Tennyson's 'Valley of Death' comes back to bite us

Russo-British skirmish in the Crimea

Surprise surprise, the whole ethnic sludge pot that is the Crimea is the result of England and France nosing around in Russian business and entering the Crimean War in the mid-19th century. And just to put the really stupid icing on it, the war was essentially driven by religion -- who controlled what in the Holy Land ( You think maybe we should stop calling it that?) 

You can read about the ins and outs here, but for today's lesson, what's important is the war transformed the region. Because of battles, population exchanges, and nationalist movements incited by the war, the present-day states of Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, and regions such as Crimea and the Caucasus all changed in small or large ways due to this conflict. And don't think for a nano-second that this isn't an arrow in Putin's quiver!
But let's end on a fun note. The war in the Crimea -- specifically the Battle of Balaclava -- prompted Alfred, Lord Tennyson to write 'The Charge of the Light Brigade', a stirring poem immortalizing a near-suicidal charge by the English cavalry in that battle. Read the poem here.
The fun part? James Bosworth was a young Brit who survived the infamous charge. He returned home and worked for the British Rail Service; some 50 years later he died in that service, in an accident. His epitaph reads:

Though shot and shell around flew fast,
On Balaclava's plain,
Unscathed he passed, to fall at last,
Run over by a train.