The Battle of Antietam

Of all the days on all the fields where American soldiers have fought, the most terrible by almost any measure was September 17, 1862. The battle waged on that date, close by Antietam Creek at Sharpsburg in western Maryland, took a human toll never exceeded on any other single day in the nation's history. So intense and sustained was the violence, a man recalled, that for a moment in his mind's eye the very landscape around him turned red.

Stephen W. Sears,
Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam

Photos: (Library of Congress).

Guinness celebrates 250 years of getting sloshed, losing your car keys, telling too many people you love them and eventually passing out in the alley

(Daily Star) - RAISE your glasses – Guinness is celebrating its 250th birthday! The legendary Irish dry stout has grown into one of the world’s biggest booze brands –proving its slogan that “good things come to those who wait”. But how much do you know about Guinness? JENNIFER DUNKERLEY finds some mouth-watering facts about the famous black tipple.... Continued

Photo: Sami Keinänen Headline: Fark

When Grave Years Fueled Grand Art

(NYTimes) - ... “Dancing in the Dark” is an extended meditation on what Mr. Dickstein calls “the crucial role that culture can play in times of national trial.” In the ’30s it was a decidedly dual role. “The crisis kindled America’s social imagination,” he notes, “firing enormous interest in how ordinary people lived, how they suffered, interacted, took pleasure in one another, and endured.”
At the same time, audiences fled toward escapist entertainment. About the decade’s split personality, Mr. Dickstein asks: “How can one era have produced both Woody Guthrie and Rudy Vallee, both the Rockettes high-stepping at the Radio City Music Hall and the Okies on their desperate trek?” Continued

Photo: WPA (Library of Congress)

Dixon S. Miles: Bad General or Worst General?

(Wikipedia) - Dixon Stansbury Miles (May 4, 1804 – September 16, 1862) was a career United States Army officer who served in the Mexican-American War and the Indian Wars. He was mortally wounded as he surrendered his Union garrison in the Battle of Harpers Ferry during the American Civil War. Continued

Miles sorry ass is buried in St. James Cemetery, Monkton, Maryland. Photo by Kim Choate. Photo of Miles is from the Library of Congess.

1881 census reveals the stories of Jack the Ripper’s victims

(findmypast.com) - The gruesome ‘Jack the Ripper’ slayings of 1888 sparked a pandemic of panic and fear, unlike any London had seen before. The identity of the killer still perplexes and fascinates history buffs today. But despite a wealth of conspiracy theories and numerous investigative books, it seems we’re still no closer to discovering who was responsible.
To mark the 121-year anniversary of the murders, and to separate the myths from the facts, findmypast.com has turned to the newly-completed 1881 census, which offers a snapshot of the victims’ lives just seven years before they met their tragic end. Continued

Photo: Wikipedia

A history of health policy and the Oval Office

(NYTBR) - ... Universal health care has bedeviled, eluded or defeated every president for the last 75 years. Franklin Roosevelt left it out of Social Security because he was afraid it would be too complicated and attract fierce resistance. Harry Truman fought like hell for it but ultimately lost. Dwight Eisenhower reshaped the public debate over it. John Kennedy was passionate about it. Lyndon Johnson scored the first and last major victory on the road toward achieving it. Richard Nixon devised the essential elements of all future designs for it. Jimmy Carter tried in vain to re-engineer it. The first George Bush toyed with it. Bill Clinton lost it and then never mentioned it again. George W. expanded it significantly, but only for retirees. Continued

Photo: Library of Congress

NASA rocket scheduled to create noctilucent clouds tonight

(NASA) - A rocket experiment that may shed light on the highest clouds in the Earth’s atmosphere will be conducted Sept. 15 from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
The Charged Aerosol Release Experiment (CARE) will be conducted by the Naval Research Laboratory and the Department of Defense Space Test Program using a NASA four-stage Black Brant XII suborbital sounding rocket. Using ground based instruments and the STP/NRL STPSat-1 spacecraft, scientists will study an artificial noctilucent cloud formed by the exhaust particles of the rocket’s fourth stage at about 173 miles altitude.
The launch is scheduled between 7:30 and 7:57 p.m. EDT. The backup launch days are Sept. 16 through 20. The rocket flight and the resulting cloud may be seen throughout the mid-Atlantic region. The artificial noctilucent cloud also may be visible the following morning just before sunrise. Continued

