True, only in the sense that they were fighting for the freedom for white people to own black slaves.

Mexico, of which Texas was a part in 1836, abolished slavery in 1821. The Texans, or 'Texians', as they were known at the time, were primarily from the Southern US. They opposed Mexico's abolition of slavery, and squatted in Texas, proclaiming their intent to start an independent Republic in which slavery was lawful. The Alamo defenders all died, but their goal became reality with the founding of the Republic of Texas.

Texas, of course, later joined the US, and then, when the US moved toward abolition, seceded to the Confederacy with the rest of the dunces.

The Alamo defenders were not 'heroes'. They were bigoted, racist assholes.

Antonio de Padua María Severino López de Santa Anna y Pérez de Lebrón, AKA Santa Anna was a brutal, corrupt, dictator who badly mismanaged Mexico. All of the local, Anglo and Hispanic were in revolution against him. Many of the heros of the Alamo were Hispanics who were already there when the Anglos arrived.

I bet you though that the defenders of the Alamo were all white, didn't you? Some of them were Tejanos that were born in Texas.

Juan Seguin was a hero of the Texas Revolution who was also a local, born in Texas.

Three Tejanos were signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence.

You can read more about the Hispanic (Tejano) contribution to the Texas Revolution here:
http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/ccbn/dewitt/tejanopatriots.htm The page is titled: Hispanic Texian Patriots in the Struggle for Independence

From that site: As a proportion of the population, the active participation of Hispanic native and immigrant residents in the struggle for independence of Texas from Spain and Mexico was equal to or greater in specific battles than that of resident immigrants from the United States of the North--Don Guillermo

The idea that the revolution was purely so that (some) whites could own slaves is pure revisionist bullshit. Some may have had that intention, but for most it was to get rid of a corrupt dictator.

The more established Texians wanted to restore the constitution of Mexico, although by the time of the battle at the Alamo, there was a growing faction of secessionists. About 200 defenders of the Alamo actually left San Antonio earlier in 1835 to cross into Coahuila proper and fight with restorationist forces to depose Santa Anna. But if anything, that only increased the proportion of Anglo-Texians who wanted to join the US. Full independence was probably an unsustainable compromise.

There was a diverse mix of goals and agendas among those fighting on the Texian side. But those wanting to join Texas to the US were a substantive group that probably included Sam Houston. In older history books in Mexico they teach it was all a big plot by Tennessee Jacksonians to annex Texas (ignoring the fact that half the Tennesseeans were anti-Jackson Whigs).

Texas has a great history of outlandish plots--including one by New York abolitionists like Frederick Law Olmstead to flood the state with German immigrants in the 1850s to halt the westward expansion of slavery.

Some of those who died fighting, crockett comes to mind, were shot for treason.

http://thealamo.org/education/fun-facts.html

There wan't anybody after the battle that could definately ID Crockett and no pictures of him. That he was captured is based on rumor. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. In any case, he was there voluntarily, when he could have escaped previously.

There were a few who were captured and were executed the same day.

And foundational myths, all countries have them. This is one of them

The lateness of the story coming to light makes the story suspect. Yet we are faced with several facts. The Alamo defenders certainly had to know that to stay was death, yet they chose to stay. Escape was possible because a messenger left and returned.

Travis' letters (He actually wrote five, all of which got out through Mexican lines.), especially his Victory or Death letter, are highly dramatic. His answering Santa Anna with a cannon shot is masterfully dramatic. So we know that he loved the dramatic gesture.

Over the 13 days of the seige he would have been truthful with the men, especially as the truth was impossible to deny.

So the line in the sand is entirely in keeping with his character, even if he didn't actually do it.

(Juan Escutia) falling to his death to protect the flag from the Americans. Fun fact, he was given a full military honors funeral by the Americans. That was during the 1848 war.

Of that period those two are the most fascinating and counter points to each other.

Besides the addition of all that land.

It brought Robert E. Lee to prominence.

The stories of the Texas Ranger's use of the Walker Colt made owning a revolver popular with gun-owning Americans. Until then no one had paid much attention to Mr. Colt's invention. For those not familiar the big revolver was critical in the Ranger's racking up some lop-sided victories against much greater numbers of Mexican troops. Reporters covered it and suddenly Colt was swarmed with orders.

Some of the major officers who would later be Civil War generals got their first combat experience in that war. In a way, it was a school for our Civil War.

