Palin and the truth about Paul Revere

"Listen, my children, and you shall hear / Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, / On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five, / Hardly a man is now alive / Who remembers that famous day and year."

If nothing else is right about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, first published more than 85 years after that legendary ride, the part about not remembering the day and year rings true.

Since Sarah Palin's impromptu discourse on Paul Revere, there has been much discussion of her account. She referred to the famed horseman as, "He who warned the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms by ringing those bells and making sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free."

Her words provoked an awful lot of hysteria, but not enough history, about this signal event....