Archives at Zinester: History At a Glance - A Den Perchik Column. Storytime

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On the 1^st in 1851, Great Britain’s monarch, Queen Victoria[i], presided at the opening ceremonies[ii] of the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations[iii], the first in a long series of World Fairs. It’s claim to being the first World’s Fair is suspect however, coming as it did hot on the heels of French Industrial Exposition of 1844, though if you weren’t French you had no chance of getting an exhibit in that little number.

When I look at the current state of affairs in the ethical constitutions of the people currently heading sensitive government agencies, I find myself troubled by our president’s high turnover rate among his appointments. I also find myself troubled by the revolving door in the offices of high-level appointees. I would feel much more comfortable if there was at least the appearance of stability. You might say that I am yearning for the safety and assurances that accompany things that could only have happened in a world long before the 9/11 tragedy. Consider if you will, the Federal Bureau of Investigation[iv], that happy breeding ground of extreme paranoia. John Edgar Hoover[v] became that newly created bureau’s first director with his appointment by President Coolidge[vi] on the 10^th in 1924. Hoover remained steadfastly at the helm until his death on the 2^nd in 1972. While there have long been rumors of Hoover’s fondness for wearing women’s clothing I am less troubled by those then other hallmarks of his time in the directorship because he certainly had the legs for it.

Whatever else he may have been, Lord Byron[vii] must have been quite a swimmer, because on the 3^rd in 1810 while touring Asia Minor he successfully swam the Hellespont, from Sestos to Abydos. A remarkable accomplishment, even if you are “mad, bad and dangerous to know[viii].”

On the 4^th in 1865, Abraham Lincoln[ix] was buried in Springfield, Missouri. Taking into consideration the fact that Honest Abe was assassinated on the 15^th of April, in an era that pre-dates reliable refrigeration, my guess is that unless they had a very chilly Spring he was probably just a little bit ripe at the time of the service.

The United States’ Patent Act of 1790 allowed women, for the first time, to be granted patents. Sensing an opportunity to finally get in on a good thing, Mary Dixon Kies[x] applied for a patent[xi] for a technique for weaving straw with silk and thread, though just why someone would want to do that is unclear. Apparently, in the early 19^th century, straw weaving was a big deal and provided a pretty good living to people. On the 5^th in 1809, Mary was the first woman to be granted a patent.

At 7:25 in the evening on the 6^th in 1937, the German zeppelin Hindenburg burst into flames as it attempted to land in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Of the 36 passengers and 61 crewmembers onboard the Hindenburg, only 13 passengers and 22 members of the crew died. Considering how quickly, completely, and violently the fire engulfed the craft, it seems to me to be a surprisingly low death rate. Part of the charm of rock and roll is its tendency to go more than a little bit overboard. Maybe I’m getting old but I think it is going just a bit too far over the top to stage this fire and kill 45 people merely to come up with an incredibly good album cover for Led Zeppelin’s first album[xii] release.

Have you ever noticed how incredibly bright the Sun is? Has anyone ever told you that it is never a good idea to stare directly at the Sun? I know that it was certainly mentioned to me. Apparently, no one ever told David Fabricus about that being a bad idea. Born in Germany, David died on the 7th in 1617. He dabbled in astronomy. The telescope was not in wide use at the time and the observations that David made were with the naked eye. His son, Johannes, was sent to school in the Netherlands and on one of his visits home, he brought with him a telescope. It is rarely recommended, but among the first things David and his son did with this new-fangled telescope was direct it at the sun so they could both get a better look at it. Aside from a headache and blurred vision resulting from staring directly at the sun, the two men discovered Sunspots. Their observations would also lead to their discovery that the sun rotated much as the earth does.

Why didn’t somebody just give this Mahatma guy a freaking sandwich? On the 8^th in 1933, Gandhi began a 21-day fast as a protest of the rather tacky behavior of a certain empire on whom the sun used to never set, in India. Gandhi not only survived the hunger strike but also was also able to get the British out of India. Certainly, Irishman Bobby Sands must have wished that he had Gandhi’s luck. Sands not only did not survive his hunger strike but he wasn’t even able to get the British out of Ireland.

