Actually quoting Shirer again, in The Collapse of the Third Republic, The french wanted to extend the Maginot Line to the sea. The Belgians were not willing to fortify their border with Germany, though, and the French were unwilling to militarize their border with Belgium.
It was for some specific groups of European settlers. One of the major problems at Jamestown was that the initial settlers were sent by the London Virginia Company to find precious metals. They sent jewelers and goldsmiths, but no farmers to found the colony.
There are other examples of poor choices of people to found a European colony- the convicts who were sent to Australia on the First Fleet didn’t include many people with experience in farming or trade.
The Pilgrims’ problems with crops, on the other hand, had more to do with landing in Massachusetts in November, which is not the best time to be planting crops.
This article on lend-lease suggests that the American contribution to the Russian war effort was a lot greater than some posters are suggesting.
For example, while Russia had a great rail system it would have been utterly ineffective but for the nearly 2,000 locomotives they received from the US.
Additionally. the US, along with the UK, effectively fought the Japanese by themselves. Left alone, it is not inconceivable that the Japanese could have invaded or at least bombed Russia.
The Australians and New Zealanders were also in the Pacific, you know… New Guinea was almost totally an Australian affair.
On every December 7 or August 6, radio hosts ask listeners to comment on dropping the atomic bomb(s) on Japan to save American lives in an invasion.
One fact is always ommitted. Japan, through other countries, offered three times to surrender. The only stipulation on the surrender was that the Emperor remain. This condition was allowed in the signed surrender.
Nor is mentioned minutes of White House meetings where it is revealed Truman wanted the bomb dropped because of Stalin, not Japan.
(P.S. NRP had a program about Pearl Harbor and a myth of the news reports. Seems that the story started about a dance program that was interrupted with a report of the attack. To were everyone (alive then) remembers the interruption when in fact it never occured. I just don’t remember the details. I’ve 'net searched but can’t find anything. Anyone? Anyone?)
Come listen my children and you shall hear, of the historical myth involving the ride of Paul Revere. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem was published in 1861wrote the poem to rally northerners during the Civil War.
*Revere the guy who organized the 60ish riders who spread the word that night - but it was a 60ish man job, not one guy on a horse.
He (almost certainly) never yelled “The British are coming!”? the colonists still thought of themselves as British at this point. When they referred to British soldiers, they called them “the regulars”. The real story is that there was a guard in the Lexington militia who was not familiar with Paul Revere.
Revere didn’t finish his ride. He was captured by the British fairly early on.*
He **was ** a Patriot and made a bigger contribution than most – but that contribution wasn’t knocking on the door alone of every Middlesex village and farm.
I think lochdale meant British and Commonwealth forces. But we may as well add Malaysia, Borneo and the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa. Australia lost a greater percentage of their population than the US did.
Still, over one third of the casualties were Russian. Over one sixth were Chinese.
Although the identity of the first person to circumnavigate the globe is a matter of much dispute, there is at last a rational basis for claiming it was Magellan.
His circumnavigation expedition of 1519-1522 produced three possible claims to the title of “First Around the World”:
[ul]
[li]Ferdinand Magellan himself, since it is claimed that he had been on a previous (1506) round-trip from Europe via the Indian Ocean to the Spice Islands. Thus, by the time of his death in the Philippines (further west than the Spice Islands) he had crossed all 360[sup]o[/sup] of the planet’s meridians, albeit in different voyages and not ending up at a place he’d visited previously.[/li][li]Enrique of Malacca, Magellan’s slave and interpreter, whose place of birth is not verified, and from whom nothing is definitely known after Magellan’s death at Cebu. If he was born in Cebu, as claimed by some, his was the first “Point A to Point A” circumnavigation. If he was stayed with the fleet after Magellan’s death and made it to Malacca, then he counts for that feat, since that’s where Magellan had purchased him years previously.[/li][li]Juan Sebastián Elcano, the Basque who sailed with Magellan from Sanlúcar de Barrameda – downriver from Seville – in 1519, took command after Magellan’s death, and sailed the Victoria back to Sanlúcar in 1522. There were 17 others in the expedition who made it all the way around, but he’s the one who got the glory and the coat of arms including a globe with the motto Primus circumdedisti me (“You went around me first”). These 18 men were the first verified “Point A to Point A” circumnavigators. Elcano is a hero to the Basques, up there with the nameless fishermen who knew about the American landmass years before 1492, and the Basque pilots and navigators who accompanied Columbus.[/ul][/li][I apologize that my links above are only to Wikipedia articles, especially given the controversies over the facts, but I don’t have time at the moment to hunt down better on-line cites. As of the time of this post, the above-linked articles match closely with what I’ve read previously.]
