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P61 Black Widow

May 12, 2026 10:47 am

Wild West relics — including Butch Cassidy’s mugshot — to be auctioned

nypost.com

A fascinating Wild West auction features rare items from Sitting Bull, Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, and General Custer.

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March 9, 2026 12:34 pm

A Gamble in the Desert: The Army's Odd Experiment With Camels in 1855 The US Congress approved $30,000 to test camels for military use on March 3, 1855. One of the most unusual military experiments... View MoreA Gamble in the Desert: The Army's Odd Experiment With Camels in 1855 The US Congress approved $30,000 to test camels for military use on March 3, 1855. One of the most unusual military experiments in American history: the U.S. Army's attempt to use camels as pack animals in the deserts of the Southwest. The camels succeeded beyond expectation. So why didn't the Army rebuild itself around them? And what does a nineteenth-century military logistics experiment have to say about how we evaluate momentum, fruitfulness, and direction in our own lives? The soldiers at Indianola had no idea what to do with them. When the USS Supply anchored off the Texas coast in May 1856, and the crew began unloading its cargo, thirty-three camels stepped onto American soil for the first time, groaning and lurching and scattering every horse within a quarter mile. The United States Army had arrived at one of the stranger moments in its history, and it had Jefferson Davis to thank for it. Davis had not arrived at this idea casually. In March 1855, Congress approved an appropriation of $30,000 to test the use of camels for military purposes, after years of quiet debate among officers who had wrestled with a stubborn logistical problem. The territories acquired after the Mexican-American War stretched across vast reaches of arid terrain in Texas, New Mexico, and the newly organized Southwest. Horses and mules suffered badly in desert conditions. They consumed enormous quantities of water, wore down quickly on rocky ground, and required supply chains that strained the Army’s limited resources on the frontier. Several officers had floated the idea of using camels as pack animals as early as the 1830s and 1840s, and Davis, appointed Secretary of War in 1853, read those proposals carefully. He was a practical man with a West Point education and years of frontier military experience, and the logic struck him as sound. By the time he formally pressed the idea before Congress, Davis had been building his case for over a year. He argued that camels could carry heavier loads than mules, travel longer without water, and navigate rocky desert terrain with less injury to their feet. He pointed to their established use across North Africa and parts of the Ottoman Empire as evidence that the concept was proven, even if it was untested in an American context. Congress was skeptical, and some members found the proposal absurd, joking openly about the Army turning into a caravan. But Davis persisted, folding the request into a broader Army appropriation bill. The funding passed in March 1855, clearing the way for an experiment few believed would ever leave the dock. The man Davis turned to for execution was Major Henry C. Wayne, an Army officer with no prior experience with camels but considerable administrative discipline. Wayne was dispatched to the Mediterranean in 1855, accompanied by Lieutenant David Dixon Porter of the United States Navy. Together they traveled through Egypt, Smyrna, and other ports of the region, studying different breeds and negotiating purchases from local dealers. They also recruited several experienced camel drivers, including a man known as Hadji Ali, later nicknamed “Hi Jolly” by Americans who struggled with the pronunciation. Loading the animals onto a naval vessel proved to be a logistical puzzle in itself. The ship assigned to the mission, the USS Supply, a storeship (today we call the supply ships), was refitted with stalls, ventilation, and a specialized sling system designed to hoist camels safely from dock to deck. When the first shipment arrived at Indianola in May 1856, it delivered thirty-three camels to Texas soil. A second voyage later that year brought more, eventually raising the number to around seventy animals. The Army established its camel base at Camp Verde, northwest of San Antonio, where soldiers began the awkward work of learning how to manage creatures that did not respond to reins, whinnies, or the familiar language of the American stable. The most ambitious field test came in 1857 under Edward Fitzgerald Beale, a naval officer turned frontiersman appointed