A thread for discussion and debate of historical topics, as well as interesting links, articles, and pics.

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40 must see historical photos -- one pic may be NSFW

Soldier shares a banana with a goat during the battle of Saipan, ca. 1944

Mom and son watching the mushroom cloud after an atomic test, Las Vegas, 1953

Martin Luther King with his son removing a burnt cross from their front yard, 1960

Melted and damaged mannequins after a fire at Madam Tussaud’s Wax Museum in London, 1930

First morning after Sweden changed from driving on the left side to driving on the right, 1967

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Who has visited the site of The Battle of New Orleans?

If you visited the Chalmette battlefield today…

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Winston Churchill described the Battle of New Orleans (1815) as the “most irresponsible British onslaught” and “one of the most unintelligent maneuvers in the history of British warfare.”1 The battle was a classic, horrific march of infantry across an open field into well-entrenched guns. The Americans inflicted over 2,000 casualties on the British while suffering only 71 themselves. Before Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, there was the Battle of New Orleans.

Andrew Jackson commanded one of the most unique armies in American history with his ranks consisting of not only US infantry, marines, artillery and sailors, but also pirates, free blacks, Choctaw Indians, and militia from Tennessee, Kentucky, and Louisiana. To understand how Jackson was able to lead such a group to victory over British commanders and soldiers fresh from victories in the Napoleonic Wars, you have to visit the Chalmette battlefield where the Battle of New Orleans took place.

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St Petersburg 1914: The door to another age

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When There Was a Mock Plantation in Brooklyn

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a plantation actually existed in Brooklyn.

To be sure, it was only a mock plantation and very much, like Foster’s, a romanticized version. It was also short-lived. But there it was, encamped in June 1895, in Ambrose Park in South Brooklyn, near Third Avenue and 37th Street, where today the Gowanus Expressway slices through, a native village erected by Nate Salsbury, the legendary producer of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show.

“Fun for the Darkies,” proclaimed a New York Times headline, heralding the arrival of the “Black America” show and its cast of 500 “Southern colored people.” Another headline trumpeted a show featuring the “Fun-Loving Darky of Old Slavery Days.”

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Looming First World War anniversary sparks ideological battle over conflict’s merits and blame

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The start of commemorations for the centenary of the First World War has provoked ideological battles between the Left and the Right. Patriotism, honour, historical truth and the place of humour in teaching history are all being fought over.

The spat has even pitted the Conservative-led government’s education minister against a comic actor — Tony Robinson, who played the dim-witted soldier Baldrick in Blackadder Goes Forth, a much-loved television sitcom.

In an article for the right-of-centre Daily Mail newspaper, Education Secretary Michael Gove said Blackadder and other satires had created a public impression of the four-year war — in which more than eight million troops and millions of civilians died — as “a misbegotten shambles — a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite.”

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Mr. Gove cited the show as a contributor to “misrepresentations which reflect… an unhappy compulsion on the part of some to denigrate virtues such as patriotism, honour and courage.”

He said for Britain, the First World War was “plainly a ‘just’ war” and one country was to blame for starting it — Germany, with its “aggressively expansionist war aims and… scorn for the international order.”

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When New York Wanted To Secede

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In December 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede, but on January 7, 1861, New York City Mayor Fernando Wood suggested that the city follow suit.

Although New York ended slavery in 1827, the city profited from slave-grown cotton, which accounted for 7/8 of the world’s supply as the city positioned itself as a center of international trade. According to our New York Divided resources, “White newspaper editors praised slavery as a benevolent system of labor and the only fit condition for people of African descent in America. Discrimination and ridicule greeted black New Yorkers every day,” hardly the attitude we expect from the “melting pot” of America. Wood suggested that New York become a “free city,” independent from both the North and South, in order to not lose business to seceding Southern states.

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This post was edited on 1/13/14 at 12:45 pm