Even by the somewhat casual standards of the late 17^th century, Thomas Blood was a brazen sort of guy. After having fought in the service of Oliver Cromwell, he had been awarded some very lucrative land grants in his native Ireland. When the monarchy was restored in 1660, Blood was stripped of these land grants. A boy has to do something to earn his daily bread and Blood decided to kidnap and hold for ransom James Butler, 1^st Duke of Ormonde, a minor noble. Blood wasn’t particularly good at that however, so he and a couple of friends attempted to steal the British Crown Jewels on the 9^th in 1671. Well actually, to be accurate, he and his associates did steal the British Crown Jewels. However, he and his confederates were captured before they could successfully make their way out of the Tower of London[xiii], where the jewels were being stored.

On the 10^th in 1872, the Equal Rights Party nominated Victoria Woodhull[xiv] to be its candidate for the Presidency[xv] of the United States of America, making her the first woman to be nominated for that exalted position. Interestly, Woodhull’s name never appeared on the ballot[xvi].

The American Civil War is marked by extraordinary brutality, much death and even more international intrigue. Brisk naval warfare is generally associated with that war. However, the Confederacy waged war against the Union off the coasts of New England and South America, and virtually all the ports in between and came remarkably close to winning the Civil War. Another of its hallmarks was the technological advances in the means by which war was waged. One advance was in the area of naval warfare. The war saw the introduction of iron clad ships of war. The abandoning wood in the construction of war ships was clearly illustrated by the ironclads (The Monitor and Merrimack being the most famous examples) and the battles that they fought. Despite the impression that the Civil War was fought primarily on land, the Confederacy, with the assistance of both France and Great Britain, waged a very aggressive maritime battle against the Union. In the Battle of Hampton Roads, the Union’s ironclad USS Monitor faced the Confederacy’s own iron clad, the CSS Virginia. On the 11^th in 1862, the crew of the Virginia scuttled her. In a striking bit of irony, the CSS Virginia had been built using the remains of the Union’s steamship the USS Merrimack (a screw frigate and namesake of the ironclad), which the Union had earlier set on fire in an unsuccessful attempt to scuttle it to prevent its being taken into service by the confederacy’s naval forces.

A girl medical professional! How cute can you get? Florence Nightingale was born on the 12^th in 1872. Obviously, she made many lasting contributions to the nursing field and medicine in general. Perhaps more importantly, she was also the author of a report proving that people admitted to a hospital died at a rate of 90% while those who did not seek hospitalization died at a rate of only 60%. You should remember that the next time you’re tossed into the back of an ambulance for yet another trip to the ICU of your friendly neighborhood hospital. I know that I do.

On the 13^th in 1787, Captain (later Admiral) Arthur Phillip of His Majesty’s Royal Navy pointed the bows of his small fleet of eleven ships into the English Channel, left Portsmouth’s harbor and headed for New South Wales. The voyage gave a very new meaning to the word transportation. The ships, with 11 boatloads of convicts were bound for Australia. Phillip would establish the first European colony on the Australian continent. The site would eventually become the city of Sydney. In the meantime, it would serve as a place to stick all the criminals who were crowding English jails. Following the successful start of the colony, judges could sentence the poor souls appearing in the criminal courts to ‘transportation’ to Australia. Surprisingly, the addition of this sentencing option was probably rather well received because the English jails, particularly London’s notorious Bridewell[xvii] prison, were not really known for being particularly nice and those being sentenced to serve a term of imprisonment more than half a world away from home actually endured improved conditions of confinement.

At 4 p.m. on the 14^th in 1804, in a steady, cold rain a party led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark left Camp Dubois, near present day Hartford, Illinois and headed west. President Jefferson had selected them to head the Corps of Discovery. Their task was to map and explore the vast new lands that the nation had acquired from France in the recent Louisiana Purchase.

