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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

1. Rounding Up Allies With Baseball Diamonds

The Cubans stayed in Angola until the 1980s, their presence easily spotted by American satellites because of the tell-tale baseball diamonds. American diplomats frequently used that evidence to rally support for the US, and against that of the Eastern Bloc. America’s then-ambassador to Tanzania used to pass aerial photos of baseball diamonds to convince Tanzania’s president, Julius Nyerere, of Cuba’s presence in neighboring Angola.

As ambassador David C. Miller put it: “You would show Julius [Nyerere] examples of satellite photography of Angola … and then point out that the overhead photography keeps turning up baseball diamonds all over Angola. We know that they’re Cubans playing baseball“.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

All Things Medieval – The Strangest Medieval Weapon Ever Created: The Lantern Shield

Blair, Clay – Silent Victory (1975)

British Battles – Siege of Mafeking

Catton, Bruce – Mr. Lincoln’s Army (1951)

Chandler, David – The Campaigns of Napoleon (1966)

Cracked – Famous Moments in History (Brought to You by Incompetence)

Defense Media Network – The Mark 14 Torpedo Scandal

Encyclopedia Britannica – Siege of Mafeking

Forgotten Weapons – The Worst Gun Ever

Latimer, Jon – 1812: War With America (2007)

Medium, April 5^th, 2015 – How Baseball Betrayed Cuba’s Covert Ops

Nafziger, George – Napoleon at Leipzig: The Battle of Nations (1996)

National Park Service – Surrender of Fort Detroit: “He Is a Coward”

Oren, Michael – Six Days of War (2002)

Sears, Stephen W. – To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign (1992)

Smithsonian Magazine, April 7^th, 2010 – The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln: Lincoln’s Missing Bodyguard

We Are the Mighty – Why America’s World War II Torpedoes Were Horrible

Wikipedia – Baseball in Cuba

Wikipedia – Battle of Karansebes

Wikipedia – Battle of Leipzig

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.