Quote:On this day in history, September 1, 1777, McCulloch's Leap goes down as one of the greatest escapes of the American Revolution, when Major Samuel McCulloch jumps over a 300 foot cliff from attacking Indians to safety.
Fort Henry had guarded the small village of Wheeling from Indian attack, in what was then part of Virginia, since 1774. The Ohio Valley tribes, aligned with the British, began a new campaign against the frontier settlements in the summer of 1777. Fort Henry was fortified and prepared, having received intelligence that it would be a target. On August 31, a party of 200 Mingo, Wyandot and Shawnee attacked the village and the fort. Most of the 25 or so families from Wheeling got to the fort safely.
Several messengers were able to get away and inform other nearby forts that Fort Henry was under attack. Captain Van Swearingen soon arrived from nearby Cross Creek with forty men on horses. They successfully fought their way to the fort, swelling its number of defenders. Other reinforcements arrived from Fort Shepherd and Fort Holliday.
On September 1, Major Samuel McCulloch arrived from Fort Van Metre with another 40 men. As they raced to the gate of the fort, the Indians attacked in full force. As some of the men were forced into hand-to-hand combat, McCulloch waited till the last to make sure they were all inside the fort. With the Indians getting very near the open doors, the settlers inside were finally forced to close the gates, leaving McCulloch alone on the outside.
McCulloch took off in the direction of nearby Wheeling Hill being pursued by the Indians. He was not fired upon because the Indians wanted to take him alive. Every Indian knew McCulloch, who was a notorious and feared Indian fighter on the frontier.
As McCulloch galloped along the crest of the hill, a 300 foot precipice on one side and a band of Indians chasing him from behind, he was confronted with another group of Indians to his front, who were just arriving to help with the siege of the fort. Now surrounded and with no way of escape, McCulloch knew his capture would mean the most excruciating torture. He made an instant decision to go over the edge of the precipice. Dying on the way down would be easier than being tortured at the hands of the Indians.
McCulloch held the reigns with his left hand and his gun in his right hand and spurred his horse over the edge. It is said that they did not hit ground until half way down the hill, which is nearly vertical. The rest of the way, they slid down the almost 90 degree hill, being pummeled with branches and stones until they hit bottom, but McCulloch's horse never lost his footing.
At the bottom of the hill lie Wheeling Creek. The stunned Indians watched McCulloch cross the creek and ride away in amazement. The Indians continued the siege of Fort Henry only for another day or so. With the reinforcements that had already arrived and those that McCulloch would likely bring back with him, continuing was futile and they gave up the mission. McCulloch's Leap has gone down as one of the bravest escapes of the American Revolution and, indeed, in all of the history of warfare.
https://www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond...ml#gallery[pageGallery]/0/
Looks Kubrickian...
USSR economic development map in the Central Pavilion of VDNKh national exhibition. Photo by Vitaly Sozinov, Moscow, 1970.
As above, so below. Full spectrum dominance.
I bet none of you thought this was ending with Carthage in space.
Consider how the Bithynian snake bomb technique might be replicated using modern technology in both the physical realm (i.e. micro drones with x y z) and the realm of consciousness, i.e., a tweet as a sort of digital serpent that gets into your head through your eyeballs. Starlink!
Quote:This technicality appears not to have crossed the mind of Cornelius Nepos (110 BCE – circa 25 BCE), the Roman biographer who many years after the battle penned De Viris Illustribus, a compendium recording the lives of “illustrious men” and an important source of information on this ancient maritime punch-up (see https://bit.ly/3kekoMx). In his chapter on Hannibal, Nepos informs that a few days before the battle, the now-Bithynian general, knowing his forces inferior, ordered his men to collect as many poisonous serpents as possible to be put into a large number of clay pots, enough to easily defend themselves against the enemy fleet (425 vessels strong!).
Having located Eumenes’ ship, Hannibal’s flotilla attacked, and with the aid of their vast number of serpents, pulled off the impossible. Eumenes fled, and when [the Pergamenians] saw their ships [i]filled with serpents, and, startled at the strangeness of the occurrence, knew not what to avoid first, they put about their ships, and retreated to their camp upon the coast[/i].
But is there really any way Hannibal could have collected a “vast number” of poisonous snakes? Certainly, it would have been easier if ancient western Turkey was crawling with them, like on the Ilha da Queimada Grande, a 0.43-km2 island 34 km off the coast of Itanhaém, Brazil, where some 2000–4000 venomous golden lanceheads (Bothrops insularis), mostly squashed into a 0.25-km2 patch of forest, make a living preying on visiting migratory birds. And certainly, where there are a lot of venomous snakes, a lot of dedicated people – given adequate time – might catch a bundle: every year thousands of rattlesnakes are captured across the southern US to eventually feature in ecologically destructive “rattlesnake round-up” fairs. But there are no rattlesnakes or golden lanceheads in Turkey, and according to Nepos, Hannibal’s men had little time to get their ophidian stash together.
“It would have been impossible to collect that many poisonous snakes”, says Emin Bozkurt, a herpetologist at Çankiri Karatekin University (Çankiri, Turkey). “I did once see six Ottoman vipers (Montivipera xanthina) together, but that hardly allows for collecting ‘vast numbers’.”
But what if they collected any old snake? After all, Hannibal’s warriors were probably not herpetologists. And rag-tag snake bombs could likely have been just as disconcerting as true viper ordnance to the sailors on the receiving end, who were probably not herpetologists either. And what if these creatures got together in large conglomerations?
In Canada and the northern US, for example, thousands of nonvenomous red-sided garter snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis parietalis) famously huddle in dens throughout the winter months, providing an early spring mass-mating spectacle when they wake up from hibernation. Unfortunately, there are no red-sided garter snakes in Turkey – but there are dice snakes (Natrix tessellata; Figure 1), which locally can reach very high densities. “This harmless snake could have been collected in the hundreds and perhaps the thousands if it was spring”, says Konrad Mebert (Global Biology; Birr, Switzerland).
“I once collected up to 140 of these in 4 hours with 20 inexperienced pupils at a lake in Switzerland. Similarly high densities exist in fish-rich lakes [across to] Central Asia. In Bithynia, high densities were likely around the [Sea of Marmara] and its adjacent wetlands. So if Hannibal had 30–50 men on the job in a habitat where this species was particularly dense, he could have got a lot of dice snakes together in a week.”
Bithynian snake bombs
Sept 1, 2000: Nokia 3310 was released. The 3310 was produced at factories in Finland and Hungary. Has a reputation of great durability, and many Internet memes have been made calling the phone "indestructible" or "the Nokia Brick" and praising its durability compared to modern smartphones. In November 2015, the Nokia 3310 was chosen as one of the first three "National Emojis" for Finland. The emoji is referred to as "The Unbreakable"!
1. What goes up, must come down. I'd make sure I have some overhead cover.
2. If you don't see how this will come home to the USA sooner more than later, you're not paying attention.
https://x.com/NatalkaKyiv/status/1830259124690714957
The Starliner astronauts aren’t just stuck in space until 2025... now they’re hearing... strange noises.
"Give me a ping, Vasily. One ping only."
https://x.com/SpaceBasedFox/status/1830180273130242223
“World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.” — Marshall McLuhan, from Culture Is Our Business, 1970