to survey a wagon road along the 35th parallel. Beale led a camel-assisted expedition from Fort Defiance in New Mexico Territory to the Colorado River, covering roughly 1,000 miles across punishing ground. His reports were strikingly positive. The camels carried loads of 600 pounds or more, navigated arid stretches with minimal water, and moved steadily over terrain that left mules exhausted and lame. They foraged on desert vegetation that horses refused to touch. In purely operational terms, the experiment worked. Yet success on paper did not translate into institutional change. Logistical and cultural headwinds worked against the project from the beginning. Experienced handlers were scarce, and language barriers complicated training. American soldiers and civilian teamsters were accustomed to horses and mules, and many disliked working alongside animals that hissed, groaned, and occasionally spat. Camels unsettled cavalry mounts, disrupted wagon trains, and required different saddles and equipment. The Army’s infrastructure, from feed contracts to transport methods, was already built around traditional livestock. Converting that system would have required time, money, and patience, commodities rarely abundant on the eve of a national crisis. That crisis arrived in 1861. The outbreak of the Civil War fractured the Army’s priorities and leadership. Jefferson Davis resigned as Secretary of War in 1857 and would soon become President of the Confederate States of America. Without his advocacy, the camel experiment lost its most powerful supporter. Federal forces abandoned Camp Verde as Texas seceded, and the animals were left in uncertain hands. Some were auctioned off to private owners. Others were used sporadically by Confederate forces in Texas. A few escaped or were released into the open country. For years afterward, scattered reports surfaced of lone camels wandering the deserts of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Travelers claimed to glimpse them at a distance, silhouettes against scrub and sand, reminders of a plan that had once seemed both practical and improbable. Whether every sighting was accurate is difficult to confirm, but contemporary accounts suggest that feral camels did roam parts of the Southwest into the late nineteenth century. The Camel Corps never became a permanent arm of the United States Army. It remains instead a peculiar chapter, born of genuine strategic need and pursued with surprising seriousness. It stands as a reminder that the Army once looked at the vast deserts of the American Southwest and imagined not cavalry columns, but caravans. In another set of circumstances, with more time and less political upheaval, the sight of camels on the frontier might have become ordinary rather than extraordinary. Possibly the last known image of a camel from the Camel Corps. This image was captioned: "A member of the legendary southwestern 'Camel Corps' stands at ease at the Drum Barracks military facility, near California’s San Pedro harbor." The mid-1850s were a period of aggressive American territorial consolidation and the logistical challenges that came with it. The Mexican-American War had ended in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, adding more than 500,000 square miles to the United States and pushing the Army’s operational frontier deep into arid, largely unmapped territory. At the same time, the California Gold Rush had produced a surge of westward migration that strained existing supply routes. The federal government was simultaneously funding surveys for transcontinental railroad routes, reflecting a broader national urgency to connect and govern a continent-sized republic. Britain and France were locked in the Crimean War from 1853 to 1856, and both nations were actively using camel transport in desert campaigns, providing documented precedent that American military planners could point to when arguing for the experiment. American confidence in scientific and technological problem-solving was running high in the 1850s. The decade saw the rapid expansion of the telegraph, the railroad, and industrial manufacturing, and there was a widespread belief that rational inquiry could resolve almost any practical obstacle. Military officers increasingly looked to other parts of the world for solutions that tradition had not yet supplied. Public attitudes toward the frontier blended romantic expansionism with genuine anxiety about how such a vast and inhospitable landscape could be administered and defended. The camel proposal fit squarely within this climate: it was unconventional, it drew on foreign expertise, and it treated an ancient animal as a modern engineering solution to a distinctly American problem.

