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

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In spite of the bad rap it gets, April 1^st must not be exclusively for fans of pranks because on that day in 1826, Samuel Morey[ii] patented the internal combustion engine, in 1854, Charles Dickens[iii]’ book Hard Times[iv] began serialization in the magazine he was editing, Household Words[v], and in 1857, Herman Melville[vi] published The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade[vii].

Abraham Ortelius[viii] was born on the 2^nd in 1527 in what is known today as Belgium. His life’s work, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Theatre of the World[ix]), is widely considered the world’s first atlas and made him quite famous. While the atlas wasn’t nearly as accurate as any over-the-counter GPS system, you really have to give the guy a break. He was, after all, working in the freaking 16^th century for crying out loud.

On the 3^rd in 1882, Robert Newton Ford[x] shot and killed outlaw Jesse James[xi] in order to collect a $5000 reward. Ford took his show on the road, posing for photographs and signing autographs billing himself as the man who killed Jesse James. On June 8, 1892, Edward Capeheart O’Kelley[xii] in turn murdered Ford. Judith Ries, O’Kelley’s great-great-grand niece, would years later write the book “Ed O’Kelley: The man who murdered Jesse James’ Murderer.”

For those of you who, like me, are fans of dangerous, time-consuming heart surgery, on the 4^th in 1969 Dr. Denton Cooley[xiii] and Dr. Domingo Liotta[xiv], the designer of the first artificial heart, implanted it in a human.

On the 5^th in 1930, in India, Mohandas Karamcha Gandhi[xv], at the head of his followers, began the Salt March to Dandi. Upon arriving at the sea on the 6th, Gandhi dipped his hand into the ocean, scooped a bit of mud into his hand, raised his arm and called out “With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire[xvi]”. Gandhi’s birthday was October 2, 1869. The 2^nd of October is now widely recognized as the International Day of Non-violence

There are few events on par with the perfection of the polio vaccine by Louis Pasteur. The same may be said of astronaut Neil Armstrong’s landing on the surface of the moon. Among those events of similar significance, one occurred on the 6^th in 1938 when Roy J. Plunkett[xvii], a DuPont chemist charged with developing a new refrigerant serendipitously discovered polytetrafluoroethylene (heh?). It was immediately re-named Teflon, so that it would fit properly onto the label for a cooking utensil. In recognition of Plunkett’s contributions to Western Civilization and life as we know it generally, in 1973 Plunkett was inducted into the Plastics Hall of Fame. In addition (will the joy would never end?) in 1985, Roy made it into the Inventors Hall of Fame.

Booker T. Washington[xviii] an African-American teacher, politician and author was honored on the 7^th in 1940 when the United States Postal Service issued a postage stamp bearing his image, the first black American to be so honored. However, Washington[xix] received his greatest honor in 1969 when the song ‘Uptight’ went top ten with his band the MG’s.

If you are unfortunate and are arrested and brought to trial for a heinous crime, there are a number of things that your attorney will do on your behalf. The first is to try to get the terms and conditions of your bail straightened out so that you may await trial in your home rather than a prison. In the event that effort fails, your counsel will then move the court to allow you to make your appearances in the courtroom without handcuffs, shackles or clothed in a bright orange jumpsuit that has Department of Corrections emblazoned on the back. You attorney will do this because the jury’s verdict should not be prejudiced by your appearance. How do you think the jury looked at Martha M. Place? Newspapers of her time described Martha as being “rather tall and spare, with a pale, sharp face. Her nose is long and pointed, her chin sharp and prominent, her lips thin and her forehead retreating. There is something about her face that reminds one of a rat’s, and the bright but changeless eyes somehow strengthen the impression.” Martha was a very troubled woman. Unfortunately, Ida, Martha’s stepdaughter,[xx] bore the brunt of those troubles. Martha, all the while proclaiming her innocence, was convicted on March 20, 1899 of her stepdaughter’s murder. On the 8^th in 1899, in New York’s Sing Sing prison[xxi], Miss Place became the first woman executed by the use of an electric chair[xxii].

On the 9^th in 1959, the American space agency NASA introduced Malcolm Scott Carpenter[xxiii]. Leroy Gordon Cooper[xxiv], John H. Glenn Jr.[xxv], Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom[xxvi], Walter M. "Wally" Schirra[xxvii], Alan B. Shepard[xxviii], and Donald K. "Deke" Slayton[xxix] to a waiting world. They were the first people selected to participate in the United States’ Mercury program and would be the first Americans to go into outer space, though not the first Americans to be spaced. Carpenter and Glenn are now the last survivors of this historic group.

