Kindgren

Full Time Tech Sales, Part time Historian

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

General George Meade's horse Old Baldy lived one of the most absurd lives in military history, and the ending is somehow darker than Traveller's.

Baldy was a stocky light bay with a stark white face, which is where the name came from. He was already a combat veteran before Meade ever met him, having been wounded at First Bull Run in 1861 while carrying Union general David Hunter. Meade bought him from Hunter that September for $150 and made him his personal warhorse. He would ride this same animal through nearly every major battle of the Eastern Theater.

What happened to that horse over the next four years is almost cartoonish.

At Second Bull Run, Old Baldy was shot in the nose. At Antietam, he was shot through the neck, collapsed, and was left for dead on the field. He got up sometime in the night and walked back to Union lines by himself. At Fredericksburg, he was hit again. At Chancellorsville, hit again.

Then came Gettysburg. On the second day, while Meade was directing the defense of the Union line, a bullet tore into Baldy's right side, passed clean through his ribs, slipped between Meade's leg and the horse's body, and lodged near the spine. Meade dismounted, certain his horse was dying under him. Baldy stood back up, shook himself, and walked off the battlefield on his own legs.

He recovered. Meade rode him again the next year at the Weldon Railroad outside Petersburg, where Baldy took yet another bullet. After that one, Meade could not stand to risk him anymore and quietly retired him to a pasture, calling him the bravest animal he had ever known.

Old Baldy outlived his general. When Meade died in 1872, the old horse, by then gray around the muzzle and stiff in the joints, walked riderless behind the funeral hearse through the streets of Philadelphia, with Meade's boots reversed in his stirrups.

He lived another ten years in quiet retirement on a Pennsylvania farm and finally died in 1882, somewhere around thirty years old, of nothing more dramatic than old age.

Then two of Meade's old veterans showed up with shovels.

They exhumed Old Baldy, sawed off his head, had it professionally taxidermied, and mounted it on a wooden plaque as a relic of the Grand Army of the Republic. The head was put on public display in Philadelphia as a kind of patriotic shrine, and it has been moved between veterans' museums ever since.

It is still there. You can drive to the GAR Museum and Library in Philadelphia right now and stand face to face with the most shot-up horse of the Civil War, staring back at you out of two glass eyes, a hundred and forty years after he died.

[Cameron Priest @cameronpriest]

leadership

[Jake @iamjakestream]

@Computershare is the single worst company in the financial services world. I don't know why any startup would work with them, but it keeps happening.

If you are lucky enough to take a company public, you should do everything in your power to avoid them.

[Rob “Stats” Guerrera @StatsOnFire]

That’s nothing.

Try being a 41 year old Niner fan.

[𝙏𝙝𝙚𝙎𝙁𝙉𝙞𝙣𝙚𝙧𝙨 @TheSFNiners]

Iconic

[Kindgren @Kindgren]

@justindross @roelofbotha @rabois Playbook

[Stephen J. Nesbitt @stephenjnesbitt]

It was five years ago today that my little sister died, and five years ago next week that our son was born. Here's what I wrote shortly afterward, still stuck in that fog of grief and exhaustion, to try making sense of it all.

We miss you so much, Bethy.

[Kindgren @Kindgren]

@esaagar Probably should give credit to creator

[American Battlefield Trust @Battlefields]

Thanks to @cbssaturday for this solemn reminder that some gave all. #NeverForgotten

[Pete Damilatis @PeteDamilatis]

😍🤢

[Kindgren @Kindgren]

@ApeLocks @GamblyBot DraftKings

[Kindgren @Kindgren]

@wizardofsoho Not a dive bar

[Abby Olcese @abbyolcese]

I'm sitting next to a Lincoln impersonator at the airport bar. He's watching MSNBC reporting on yesterday's assassination attempt. This is easily the most surreal thing I've ever witnessed.

[Jake Eisenberg @JakeEisenberg_]

The Man in the Red Bandana.

The story of Welles Crowther’s actions on September 11th, 2001 is one of earnest courage, love, & sacrifice.

Never forget.

[Gregg Rosenthal @greggrosenthal]

We started the Around the NFL Podcast 11 years and over 1,600 episodes ago. We didn’t take a single break in all the years since, which is part of what made the last six weeks so heartbreaking. I never expected our last show on May 23 to be our *last show,* but here we are.

[Kindgren @Kindgren]

@Ihartitz Missing AJ Jenkins

[Kindgren @Kindgren]

@PeteDamilatis We had him graded as a first rounder so to get him in the fourth round was a real win

[Kindgren @Kindgren]

@PeteDamilatis Isn’t this what all GMs say after they make a trade ?

[Kindgren @Kindgren]

@ProFootballTalk @PeteDamilatis Cool cool cool cool