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P61 Black Widow

Another interesting aspect of history. The was a B Western made about the csmel experiment.

1 March 9, 2026 Edited

oldmarinesgt5

P61 Black Widow‌ , You're right, there are many little-known stories in the Old West, some we may never know.

1 March 10, 2026

P61 Black Widow

The movie name is Southwest Passage, 1954, with John Ireland, Rod Cameron, and Joanne Dru.

March 18, 2026

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March 16, 2026 11:18 am

Fighting for Independence During a Smallpox Epidemic: Lake Champlain in 1776 Throughout the first six months of 1776, the soldiers of the American Northern Army in Canada fought against two deadly en... View MoreFighting for Independence During a Smallpox Epidemic: Lake Champlain in 1776 Throughout the first six months of 1776, the soldiers of the American Northern Army in Canada fought against two deadly enemies: smallpox and the British military. The British turned out to be the less lethal of the two. Development of a vaccine has now largely eradicated the highly contagious smallpox virus. But the disease could be so virulent it was known as the ‘speckled monster.’ Symptoms began with vomiting and high fever, followed a few days later by pustules in the mouth and on the tongue before spreading across the body. Recovery could take up to three weeks. Once infected, a person had about a one in three chance of dying. The American army did not beat those odds. The Invasion of Canada In September 1775, the Continental Congress sent two expeditions to invade Quebec. One initially consisted of 2,000 men commanded by Brig. Gen. Richard Montgomery. They sailed up Lake Champlain toward Montreal, where they captured Fort St. John. Then they marched to Quebec, where they joined the second expedition led by Col. Benedict Arnold. Arnold’s forces had dwindled to 600 men from the 1,100 that started out in Cambridge, Mass. It had taken months to reach Quebec through the Maine wilderness, and a third of Arnold’s men turned back during the grueling trek. Quebec Montgomery’s forces joined Arnold’s in Quebec in early December. They launched an attack on the British fort in a howling snowstorm on New Year’s Eve – a disastrous mistake. Montgomery died in the battle, as did 50 men. Another 34 were wounded and 431 captured. The British lost only five killed and 14 wounded. The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec, Dec. 31, 1775, by John Trumbull Smallpox had already begun to kill soldiers. The remaining forces under Arnold besieged the city for the next few months as the smallpox spread. When reinforcements bolstered the British in May, the Northern Army began a disordered retreat. The army moved west from Quebec City toward Fort Ticonderoga, hindered by a staggering number of soldiers debilitated by smallpox. Smallpox Misery Dr. Lewis Beebe of Sheffield, Mass., arrived in Quebec in May. He kept a journal about his time in the army. In his entries we can see firsthand the misery caused by the epidemic. From Chambly, outside of Montreal, he wrote on May 26, “If ever I had a compassionate feeling for my fellow creatures… I think it was this day, to see Large barns filled with men in the very heighth of the small pox and not the least thing, to make them comfortable…” On June 17, as the army moved south toward Lake Champlain, Beebe wrote from Isle aux Noix: Scarcely a tent upon this Isle but what contains one or more in distress and continually groaning, & calling for relief, but in vain! Requests of this Nature are as little regarded, as the singing of Crickets in a Summers evening. The most shocking of all Spectacles was to see a large barn Crowded full of men with this disorder… one nay two had large maggots, an inch long, Crawl out of their ears, were on almost every part of the body. No mortal will ever believe what these suffered unless they were eyewitnesses. Inoculation Smallpox had no cure. But those who survived an infection would be immune. This led to soldiers seeking inoculation — intentional infection through the blood. This involved making an incision in the skin and applying pox to the wound. Those who were inoculated usually came down with a milder — though still harrowing — case of the disease with a much lower mortality rate. When recovered, those soldiers would have an immunity to future infections. But inoculation violated regulations. Officers feared that inoculated soldiers would spread the disease to their comrades. If the soldiers all inoculated at one time, they would be too weak to defend against the enemy. Nevertheless soldiers were surreptitiously inoculated. In May of 1776, Josiah Sabin served with the Green Mountain Boys at Quebec. Later in life Sabin recalled inoculating himself with smallpox. Then he also inoculated some of his comrades, blindfolded so as not to know who administered the inoculation. Nevertheless, Sabin was found out and only saved from severe punishment by the intervention of his commanding officer, Seth Warner. Soldiering On Finally, Benedict Arnold, in temporary command, issued an order allowing for inoculation. That lasted one day. Then Gen. John Thomas arrived, sent by Congress to take command of the army in Canada. He threatened