I'm Welcome back, everyone, everyone, the 1001 Heroes, Legends, Histories, and Mysteries

Podcast.

This is your dedicated host and history storyteller, John Haggardorn, and it's time for a journey

through some very important American history.

You could also see a crucial time in American history, as you'd be right.

Perhaps the most crucial time.

I know that many of you listeners are well steeped in history,

and you can probably name a handful of times when America came close to the brink of destruction.

I can think of a few, one being the Battle of Midway against the Japanese in the Pacific during World

War II, while their own carriers, the Lexington and the Yorktown were being destroyed,

sank or crippled three of Japan's largest aircraft carriers and destroyed a large portion of their fleet, turning the

tide of the Pacific War against Japan. This was the first time the aircraft carriers had faced

off in war. The 80th anniversary of that battle is being observed as I write this today.

Search our archives here for the Battle of Midway, and you'll find that episode, which contains interviews with the USS Yorktown survivors.

It's a very informative episode.

Then there was the Battle of New Orleans in 1812, where Andy Jackson brought together a colorful mix of Cajuns,

pirates, freed slaves, and American militiaman, and ran the British back down the Mississippi

to the Gulf of Mexico, as Johnny Horton's song goes, to be banished forever as a threat.

But it was at Valley Forge, about 18 miles west of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, during the winter of 1777, 1778, that America faced its biggest challenge.

Not from any major battle, but from severe cold, disease, and a test of faith in their leaders from the poundings they'd been taken in battle, being outsmarted

and outfought by the British for months from Brooklyn Heights to Brandywine.

They were then left with no choice but to retreat, starve, and freeze in Valley Forge

...