Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.

Announcing a new column

Storytime Tapestry is proud to present:  History At A Glance by Dean Perchik

Here is Part one of the two part September issue

To view previous issues please visit Dean’s blog: http://symzonia.blogspot.com 

You can also reach him at his email address:  deanperchik@earthlink.net

I am sure you will be as pleased as I am to have him on board. Dean becomes writer # 429

Dean would be happy to hear from you.

September 1, 2007

© 2007 Dean Perchik                                        deanperchik@earthlink.net

Henry VII, King of England had a way with women.  Not a particularly nice way with them, but a way with women nonetheless.  In his pursuit of Lady Anne Boleyn[i], on the 1^st in 1532 he created her a Marchioness of Pembroke, a title specifically crafted by Henry for her.  Anne was the first woman in England to be honored with a peerage in her own right, as opposed to inheriting it from a husband.  At this point in his career however, Henry thought that it was the least he could do for his intended bride.  How thoughtful of him, don’t you agree?  I guess Anne’s charm must have eventually worn off because Henry[ii] would have his beloved beheaded on the 19^th of May in 1536.

You might want to consider the following the next time you use the top-brown setting on your toaster oven.  Thomas Farriner was a baker who plied his trade in a building on Pudding Lane in London, England.  On the 2^nd in 1666, London was in the midst of a storm whose defining features were high winds but very little rain.  At 2:00 a.m., a fire[iii] broke out in Farriner’s bakery.  Fed by the high winds the fire raged uncontrollably for three days until almost the entire city had been consumed by the flames.  Surprisingly not many people died but the greater part of London was burned to the ground.  Initially, Farriner was suspected of having set the fire but he was cleared of the charges when Robert Hubert confessed to the arson[iv].  It would take London decades to recover.  The fire did however give restoration England the opportunity to rebuild the city in what would become the most extensive urban renewal project of all time, securing Christopher Wren[v]’s place in the history of architectural innovation.

Of the 232 recognized nations on Earth, there are only four countries physically smaller than the Most Serene Republic of San Marino[vi].   Marinus of Rab, a Christian stonemason, fled the persecution he encountered and ended up in the Italian town of Monte Titano where he built a church.  On the 3^rd in 301, this town would become the republic of San Marino.  Marinus died in 366 and would be elevated to sainthood shortly after his death.  Today, San Marino is the oldest republic in existence, and the nation with one of the oldest constitutions, which was originally adopted in the early seventh century.  Its ranking as the fifth smallest nation fails to take into consideration the many micro-nations that have declared their independence.  Some of these nations, like Sea-Land, whose dominion is limited to an abandoned offshore drilling platform, take their independence and autonomy quite seriously.  They issue passports, postage stamps and put on a very good front of being an actual nation.  Nations bearing names like Terre d’Riches and the Commonwealth of Cyberia prove that not everyone has lost their sense of humor.  Taking into account the current state of affairs in world travel, I think that you might want to consider not crossing an international border with a passport issued by the Purple Bunny Federation.

Geronimo[vii], leader of the Chiricahua Apache, led his people in a thirty year war against the United States military, in an attempt to prevent American encroachment on his people’s tribal lands.  While over the time in which Geronimo waged war he would experience intermittent victory, he was ultimately fighting a losing battle for homeland security.  On the 4^th in 1886, Geronimo[viii] and what was left of his tribe surrendered to General Nelson Appleton Miles[ix] in Arizona.

The United States Army faces many challenges as it attempts to manage the personnel requirements of the War on Terror.  Even in the best of times, recruiting has been problematic for the military services.  They do their best however and maintain an active public relations office to entice people to enlist.  At their website,[x] they remind people “There is no limit to the opportunities in the Army — so there’s no limit to what you can learn and achieve. The Army strengthens you, and your future, with expert training in one of over 150 different jobs for Soldiers on Active Duty and over 120 in the Army Reserve.”  The Army needs men and women and it attempts to make the experience of being put in positions of grave danger as attractive as they can.  I rather doubt that they had someone like Howard Unruh in mind however when they began their recruiting campaign.  On the 5^th in 1949, Unruh, an Army sharpshooter who served his country in World War II, left his home in Camden, New Jersey with a self-loading, semi-automatic German Luger.  He then proceeded to stroll around the neighborhood shooting and killing thirteen[xi] of his neighbors.  Unruh is now 86 years old and a permanent resident of the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital.  One psychiatrist reported that Unruh still insists, "I'm no psycho. I have a good mind. I'd have killed a thousand if I had bullets enough."  Unruh was the first single episode mass murderer in the United States.

