Battle Of Bunker Hill Essays - Charlestown, Boston,

Battle Of Bunker Hill The Battle of Bunker Hill - 17 JUN 1775 Following the events in Massachusetts at Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1775, state militiamen from Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Vermont gathered in Cambridge and the area surrounding Boston. British General Gage and 6,500 soldiers and marines were in possession of Boston proper, while the American force consisted of over 16,000 men. Sickness and missing brought the number of available soldiers closer to 9,000. In addition the American force was extremely short of gunpowder, having only some 30 or so half barrels of powder beyond that carried in the horns of the citizen soldiers. In the two months following Concord, efforts were made to bring organization and order to the United States Army. But the work was difficult and the progress slow. By mid-June the army was still a collection of individual Militia regiments, headed by officers who were viewed more as friends and fellow citizens of the common soldier rather than trained and capable leaders. The Continental Congress was working on legislation to regularize the militia and see that they were paid by the Congress, but by mid-June still had not acted. To make matters worse, militia units were responsible only to their own militia commanders and their own state governments. General Artemus Ward was commanding general of the Massachusetts militia, leading the largest contingent of troops, and held nominal authority over the non-Massachusetts forces. General Gage considered his force too small to effectively attack the Rebels and hold the countryside outside of Boston. At the same time he became concerned that the surrounding heights of Dorchester and Charlestown provided an excellent opportunity for Rebels to place cannon and threaten Boston. Consequently, he began to plan measures to secure these strategic positions. But word leaked out and the Boston Committee of Safety recommended to Ward that he beat the British to their own move and seize Bunker Hill above Charlestown. Col. William Prescott supported the plan and was asked to lead a night mission to establish a redoubt (small fort) on Bunkers Hill. Together with 300 men of Prescott's regiment, and parts of Ebenezer Bridge's and Colonel James Frye's regiment were added 200 Connecticut men under Captain Thomas Knowlton from Putnam's regiment and Captain Samuel Gridley's artillery company with two light guns. About 5 oclock in the evening of June 16th this force assembled on t he common in Cambridge and after a prayer set off quietly for the Horse's Neck. Positioned like a drop of ink extending into the harbor just to the north of Boston, the Charlestown peninsula is approximately one and a quarter miles long and lies between the Charles River on the West and the Mystic river on the East. On the north, the peninsula is joined to the mainland by a narrow stretch of land (called the Neck), which is only thirty feet wide at high tide. Bunker's Hill rises across the narrow western end of the peninsula and at 100 feet high, dominates the Neck of the peninsula. Any fortifications constructed there would be out of effective range of the British battery on Copp's Hill in Boston and would be too high to allow elevation of shipboard guns in the harbor. To the south and east of Bunker's Hill lies Breed's Hill, some 60 feet high gradually sloping to the harbor and Charlestown to its south and west. Under the cover of darkness, the American force crossed the Neck and mounted Bunker's Hill. On the far slope the column stopped and a violent argument broke out among the leaders, with Prescott saying that Ward's verbal orders had been to fortify the lower and more exposed Breed's Hill. Colonel Gridley, who was serving the role of engineer added to the problem contending that valuable time was being lost. At last the decision was made to make Breed's Hill the primary fortification and Bunker Hill the secondary fortification, if and when time permitted. The column moved on the Breed's Hill where at its farthest point, Gridley staked out the outline of a redoubt approximately 132 feet square. As the clock struck midnight, the men began to dig, throwing up dirt as quickly as they possibly could.

