by Joe Rhatigan
She continued spying, even though she was captured and imprisoned three separate times. (The first time her boyfriend turned her in.) She sailed for Britain in 1864, supposedly to deliver some letters from Jackson. The ship was captured by the Union Navy, but she was allowed to escape by a Union sailor named Lieutenant Samuel Hardinge. He had fallen in love with her, and they later met up in Britain and married. Boyd gained much fame as a spy. French newspapers called her “la Belle Rebelle,” and Boyd used her notoriety to get into acting.
The Turkey Tactic
Alvin Cullum York was born in 1887 in a log cabin in Pall Mall, Tennessee. A wild youth and expert shot, he converted to Christianity after a friend was killed in a bar fight. He joined a church that forbade violence, and when he was drafted in 1917 for World War I, he wrote on his draft notice, “Don’t want to fight.” Yet fight he did.
He was sent overseas, and during a battle in the Argonne Forest in France, he and sixteen other soldiers were sent behind German lines to capture machine gun positions and a rail line. They captured a bunch of German soldiers eating breakfast, but then the machine guns turned around and started shooting at them. Six of York’s comrades were killed and two were wounded, and York found himself in charge. York, reminded of the turkey shoots back home, “began to exchange shots with them. In order to sight me or to swing their machine guns on me, the Germans had to show their heads above the trench, and every time I saw a head I just touched it off.” Growing up, York had learned that the best way to hunt geese was to shoot the birds in the back of the row first so the others didn’t scatter. He did the same thing when a group of six Germans rushed at him—knocking off the ones in the back before shooting the ones up front.
The Germans had seen enough and surrendered. York and the seven remaining Americans had more than eighty prisoners on their hands, but they were still behind enemy lines. York put a German major at the head of the line of prisoners, held a gun on him, and began to escort them back to the American side. By the time they got there, they had more than 130 prisoners. It was determined that York had single-handedly killed twenty-eight Germans.
He received the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Service Cross, as well as France’s Croix de Guerre and Legion of Honor. The Supreme Allied Commander said, “What York did was the greatest thing accomplished by any soldier of all the armies of Europe.” York was played by Gary Cooper in a movie about his heroic deeds.
Public Relations 101
Pharaoh Ramses II (aka Ozymandias) was soundly defeated by the Hittites at the Battle of Kedesh in 1288 BCE. Afterward, Ramses built a memorial to his amazing triumph. Huh? That’s right, Ramses II returned to his empire and declared victory, even though he was ambushed by the Hittites and forced to retreat. The Hittites are gone. All eyewitnesses are gone. Ramses’s memorials to his “victory” remain, and it has only recently been unearthed by archaeologists that Ramses was fibbing.
The Drunken War
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Republic of Moldova (located between Romania and Ukraine) declared itself an independent state. It sought closer ties with Romania, but the area of the country closest to Russia and Ukraine broke away in 1990 and named itself Transnistria. The two sides battled on and off from March till July 1992, when a ceasefire was declared. But it seems there were plenty of ceasefires every evening—when combatants on both sides of the conflict would put down their weapons to drink together.
Yankee Doodle Diddy
The song “Yankee Doodle Dandy” was written by a British surgeon during the French and Indian War to ridicule the colonial militiamen who were fighting alongside British soldiers. As the American Revolution drew near, the song became a popular insult the British soldiers used—often making up new verses that mocked the colonists.
On April 19, 1775, as British troops marched toward Lexington and Concord, Redcoats played the song on fife and drum and sang it heartily. However, as rebels battled with the British, eventually turning them back, the Redcoats were surprised to hear the colonists singing “Yankee Doodle.” One British soldier later said, “Damn them, they made us dance it till we were tired.”
From that moment on, the colonists sang the song in battle, taking delight in the self-mockery. They even played it while the British surrendered at Saratoga and Yorktown. British Lieutenant Thomas Anburey wrote: “… the name [Yankee] has been more prevalent since the commencement of hostilities … The soldiers at Boston used it as a term of reproach, but after the affair at Bunker’s Hill, the Americans gloried in it. Yankee Doodle is now their paean, a favorite of favorites, played in their army, esteemed as warlike as the Genadier’s March—it is the lover’s spell, the nurse’s lullaby … it was not a little mortifying to hear them play this tune, when their army marched down to our surrender.”
SIDE NOTE: The term Yankee may have come from the Dutch word jahnke, which was used to describe an uncultured person. The word doodle referred to uneducated farmers and backwoodsmen—hicks. Meanwhile, macaroni referred to certain young foppish British men and women who at the time wore outlandish clothing and spoke Italian in an affected way to show that they were cultured. They were called Macaronies.
An Army of Two
During the War of 1812, Abigail and Rebecca Bates, daughter of Captain Simeon Bates, prevented an attack by the British on their town. Their father was the keeper of the lighthouse in Scituate, Massachusetts, a fishing village about thirty miles from Boston. During the summer of 1814, the girls saw two barges from a British ship filled with soldiers. With no time to call an alarm, the girls grabbed a fife and drum from the lighthouse, hid behind some trees, and began playing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” as loudly as possible. The British thought the sounds were coming from a regiment of American soldiers and retreated.
