Posts Tagged ‘war’

1. The Battle of Fallen Arches – The Crowfeet tribe discovered all too late that moccasins are not sturdy shoes. Once the Crowfeet’s arches collapsed the Sioux caught them flatfooted. Later the Crow sued the Sioux for a murder of Crows.
2. The United States Drops the first F-bomb at the United Nations (1962) – While complaining about the Russians to an aide just prior to a speech before the General Assembly, poor Adlai Stevenson did not realize his microphone was on, and his F-bomb reverberated throughout the chamber. Damage was limited because most of the nations listening didn’t understand English. Mr. Stevenson deftly defused the F-bomb with an apologetic, “Pardon my French.” To which the French replied, “That wasn’t French.”
3. 

   ♫What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding♫ 

   Battle of Blood Pudding – Actually just a British baking show gone very, very wrong. Bad blood was generated when the culinary tasting panel rejected the Blood Pudding efforts of several bakers.

The bakers felt they’d poured their blood, sweat and tears into their puddings. The panel said, “Sweat and tears yes. But not enough blood. Your blood puddings are anemic.”

Bakers from Liverpool to Manchester united and took up arms. Brandishing vanilla cream-filled frosting bags with floral tips and uniformed in big puffy hats, irate pastry chefs attacked their scolding culinary critics who defended themselves with poison pens. They fought each other tooth and nail. And as expected, when the frosting cleared, everyone’s teeth and nails were a mess. What’s next, a gardening conflict – the War of the Roses?     

4. The War of the Two Lips – A needless conflict. Deaf lip readers at Gallaudet University claimed their teachers were speaking ill of them in the cafeteria, when in actuality the professors were just chewing their food. 
5. Battle of the Banana Republics – This battle was called off when the combatants kept slipping on the battlefield. 
6. Appendomattox – Penultimate Civil War battle fought just prior to Appomattox. In the Battle of Appendomattox Gen. Robert E Lee lost both the battle and his appendix.
7. Battle of the Bugle – Often confused with the Battle of the Bulge, more for its similarity in spelling than anything martial. The Battle of the Bugle was Taps for many servicemen.
8. Water Lou – Cirque du Soleil’s extravagant reenactment of Napoleon’s disastrous Battle of Waterloo. The staging is very complex – Napoleonic Complex.
9. Battle of Yettisburg – An abominable battle between snowmen from the North and South. The battlefield was streaked in yellow lines. Months later, when the snow cleared and the melting was evident, poet Robert Frost delivered his famously moving Yettisburg Address.
10. WW½ – People have forgotten about this fairly benign hemispheric clash (1907-10) involving countries located below the equator. Some say they were protesting Rand-McNally mapmakers always putting them on the bottom of the globe and the older, more traditional countries on the top half. The Prime Minister of Australia said it was punishment for, “all our goofy Down Under animals. I knew those makeshift, spare-parts marsupials would give us a bad name. Kangaroos that box, platypuses with duckbills and Tasmanian Devils. Not to mention Waltzing Mathilda and Christmas in the summer.”

The worst of it was when Australia invaded Chile armed only with unloaded didgeridoos that they just pointed at the bewildered Chileans and said, “Diddly, diddly-dow. Dow. Dow. Diddly, diddly-dow.” The only casualty from this hemispheric tantrum was the Tropic of Capricorn which was taken hostage by Paraguay but later released unharmed after another imaginary line – the International Dateline – negotiated successfully for its release. Historians now believe World War ½ was really a gateway World War.   Read the rest of this entry »

“This unbidden dilemma vexes me to no end.” 

In 1861 United States Army Colonel Robert E Lee was the South’s first choice for a commanding position in the Confederate Army. His outstanding military reputation and patriotic lineage merited a similar offer from the North. Ultimately he chose to resign his commission in the United States Army and sign on with his secessionist home state of Virginia. He was promptly named a General in the Confederate Army and in short order the patriotic brotherhood of the Revolution devolved into the bitter animus of the Civil War.

We will never know what would’ve happened had Lee decided otherwise. We only know the predictable result of his imprudent decision – a prolonged and lethal struggle to defend a state’s right to extend slavery into the territories. Of course I’m not suggesting Robert E Lee was entirely responsible for the abomination of the Civil War. What I am suggesting is that his faulty decision amplified the length and breadth of this irrepressible conflict. Read the rest of this entry »