The conservatives and liberals. It was the seed for the French intervention staring in 1860, ending in '65. Some historians think they are related. But I have been able to find little on that theory. I heard first at 13. It makes sense that some relation should exist given the calendar years involved.

Crockett self identified before being executed and a sergeant in the Mexican army wrote his memoirs detailing the event. That's not "rumor" but historical evidence.

Was the sergeant correct? Historical accuracy usually requires confirmation.

It could have been someone claiming to be Crockett, hoping that his fame would get him a better deal. We don't know.

Even if he was really captured and executed, that still doesn't change the fact that he was there voluntarily.

Santa Anna, as an old man, introduced chewing gum to the United States. He did it via an arrangement with some American businessmen.

One of the most complex men in history. I wonder how much fun they would have had if they put him on the couch. He is also hated and liked all at the same time in Mexico. You know that though. Can you imagine Santa Anna on the couch?

The point being made was that keeping slavery was definitely one reason that White settlers were fighting for, not that Santa Anna was a saint.

He is claiming that all of the Alamo defenders were "racist, bigoted, assholes." and that the only reason for the revolt was to try to establish slavery.

There were more Mexicans in the revolt than there were Anglos.

I will admit that keeping slavery was one reason for some of the fighters, but not the only reason for all the fighters.

Not all of them were anything like saints.

Let Then Eat Cake.


She never said that. It was a nasty rumor while she was alive - along with her being a 'whore', a snob, vicious - all came from the 'Royals' themselves and handed down to the people to repeat.

Every time I read it at DU or hear it anywhere I want to crawl out of my skin. She was a smart ass who looked down on the stupidity and sillyness of the court and she was always a target because of it. . . Hence - why that, the necklace affair, the 'whoring around' rumors, etc. etc. were 'allowed' to multiply.

there were many exceptions but it was safer and easier to dis hate and gossip about the ladies than the King, for example. Courts were vicious. It's my understanding that MA (of whom I'm a huge fan - along with "Josephine" Buonapart and etc.) actually did ask, innocently "Have they no cake?" when told of rioting over mass bread shortages in Paris. She was a coddled, swaddled, protected princess-in-a-bubble of unimaginable opulence who simply had no idea. Sorta like our Congress today.

or possibly German.

It was just a regular colored ox.

The miracle of one day possibly being able to have my own blue ox was the only thing that made my life worth living.

*cries*

is that people pose for photographs with him while touching his enormous testicles.

I have proof!

The 'real' Babe wasn't blue.

Here is the statue I was referring to and it's not even in Minnesota.

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2040

Meany.

Every day, more of my illusions are being destroyed :sigh:

but I can't verify his Rio Grande story.

not only did Pecos Bill dig the Rio Grande, he also brought so much water from "Californy" that it formed the Gulf of Mexico, among other formidable feats

"Pecos Bill"

Pecos Bill was quite a cowboy down in Texas
He's the Western Superman to say the least
He was the roughest, toughest critter, never known to be a quitter
'Cause he never had no fear of man nor beast

So yippee-i-ay-i-ya, yippee-i-o
He's the toughest critter west of the Alamo

Once he roped a raging cyclone out of nowhere
Then he straddled it and settled down with ease
And while that cyclone bucked and flitted
Pecos rolled a smoke and lit it
And he tamed that ornery wind down to a breeze

So yippee-i-ay-i-ya, yippee-i-o
He's the toughest critter west of the Alamo

Now, there was a drought
That spread all over Texas
So to sunny Californy he did go
And though the gag is kind of corny
He brought rain from Californy
And that's the way we got the Gulf of Mexico

So yippee-i-ay-i-ya, yippee-i-o
He's the toughest critter west of the Alamo

Once a band of rustlers stole a herd of cattle
But they didn't know the herd they stole was Bill's
And when he caught them crooked villains
Pecos knocked out all their fillings
That's the reason why there's gold them thar hills

So yippee-i-ay-i-ya, yippee-i-o
He's the toughest critter west of the Alamo

Pecos lost his way while traveling on the desert
It was ninety miles across the burning sand
He knew he'd never reach the border
If he didn't get some water
So he got a stick and dug the Rio Grande

So yippee-i-ay-i-ya, yippee-i-o
He's the toughest critter west of the Alamo

The invented very little at all, and most of what they did invent didn't last long. They were the first to successfully fly under powered flight. They also were one of the early ones to understand that you need to be able to DEstablize an aircraft to control it. And they practically invented the wind tunnel. But most of the modern airplane bears little connection to what they built.

