The 5 most famous real-life swords from military history
These days, swords are merely ceremonial. There’s not a lot of need for getting in close and cutting the enemy down while your side of the battle is being bombarded…
9 ‘Game of Thrones’ weapons and their real-life analogs
When building a fantasy world, you draw inspiration from the real world for some of the practical details. In “Game of Thrones” (or “A Song of Ice and Fire” to my fellow book readers), almost every tool of death is based off of an actual weapon.…
This Revolutionary War battle was fought in lard with swords
When a revolution starts, there eventually comes a time for everyone to start picking sides. For the southern colonies in the American Revolution, the time to choose came in 1776. Both loyalist and patriot armies began recruiting drives for…
The last Scottish Highland broadsword charge ended terribly for the Highlanders
There aren’t a lot of thoughts scarier than a few hundred Scots brandishing broadswords and coming at you at full sprint. That’s the concept behind the Scottish Highland charge, and…
That time a Marine in WWII was found clutching a sword around 13 dead Japanese soldiers
It was in August 1942 that Private 1st Class Edward Ahrens would cement his place in the halls of Marine bad*sses when he singlehandedly took on an entire group of Japanese soldiers who were trying to flank his unit.
Ahrens, a Ma…
How George Patton became the Army’s Master of Swords
We’ve all heard of General George S. Patton. Maybe you’ve seen the movie. Maybe you did a report on him in school. Maybe you even have a grandfather who served…
How a World War II general survived being hit in the head by a katana
Many years before the katana attack, Walter McIlhenny began his military career in the Virginia National Guard, but as war in Europe loomed in 1935, he transferred to the Marine…
These are the Air Force swords that look like they belong in a video game
Everyone in the military (including the Air Force) scratches their heads over why ridiculous and over-sized swords are given to high ranking Air Force officers. The real reason is rooted in tradition and a dash of silliness.
U.S. Air Forc…
This is the fascinating process of how samurai swords are made
Samurai are some of the most popular and enduring figures of Japanese culture. They are the heroes of poems, stories and movies in Japan and Western countries alike. The Last…
What the movies get wrong about blacksmiths
It’s one of the coolest moments in medieval fantasy films. A blacksmith sweats over the forge, slowly pouring bright-orange, molten iron into an open-topped stone mold of a mighty sword while the audience watches a cool shot of the weapon taking sh…