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

It is quite common when embarking on a new project for a person to choose the first day of a new year as a convenient starting point. On that day, the entire year stretches out in front of you; hope is blithely twinkling on the horizon enticing you with its possibilities. A person would be hard-pressed to feel anything other than optimism. What is it that you want to do? Do you want to lose 10 pounds? Is it perhaps your wish to learn how to play the clarinet? Do you desire to become a writer whose work will be read hundreds of years after you have died? On the 1^st in 1660[i], diarist and inveterate gossip Samuel Pepys made the first entry in the diary that he would scrupulously maintain until May 31, 1669 when he would make his last entry[ii].

By the second day of the New Year, the enthusiasm and interest, for a new beginning has for most people passed quietly away; the inspiration for achievement has evaporated like water spilled on a Brooklyn sidewalk in August. For most people there is the sudden realization that your feeling of ‘Wow, this is great – another whole New Year’ has abruptly changed to ‘Damn, this sucks - another whole New Year!’ On the 2^nd in 1923, Albert Bacon Fall[iii] President Harding’s Secretary of the Interior, resigned his position in Harding’s cabinet due to his role in the notorious Teapot Dome scandal[iv].

On the 3^rd in 1870, after years of planning ground was finally broken[v] for the construction[vi] of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge[vii]. Today this iconic structure is referred to simply as the Brooklyn Bridge.

Christopher Colt[viii] was a farmer in Connecticut in the early years of the 19^th century. In 1822, he abandoned agriculture to go into the business of manufacturing textiles. He, his wife and their three sons and three daughters moved to Hartford. To celebrate one son’s 11^th birthday Colt gave the child a pistol. The child’s name was Samuel and that birthday gift made such an impression on him that it would set him on the path to success. On the 4^th in 1847, Samuel Colt[ix] would sell his first pistol, a revolver, to the

United States

government. His company, Colt’s Patent Fire-arms Manufacturing Company, is today one of the largest manufacturers of firearms.

It hardly needs to be said that a marriage is far more than the sum of its parts[x]. Our nation’s first president, George Washington[xi], was a wealthy land and slave owner when he married Martha Dandridge Custis[xii] on the 5^th in 1759. Martha, however, brought significantly more money to the marriage bed than George did[xiii]. Arlington National Cemetery, which sits on more than 140 acres of prime real estate in Virginia, was built on land formerly owned by Martha.

On the 6^th in 1853, as President-elect Franklin Pierce[xiv] was traveling to Washington, D.C. for his inauguration, tragically the train he and his family were traveling in derailed. The tragedy was not that Pierce and his wife were shaken up; the tragedy was that they watched helplessly as Benjamin, their 11-year old son was crushed to death when the train left the tracks near Andover, Massachusetts.

Sometimes it seems to me that the English Channel is always turning up in the context of some first: the first to swim across it[xv], the first aircraft crash while attempting to cross it[xvi] things like that. On the 7^th in 1785, people flew across it for the first time. They were Jean-Pierre Blanchard[xvii], from Paris, and John Jeffries[xviii], from Boston. They flew across the channel in a gas-filled balloon. The crossing took the men two and a half hours, give or take a couple of minutes.

The

United States

has a well-deserved reputation for being a nation where freedom and unbounded opportunity are just sitting there for the taking. The nation has long been a beacon in the darkness calling out to people seeking a better life. In the 1840s Joshua Abraham Norton, an orphaned Englishman, saw that light and made a beeline for

America

. As immigrants before and after him have done, Norton arrived on our shores well aware of the struggles he would face. He stepped ashore with only the clothes on his back, unbridled hope, and a tattered suitcase filled with over $40,000 in cash. Inexplicably, on September 17, 1859, Norton had proclaimed himself Emperor Norton I, Emperor of these

United States

and Protector of

Mexico

. His reign as emperor was unsullied by scandals involving small boys, though it was chock full of financial impropriety[xix]. Despite the handicaps and obstacles he faced by dint of hard work Norton rose to the challenges that confronted him and would manage to die alone, alcoholic, and penniless on a sidewalk[xx] in San Francisco[xxi] on the 8^th in 1880. The San Francisco Chronicle published Norton’s obituary on its front page under the headline "Le Roi est Mort" ("The King is Dead"). They noted Norton’s passing with great sympathy stating "[o]n the reeking pavement, in the darkness of a moon-less night under the dripping rain..., Norton I, by the grace of God, Emperor of the

United States

and Protector of

Mexico

, departed this life".

