Today is Presidents Day, the day we celebrate George Washington’s birthday — and apparently all other past presidents.
But screw all the other presidents, for they’ve got nothing on ol’ George.
In honor of Washington — who may have also been either a ninja or wizard — I have decided to celebrate his birthday.
But first, let me clarify something. This is more about what happened to Washington than what Washington did.
By most accounts, Washington was a pretty bad general, which makes his accomplishments all the more impressive.
Earlier in his career and before the revolution, Washington was what Dwight Schrute might call an “Assistant British General.” He was actually an assistant to that general (as in secretary who also fetched the rum), but no one’s counting.
One day during the French and Indian War, the British decided to surprise the Native Americans with an ambush.
During that battle, Washington — assistant to the general, remember — decided to hop on a horse and join the fracas after his general was killed, taking command himself.
Small problem — his horse was immediately shot out from under him.
“No biggie,” Washington thought.
He quickly recovered from the fall, spotted a vacant horse, shouted, “Dibs!” and ran toward it. He then mounted the beast and resumed his organizational efforts of the troops.
And then his horse — yep, his second horse — was shot out from under him.
George Washington’s badassery could have ended there that day, but it didn’t.
In an action that would have gotten him a nasty letter from PETA today, he hopped on a third horse and resumed leading the troops.
Luckily for the horse, Washington was fine for the rest of the battle. When he got off his steed at the end of the day, he looked down at himself.
He had four bullet holes in his coat and none in his body.
George Washington was pretty much Neo from The Matrix. He was The One.
There are other accounts of stories like this in which Washington essentially rode circles around bullets.
For example, during the Revolutionary War, Washington, who was commanding the American forces, arrived late to a battle between his troops and the British.
If you’ve seen any movies about the revolution, you’ll know common practice was to form a straight, horizontal line and fire at each other.
Upon arrival to the battle, Washington reformed his army’s line and told them to hold their fire. He then rode his poor, poor horse between both armies and ordered his troops to fire.
Just visualize that scene in your head for a moment — I’ll wait.
After surviving — and at this point, that’s kind of expected — the battle, he wrote a letter to his brother describing his time, saying, “I heard bullets whistle and, believe me, there is something charming to the sound of bullets.”
In addition to dodging bullets, Washington also frequently made battle plans that heavily relied on weather or other conditions that should not exist.
One such plan called for a group of Washington’s troops to gather supplies and heavy gear from a fort 300 miles away from their current position, load them onto boats in a nearby river, sail down that river, then unload the boats and use snow sleds to bring the supplies back to base — all during the freezing winter.
This, of course, seems incredibly difficult, but when you throw in the fact that the river needed to be unfrozen while there was snow on the ground makes it seem quite impossible.
You already know it worked anyway.
The river started freezing over while they unloaded the cargo after their trek down the river. Only then did it start snowing.
Remember, Washington specifically ordered sleds to be used, so if it had not snowed, the mission likely would have failed.
America is unlikely to ever have such a badass for a president again.
The trend seems to be moving away from presidents with military experience, which is neither good nor bad.
But it does kind of suck that we’ll never hear cool battlefield stories about our future presidents.
Happy birthday, George.