Cmdr. Edward Pledger, current captain of the USS Cole, told the families of the fallen and members of the former crew that the 17 golden stars on the bulkhead by the ship’s mess line are kept polished and shining — and continue to inspire his own shipmates today.

At President Abraham Lincoln's side on Nov. 19, 1863, helping take care of him was one of the most important yet historically overlooked people in his life — William H. Johnson, a 30-year-old Black man the president had brought with him from Illinois to be his personal valet.

Obituary

Ruth Kluger, whose unsparing account, published in English as "Still Alive," of her coming-of-age during the Holocaust, has died. She was 88.

In a strange twist of historical irony, the Supreme Court nominee put forth by President Donald Trump was able to adopt her child from Haiti thanks in part to Trump's 2016 archrival, Hillary Clinton.

When Randall Edwards entered a Japanese prisoner camp in Manchuria during World War II, he expected his life to end soon. But he survived, and lived to age 103.

A World War II veteran and grandson of 10th U.S. president John Tyler, who left office 175 years ago, died at age 95 last month, a historical anomaly of a family whose three generations span three centuries.

Sarah Gauna Esquivel remembers the day her 19-year-old first-born, Tim, headed off to Naval Station Great Lakes for boot camp.It’s harder to remember when he came home.

Twenty-five hundred years ago in the Battle of Salamis, the ancient Greeks defeated the invading Persians and paved the way for Greece's Golden Age of the 5th century, BCE, a foundation period for Western Civilization.

In 1918, as World War I crawled to its finish, the world faced down another sinister enemy with the spread of H1N1 influenza. During the influenza pandemic, about one-third of the world was infected and at least 50 million died.

George Washington was a strapping man – taller than his peers, an athletic rider and a fantastic dancer. But his immune system was weak. Throughout his life, he was regularly struck with illnesses and brought to the brink of death.

Analysis

The reports that President Donald Trump has contracted the coronavirus and is working from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center has launched a thousand "what if" and worst-case scenarios.

The public can visit former President John F. Kennedy’s gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery on Saturday for the first time since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

The old green crane was designed for a different age — of what manager of crane engineering Jim Kelly calls “stick-built” ships, or moving individual steel plates and pieces into a dry dock for assembly.

Grissom Air Museum would like to add an $800,000 facility to house its 60-year-old B-58 Hustler and a collection of items related to the program.

Patricia Warner, one of the nation’s last OSS female spies who once worked undercover as a flamenco dancer, died Saturday at her home in Lincoln, Mass. She was 99.

“I felt that my decision to honor Sgt. 1st Class Alwyn Cashe was something that was very personal to me,” the Steelers' Alejandro Villanueva said during a video conference call, “due to the fact that in the veteran community there is a strong push to get him a Medal of Honor, which is something that the community believes that he deserves.”

Launched in March 1943, the USS Cod played a key role during its third patrol on May 10, 1944, when it helped sink the the Japanese destroyer Karukaya. It also performed the only international submarine-to-submarine rescue in history.

U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Michael P. Anderson's life arcs across Plattsburgh, N.Y., where he was born in 1959 and where “Reach for the Stars! The Michael Anderson Mural” by artist Brendon Palmer-Angell, will grace the side of a building as part of a public art project.

The Arsenal of Democracy flyover of Washington, D.C. was once again grounded by weather on Saturday, forcing the cancellation of the aerial portion of the tribute to World War II veterans 75 years after the war's end. See a tribute video with the story.

A flyover of vintage planes in the Washington region scheduled for Friday morning is being postponed a day because of weather.

GALLERY

The Arsenal of Democracy flyover commemorates the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. More than 60 vintage WWII-era aircraft are to take part in the event.

With President Trump scheduled to visit the Dayton area Monday, the president has before him a renewed request from Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine to make the Dayton area the permanent headquarters of the U.S. Space Command.

