Rantings Diversified

I have pressed the ‘big pause’ button on this blog.  I am incredibly busy in my life right now and though I may not be posting or haunting other blog as much as I use to I’ll be back as soon as things settle down.

I’ll be back,
Brianf

Here’s a bit of interesting history I just found.
On November 22nd 1783 the last of the defeated British military set sail out of New York for home under terms of the Treaty of Paris.  The story goes that the humiliated Brits raised a Union Jack at Bowling Green in lower Manhatten and greased the wooden flag pole and cut the rope holding the flag so the flag could not be lowered.  Yankee ingenuity won the day when a US sailor named John Van Arsdale fashioned iron cleats for his shoes and scaled the pole and torn down the Union Jack and nailed the Stars and Stripes to the pole.
November 22nd was regarded for many years as a holiday but fell into disuse during World War 1 so as not to offend the British, our allies at the time.
There is an organization called The Sons of the Revolution that maintain the memory of this day. This year they will be marching down Broadway from NYC city hall to the park where this happened and they will lower a Union Jack and raise the Stars and Stripes in a reenactment of that day 225 years ago.
On a side note the City of Boston celebrates an Evacuation Day also.  Theirs is on March 17th and celebrates the day they drove the British out of Boston and into Nova Scotia in 1776.  But of course it falls on St. Patrick’s day so no one remembers Evacuation Day any more.