execution for anyone performing or receiving an inoculation. Thomas himself died of the disease in early June and the surreptitious inoculations went on. Benedict Arnold Later that summer, George Washington approved inoculation for the Continental Army. Colonel Jeduthan Baldwin, an army engineer from North Brookfield, Mass., took inoculation on May 17, 1776. He described the progress of the disease in his journal. In six days he began to suffer symptoms including headache and pox. Over the next three weeks he suffered more headaches, sore throat, chills and, of course, painful pustules on his skin. But Baldwin continued to do his job the best he could, helping the retreat. Crown Point The army moved south on Lake Champlain to Crown Point and the large, damaged fort built by the British following the French and Indian War. Beebe arrived on the 26th of June. “The Regiment is in a most deplorable Situation,” he recorded in his journal, “between 4 & 500 now in the height of the small pox. Death is now become a daily visitant to the Camps…” Crown Point today. Photo courtesy of the author. Three days after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, John Adams wrote a letter to Abigail in which he reported on affairs in the north. “Our Army at Crown Point is an Object of Wretchedness, enough to fill a humane Mind, with Horror,” he wrote. “Disgraced, defeated, discontented, dispirited, diseased, naked, undisciplined, eaten up with Vermin—no Cloaths, Beds, Blanketts, no Medicines, no Victuals, but Salt Pork and flour.” This army was charged with defending the newly minted United States of America from the 8,000 fresh British troops preparing to move south on Lake Champlain. The Americans had one advantage. The previous year, after capturing Fort Ticonderoga, they had also captured some gun boats. If the British tried to move south on the lake, the mini American navy could blow their troop ships to smithereens. Before the invasion could continue, the British needed to build their own war ships. This gave the Americans time to heal and prepare. Philip Schuyler From his headquarters in Albany, Maj. Gen. Philip Schuyler had command of the entire Northern Department, including this ravaged army. In early July he traveled to Crown Point to get a firsthand look at conditions there. With the consent of his general officers, Schuyler drew up a plan to handle the situation. Philip Schuyler First they needed to separate the fit soldiers from the ill; otherwise, reinforcements would refuse to mingle with the infected. The sick were transported to Fort George at the southern end of Lake George. Next Schuyler and his officers decided it would be a mistake to try to defend Crown Point. They did not have a large enough force to cover the long, narrow peninsula. It would be too easy for the British to sail cannon around the deep bay to the west and get the Americans in a crossfire. And it would be much more difficult to bring supplies and reinforcements. But where to make a stand? On July 12th, Schuyler answered that question in a letter to George Washington. “I am just returned from Crown Point,” he wrote, to which place I accompanied General Gates — On our Way to that place we stop’d at Tyconderoga and left Colonel Trumbull to take a View of the Grounds opposite to it and on the East Side of Lake Champlain… Trumbull returned with a favorable report, wrote Schuyler, and on July 9 he and his general officers checked out the ground. They found it, “so remarkably strong as to require little Labour to make it tenable against a vast Superiority of Force, and fully to answer the purpose of preventing the Enemy from penetrating into the Country to the South of it.” Mount Independence The strong ground Schuyler referred to would soon be named Mount Independence, a 300-plus acre peninsula projecting northward from the Vermont shore. As a keystone to the defenses that included Fort Ticonderoga, the Mount would in a few short weeks buzz with activity as the Americans prepared to meet the British head on. Meanwhile, the steps taken by Schuyler paid off. The smallpox epidemic waned. By the end of August, Gen. Horatio Gates — in command of the Lake Champlain forces — could report to George Washington that the smallpox “is now perfectly removed from the Army.” Dr. Beebe returned home at the end of July to recuperate from dysentery. He traveled north again at the end of August, intent on rejoining his regiment. he passed by Fort George, the smallpox hospital set up by Schuyler in early July. “Visited the hospital,” he recorded on the 28th. [He] “found the number of sick to be about 700, viewed the burying place counted upwards of 300 graves… the appearance of which was melancholy indeed, to see such desolation made in our army.” Bibliography Cubbison, D. R. (2010). The American Northern Theater Army in 1776. McFarland. Dann, J. C. (1999). The Revolution Remembered. University of Chicago Press. Fenn, E. A. (2002). Pox Americana. Macmillan. Frederic R. Kirkland, ed. “Journal of a Physician on the Expedition Against Canada.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. (Volume LIX, Number 4). October 1935. Wickman, Donald. (2017) Strong Ground: Mount Independence and the American Revolution, Mount Independence Coalition.

