Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/December 2022/Articles


 * Matthew Quay, nominated by Wehwalt: Matt Quay (1833–1904) was a Republican Party politician who represented Pennsylvania in the United States Senate from 1887 until 1899 and from 1901 until his death. His control of the Pennsylvania Republican political machine made him one of the most powerful and influential politicians in the country, and he ruled Pennsylvania politics for almost twenty years. As chair of the Republican National Committee and thus party campaign manager, he helped elect Benjamin Harrison as president in 1888 despite his not winning the popular vote. He was also instrumental in the 1900 election of Theodore Roosevelt as vice president. During the Civil War, he served in the Union Army, commanding the 134th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment as a colonel, and was awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism at the Battle of Fredericksburg.


 * Project Waler, nominated by Nick-D: Project Waler was an unsuccessful Australian defence procurement exercise which sought to replace the Australian Army's M113 armoured personnel carriers with more capable armoured fighting vehicles (AFVs). It was initiated in 1980 and cancelled in 1985 without any vehicles being procured. The goal of the project was to replace the Army's M113s during the mid-1990s with between 500 and 1,000 AFVs optimised for Australian conditions and built in Australia. Several years worth of scoping work was carried out, but the project was cancelled by the Australian Government in July 1985 due to concerns over the cost and capabilities of the proposed vehicles.


 * Ai-Khanoum, nominated by AirshipJungleman29: Ai-Khanoum is the archaeological site of a Hellenistic city in Takhar Province, Afghanistan. The city, whose original name is unknown, was probably founded by an early ruler of the Seleucid Empire and served as a military and economic centre for the rulers of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom until its destruction c. 145 BC. Rediscovered in 1961, the ruins of the city were excavated by a French team of archaeologists until the outbreak of conflict in Afghanistan in the late 1970s. The onset of the Soviet-Afghan War halted scholarly progress, and during the following conflicts in Afghanistan, the site was extensively looted.


 * Eileen Collins, nominated by Hawkeye7: Eileen Collins is a retired NASA astronaut and United States Air Force (USAF) colonel; the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle and the first to command a Space Shuttle mission. Collins was commissioned as an officer in the USAF through Syracuse University's Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps program and served as a a T-38 Talon instructor pilot and C-141 Starlifter pilot. During the American invasion of Grenada in October 1983, her aircraft flew troops of the 82nd Airborne Division to Grenada, and took thirty-six medical students back. From 1986 to 1989, she was an assistant professor in mathematics and a T-41 instructor pilot at the U.S. Air Force Academy. In 1989 she became the second woman pilot to attend the USAF Test Pilot School. Collins was selected as a pilot astronaut the next year. She flew the Space Shuttle as pilot in 1995 aboard STS-63. She was also the pilot for STS-84 in 1997. She became the first woman to command a US spacecraft with STS-93, launched in July 1999, and in 2005 she commanded STS-114, NASA's "return to flight" mission after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. She retired from the USAF in January 2005 and from NASA in May 2006.