Good
morning,
Quote
of the day:
After
being confronted by Xerxes, the head of the Persian army at the
battle of Thermopylae Pass, Leonidas the leader of the Spartans was
told by Xerxes that if he would acknowledge him as king of the world,
he would make Leonidas the ruler of Greece. Leonidas, an
acknowledged hard-ass said “I would rather die on my feet with my
countrymen than to serve on my knees”. By the way, Leonidas would
slaughter every messenger that came from Xerxes, and send a Greek
back with his answer.
Like
I said, a hard-ass.
By
the way, when Leonidas was informed about the arrival of Xerxes and
his gigantic army and agreed to lead the Hoplites (acknowledged to be
the meanest combat soldiers in the world) against the Persians he
knew he would not return and told his wife, “Find a good husband
and have good children.” He indeed did not return. The Persians
beheaded him but recognized his courage and bravery and retrieved
Leonidas' corpse and sent it back to Sparta for a hero's burial.
I
have a friend that owns a restaurant in Greenville, SC. This man is
Greek and only one generation from immigrants. His ancestors and he
are from Sparta, Greece. He owns a house near Sparta that he visits
on occasion. Behind this house there is a mountain that has a pretty
steep cliff on one side. This cliff is protected and no one is
allowed to visit this site. According to legend, many years ago if a
Spartan child is borne that was not perfect in shape and form, it
would be carried to this cliff and left to die. The Spartans had a
very, very vigorous training program for every male beginning at the
age of 8 and continuing until the staff of trainers were satisfied
that he was ready to enter a combat unit. They wanted perfect female
children also so it would be more likely that they would bear perfect
children.
Nobody
attacked Sparta for obvious reasons...except Athens. There was a
war between these two from 431BC to 404BC known as the Peloponnesian
War . Athens led a group of city-states that existed over on the
Aegean Sea and Sparta led a group of city-states over on the
Peloponnesian peninsula in southwest Greece. The war broke out when
Athens tried to exert influence on some of the city-states under the
umbrella of Sparta. They fought for 27 years. Eventually all of
this nonsense came to an end when the Athenians received a severe
ass-kicking at the battle of Aegospotami in 405BC. The Athenians
asked for a treaty and one was signed and that slaughter of humans
for power was ended. By the way, they did it the hard way
then...axes, swords, lances, knives, etc. The Athenians did have
“Greek fire” then. This was a flammable material, probably
naptha, that was put into clay jars, set on fire and launched at the
enemy with catapults. The clay jar would break and spread the
flaming liquid. This method was excellent from ship to ship because
of the slow moving vessels but maneuvering a catapult on a
battlefield against fast moving troops, especially cavalry on
horseback was too unwieldy...so they did it the hard way as
previously described.
This
Date in History October 23
1965 The 1st
Cavalry division launched Operation Silver Bayonet in an attempt to
drive the North Vietnamese Army out of II Corps (Central Highlands)
in Vietnam. They met up with the North Vietnamese 33rd
and 66th
regiments. It was a week long bitter struggle and ended up being
one of the bloodiest of the War. The fleeing North Vietnamese Army
decided to make a stand and protect one of their supply depots on
the La Trang Valley. This three day battle with the
7th
Cavalry engaged was the most savage of the operation. The final
result was 834 North Vietnamese killed on this battlefield alone. In
a related attack, 500 NV soldiers fell upon a company of American
Soldiers waiting at a landing zone and the Americans were
annihilated. The final result of this operation was 1771 North
Vietnamese and 241 Americans/South Vietnamese killed.
1864 CSA Gen.
Sterling Price attacked US Gen. Samuel Curtis’ infantry unit near
Westport, Missouri. Price had entered Missouri from Arkansas and had
raided several small Union detachments before reaching Westport in an
attempt to draw away some of the Union forces from the Eastern
theater. The war was not going well for the Confederacy and
President Jefferson Davis ordered Price to try and spread out the
Union Army. Price’s attack on Westport went well at first but he
was unaware of US Gen. Pleasanton’s cavalry was closing in fast
from another direction and he was going to be trapped and possibly
forced to surrender. Price orchestrated a skillful withdrawal and
escaped. The exhausted Union units failed to follow but if they had,
the war would have been over sooner. There were about 1,500
casualties on both sides but this represented about 10% to the Union
forces but 20% to Price. As usual, the Confederates were outnumbered
about 2 to 1.
42BC
One of the conspirators in the assassination of Julius Caesar,
Marcus Brutus, committed suicide after losing the 2nd
battle of Philippi. Brutus and Cassius had formed an army in an
attempt to re-institute the Republic of Rome rather than an empire
which was the reason for the assassination. They were opposed by
Octavian and Marc Antony who wanted to preserve the empire. This was
the same Marc Antony that got hung up with Cleopatra. Anyway, the
first major engagement between these two armies was at Philippi at
which Octavian and Antony defeated the army lead by Cassius and
Cassius committed suicide. Then came the 2nd
Battle at Philippi and with Brutus in command and he was defeated
also and committed suicide. After a while Octavian and Marc Antony
started squabbling and they split up with Octavian taking the crown
under the name of Augustus and the rest is history.
1942 Author Michael
Crichton is born in Chicago. Mike evidently was from a pretty
affluent family because he graduated from Harvard Summa Cum Laude.
After this he went to Cambridge in England and taught anthropology.
In the mean time he had turned out some fairly successful books and
decided that writing was his calling and started doing it full time.
This man cranked out some of the best books ever written by a modern
day American author in: “Andromeda Strain”, “The Terminal Man”,
“Congo”, and “The Great Train Robbery”. He wrote and
directed the movies: “Binary”, “Westworld”, “Jurassic Park”
and “Rising Sun”, at one point in 1993 he had four books on the
best seller list. He was a very wealthy man and deservedly so.
Births
and deaths:
1869 US Football
coach John Heisman, for which the trophy is named, is born. John
once said “It is better to die as a young man than to fumble”.
He was a hard man.
1942 English
writer Anita Roddick is born. She once said “If you think you are
too small to have an impact, try going to bed while hearing a
mosquito in the room.”
Thanks
for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow
No comments:
Post a Comment