[i] Victoria ascended to the throne of Great Britain upon the death of her uncle, King George III, on June 29, 1820. George’s eldest son, the Prince of Wales, had one child who died in 1817. George’s remaining unmarried sons were unable to scramble fast enough to marry and produce an heir to the throne.

[ii] By the time the exhibition closed on October 15, 1851, 6 million people had visited it; roughly, a third of the population of Great Britain had visited it.

[iii] The chief administrator of Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 was Henry Cole . Among his many achievements, the one closest to British hearts was his award-winning teapot.

[iv] Calvin Coolidge formed the FBI on the remains of the Bureau of Investigation, of which Hoover was the sixth director. Hoover took the reins from the fifth director, William J. Burns , who was forced to resign because of his role in the notorious Teapot Dome scandal. That is another story deserving of greater attention than I can give it here.

[v] After Hoover’s death, the rules of the game were changed to insure that no future director could serve for longer than 10 years.

[vi] Shortly before his heart attack and death on January 5, 1933, Coolidge confided to a friend "I feel I am no longer fit in these times." You have to admit that he made a good point.

[vii] Byron is referred to simply as Byron because his full name, George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, just took too long to say. Byron’s daughter, Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace collaborated with Charles Babbage on the development of an analytic engine, a very early attempt at building a computer.

[viii] Lady Caroline Lamb gave this description of Byron. In the course of their affair, Byron would go to extraordinary lengths in his attempts to destroy Lady Caroline’s marriage to the 2^nd Viscount Melbourne.

[ix] What has come to be viewed as Lincoln’s life work, the abolition of slavery , would become the law of the land when the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States constitution, which abolished slavery, was ratified and become law on December 31, 1865.

[x] Fellow American Betsy Metcalf invented a method of braiding straw in 1798. She chose to not patent her process because she didn't want her name being sent to Congress.

[xi] Kies was unable to successfully to defend her patent and she died penniless in Brooklyn, New York in 1837.

[xii] The Led Zeppelin album cover was actually a drawing of the original UPI photograph done by artist George Hardie.

[xiii] In the eighteenth century, the Tower also contained a menagerie, which was open to visitors. The price of admission was the sum of three halfpence or the supply of a cat or dog for feeding to the lions.

[xiv] Victoria Claffin Woodhull managed to make two fortunes. The first one she made touring as a magnetic healer, a venture that was highly successful. Her second fortune came with the help of her benefactor, Cornelius Vanderbilt. With Vanderbilt’s assistance, she opened the firm of Woodhull, Claffin & Company and became one of the first female brokers on the New York Stock Exchange. The brokerage was a family affair. She collaborated with her younger sister Tennessee Claffin. Do not even think about asking me about her first name. What do I know? I didn’t name her. On May 14, 1870, she took the money that she made in the stock exchange, and Victoria and her sister would start a newspaper, Woodhull & Claffin’s Weekly. The paper had a six-year run but is now notable primarily for the fact that in its December 30, 1871 issue it published the first English language version of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto.

[xv] Frederick Douglass was her running mate. Born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, it was as Frederick Douglass that he would achieve fame. Douglass was born into to slavery in 1818 in Talbot County, Maryland. In 1838, using documents borrowed from a sailor, a free black man, he made his way to New York City. Once there abolitionist sympathizers bought Douglass his freedom by paying off the man in Maryland who owned him.

[xvi] The first time a women’s name appeared on a ballot was in the 1968 United States presidential elections when Charlene Mitchell’s name appeared on the ballot as the Communist party’s candidate for President. Mitchell was also the first black person nominated for the post. She didn’t win.

[xvii] Bridewell Prison, in an earlier incarnation, was Bridewell Palace and was a residence used by England’s King Henry VIII.

[xviii] Confirming yet again that God does indeed work in mysterious ways His wonders to perform, also on the 15^th but in 1252, Pope Innocent IV(pic papal bull exstirpanda, which authorized the torture of heretics in the Inquisition. I am certain that God is still scratching his head and asking himself ‘Geez, why did I do this?’

[xix] This is the hospital for the insane from which we get the word bedlam.