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March 13, 2026 11:46 am

Ben Franklin proposed something like daylight saving time as a joke.

March 13, 2026 Category: Education 60 views

In most U.S. states, the clocks get set forward an hour on the second Sunday in March, making Monday morning arrive just a little too soon. While daylight saving time can seem like a cruel joke to groggy night owls, the concept is logical enough that even Benjamin Franklin suggested, albeit humorously, maximizing daylight by getting up earlier. In 1784, when Franklin was living in Paris, he submitted a satirical letter to the Journal de Paris called “An Economical Project.” In it, he wrote that he was up late discussing ways to save money on lighting and went to bed around 3 a.m. or 4 a.m., before “[an] accidental sudden noise waked [sic] me about six in the morning, when I was surprised to find my room filled with light.” Franklin, who was the author of Poor Richard’s Almanack, noted that he consulted his almanac and was “astonished” to find that the sun “was to rise still earlier every day till towards the end of June.” In the letter, Franklin calculated that Parisian families could save millions of pounds by waking up with the sun and swapping candlelight for sunlight. He jokingly suggested levying a tax on closed shutters, setting limits on candle purchases, and ringing all church bells right as the sun rises — switching to cannons if the bells proved ineffective. Franklin did not, even as a joke, suggest changing the time, but his letter was still somewhat prophetic. Ultimately, when countries started implementing daylight saving time, the main argument for doing so was fuel savings. U.S. states that don’t observe daylight saving time 2 States that have passed legislation to make daylight saving time permanent (as of 2025) 19 Years Franklin lived in France 9 Sale price of a first printing of the Treaty of Paris, which Franklin helped negotiate $94,500 Ben Franklin added “self-evident” to the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, but Benjamin Franklin made critical edits to the document before it was presented to the Second Continental Congress for approval. In Jefferson’s first draft, he wrote, “We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal.” When he passed it along for edits, Franklin changed “sacred” to “self-evident” — changing a spiritual argument into a rational one. There is some evidence that Thomas Paine also helped with the DOI.

