Misheard history

On this day in 1854, a British general led his troops into a massacre because either he misinterpreted an order or was set up by the captain who carried the message to attack.
The Charge of the Light Brigade, written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, immortalized those mortals who were led by duty and arrogance to their deaths.
Lord Raglan, commander of the British forces during the Crimean War, gave an order to attack an installation of Russian guns. The order was carried by a Captain Nolan to another general, Lord Lucan.
Some historians believe that Nolan despised Lucan and pointed to a valley where there were Russian installations along three sides when the real order was to attack a Russian contingent on the periphery that was making away with guns. Others contend that Lucan misunderstood the letter and order because he wasn't a good general.
Lucan dispatched Lord Cardigan and the 600 members of the Light Brigade. They charged into the valley and, in the words of another song from from another war, were "led like lambs to the slaughter."
Hear the BBC report, Witness: The Charge of the Light Brigade, on how this story came to us by way of a Times of London reporter. Here's a text version, Charge of the Light Brigade Ends in Heroic Failure, of the tale.
As an addendum, my junior high school teacher once told us, when we were given an assignment that we disliked, "yours is not to question why; yours is but to do or die" For most of my life, I've heard that admonition as "do or die." Tennyson's words, however, are more dire: "do and die." You don't get a reward for following a stupid order. You follow a stupid order and you die. 
As the bumper sticker used to say, Question Authority.