Archives at Zinester: History at a Glance - A Monthly Column by Dean Perchik. Storytime

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Better Late Than Never Press Dean Perchik 7103 Third Avenue Ste 315 Brooklyn, New York 11209

Boies Penrose[i] was born on the 1^st in 1860. As an adult, he would serve in the United States Senate from 1897 until his death on December 31, 1921. His contribution to Public Service can best be summed up in the following quote, delivered in a speech Penrose gave in 1896: “I believe in the division of labor. You send us to Congress; we pass laws under which you make money…and out of your profits, you further contribute to our campaign funds to send us back again to pass more laws to enable you to make more money.” It is unnecessary to mention that Penrose was a Republican.

Radio station KDKA[ii], in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was the first licensed commercial radio station. On the 2^nd in 1920, the station began its life by broadcasting the results of that year’s Presidential elections. Warren G. Harding decisively beat Franklin D. Roosevelt with a score of 404 electoral votes for Harding and 127 for FDR.

Anyone who approaches writing seriously, which is an extraordinarily foolish thing to do, will at times feels compelled to place his or her work in a public forum and subject it to scrutiny. As Robert Heinlein pointed out, “writing is nothing to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards”. Putting that to the side for the moment, once what you have written is exposed to the gaze of the world at large you have to expect to receive criticism of your work. Some people will like it and others will despise it. Marie Gouze[iii], a playwright, journalist and feminist, writing as Olympe de Gouges in the eighteen century, wrote a great deal and received a great deal of criticism of her literary oeuvres. Criticism can at times be very cutting, at times more cutting than one should reasonably expect. Marie’s troubles began when she adopted the heretical position that "Female and male citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, must be equally admitted to all honours, positions, and public employment according to their capacity and without other distinctions besides those of their virtues and talents." On the 3^rd in 1793, poor Marie[iv] was beheaded for her literary efforts. It seems that the publishers’ tool ‘Sorry, not for us. Better luck elsewhere’ had yet to be invented.

On the 4^th in 1825, the Erie Canal[v] was officially completed. New York’s Governor DeWitt Clinton officiated at the Wedding of the Waters ceremony during which he poured water from Lake Erie in to the water of New York Harbor. It is interesting that they chose to hold a wedding ceremony because the Erie Canal can’t really be said to be straight.

The next item has been a favorite of mine ever since John Lennon asked the question “Do you remember the fifth of November.” On the 5^th, in 1605,

England

’s King James I was scheduled to address both houses of Parliament during the opening session of the 1605 parliament. Guy Fawkes[vi] was arrested when he was found in the basement with lots of gunpowder, preparing to assassinate James I and give the British yet another holiday – Guy Fawkes Day.

There is one fact of life that I not only did not get in grammar school but have not been able to get it to this day. Such a fuss is made about how we live in a democracy with the rule of “one person, one vote” and the person with the most votes is elected. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? I suppose that the election debacle in Florida where the guy with the least votes got to be president should have washed away any lingering illusions I might have had that votes actually mean something, but I still don’t get it. In the

U.S.

presidential election, held on November 6, 1888 incumbent Grover Cleveland[vii] received 5,534,488 votes and the challenger Benjamin Harrison[viii] received 5,443,892 votes. So, who was elected President? Cleveland? Nope. Harrison got more votes from the Electoral College and became president. Personally, I think they were swayed by the beard, so he became the big cheese[ix].

The London Gazette, the oldest surviving English newspaper began publication on the 7^th in 1665. It began life as the Oxford Gazette because King Charles II had left London and fled to Oxford to escape the ravages of the plaque. The publication date is vouched for by no less an authority than Samuel Pepys in his diary. Today, the paper is still published daily except for bank holidays.

