Perry Cuskey

Shiloh Discussion Group administrator. NBA champion OKC Thunder fan. 🏆 Oklahoma Sooner fan. (Very) amateur photographer. American Civil War guy. 🇺🇸

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@chriz31_07 Thank you Chriz! He was kind enough to pose for a few pictures before resuming his foraging. 🙂

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@cowincrisis

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So here's what you might call an interesting creek name. It wanders around far northwest OKC. From what I gather, no one seems to know the exact name origin. I'm not sure we'd want to know!

Have you ever come across an eye-catching name that grabbed your attention?

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@openshutter21 He would be his own algorithm.

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@KnicksMuse

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@chriz31_07 A favorite place in Colorado.

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@twowayshai

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@kershaw_alex @WWIIMemorial The eyes.

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It tends to get overshadowed by D-Day, but it was a turning point moment in its own right.

[History Dame @history_dame]

On June 4–7, 1942, just six months after Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy delivered a decisive blow to the Imperial Japanese Navy in one of the most pivotal naval battles in history.

Outnumbered but armed with critical intelligence from codebreakers, American forces under Admiral Chester Nimitz ambushed the Japanese fleet near the remote Midway Atoll. In a stunning display of courage and strategy, U.S. dive bombers sank four Japanese aircraft carriers (Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū, and Hiryū) while losing just one of our own (USS Yorktown).

This victory halted Japanese expansion in the Pacific and marked the beginning of America’s long road to victory in the theater.

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Yo, San Antonio! Great game, huh?!

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@carlprothman Bingo! 😀

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@MandyLSimard I see them all the time. 😄

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You're very welcome, Carl. I would think living up in that area must be pretty great. You take some wonderful pictures.

Here's a painting that hangs in the Oklahoma state capital building, called The Last Farewell. It's based on a series of photos taken of the two men shortly before they took off from Lake Washington. I've always liked it.

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@MilHistNow What a wonderful experience to have. Visiting there is a goal of mine.

Red Buttons did such an incredible job in that scene, and never says a word. Most of his acting was with his eyes. It's one of my favorite scenes in the movie.

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@Kristin_Mae Goodness. Hold on a moment while I get my hiking shoes on...

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@jpentlandart Makes you want to just step into the picture and take a stroll.

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@DMiller52325459 Wow, I love the lighting on this. Wonderful shot.

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Today, June 3rd, is the anniversary of Grant's infamous failed assault at Cold Harbor in 1864.

There are several misunderstandings about Cold Harbor, none more famous than the often repeated claim that Grant lost 7,000 men in less than 30 minutes during this June 3rd attack. Or less than 10 minutes, according to some wide-eyed versions.

Historian Gordon Rhea, quite possibly the foremost authority on the Overland Campaign, has taken issue with this long-held belief.

Rhea estimates in his excellent book on Cold Harbor that the actual Union casualties figure for the morning assault was between 3,500 and 4,000 men, and about 6,000 for the day as a whole.

Those figures do not, despite what we often hear or what is often implied, represent the number of men killed.

They are the combined total of men listed as killed, wounded, captured or missing. The "total casualties."

With rare exceptions, casualty figures you see from Civil War battles refer to the total casualties like this, rather than the number of men killed alone. Terms like "lost 7,000 men" can therefore understandably be misleading.

Quick example: Gettysburg resulted in over 50,000 casualties between the two armies. Was that the number of men killed?

Thankfully no. It's the combined number who were killed, wounded, captured, or missing. The number of killed at Gettysburg was over 7,000 during the three day battle, with revised estimates nearing 10,000 when counting mortality wounded.

That's awful. Worse than any other battle of the war, in fact.

But, thank God, it's not 50,000.

So when you see someone state that Grant lost 7,000 men in 'x' minutes at Cold Harbor, it can certainly sound like that many men killed. And the writer/speaker might even mean it that way.

As we see however, that's not the case. Not even Gordon Rhea's revised figures refer to the number killed. They're his careful estimate of the total casualties. (To the best of my knowledge, the exact number of men killed in the morning attack is not known. Likely, however, it was at least several hundred if not more.)

My point isn't to downplay the failed attack. The point is to put that attack in the proper perspective, and correct a longstanding myth: that Grant lost 7,000 men killed in half an hour.

I'm not exactly the first person to try to do this. Probably not even among the first several thousand or more.

Myths die a long, slow, very stubborn death. This one isn't even on life support yet, despite being wrong for sixteen decades. It will probably still be hanging in there for several more to come.

And it will still be wrong.

Thank you for attending my Ted Talk Rant.