Philip Astley’s father was a cabinetmaker in

England

in the late 18^th century. In 1751, Philip began his apprenticeship in his father’s shop. Like many children, Philip was not particularly interested in his father’s line of work. Also like a many children, he dreamed of running away from home and joining a circus. Quite unlike many children however, he started his own circus in which he incorporated another childhood desire, which was to work with horses[xxii]. On the 9^th in 1768, Philip staged the first modern circus[xxiii].

One of the pivotal documents of eighteenth century American history was the pamphlet Common Sense, written by Thomas Paine[xxiv]. This was the single most important document that moved popular opinion towards the support of the revolutionaries seeking independence from

England

. Common Sense was one of a series of essays, collectively called The American Crisis. It was in this work that the familiar line ‘these are the times that try men’s souls’ first appears. Published anonymously Common Sense descended on a waiting world on the 10^th in 1776.

Amelia Mary Earhart[xxv] was a woman who got around, and I mean that in only the most complimentary way. She was a woman with great stamina and an unceasing love of flying. In the period from 1930 to 1935, she set seven women’s speed and distance records for flying. On the 11^th in 1935, she set her plane down in Oakland, California, successfully completing the first solo trans-pacific flight by either a man or a woman. I have been unable to discover why she chose to land in Oakland, although my guess is that she had never been there before because if she had she certainly would have chosen some place else.

Thaddeus Horatius Caraway was a United State Senator representing the state of Arkansas. He died in November of 1931, while still in office. On the 9^th of December Governor Harvey Parnell appointed his widow, Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway[xxvi], to serve out the balance of Caraway’s term. In a special election held on the 12^th in 1932, the people of Arkansas confirmed her appointment, making her the first woman elected to the United States Senate. She would serve in the Senate for fourteen years.

On the night of the 13^th in 1840, the side-wheeled steamer Lexington, the fastest vessel operating on the run from Manhattan to Boston, caught fire and burned to the waterline two miles off Eaton’s Neck on the north shore of Long Island resulting in the loss of all but four[xxvii] of the 143 passengers and crew.

Have you had the opportunity to read Metzengerstein: A Tale In Imitation of the German? Do you have any idea what it even is or what its plot is? If so, you are at least a couple of steps ahead of me because until I stumbled across it I had never even heard of it. It is a short story published on the 14^th in 1832, in the magazine Saturday Courier[xxviii] and it has the distinction of being the first short story published by author Edgar Allen Poe.

[i] My guess is that Pepys was fond of alcohol, perhaps a bit too fond of it. His diary entry for New Year's Day, 1661, reads: "I have newly taken a solemn oath about abstaining from plays and wine ...". How many people have made that oath on New Year’s Day?

[ii] Pepys was slowly going blind and his failing eyesight made it impossible for him to continue writing in his diary.

[iii] Fall was also an attorney and represented famed sheriff Pat Garrett when Garrett was arrested and tried for the murder of Albert Jennings Fountain.

[iv] In 1922, Fall had accepted a bribe of nearly a half a million dollars for fixing an oil lease on Federal property in Wyoming. That is the equivalent of roughly four million dollars in 2007.

[v] It wasn’t really a groundbreaking, more of a ‘get-this-water-the-hell-out-of-here-breaking’ because the dredging necessary to prepare the riverbed of the East River began on that day.

[vi] The first person to cross the bridge was master mechanic E. F. Harrington on August 25, 1876. He did so while sitting in a boatswain’s chair which he pulled across the span as it hung from the first wires connecting the Brooklyn and New York towers prior to the construction of the cables that would connect the two.

[vii] The bridge spans a total distance of 5,989 feet of which 1,595 feet 6 inches is over the East River.

[viii] Christopher and his first wife had seven children, four boys and three girls. Of the girls, two died in childhood and the third committed suicide as an adult. Christopher’s wife died young, but he remarried. Samuel and his brothers and sister were raised by Olive Sargeant, his stepmother.

