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| Fig.1: What's this place again? |
They tell us that we must "Remember the Alamo!" But I've got a lot of stuff bouncing around my brain, like all 282 laws on the
Code of Hammurabi, and the order of succession for the British throne (I'm only 486,593,204th in line!), and which establishments have dollar tacos on what days of the week. There needs to be a good reason for me to make room in my memory banks for yet another piece of information. So should we care about the Battle of the Alamo? Statistically, it's a relatively insignificant moment in the Texas Revolution, with the Mexican army overpowering a force of less than 200 Texian rebels to capture a small mission-turned-fort within a sparsely populated area. It also does not appear to be indicative of the overall war, as Texas would eventually shake off Mexican rule despite the loss, briefly becoming an independent republic before its annexation by the United States. So what's the point? Wouldn't we be better off remembering to have our pie
à la mode instead? Well I guess the least we can do is take a look at the battle before promptly sending it to "working memory hell" along with everything we learned about trigonometry and the fact that there's a
Caddyshack II (darn, I had to remind myself).
