Creative History

  On February 16, 1918 the naval collier USS Cyclops  set sail from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and headed north on her way to port in Baltimore, Maryland. She was carrying approximately 11,000 tons of manganese ore.  Manganese, designated Mn on the periodic table of elements, is a metallic chemical element.  It is an important element in the manufacture of stainless steel and a necessary part of munitions manufacture which was vital to the war effort of the United States and its allies during the First World War. At the time, there were conflicting reports regarding the cargo capacity of the USS Cyclops .  Some reports stated that the Cyclops could only safely transport approximately 8500 cubic tonnes of cargo, and that she was dangerously overloaded with 11,000 tonnes of manganese ore aboard upon leaving Rio on that fateful day of February 16, 1918.  Though, it must be noted that previously, the Cyclops had been documented as having safely carried cargo ...

  On the morning of November 7, 1918 the French Deuxieme Bureau (Intelligence Bureau) receives an unverified report that an armistice ending the World War has been signed by Germany and the allied powers of the United States, Great Britain and France. When news of the signing of an armistice to end hostilities reaches American Army Intelligence in Paris, the Americans express doubt about the veracity of the French report and insist that, as far as they know, military operations are still very much active on the Western Front and that it is much too early on in the peace negotiations for any armistice agreement to have been reached. French intelligence insists though, that their report states that an armistice has, in fact, been signed and that a ceasefire is set to go into effect at 2 pm that very day. Head of the American Army Intelligence Service Lieutenant Colonel Cabot Wood forwards the report, “with reservations” to General John J. Pershing commander of the American Ex...

            Completely devastated.  Damage to properties 100%.  Damage to agriculture 100%.  Impossible to clean.  Human life impossible. This is how the French government originally defined what it called Zone Rouge (the Red Zone) at the end of the First World War over one-hundred years ago in 1919.   Zone Rouge encompassed over 450 square miles of French countryside along the trench lines and no man’s land that had once made up the Western Front. At the end of the war areas within what the French government had defined as Zone Rouge were considered absolutely unfit for human habitation.  The Red Zone remained littered with hundreds of thousands of tons of unexploded artillery shells, countless human and animal remains and fetid toxic soil that was the result of chlorine, phosgene and mustard gas bombardments. Farming, forestry and human habitation were all banned within Zone Rouge.  Many of these res...