In honor of Emil Faber. Catchall thread for various historical articles/videos/etc...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdTEiUDHaZo

58 minutes ago, Mlodj said:

In honor of Emil Faber. Catchall thread for various historical articles/videos/etc...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdTEiUDHaZo

Almost done.

I love listening to Brits talk about themselves.

Cats have barbed Ds in order to prevent premature escape of the mate and to scoop out the semen of other suitors.

IS knowledge good really? All knowledge?

10 minutes ago, DEagle7 said:

Cats have barbed **** in order to prevent premature escape of the late and to scoop out the semen of other suitors.

IS knowledge good really? All knowledge?

What would Fawn Liebowitz do?

Thank you France and Spain. The American Revolution was on the verge of defeat, but survived by nothing short of a miracle in October 1981.

From Nathaniel Philbrick's "In the Hurricane's Eye."

By the end of September, the allied forces had started to accumulate the men, provisions, equipment, and cannons they needed to start the thirteen-mile march to Yorktown. No one could quite believe they’d reached this point. There were at least 8000 French soldiers, a similar number of Continentals, and over 3000 American militia, for a total of almost 19,000 soldiers. (Even Washington’s twenty-six-year-old stepson, Jacky Custis, who had shown no previous interest in participating in the Revolutionary War, had decided that now was the time to join his stepfather’s army.) On top of that, approximately 20,000 French sailors were stationed on the ships scattered across the lower portions of the Chesapeake. In total, close to 40,000 French and Americans were temporarily gathered in this portion of Virginia to face Cornwallis’s army of between 7000 and 9000 soldiers. For a few brief weeks in the autumn of 1781, the largest concentration of people in North America (more than half of them French) existed not in Philadelphia (the most populous city in America) but on and around a peninsula between the York and James rivers. Writing on September 28, Jonathan Trumbull called it "a most wonderful and very observable coincidence of favorable circumstances.” That morning the army marched out of Williamsburg and approached to within two miles of the British fortifications. "The line being formed,” Washington recorded in his diary, "all the troops, officers, and men lay upon their arms during the night.” The Siege of Yorktown was about to begin.

Once they’d been directed to the appropriate place, they began placing narrow strips of pine along the line marked by the engineers, just six hundred yards from the enemy’s fortifications. "We had not proceeded far in the business,” Martin wrote, "before the engineers ordered us to desist and remain where we were and be sure not to straggle a foot from the spot while they were absent from us.” Standing motionless in an open field within easy cannon shot of the British was not a pleasant duty. Making it even worse was the knowledge that should they be discovered by the enemy and identified as sappers, they would invariably be killed. Not long after the departure of the engineers, a tall man in a long overcoat appeared out of the blackness. "The stranger inquired what troops we were,” Martin remembered, “[and] talked familiarly with us a few minutes.” Before leaving to find the engineers, the stranger reminded them not to reveal "what troops we were” if they should be taken prisoners. "We were obliged to him for his kind advice,” Martin wrote, "but we considered ourselves as standing in no great need of it; for we knew as well as he did that Sappers and Miners were allowed no quarters, at least are entitled to none by the laws of warfare.” Eventually the engineers returned in the company of "the aforementioned stranger.” "By the officers often calling him ‘Your Excellency,’ we discovered that it was George Washington. Had we dared, we might have cautioned him for exposing himself too carelessly to danger at such a time, and doubtless he would have taken it in good part if we had.” Like the young warrior king in William Shakespeare’s play Henry V, Washington had left an indelible impression on his men as he chatted with them on a dark night before battle.

From Wiki. His name should be familiar to every American.

Francisco Saavedra de Sangronis (1746–1819) was a Spanish government official and soldier whose work in Cuba during the American Revolutionary War laid the foundations for the defeat of British forces in Florida and at Yorktown.

Saavedra and Yorktown

In January 1781 he was finally released by the British, and began work in Havana. After making initial recommendations for administrative changes, over the next few months he helped to organise, and actually took part in Gálvez' successful siege of Pensacola, the key British base in Florida. On his return he found that his recommendations had been accepted by the Spanish government, and key officials had been replaced. In July, at the request of the Minister (José de Gálvez, Bernardo's uncle), Saavedra, who spoke and wrote French fluently, met in the French colony of St. Domingue with Admiral de Grasse to discuss the best ways of using the large French fleet he had brought across the Atlantic, and they agreed a plan for the following year, known as the Grasse-Saavedra Convention. First priority was to aid the French and American forces in the United States, preferably by attacking the British force in Virginia under Lord Cornwallis. Next was to regain control of Caribbean islands captured by the British. The final goal of the plan was the capture of Jamaica, by far the richest British possession in the West Indies. 

To finance phase 1, Saavedra obtained 100,000 pesos from the Spanish treasury in neighboring Santo Domingo. The Spanish had planned to finance the French and North Americans with pesos shipped through Veracruz from the mines in Mexico. The ships had not arrived, and then, finding that most of the Government money from Havana had been sent on to Spain, he appealed to Cuban citizens, who raised a further 500,000 pesos in a matter of hours.^[1]

On August 17, the frigate Aigrette departed Cuba with the funds and rendezvoused with the remaining French fleet the following day, setting course for Chesapeake Bay. On August 30, they arrived off the Virginia coast, and by September 5, Robert Morris finally obtained 26,600 pesos from the French army’s treasurer to compensate the Continental Army soldiers. Eyewitness reports state this was the only payment the troops received throughout the war. Just over a month later, these American forces, alongside their French allies, achieved the critical triumph at Yorktown.^[1]

English guy breaks down modern battles from WW2 to OIF, both big and small engagements.

