sweasel.com

I am saddened to hear the tragic news that Yahoo! Answers is going away May 4. I have been wheezing at this twitter link for an unseemly long time.

Shame it’s only Yahoo! Answers… if ever a worthless zombie stalked the earth it was Yahoo!

Sweasy – it was only 5 of the 7th Cavs companies, those directly with Custer.

What he didn’t know was that the Hikawi Indians really hated custard so they weren’t going to let him set up his stand there.

Sorry, couldn’t resist my childhood ‘history’.

Seriously on paper that means roughly 500 men and officers of various rank. Active duty companies rarely go into the field/battle at full paper strength, and you can see in Custer’s case, basically half strength.

But losing that many ‘Regular’ troops to “Indians” in a single battle was unheard of and of course all the tales of horror, scalping, mutilation and what not printed by the lurid press of the time to sell their copy.
However, the ‘honor’ of the single largest loss of US troops to ‘Native insurgents’ in North America goes to
General Arthur St. Clair at the Battle of the Wabash in 1791 when the Native American forces under Little Turtle annihilated 976 men of a force totaling 1000.

No one talks about that one very much though.

Speaking of hatchets…. did you see in the Daily Mail that someone bought the Lizzy Borden house and has turned it into a hotel?

@Uncle Badger — I have no affection for Yahoo! but by my ranking the Worthless Zombie Gold Crown goes to AOL.

I knew several of the people who formed America Online. Steve Case and cronies left the software company I worked for in Virginia. We were glad to see them go. Unfortunately, they set up shop across the street.

Sidebar: The team they left was Morino Associates. For those interested in techie history, here is an interesting article. I worked for Mario for ten really good years. Some of our software is still on the market.

Is there any small town that does not have some, however obscure, claim to fame? My hometown is very proud of:

Having the only statue in the world of George Washington (yeah that one) wearing a British uniform.

As for the Battle of Little Bighorn, I developed somewhat of a fascination with if after reading “Son Of The Morning Star”; a book about Custer and the Little Bighorn.

A quick reading (from memory) goes like this:

Custer became a general during the Civil War by doing really stupid and rash attacks. While Meade was dragging his feet, a (literally) dashing young guy with blonde hair and a sword made good headlines.

Having developed a taste for fame, by 1876 Custer was getting ready to announce a run for the Presidency. He saw a chance for a big victory in the Indian Wars right before the nomination convention. …”Cool! Gonna get me some excellent press. Need to be the clear star though, at the head of the pack”.

On the fatal day, he split his forces for a forked attack with himself at the glory point and he led his troop in on a charge against an Indian force which he had grossly underestimated. He sent a messenger to Captain Benteen (who was both an experienced Indian fighter and no fan of flashy Custer) to bring up the pack mules with more ammo. In the meantime, Major Reno who had the other prong of the fork ran into a surprising,indeed shocking, number of pissed off Indians on his way to link up with Custer. He scrambled into a defensive position a few miles short of where he was to link up with the (now) besieged Custer. Benteen got as far as Reno’s location and dug in with him. Was it because he was in no hurry to help Custer or because he was experienced enough to know a disaster brewing when he saw one? In any case, without Reno or Benteen, Custer was from that point on, uhm, SOL. Reno and Benteen’s troops were in a pretty good fight themselves and they were afterwards pleased to have lived through the whole mess. It is questionable that they could have successfully aided Custer; it is quite possible that they would have also been wiped out if they had tried….which they didn’t.

The controversy still rages about whether Reno should have ‘pressed on regardless’ to the relief of Custer. The ‘digging-in was the right move’ side was not helped by the fact that Reno, a notorious alcoholic who got in -a lot of- trouble for drunkenness during his career both before and after this battle, was seen waving a half-full bottle of whiskey around during the fight.

He was later branded a coward, and blamed for abandoning Custer to his doom. However Reno demanded and got, a court of inquiry which cleared him of charges of cowardice. He remained in the army, and naturally got in more trouble for making a drunken pass at his (out of town at that moment) commander’s wife…

The “Too Long, Didn’t Read” version is that Custer died of a bad case of hubris

For some unknown region I decided to look up village of Dallington on Bing.
Got a kick out of some of the town/village/hamlet/abandoned garage names…
Three Cups Corner, Foul Mile, Stunts Green, Lower & Upper Dicker, Ripe, Spithurst, and tons of others. Even found a street (near a church) called The Street.
Our local town names are boring.

“This ain’t the Washita River, General, and them ain’t helpless women and children waiting for you. They’re Cheyenne brave, and Sioux. You go down there, General, if you’ve got the nerve.”

@Stoaty…mebbe that guy wasn’t running away, but into battle? Think Thermopylae….or this guy.

More likely he was caught on foot and dragged up the hill by a mounted Sioux and dispatched.

American history is vast, every burg has a story, but it’s only an inch deep. That’s why English and French history is more interesting…and my peeps are Flemish and Scots.

I knew I’d have a Custerologist among my readers.

There are some *amazing* place and street names around here, Fert. The Street is a common one.

General St. Clair lost over twice as many men to an Indian force as Custer did, but had the bad luck not to get surrounded and killed in a glorious Last Stand. I think that’s one reason why he never became a hero to American schoolboys and why the defeat was perhaps forgotten about as soon as possible (after it was followed by the reorganization of the U.S. Army into the “Legion of the United States” and Gen. Anthony Wayne decisively defeating the Indians).