History Shorts

In this full-length interview, I sit down with Leon Carroll Jr. — retired NCIS Special Agent, longtime technical advisor for the hit series NCIS, and co-author (with Mark Harmon) of the gripping new book Ghosts of Sicily: The True Story of the Naval Intelligence Agents Who Courted the Mob to Fight Nazis in America and the Battlefields of Italy.
We dive deep into Operation Underworld — the secret WWII alliance between the Office of Naval Intelligence and organized crime figures like Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky. From securing New York's waterfront against German U-boats and spies to daring undercover missions supporting the Allied invasion of Sicily and Italy, this is one of the most unlikely and controversial operations in American history.
 
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When the British evacuated New York in 1783, suspected Loyalists found themselves in danger. Among the most suspicious was Hercules Mulligan, an Irish tailor who had spent the entire Revolutionary War making clothes for British officers. To his neighbors, he looked like a collaborator. In reality, he had been one of George Washington's most valuable spies.
Working from his tailor shop, Mulligan gathered intelligence simply by listening. British officers freely discussed troop movements, military plans, and upcoming missions while being measured for new uniforms. Twice, information he uncovered helped Washington avoid capture or ambush, potentially altering the course of the war.
 
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Everyone knows Alan Turing helped break the Enigma code. Far fewer know that the first breakthrough came years earlier—from Poland. In 1932, mathematician Marian Rejewski reconstructed the Enigma machine using pure mathematics, allowing Polish intelligence to read German communications throughout the 1930s. Weeks before Germany invaded Poland, the Poles handed their methods, replicas, and discoveries to Britain, laying the foundation for Bletchley Park's wartime success. Yet Rejewski's contribution remained largely unknown for decades. In this episode of History Shorts, we tell the remarkable story behind one of history's greatest unsung heroes.
 
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Buried more than 100 feet beneath the Greenland ice sheet lies one of the Cold War's most astonishing secrets. In 1959, the U.S. Army built Camp Century—an underground town complete with living quarters, a chapel, library, barbershop, and even a portable nuclear reactor. Officially, it was a scientific research station. In reality, it was the proving ground for one of the most ambitious military schemes ever conceived.
Known as Project Iceworm, the plan called for hiding hundreds of nuclear missiles inside a vast network of tunnels beneath Greenland's ice—without Denmark, which owned Greenland and prohibited nuclear weapons on its territory, ever knowing.
 
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The first hospital ship in U.S. Navy history wasn't purpose-built—it was a captured Confederate steamer transformed into one of the Civil War's greatest innovations. Commissioned in 1862, the Red Rover featured an operating room, a patient elevator, advanced ventilation, and even hundreds of tons of ice to help fight disease.
But her greatest legacy was the people aboard. On Christmas Eve 1862, three Catholic nuns became the first women ever to serve on a U.S. Navy vessel. They worked alongside formerly enslaved women, including Ann Bradford Stokes, who later became the first American woman awarded a military pension for her own military service. Together, they cared for more than 2,400 wounded and sick patients—Union and Confederate alike.
 
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