10 Reasons To Visit Gettysburg

I am participating in 31 Days to a Better Blog at Yeah Write. Today's  challenge is to write a list post. Since this weekend is the 150th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg, I wanted to look at one of our country's finest historical attractions and why it is such a great place to visit.

1.)  It's family friendly. The various museums, tours and exhibits make it easy for kids to understand the battle. 

2.) Its one of the best preserved battle sites in the country, nearly 6000 acres of  land that is kept as close as possible to the way it was in July of 1863.

3.) The town itself is fun and quirky, with lots of interesting little museums and stores.

 4.) It's easy to get around.  You can walk, take a guided tour, or ride around on the free public transit.  You can also purchase a recorded tour of the battlefield that will guide you in your own car. There are even Segway tours.

 5,) The monuments are cool.  There are hundreds of them, some merely mark the location a group of men stood at, others honor whole states.  Many are moving works of art.

 

 

6. There's lodging for every price range. There are luxury motels, budget motels, and campgrounds.  If you have several families and lots of kids meeting up, the campgrounds are great. 

 

Family reunion

 

On the other hand, when my son and I went, we stayed at a motel right by the battlefield.  We could see the cemetery outside the window.

 

 

 

 

 

7) There are ghosts.  Well they say there are ghosts.  There are tours and a train ride and all sorts of books on the subject.  I am not a psychic person myself, but personally I think that if any place on earth is haunted, it would be Gettysburg.

Boarding the Ghost Train

8) There is plenty of material available to prepare for your trip.  There are books and documentaries and feature films.  If you got out of American History class without reading The Killer Angels, read it. Or watch Gettysburg, the film that was made of the book.  Or Ken Burns' Civil War. Or any of the many writers who treated the battle and the War at even greater length

 

 



9) You can stand where they stood,  There is something extremely moving about standing on Little Round Top or Culp's Hill (the ends of the Union Line) and picture yourself in the shoes of those young men who knew they had to stand their ground or all was lost. 

 

 

 And can one fully appreciate the courage it took for the men in Pickett's command to form a line a mile across and advance in full view against the Union center, without walking their walk?

 

 

And then, upon reaching the other end, to turn around and imagine what the men in blue had seen advancing towards them.

 

 

If you are lucky there will be demonstrations going on when you are there, and you can get a real feel for the noise and smoke and chaos.

 

 

10) You can stand where Lincoln stood, in November of 1863, and made that magnificent speech that in about 200 words defined the country and the war.  You realize that when Lincoln spoke of "These brave men, living and dead" and "The last full measure of devotion" he was looking out at newly dug graves.

 

 

Americans often have a reputation for being ignorant of their history, or unappreciative of the sacrifices made for them.  It's impossible to go to Gettysburg and still be that way.

 











Trivial Pursuits

All my life I have been obsessed with trivia. My pursuit of trivia has taken two routes, accumulating random facts, and obsessively learning everything I can about any subject I am interested in. Books, articles, Internet searches, I check it all out. A long time ago my relatives refused to play Trivial Pursuit or any other trivia game with me. (The kids play trivia games, but the prefer specific topics sets  like Lord of the Rings Trivial Pursuit.  My daughter beat the pants of me at Twilight Trivia ) 

It probably started when I was a kid, watching  baseball. No other sport is as obsessed with trivia. Plus my dad was absolutely fascinated with trivia also, especially sports and history. I was able to easily learn things like the 12 Olympians and their attributes, the order of the Presidents of the United States, various Oscar winners,the line of descent of the Queen of England.

Really good trivia is more than just obscure facts.  The best trivia relies on a twist, or an unexpected outcome, some foreshadowing of the future or an interesting sychronicity.

Here are 5 of my favorite pieces of trivia:

In the US and around the world today there are a number of  memorials  to fictional characters. Among the most famous are the statue of the Little Mermaid in Denmark, and the statues of Peter Pan in children's parks all over the world. One of the most adorable is the statues of Mrs Mallard and her children marching into the Boston Public Garden just as they did in the book Make Way for Ducklings. (Theres Jack, and Kack, and Lack, and Mack, and Nack, and Ouack, and Pack and Quack) All over England, and at the Reichanbach Falls in Switzerland there are markers honoring events in the life of Sherlock Holmes. And in front of the Port Authority Transit Center in  New York city there is a statue of Jackie Gleason as Ralph Kramden, TV's most famous bus driver.


The most famous of all sled dogs, Balto, was sold to a circus after his sledding days were over and was being kept along with some of his fellow dogs in poor conditions in California when they were found by a Cleveland businessman. He went home and organized a fundraising drive to bring the dogs to Cleveland. It was successful and Balto and six of his sled mates were brought to Cleveland where they lived out their lives in comfort at the Cleveland Zoo. There is a statue of him, at the Zoo, in addition to the more famous statue in Central Park, and Balto himself can be seen, mounted,  at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where he is one of the favorite exhibits.


The career of the great 19th actor Edwin Booth was overshadowed forever by his younger brother, who assassinated Abraham Lincoln. Also forgotten in the shuffle was an act of heroism by Edwin, rescuing a young man who had fallen on the railroad tracks in Jersey City, NJ. The young man turned out to be Robert Todd Lincoln,  Abraham Lincoln's eldest son.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was a college professor who volunteered for the Civil War and received a commission as a Captain, was a General by the end of the war, and received the Medal of Honor for holding the Union line on Little Round Top at Gettysburg. He was also wounded 6 times during the war, most seriously at the siege of Petersburg when he was shot through both hip, the bullet damaging just about everything in between. He not only survived, but got back to his troops in time to figure in several more major battles and to receive the Southern Troops surrender at Appomattox. The Petersburg wound never really healed though, and he dealt with it for the rest of his life, while serving as governor of Maine, President of Bowdoin College, and head of the Maine Militia (putting down a major riot trying to take over the Statehouse), He died as a direct cause of the Petersburg wound in 1914...50 years after he was wounded. He was the last known veteran to die of a Civil War wound.

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were friends, rivals, and at the end of their lives friends again. Both were greatly involved in the process of getting the Declaration of Independence approved by Congress, Jefferson as its chief author and Adams as its chief advocate. They were also the 2nd and 3rd Presidents of the United States. Both men died on the same day, July 4th, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the ratification of the Declaration of Independence. (and by the way, the President at the time was John Quincy Adams,  John Adams' son.)

I could go on and on with this (and no doubt will in some other post some time) but for now, tell me: Do you have a favorite piece of trivia? Some interesting coincidence that just seems to good to be true?  I would love to hear about it.