The Luckiest Man Alive
In 1918, during a World War I dogfight, British flying ace Reginald Makepeace of the No. 20 Squadron went into a steep dive to dodge German gunfire. Captain J. H. Hedley, who was in the back seat of the cockpit, was thrown from the plane. As the plane leveled off several hundred feet below, Hedley landed on the tail of the plane and hung on for dear life as the plane landed safely.
Calvin’s Ruse
In 1942, Calvin Graham enlisted in the US Navy. He was quickly shipped out to the Pacific, where he joined the crew of the USS South Dakota as a gunner. During the Battle of Guadalcanal, he was seriously wounded while helping fight a fire aboard the ship. For all his efforts, he was dishonorably discharged, stripped of his medals, and put in the brig. Why? After he received the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart, Calvin’s mother revealed Calvin’s secret: he was only twelve years old. After a couple of months in the brig, Calvin went back to seventh grade. He spent much of his adult life trying to clear his record and get his medals and disability benefits back. He was finally awarded an honorable discharge in 1978 and he received disability and back pay in 1988. Rick Schroder played him in a TV movie of his life.
Ask, Tell
Let’s travel back to 371 BCE and the Battle of Leuctra. The famed Spartan army was defeated by armies of the city-state Thebes—effectively ending Sparta’s dominance over Greece. The key point of the battle came when an elite Theban unit known as the Sacred Band led a breakthrough against Spartan defenses. These three hundred soldiers were fierce, brave, committed … and gay. The unit was composed of 150 gay couples, and the thinking of the band’s organizer, Gorgidas, was that each man would fight his best to protect his lover, who was fighting alongside him. The band remained undefeated for more than thirty years, until, surrounded by Macedonian forces, they fought to the death (while other Theban troops retreated). A giant stone lion resides at the burial site of the Sacred Band in the town of Thebes.
Weapons of Mass Destruction, Old School–Style
Archimedes, master mathematician, inventor, and all-around genius, nearly single-handedly fended off a powerful Roman force that was attacking the city of Syracuse in 213 BCE. Although the Roman
fleet commanded by Marcus Claudius Marcellus was impressive, their siege, which had been estimated to take a week, lasted nearly two years. As military advisor to the king of Syracuse, Archimedes developed several weapons that helped keep the Romans at bay. One such weapon consisted of several mirrors, which Archimedes used to direct the sun’s rays onto the Romans’ ships, setting them ablaze. Other inventions included catapults that could hurl a ton of stones onto the ships, mousetrap-like mechanisms that sent rocks down onto siege ladders, and a giant grappling claw, called the Claw of Archimedes, which lifted ships by the bow and dropped them against the rocks, sinking them. The Romans finally succeeded in breaching the city’s defenses, and although General Marcellus ordered Archimedes not to be harmed, a Roman soldier killed him.
General Buck Naked
During the First Liberian War in 1992, General Joshua Milton Blahyi would lead his troops wearing only his shoes. He says the devil telephoned him at age eleven and told him that running into battle naked would make him impervious to bullets. Sometimes he and his soldiers would also don colorful wigs and dainty purses. He’s still alive, so I guess it worked. The devil also said it would be a good idea to practice human sacrifice and cannibalism to increase his power. Blahyi admits to sacrificing a small child or teenager before battles, including sometimes cutting out the heart and eating it. Today he is the president of the End Time Train Evangelistic Ministries, and he has repented his sins, blamed the devil for his actions, and expressed a willingness to be tried for war crimes.
Battle Fatigue
The British had actually buckled to demands and lowered tea taxes before the Boston Tea Party.
An OSS staff psychologist came up with an ingenious (or idiotic) plan during World War II that he believed would send an already unhinged Hitler over the edge. He theorized that Hitler would suffer a mental breakdown if tons of pornography were dropped in and around his home. The Royal Air Force refused to carry out the plan.
At the start of the Civil War, Confederate Robert E. Lee owned no slaves. Union general Ulysses S. Grant did.
Spain declared war against the United States on April 24, 1898. The United States then had the date of its own declaration set at April 21, even though they actually declared war on April 25.
Henry Kissinger and Yassir Arafat won the Nobel Peace Prize. Gandhi didn’t.
The shortest war on record was fought between the United Kingdom and Zanzibar on August 27, 1896. It lasted around forty minutes, with Britain whipping the Zanzibaris with a massive bombardment that disabled Zanzibar’s defenses.
The D in D-Day doesn’t stand for deliverance, doom, or even debarkation. It doesn’t stand for anything. The D is derived from the word day, and the term D-Day, (or Day-Day) was used for many different operations, even if it’s only remembered today as the name for the invasion of Normandy.
Arlington National Cemetery, the military cemetery for US armed forces, was established during the Civil War on land “appropriated” from Robert E. Lee, commanding general of the Confederate army.
“Dixie,” the unofficial anthem of the South during the Civil War, was written in 1859 by Daniel Decatur Emmett, a northerner who was loyal to the Union.
