Battlefield Quotes
The Congress did not believe that there would be war. Six weeks later Germany invaded Poland.
Bryan participated as a prosecutor in the infamous Scopes Trial in Tennessee where a school teacher was convicted of a crime for discussing the idea of evolution in a high school classroom. He had written this for his summary to the jury, but the summaries were dispensed with when it was obvious that Scopes would be convicted. He had admitted to breaking the law, but the law itself was on trial.
Washington and Green won very few battles as the strategy was, like many revolutionary movements, simply to avoid losing and being wiped out—the strategy that finally won the war.
The Professor just connected a telegraph wire to the balloon tether rope and the observer/telegraph operator in the balloon could describe in real time the position, deployment, weapons and strength of the Confederates. The information was picked up by the Union officers on the ground and a few seconds later by Washington where Abraham Lincoln, a brilliant innovator in the use of telegraph technology, had a telegraph office right next to the White House. Observational intelligence was in real time reaching the Commander in Chief and the war planners not unlike the functionality of a modern observational drone. The graphic is a photo of that balloon preparing for launch.
Of the 10, 596 Italian troops, 4,133 were killed or missing and 2,000 were captured. Baratieri was court-marshaled but acquitted. Italy’s imperial African plans were dashed. This defeat did much to create and sustain the poor world military reputation of the Italians extending to this day.