A group of about 50 friends, family and well-wishers gathered Friday to dedicate a historical marker to Medal of Honor recipient Joe Mann, made possible by the work of the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

In a 2004 speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke about her Jewish identity and the horrifying history of anti-Semitism.

Looking through wartime artifacts in 2014, VFW Post 6859 Commander Joel Demers stumbled on a mystery that would take six years to unravel. In seeing it through, Demers reunited a long-lost Purple Heart with a family that had spent decades searching for the medal.

Of the 23 Morgan County, Alabama men killed during the Vietnam War, only the body of Air Force Lt. Col. Ralph Pattillo was never returned home. A marker in memory of Pattillo sits above an empty grave at the Hartselle City Cemetery.

With time on their hands due to the pandemic and with the help of funding, mentorship and guidance through the Dragon Kim Foundation’s seven-month fellowship for California high schoolers, Hina and Kana Kojima spent the last few months interviewing Omori and five other prison camp survivors in person or over Zoom.

For the next month or so, Stars and Stripes is going to cycle through the alphabet, showcasing an active or former base (or bases) that start with that letter. There may be a few you've never heard of, there may be some naval ships and Coast Guard stations involved, and keep an eye out for a fort that shared a name with a popular musical.

Active-duty service members who die from an incident that was not in support of combat operations would no longer be eligible for burial at Arlington National Cemetery under a new proposed rule posted Tuesday to the Federal Register.

For nearly a year, Nazi U-boat submarines patrolled the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean seeking to kill Americans, disrupt merchant shipping and strike fear in the hearts of U.S. citizens.

WBZ reported that the resident who found the explosives was digging on his property as part of a driveway expansion project.

The Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum is ever so close to a crowning achievement: offering public access for the first time to the top of the international orange-and-white-striped historic control tower overlooking Ford Island and Pearl Harbor for what museum officials call “freedom’s view.”

Seventy years after a horrific train crash in Ohio claimed the lives of 33 members of Wilkes-Barre’s 109th Field Artillery, a group of soldiers and veterans brought the past, present and future together at a memorial service in Pennsylvania.

It was the early 1900s, and getting the mail had become such a chore for this speck of a town deep in forest, about 100 miles south, as the crow flies, of the Oregon border. The journey to the nearest post office in Hayfork – a seven-mile horseback trail ride – could take several hours.

Video

The award is an upgrade of the Distinguished Service Cross that Sgt. Maj. Thomas Patrick Payne was initially awarded in 2017. He is just the second living service member to receive the nation’s highest honor for combat valor for actions in Iraq.

“It’s a very personal day, not only a personal day if you’re an American, but even more so if you’re a New Yorker because the hometown was struck,” Col. Douglas Levien said at a 9/11 remembrance ceremony in Germany.

At the sound of the gunshot from inside the house of the notorious Japanese general, Hideki Tojo, Maj. Paul Kraus and Lt. John 'Jack' Wilpers rushed the front door, followed by the media.

Asked about Willie Nelson's account of smoking marijuana on the roof of the White House with a staff worker, Carter responded, "That is not exactly true. It actually was one of my sons."

The long-awaited presidential memorial honoring Dwight D. Eisenhower will be dedicated and unveiled in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 17 – more than 20 years after Congress commissioned it.

Researchers and archivists have steadily worked to gather artifacts related to Gen. Douglas MacArthur, quintupling its collection in half a century. During the pandemic, as folks around the world spent more and more time at home, digging through family heirlooms and cleaning out closets and attics, artifacts have poured in.

Although the Virginia Military Institute scrapped the custom of making first-year cadets salute a large statue of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson that stands in the center of the campus a few years ago, the former VMI professor and slave owner's statue remains in its prominent perch.

Nineteen years after the attacks of 9/11, some American veterans of the war in Afghanistan wrestle with the idea that the pull-out of U.S. troops from the country was born out of a deal struck with the very enemy more than 2,400 of their brothers and sisters died fighting.

