Agustina of Aragon March 4, 1786

Agustina of Aragon March 4, 1786 – May 29, 1857

Agustina de Aragón was a Spanish heroine who defended Spain during the Spanish War of Independence, first as a civilian and later as a professional officer in the Spanish Army. So badass were her actions that she became known as “the Spanish Joan of Arc”. When war broke out in 1808, in her small Spanish town, she took a basket of apples to feed the gunners. When she arrived she saw the Spanish soldiers take heavy losses to the French army, causing the Spaniards to flee. Instead of running away, Agustina ran to the cannons and began to defend the town on her own. The sight of her doing this gave the Spaniards the courage to return and help. After a bloody struggle, the French gave up the assault on Zaragosa and abandoned their siege for a few short weeks, before returning to fight their way into the city, house-by-house which ultimately won them the town. After being captured by the French, she was imprisoned but she subsequently mounted a daring escape and became a low-level rebel leader for the guerrilleros, helping to organize raids and attacks that harassed the French. On June 21, 1813, she acted as a front line battery commander at the Battle of Vitoria, under the command of Major Cairncross. This battle was to see the French Army that had occupied Spain effectively smashed beyond repair and driven out. She eventually married a doctor and lived the rest of her life in peace, proudly wearing her battle medals.

Comments

Watch as Patrick Stewart Recites a Poem with a Yorkshire Dialect

In a scene from TOWN with Nicholas Crane, Patrick Stewart, of Star Trek and X-men fame, gets nostalgic over his childhood and recites a poem in his native Yorkshire dialect. His mother and aunt would recite the poem around Christmas time every year which is probably why he still remembers it many years later. Stewart was born in Mirfield - a small town in West Yorkshire England.

Wildlife conservation on ice: frozen zoos to save animals

On the edge: Disease and habitat loss is decimating wild amphibian populations globally, with more than 200 species needing urgent intervention through captive breeding, says Dr. Simon Clulow. In a south-eastern suburb in Melbourne, there’s a zoo. It has no visitors, and there are no animals anywhere inside it. Rather, the Australian Frozen Zoo houses living cells and genetic material from Australian native and rare and exotic species. This place, and others like it, could be a big part of the future of conservation. Department of Biological Sciences’ Simon Clulow and his colleagues make the case for ‘biobanking’ in a recent piece in Conservation Letters. Clulow is keen to stress that this doesn’t mean getting rid of conventional zoos or captive breeding programs. “Captive breeding has had some wonderful successes, and there will always be a huge place for it,” he says. PhD student and lead author Lachlan Howell agrees. “It was captive breeding that brought the giant panda back f...

California’s surge of large wildfires: a multi-dimensional fire challenge

September 21, 2021 Accumulating fuels and rising populations are contributing to California’s large, destructive fires. Climate change has helped fuel California’s surge of unusually large and destructive fires by exacerbating heat waves and droughts , but climate is not the only factor contributing to the surge. More than a century of fire suppression has caused excessive amounts of dead trees, leaf litter, and dried brush to build up in forests. Meanwhile, California’s increasing population means that many more people now live and work in areas that are prone to fire. The consequences of all the fires are remarkable, even from space. The false-color image at the top of the page shows burn scars left by large fires that burned in recent years, including the two largest incidents on record in California: the August fire complex and the Dixie fire . The image was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite on September 21, 2021. ...

Search This Blog