October 25 anniversary of 3 major battles: Agincourt, charge of the Light Brigade and Leyte Gulf

VA Viper ^ | 10/25/2015 | HarpyGoddess

[harpygoddess]

Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt (wiki) in 1415, when the English under King Henry V defeated the French on St. Crispin's Day (25 October) of that year. Henry (1387-1422) followed his father King Henry IV to the throne in 1413 and two years later announced his claim to the French throne and rekindled the Hundred Years War by invading Normandy.

This is also the anniversary of the "the charge of the Light Brigade" (wiki) at the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854. Although of relatively little importance in the larger context of the Crimean War, Balaclava has emerged as its most famous encounter because of Tennyson's poem, which immortalizes the brave, but foolhardy, British light cavalry assault on massed Russian guns and infantry at the end of a shallow valley near Sevastapol. Of the 673 men who started out, 118 were killed outright, and only 195 remained on horseback at the end of the encounter.

And finally, today is the anniversary of the largest naval encounter of World War II in the Pacific, the Battle of Leyte Gulf (wiki) (which actually lasted from 23 to 26 October 1944), in which the U.S. Third and Seventh Fleets decisively defeated the Japanese Combined Fleet after the latter sortied in an attempt to destroy the forces supporting the ongoing Allied invasion of the Philippine Islands. The U.S. victory at Leyte Gulf essentially destroyed the Japanese Navy as a fighting force, and its remnants posed little threat for the remaining months of the war.

[dsc]

“All men make errors, wise men and great leaders overcome them. Churchill did just that.”

Yes, he did, and yet the lie lives on.

As Twain said, “The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, but that they know so many things that ain’t so.”

[SunkenCiv]