Recently in History Category
Here is the start of a webtoon that covers the Calendar in a long arc.
Personally, I just think the calendar will reset, as it's internal sections have done.
It almost seems like SCOTUS is using the Mayan Calendar to release it's decision on Heller, the first gun case to hit the Supremes since the '30s. Com'mon already. This is like waiting in the delivery room. I ain't waiting 'til 2012.
Update: Heller affirmed. After 127 years, SCOTUS has affirmed that gun ownership is an individual right. No more militia crapola.
Must of been a tough little fuck...join the jarheads at 14 and get thru bootcamp, attack Iwo at 17, then jump on a grenade, survive, and live to 80. He's battling cancer now. With this guy, It wouldn't surprise me if he wins.
Damn.
685,000 men marched into Russia in 1812, of whom around
355,000 were French; 31,000 soldiers marched out again in some sort of
military formation, with perhaps another 35,000 stragglers, for a total
of less than 70,000 known survivors.
Yikes! 9 out of 10 dead in the snow.
BOSTON, April 20 - National Guard units seeking to confiscate a cache of recently banned assault weapons were ambushed on April 19th by elements of a para-military extremist faction. Military and law enforcement sources estimated that 72 were killed and more than 20 injured before government forces were compelled to withdraw.
Speaking after the clash, Massachusetts Governor Thomas Gage declared that the extremist faction, which was made up of local citizens, has links to the radical right-wing tax protest movement. Gage blamed the extremists for recent incidents of vandalism directed against internal revenue offices.
The governor, who described the group's organizers as "criminals," issued an executive order authorizing the summary arrest of any individual who has interfered with the government's efforts to secure law and order.
The military raid on the extremist arsenal followed wide-spread refusal by the local citizenry to turn over recently outlawed assault weapons. Gage issued a ban on military-style assault weapons and ammunition earlier in the week. This decision followed a meeting in early April between government and military leaders at which the governor authorized the forcible confiscation of illegal arms. One government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, pointed out that "none of these people would have been killed had the extremists obeyed the law and turned their weapons over voluntarily."
"Government troops initially succeeded in confiscating a large supply of outlawed weapons and ammunition. However, troops attempting to seize arms and ammunition in Lexington met with resistance from heavily-armed extremists who had been tipped off regarding the government's plans.
During a tense standoff in Lexington's town park, National Guard Colonel Francis Smith, commander of the government operation, ordered the armed group to surrender and return to their homes. The impasse was broken by a single shot, which was reportedly fired by one of the right-wing extremists. Eight civilians were killed in the ensuing exchange.
Ironically, the local citizenry blamed government forces rather than the extremists for the civilian deaths. Before order could be restored, armed citizens from surrounding areas had descended upon the guard units. Colonel Smith, finding his forces overmatched by the armed mob, ordered a retreat.
Governor Gage has called upon citizens to support the state/national joint task force in its effort to restore law and order. The governor has also demanded the surrender of those responsible for planning and leading the attack against the government troops. Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and John Hancock, who have been identified as "ringleaders" of the extremist faction, remain at large.One Marine, One Ship..
Oct. 26 falls on a Thursday this year.
Ask the significance of the date, and you're likely to draw some puzzled looks - five more days to stock up for Halloween?
It's a measure of men like Col. Mitchell Paige and Rear Adm. Willis A. "Ching Chong China" Lee that they wouldn't have had it any other way. What they did 58 years ago, they did precisely so their grandchildren could live in a land of peace and plenty.
Whether we've properly safeguarded the freedoms they fought to leave us, may be a discussion best left for another day. Today we struggle to envision - or, for a few of us, to remember - how the world must have looked on Oct. 26, 1942. A few thousand lonely American Marines had been put ashore on Guadalcanal, a god-forsaken malarial jungle island which just happened to lie like a speed bump at the end of the long blue-water slot between New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago - the very route the Japanese Navy would have to take to reach Australia.
On Guadalcanal the Marines built an air field. And Japanese commander Isoroku Yamamoto immediately grasped what that meant. No effort would be spared to dislodge these upstart Yanks from a position that could endanger his ships during any future operations to the south. Before long, relentless Japanese counterattacks had driven supporting U.S. Navy from inshore waters. The Marines were on their own.
