History

I like holding history in my hands.

I’ve always been fascinated by history, especially the First and Second World Wars. But what interests me most isn’t memorizing dates or battles. I like finding the individual stories hidden inside larger historical events.

That interest led me to start collecting historical artifacts—military equipment, documents, photographs, personal objects, and other things that survived from the people who experienced these events firsthand.

A large pile of military artifacts from Ethan's collection: helmets, a medic's helmet with a red cross, canteens, gas masks, ammunition, pouches, and field gear
A small part of my collection.

Every object has a story.

When I find an artifact, the object itself is usually just the beginning.

  • Who owned it?
  • Where were they?
  • What happened to them?
  • What was happening in the world around them?

Sometimes a name, date, inscription, or photograph is enough to start researching a person and following a story that happened decades ago. That’s why my favorite pieces are photographs and diaries: they come with a person already inside them.

I love when an ordinary object becomes a connection to a real individual and a much larger historical event.

Ethan's hands sorting through old wartime black-and-white photographs, a handwritten diary, and dog tags on a table
Photographs, a diary, and dog tags. My favorite kind of artifact.

From the collection

Most of what I collect comes from the World Wars, but some pieces reach into the Cold War and beyond. Each one is a different way into the past.

Seven military helmets on a table, including a white medic's helmet with a red cross, a camouflage-covered helmet, and a German-style steel helmet
Helmets. Every dent and scratch is from someone who wore it.
Military field gear: an ammunition box, canteens with covers, a mess cup, a flashlight, and a cartridge belt
Field gear. Canteens, an ammunition box, and a cartridge belt: what soldiers carried every day.
Two pilot's flight helmets with visors and oxygen masks, a flare pistol, an aircraft gauge, a leather flight cap, and sheepskin-lined gloves
Aviation gear. Flight helmets, a flight cap, gloves, and a flare pistol.
A framed relic labeled WW2 Enigma code machine, dug relic, notched rotor wheel ring
An Enigma machine part. A dug-relic notched rotor ring from a WWII Enigma cipher machine.
Ethan holding military binoculars next to their open leather case, which has instructions printed inside the lid
Optics. Military binoculars, still in their original leather case.
Four display boxes of rusted, excavated metal relics and spent cartridges from Normandy
Relics from Normandy. Rusted metal and spent cartridges recovered from the ground.
A display case with a roof tile fragment, a small sample of trinitite, and a photo of the first atomic test dated July 16, 1945
A tile from Hiroshima and trinitite. Trinitite is the glass formed in the first atomic test, July 16, 1945.
A painted fragment of the Berlin Wall on a wooden stand in front of a Soviet fur hat with a hammer-and-sickle badge
A piece of the Berlin Wall and a Soviet ushanka: the Cold War that followed.
Two old Edison phonograph cylinder containers, one with a portrait of Thomas Edison on the label
Edison phonograph cylinders. Recorded sound from more than a century ago.

Following history

My interest in history also changes the way I travel. When I have the opportunity, I visit the places where the events I’ve studied actually happened—from major museums and monuments to battlefields and small historical sites that can be surprisingly difficult to find.

Standing in the actual place makes history feel different. Distances, geography, weather, buildings, and landscapes that seem abstract in a book suddenly become real.

Side by side, in black and white: Ethan smiling in front of a stone farmhouse wall in Normandy, and a wartime photograph of American paratroopers in front of the same wall
Then and now. I tracked down the farmhouse from a wartime photo of American paratroopers in Normandy and stood in front of the same wall.
Ethan posing with the barrel of a heavy gun at a concrete coastal bunker in Normandy
A German coastal battery in Normandy.
Ethan at the USS Arizona Memorial, with the rusted gun turret base of the sunken battleship visible in the water behind him
The USS Arizona Memorial, Pearl Harbor.
Ethan standing in front of the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima
The Atomic Bomb Dome, Hiroshima.
Young Ethan, seen from behind, standing before a white memorial obelisk with Japanese characters, with snow-covered mountains behind it
The memorial at Manzanar, where Japanese Americans were incarcerated during WWII.
Ethan laughing while trying on an old military helmet in a crowded militaria shop full of uniforms, medals, and badges
Trying on a helmet at a militaria shop in Poland.

Why the past matters

What fascinates me most is how everything connects:

  1. an object
  2. a person
  3. a place
  4. an event
  5. a consequence

The more I learn about history, the more I realize that enormous events are ultimately made up of individual people making decisions, living ordinary lives, and responding to circumstances they could never completely control.

That’s probably why I keep collecting, researching, and traveling. There is always another story to discover.

Explore places I’ve visited