Photographs of American Revolution veterans, and 3D images from World War I

Old historical photos hold a special fascination for me.  So I find this next couple of items positively amazing...

Peter Mackintosh
Photo Credit: Joseph Bauman

On the right is a picture of Peter Mackintosh, taken sometime after the early 1840s.  Mackintosh was 16 years old and an apprentice blacksmith in Boston when he watched as a gang of young men barged into his shop, smeared ashes from the hearth all over their faces, and then just as quickly stormed out of the place.  Mackintosh later discovered that they were part of a mob on their way to Griffin's Wharf to throw boxes and barrels of British-taxed tea into Boston Harbor.

That was on December 16th, 1773.  And the teenaged Peter Mackintosh had witnessed the first moments of the Boston Tea Party.

Later on Mackintosh served in the Continental Army, shoeing horses and repairing cannons.

Mackintosh lived long enough for his photograph to be taken at the dawn of the art.  And his is but one of a collection of photos of Revolutionary War heroes who survived long after America's war for independence.   Some of these men served personally under George Washington.  A few witnessed Cornwallis' surrender after the Battle of Yorktown.

Think about that: we are looking into the eyes of men, whose own eyes looked into those of Washington, Hamilton, Greene, and perhaps Cornwallis himself.  These aren't painted depictions, but captured moments of these people in the twilight of their lives.

1776 wasn't all that long ago, when you consider it.

Much closer to our own epoch, a World War I-era stereoscopic camera discovered two years ago has yielded some incredible 3D photographs of the Great War.  It will be a hundred years next August that World War I broke out in Europe but if you don't mind the absence of color, images such as this one are practically as fresh as those taken in any modern conflict...

Two French soldiers help another who has been shot,
as another lies dead in the background.

io9.com has several more photos of World War I in 3D at the link above.

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ASSASSINS CREED III cover art would make James Fenimore Cooper proud

I've never played an Assassins Creed game. I have no idea what this series is about. But daaaaang if this cover for Assassins Creed III isn't hella awesome...

Playing as a Native American with a tomahawk, scalping British soldiers during (presumably) the American Revolutionary War. Now there's a direction that I can't remember video games ever taking.

Kinda makes you wonder what a Nintendo adaptation of The Last of the Mohicans would have been like, huh?

Thanks to good friend Drew McOmber for spotting this!

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George Washington slept here (really, maybe)

After going to vote today I took a "scenic detour" back, going west on US 158 from Reidsville. When you get to the Monroeton community, turn right onto Monroeton Road (at the original Monroeton Elementary School buiding).

About one and a half miles on the right after that, you will find this stone wheel...

This stone marks the site west of Reidsville visited by George Washington during his tour of the southern states in 1791, when he was the first President of the United States. I've heard a lot of people say over the years that the stone even marks the spot where Washington and his colleagues camped while in the Monroeton area. The main draw during this leg of Washington's tour was the nearby Troublesome Creek Iron Works, which was used during the Revolutionary War. And then in 1781 General Nathaniel Greene and his soldiers camped there after the decisive Battle of Guilford Courthouse.

By the way, also nearby is Speedwell Presbyterian Church. Organized in 1759, it's not only the oldest church in Rockingham County but also one of the oldest in the entire country. In the cemetery behind the present building (built in 1844) there can still be found the grave markers of many soldiers who fought and died at Guilford Courthouse. And though it has never been conclusively proven, I have heard a number of people tell that Washington did attend a worship service at Speedwell while he was in the area.

(Speedwell Presbyterian is also the church that my Boy Scout troop is chartered to, incidentally :-)

In light of all that's going on today, and the tremendous amount of raw emotion that this election seems to have generated, I thought it would be a neat thing to pause for a bit. And reflect on where we as a country have come from... and what it took to get us here. That, to me anyway, certainly merits some appreciation.

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