World War Two is generally calculated from Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939. But that's a eurocentric view. The Japanese had been limbering up their muscles in Korea and Manchuria as early as 1931, and in China by 1934. By 1942 they'd devastated every major Pacific military force or stronghold of the great pre-war powers: Britain, Holland, France, and the United States. The bulk of America's proud Pacific fleet lay beached or rusting on the floor of Pearl Harbor. A few aircraft carriers and submarines remained, though as Mitchell Paige and his 30-odd men were sent out to establish their last, thin defensive line on that ridge southwest of the tiny American bridgehead on Guadalcanal on Oct. 25, he would not have been much encouraged to know how those remaining American aircraft carriers were faring offshore.
(The next day, their Mark XV torpedoes - carrying faulty magnetic detonators reverse-engineered from a First World War German design — proved so ineffective that the United States Navy couldn't even scuttle the doomed and listing carrier Hornet with eight carefully aimed torpedoes. Instead, our forces suffered the ignominy of leaving the abandoned ship to be polished off by the enemy ... only after Japanese commanders determined she was damaged too badly to be successfully towed back to Tokyo as a trophy.)
As Paige - then a platoon sergeant - and his riflemen set about carefully emplacing their four water-cooled Brownings, it's unlikely anyone thought they were about to provide the definitive answer to that most desperate of questions: How many able-bodied U.S. Marines does it take to hold a hill against 2,000 desperate and motivated attackers?
The Japanese Army had not failed in an attempt to seize any major objective since the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. Their commanders certainly did not expect the war to be lost on some God-forsaken jungle ridge manned by one thin line of Yanks in khaki in October of 1942.
But in preceding days, Marine commander Vandegrift had defied War College doctrine, "dangling" his men in exposed positions to draw Japanese attacks, then springing his traps "with the steel vise of firepower and artillery," in the words of Naval historian David Lippman.
The Japanese regiments had been chewed up, good. Still, the American forces had so little to work with that Paige's men would have only the four 30-caliber Brownings to defend the one ridge through which the Japanese opted to launch their final assault against Henderson Field, that fateful night of Oct. 25.
By the time the night was over, "The 29th (Japanese) Infantry Regiment has lost 553 killed or missing and 479 wounded among its 2,554 men," historian Lippman reports. "The 16th (Japanese) Regiment's losses are uncounted, but the 164th's burial parties handle 975 Japanese bodies. ... The American estimate of 2,200 Japanese dead is probably too low."
Among the 90 American dead and wounded that night were all the men in Mitchell Paige's platoon. Every one. As the night wore on, Paige moved up and down his line, pulling his dead and wounded comrades back into their foxholes and firing a few bursts from each of the four Brownings in turn, convincing the Japanese forces down the hill that the positions were still manned.
The citation for Paige's Congressional Medal of Honor picks up the tale: "When the enemy broke through the line directly in front of his position, P/Sgt. Paige, commanding a machinegun section with fearless determination, continued to direct the fire of his gunners until all his men were either killed or wounded. Alone, against the deadly hail of Japanese shells, he fought with his gun and when it was destroyed, took over another, moving from gun to gun, never ceasing his withering fire."
In the end, Sgt. Paige picked up the last of the 40-pound, belt-fed Brownings - the same design which John Moses Browning famously fired for a continuous 25 minutes until it ran out of ammunition at its first U.S. Army trial - and did something for which the weapon was never designed. Sgt. Paige walked down the hill toward the place where he could hear the last Japanese survivors rallying to move around his flank, the gun cradled under his arm, firing as he went.
The weapon did not fail.
Coming up at dawn, battalion executive officer Major Odell M. Conoley first discovered the answer to our question: How many able-bodied Marines does it take to hold a hill against two regiments of motivated, combat-hardened infantrymen who have never known defeat?
On a hill where the bodies were piled like cordwood, Mitchell Paige alone sat upright behind his 30-caliber Browning, waiting to see what the dawn would bring.
One hill: one Marine.
But that was the second problem. Part of the American line had fallen to the last Japanese attack. "In the early morning light, the enemy could be seen a few yards off, and vapor from the barrels of their machine guns was clearly visible," reports historian Lippman. "It was decided to try to rush the position."
For the task, Major Conoley gathered together "three enlisted communication personnel, several riflemen, a few company runners who were at the point, together with a cook and a few messmen who had brought food to the position the evening before."
Joined by Paige, this ad hoc force of 17 Marines counterattacked at 5:40 a.m., discovering that "the extremely short range allowed the optimum use of grenades." In the end, "The element of surprise permitted the small force to clear the crest."