Photos: NASA

Battle of Harpers Ferry

(Wikipedia) - The Battle of Harpers Ferry was fought September 12–15, 1862, as part of the Maryland Campaign of the American Civil War. As Gen. Robert E. Lee's Confederate army invaded Maryland, a portion of his army under Maj. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson surrounded, bombarded, and captured the Union garrison at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), a major victory at relatively minor cost. Continued

Photo: Library of Congress

YouTube - MA & PA Railroad

Ride the long extinct MA & PA Railroad. Filmed in 16mm.

Pennsylvania's fine new State Capitol at Harrisburg will be dedicated this week by President Roosevelt

New-York tribune, September 30, 1906

Battle of South Mountain

(Wikipedia) - The Battle of South Mountain (known in several early Southern accounts as the Battle of Boonsboro Gap) was fought September 14, 1862, as part of the Maryland Campaign of the American Civil War. Three pitched battles were fought for possession of three South Mountain passes: Crampton's, Turner's, and Fox's Gaps. Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, commanding the Union Army of the Potomac, needed to pass through these gaps in his pursuit of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Despite being significantly outnumbered, Lee's army delayed McClellan's advance for a day before withdrawing. Continued

Photos: 1. Battle of Crampton's Gap by A. R. Waud. 2. The battle of South Mountain, MD. Sunday, Sept. 14, 1862 by Endicott & Co. (Library of Congress).

The Mystery of the Lost Cigars (And Special Orders No. 191)

(Kudzu Monthly) - General Robert E. Lee issued Special Order No. 191 on September 9th 1862, and it was was signed by Lee's chief administrative officer Colonel Robert Hall Chilton. Included among the recipients was Major-General D.H. Hill. When the Confederates moved on, the Yankee 27th Indiana Infantry camped on the very same field, and it was there that Lee's orders, wrapped around three cigars, were found. Recognizing what his men had brought him, General George B. McClellan jubilantly sent a telegram to President Lincoln stating, "I have all the plans of the rebels." But Lincoln and the others knew that these "lost orders" might have been carelessly dropped... or placed there deliberately for the Yankees to find... Continued

Photo: Label for McClellan Tobacco, which I'm sure burned extra slowly (Library of Congress).

What on earth is going on with the Sons of Confederate Veterans?

(The Daily Beast) - ... A once-proud organization of Confederate history buffs and Civil War re-enactors that traditionally spent its money to restore battlefields and Confederate cemeteries. By 2006, however, the SCV had been substantially taken over by an organized cadre of white supremacists (read here for more background) who sought to turn the nation’s oldest Southern historical society into what the veteran white supremacy activist Kirk Lyons called “a modern, 21st century Christian war machine capable of uniting the Confederate community and leading it to ultimate victory,” had seized much of the SCV’s leadership positions, the Southern Poverty Law Center released an extensive list of SCV officials who belonged to “hate groups.” Continued

Photo: Confederate grave marker, Harford County, Maryland

Battle of Brandywine

(Wikipedia) - The Battle of Brandywine, also known as the Battle of the Brandywine, was a battle of the Philadelphia campaign of the American Revolutionary War fought on September 11, 1777, in the area surrounding Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and the Brandywine River. The battle, which was a decisive victory for the British, left Philadelphia, the revolutionary capital, undefended. The British captured the city on September 26, beginning an occupation that would last until June, 1778. Continued

Painting "Nation Makers" by Howard Pyle now at Brandywine Museum in Chadds Ford PA. From their website http://www.brandywinemuseum.org/collect.html

NOAA Locates U.S. Navy Ship Sunk in World War II Battle

(NOAA) - A NOAA-led research mission has located and identified the final resting place of the YP-389, a U.S. Navy patrol boat sunk approximately 20 miles off the coast of Cape Hatteras, NC, by a German submarine during World War II.
Six sailors died in the attack on June 19, 1942. There were 18 survivors. The wreck is located in about 300 feet of water in a region off North Carolina known as the “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” home to U.S. and British naval vessels, merchant ships, and German U-boats sunk during the Battle of the Atlantic. Continued