The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Peter Austin:

De-lurking for random overly-technical pedantry:

Technically, the Latvian colony (on Tobago) was from the Duchy of Courland which occupied only a western portion of modern Latvia.

Also of note: The Knights of St. John of Malta had nominal ownership of four islands (St. Martin, St. Barthelemy, St. Croix and, most notably, the pirate haven of Tortuga) in the Caribbean for about a decade and a half.

I've always thought that Belgium had a sort of alternative-history feel to it. ("A small, ethnically divided country between France and Germany? Really?")

While Midway was nowhere near a foregone conclusion, it's actually rather unlikely that a total Japanese victory at Midway would have won the war for the Japanese. American political resolve was such that a defeat would have force a negotiated settlement, and, as far as I'm aware, the Japanese military was at the far end of its logistical capabilities by June 1942. It is, to my mind, extraordinarily unlikely that the Japanese would have been able to invade either the western United States or Panama before the massive, massive American wartime shipbuilding program began to make itself felt. A victory at Midway would have prolonged the war significantly, but I don't think it would have changed the ultimate outcome. There's not a whole lot you can do when the enemy has about ten times your industrial capacity.

As a side note, not only were the American carriers not in Pearl on December 7th, neither was the battleship Colorado, then at Bremerton undergoing a refit. Additionally, the battleships Tennessee, Maryland and Pennsylvania were all very lightly damaged, and were back in service by February 1942, when the Japanese were still conquering the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies. Then there's the fact that seven of the U.S. navy's battleships were in the Atlantic at the time - while this included the three oldest battleships, it also included the new North Carolina and the three New Mexico class battleships, which were newer than the Arizona.

Finally, can anyone post me a link to how the 18 ships sunk figure is generated? I was going through a list of ships damaged and I can't really make it work. There's about twenty ships damaged, but a lot of those weren't damaged enouogh in my mind to count as sunk . . .

Epacris:

It's been a while since I've done anything with insects, but those look like plant-hoppers, most of which, if I recall correctly are not as colorful. (Though one North American species camoflages itself as a thorn.)

They're members of the order homoptera, which also includes cicadas, aphids and scale insects.

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