Michael Armstrong, an associate professor of operations research in Brock’s Goodman School of Business, wrote a piece recently published in The Conversation looking back at the Crimean War and the Charge of the Light Brigade.

Armstrong writes:

Middle East tensions. Russian soldiers in Crimea. Western nations’ warships in the Black Sea. Those descriptions sound like Russia’s 2014 takeover of Crimea.

But they also applied 150 years earlier during The Crimean War between Russia and a British-French-Turkish alliance. That war is largely forgotten now, apart from its famous nurse Florence Nightingale.

However, another of its features also remains in our memories: The Charge of the Light Brigade. That was a small engagement that ended the inconclusive Battle of Balaclava on Oct. 25, 1854. But it became infamous for its brave soldiers, incompetent leaders and senseless bloodshed. It quickly inspired a magnificent poem by Lord Tennyson and later a colourful movie.

Continue reading the full article here.