Whether it was Wilbur or Orville, I'm not sure, but their propellers were a dramatic improvement over existing technology and design. The fact that a modern propeller gets thicker and more angled close to its hub is a Wright innovation.

Again, from what I understand. It comes from speaking with a historian standing next to the replica that was built to fly on the anniversary of their first flight. I saw it at an open house event at Edwards AFB back in the early 2000's.

They also made a very light weight gas motor (well, their mechanic did).

In 2013 Jane's All The World's Aircraft recognized Gustave Whitehead as making the first manned, powered, controlled flight in its 100th anniversary edition. This reignited the debate over who flew first. On June 26, 2013 Connecticut Governor Dannel P. Malloy signed into law a measure which specifies that Powered Flight Day is in honor of the first powered flight by Gustave Whitehead, rather than the Wright Brothers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Whitehead

Sorry, but I don't buy it. Without authenticated, verifiable witness to the flight, it's pure conjecture if anyone beat the Wright brothers. I believe the Smithsonian has put a lot of effort into examining claims and found them baseless.

Whitehead might have done it or might not have but as in the case with discovering America or inventing the lightbulb, prior attempts, even if 'successful' did not have any historical effect. They are footnotes.
Whitehead's story is interesting and possibly true but it didn't change anything, which a proper invention should.
Even if we gave Whitehead credit for the first powered flight he did not invent a practical airplane.

... as a simple farmer defending his freedom.
Well, maybe so but within weeks of Bunker Hill the 'embattled farmers' were planning a two-pronged invasion of Canada and executed it that fall under Montgomery and Benedict Arnold in a campaign that is still studied by military historians.
They went for the whole enchilada immediately.

I think many still believe that...what he invented was a cheap way to manufacture them...

The idea that the Spanish came to the Americas for riches and the English for colonization.

This is a good start:

http://sundown.afro.illinois.edu/liesmyteachertoldme.php

I love James Loewen

Columbus didn't discover America, he led the invasion.

No he didn't. Most educated people of his time not only knew the world was spherical, they also had a pretty good idea of how big it was. In fact, in the third century BCE, Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth to a surprising degree of accuracy.

The reason Columbus had trouble finding someone to fund his little adventure was that he believed the Earth to be much, much smaller than people knew it to be. About half its actual size. It's the only way his "shortcut" to the Indies would have worked. If the Americas weren't in his way, he and his crew would have never made it as they didn't have supplies for such a voyage.

created the Earth in seven days and then told his new people to not be curious about it or he'd kill em'.

I take a backseat to no one in admiring George Washington's political skills and moral integrity, but the fact is that he told a couple of whoppers in trying to get some land deals pushed through to establish the District of Columbia as a new city for the country to build it's capital in.

He's easily the least dishonest of American presidents, but I don't think it's possible to be leader of a whole nation and never prevaricate.

There were some pretty angry editorials in the newspapers of the day

Gunfights were rampant in the Wild West.

Einstein flunked math.

Pretty much everything about Columbus.

Germans actually thought JFK was talking about a jelly doughnut.

Pretty much everything about BCE Israel.

The WWII one I mean.

That, and how Hiroshima was not a war crime.

Big myths.

Khrushchev stating that "we will bury you", when a more valid translation of his statement would be "we will be around long after you are dead and buried..."



Inaccurate transliteration is a popular way to study history as it didn't happen.

n/t

the kids knew best.

oops

And I can jump.

They didn't, they just also knew perfectly well how big it is and had no idea if there was a continent between Spain and China, and didn't want to pay for ships that would starve to death if there wasn't.

The Pilgrims were shooting off their guns (typical) and the First Americans came to see what the hell all the noise was about.
The popular myth makes it sound like Massasoit received an engraved invitation or something.

http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/stories/history/first-thanksgiving/

The Pilgrims and one local tribe got along so well, because the Pilgrims used their guns to eliminate a competing tribe. That lead to the positive interactions in the article.

That was just self-serving PR from the WH Communications Office.

She died from infirmities brought on by old age.

and 80% out and out thuggery.

Edison is at least partially responsible for the film industry being in Southern California, because his thugs and goons drove all the independent filmmakers out there.

Neither did the Barons. It was not signed at all; it was sealed.

John was a king in a rough time, and got his hands dirty, but wasn't particularly worse than any of the other Plantagenets. Nor was he an idiot; he read Latin, French, and English (his brother Richard the Lionhearted could never be bothered to learn English).