On the 8^th in 1899, the Bronx Zoo[x] opened its doors to the public, boasting 22 exhibits and 843 animals. In 1905, with fewer than 1,000 American bison alive in the wild, William T. Hornaday, first director of the zoo, who possessed a deep and abiding interest in bison, started to build the Zoo’s herd. Hornaday was instrumental in obtaining national protection for the American bison, a species decimated by hunting in the 19^th century. Beginning in 1907, the Bronx Zoo began shipping New York bison to new homes at the Oklahoma Wichita Mountain Preserve. Eventually the Bronx Zoo, under Hornaday’s guidance, would send bison to refuges in Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska. The descendants of the New York bison are easy to pick out in the herd; they’re the ones with the attitudes and the sneers.

The elections are still a long way off but I am already tired of them and wish they were already out of the way so I could relax for a while. I’m tired of all the annoying sound bites and repulsive advertisements. At times, the entire political process makes it difficult for me to find anything good about current events. However, being an optimist, I can generally manage to find something that makes things seem to be something other than terribly dismal. For instance, consider this: On the 9^th in 1888, Jack the Ripper killed Mary Jane Kelly. Now, don’t get me wrong, I do not mean to imply that Miss Kelly’s death was a good thing because that was a truly awful thing for Jack to have done. However, what makes the murder a good thing is that Mary Jane was Jack’s last victim. More properly, she was the Ripper’s last known victim; and that is a very good thing indeed.

In 1869, Sir Henry Morton Stanley was hired by the New York Herald to locate Scottish explorer David Livingston. On the 10^th in 1871, he finally found Livingston near Lake Tanganyika and uttered the very famous line “Dr. Livingston, I presume.” There is no reliable evidence to suggest that Livingston responded by stating, “I’ve seen butterflies galore, I’ve seen people big and small and I’ve still not found what I’m looking for[xi].”

The nation’s citizenry all too often views national elections as real train wrecks. To be fair, most elections aren’t train wrecks at all. When you have a free moment, I suggest that you toddle on over to your local library and put those dusty books to some use. Once there you can reacquaint yourself with former President and, by an extremely convoluted trail, Republican, John Quincy Adams[xii]. On the 11^th in 1833, Adams was traveling back to Washington, D. C. by train. Adams was the first president involved in a real train wreck when the Camden & Amboy train he was traveling on broke an axle and derailed near Hightstown, New Jersey. Adams was not injured and managed to resume his trip the following day.

I have no way of knowing, but considering the time and place, these rocket scientists may have been breathing a little too much Oregon air. On the 12^th in 1970, a dead sperm whale washed ashore in Florence[xiii], Oregon. Trust me on this one, after a couple of days a dead cetacean weighing about eight tons starts to get just a little ripe. I can testify to the fact that the while beaches along the Oregon coast are always cold, but they are not an adequate substitute for proper refrigeration. In Oregon, all beaches are under the jurisdiction of the state’s Parks and Recreation Department. Curiously, the task of removing Moby (the whale, not the musician) from Florence’s lovely waterfront fell to the very capable Oregon Highway Division. Apparently, after meeting with members of the United States Navy, it was decided to use the same techniques that would be appropriate for removing a very large boulder from a highway: just blow the darn thing up. Taking into consideration the fact that this was a very big whale and quite dead, they figured that 1000 pounds of dynamite out to do the trick. The resulting explosion scattered blubber over a wide area, crushing a car and showering areas well away from the beach with icky whale guts. What do you think the workers from the Highway Department saw when the smoke cleared? Go ahead take a guess. If you guessed that they saw a very large, very disfigured, very large dead whale still on the beach you win a prize. Rather, you would have won a prize if I had taken any steps to hold a contest and provide one, which I haven’t.