And that's where the unstoppable wave of Japanese conquest finally crested, broke, and began to recede. On an unnamed jungle ridge on an insignificant island no one had ever heard of, called Guadalcanal. Because of a handful of U.S. Marines, one of whom, now 82, lives out a quiet retirement with his wife Marilyn in La Quinta, Calif.
But while the Marines had won their battle on land, it would be meaningless unless the U.S. Navy could figure out a way to stop losing night battles in "The Slot" to the northwest of the island, through which the Japanese kept sending in barges filled with supplies and reinforcements for their own desperate forces on Guadalcanal.
The U.S. Navy had lost so many ships in those dreaded night actions that the waters off Savo were given the grisly sailor's nickname by which they're still known today: Ironbottom Sound.
So desperate did things become that finally, 18 days after Mitchell Paige won his Congressional Medal of Honor on that ridge above Henderson Field, Admiral Bull Halsey himself broke a stern War College edict - the one against committing capital ships in restricted waters. Gambling the future of the cut-off troops on Guadalcanal on one final roll of the dice, Halsey dispatched into the Slot his two remaining fast battleships, the USS South Dakota and the USS Washington, escorted by the only four destroyers with enough fuel in their bunkers to get them there and back.
In command of the 28-knot battlewagons was the right man at the right pla4ce, gunnery expert Rear Adm. Willis A. "Ching Chong China" Lee. Lee's flag flew aboard the Washington, in turn commanded by Captain Glenn Davis.
Lee was a nut for gunnery drills. "He tested every gunnery-book rule with exercises," Lippman writes, "and ordered gunnery drills under odd conditions - turret firing with relief crews, anything that might simulate the freakishness of battle."
As it turned out, the American destroyers need not have worried about carrying enough fuel to get home. By 11 p.m. on Nov. 13, outnumbered better than three-to-one by a massive Japanese task force driving down from the northwest, every one of the four American destroyers had been shot up, sunk, or set aflame, while the South Dakota - known throughout the fleet as a jinx ship - managed to damage some lesser Japanese vessels but continued to be plagued with electrical and fire control problems.
"Washington was now the only intact ship left in the force," Lippman writes. "In fact, at that moment Washington was the entire U.S. Pacific Fleet. She was the only barrier between (Admiral) Kondo's ships and Guadalcanal. If this one ship did not stop 14 Japanese ships right then and there, America might lose the war. ...
"On Washington's bridge, Lieutenant Ray Hunter still had the conn. He had just heard that South Dakota had gone off the air and had seen (destroyers) Walke and Preston "blow sky high." Dead ahead lay their burning wreckage, while hundreds of men were swimming in the water and Japanese ships were racing in.
"Hunter had to do something. The course he took now could decide the war. 'Come left,' he said, and Washington straightened out on a course parallel to the one on which she (had been) steaming. Washington's rudder change put the burning destroyers between her and the enemy, preventing her from being silhouetted by their fires.
"The move made the Japanese momentarily cease fire. Lacking radar, they could not spot Washington behind the fires. ...
"Meanwhile, Washington raced through burning seas. Everyone could see dozens of men in the water clinging to floating wreckage. Flag Lieutenant Raymond Thompson said, "Seeing that burning, sinking ship as it passed so close aboard, and realizing that there was nothing I, or anyone, could do about it, was a devastating experience.'
"Commander Ayrault, Washington's executive officer, clambered down ladders, ran to Bart Stoodley's damage-control post, and ordered Stoodley to cut loose life rafts. That saved a lot of lives. But the men in the water had some fight left in them. One was heard to scream, 'Get after them, Washington!' "
Sacrificing their ships by maneuvering into the path of torpedoes intended for the Washington, the captains of the American destroyers had given China Lee one final chance. The Washington was fast, undamaged, and bristling with 16-inch guns. And, thanks to Lt. Hunter's course change, she was also now invisible to the enemy.
Blinded by the smoke and flames, the Japanese battleship Kirishima turned on her searchlights, illuminating the helpless South Dakota, and opened fire. Finally, standing out in the darkness, Lee and Davis could positively identify an enemy target.
The Washington's main batteries opened fire at 12 midnight precisely. Her new SG radar fire control system worked perfectly. Between midnight and 12:07 a.m., Nov. 14, the "last ship in the U.S. Pacific Fleet" stunned the battleship Kirishima with 75, 16-inch shells. For those aboard the Kirishima, it rained steel.