Catharine Esther Beecher was born on the 6^th in 1800, in the rustic town of East Hampton, New York, on the eastern end of Long Island.  She was an educator who vigorously fought to increase the opportunities available to women who wished to be educated.  She was also a vocal proponent of kindergarten for children of both sexes.  Her family was chock full of extraordinarily talented siblings.  Her sisters were Isabella Beecher Hooker[xii], a prominent suffragist, and author Harriet Beecher Stowe[xiii] and her brothers, Henry Ward Beecher[xiv] and Charles Beecher[xv] were renowned ministers.

When someone mentions shipwrecks and Lake Michigan, I immediately recall the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, probably because of that song by Gordon Lightfoot.  The sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald was indeed a tragedy, which resulted in not only the loss of a very big boat, but the lives of its 29 crewmembers as well.  It pales however, when you consider another wreck, that of the Lady Elgin[xvi], which sank in Lake Michigan with a loss of the 400 passengers who were onboard at the time of the sinking on the 7^th in 1860.

On the 8^th in 1810, the ship Tonquin, owned by John Jacob Astor[xvii], sailed from New York harbor bound for the Columbia River in Oregon.  It was Astor’s intention to establish a site in Oregon to take advantage of the lucrative fur trading business there.  Astor had bought the boat specifically for that purpose.  The cargo on board the Tonquin included trade goods, seeds, building material for a trading post, tools, and the frame of a schooner to be used in the coastal trade.  Additionally there was a crew of 34 people including the captain[xviii].  Following a circuitous route, which took them to the Falkland Islands, around Cape Horn, and then to Hawaii, they finally reached Oregon on March 22, 1811, when they arrived at the mouth of the Columbia River.  Due to the rather treacherous sand bar there, it took them three days to figure out a way into the river.  They then headed upstream and founded the city that was to become Astoria, Oregon.

Have you ever felt that at times your family puts just a little too much pressure on you?  Do they constantly impress upon you the importance of living up to their standards?  What ever you face in this regard should be considered in light of the expectations that Mary Stuart’s parents had when it concerned their daughter’s future.  On the 9^th in 1543, Mary, aged nine months, was crowned Queen of Scots[xix].  My guess is that she still had to eat all of her strained peas.

History records that Simon Bolivar became president of Peru on the 10^th in 1823.  What it is generally relegated to the footnotes, which is a bit like throwing something into the attic where it is rarely seen every again, Bolivar was also president of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, and Bolivia.  Also tossed into the footnote bin is that Bolivar founded Lodge No. 2 of the Peruvian Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry[xx]. 

British scientist, physicist and mathematician Sir James Hopwood Jeans was born on the 11^th in 1877.  His resume reads remarkably like fellow Briton Stephen Hawking’s does, which means that I understand maybe every other word of what he wrote, if that much.  He is good for a quote however, which is proven by the following: “The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter...we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter."[xxi]

Henry Hudson[xxii] must really have been something else.  He has had a river, a bay, a car named after him, and there are probably other things that I am unaware of.  I do know that he had to have been a halfway decent sailor and explorer because he was able to get large, influential companies from two countries to give him more than adequate funding for his epic voyages.  He managed to secure this funding in spite of the fact that he never really did what he had been hired to do.  He was repeatedly given the task of finding the elusive northern passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.  It seems obvious that his performance evaluations tap-danced around the bit about “Have you done what we hired you to do?”  On the 12^th in 1609, Hudson was doing what most explorers do: exploring.  He had entered what is now called the Hudson River and decided that he needed a break from all that not finding stuff that he was doing.  He pulled his ship, the Half Moon, over to the side of the river and landed on what we now call Manhattan Island.  I am sure that it is merely a coincidence that the 12^th is also his birthday.  Heck, you can’t blame a guy for calling work and taking the day off on his birthday can you?