This is not so much myth as contested history. We have had numerous (feisty) threads on the topic. Among the points that you do not mention are that by going through the various mediators that the Japanese chose, none of their proposals were delivered directly in English, with at least two going through two separate translations and it is not at all clear that the U.S. and Japan even fully understood what terms were being discussed.
A separate point regarding the peace or truce offers is that Japan was being governed by a fairly schizophrenic system involving a joint civilian/military government. The peace proposals all originated among the civilians who did not clearly have the authority to extend such offers without the permission of the military–which they did not have.
This is not to claim that the U.S. might not have worked harder to discover the quality of the peace proposals, but that is a topic for its own debate in a separate thread.
(And while the general American public may not be aware of either the peace proposals or the Truman/Stalin connection, I can assure you that they have been well attested and argued over on this board.)
Serious scientific opinion was never in any doubt that the world was round. Aristotle had said that it was round, so round it must be.
In Spain we usually refer to the whole rouexpedition as a combination Magellan/Elcano; Elcano is considered the first but the trip is known as “la expedición de Magallanes” - Magellan’s trip. Without Magellan, the trip wouldn’t have been started; without Elcano, it wouldn’t have been finished.
And in spirit, the whole crew is credited with the cojones to do it, just not all had the health/luck.
I thought it was Yuri Gagarin? 
I would quibble with this assertion. Washington’s defeat at Fort Necessity the year before opened with him arraying his troops in ranks before the fort in the Great Meadows in the mistaken belief that the French and their allies would do the same. In a broader sense the common European strategy of covering a slow advance with fortified supply bases adopted by General Forbes campaign of 1758 was unprecedented in North American history. His opponents responded with the traditional raids, the attack at Loyalhanna being the most spectacular engagement.
Braddock’s Defeat seems especially fertile ground for mythmaking. Washington did earn praise for his role in preventing an out and out rout but never took command as is often stated. He wasn’t eligible as he never held a commission in the regular British Army. He was along strictly as a volunteer. Braddock actually did have scouts and flanking parties out despite persistant stories to the contrary and was not ambushed. It was an encounter battle where the armies stumbled upon each other in an unexpected place and set to.
Nor can the battle be properly described as disasterous as the was the engagement not decisive. Had Colonel Dunbar not panicked and retreated all the way back to Philadelphia abandoning all the equipment that had so laboriously been brought across the mountains he would have found himself in a favorable situation. The Indians allied with the French had evaporated as usual after their victory and the British outnumbered the French and still had most of their main seige guns. If they had marched forward to occupy the highground now known as Mount Washington the French at Fort Duquense below them would have been in an untenable position.
Just my 2sense
There’s the various myths about who was the first person to reach the North Pole; Cook, Peary, Byrd, or Amundsen.
There’s the myth that Billy Mitchell was a military genius who was ignored by the Generals and Admirals when he tried to tell them the truth.
There’s the myth that the Southern states seceding for reasons that had very little to do with slavery.
There’s the myth that Erich von Manstein was a military genius.
There’s the myth that the Americans could have and should have captured Berlin before the Soviets.
Cite? Indeed, as tomndebb has said- there *were * unofficial "peace feelers’ extended by various members of the Government. Which is entirely different than an actual offer to surrender. No such offer was made.
Well, here’s a pretty good article about certain myths of World War II.
The posts above about Native Americans dying of plagues reminds me of indigeneous Australians doing the same thing, often so quickly that by the time Europeans reached areas, there was no one left. This created the impression the survivors were sparse tribes of hunter-gatherers. Recent archeology in eastern Australia has discovered an extremely large and sophisticated eel farm, complete with smoking facilities (albeit in trees) which suggests the eels were trandported significant distances possibly for trade. Not quite the stone age foragers we were taught about at school.
Here is a question: were the Crusades an effort to release the Holy Land from Muslim reign, as popularly imagined, or actually an exercise in piracy (evidenced by the sack of the holy Christian city of Constantinople) and colonisation (the establishment of Outremer)?
Snopes’ site - www.snopes.com - has a forum dedicated to historical myths. Some of them are fascinating.
Re: gen. Mitchell. it is true that Billy Mitchell was court-matialed and drummed out of the Army. but it was mostly becuase mitchell had taken to public criticism of superior officers (a no-no if you are a career officer). His sinking of the german battleships was impressive, but his antics made him extremely unpopular. it is too bad, because mitchell was a very sgarpo guy, and would have made a fine commander.
Myths are supposed to be statements of fact that aren’t true. Most of the above are just opinions
The only one that really fits is the myth that the Southern states didn’t secede over slavery, they seceded over states rights or tarrifs or some other such. Yeah, they seceded over states rights…the right to slavery.
The civil war was all slavery, all the time. Other issues like tarrifs were only part of it because of the slave plantation system. No slavery controversy, no civil war. They were standing up for the right to own slaves, and they were proud of it.