A Brief History On April 12, 1864, Confederate forces under Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest massacred a large part of the Federal troops defending Fort Pillow, Tennessee. Digging Deeper Digging deeper, we find Nathan Forrest well known as a founder of the Ku Klux Klan and renowned as a racist, leading about 7,000 Confederate cavalrymen. Fort Pillow was an earthworks fort supposed to protect the Mississippi River, but it was not of a good design. The cracked layout of the fort actually favored attackers having better fields of fire than the hapless defenders who found it hard to fire at…
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A Brief History On April 12, 1831, 74 British soldiers got the surprise of their lives when the “new fangled” suspension bridge they were marching across collapsed! Digging Deeper The bridge at Broughton, near Manchester, England, was built in 1826 in the new “suspension” style. Being one of Europe’s first suspension bridges and only 5 years old, it was considered state of the art. As the British troops marched “in time” in 4 columns across the bridge their synchronized footsteps began a rhythmic resonance creating a pleasant sort of bounce, causing some of the men to start whistling in time! …
A Brief History On April 19, 2016, the 2016 New York Republican presidential primary is scheduled to be held in the U.S. state of New York as one of the Republican Party’s primaries ahead of the 2016 presidential election. As the 2016 Presidential election primary season drags on to delegate rich New York State, Republican front-runner Donald Trump visited the 9/11 memorial (The National September 11 Memorial Museum), an incident he has frequently mentioned as testament to the character of New Yorkers. With no appearance of fake emotion, The Donald contributed $100,000 to the memorial fund on the spot after…
On April 11, 1951, President Harry Truman had had enough, and fired General of the Army (5 star general) Douglas MacArthur. Firing the senior American general during a war, especially one that had been awarded the Medal of Honor (in World War II) and that was a national hero is not to be taken lightly; however, Truman had no choice and “Dugout Doug” was out. Sometimes during the emergencies of war even senior officers are found to be lacking in brains, skills, or character necessary to win the war. When officers of exalted rank get fired, it is unusual enough…
A Brief History On April 11, 1993, prisoners at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility (Lucasville, Ohio) began a terrifying and deadly riot! Digging Deeper “Lucasville” was built in 1972 to house dangerous felons. The usual miserable prison conditions of overcrowding and racial tensions erupted into a riot when African-American prisoners were forced to submit to inoculations for tuberculosis in defiance of the teachings of The Nation of Islam (Black Muslim) religion that many belonged to. Of the 1,800+ prisoners (hundreds over capacity) 450 took part in the riot and subsequent siege. A cracked angle to this riot was the unusual…