In seven minutes, the Japanese battleship was reduced to a funeral pyre. She went down at 3:25 a.m., the first enemy sunk by an American battleship since the Spanish-American War. Stunned, the remaining Japanese ships withdrew. Within days, Yamamoto and his staff reviewed their mounting losses and recommended the unthinkable to the emperor - withdrawal from Guadalcanal.
But who remembers, today, how close-run a thing it was - the ridge held by a single Marine, the battle won by the last American ship?
In the autumn of 1942.
When the Hasbro Toy Co. called up some years back, asking permission to put the retired colonel's face on some kid's doll, Mitchell Paige thought they must be joking.
But they weren't. That's his mug, on the little Marine they call "GI Joe."
And now you know.
.
...almost happened.
The [California] legislature of 1859, which was intensely pro-slavery, passed a bill, which the Governor approved, to set off six southern counties and form a separate territorial government for them; the people of these counties themselves voted 2,477 for, 828 against dismemberment, and the results of the vote and the act were sent to the President and Congress. But the intense national excitement over the questions which led to the Civil War delayed action, and nothing ever came of this movement in the interests of the pro-slavery element in California.
- CHAB news, found thru links on No Pasaran
...the more they stay the same.
My darling daughter brought me a book for my birthday. Six Frigates - the epic history of the founding of the U.S. Navy - Ian W. toll.
The first chapter lays out the state of the maritime world in the late 1700s and I found a section including coorespondence between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson discussing what should be done with the depredations of the Barbary Pirates. The four Barbary states had no other source of income other than officially sanctioned institutional piracy. Adams believed they should be paid off as other small countries were doing, but Jefferson wasn't sure. Help with piracy in the Med was not forthcoming from the large naval powers, because the pirates kept the smaller trading nations in check. America was still decades away from reconciliation with Great Britain and was not on the best of terms with the new French republican government.
Adams doubted the Congress would vote to send warships to the Mediterranean. Adams reported that the tribute system had been in place long before the United States arrived on the scene: "The Policy of Christendom has made Cowards of all their Sailors before the Standard of Mahomet. It would be would be heroical and glorious in Us to restore courage to ours. I doubt not that we could accomplish it, if we should set about it in earnest. But the Difficulty of bringing our People to agree upon it has ever discouraged me."
Jefferson was taking a different tack. He told Adams he believed that "it would be best to effect a peace through the medium of war." He laid out his reasons: "I. Justice is in favor of this opinion. II. Honor favors it. III It will procure us respect in Europe, and respect is a safe-guard to interest".
But Adams did not believe the American people or their leaders were ready either to rebuild the navy or to fight a war in the Mediterranean. "We ought not to fight them at all unless we determine to fight them forever. This thought, I fear, is too rugged for our People to bear". Adams told Jefferson that "Congress was so weak and indecisive that it would not be capable of doing anything at all about the Barbary threat".
Well we know what happened. Eventually the depredations became so great the the US bankrupted itself building 6 frigates. Over the course of the next few years the Barbary States were repeatedly slammed back to the advantage of the US and other small trading nations with few or no warships.
Just 2 hours steaming north of Leyte Gulf.
October 25th, 1944 0716: The Order comes: Small Boys Launch Torpedo Attack - Rear Admiral C. A. F. Sprague
American Forces:
Destroyers Heermann, Hoel, and Johnson
Destroyer Escort Samuel B. Roberts, Raymond, Butler, and Dennis
Japanese Forces:
4 Battleships
8 Cruisers
11 Destroyers
Johnson opens the ball at 0710 anticipating Sprague's orders.
Weaving to avoid shells, and steering towards splashes, the Johnston approached the Japanese heavy cruiser Kumano for a torpedo run. When Johnston was 10 miles from Kumano, her 5-inch guns rained shells on Kumano's bridge and deck (where they could do some damage - the shells would simply bounce off the enemy ship's armored hull). Johnston closed to within torpedo range and fired a salvo, which blew the bow off the cruiser squadron flagship Kumano and also took the cruiser Suzuya out of the fight as she stopped to assist.
