Cities and towns across the United States have done their part to honor those who served their country from the Revolutionary War through the current Global War on Terrorism, and the twin cities of Lewiston and Auburn, Maine, are no exception.

Forty years after having been taken hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, some survivors of the 444-day ordeal say that despite their own deep-seated scars, and those that remain between the U.S. and Iranian governments, it would be beneficial for the two nations to get beyond the enmity of the past.

Michael Strank was a Czechoslovakia native with Carpatho-Rusyn heritage, beloved family member, immigrant, devout Byzantine Catholic, Marine’s Marine and an individual who – in less than a second – was immortalized in what may be the most famous photograph ever taken.

Secret cities. Secret work. During World War II, about 130,000 people were involved in the Manhattan Project, a highly classified collective effort that produced the first nuclear weapons and changed science, and war, forever. But those working on the project didn't necessarily know what they were working on.

Simone Arnold Liebster can still remember being 12 years old and forced to stand alone in front of 500 fellow students while her school principal demanded she give the Seig Heil salute. Liebster refused to pledge her allegiance to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and the regime that persecuted her family for being Jehovah's Witnesses.

The Beirut bombing of 1983 was one of the deadliest single-days for the U.S. Armed Forces. Every year since 1986 a remembrance ceremony has been held at what is now the Beirut Memorial near Camp Lejeune in honor of those who lost their lives.

For 50 years the would-be Marines who headed to boot camp on Parris Island first traveled through a sleepy Lowcountry town via a train depot the military built specifically for the purpose.

As shredders that were available jammed or broke down, Stasi officers resorted to tearing documents by hand, stuffing them into bags to later be burned or pulped. But the effort came to a premature halt when citizens groups stormed and occupied Stasi offices to preserve the evidence.

A senior Russian diplomat says Moscow and Washington are running out of time to extend the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty.

Sam Storms was driving his brush to the dump when he got the call from Fort Knox. "I've got some good news for you," the man said. "We found your Daddy," Maj. Harvey Storms, who was presumed killed in action at the Chosin Reservoir 66 years ago.

Vietnam, led by a government the 81 soldiers had fought against, twice declined to accept their remains for burial. They became “men without a country,” former U.S. Sen. Jim Webb said.

Just over 54 years after it was originally launched, the USS Mariano G. Vallejo is back home for good at Mare Island. Hundreds of veterans, along with their family and friends were joined by numerous city officials to witness the sail dedication of the USS Mariano G. Vallejo, which was decommissioned and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in March of 1995.

For years, a former Argentine naval officer was living in a $1 million waterfront home in North Miami. At 7 a.m. Friday, U.S. Marshals Service deputies knocked on his door and took him into custody to send him back to Argentina over a massacre he's accused of leading nearly 50 years ago.

A song performed at a Saturday ceremony told of the deaths of Ensigns George Kraus of Wisconsin and Merle Longnecker of North Dakota, who were respectively 22 and 20 when their Hellcat Grumman F6F-5N fighter planes collided in a training exercise above Preston, Conn., on Oct. 19, 1944.

"We always knew this day was going to happen," Martha Kloecker, 79, said of her brother, U.S. Army Sgt. Gerald B. Raeymacker. "We never gave up and we waited a long time for this."

Prior to going overseas, Carlyle Harris sat in a classroom and listened as an instructor spoke of World War II prisoners having communicated by tapping on a water pipe. The young fighter pilot’s learning – and remembering – the tap code would later change the course of his eight years in captivity in North Vietnam.

All his life, Rene Gagnon has told his children and grandchildren about their proud family heritage: His father and namesake, Rene Gagnon Sr., was one of the U.S. Marines who raised the flag on Iwo Jima in what has become an iconic image of American triumph. A few days ago, Gagnon learned that his father was not one of those men.

At these fairs, premature babies were medical oddities, the disabled were sideshow "freaks" and primitive tribes were billed as "savages."

Chet Furtek is now 93. And the story of his rescue after the sinking of the USS Corry, which he described as a miracle, has not been forgotten.

As the legend goes, Colonel William Prescott ordered his militia “Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes!” as British forces embarked on Bunker Hill nearly 250 years ago. The musket used by the man who disobeyed that order is now up for auction.

Military museums face challenge of telling service stories to disparate audiences with varying purposes.

