Browsing: July 27

A Brief History On July 27, 1689, the Battle of Killiecrankie was fought between Scots and Irish Jacobites against the forces of the Williamite Government of Scotland.  Every so often a battle occurs at a funny sounding place or with a funny sounding name of the battle, and today we take a look at some of those funny sounding battles. (Yes, we are including some wars as well as battles…) Some that come to mind that are not on our list (too predictable) include The War of Jenkins Ear, The Football War, The Whiskey Rebellion, The Great Emu War,and The…

A Brief History On July 27, 2019, while enjoying Sirius/XM Radio, the subject of one-word-title songs was the theme, giving this author the inspiration to compile a list of the 6 Best Songs wherein the title is a person’s name, just a one word name.  Obviously, since the list is not based on scientific data such as record sales, it is necessarily subjective and based only on my humble opinion.  You are welcome to criticize the choices on the list and to nominate your own choices for songs that should be named on such a list.  To be fair, we…

A Brief History On July 27, 1189, Friedrich Barbarossa (also known as Frederick), the Holy Roman Emperor, arrived at the capital of the Serbian King Stefan Nemanja, a city called Nis. King of Germany, King of Italy, and King of Burgundy, Barbarossa was a medieval force to be reckoned with, crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 1155. His undoing was his ill-considered foray into the Third Crusade, a venture that cost the Holy Roman Emperor his life. Digging Deeper Perhaps you are familiar with the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, a plan the Germans called “Operation Barbarossa” in…

A Brief History On July 27, 1816, US gunboat #154 fired a cannon shot regarded as the deadliest single cannonball ever fired by the US Navy.  The so-called Battle of Negro Fort touched off what became General Andrew Jackson’s conquest of Florida, and was the first big battle of the First Seminole War. Digging Deeper During the War of 1812, the British had garrisoned a fort at Prospect Bluffs on the Apalachicola River of what was then Spanish Florida.  With British Marines (1000 total British fighters) and several hundred Africans (free men and runaway slaves) the British had recruited as…

A Brief History On July 27, 1995, veterans of the Korean War finally got to see their sacrifice acknowledged when the Korean War Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C. Digging Deeper Often referred to as a “forgotten war” or even as an “unknown war,” the Korean War was actually the first major international conflict of the Cold War between the Communists and the Democratic West, and it took place from 1950 to 1953 before a truce ended the fighting, but technically not the conflict.  Communist North Korea, an ally of the Soviet Union and Red China, had invaded Democratic South…