history


Today is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Perryville, which was the largest Civil War battle fought in Kentucky.

This past Saturday, A.J. and I spent all day at the Perryville reenactment. In the afternoon, we watched one of three skirmishes (there was also one at 7:00 a.m., which was a bit early for us, and a third on Sunday) as it stretched across the battlefield’s rolling hillsides. With virtually nothing built up on or near it, Perryville is one of the most pristine Civil War battlefields in the entire country.

In addition to watching the reenactment, we wandered through the “living history village” and the various camps and had a nice long chat with the members of the only horse-drawn artillery unit in attendance. Needless to say, we took a lot of photos. So I hope you won’t mind looking back to “1862” with us all this week.

As a preview of this week’s posts, here a couple of A.J.’s photos from Saturday:

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As you might imagine, there’s a heck of a lot going on in this photo, which was taken outside New York’s Grand Central Station and Hotel Manhattan, c. 1903. Streetcars, commercial vehicles, passenger vehicles, Hansom Cabs, pedestrians, a rider, a bicyclist …

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Here’s a row of taxicabs (the horse-drawn Hansom Cab variety, of course) lined up along a sidewalk in New York City, c. 1900.

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There are work vehicles, at least one passenger vehicle, a horseless carriage, and quite a few “ghosts” (blurry images of people moving through the long-exposure frame) in this image of the Suffolk County courthouse in Boston, c. 1906. And do you see the dog?

Because there’s no F1 race this weekend, how about we take a look at a 1920s-era hot rod instead? This is “The Cootie,” in front of the White House, in 1922.

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