Bay Of Pigs Invasion Essays - CubaUnited States Relations

Bay Of Pigs Invasion Essays - CubaUnited States Relations Bay Of Pigs Invasion The Bay of Pigs Invasion. The story of the failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs is one of mismanagement, overconfidence, and lack of security. The blame for the failure of the operation falls directly in the lap of the Central Intelligence Agency and a young president and his advisors. The fall out from the invasion caused a rise in tension between the two great superpowers and ironically, years after the event, the person that the invasion meant to topple, Fidel Castro, is still in power. To understand the origins of the invasion and its ramifications for the future it is first necessary to look at the invasion and its origins. The Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961, started a few days before on April 15th with the bombing of Cuba by what appeared to be defecting Cuban air force pilots. At 6 a.m. in the morning of that Saturday, three Cuban military bases were bombed by B-26 bombers. The airfields at Camp Libertad, San Antonio de Los Baos, and Antonio Maceo airport at Santiago de Cuba were fired upon. Seven people were killed at Libertad, and forty-seven people were killed at other sites on the island. Two of the B-26s left Cuba and flew to Miami, apparently to defect to the United States. The Cuban Revolutionary Council, the government in exile, in New York City released a statement saying that the bombings in Cuba were . . . carried out by 'Cubans inside Cuba' who were 'in contact with' the top command of the Revolutionary Council . . . . The New York Times reporter covering the story alluded to something being wrong with the whole situation when he wondered how the council knew the pilots were coming if the pilots had only decided to leave Cuba on Thursday after . . . a suspected betrayal by a fellow pilot had precipitated a plot to strike . . . .. Whatever the case, the planes came down in Miami later that morning, one landed at Key West Naval Air Station at 7:00 a.m. and the other at Miami International Airport at 8:20 a.m. Both planes were badly damaged and their tanks were nearly empty. On the front page of The New York Times the next day, a picture of one of the B-26s was shown along with a picture of one of the pilots cloaked in a baseball hat and hiding behind dark sunglasses, his name was withheld. A sense of conspiracy was even at this early stage beginning to envelop the events of that week. In the early hours of April 17th the assault on the Bay of Pigs began. As in the spirit of a movie, the assault began at 2 a.m. with a team of frogmen going ashore with orders to set up landing lights to indicate to the main assault force the precise location of their objectives, as w ell as to clear the area of anything that may impede the main landing teams when they arrived. At 2:30 a.m. and at 3:00 a.m. two battalions came ashore at Playa Girn and one battalion at Playa Larga beaches. The troops at Playa Girn had orders to move west, northwest, up the coast and meet with the troops at Playa Larga in the middle of the bay. A small group of men were then to be sent north to the town of Jaguey Grande to secure it as well. When looking at a modern map of Cuba it is obvious that the troops would have problems in the area that was chosen for them to land at. The area around the Bay of Pigs is a swampy marsh land area which would be hard on the troops. The Cuban forces were quick to react and Castro ordered his T-33 trainer jets, two Sea Furies, and two B-26s into the air to stop the invading forces. Off the coast were the command and control ship and another vessel carrying supplies for the invading forces. The Cuban air force made quick work of the supply ships, sinking the command vessel, the Marsopa, and the supply ship the Houston, blasting them to pieces with five-inch rockets.

Identifying the academic and Behavioural Support Needs of Teachers Dissertation - 1

Identifying the academic and Behavioural Support Needs of Teachers Teaching in LINUS classrooms in Malaysia - Dissertation Example Professional development is very essential in supporting teachers teaching in LINUS classrooms in Malaysia in the sense that the teachers feel motivated and appreciated for their effort as it will be discussed in this chapter. 2.2 The Effectiveness of Screening According to Mohd Sham Hamid (2012; p. 7) there is total faith in the literacy and numeracy screenings programme in Malaysia. The LINUS programme conducts screening on the student’s literacy and numeracy ability, hence giving room for learning institutions to identify pupils who are weak. There is a distinction between the former system and LINUS. With LINUS, teachers are in a position to distinguish excellent students from the less excellent ones. This gives an avenue for the teachers to comprehend the exposure of knowledge of the weaker students. By understanding the knowledge level, it helps the participants to formulate extra plans to enhance the ability of the students while concentrating on the prescribed LINUS pr ogram which was established by the Ministry of education. According to Mohd Sham Hamid (2012; p. 7), the teacher normally depended on the same component and method of teaching but this was broken down by LINUS programme. The same method cannot be used to train children in a learning environment as some of the methods have a poor standard of comprehending the subject and hence require extra attention (Cohen, & Spenciner, 2007; p. 13). In such a condition the teacher will not be in a position to know whether the pupil is weak till the pupil takes the exam and scores below average or fails the exam. By this time the student will have advanced to the next stage and will still be left behind as the topic gets tougher to go through. The LINUS curriculum has a complex set of subjects for all levels of learning. There are pupils who are in a position to identify the alphabetical order after seven months of continuous recitation. These students can be discovered after sitting for the LINUS s creening tests. Extra attention can now be administered to these students in class. Learning in this environment is made more interactive and more of fun by use of music and activities to assist the pupils understand the subject more easily. There are times when issues of absenteeism and other uphill tasks which might derail the process of indentifying weaker children or helping them through the stated topic more challenging. Remedial lessons can be helpful if given keen attention with the use of specialized modules in enabling the pupils to deal with the learning challenges to a particular level. The education office through the Malaysian ministry of education gives abundant support by providing books of reference and usually giving supervision to the LINUS curriculum in the school. Currently, pupils from both year one and year two inclusive of the weaker students are reported to be going through the LINUS curriculum classes where teachers use laptops, charts, books, and flashcards as teaching aids. This has seen a remarkable improvement in the performance of the pupils over the recent time period (Pliszka, et al, 2007; p. 897). 2.3 The Significance of LINUS In ensuring that some of the programs are executed for the present school year, implementation of the programs is already underway. The first semi-annual implementation has seen the