Also, what the barons were reacting to was John's claim that he could step in and keep them from oppressing "their" peasants if they wanted to.

John was probably no more evil than the other mediaeval kings, but that is not much of a recommendation.

Certainly, the Magna Carta, though it set some important precedents with regard to civil liberties, was decidedly limited in its scope. '1066 and All That' was pretty accurate in its satirical version of the document, listing its provisions as mostly ending in 'except the Common People'; and including 'No baron was to be tried except by a special jury of other barons who would understand'.

Shakespeare's play have a lot to do with it.

His brother Richard also spent most of his time waging war, and taxed the heck out of people to finance his foreign adventures.

Yet Richard is remembered as a hero and John as a villain....it's all in the PR.

Reagan spent the least out of any president in history, George Washington had wooden teeth and chopped down a cherry tree, Abe Lincoln got his nickname "Honest Abe" because he never told a lie, the Americas were unoccupied prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus, there was no Holocaust, the moon landing was faked, Lincoln made slavery illegal because he loved Black people, and people drove wood cars in the early-to-mid 20th century.

well. Turns out there was no real resistance until non-jews started to be conscripted. Then the population said Ney.

this show is FULL of these.

The America the Teahadis pine for never existed. They're fucking delusional.

This is more a half-truth than a total myth. The Russian pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky described the concept of liquid propellant rockets near the end of the 19th Century. Tsiolkovsky's book: The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Devices was first published in 1903; but attracted little attention.

The first confirmed flight of a liquid-fuel rocket is credited to Dr. Robert Goddard on March 16, 1926. A Peruvian engineer, Pedro Paulet, claimed to have experimented with liquid fuel rocket engines before 1900; but, since he didn't publish anything until three decades later, that can't be confirmed.

Wenher von Braun's amateur rocket group, the VfR, began experimenting with liquid fuel rockets in 1930. von Braun's group formed the core of the Peenemunde team that built the A4 (better known as the V-2). Dr. von Braun and most of the Peenemunde team surrendered to the US Army 44th Infantry in May, 1945, giving the US most of the German rocket program's engineers and papers.

The Russians did get some papers on V2 production and a few rocket engineers; but, they already had an active rocket program under Sergei Korolev. There were also liquid fuel rockets produced in the US; the XLR-11 rocket engine used in the X-1 rocket plane was designed in 1943.

I never thought that story had much bounce anyway...

Sure they escalated it, and officially it started in 1965, but they were not the first ones to have our military involved, it was DD Eisenhower. Hard myth to debunk, but the truth is elusive for Republicans Chickenhawks. Oh and another dealing with Nam is that Republicans actually joined in droves and served in that war. The only ones I can recall were the "lifers" or REMF's safe in the rear with the gear. They were the ones stealing our supplies and selling them to the enemy. Perhaps that is what passes as capitalism in Republican circles.

Question: Did George Washington chop down a cherry tree and tell his father the truth?

Answer: As far as we know, no. In fact, Washington's biographer, Mason Weems, wrote a book called "The Life of Washington" shortly after his death where he created this myth as a way to show Washington's honesty.

http://americanhistory.about.com/cs/georgewashington/f/washcherrytree.htm

The earliest people in the Americas were people of the Negritic African race, who entered the Americas perhaps as early as 100,000 years ago, by way of the bering straight and about thirty thousand years ago in a worldwide maritime undertaking that included journeys from the then wet and lake filled Sahara towards the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, and from West Africa across the Atlantic Ocean towards the Americas.

http://www.raceandhistory.com/historicalviews/ancientamerica.htm

Actually, they wanted to replace the king and Parliament as the rulers of America.

The Middle Ages were a time of stagnation, oppression, and misogyny.
No they weren't. In fact women in particular had more personal freedom than they did either under the Roman slave state or early modernity.

Slavery and the native genocide were incidental to American success.
No, this country was truly founded on both practices. In fact slavery drove both the Indian genocide and its own expansion in the West.

Rome fell.
In the West, Roman leadership dissolved, but was replaced by new Germanic leader. People generally did not notice that much had changed. In the East, Roman leadership continued into the 14th century.

Despite claims in the media, there was/is no actual evidence that this ever happened.

Nom nom nom

nt.

when Jesus was a Jew? His response? "Jesus was a Christian dumbass!"

And when I remind them that he was a Jew (because half of them believe in the One World Govt garbage), they get all mad...it would be funny if it wasn't so sad.