From seven miles away, the battleship Kongo sent a 14 inch shell through the Johnston's deck and engine room. Johnston's speed was cut in half to only 14 knots, while the aft gun turrets lost all electrical power. Then three 6-inch shells, possibly from Yamato's secondary batteries, struck Johnston's bridge, killing many and wounding Comdr. Evans. The bridge was abandoned and Evans steered the ship from the aft steering column. Evans nursed his ship back towards the fleet, when he saw the other destroyers attacking as well. Emboldened by the Johnston's attack, Sprague sent the rest of Taffy 3's destroyers on the assault. Even in her heavily damaged state, damage-control teams restored power to 2 of the 3 aft turrets, and Evans turned the Johnston around and reentered the fight.
The other destroyers attacked the Japanese line with suicidal determination, drawing fire and scattering the Japanese formations as ships turned to avoid torpedoes. The powerful Yamato found herself between two torpedoes fired from the destroyer Heermann which were on parallel courses, and for ten minutes, she headed away from the action, unable to turn back for fear of being hit. Heermann, meanwhile, closed with the other Japanese battleships, advancing so close to her huge targets that they could not fire for either inability to depress their main guns enough or fear of hitting their own men and ships.
The Hoel loses her port engine; she is steered manually; her decks are a holocause of blood and wreckage; fire control and power are out; No. 3 gun is wreathed in hot steam from broken pipes; No. 5 gun frozen from a near miss; the barrel of No. 4 gun blown off. No's 1 and 2 guns continue to fire. She sinks at 08:40 holed by scores of major caliber shells.
The Heermann, hit numerous times, makes a wild escape; carrying 6 dead and many wounded back to the fleet. The escort destroyers Raymond and Butler expend all of their ammo and torpedoes but survive intact. Dennis has all of her guns knocked out but survives to rescue 435 survivors from the bombed St. Lo.
At 07:35, the even smaller destroyer escort Samuel B. Roberts turned and headed toward the battle. On the way, the Roberts passed by the mangled Johnston and saw an inspirational sight in the person of Comdr. Evans standing on the Johnston's stern, his left hand wrapped in a bandage, saluting the captain of the Roberts. With only 2 5-inch guns, one fore and aft, and just 3 Mark-15 torpedoes, her crew lacked the weapons and training in tactics to take on the much larger attackers. Still, she charged in to attack the heavy cruiser Chokai. With smoke as cover, the Roberts steamed to within two and a half miles of Chokai, coming under fire of her two forward 8-inch turrets. But Roberts was so close that the shells passed overhead. Once in torpedo range, Roberts' 3 torpedo salvo struck the cruiser. Following this Roberts dueled with the Japanese ships for an hour, firing over 600 5-inch shells, and raking the upper works with 40 mm Bofors and 20 mm anti-aircraft guns while maneuvering at close range. At 08:51, the Japanese finally landed two hits, the second which destroyed the aft gun turret. With her remaining 5-inch gun, she set the bridge of the cruiser Chikuma afire and destroyed the number 3 gun turret, before being pierced again by three 14 inch shells from the Kongo.
But the crew of No. 2 gun continue to load, ram, aim and fire by hand. Without compressed air to clear the bore of the bits of burning fragments from the previous charge, the powder bags might cook off. They fire six rounds by hand. Six rounds that destroy the bridge of a Japanese cruiser so close it can be hit by men forced to manually aim the cannon. The seventh cooks off and instantly kills most of the gun crew. The gun captain, his body ripped nearly in half, holding a 54lb shell in his arms; his dying words plead for help to load the gun. With a 40-foot hole in her side, the Roberts took on water, and at 09:35, the order was given to abandon ship, sinking 30 minutes later with 89 of her crew. The gun captain had a fast frigate named in his honor, as did the Captain who survived 50 hours in the water with his crew. The latest in the line of the Roberts guards the fleet today.
Now two hours into the attack, Comdr. Evans aboard the damaged Johnston spotted a line of four destroyers led by the light cruiser Yahagi making a torpedo attack on the fleeing carriers and moved to intercept. Johnston poured fire on the attacking group, forcing them to prematurely fire their torpedoes, missing the carriers. Their gunfire then turned to the weaving Johnston. At 09:10 the Japanese scored a direct hit on one of the forward turrets, knocking it out and setting off many 5-inch shells that were stored in the turret, and her damaged engines stopped, leaving her dead in the water. The Japanese destroyers closed in on the sitting target, and the Johnston was hit so many times that one survivor recalled "they couldn't patch holes fast enough to keep her afloat." At 09:45 (2 hours and 45 minutes into the battle), Comdr. Evans finally gave the order to abandon ship. The Johnston sank 25 minutes later with 186 of her crew. Commander Evans abandoned ship with his crew, but was never seen again. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
Meanwhile, Sprague had ordered all three Taffy groups to launch their planes with whatever they had, even if they were machine guns or depth charges. Even after many aircraft expended their ammunition they made dry runs to threaten and distract Japanese warships and their gunners. Instead of the Japanese rolling over the tiny carriers of Taffy 3 and it's handful of destroyers, the Americans had turned the battle into a bloody all-out brawl with their attackers.
