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

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Dr. Albert Hoffman, a Swiss chemist, stumbled upon the psychedelic effects of LSD on the 16^th in 1943 while conducting an experiment. Following this, he calmly rode his bicycle home from work in Basel, Switzerland. Beginning with the surge in the popularity of psychedelics in the 1960s, the 16^th would often be celebrated as Bicycle Day. Hoffman wrote the book, LSD: My Problem Child.

Taksin was born on the 17^th in 1735. He would become King of Siam (now Thailand[i]) in 1768. As with many destined to become king, he had a rather lofty opinion of himself. Teetering on the edge of sanity, Taksin became convinced that he was destined to become a Buddha and directed that those monks who did not worship him as such be flogged. In March of 1782, Taksin was declared insane and removed from power. He was then wrapped in a velvet sack and beaten to death with a sandalwood club. As a royal whose blood could not be allowed to hit the ground, he was locked in the sack.

Certainly, everyone has heard the poem of Paul Revere’s midnight ride “Listen my children and you shall hear of the Midnight ride of Paul Revere….[ii]” It is widely understood that the ride was to warn people that the British were coming to do battle. They were not; the British wanted to seize a munitions stockpile in Concord. That ride began when two lanterns were seen hanging in the steeple of the Old North Church in Boston, Massachusetts on the 18^th in 1775. Overlooked, however, is the fact that Revere was not alone on this ride. There were three riders giving the warning and the warning had little to do with an invasion. Riding with Revere[iii] were William Dawes[iv] and Samuel Prescott. In addition to warning of the approach of British forces to Concord, the three men were also riding to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock that the British were coming to arrest them. While Prescott was the only one to actually reach Concord on a horse, I kind of think everything worked out all right in the end.

The 15^th century was a rather rough patch for Joan of Arc, what with her being burned at the stake and all. Joan was executed on May 30, 1431. Things got a bit better when Pope Callixtus III re-opened her case and she was granted a new trial. While at the conclusion of the trial she was declared innocent of all charges, the trial unfortunately took place on July 7, 1456 and really did Joan absolutely no good at all. The twentieth century proved to be much friendlier century for her. Joan’s prospects looked a bit brighter when Pope Pius X beatified her on the 19^th in 1909. But things really started looking up for her when Pope Benedict XV canonized the dear girl on May 16, 1920.

If you are a fan of the Charles Schulz comic Peanuts you might want to give some thought to throwing a party for Snoopy on the 20^th because it was on that date in 1918 that the Red Baron[v] (Manfred von Richthofen) shot down his final victims (the 79^th and 80^th). Richthofen would die of a gunshot wound the next day in an engagement with a Sopwith Camel piloted by Canadian pilot Wilfrid May. The fatal shot came from the ground however, not from his adversary.

If your behavior at times raises the question of whether or not you were raised by wolves then the 21^st is your day because that is the day in 753 b.c.e that is traditionally given for the founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus.

James Hargreaves died on the 22^nd in 1778. In the textile industry, Hargreaves is credited with inventing the spinning jenny. In my never-ending efforts to correct the grievous errors in the historical record I checked all over and was shocked to discover that the spinning jenny was not invented until June of 1957; the inventor being Richard Penniman (Little Richard) who then used the spinning jenny in his hit song Jenny, Jenny which reached number 10 on the US charts and number 2 on the US R&B charts.

On the 23^rd in 1982, the city of Key West[vi] seceded from the union and declared itself the independent Conch Republic.

On the 24^th in 1800, President John Adams[vii] signed into law legislation authorizing establishment of the Library of Congress[viii] with the appropriation of $5000 for "such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress".

The French Revolution at the end of the 18^th century gave the world a lot of things, chief among them, the plot of a lavish, over-done Broadway play. In a significant technological leap in penal reform however, it also gave us the guillotine. On the 25^th in 1789, highwayman Nicholas J. Pelletier became the first person to be executed using a guillotine[ix].

Born in 1880, George Baker[x] was an ambitious man. Like many others when he hit his thirties, he apparently hit his stride; changing his name to Reverend General Jealous Divine and claimed to be God. Not a god, but God, with the capital G. In light-hearted, less formal moments, he referred to himself as The Messenger. When he felt the urge to be slightly more casual he would call himself Father Divine. Apparently, to prove that God was really just one of the boys, on the 26^th in 1946, in Brooklyn, New York, Baker married Edna Rose Ritchings[xi]. This was truly a merging of two hearts and souls. The fact that Baker was 65 years old and Ritchings was only 21 had absolutely nothing to do with Baker’s, how shall I put it, more earthly motivations.

I have known for a very long time that what really drives poets is not the love of words, or even the way those words interact with each other and the world at large. It is actually quite plain and very simple. What drives a poet is the money. Think about it, there are bags filled with money just waiting to be handed to poets. Consider if you will, John Milton[xii], author of the hugely successful free-verse epic poem Paradise Lost[xiii]. In 1667[xiv], Milton, blind and impoverished, took solace in the knowledge that he had his poetry to fall back on. On the 27^th, he sold the copyrights to Paradise Lost for ?10. Remember, this was the 17^th century and ₤10 went a lot farther than it does today. Also, don’t forget that in all likelihood a bunch of paper, postage stamps, envelopes and toner cartridges probably cost a lot less than they do today.

