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Interesting Facts I learned watching Ken Burn's Revolutionary War

Fact #1. Boston used to be an island. Backbay was literall...
vermilion queen of the night
  11/29/25
huh. did they have a lot of little bridges back then? or ho...
irradiated parlour voyeur
  11/30/25
There was one isthmus, so had the British come by land they ...
vermilion queen of the night
  12/01/25
...
irradiated parlour voyeur
  12/01/25
...
Plum gay wizard principal's office
  11/29/25
Fact #2: Initially, only free blacks were allowed to join th...
vermilion queen of the night
  11/29/25
yer an idiot if you believe that’s why they didn&rsquo...
glassy bearded karate
  11/30/25
What’s the real reason? They let them in very shortly...
vermilion queen of the night
  12/01/25
if you're a wealthy tea merchant or spice trader astroturfin...
glassy bearded karate
  12/01/25
Underrrated
Ebony cuck locus
  12/01/25
Sup, Noam
vermilion queen of the night
  12/02/25
Fact #3: Early in the war the Continental Congress tried to ...
vermilion queen of the night
  11/30/25
Wow all this shit about black people sounds really important...
rusted submissive twinkling uncleanness
  11/30/25
If not for blacks we would have conquered Canada.
provocative infuriating market
  11/30/25
I see what you did there. I doff my cap to you, sir.
vermilion queen of the night
  12/01/25
This should not be a new learned fact. The U.S. fought the W...
Appetizing lodge
  11/30/25
XO Jackson would have words about that.
180 elite rigor shitlib
  11/30/25
Fact #4: Lord Dunmore declared that any slave owned by a reb...
vermilion queen of the night
  11/30/25
I thought the idea backfired when they all caught smallpox
Trip self-absorbed party of the first part mood
  11/30/25
All soldiers of all races suffered badly from small pox. An...
vermilion queen of the night
  12/01/25
Update: At the end of 1776, George Washington eventually rel...
Marshall W. Waller
  12/24/25
All of these are facts anyone who has read anything about th...
Silver casino
  11/30/25
oh wow you mean these aren't completely new facts that ken b...
Plum gay wizard principal's office
  11/30/25
really dumb criticism. OP is trying to create solid content,...
Unholy Racy Circlehead
  12/01/25
Fact #6: the Iroquois created democracy and whitey stole it ...
hot kink-friendly alpha
  12/01/25
It’s funny, this claim has been getting traction on Tw...
vermilion queen of the night
  12/01/25
so the first few sentences of the series did not say that th...
supple claret old irish cottage
  12/01/25
That doesn’t bear any resemblance to what you’re...
vermilion queen of the night
  12/01/25
it unambiguously says that the Iroquois had a "democrac...
supple claret old irish cottage
  12/02/25
They did! And they formed a confederacy. You’re not ...
vermilion queen of the night
  12/03/25
it was a permanent ruling caste chosen matrilineally. if tha...
supple claret old irish cottage
  12/03/25
born Robert Peter Cohon
rusted submissive twinkling uncleanness
  12/01/25
Fact #5: The colonies were by far the least profitable colon...
vermilion queen of the night
  12/01/25
Fact #7: George Washington Carver's great-grandfather was a ...
Glittery apoplectic lettuce
  12/02/25
Pretty sad you guys just want to do racisms and not learn ab...
vermilion queen of the night
  12/02/25
?
Glittery apoplectic lettuce
  12/03/25
You forgot the super soaker
vermilion queen of the night
  12/03/25
...
Plum gay wizard principal's office
  12/03/25
Fact #6: I knew that rich drafted men could pay poor men to ...
Marshall W. Waller
  12/24/25


Poast new message in this thread



Reply Favorite

Date: November 29th, 2025 1:22 PM
Author: vermilion queen of the night

Fact #1. Boston used to be an island. Backbay was literally a bay.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/1bn2n09/boston_land_reclamation_between_1630_and_1995/

