Malarial mosquitoes helped defeat British in battle that ended Revolutionary War

The Washington Post ^ | 18 Oct 2010 | J.R. McNeill

[vetvetdoug]

FYI the last state in the US to eradicate Malaria was......of course Mississippi.

[colorado tanker]

Interesting article, but McNeill makes a false claim “without mosquitoes there would be no U.S.” Even if it could be proved that mosquitoes helped, claiming success on one factor is a bad argument.

Call me crazy, but the French fleet keeping the British fleet out of the Chesapeake strikes me as tad bit more important.

[driftless2]

Not only that, the writer makes a logical fallacy by assuming that if x didn't happen then y wouldn't occur. That's similar to the people who claim for example that if Jackie Robinson hadn't have been a success, there would be no blacks in baseball. Apparently many people fell for that sort of nonsense. The fact that a number of clubs had been itching for the opportunity to use black players and that integration into baseball and other big league sports was inevitable totally escaped them.

If the British had been able to quell that rebellion, rest assured many more would have followed. There was no way the British government could keep the American colonies from eventually becoming independent.

[colorado tanker]

If the British had been able to quell that rebellion, rest assured many more would have followed. There was no way the British government could keep the American colonies from eventually becoming independent.

Americans have quite the independent streak, don't we? The powers that be are learning that all over again this year. :-))