[ix] Colt named his mansion, in Hartford, Connecticut, Armsmear, which means ‘meadow of arms’. Colt Park in Hartford is situated on 140 acres donated to the city by Colt’s widow in 1905.

[x] This means of course that I am going to say it.

[xi] Washington had no children. His nephew, Bushrod Washington, who at age 38 was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, inherited his estate in Mount Vernon, then home to the largest distillery in the United States of America. The distillery has been restored and it was re-opened on March 30, 2007. Today it produces 5000 gallons of whiskey a year, which is only available for purchase at the estate’s gift shop.

[xii] Martha Washington had inherited a great deal of money and land from her first husband, Daniel Parke Custis. The land eventually landed in the hands of Robert E. Lee, who was George Washington Parke Custis' son-in-law. During the Civil War, the land was confiscated and after years in the lower courts, the Supreme Court upheld the Lee Families ownership and in 1882 the United States Congress authorized spending $150,000 to purchase the land for use as the Arlington National Cemetery.

[xiii] Did I hear you ask where did the money come from? Martha’s first husband was Daniel Parke Custis. His grandfather was Daniel Parke, who sat on colonial Virginia’s council and was Queen Anne’s governor of the Leeward Islands. Parke was assassinated in a mutiny provoked by his rather self-enriching execution of his duties to the Queen in the islands.

[xiv] When he was taking the oath of office, Pierce chose to ‘affirm’ rather than swear and he did so on a law book, not a bible as had been customary. He was the first president to do so. Pierce was also the first president born in the nineteenth century and the only one to date to come from New Hampshire.

[xv] Matthew Webb was the first to swim the channel. He did it on the 25^th of August in 1875 and he took 21 hours and 45 minutes to do it.

[xvi] On the 15^th of June in 1785, Pil?tre de Rozier and Pierre Romain crashed while attempting to duplicate Blanchard’s success.

[xvii] Blanchard made his first successful flight on the 2^nd of March in 1784, in a hydrogen-filled balloon launched from the Champ de Mars

[xviii] Jeffries was a surgeon by profession. Following the Boston Massacre he was the defense’s star witness in the matter of the shooting of Patrick Carr, one of the Americans shot and the fifth and last to die on March 17,1770.

[xix] In 1852, Norton attempted to corner the market in California for rice, which due to a famine in China had risen to astronomical prices in San Francisco. Norton tried importing rice from Peru but someone beat him to the punch, he lost everything and was forced into bankruptcy in 1859.

[xx] The Emperor was on his way to a lecture at the California Academy of Sciences when he collapsed at the corner of California Street and what is today Gant Avenue in front of Old St. Mary's Church.

[xxi] Norton was buried on January 10, 1880 and his funeral was attended by more than 30,000 people. There were those who doubted Norton’s abilities as a supreme ruler but on January 11 there was a total eclipse of the Sun, make of that what you will.

[xxii] When he was 17 years old, Philip ran away from home and enlisted in the Fifteenth Light Dragoon Regiment as the first step in making his way to working with horses.

[xxiii] Once he got the whole circus thing going Philip quickly hit his stride and in 1772 he staged a show for King Louis XV of France in Versailles.

[xxiv] Another Paine essay, “African Slavery in America", was published on March 8, 1775. This was the first American writing to advocate the abolition of slavery.

[xxv] Whenever you think that your life is far too busy, take a moment to consider that in addition to this trans-pacific flight Earhart was also the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. She was the first woman to fly the Atlantic alone and the first person to fly the Atlantic alone twice. Furthermore, she was the first woman to fly an autogyro and the first person to cross the United States in an autogyro. On top of all that, she was the first woman to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross, the first woman to fly non-stop coast-to-coast across the US, and the first person to fly solo nonstop from Mexico City to Newark, New Jersey.

[xxvi] Caraway consistently voted against anti-lynching legislation.

[xxvii] The survivors were Chester Hilliard, the only passenger to survive, the ship’s fireman Benjamin Cox, Stephen Manchester, the ship's pilot, Charles Smith, one of the ship's firemen, and David Crowley, the second mate.

[xxviii] Poe had submitted it as his entry in a writing contest. He didn’t win but the story was published with no credit to Poe several months after the contest ran. It would go on to be published again in the Southern Literary Messenger in January 1836, in which Poe is given credit for it.