I have a cousin who is a prominent physicist, and we were discussing whether certain principles of physics can be useful in political science. To appeal to his mathematical mind, I gave him the following equation:

D-Day: 6 June 1944.... When we look back upon the mighty armada the allies threw ashore on that day, it is tempting to believe overwhelming victory was inevitable. Not so. In a series of small matters God smiled upon the endeavor. Late Spring that year saw some of the worst weather the Channel coast had seen in living memory - the weather only cleared the night before the invasion and the storms returned with a vengeance a couple of days later, leaving just enough time to get all that was needed ashore. The bad weather caused the German commander of the "Atlantic Wall," the famed Rommel, to risk going home for his wife's birthday. It would take several precious hours for him to rush back to the front. Even as the allies began landing, the Germans still thought the main thrust would be at Calais, the narrowest part of the English Channel. Panzer divisions held in the rear near Paris could not be brought up with out Hitler's authorization, but Der Fuehrer had taken a sleeping pill and no one around him dared to wake him up.

In the actual event, only upon Omaha Beach - one out of five landing zones - was the issue ever in doubt. Movies from the Longest Day to Saving Private Ryan have depicted the terror and the heroism of the Americans who finally broke through there in the afternoon. But what if the whole thing had been a disaster? What if instead of securing the beachheads, the English Channel was filled with wreckage - and the bobbing corpses of thousands of American, British and Canadian boys? Who would take responsibility for a bloody fiasco on such a scale?

That question had been decided before the first ships left English ports, and in the event of failure the letter had already been written:

"Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone." Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower...

Thank God that announcement never needed to be made, and instead we got this from Ike:

"People of Western Europe - A landing was made this morning on the coast of France by troops of the Allied Expeditionary Force. This landing is part of the concerted United Nations' plan for the liberation of Europe..."

Notice that the "I," "my" and "mine" in the first announcement are nowhere to be found in the second. Instead we get an American from the Kansas prairie plainly announcing that a job got done.

Where is the leadership today whose sense of responsibility, decency, dignity and humility is that deep and that wide? Instead we seem surrounded by shape-shifting, blame-throwing buffoons...

God help us.

Please, let's get one thing straight about the men who stood that morning at Lexington Green and Concord against the professional troops of the world's greatest superpower - They were not rabble bearing pitchforks and scythes, out to upend society as they knew it, like the French peasantry who stormed the Bastille 14 years later.

Nobody knew why the drunk cowboy in the saloon at Nolan's Hotel had it in for the clock - perhaps his time had passed him by - but he had already put two holes in its face with the Colts he had in each hand when he was distracted by the dude who had just walked in out of the cold night air. Oh, this dude was a comical sight to behold - fancy store-bought pants and boots from somewhere back east, silk shirt, covered over with a leather fringed jacket obviously intended as some sort of frontier veneer. His hat seemed over-sized and rested at an odd angle on his head. All of this was hilariously accented by the pince-nez spectacles perched on his nose.

Andy and Rachel had a big problem. They were madly in love with each other and had run away to Natchez, Mississippi to be married. Rachel's abusive first husband had abandoned her, claiming he was getting a divorce. When the happy couple returned to Nashville, they discovered to their horror that he had not done so, and would publicly humiliate her by suing for divorce upon the grounds of adultery. Andy and Rachel had to marry once again when the divorce was finally over.

Lincoln was not projected to win re-election in the fall of 1864. He himself predicted that he was "... going to be beaten, and badly beaten" by a general whom he had twice relieved for a lack of aggression in the field - George B. McClellan - who was running upon a platform of a negotiated peace with the Confederacy. The continued existence of the United States of America was on the election table.

Davy Crockett's Almanack first came out while the frontiersman was alive, and after his famous death at the Alamo, we would say today that "it went viral." In it, he would ride bears and alligators into battle, shoot lightning from his eyes to blow up British ships, and perform all kinds of wonderously absurd feats that Batman could only dream of. Thanks to Disney, he became the first full-blown media craze of American kids everywhere in the late 50s and early 60s. For a while "Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee..." was sung almost as often as "Happy Birthday." The real David Crockett (he actually disliked being called "Davy") is a character well worth being acquainted with. Most folks don't know that when he gave one of best (and shortest) concession speeches in American history - "You may all go to hell; and I will go to Texas!" he had just lost his congressional seat for taking an unpopular position - he had eloquently sided with the Cherokee Indians in the "Trail of Tears" disaster.

The colors of a West Point Cadet's uniform - grey, black and gold - have, since the inception of the academy in 1802, stood for three common substances: saltpeter (potassium nitrate), charcoal, and sulfur. The power obtained by the proper combination of these simple, cheap and readily available chemicals can never be erased from the memory of mankind. The knowledge has been with us for a thousand years.

Today is the anniversary (December 23, 1783) of George Washington tendering his resignation as Army commander-in-chief before the Continental Congress, assembled at the Maryland state house in Annapolis, where he said "Having now finished the work assigned to me I retire from the great theater of action." He wanted nothing more than to go back to Martha and Mount Vernon for Christmas, as he had promised her so many years before. It was only three months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, formally ending the American Revolution.