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March 13, 2026 11:40 am

Battle of Coleto and the Goliad Massacre, Texas, 190 years ago tomorrow The Battle of Coleto, also known as the Battle of Coleto Creek, the Battle of the Prairie, and the Batalla del Encinal del Perd... View MoreBattle of Coleto and the Goliad Massacre, Texas, 190 years ago tomorrow The Battle of Coleto, also known as the Battle of Coleto Creek, the Battle of the Prairie, and the Batalla del Encinal del Perdido, were fought on March 19-20,1836, during the Goliad Campaign of the Texas Revolution. In February, Mexican General Jose de Urrea led a branch of the Mexican army up the Gulf Coast of Mexican Texas toward Goliad, where a large contingent of soldiers from the Texian Army was garrisoned under Colonel James W. Fannin. Simultaneously, Mexican president Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna led a more significant force into the Texas interior, where on March 6, his troops won the Battle of the Alamo. After word spread that the Alamo had fallen, Texas Commander Samuel Houston, fearing another disaster could befall the Texian Army, ordered Colonel James Fannin to destroy Presidio La Bahia and retreat to Victoria, Texas, some 30 miles to the northeast. Fannin and his men had been fortifying the presidio, which Fannin called Fort Defiance, from possible Mexican attack. Fannin received the orders on March 14, 1836, which stated, “The immediate advance of the enemy may be confidently expected. Prompt movements are therefore highly important.” But, for whatever reasons, he failed to act immediately. Whether indecisive, stubborn, or loyal to the soldiers away on missions whom he did not want to abandon, Fannin remained in Goliad until the morning of March 19. Finally, Fannin led his 400 men away from Goliad, transporting nine cannons, more than 500 spare muskets, and loads of heavy supplies and baggage. But, it would be too late for him and his troops. Urrea’s advance riders had already spotted the Texan troops, and the main army was just about two hours behind. After the column had traveled about nine miles, Fannin ordered a halt to rest the animals. At about 3:00 p.m., the Mexican cavalry appeared, and the Texans strove to reach a grove of timber some 400 yards away. But, as the Mexican force grew closer, the withdrawing Texas contingent formed a defensive square with their wagons and placed cannons in each corner. General Urrea’s forces then attacked. Bitter fighting immediately ensued as Fannin’s volunteers hurled back the assaults of the Mexican force. Although Mexican troops launched three attacks against the square, they could not penetrate the Texian position. However, as night fell, Mexican sharpshooters were able to wound and kill many of the Texians, whose view of the Mexicans was impaired due to the high grass of the prairie. After a fierce battle, the Mexicans suffered about 100 to 200 killed and wounded, while the Texian losses were seven to nine killed and 60 wounded, one of whom was Colonel Fannin. On the following day, faced with several times their number, Fannin and his officers drafted terms of surrender, which included statements that the Texian wounded would be treated, that they would all gain the protection expected as prisoners of war, and that they would be paroled to the United States of America. However, Santa Anna had stated earlier that any Texians could only be allowed to surrender unconditionally, so Urrea could not guarantee that the terms would be followed by Santa Anna but stated that he would talk to Santa Anna on behalf of the terms of surrender presented by the Texians. As a result of the signing, the Battle of Coleto ended. After the surrender, those Texians that could walk were sent to Goliad under Mexican escort. Those that were wounded were transported. Fannin arrived in Goliad on March 22. In the meantime, General Urrea moved on to Victoria, where he wrote a letter to Santa Anna recommending that the Texian prisoners should be treated with clemency. However, Santa Anna disagreed, as he had received authorization from the Mexican Congress to treat all captured Texian troops as pirates rather than prisoners of war. Once the Texian troops arrived in Goliad, Santa Anna ordered the Mexican commander Jose Nicolas de la Portilla to execute the prisoners. The Mexicans spared 20 physicians, orderlies, and interpreters; another 28 prisoners escaped. Then, on Palm Sunday, March 27, 1836, Fannin and about 340 other Texian prisoners were divided into four groups. While the sick and wounded remained in the chapel, the other three groups were escorted on different roads out of town, and when each group was about a half-mile from the fort, the Mexican guards opened fire. Then the Mexicans executed the wounded who were held in the chapel. The last soldier to die was the injured Colonel James Fannin. His three dying wishes were to be shot in the chest, given a Christian burial, and send his watch to his family. Instead, the Mexican commanding officer shot Fannin in the face, burned his body with the others, and kept the timepiece as a war prize. Deemed a massacre, the execution of Fannin’s command served to inflame the Texas cause. When Texian forces attacked Santa Anna’s command on April 21, 1836, the battle cry rang out, “Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!” The war ended that April day when General Sam Houston defeated Santa Anna’s Mexican army at the Battle of San Jacinto. A few months after the Battle of San Jacinto, Republic of Texas Army General Thomas Rusk was escorting the remnants of the Mexican Army on their retreat back to Mexico. When he came through Goliad, Rusk discovered the remains of Fannin’s men in the trenches where they had been burned and on the ground where animals had scattered them. Rusk immediately ordered that the remains be collected and given a proper military funeral. Fannin and his men were buried with full honors in a mass grave on June 4, 1836. This mass grave of Texas heroes remained unmarked for decades and was almost lost to history. Over the years, charred bone fragments and other human remains would be unearthed near the site. In 1928, two acres where these remains were often found were purchased and given to the City of Goliad. A subsequent archaeological investigation confirmed that this was the site of the mass grave for Fannin’s army. In 1936, the state of Texas appropriated money for this grand monument, which was dedicated in 1938. Today, it is a popular pilgrimage site for everyone interested in the Republic of Texas and the Texas War of Independence.

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