The carriers of Taffy 3 turned south and fled through shellfire. The armor-piercing shells intended for Halsey's battleships flew right through the thin-skinned escort carriers without triggering their fuses. A switch to High Explosive shells holed, slowed, and sunk the Gambier Bay at the rear, while most of the others were also damaged. Their single stern-mounted five-inch anti-aircraft guns returned fire, even though they were ineffective against surface ships. Yet, the St. Lo scored a devastating hit on the deck mounted torpedo magazine of a cruiser, the only known hit inflicted directly by a gun on an aircraft carrier against an opposing surface vessel.
The Kitkun Bay readys it's planes for an attack on Japanese battleship forces so close that you can see the 14inch gun fire straddling the White Plains in the background. The planes have been supporting Army forces ashore. There's been no time to arm the planes with anti-shipping bombs...they only have their machine guns and gasoline drop tanks with which to fight. Other planes dropped anti-sub depth charges ahead of the bows of Japanese ships in the hopes that the sinking charges would do some damage when they exploded.
Just as it seemed the end was near for the Taffy 3 and the other two Taffy groups, at 09:20 Kurita suddenly broke off the fight and, giving the order "all ships, my course north, speed 20", retreated north. Though many of his ships were not even damaged, the air and destroyer attacks had broken up his formations, and he had lost tactical control. The heavy cruisers (Chokai, Kumano, Chikuma) had been sunk, and the ferocity of the determined concentrated sea and air attack had led him to calculate that continuing was not worth further losses. He was two hours from the soft transports at Leyte.
Kutita couldn't have done much at this stage of the war. The transports had off-loaded supplies and the troops were secure ashore. The planes of Taffy 2 and 3 were rearming for a sea-strike out of his reach. The 6 battleships that were pulled from the mud of Pearl Harbor were waiting for him off Leyte...depleted in ammo from shore bombardment, but with 20 AP rounds remaining for each gun. It would have been an expensive hit and run raid.
My daughter asked me this weekend why I joined the Navy instead of the Army or Marines. I was a boy when young men who fought in this battle were still in their late twenties. The TV show Victory at Sea thrilled me. I always knew I would join the Navy and fight the big guns. As it turned out, I joined the Navy and blew things to fuck all. It was still the Navy.
Compiled from Wiki; Battles Lost and Won, Hanson W. Baldwin 1966; The Battle off Samar, Robert Jon Cox 1996
Today marks the anniversary of the ending of the War between the States April 12, 1861 - April 9, 1865.
More American soldiers died during the War of Southern Independence
than in all the other wars Americans have fought in combined.
The South will save the North next time.
We could use old Tom now...he's already learned the lesson.
During the meeting Jefferson and Adams asked the Dey's ambassador why Muslims held so much hostility towards America, a nation with which they had no previous contacts.
In a later meeting with the American Congress, the two future presidents reported that Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja had answered that Islam "was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Quran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise."
For the following 15 years, the American government paid the Muslims millions of dollars for the safe passage of American ships or the return of American hostages. The payments in ransom and tribute amounted to 20 percent of United States government annual revenues in 1800.
Not long after Jefferson's inauguration as president in 1801, he dispatched a group of frigates to defend American interests in the Mediterranean, and informed Congress.
Declaring that America was going to spend "millions for defense but not one cent for tribute,"
I ran across these pictures of barricades in Paris during the Commune period. I had heard of them, and realized that some were made of cobblestones pried from the roadways, but I never realized how elaborate they were. These things are mini-forts with embrasures and the whole nine yards....
Impressive.
'A black vicious ugly customer as ever I saw, whale-like in size, and with as terrible a row of incisor teeth as ever closed on a French frigate' - Charles Dickens
HMS Warrior Launched: Blackwall, London 29th Dec. 1860. The armored steam frigate was built in response to France's La Gloire, the world's first armored warship. 
What a beauty. Restored and on display in Portsmouth.
Sir Winston Churchill - d. this date 1965
If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
Note for young people and Americans.
