Reports that China seeks a permanent lease of the island of Tulagi in the Solomons is enough to induce chills in any student of history, as much as it would puzzle most of the world. Where are the "Solomons," after all?  What are they?  Who has ever heard of them?  (In fact, Word redlined both those uses above as "errors.")  A string of islands in the back of beyond, a name suitable for a trick question on a game show. But there was a time when the Solomon Islands, stretching a thousand-mile arc northeast of Australia, were notable to the point of legend, as the site of one of the bloodiest, most vicious, and most interminable campaigns of WWII, one of those instances in history where "they stood, and earth's foundations stayed." The U.S. invaded Guadalcanal, one of the southernmost islands in the chain (along, in fact, with Tulagi) on August 7, 1942, in the first major amphibious...(Read Full Post)