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As some of you may be aware, part of my education in college was achieving a major in history — for all the good it’s done me over the years.

A story I tell often is one day the colorful and clearly impactful history teacher and my advisor at South Dakota State University, a one Jerry Sweeney, called me into his office to have a chat about my future.

Now, if you were acquainted with Jerry Sweeney then you will no doubt understand why I held him in such high regard. I could go into more precise detail as to why, but that alone could take up at least three columns and as fun as they would be for me to tell, it might be lost on you, dear reader.

Suffice to say that his breakdown of the Battle of Gettysburg goes down in history as one of the best lectures of all time, bar none.

At any rate, he had a fairly simple and profound question for me: what did I want to do with my history degree?

A fair question really and one I hadn’t really given enough thought to as I sloughed my way through college. I had thoughts, naturally, but unfortunately they were as realistic as my thoughts were when I was considering the Navy. Thoughts that were far too influenced by “Top Gun” and “Navy Seals” and not at all based in reality. You know, the reality that requires good math skills and the bravery needed to jump out of airplanes into active war zones.

My thoughts for my history major were to do something flashy, hip and cool — like working in a museum, getting into archaeology —  carrying a bull-whip for some unknown reason.

I knew I was in trouble. Jerry laughed at me. Not mockingly per se, but laced with enough sarcasm to let me know that he was about to bust me a picture of reality. He asked what I thought about teaching and I said unequivocally — no. Students are horrible, I said. I should know — I’m one of them.

Also, I just wasn’t into education so much, falling out of line with my parents and my grandfather, all three of which had highly successful education careers. But I knew my patience threshold and in high school I had a hard time being around me, much less having to teach kids like me.

I was, for a time that afternoon, prepared to argue my case, but apparently I’m pretty readable and Jerry (I hope I can call him that now) pretty much laid it out that I should maybe try something else.

I flirted with the idea of leaving college to train to be a firefighter for a time, something I have to confess I still regret to this day, especially after the Austin Fire Department has taken me into burning structures a couple times now and I loved every moment of it.

But ultimately, we all know where this story leads — boring you with column on a Wednesday morning.

Still, I do love talking about history and will very readily ruin a party by dropping some historic nuggets at the slightest provocation so with that in mind, let me drop a few of my favorites on you.

Blackbeard

was a big softy

Well, no not exactly, but he was a fairly complicated man for a pirate during the Golden Age of Piracy, which just sounds amazing. While it’s hard to really nail down anything specific related to how he’s seen today through movies and books, it is widely believed that for all of his fearsome exploits, it’s unlikely he personally killed anybody. Or at least there is no real solid record of such. Rather, Edward Teach (or Thatch depending on the source) generally relied on fear to haul in his takes — including famously lighting fuses and sticking them in his beard and under his hat — something I’m going to start doing when meetings start going long.

Um, we

were there too

People love to look at the Battle of Thermopylae as an epic last stand by the famed warriors of Sparta, who stood against the mass of the Persian army led by mighty Xerxes. Under Leonides I, the Spartans stood their ground and gave their last so that the rest of the Greek states could rally in defense of the city states …. except, they weren’t the only ones as there were a whole bunch of other Greeks involved that didn’t get their own oiled  up movie. It’s unknown how many were rippling with muscles to the level of Gerard Butler.

Go ahead …

I’ll catch up

We all remember hearing about Paul Revere — the rider, not the raider. Heroically dashing  about the country, screaming to the high heavens that the British were coming and they were bringing rock n’ roll with them. However, there were actually three: Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott. Revere didn’t even make it to the intended destination of Concord. He along with Dawes and Prescott were all stopped by the red coats and only the latter two managed to carry on to Concord. Revere was escorted back to Lexington, no doubt while being chastised by the British regulars. “Where have you been?! We’ve been worried sick about you!”

The 1640s were

weird, man

This one is admittedly more obscure and I confess I actually had to do a little digging on this one. Supposedly, in 1644, Oliver Cromwell banded the eating of mince pies (which are delightful). I’ve found a couple different reasons why. One of the reasons was that he supposedly wanted them banned to prohibit pagan practices and another was he wanted to stop gluttony. However, the ban didn’t make it past his reign because people determined that pagans were awesome.

How about a little entertainment

history with your

far, far away?

One more for the road because five is better than four. Actor Denis Lawson played the X-wing fighter pilot Wedge Antilles in all three of the original Star Wars films and again in the third movie of these most recent abominations … I mean fine, fine films in the series: “Rise of Skywalker.” Did you know that he is the maternal uncle of Ewan McGregor, who played Obi Wan Kenobi in the prequel films? Sure did and even if you did know, keep it to yourself.

Nobody likes a no-it-all — nerd.