Two farthings = One Ha'penny
Two ha'pennies = One Penny
Three pennies = A Thrupenny Bit
Two Thrupences = A Sixpence
Two Sixpences = One Shilling, or Bob
Two Bob = A Florin
One Florin and One Sixpence = Half a Crown
Four Half Crowns = Ten Bob Note
Two Ten Bob Notes = One Pound (or 240 pennies)
One Pound and One Shilling = One Guinea
The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated.
Long may it wave.
One of the things that has always fascinated me was the ability of women to masquarade as men during the Civil War. The prevailing victorian attitudes on personal privacy and the number of beardless teenage boys in ranks allowed women to serve and fight with many combat units on both sides. Usually they were only discovered when wounded or killed. Hundreds of cases are documented, and there may be thousands who served bravely.Two Confederate female casualties (one dead, one seriously wounded) were discovered after the Battle of Gettysburg, July 2-3, 1863. As confirmed in the Army Official Records of the war, the body of an unidentified female Confederate soldier was discovered by a burial detail near the stone wall at the angle on Cemetery Ridge. She had been a participant in Pickett's famous charge. An author reporting on Pickett's charge at Gettysburg noted, "The fact that her body was found in such an advanced spot is testimony to her bravery. However, except for an unverified story that the woman had enlisted in a Virginia regiment with her husband and was killed carrying the colors during the charge, Hays' notation [in the Official Records] is the extent of acknowledgment she received for having given her life for her country."
I've known of this woman since I was a boy. Her story is one of the great unknowables from those terrible times.Additional Resources: Known but to God: Women in the Civil War Uncommon Soldiers: Women During the Civil War Women and the Civil War
I was 17 years old and in high school when the announcement came over the PA that the president had been shot in Dallas.
The first thing that crossed my (weak and shallow) mind was that Vaughn Meder was out of a job. If you remember him, you're as old as I am.
Oh yeah, I saw Ruby killed on live TV. Freaked me out.
And...I lived it, I watched it, and I followed the aftermath closely. I am utterly convinced, by simply watching what went on at the time, that there were AT LEAST TWO SHOOTERS. Period. So was most of the country at the time just as convinced. The keys for me....
(1) EVERYONE turned and looked up the grassy hill for the shooter.
(2) The films show Kennedy being hit twice all right, but the second (fatal) shot was from the front.
(3) Bullets do not go thru a Texas Governor twice, make a right turn in the air, and hit a President in the back of his head.
The USS Constitution (Old Ironsides) as a combat vessel carried 48,600 gallons of fresh water for her crew of 475 officers and men. This was sufficient to last six months of sustained operations at sea. She carried no evaporators.
Blockaded in Boston for eight months, from April to December 1814, Constitution takes advantage of bad weather and poor visibility to slip past the enemy and out to sea under the command of Captain Charles Stewart.
Her mission: "To destroy and harass English shipping."
Let it be noted that according to her log, "On December 19, 1814, the USS Constitution sailed from Boston with a full complement of 475 officers and men, 48,600 gallons of fresh water, 7,400 cannonshot, 11,600 pounds of black power and 79,400 gallons of rum"
Making Jamaica on 6 January, she took on 826 pounds of flour and 68,300 gallons of rum. Then she headed for the Azores, arriving there 12 February. She provisioned with 550 pounds of beef and 64,300 gallons of Portuguese wine. On 18 February, she set sail for England. In the ensuing days she defeated and captured two British men-of-war and captured and scuttled 12 English merchantmen, salvaging only the rum aboard each.
By 26 April, her powder and shot were exhausted. Nevertheless, although unarmed she made a night raid up the Firth of Clyde in Scotland. Her landing party captured a whisky distillery and transferred 40,000 gallons of single malt Scotch aboard by dawn. Losing one of her prizes to a British squadron, Constitution headed home.
The USS Constitution arrived in Boston on 15 May 1815, with no cannon shot, no food, no powder, no rum, no wine, no whisky, the 34 gun prize HMS Cyane, and 28,000 gallons of stagnant water. The War of 1812 was ended by the treaty of Ghent on 24 December, 1814.
Go Navy!
Which reminds me of the poem written when the Constitution was destined for the breakers yard....
OLD IRONSIDES
By Oliver Wendell Holmes
September 16, 1830
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon's roar;
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more.
Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood,
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor's tread,
Or know the conquered knee;
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!
Oh, better that her shattered bulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!
