Planes, Trains, and Ponies
People are always bemoaning the sad state of the American high school student, that pathetic dullard who can't place the Civil War in the right century and can't tell Neil Armstrong from Louis Armstrong. But how can we blame them when newspaper journalists can't even be bothered to get their facts remotely right? Here is a direct quote from an article about sled dogs in today's Reno Gazette Journal:
"When airplanes began replacing the Pony Express as the country's main method of mail transit in the 1920s, dog sledding proved its merit as more than just a diversion."
Umm... wow. They went straight from ponies to planes? In the 1920s? I know that maybe people in Europe think it's still the wild west out here (a British person, upon hearing that my friend Jenny was from Oklahoma, asked her if we were still having problems with Indians), but really. We were not getting our letters delivered by orphans on ponies in the 1920s.
Of course it's understandable how one could overlook tiny little details such as the telegraph, the transcontinental railroad, and the 60 years that lapsed between the end of the short-lived Pony Express and the 1920s.
If that guy ever looks up Henry Ford on Wikipedia, it's going to blow his mind.
http://www.rgj.com/article/20130204/NEWS/302040016/Mushers-living-part-Tahoe-history?nclick_check=1
"When airplanes began replacing the Pony Express as the country's main method of mail transit in the 1920s, dog sledding proved its merit as more than just a diversion."
Umm... wow. They went straight from ponies to planes? In the 1920s? I know that maybe people in Europe think it's still the wild west out here (a British person, upon hearing that my friend Jenny was from Oklahoma, asked her if we were still having problems with Indians), but really. We were not getting our letters delivered by orphans on ponies in the 1920s.
Of course it's understandable how one could overlook tiny little details such as the telegraph, the transcontinental railroad, and the 60 years that lapsed between the end of the short-lived Pony Express and the 1920s.
If that guy ever looks up Henry Ford on Wikipedia, it's going to blow his mind.
http://www.rgj.com/article/20130204/NEWS/302040016/Mushers-living-part-Tahoe-history?nclick_check=1