Photography as a means of preserving images for future generations was born in the 19^th Century. This new tool in the historian’s toolbox captured President Abraham Lincoln’s image so that today we are all familiar with his rather stern look of melancholy and undeniable sadness. The last photograph taken of Lincoln while he was still alive was the one taken on the 10^th in 1865; Lincoln[xxx] died on the 16^th.

Edward Everett[xxxi] was born on the 11^th in 1794 in Massachusetts. He had a rich and varied career. He served in the United States House of Representatives, and the United States Senate. He was for a time the United States Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Britain, and Governor of Massachusetts. After serving as Governor, he was appointed Secretary of State by President Millard Fillmore[xxxii]. To top all of that off, as President of Harvard University he admitted the first black student to that school. In response to the rather negative outcry of the good people of Massachusetts, Everett declared that "[i]f this boy passes the examinations he will be admitted and if the white students choose to withdraw, all the income of the college will be devoted to his education."

Henri D?sir? Landru[xxxiii] was born on the 12^th in 1869. He was a man on a mission, a mission that he pursued with remarkable vigor. It is unfortunate that the mission consisted of defrauding young women, stealing their money, and then indiscriminately killing them. While his body count does not really hold up when compared to other serial killers, he had his routine down pat. He used a number of aliases when approaching young ladies so that his identity would be shielded. When someone is engaged in a project such as the one that Henri was in, it pays to be as consistent in your behavior as possible. In order to keep track of just who he was on a given day Henri began to keep a rather large ledger of the aliases he had and was using. The final body count was 10 women and a son of one of the victims. However, I think the size of the ledger that he maintained might indicate a rather higher body count.

On the 13^th in 1729, Thomas Percy[xxxiv] was born in Bridgnorth, England. As many of the time did, as an adult he took holy orders and would become the Bishop of Dromore. He had a lifelong fascination with poetry however. His book Reliques of Ancient English Poetry[xxxv], for which he is best known, was published in 1765. In 1763, however he published Five Pieces of Runic Poetry, poems from Iceland, which Percy “translated and improved." What is it with some people; can’t they just leave well enough alone?

As hard as it may be to believe there are still a few people who rely on actual dictionaries to check their spelling or more rarely, look up a word’s definition. Most people seem to rely, instead, on Bill Gates’ spell-check. If you actually have a dictionary and know how to use it, pause for a moment on the 14^th and offer a word of thanks to Noah Webster[xxxvi], who, on that date in 1828, copyrighted his first dictionary[xxxvii].

Dorothy Mae Ann Wordsworth[xxxviii] would occasionally go for long walks with her brother William[xxxix]. On one of these walks, on the 15^th in 1802, the pair happened to pass a large field of flowers. The sight of these flowers inspired William to burden the world with the poem The Daffodils, which is the one that begins with I wandered Lonely as a Cloud.

[i] Page 121, The Battle of Britain, 1989, W.W. Norton and Company.

[ii] Morey’s first patent, obtained in 1793, was for a steam-powered spit. On his death, on April 17, 1842 Morey held twenty patents.

[iii] As a 12 year old, Dickens will spend ten-hour days in a boot-blacking factory pasting labels on jars of polish. The money went to help support his family because his father had been tossed in to Marshalsea, a debtors’ prison in London, England

[iv] The 100,000 words of the novel were serialized between April 1 and August 12, 1854.

[v] Sales of the magazine Household Words, of which Dickens was the editor, were disastrously low and he serialized the novel in the hope that it would boost sales,

[vi] Such was Melville’s fame in his own day, that when he died on September 28, 1891 and the venerable New York Times published his obituary they got his name wrong. It was not Herman Melville who had died it was Henry Melville.

[vii] The Confidence Man was Melville’s last major novel. I’m certain that it was merely a coincidence that its publication date is also the date in which all the action in the novel occurs.

[viii] In 1575, Ortelius was appointed geographer to Philip II the king of Spain.

[ix] The atlas would go through more than 25 editions in various languages before Ortelius’s death on June 28, 1592.

[x] When Ford attempted to collect the reward offered for James, he was arrested on charges of murder. Ford was convicted and sentenced to hang but the Governor of Missouri pardoned him before the sentence was carried out. He subsequently only received a small portion of the $5000 reward.

[xi] James must have recovered because today he is allegedly happily married to his third wife, actress Sandra Bullock, and in his spare time designs and builds exotic motorcycles.

[xii] To illustrate yet again that the internet is not all it is cracked up to be - In O’Kelley’s biography at findagrave.com, author Judith Ries has posted this comment about his obituary there “I have no idea who wrote this so-called “bio” about Edward Capeheart O’Kelley, but it is so incorrect as to be totally humorous!! I am a great-great niece of Ed O’Kelley and I wrote the book entitled “Ed O’Kelley: The Man who murdered Jesse James’ Murderer”. If you want/need the correct information about him, please contact me!! Thanks a bunch!!

