This Day in History - October 10

1845 - United States Naval Academy founded in Annapolis, Maryland

The institution was founded as the Naval School by Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft. The campus was established at the site of a former US Army post called Fort Severn. The school's first class had 50 Midshipmen students and seven professors. later the USS Constitution was refurbished and used as a school ship for the fourth class midshipmen. The plebes were introduced to Navy life and and traditions while they lived on board the ship which usually at anchor.

The decision to establish an academy on land is said to be a result of the infamous Somers Affair, an alleged mutiny involving the son of the Secretary of War that resulted in his execution via hanging at sea.

This Day in History- December 2

I have to say that I am sorry about the low output recently, I'm back in school and am doing that
during the time of day when I used to bored enough to blog. Well, I am going to try and do a little more, starting with an easy one.



December 2, 1804

A Corsican-born General in the Revolutionary Army of France named Napoleon Bonaparte becomes Emperor Napoleon I. It is said that at his ascension ceremony in Notre Dame, he took the crown from the hands of Pope Pius VII and placed it on his own head. It is said he did this to show that he was the author of his destiny and rose to his position solely on his merit. If so, this would also seem in violation of custom in place from Charlemagne's time of the Emperors being crowned by the Pope.

Of course Napoleon is held to be one of the most gifted and driven military commanders and strategists in history. He also is mostly responsible for the creation of a new system of laws and courts known today as the Napoleonic Code. He also was a gifted military theorist and he made vast changes to the way that armies fought and were organized both in France and around the world. It took losing hundreds of thousands of troops in Russia and a crushing defeat at the Battle of Waterloo and a long term arsenic poisoning to keep him down. It is strange that his reputation in modern American culture is just that of a short, petty Frenchman. While he was certainly a "great" man, he was responsible for some social progress, had some nice buildings built and so on, he was also a voracious and cruel conqueror and is personally responsible for hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths at the very least. The very least. There are many who view Napoleon as belonging in the same class as people like Hitler and Stalin. While that may be taking it too far, as Napoleon is not generally thought of to be genocidal and bloodthirsty, just incredibly greedy, apathetic and cruel. But he most certainly deserves at least partial blame for the 17 YEARS of war that Europe experienced during his time and the estimated 6 million deaths those wars caused.

and on December 2, 1777

During the occupation of Philadelphia by forces under British General William Howe, the British command had commandeered a large room across from his headquarters to serve as a meeting room. Unknown to them, the home's owner, Lydia Darragh, an Irish immigrant, would discreetly listen to these meetings and pass the information to American revolutionary leaders. She did this by sewing notes into her coat and crossing the lines to meet American officers in secret.

America's first Bond girl villain?

On the night in question, she learned of a surprise attack on Washington's army in Whitemarsh, Pennsylvania. She devised a cover story that she needed to buy flour from a mill just beyond the British lines, she was able to get the vital plans to Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Craig. When the British marched on Whitemarsh on December 4 they found an army ready and waiting for them. Three days of skirmishing followed, and General Howe returned to Philadelphia, having failed to destroy or dislodge Washington's force. Timely knowledge of the impending attack, much less any information on troop strength, route and cannon, would have been absolutely essential to the survival of Washington and his army. That being the case, Mrs. Darragh's actions, which were quite audacious and daring in my opinion, and were extremely dangerous to her well being if she were caught, were one of the most important forgotten events of the Revolution.

I see her as kinda like Princess Leia myself.

It is said (on Wikipedia) that the CIA remember Lydia Darrah as one of the first American spies.

This Day in History - October 15

On this date in 1917, one of the most famous spies in history was executed.
Mata Hari was the stage name of a Dutch woman named Margaretha Geertruida Zelle. She became famous for, well to put it impolitely, kinda being a ho. She was a dancer known for performing "exotic" dances that seemed to consist of her wearing some kind of vaguely eastern costume and taking it off. She had a whole back story that she was born in an Indian temple and was taught sacred dances by the priestesses. However, it was all a pack of lies and what she knew of Indian and Javanese dances she learned while in Malaysia with her husband who was in the Dutch Colonial Army. But nobody knew or cared, because Internet porn was like, 70 years away. She was known as a famous courtesan, which is nice way of saying she was a gold digger. She was widely rumored to be banging( to use the parlance of our times) a bunch of high-ranking military officers both in the French and German armies. So, in 1917, the French authorities arrested her on suspicion of treason and espionage and sent her to the St. Lazare Prison in Paris. During her military trial, she was accused of revealing details of the new weapon, the tank, resulting in the deaths of thousands of soldiers. She was convicted and sentenced to death.

