Pennsylvania

“And here is the information for a self-guided audio tour on your Smartphone.”

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“Oh…I don’t have a Smartphone.”

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“That is very odd.”

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This was a conversation I had with a worker at the Valley Forge National Historical Park visitor’s center. It was true. It was 2016 and I did not have a Smartphone.

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George Washington’s Continental Army did not have Smartphones in the 1770s, and they survived! Haha.

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The general and his men spent a cold winter encamped at Valley Forge, and endured many hardships including lack of food and proper clothing and disease.

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Smallpox spread through the camp and Washington chose to implement a risky procedure called “inoculation.” Medical personnel cut open a smallpox sore on an infected soldier, took some of the puss, and fed it into a small cut on a healthy soldier’s body. Sounds gross but it worked.

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The soldiers survived the bitter winter, and lived to fight another day in the American Revolutionary War.