Biram Senghor, 82, is among the last living sons of hundreds of West African soldiers who fought to liberate France in World War II but were killed upon their return one morning at the order of French commanders.

Four congressional lawmakers are pushing to award the Medal of Honor posthumously to Cpl. Waverly B. Woodson Jr., a Black Army medic who was wounded on D-Day and spent the next 30 hours treating injured men on the beach until he finally collapsed from his own wounds.

Starting Wednesday, the public will be allowed into Arlington National Cemetery to visit gravesites every day from 8 a.m. to noon, but some points of interest inside the cemetery will remain closed.

It was the summer of 1970, and as Tomas Sandoval fought in a war he'd been drafted into, activists back home protested a system that sent so many Mexican Americans like him to fight in Vietnam.

In the summer of 1945, Lt. John K. Bremyer, 25, was to carry a flag from Washington and travel in a hurry to legendary Fleet Adm. William F. "Bull" Halsey, then on the battleship USS Missouri, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

ANALYSIS

The legacy of World War II is still rippling through world events and influencing history. Even though the war ended 75 years ago, the world is still defined in many ways by what they accomplished.

Over the course of nine years, the Civilian Conservation Corps changed the face of outdoor recreation in this country, ushering in the era of easy-access “car-camping” that exploded after World War II and continues today.

In the war in the Pacific, Jack DeTour used to fly B-25 bombers on missions in which his aircraft would sometimes come back with extra parts ... from the Japanese ships he was attacking at a very low level.

A few leads have turned up in the search for “Gimpy Joe,” a soldier from Pittsburgh who scratched his name into the stone walls of a cave in the Netherlands in 1944, but nothing concrete has surfaced.

Pilot Ralph Cheli buzzed his B-25 Mitchell just above the rainforest treetops of New Guinea, followed by several dozen other bombers from his squadron known as the Green Dragons. The mission: bomb and strafe an airfield crammed with hundreds of Japanese planes.

Fred David was just 18 when he stormed the beaches of Normandy on June 5, 1944. David is one of 115 Greentown, Indiana, veterans who now have a banner prominently displayed on nearly every light pole as part of the town's Hometown Hero project.

The Pentagon is poised to recommend that the Medal of Honor be posthumously awarded to Sgt. 1st Class Alwyn Cashe, who suffered fatal burns while repeatedly bursting into a burning vehicle in Iraq to save the lives of fellow soldiers.

Due to the pandemic, the traditional birthday gathering for Lawrence Brooks can't take place this year. But the National WWII Museum is hoping that people will send Brooks a card to commemorate his 111th birthday.

On Friday, Sept. 11, Wreaths Across America calls for every American to stand outside and wave a flag for one minute at 8:46 a.m., 9:03 a.m., 9:37 a.m.and 10:03 a.m.

On August 29, 1970, thousands of demonstrators marched through East Los Angeles for the National Chicano Moratorium Against the Vietnam War. What was intended to be a quiet rally "ended in violence and tragedy," Time Magazine reported.

A cavalcade of World War II flying history will land at Wheeler Army Airfield from 9 a.m. to noon Thursday in preparation for three aerial parade flyovers commemorating the 75th anniversary of the end of the war, officials said.

It’s been frustrating for some of the pilots and warbird owners who came a long way and with great difficulty to Hawaii to honor veterans with flights and a series of group flyovers commemorating Japan’s surrender on Sept. 2, 1945.

In 2005, a man showed up at the home of Jason Dunham's parents with an ammo box and a request. Could he place it on the hill overlooking the house, and mark the box as a geocache site? Geocachers from around the world are still able to discover the box and learn some of the Medal of Honor recipient's story.

Organizers of the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II event in Hawaii said Friday night they made the “extremely difficult decision” to limit attendance at the Sept. 2 ceremony to World War II veterans who live in the state.