For 1917, this was wicked hot

Today, opinions are divided about the truth of the matter. Some say that she was a spy for the Germans and even worked as a double agent for the French, but that the Germans had written her off as pretty much useless. (except all the looking hot and dancing like a ho) Her trial was said to pretty much be a farce and no real evidence was brought against her. It has been suggested that the French High Command played her story up to distract the nation from the appalling losses that they French Army was suffering on the Western Front. No one will ever know the truth, I suspect. But the legacy is that Mata Hari became the archtype of the femme fatale spy, and we would probably not have any James Bond movies without her. In one of those incidents that is more like a movie than real life, she refused a blindfold and blew a kiss to her firing squad before she was shot.



Also in 1860 an eleven-year-old girl named Grace Bedell, wrote a letter to presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln, suggesting he could improve his appearance by growing a beard.

This Day in History- February 1

On this day, the 1st of February in 1968, a very famous photograph was taken in South Vietnam. Probably the most iconic photo of the Vietnam War, even more so than the My Lai photo.

What photograph am I speaking of?




On this day, the chief of police in Saigon, Nguyen Ngoc Loan, executed a captured Viet Cong officer with a pistol shot to the head. For those of you who don't know, there is no real debate about who the man getting shot was. He was captured fighting in civilian clothes, and was by definition, a spy and saboteur.

This Day in History - October 25

1415- The Battle of Agincourt

During the Hundred Years' War, Henry the Fifth had led a force of 11,000 men into France to enforce English claims to territory in the North of France. Henry had just successfully completed a siege at the town of Harfleur in Normandy. But Henry had lost about half of his force to disease and wounds in the siege of Harfleur and he was hoping to reach the port of Calais and retreat to England for the winter.

However, the French massed an army 20,000 strong and cut off the English at Agincourt.The English Army had marched 250 miles in seventeen days and many of the soldiers were suffering from dysentery. The English soldiers were almost all common foot soldiers, with fewer than 1,000 of them being heavily armored knights. The French forces had many more mounted knights than the English. The French knight was the main battle tank of the day, fast, nearly invulnerable, and able to mete out an amazing amount of pain and damage. They represented an enormous outpouring of wealth and effort. The Feudal system of the day taught many children of the upper classes absolutely nothing but how to fight. No other skill was valued as highly. The horses, weapons, and especially armor of the cavalier were immensely expensive. The complicated and advanced plate armor was custom made by artisans of the highest skill and was designed to protect the wearer from all weapons.

The French attacked in the late morning and they were slowed by boggy and wet ground. King Henry had made himself very visible from the start of the battle, surrounding himself with banners and enticing the French knights to advance up the hill, into the range of his archers. The rules of war at the time usually had captured knights ransomed, often for very large sums of money. This even was the case with Kings and as a result, everyone was eager to capture someone important and become rich. The French were in three rows (or battles) and the highest ranking Noblemen were in the first row. They felt that their bravery and skill would sweep the common soldiers of England off the field.The English longbow had a range much greater than that of the French archers and was outfitted with a pyramidal arrowhead designed to punch through the heaviest armor. The field was close to 1,000 yards long and bordered by woods on both sides, giving an advantage to Henry's smaller and lighter force.

French men at arms and knights, over eager to gain glory and fame on the battlefield, pressed forward into range of the longbows. As the cavalry made their way towards the English lines, they were met with withering fire from the English longbowmen. The armor of the cavaliers, so expensive and beautiful, failed to protect them from the yard long arrows of the English from more than 300 yards away.The French cavalry was suddenly stuck far out in front of their own lines. They had the forest blocking them in on the flanks, and the English had set a line of sharpened stakes in front of their position. As more and more soldiers fell to the rain of arrows, the mobility of the cavalry was further compromised by corpses and wounded horses. At this point Henry ordered his lightly armed men at arms and archers to charge and the trapped Frenchmen were massacred.

Nearly 6,000 Frenchmen were killed during the Battle of Agincourt, many of them from noble families. It marked an end to the era of heavy cavalry as the most important arm of an army. The French nobility was severely weakened as well, and in many respects never recovered. English deaths amounted to just over 400, making it one of the most one sided battles of the era. Outnumbered three to one, Henry V had won one of the greatest victories of English military history. Five years later, Henry was made the Dauphin and Regent of France after winning several more victories. Henry the Fifth died only two years later from "camp fever" near Paris. He would have likely continued his conquest of France and would have greatly changed the face of history had he lived even ten more years.

