250 and Counting

Before I get into the Maryland Declaration of Rights, can I please just note that the State Flag of Maryland is probably the coolest of all 50 state flags? And remember, I’m not native to this state. In fact, not only is it cool, it’s aggressively cool. I should also mention that if you happen to notice that there appears to be Christmas music playing in the background of today’s episode, you’re not entirely wrong. It’s a recording of Maryland’s state song, which is set to the tune of “O Tannen

William Demont was a traitor in much the same way that Benedict Arnold was, but Washington chose to keep this story a little quieter, largely for morale reasons. So how does he make it into an episode of Scooby Doo? It’s worth remembering that as we approached the Bicentennial, America was absolutely immersed in the whole Spirit of ’76 and showed great interest in that era. (Frankly it’s sort of what we were hoping would happen again when we first came up with this show. Anyway.) The American

Every day you learn something new if you pay attention, and today I learned that there is more than one Mission San Juan Capistrano. I went looking for a photo of the mission on Wikipedia, since most images there are in the public domain, and I found one in an article about the mission but the map was all wrong. This mission was in Texas; mine is supposed to be in California! It took me a second to notice the line at the top of the article: “For the mission of the same name in California, clic

When George Washington retreated his men under cover of darkness from White Plains to North Castle, he expected General Howe to follow. Howe didn’t take the bait. So the two men sat there for a couple of days, each hoping to draw the other one out. The fact was, Howe wasn’t all that interested in pursuing Washington’s army, so he turned his attention elsewhere in the end. Stay tuned; we’ll get there in a couple of days. This was a good news/bad news situation for the Continental Army. Good, b

What can I tell you about George Bibb that Mike hasn’t already shared with you? (Also: wait—Mike has a research staff? I don’ t have a research staff and this show was my idea! I think he’s getting his students to do his homework for him.) (For the record, that’s a joke. Mike and I each do our own research on these shows.) George Bibb was a generally wealthy guy, but in 1837 there was a financial crisis that led to several years of economic depression. It was a lot of different things coming

The Battle of White Plains was long, and it was complicated, and once things settled down, both armies needed a little time to regroup and figure out what happened. It was clear that, despite the relative gains for the British, the casualties were comparable (at worst) to those of the Americans. General Howe’s aim in not pursuing matters further was to await the arrival of reinforcements. Could he have have gotten the job done without them? Maybe; the Americans were outnumbered but they were st