For over an hour Monday, dozens of female soldiers and veterans at the Association of the United States Army annual meeting in Washington took turns shaking the hand of Indiana Hunt-Martin, a 97-year-old World War II veteran whom many of them credited for “paving the way” for their service.

Twenty-one shots from an honor guard. The haunting sound of a bugler playing Taps. Then, total silence as two more Michigan Army National Guard honor guard members folded the flag draped over U.S. Army Sgt. David Feriend’s casket.

When you're traveling in either direction along Interstate 95 in Virginia, you will likely pass more than one sign featuring a silhouette of George Washington's head framed by a golden heart. Some have a green background, others are white. And each announces that you're on a "Purple Heart Trail."

Amendments to change White Sands National Monument's designation are included in both the House and Senate versions of the National Defense Authorization Act.

For far too long, the five African Americans have been overlooked, overshadowed by their martyred commander, treated as footnotes, if at all, in the John Brown saga.

This year, Rep. Derrick J. Lente – a second-term Democrat in a state where more than a tenth of residents are American Indian – successfully sponsored a bill ditching Columbus Day, fighting back attempts to rename the holiday New Mexico Day or Friendship Day.

By the autumn of 1919, the First World War had been over for almost a year. But the U.S. military was already thinking about the next struggle and the need for more recruits. Top Navy brass decided to send some of the heroic boats of the Great War on tour.

It is dedicated to the local soldiers and sailors who fought in World War I, but Erie Veterans Memorial Stadium is also very much a place that students helped build and have called their own for 95 years.

Bill Tamburrino, a retired Baltimore City public schools vice principal and a World War II veteran who painted the likenesses of famous women on bombers, died of heart disease Sept. 17 at a family member’s home. The Fallston resident was 98.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie praised the nation’s 37th commander in chief as “the man who probably did more for veterans than any president since Abraham Lincoln.”

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s office uncovered a letter from the FAA in March 2018 that extended the exemption allowing the plane to fly with paid passengers through 2020.

Revered across the country as vintage aviation preservationists, the father and son behind the nonprofit Collings Foundation, owner of the B-17 that crashed last week, have had a turbulent relationship with some of the neighbors around their museum and airfield in Stow, Mass.

The Cadet Nurse Corps operated from 1943 to 1948, when the country worried about a shortage of nurses. The vast majority of them were women, serving in war hospitals overseas and in civilian hospitals in the U.S. to fill a massive need.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the strike organized by the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers that started Sept. 22, 1919, at a time when steelworkers put in 12-hour days six days per week and 24-hour shifts every other week.

A resolution introduced last week by U.S. Rep. Julia Brownley proposed a Forever stamp series to honor women who served in the military, including two Stark County, Ohio, women who were killed in action.

Seven of Nixon's closest confidantes had been indicted in the Watergate scandal, and the special prosecutor investigating the matter wanted audio recordings of some of the president's phone conversations from the Oval Office. Nixon claimed executive privilege protected him, and he refused to release the tapes.

It's D-Day, 1944, and radio correspondent George Hicks is on the deck of the USS Ancon as it comes under attack by Nazi aircraft. For more than 13 riveting minutes, he captures the raw sound of battle. Hicks' original tape was presumed lost, until it was discovered among abandoned belongings in an old cabin on Long Island.

Monday's was the first of five hearings to be held across the state to gather opinions on what changes, if any, should be made to the name of Historic Fort Snelling following a $34.5 million restoration project at the site.

Two World War II fighter planes and three bombers will be at Bradley International Airport in Connecticut through Thursday. The aircraft are a B-17G Flying Fortress heavy bomber, a B-24J Liberator heavy bomber, a B-25 Mitchell medium bomber, a P-51 Mustang fighter and a P-40 Warhawk fighter.

Weeks ago, the mysterious discovery of an unopened letter written in 1967 reinvigorated a metro family’s search for a relative they hadn’t seen in 10 years. Now, the Hayes family says, that story has a happy ending.

The Civil War and slavery are sore subjects for many black people, and changing the name might help tone down the growing opposition to the project, including his own, Fayetteville Mayor Mitch Colvin said.