HISTORICAL MOMENTS
“History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.”—George Santayana
Right after a historic moment, we revel in the details. We want to know everything that happened and how it went down and who was there. As years pass, these moments get chopped down into one-sentence sidebars in textbooks. This chapter seeks to correct this injustice with stories about insignificant or just plain weird moments from history’s footnotes, what-ifs, and greatest hits.
Dead End
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was a pivotal point in history—sending several countries into a war that would become known as World War I. Perhaps all of that war nonsense could have been avoided if Ferdinand’s driver hadn’t made a wrong turn.
On June 28, 1914, Ferdinand and his wife were in a motorcade in Sarajevo, Bosnia, where tensions were high and Ferdinand wasn’t very popular. At one point a bomb was thrown at his open-topped car. It bounced off and detonated behind them. Ferdinand is known to have shouted, “So, you welcome your guests with bombs!” Later, while either attempting to rush out of the city or to visit those injured in the blast earlier in the day, his driver made a wrong turn and began backing up right near one of the conspirators, Gavilo Princip, a nineteen-year-old Slavic Nationalist. While the car slowly backed up not five feet away, and with a second chance just fallen into his lap, Princip drew his pistol and shot the Archduke and his wife.
SIDE NOTE: If you don’t like the idea of blaming a wrong turn for the start of World War I, consider this: The Archduke was such a perfectionist about the cut and fit of his military uniform that he had a one-piece garment sewn on to him each day. So when doctors attempted to examine his wounds after he was shot, they realized the buttons didn’t work, and by the time they figured out they had to cut the uniform off, the Archduke was dead.
Suffering Suffrage
The US Congress passed and ratified the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, giving women the right to vote. But before that, some women did have the right to vote in elections. After the American Revolution, women in New Jersey could vote until 1807. And, before Utah was granted statehood, women were given the right to vote (without even really asking for it) expressly to help make polygamy illegal, which would then make Utah a more desirable candidate for US statehood. Once polygamy was finally outlawed, women lost the right to vote once again … presumably to make Utah a more desirable candidate for US statehood.
SIDE NOTE: Two women, Victoria Woodhull and Belva Ann Lockwood ran for president of the United States before 1920, even though, under law, they couldn’t vote for themselves.
Listen to Mother
Today we take for granted women’s right to vote; however, the vote in Congress that fateful day in 1920 was too close for comfort. Thirty-six of forty-eight states were needed to ratify, and the Nineteenth Amendment was one vote shy. Its only hope was Harry Burn, a Republican from Tennessee. He was firmly in the “no way” camp until receiving a letter from his mother. It said, “Don’t forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the ‘rat’ in ratification. Signed, your mother.” He changed his vote and later explained, “I know that a mother’s advice is always safest for her boy to follow, and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification.” Bet you he got an extra cookie in his lunch after that!
United States of France?
Napoleon had big plans for the vast territory that France held in North America. In 1802 he sent an army to take control of New Orleans and open the doors for a new wave of French colonists to populate a New France. The army’s first stop, however, was Haiti. There, troops were ordered to reestablish French rule after a slave rebellion. While the Haitians were no match for French troops, something far more menacing attacked: mosquitoes. More specifically, mosquitoes carrying yellow fever. Of the original twenty thousand troops sent, only a few thousand lived. Napoleon responded by sending reinforcements. Thousands more perished—up to fifty thousand troops by some estimates. Meanwhile, the largely immune local population renewed the fight with guerilla-type attacks. The few living French soldiers soon surrendered and returned to France. With most of his expeditionary force completely destroyed, Napoleon gave up on his dream of a New France and sold his empire of the Mississippi Valley to the United States
Notes on the Declaration of Independence
On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress, meeting in the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, approved the Declaration of Independence. There are lots of fun stories about the Declaration, although many of them are in dispute or outright incorrect. (For example, Ben Franklin did not add to an early version of the document, “kiss our collective arse.”) Let’s set the record straight:
The Declaration of Independ
ence is the document that severed the colonies’ ties to the British Crown and set in motion the American Revolution … right? Well, yes, but it was meant more as a press release for the colonists since the Lee Resolution (aka the Resolution of Independence), which was passed on July 2, 1776, declared the United Colonies to be independent of the British. John Adams even thought July 2 would be the day future Americans celebrated. He wrote to his wife: “The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival … It ought to be celebrated with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations …” Well, at least he got the pomp and parades right.
Who exactly signed the Declaration, and when? Historians still argue over this. Most say it was actually signed on August 2, 1776, and not on July 4, even though Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and John Adams all wrote that it was signed on July 4. In 1796, one of the signers disputed this by pointing out that some of the signers weren’t even in Philadelphia on July 4—including some who weren’t even elected to Congress at that time. These days, it’s thought most signed the Declaration in August.
Thomas Jefferson loved telling people that the final vote on the Declaration was approved quickly because a swarm of flies from a nearby stable invaded the session, forcing a quick vote. Other stories state Jefferson actually complained about the flies at the Graff House, where he wrote the Declaration.