Aerial parade flyovers with up to 14 vintage warbirds are scheduled around Oahu Aug. 29 and 30 and Sept. 2 — the day 75 years ago that Japan signed an unconditional surrender aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

The massive Mediterranean style hotel survived the Great Depression and, later, just barely staved off destruction. It went from luxury hotel to military hospital, government office to derelict eyesore.

The English colonists who settled North Carolina's so-called Lost Colony before disappearing from history simply went to live with their native friends — the Croatoans of Hatteras, according to a new book.

VJ Day is officially remembered in the United States on Sept. 2, when documents were officially signed, but it’s also remembered on August 15, the day when Japan’s surrender to the Allies was announced to the world.

Walter W. Waters called the mass protest “a safety valve for dissatisfaction.” He didn’t want revolution or anarchy, but he and millions of other Americans were desperate.

The actions of Henry “Red” Erwin, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for a heroic act during World War II, and the love story with his wife are at the heart of a new book, "Beyond Valor."

Luzerne County, Pa., Judge Richard M. Hughes III said his late father didn’t talk much about his Army service in World War II. But he wrote extensively about his combat journey through Europe. It just took the family more than 75 years to find the writings.

The 222-year-old USS Constitution in Boston, the United States Navy’s oldest commissioned ship, reopened last week to much fanfare. Roughly 1,000 people visit the ship during its reopening weekend

Complaints, advice, congratulations, introductions, pleas, job requests and military reports poured into Abraham Lincoln's mailbox before and during his presidency.

As the U.S. marks National Purple Heart Day on Friday, Stars and Stripes looks at the life and career of retired Army Col. Richard "Dick" Williams, 97, who was wounded during the Korean War Battle of Chipyong-ni in 1951.

With a Japanese helicopter destroyer, the battleship Missouri and USS Arizona Memorial behind them, officials announced Wednesday that 52 World War II veterans plan to attend events on Oahu marking the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II.

It’s been 75 years since the U.S. Army Air Force dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Here's a look back at the first and only wartime use of atomic weapons.

The 75th Anniversary of the End of World War II Commemoration, which includes events in Washington, D.C., and Honolulu, Hawaii, will continue with adjustments and safety precautions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

Fourteen vintage warbirds, including a polished aluminum 1944 B-25 bomber, are headed to Hawaii courtesy of a U.S. Navy lift on the amphibious assault ship USS Essex for aerial flyovers commemorating the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II.

On that clear, sunny morning, 7-year-old Howard Kakita stood on the roof of his grandparents’ bathhouse excitedly watching the vapor trails of an approaching B-29. The date was August 6, 1945. The city was Hiroshima, Japan.

Bert Shepard’s major league debut in 1945 — 75 years ago this month — capped a remarkable tale of perseverance that began when his P-38 Lightning fighter was shot down in Germany on May 21, 1944.

Between 1940 and 1943, over 90,000 Jews died in the Warsaw Ghetto of starvation and disease. But that number could have been much higher if not for the efforts of doctors and ghetto officials who managed to stop a typhus epidemic in its tracks.

The 2005 obituary for William F. Ault of Canton, Ohio, noted he was one of the few who survived one of the deadliest losses of life in U.S. Naval history.

The Air Zoo Aerospace and Science Museum will be a “proud recipient” of one of the first Lockheed F-117 Nighthawks released for public display at a non-military institution, the museum said.

Sen. Tim Kaine on Tuesday urged other lawmakers not to cave to President Donald Trump’s demands to remove a measure from the annual defense authorization bill that would strip the Confederate names from 10 Army posts.

For half a century, a U.S. Military Academy dormitory has borne the name of Robert E. Lee, the West Point graduate who led the academy as superintendent for three years and later waged war against former comrades as a Confederate commander during the Civil War. That could change.

Daniel Smith is a member of an almost vanished demographic: The child of someone once considered a piece of property instead of a human being.

Inventor Robert Condit speculated that Venus was run by naked, multi-limbed inhabitants — who would eventually become business partners with Earthlings.