The mutiny[xv] on the Bounty occurred on the 28^th in 1789, when Fletcher Christian[xvi] set Captain Bligh and 18 others adrift in an open boat[xvii] in the South Pacific, thereby setting the stage for one of the more masterful moments in Charles Laughton’s career.

George Ernest Jean-Marie Boulanger was born in Rennes, France on the 29^th in 1837. In the course of time, he would become a major influence in French politics. Like all politicians, he soon became embroiled in a rather sordid web of scandals, scandals that would ultimately lead him to commit suicide in 1891. He was for a time George Clemenceau’s War Minister[xviii]. After hearing of Boulanger’s suicide, Clemenceau would sum up Boulanger’s life by saying that ‘he died as he has lived: a second lieutenant.’ The phrase ‘damning with faint praise’ springs to mind.

Paul Eugen Bleuler was born on the 30^th in 1857. He was a Swiss psychiatrist best known for his contributions to the understanding of mental illness and for the naming of schizophrenia. Bleuler also introduced the term ambivalence to the lexicon. I have read some of his work and personally, I can take it or leave it.

[i] Siam was renamed Thailand on May 11, 1949.

[ii] In 1861, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the poem Paul Revere’s Ride. When Longfellow was a senior in college, he wrote a letter to his father to tell him “I will not disguise it in the least... the fact is, I most eagerly aspire after future eminence in literature, my whole soul burns most ardently after it, and every earthly thought centres [sic] in it... I am almost confident in believing, that if I can ever rise in the world it must be by the exercise of my talents in the wide field of literature."

[iii] On his way to Concord, Revere was detained by British troops who confiscated his horse. Revere had to walk the rest of the way into town.

[iv] William Dawes’ great-great grandson, Charles Gates Dawes, was the nation’s 30^th Vice-President in Calvin Coolidge’s administration. He followed that job by becoming the United States’ Ambassador to the Court of St. James, which is just a fancy way of saying the United Kingdom. Charles wrote the music for the hit song, It’s All In the Game, which has been covered by Nat ‘King’ Cole, Van Morrison, Elton John and Keith Jarret, among others.

[v] Richthofen began his flying career in Obtober 1915 flying reconnaissance flights over the Eastern Front. That would be the Eastern Front in Europe, not in Montauk.

[vi] On September 20, 1995, the United States Army Reserve conducted a training exercise simulating an invasion of a foreign island. They landed on Key West and conducted affairs as if the residents were foreigners. No one found it necessary to notify the Key West officials of the exercise.

[vii] In the aftermath of the Boston Massacre, John Adams represented the British soldiers when criminal charges were brought against them. The captain, Thomas Preston, was acquitted but two of his men, Hugh Montgomery and Mathew Kilroy, were found guilty of manslaughter. Their sentence was to be branded on the thumb with a hot iron. Ouch! Man that has to hurt.

[viii] The original collection consisted of 740 books and 3 maps. today, the Library of Congress receives almost 22,000 items every day.

[ix] The last public execution by guillotine was of Eug?ne Weidmann, on June 17, 1939. The last guillotining of anyone in France was that of Hamida Djandoubi, on September 10, 1977.

[x] Jim Jones, of Peoples Temple fame, at one point claimed to be the reincarnation of Father Divine, but abandoned that ploy when he could only get one person to join the Peoples Temple.

[xi] Ritchie was from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada and I am certain that it is merely a coincidence that she married Divine shortly before her visa was scheduled to expire and she would have to return to Canada.

[xii] Samuel Johnson thought of Milton as being “an acrimonious and surly republican”.

[xiii] Paradise Lost was published in 1667 in ten books. The second edition published in 1674 consisted of twelve books.

[xiv] Milton was for a time employed by Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell was so well loved in England that even though he died on September 3, 1658, on January 30, 1661 his body was exhumed from Westminster Abbey, ritually executed, his body thrown in a pit, and his head stuck on a pike and displayed in front of Westminster Abbey.

[xv] John Adams, one of the mutineers, was the last of all the mutineers when he died on March 5, 1829. He ended his days as a resident of Pitcairn Island

[xvi] Fletcher Christian’s son, Thursday October Christian lived until April 21, 1831. Fletcher explained his son’s name as being the day of the week and the month in which the child was born. Kind of like my wanting to name my daughters Another and One More. Fortunately, for my daughters, cooler heads prevailed.

[xvii] Bligh and 18 members of the crew of the Bounty were put in to an open boat only 23 feet long. It took the group 41 days to travel 3,618 miles and reach Timor in the Malay Archipelago, where Bligh and the survivors were able to hitch a ride to England on a Dutch merchantman. Not exactly a trip to Disneyland, though they did get a lot of fresh air and exercise.

[xviii] As War Minister, Boulanger would begin to reform the army. The one change most appreciated by the soldiers was likely to be the one that allowed them to wear beards.