History
Here we bring you the fascinating world of history: U.S. history; archeological, anthropological, natural, and evolutionary history; plus historical figures. To know where we are going we must first understand where we have been.
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A Skirmish Early in George Washington’s Military Career Helped Define Him. It Could Have Killed Him
By: David L. Preston / Photographs by Sally Maxson / Smithsonian magazine
For the rest of his life, George Washington would remember the chaos and tragedy of November 12, 1758. At 26, he was the colonel commanding the Virginia Regiment, a British subject fighting for his king in the conflict now known as the French and Indian War. The soldiers were advancing westward in a campaign to take the Ohio Valley from the French and their Native allies. The troops had crossed the Appalachians and built a fort called Loyalhanna in what is now western Pennsylvania—about 50 miles east of Fort Duquesne, the strategic French outpost they planned to conquer.
In the October 2019 issue of Smithsonian, I wrote about a 1754 document I discovered in the British National Archives: an eyewitness account from an Ohio Iroquois warrior who identified Washington as having fired the first shot in the skirmish that sparked the war. Now, as British troops closed in on the Ohio Valley, Washington was about to play a key role in the conflict’s end.
On that Sunday in November 1758, the British commander, General John Forbes, got word…Read more here.
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Why Do States Run Federal Elections?
Dave Roos – history.com
When the delegates met in Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the United States was governed by the Articles of Confederation, under which the federal government had little authority. Federalists like James Madison and Alexander Hamilton wanted to rectify that with a new Constitution.
Not only did Madison and Hamilton want a stronger central government, but they openly distrusted the states, which tended to act in their own self-interest. Elections were key to the function of the new democracy, but only if they were fair and free of outside influence. The Federalists worried that corrupt state legislatures could undermine Congress by meddling with federal elections.
Hamilton’s biggest fear was that rebellious states could simply refuse to hold federal elections at all, crippling the government. That concern led Hamilton and other Federalists to argue that Congress…Read more here.
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Afghanistan Was a Crossroad of the Ancient World, Where Hellenistic Culture Blended With Buddhist Influences
Tom Cassauwers / Smithsonian magazine
In 1961, the then-king of Afghanistan, Mohammed Zahir Shah, went hunting in the north of his country, on the border with Tajikistan. On a slab of sand called Ai-Khanoum, where two rivers straddle each other, he noticed something odd: the outlines of a city.
Zahir Shah quickly called in the French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan, which was formed in 1922 at the request of a previous Afghan king to study the country’s buried history. Although official accounts suggest that Zahir Shah was the first to stumble upon Ai-Khanoum, the ancient city’s existence had already been documented more than a century earlier.
Still, what the archaeologists found at the site astounded them. A gymnasium, a theater and an acropolis emerged from the dust. The scholars unearthed Corinthian column capitals, Hellenistic mosaics, and a massive silver disc depicting the goddesses Nike and Cybele in a chariot pulled by lions. More than 2,500 miles from Greece, they had uncovered a city that was clearly inspired by…Read more and see video here.
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When the US Army Tried Bombing Open a Frozen River
Dave Roos – history.com
The scene in the skies over the Susquehanna River Valley on March 9, 1920, was something out of a World War I dogfight. Airplanes were still a novelty in 1920, yet a two-seater biplane circled over the Pennsylvania-Maryland border, where the Susquehanna River had been choked with ice for nearly three months.
Veterans of World War I might have recognized the plane as a de Havilland DH-4 bomber, an American-made military plane with the unfortunate nickname “The Flaming Coffin.” It was rare enough to see a U.S. Army Air Service plane in action, but nothing prepared onlookers for what happened next.
The small airplane circled the river a few times, then swung high into the slate-gray sky. Then, with the roar of its 12-cylinder Liberty engine echoing off the ice below, the plane entered a steep dive. As…Read more here.
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