LINK

Postal Service was key to shaping the nation

The one government agency that still reaches nearly every American daily — undeterred by rain, sleet, snow or even gloom of night — turned 250 on Saturday. Established in 1775, when the Second Continental Congress appointed Benjamin Franklin as postmaster general, the Postal Service predates the United States. It was launched nearly a year before the colonies declared their break from British rule. "The country may not even have come into existence but for the Postal Service,” said Stephen Allen Kochersperger, the USPS historian and a former local postmaster. While it grapples with concerns over its financial viability in the modern era, the agency has had a long and colorful history that helped shape the nation. It has grown from serving the 13 colonies to delivering more mail than any other postal system in the world, reaching nearly 169 million addresses and employing more than 635,000 people.

A new postal service

In those early days, creating an American postal system was a key priority for the nation’s founders, who needed to communicate with the Continental Army and the colonies. When the Continental Congress met in 1775, it appointed Franklin as the first postmaster because he had served in the British postal service for North America. The early postal system also became crucial to unifying the diverse, fragmented colonies into a nation by spreading ideas of liberty and independence through letters, newspapers and pamphlets. "People were reading, getting ideas of what it would be like to be an independent country,” Kochersperger said.

Westward expansion. When the U.S. Constitution was ratified, Congress was granted power to establish post offices and mail routes that were first used by mail carriers on horseback and later upgraded for stagecoaches. Some evolved into highways that are still used. Initially running north-south along the East Coast, post roads later extended westward. Historians have said this aided settler expansion into Native lands and was intertwined with the displacement of tribes. As western migration accelerated, mail was sent by ship from New York to Central America and on to California. Delivery typically took two to three months. The Pony Express, operated by private carriers, was started to speed things up. A relay system of riders on horseback carried mail from California to Missouri, the furthest-westward railroad stop. The 1,800-mile journey took 10 days.

While legendary, it only lasted about 18 months, until Oct. 26, 1861. The service was scuttled by the Civil War and made obsolete with the advent of the telegraph, said Daniel Piazza, chief curator of philately at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum. Later, the transcontinental railroad reduced mail delivery from months to days.

New types of delivery

Free mail delivery to homes began in earnest in 1863 in the nation’s largest cities. It was initially created as a response to grief during the Civil War. At the time, the only communication from a father, brother, husband or son usually came through letter-writing. Women lined up daily at post offices, awaiting word. They sometimes got their own letters back, with a note saying their loved one had been killed. Postal officials in Cleveland decided to take mail to people’s homes out of compassion. Enthusiasm for home delivery spread quickly, and people living in rural areas wanted it too. Despite logistical challenges, rural free delivery began expanding rapidly around 1900. By the 1920s, mail carriers in automobiles mostly had replaced horse-drawn wagons. Around that time, mail started being sent by airplane as well. The nation’s first regularly scheduled airmail service began May 15, 1918. The initial routes were between Washington, Philadelphia and New York, using Army pilots and planes. The post office soon took over air mail, running operations for nine years until turning to fledgling private airline companies, some of which remain major airlines. In the early days, flights were so dangerous that some pilots dubbed themselves the Suicide Club. Thirty-two pilots were killed.

Major changes to the system

The postal system saw major growth during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s time in office. His New Deal plan to address the Great Depression put people to work building 2,000 post offices. After World War II, a booming economy and growing population led to a surge in mail. To handle the increasing volume, the post office needed a faster alternative to manual sorting. So on July 1, 1963, each post office was given a five-digit ZIP code. Previously, clerks had to memorize thousands of points of address information so they could sort the mail, Kochersperger said. By 1970, postal workers were angry over low wages and a strike was called by leaders of the National Association of Letter Carriers union. The work stoppage led to the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970. It authorized collective bargaining rights for postal workers and transformed the taxpayer-supported Post Office Department into the U.S. Postal Service, a financially self-sustaining and independent agency within the executive branch.

How anthrax attacks reshaped the postal service

Weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, four threatening letters contaminated with anthrax were sent through the mail, including to two U.S. senators. Two workers at a mail distribution center in Washington, D.C., died after breathing in the spores.

Three other people were killed, and more than a dozen were sickened. Following a nine-year investigation, authorities concluded the person who mailed the anthrax had taken his own life in 2008, and the case was closed, but new precautions were added to protect workers. "It changed the whole way that we sorted mail at that time,” Kochersperger said.

Years later, postal workers would be designated essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic and don protective gear again.

What's next for the USPS?

The advent of the internet and private companies like Amazon has taken a bite out of mail volume, threatening the postal service's financial viability. A 10-year modernization effort was launched to keep up with the times.

Reaction has been mixed, but David Steiner, the agency's newly appointed postmaster general, says some improvements have been made. Steiner, a former FedEx board member, wants to help keep the service self-sustaining. He has said he opposes privatization, an idea raised by President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, and believes the agency has a bright future as an independent entity. "There is much to build upon in the years ahead,” he said.

2 hours ago, Mlodj said:

LINK

Seems like nonsense but ok

Now we should be winding it down

80 years ago, today.