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Incompetence That Shaped History

Khalid Elhassan March 9, 2020 33 min

Nineteenth century Washington Metropolitan Police Force officers. Washington Metropolitan Police

9. Falling For Fake News

Defenders manning the lines during the Siege of Mafeking. British Battles

When hostilities commenced, Robert Baden-Powell was besieged in Mafeking by a Boer force five times the size of his own. To discourage a direct attack, he began burying mysterious boxes around the town’s periphery. When asked, he responded that they were powerful new landmines, the latest in British technology.

To demonstrate, he had a couple blown up within sight of Boer sympathizers. He then allowed them to slip out of town, knowing that they would make a beeline for the enemy, to inform them of the new British weapon. In reality, the boxes blown up had been stuffed with the town’s entire stores of dynamite. The other boxes buried around the defensive perimeter contained nothing but sand.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.