Crew families, as well as friends, legislators, and current and former Navy officials were gathering Thursday at Arlington National Cemetery to honor the men who perished in 1963 when the USS Thresher burst a leak and imploded under the pressure of the ocean as it drifted out of control past its "crush" depth.

On Saturday in Germany, Adolf Hitler’s military uniform, visor hat and several medals will go on the auction block and could sell for upward of $2 million, based on similar sales in recent years.

Harold Pedersen, who passed away Sept. 7 in Helena, Mont., at age 96, celebrated his 22nd birthday the day of the invasion on Feb. 19, 1945.

Karl Muenter, was a sergeant with the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitler Youth, which was responsible for the massacre of 86 men in Ascq, France in April 1944, about two months before the Allied D-Day landings.

Marveling at the mammoth World War II warbirds on the tarmac at the Worcester Regional Airport, WWII veteran Herbert Keilson's eyes focused on the fuselage of a B-24 Liberator heavy bomber, the type of aircraft on which he once served as a flight engineer.

A child's innocence and his mother's worry were both captured on a video that Mark Tennenbaum made of his family after they boarded the RMS Queen Mary for a transatlantic passage. "The bottom line was that the Queen Mary saved me and my mom and dad, saved our lives," Tennenbaum said.

Sixteen million Americans served in World War II. In the European theater, roughly 94,000 of those soldiers lived out part of their service as a kriegsgefangener, which is German for prisoner of war. Friday is a day to remember them, and those who never came home.

Work begins Saturday on the National Mall to establish a long-sought memorial recognizing the military service of Native Americans – service that many in the United States remain unaware of, according to leaders of the project.

In her message to the many students in the audience, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Olga Custodio impressed upon them the importance of persistence, passion and patience. “I learned that denial is sometimes just delay,” she said about setbacks she’d faced.

Dutch paratroopers jumped onto an old World War II battleground this week to present their country’s highest military award to an American veteran and the son of another who helped liberate the Netherlands from Nazi Germany.

Clarence Smoyer earned the moniker the “Hero of Cologne” as a 21-year-old tank gunner credited with destroying a German Panther IV tank blocking the U.S. Army’s 3rd Armored Division’s march to the Rhine River during WWII.

Harold Kendall Costill, 18, was among more than 100 sailors killed aboard the battleship USS West Virginia when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. He was listed as missing in action for nearly 80 years.

Retired Bishop Francis X. Roque, former auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese for Military Services who also served as a U.S. Army chaplain in Vietnam, Korea and Europe, died Thursday at age 90.

Russian authorities hope to prove that, among Joseph Stalin's victims in Sandarmokh, Soviet soldiers taken captive and shot by the Finnish army during World War II are also buried.

There's still a lot to learn about the Anniversary Wreck, so named because a crew from the St. Augustine Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program found it in 2015, the 450th anniversary of the city's founding.

Struggling through Parkinson's disease, dementia and a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, Harry Glixon spent the last decade of his life racing the undertaker, pecking away at the keyboards with the two-fingered intensity that characterized his typing skills.

The high-stakes Incheon landing marked a crucial turning point early in the Korean War which, absent a formal peace treaty, is technically still underway. Some military commanders argued it was too risky, but Gen. Douglas MacArthur insisted the riskiness only boosted the element of surprise.

About 20 miles south of Washington, the $400 million National Museum of the U.S. Army will be the service's flagship museum when it opens on June 4.

Opinion

Relations between Japan and South Korea are currently strained due to a dispute over former civilian workers from the Korean Peninsula during World War II. The heart of the problem is whether the promises made between our two sovereign states when they decided to normalize their relations in 1965 will be kept or not.

Analysis

World War II ended 74 years ago. But even in the 21st century, the lasting effects endure, both psychological and material. After all, the war took more than 60 million lives, redrew the map of Europe and ended with the Soviet Union and the United States locked in a Cold War of nuclear superpowers.

D.J. and Jessica Carson were hoping to discover a small fortune when they purchased contents within a storage unit during a public auction in Canton, Ohio. Inside an old trunk were a Purple Heart and other memorabilia that belonged to Lewis R. Billman, a U.S. Army soldier who died in battle in France on Aug. 21, 1944.

Obituary

Jim Leavelle, a Pearl Harbor veteran and longtime Dallas lawman who was captured in one of history's most iconic photographs as he escorted President John F. Kennedy's assassin as he was fatally shot, has died. He was 99.