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49470245)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 30th, 2025 8:25 AM
Author: irradiated parlour voyeur

huh. did they have a lot of little bridges back then? or how did they get around

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49471669)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 1st, 2025 5:18 PM
Author: vermilion queen of the night

There was one isthmus, so had the British come by land they could have been easily met by militia forces in a bottle neck. That’s why the British chose to come “by sea” and land their forces in Charlestown.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49475259)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 1st, 2025 11:41 PM
Author: irradiated parlour voyeur



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49476232)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 29th, 2025 1:24 PM
Author: Plum gay wizard principal's office



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49470256)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 29th, 2025 1:36 PM
Author: vermilion queen of the night

Fact #2: Initially, only free blacks were allowed to join the American forces. Enlisting slaves was seen as "awkward" because they kept saying the Brits were treating them like slaves. This was codified by the Massachusetts legislature.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49470300)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 30th, 2025 9:20 AM
Author: glassy bearded karate

yer an idiot if you believe that’s why they didn’t allow slaves in the forces

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49471689)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 1st, 2025 5:13 PM
Author: vermilion queen of the night

What’s the real reason? They let them in very shortly thereafter. So they passed a law and then almost immediately changed their minds.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49475232)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 1st, 2025 5:37 PM
Author: glassy bearded karate

if you're a wealthy tea merchant or spice trader astroturfing insurrection against an onerous tax regime, would you have an easier time convincing the agricultural southern elite to join your cause by demanding that they donate their tractors to the fight, or by telling them that the shitlib bostonians and poor ass backwater western pennsylvanians will absorb all the shrapnel

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49475332)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 1st, 2025 11:42 PM
Author: Ebony cuck locus

Underrrated

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49476234)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 2nd, 2025 9:49 AM
Author: vermilion queen of the night

Sup, Noam

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49476781)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 30th, 2025 8:10 AM
Author: vermilion queen of the night

Fact #3: Early in the war the Continental Congress tried to seize Canada, fully expecting that they could make it part of the new country. But the U.S. lost the Battle of Quebec City. If that hadn’t happened it’s possible all or some of Canada would be America.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49471655)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 30th, 2025 8:23 AM
Author: rusted submissive twinkling uncleanness

Wow all this shit about black people sounds really important.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49471668)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 30th, 2025 8:26 AM
Author: provocative infuriating market

If not for blacks we would have conquered Canada.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49471670)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 1st, 2025 5:14 PM
Author: vermilion queen of the night

I see what you did there. I doff my cap to you, sir.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49475235)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 30th, 2025 9:08 AM
Author: Appetizing lodge

This should not be a new learned fact. The U.S. fought the War of 1812 over the same thing—annexation of Canada—and the British sacked DC and the war ended technically in a stalemate (USA lost badly).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49471687)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 30th, 2025 9:20 AM
Author: 180 elite rigor shitlib

XO Jackson would have words about that.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49471690)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 30th, 2025 8:20 AM
Author: vermilion queen of the night

Fact #4: Lord Dunmore declared that any slave owned by a rebel who fought for the British would be freed. He formed a unit of several hundred runaway slaves called “The Ethiopia Regiment”. The idea backfired by more firmly uniting the states, especially the Southern States, against the British.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49471666)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 30th, 2025 9:35 AM
Author: Trip self-absorbed party of the first part mood

I thought the idea backfired when they all caught smallpox

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49471699)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 1st, 2025 5:16 PM
Author: vermilion queen of the night

All soldiers of all races suffered badly from small pox. Another fun fact is that Washington faced the difficult choice of inoculating all troops at once (and putting everyone out of commission for two weeks) or doing it piecemeal and risking outbreaks. They ended up just trying to quarantine.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49475246)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 24th, 2025 6:54 AM
Author: Marshall W. Waller

Update: At the end of 1776, George Washington eventually relented and all new recruits had to be inoculated prior to joining the army and this was one of his most consequential decisions, as army readiness soared once this program was in place.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49536406)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 30th, 2025 9:51 AM
Author: Silver casino

All of these are facts anyone who has read anything about the revolutionary war already knows

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49471717)