1854- The Charge of the Light Brigade

October 25 is both a good day and sad day for the British though, as it also marks one of the saddest events in British military history. During the Crimean War, Lord James Cardigan received an order to attack with his Light Brigade cavalry against Russian artillery positions.
The British Army had been winning the Battle of Balaclava (which is where we get a fancy name for a ski mask today) when Cardigan received his order to attack. The Russian artillery turned out to be very heavily defended and there was no clear avenue of attack.
His cavalry bravely charged down into the valley and were destroyed by the massed fire of heavy Russian guns on three sides, suffering over 40 percent casualties.

Later it was discovered that the order was a mistake and the result of the "fog of war". Lord Cardigan, who survived the battle, is hailed as a national hero in Britain. The Charge of the Light Brigade, as it came to be known, was a prime example of old tactics and strategies being thoroughly discredited by modern weapons. By 1854, small arms and artillery were many times more effective than they had been 50 or 100 years before, but tactics were largely unchanged. This lead to the deaths of thousands of soldiers in the Crimean War and can also be clearly seen in the American Civil War and WWI. "Hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle" is a common term to describe this "plan" of attack. While there do arise cases where a frontal attack is necessary and the only choice, it rarely is a good idea. Casualties will always be high, many times unacceptably so. Success is far from guaranteed.

The Charge of the Light Brigade is probably most famous for being the subject of a poem by Lord Tennyson that some get to read in high school.

Half a league, half a league,
  Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
  Rode the six hundred.
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns' he said:
Into the valley of Death
  Rode the six hundred.

I suppose it is a nice poem, if you like such things, but I doubt if anyone who was there to see the 278 wounded and dying men and 335 dead or dying horses would put it in such nice terms.

This Day in History- October 22

Cuban Missile Crisis

On October 22, 1962, President Kennedy announced that Soviet Nuclear Missiles had been discovered in Cuba. These were medium range missile capable of hitting most of the cities on the Eastern seaboard, including Washington. Kennedy stated that he was ordering a naval "quarantine" of Cuba to prevent Soviet ships from transporting any more offensive weapons to the island and explained that the United States would not tolerate the existence of the missile sites currently in place. Kennedy made it clear that America would not stop short of military action to end what he called a "clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace."

The Cuban Missile Crisis actually began on October 15, 1962--the day that U.S. intelligence personnel analyzing U-2 spy plane data discovered that the Soviets were building medium-range missile sites in Cuba. The next day, President Kennedy secretly convened an emergency meeting of his senior military, political, and diplomatic advisers to discuss the ominous development. The group became known as ExCom, short for Executive Committee. After rejecting a surgical air strike against the missile sites, ExCom decided on a naval quarantine and a demand that the bases be dismantled and missiles removed. At the direction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. military forces went to DEFCON 2, the highest military alert ever reached in the postwar era, as military commanders prepared for full-scale war with the Soviet Union.

The next day, however, Khrushchev upped the ante by publicly calling for the dismantling of U.S. missile bases in Turkey under pressure from Soviet military commanders. Later that day, a U-2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba, and its pilot, Major Rudolf Anderson, was killed. Waffling, Kennedy forbid a military retaliation unless any more surveillance planes were fired upon over Cuba. Kennedy's advisers convinces him to agree to dismantle the U.S. missile sites in Turkey but at a later date, in order to prevent the protest of Turkey, a key NATO member.

On October 28, Khrushchev announced that he would dismantle and remove all offensive Soviet weapons in Cuba. With the airing of the public message on Radio Moscow, the USSR confirmed its willingness to proceed with the solution secretly proposed by the Americans the day before. The world stepped back from the brink of nuclear war and what became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis was over. By the end of 1962 all the Nuclear missiles had been removed. Soon after, the United States quietly removed its missiles from Turkey.

The removal of obsolete Jupiter missiles from Turkey had no detrimental effect on U.S. nuclear strategy, but the Cuban Missile Crisis convinced a humiliated USSR to commence a massive nuclear buildup. In the 1970s, the Soviet Union reached nuclear parity with the United States and built intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking any city in the United States. However, later review of Soviet technology leads many to believe that the design and manufacturing flaws in Soviet ICBM would result in many being unable to launch, and most unable to hit within 50 miles of their targets.

This Day in History- September 9

How about this for a good day.


1776- The Continental Congress votes to rename the Country from the United Colonies to the United States of America.

good job boys, time for a pay raise

1976- Chairman Mao Zedong, the greatest murder in history, dies peacefully in bed at age 83, after killing 70 million people.

fuck you, commie

This Day in History- August 23

1939 Molotov and Von Ribbentrop signed Stalin and Hitler's Non-Aggression Pact
(also known as the Who gets What in Poland Pact)
It holds for a little while.
(While both sides were pummeling smaller, weaker neighbors)



Then it got all:
You get the picture.




AND...
in 1775 King George III declared the Colonists of America in open rebellion.

Screw him.