On the 13^th in 1994, noted guitarist and scholar Katherine Simone Perchik was born in Brooklyn, New York. It strikes me as unnecessary to say it, but I must point out that at no time have any allegations of felonious activities focusing on Miss Perchik been made. Additionally, she has not yet been called upon to appear before a committee of the United States Senate to give testimony concerning her involvement in plotting to interfere with a Federal investigation of questionable dealings anywhere within the 48 contiguous states or Alaska. As of this writing reports from Hawaii have not been formally presented, but it is anticipated that officials there will not charge Miss Perchik with any crimes whatever. However, there are others about whom the same cannot be said. On the 13^th in 1909, Collier’s magazine published an article accusing Richard Achilles Bollinger of questionable dealings with private claims in the Alaskan coalfields. Bollinger was a member of President Coolidge’s cabinet, holding the position of United States Secretary of the Interior[xiv] and as such was only eight heartbeats away from the presidency itself.

On the 14^th in 1889, journalist Nellie Bly[xv], inspired by Jules Verne’s book Around the World in 80 Days, left Hoboken, New Jersey and began a trip that se and her sponsors hoped would either meet or beat Verne’s time. She arrived, to great fanfare, back in New York[xvi] 72 days, 6 hours, eleven minutes and fourteen seconds later. Not that anyone was watching the clock or anything as silly as that.

If there had been just a little more traffic, today’s entry would have had to appear tomorrow. At 10:00 p.m. GMT on the 15^th in 1970, the Soviet Spacecraft Luna 17 slipped in to orbit around the Moon. Carried onboard was the Lunokhod[xvii] 1, a really neat remote control car, which would land on the Moon on November 17. Actually, it was a bit too odd looking to be called a car. Calling it an RC car does get the point across though. Well, maybe not a car, it looked more like someone polished off all the Vodka in the liquor cabinet and then got in to their kid’s erector set. If you look at it very closely, it becomes clear that it was a miniature laboratory. O.K., maybe it’s not the Dr. Frankenstein kind of laboratory, but it is a laboratory nonetheless. The Lunokhod 1’s significance, however, lies in the fact that it was the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on a planetary body other than Earth. Perhaps I should qualify that by saying it was the first rover made by humans. That would be both accurate and leave the door open for new evidence that may be coming out of Area 51 once everything there is de-classified.

Notes

[i] One indication of Penrose’s great insight into his own character is illustrated by his statement that "Public office is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

[ii] Robert Trow, who would become well known by virtue of his playing the characters of Bob Dog and Robert Troll on Fred Rogers’ show, Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, got his start at this radio station.

[iii] In 1791, in response to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, the work principally of the Marquise de Lafayette, de Gouges wrote Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen.

[iv] She arrested in 1793 following the publication of her book The Three Urns, or the Health of the Country, By An Aerial Voyager.

[v] The canal is 363 miles from beginning to end and its maximum depth is only four feet.

[vi] The leader of the Gunpowder Plot was Robert Catesby, who was also behind a failed attempt to remove Elizabeth I from the throne of England.

[vii] Cleveland was the first of only two presidents who were for a time police officers. The other was Theodore Roosevelt.

[viii] Benjamin Harrison, on the 7^th of June in 1892, became the first President to attend a baseball game.

[ix] My apologies to those involved in the manufacture of dairy products.

[x] The Bronx Zoo is built on 240 acres of property donated to New York City by tobacco magnate Pierre Lorillard IV. The original pavilions of the Bronx Zoo were designed by George Lewis Heins and Christopher Grant La Farge, who were also instrumental in the designing of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in New York. The zoo shares the park with the New York Botanical Gardens, which opened in 1891.

[xi] From the Moody Blues song

[xii] Adams was the second president to abandon the fashion of wearing knee breeches and wear long pants. James Madison was the first.

[xiii] Frank Herbert wrote a great portion of his Dune series while visiting Florence, Oregon to research an article he was writing on the Department of Agriculture’s coastal management program.

[xiv] The Secretary of the Interior is eighth in the presidential line of succession.

[xv] Bly’s name at birth was Elizabeth Jane Cochran.

[xvi] In 1887, while working for the newspaper the New York World Bly had herself committed to the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island to research a series of articles about conditions in the Asylum.

[xvii] Lunokhod means Moon Walker in Russian.