A few interesting (to me!) notes
I'm reading, at the moment, about the WW2 campaign against both the V-1 and later V-2 rocket attacks on England towards the end of the war. This naturally got me doing five minutes of Google research and this is what I discovered:
The street I was born in (Wordworth Street in Liverpool 8) received 5 German bombs during the Blitz. At least one of those bombs landed pretty close to my birth house - where, at the time, my grandparents and my mother lived. But for a few hundred meters I might never have been born or might have had a different mother and a different life....
In the spring of 1945 the last V-2 rocket to land on England impacted in Orpington, Kent. I lived there in the late 80's/early 90's when I worked in London. The impact site was just 1.5Km from where I lived. I wonder if there's any kind of plaque on a wall in recognition of the event?
6 comments:
Fascinating to think how easily we could not be here. My great-grandfather fought in the Civil War war, for instance, in Longstreet's corps. Despite all the casualties Lee's army (Longstreet's corps included) sustained, he survived -- and lived straight into the 20th century, outliving four wives.
One of the things you quickly learn from reading History is that SO many things - both big and small - could've been *very* different. EVERYTHING is contingent on millions of little decisions and events.... That's why the 'Great Man' theory of History is complete bullshit.
I think there are likely many close calls in our own and our ancestors’ lives that could have changed the outcome of our lives and the world as we know it. I recall the story of one ancestor who fell overboard from The Mayflower, but hung on to survive and now has about ten thousand descendants. There are probably many more close calls that we’ll never know about. Glad fate worked out and you were born. https://myownzen.blogspot.com/2015/12/latest-distraction.html
Survivors indeed!!
It's amazing to think just how lucky we all are to be alive. When you see the 'near misses' that global history makers had and how that would've changed SO much it's easy to forget that our own ancestors probably had just as many opportunities not to make it to adulthood or even fail to meet the partner that eventually led to us.
CK, have you read War and Peace? I think you'd find Tolstoy interesting to tangle with. His take in the book was that history was often decided not by great men, but by little men -- the decision of one man on the field to stand and fight, or cower and run, resulting in a ripple effect. We can see that in whatever aid dropped Genl Robert E Lee's plans for the invasion of Maryland in 1862, allowing McClellan to maneuver into place and stop him.
I *have* W&P but I haven't read it - yet. I think History is like gas. The shape of it is because the way the gas particles move around. It's not because one or more gas particles decided to 'lead' the others one way or the other. ATM history is made by 8 billion people making decisions on a daily basis.
Post a Comment