The tags were the only thing Angela had left of her father, Capt. Steven L. Bennett, who was killed in action in Vietnam when Angela was only 2 years old. Her father was an OV-10 pilot and Medal of Honor recipient.

The museum encompasses three different sites with three different historical focuses, expanding beyond its initial concentration on the convergence of soldiers and medical personnel in Frederick after the battles of Antietam, Gettysburg and Monocacy. Changing the logo — or at least the possibility of it — is a new focus as the museum embarks on a rebranding campaign.

The long wait for the USS Arizona Memorial to reopen to walk-on visits is ending soon, with a new anchoring system drilled firmly into the seafloor to keep a formerly wayward floating access dock in place, officials say.

Jan Ruff-O'Herne, who had grown up on her father's colonial sugar plantation in what was then the Dutch East Indies, was one of the few Europeans used by the Japanese as sex slaves during World War II.

The fort is considered to have been an important British military outpost along Wood Creek during the French and Indian War. France blew up Fort Bull and killed or captured nearly 60 soldiers.

At the same time Ruth Reise's husband enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II, she was also offered a job. Her height – 5 foot – made her the perfect size to climb into plane gas tanks to secure the rivets.

Whether it’s through a glove belonging to Stonewall Jackson, a uniform worn by a Union soldier, a complete Civil War ambulance, or any of the other 24,000 artifacts, dioramas and detailed descriptions in the National Civil War Museum’s collection, visitors learn about the conflict from beginning to end.

Archaeological divers from Rhode Island and Australia are gathering in Newport to positively identify the wreck of Capt. James Cook's Endeavour, the ship that took him around the world and from which he discovered Australia.

What was a grand and enjoyable dinner party honoring returning World War I veteran Col. Charles Weybrecht a century ago turned into a deadly tragedy resulting in the deaths of seven people, including the guest of honor.

The cleansing and naming ritual, presided over by visiting chiefs from Cameroon, kicked off a weekend of events marking the 400th anniversary of the Africans' arrival and the dawn of American slavery.

Liane Russell, a refugee of Nazi Europe who became one of the most distinguished female scientists of her era, building a colony of more than 200,000 laboratory mice that she used to demonstrate the importance of protecting developing embryos from X-rays and other forms of radiation, died July 20 at a hospital in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. She was 95.

A rusty spoon gave high school senior Josh Picoult a portal to World War I and the perilous life of a young soldier. Picoult was among 15 Connecticut students who traveled to France last month to restore trenches that French soldiers dug in 1914 and Connecticut soldiers occupied four years later.

In the photo, a group of straight-faced Japanese prisoners sit, transported by U.S. Army soldiers. At the left, according to Dean Ford, sits Hideki Tojo, Japanese minister of war and later the prime minister during World War II.

Nan Songer, a chemist assistant and naturalist, established a spidery in Yucaipa in 1939 and supplied webs to make crosshairs for equipment such as scopes and sights, including the Norden Bombsight.

In November 1944, Marthe Cohn was recruited by the French Army Intelligence Service to serve as a Nazi spy, a calling that she excelled at, but was not recognized for until decades later. Now, the 99-year-old Holocaust survivor travels around the world with her husband, 93-year-old Major Cohn, sharing her story with anyone who will listen.

As planes from World War II landed, Bob Considine thought of his father, who flew in combat. A P-40 Warhawk, a B-24 bomber and a P-51 Mustang were among the vintage World War II planes that arrived at Hazleton (Pa.) airport as part of the Wings of Freedom tour.

Volunteers continue to clean and polish the USS Arizona Memorial in preparation for the as-yet announced reopening of one of the state’s most visited tourist attractions.

Darr Keirn, Meredith Keirn's brother, had been fighting for years to recover the remains of his brother, and in May 2018, he was told the DNA sample he submitted was an exact match with recently uncovered remains.

Regina Boone's father was only three when his dad, Tsuruju Miyazaki, was taken away. In 2014, before he succumbed to cancer, Raymond Boone asked Regina to sit by him. She took his hand. He then told her: “Find out what happened to my father.”

Raritan Borough is about 4,325 miles away from Italy but a common connection — a World War II hero named John Basilone — now ties the New Jersey town and a small Italian community even closer together.