August: the most dangerous month?
Arguably, August is in the finals as potentially the most dangerous month of the year. On August 4th a century ago, Britain went to war to honor an 1839 treaty immediately after the Kaiser’s army invaded that Belgium. Fifty years ago, on the same date in 1964 (following an attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on a U.S. Navy destroyer two days before), a second incident occurred in the Tonkin Gulf. Two Navy destroyers radioed that both were under torpedo attack. No such attack took place. But the incident was enough for the U.S. Congress to pass the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that began a decade of war in Vietnam, the [...]
