Today is not just Paul McCartney’s 70th birthday – it’s also the 200th anniversary of The War of 1812.
200 years ago on June 18, 1812, the young upstart United States declared war on Great Britain – then the preeminent world power.
130 years later, on June 18, 1942, Paul McCartney was born.
22 years after McCartney’s birth, he and his band, The Beatles, led a British Invasion of the United States.
McCartney’s British Invasion was far more peaceful and harmonious than the British invasion during the War of 1812: the one in which the invaders burned Washington DC and the White House — necessitating Dolly Madison’s legendary heroics in saving the portrait of George Washington.
Given that England gave us Paul McCartney 70 years ago, I am willing to forgive those rampaging Redcoats for laying waste to our national’s capitol in the early 19th Century.
Besides, we kicked their high-stepping, bagpipe-playing butts at The Battle of New Orleans anyway.
Which only makes me long for a McCartney cover of that great Johnny Horton tune.
I’ll just have to settle for this cover by another musical artist from Great Britain, Lonnie Donnegan – the King of Skiffle: an early influence on Paul and his Beatles band mates.
Paul's Voyage of Discovery & Etc. 
Like the Lonnie Donnegan cover and tribute to Sir Paul. I’d just finished reading a Jackson bio by Robert V. Remini. The battle of New Orleans catapaulted him to national adoration – Andrew not Paul.