[xiii] Cooley is a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, in the Department of Medical Sciences. One question: Why?

[xiv] Dr. Liotta is the founder and director of the Domingo Liotta International Foundation – Medical Corporation that is a non-profit organization dedicated to the Artificial Heart and Assisted Circulation research. He is the author of the book The Artificial Heart: The Frontier of Human Life.

[xv] In an arranged marriage, Gandhi married Kasturba Makhanji when they were both thirteen years old. They would have four children. At the time of their marriage, Katurba was illiterate and Gandhi taught her to read and write.

[xvi] Gandhi and Jawaharal Nehru, leaders of the Indian National Congress, had issued the Declaration of Independence on January 26, 1930. The British Viceroy of India, Lord Irwin, had Nehru arrested before the march.

[xvii] On the downside, Plunkett also perfected the gasoline additive tetra-ethyl lead, bequeathing to us an entirely new set of problems.

[xviii] In 1901, as a guest of President Theodore Roosevelt, Booker was the first black man honored as a guest in the ironically named White House.

[xix] In his autobiography Up From Slavery, published in 1901, Washington wrote "I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed."

[xx] On February 7 1899, when Martha’s husband William arrived home Martha met him at the door wielding an ax and tried to kill him. His daughter was already dead.

[xxi] Albert Fish, whose culinary tastes were widely frowned upon (He was in the habit of kidnapping, cooking and eating children) was executed using Sing Sing’s electric chair on January 16, 1936. He had told his executioner that the execution would be “the supreme thrill of my life.”

[xxii] Miss Place’s executioner was Edwin F. Davis, the State of New York’s first state electrician. He apparently enjoyed his work and had been awarded patent number 587,649, for his "Electrocution-Chair", on August 3, 1897. Davis was also William Kemmler’s executioner. Kemmler was toasted on August 6, 1890 and was the first person to be executed with an electric chair.

[xxiii] Carpenter was the second American to orbit the earth. Shame on you if you don’t know who the first was.

[xxiv] Cooper always insisted that he had seen extraterrestrial crafts (UFOs), the first encounter when he was flying over Germany in 1951. His Book Out of The Blue describes that incident and many other encounters, though he denied seeing any in his time with the Mercury Program. In a stunning bit of irony, Cooper died on October 4, 2004, the same day that SpaceShipOne made its second flight and won the Ansari X-prize.

[xxv] In 1957, Glenn appeared on the television show Name That Tune and won $12,500.

[xxvi] After the successful Gemini 3 flight, Grissom said that he hoped “If we die, we want people to accept it. We are in a risky business and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.”

[xxvii] Schirra is the only astronaut to have flown in the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. He logged close to 300 hours in space.

[xxviii] Reflecting on his time with the Space program, Shepard reluctantly said that "I must admit, maybe I am a piece of history after all."

[xxix] Despite having serious heart problems, Slayton received medical clearance and went back into space as the docking module pilot for the Apollo-Soyuz Project in July 1975.

[xxx] Following the President’s death, his widow, Mary Ann Todd Lincoln, received from the United States Congress a pension of $3000 per year for the term of her life. In 1875 the President and Mrs. Lincoln’s son Robert would have his mother confined by court order to an insane asylum in Peoria, Illinois.

[xxxi] Everett was the first American to receive a PhD degree.

[xxxii] Everett was selected by Fillmore for the post of Secretary of State to fill the vacancy left when his previous Secretary of State, Daniel Webster, died.

[xxxiii] Compared to fellow resident of France, H?l?ne Jegado, Landru was a rank amateur. Between 1833 and 1851, she murdered 23 people and is suspected in the deaths of at least 13 others.

[xxxiv] He was editor of Richard Steele’s Tatler. Steele died on September 1, 1729 but The Tatler did not and is today is published by Conde Nast Publications.

[xxxv] Samuel Johnson collaborated with Percy on this book.

[xxxvi] In 1774, when he was 16, Webster entered Yale College. He earned a law degree in 1781. In 1793, Alexander Hamilton gave him $1500 to move to New York and edit a newspaper, which Hamilton had started to use as a propaganda machine for the Federalists.

[xxxvii] Webster was a little slow out of the gate however because on the 15^th in 1755, Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language was published in London, England.

[xxxviii] Dorothy was also a writer, though she languished in her more famous brother’s shadow. In 1931, Beatrix Potter bought a house the brother and sister had occupied and discovered a vast collection of Dorothy’s work, which Potter published as the Grasmere Journal in 1933.

[xxxix] When in 1843 England’s poet laureate, Robert Southey, died, Wordsworth was given that honor.