Reply Favorite

Date: November 30th, 2025 10:12 AM
Author: Plum gay wizard principal's office

oh wow you mean these aren't completely new facts that ken burns uncovered himself?

shut the FUCK up you know-it-all dweeb. i didn't know boston was an island.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49471741)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 1st, 2025 5:15 PM
Author: Unholy Racy Circlehead

really dumb criticism. OP is trying to create solid content, and content is what xo desperately needs.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49475242)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 1st, 2025 5:19 PM
Author: hot kink-friendly alpha

Fact #6: the Iroquois created democracy and whitey stole it before they raped and killed them all.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49475262)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 1st, 2025 5:28 PM
Author: vermilion queen of the night

It’s funny, this claim has been getting traction on Twitter, but it’s actually nowhere in the series. It’s a total made up straw man used by conservatives to attack Ken Burns, but he does not make this claim. He talks about Native American governance, but it’s actually very relevant and interesting as the Natives were a big wildcard throughout the war. The Cherokee kind of screwed themselves by briefly siding with the British.

The knock that’s valid is that he constantly returns to “what were the slaves getting up to”, but given how much research has been done on this period that’s the one area that is actually somewhat under explored and is new to me.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49475296)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 1st, 2025 5:45 PM
Author: supple claret old irish cottage

so the first few sentences of the series did not say that the Iroquois had a "democracy," is that what you're saying? listen and see what you think.

https://x.com/adamkjohnston/status/1990986003293536716

funny irony: the Jewish narrator of the series adopted the name "Peter Coyote" after an entirely euro-American "plastic shaman," phony Native American led Peter to a faux spiritual path based upon a trip on hallucinatory drugs. then the "Coyote" went Zen and has never circled back to Native American culture.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49475358)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 1st, 2025 6:09 PM
Author: vermilion queen of the night

That doesn’t bear any resemblance to what you’re claiming. It’s a total canard.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49475427)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 2nd, 2025 11:00 AM
Author: supple claret old irish cottage

it unambiguously says that the Iroquois had a "democracy," which is plainly bullshit.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49477027)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 3rd, 2025 7:15 AM
Author: vermilion queen of the night

They did! And they formed a confederacy. You’re not even understanding the claims. The claim that has people upset is that the U.S. confederacy and early democracy was modeled on the Iroquois. This is not the case and it’s not a claim Ken Burns actually makes. But it is true that Iroquois and other tribes used forms of democracy and representative government.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49479288)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 3rd, 2025 8:18 AM
Author: supple claret old irish cottage

it was a permanent ruling caste chosen matrilineally. if that counts as a "democracy" then everything does.



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49479345)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 1st, 2025 6:11 PM
Author: rusted submissive twinkling uncleanness

born Robert Peter Cohon

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49475435)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 1st, 2025 5:30 PM
Author: vermilion queen of the night

Fact #5: The colonies were by far the least profitable colonies in the British empire. Britain was much more worried about losing the Caribbean colonies at the outset and so British public sentiment turned more quickly against the war than it would have had it really threatened the Caribbean profits.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49475304)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 2nd, 2025 12:08 AM
Author: Glittery apoplectic lettuce

Fact #7: George Washington Carver's great-grandfather was a freed slave who invented the musket, cannon, lantern, candle, and gunpowder.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49476260)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 2nd, 2025 9:48 AM
Author: vermilion queen of the night

Pretty sad you guys just want to do racisms and not learn about America

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49476778)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 3rd, 2025 1:35 AM
Author: Glittery apoplectic lettuce

?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49479158)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 3rd, 2025 10:43 AM
Author: vermilion queen of the night

You forgot the super soaker

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49479641)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 3rd, 2025 8:25 AM
Author: Plum gay wizard principal's office



(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49479354)



Reply Favorite

Date: December 24th, 2025 6:52 AM
Author: Marshall W. Waller

Fact #6: I knew that rich drafted men could pay poor men to take their place, but sometimes entire towns would pay other towns to send men in their place, which sounds like something Shelbyville would do to Springfield.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5804097&forum_id=2#49536403)