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

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When two people meet and fall in love, it is not terribly surprising that they should choose to marry. An announcement of marriage will generally be met with sincere congratulations from the families of the bride and groom. Occasionally the announcement of a wedding will be met with more questions than plaudits. One such wedding occurred on the 16^th in 1836. That was the day that Edger Allan Poe married Virginia Eliza Clemm. The questions had much to do with the pair’s difference in ages, Poe was 27 and Clemm was 13. However, they had much more to do with the fact that Virginia was Edgar’s first cousin.

Bartholomew Roberts, a Welshman, was born on the 17^th in 1682. His name at birth was John Robert. Why he assumed the name Bartholomew is puzzling. Perhaps he felt that John Robert didn’t have enough zing to it. In any event, as children tend to do, he grew up and as an adult made a career choice to become a pirate. His motto appears to have been ‘Better being a commander than a common man’. He even managed to secure an appropriate nickname for his chosen life’s work, though I’m uncertain as to why he chose Black Bart, which somehow strikes me as more appropriate a sobriquet for a 19^th century American Old West bandit than it does for an 18^th century British maritime outlaw.

Apparently being God’s messenger on Earth is not all that it is cracked up to be. Just think about it for a moment. Consider that Father Devine, David Koresh, Jim Jones, Marshall Applewhite, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and scores of others have all met with singularly unpleasant ends. At first the only woman that sprang to my mind was Tammy Faye Bakker, she of the ludicrous make-up. Then it occurred to me that I had overlooked someone. I had failed to consider a dainty woman born at the end of the nineteenth century. How could I have overlooked the saintly, sweet, demure Aimee Semple McPherson? On the 18^th in 1926, she disappeared from a very lovely beach in Venice, California.

At times, it seems as if the weather gets just a bit odd. Charles Hoy Fort[i] made a career out of collecting, among other things, abnormalities in the weather and today the Fortean Society continues his work. On the 19^th in 1790, the skies over New Jersey, New England, and parts of Canada became so dark that candles had to be lit at noon. Instead of taking into consideration, the widespread forest fires that were raging all over New England at the time, many people concluded that the darkness heralded the end-times spoken of in the Bible’s Book of Revelation. Abraham Davenport, a member of the state of Connecticut’s legislature had this to say about it: “I choose, for one, to meet Him face to face, no faithless servant frightened from my task, but ready when the Lord of the harvest calls; and therefore, with all reverence, I would say, let God do his work, we will see to ours. Bring in the candles.” The event has come to be known as New England’s Dark Day. I think the mere fact that I am writing this is clear and convincing proof that God did not pick that particular moment to destroy His creation. But hey, you never know.

If you are contemplating buying a home in the current rather dismal real estate market today, you are of course, looking into the area in which your home will be located. It has often been said that there are only four things that you need to consider: location, location. To that should be added a fourth - insurance coverage for your new home. If you are looking to by a home in Codell, Kansas however, the four things become insurance, insurance, insurance, and insurance. Did I hear you ask why that is? The answer is very simple - on the 20^th in 1916, 1917 and 1918 the town was struck by tornadoes. No, not tomatoes, tornadoes!

As everyone should recognize, justice takes time. In the nation’s Supreme Court, it takes just a little bit longer. Alfred Moore was born on the 21^st in 1755. He started out as a judge in North Carolina but in 1799 made the jump to the Supreme Court of the United States. In his five years on the bench, Moore wrote exactly one opinion. This is not to say that he did not serve with distinction. He did. Standing 4’ 5” tall, he has the distinction of being the shortest judge to serve in the Supreme Court.

It should be apparent to even the most casual of observers that the world of politics can at times be just a tad contentious. I think, however, contemporary politicians have a long way to go before they surpass their predecessors. On the 22^nd in 1856, Senator Preston Brooks[ii] of South Carolina, beat Senator Charles Sumner[iii] of Massachusetts with a cane in a hallway of the United States Senate.

Our modern political apparatus seems to be a bit plodding at times. Personally, I yearn for simpler times when a person could see immediate results from their actions. There was a time when national political agendas were dealt with in very expeditious ways. Take for example the Second Defenestration of Prague[iv], which took place at Prague Castle on the 23^rd in 1618, when two Imperial Governors, Wilhelm Graf Slavata and Jaraslav Borzita Graf von Martinicz, and their scribe Philip Fabricius were simply tossed out of the Castle’s windows. The three tumbled 50 feet on to a large pile of horse poop. This act ushered in the Thirty Years War. Apparently, the people of Prague were getting lazy with the passage of time, because in the First Defenestration of Prague, on July 30, 1419, seven of the town’s council members were tossed out windows onto the raised spears of the assembled rabble. Messy? Generally speaking, quite messy. Effective? Perhaps. There can be no denying however the fact that these tactics produce plainly observable results in a timely manner. Nevertheless, upon quiet, sober reflection, I think that I am safe in saying, without fear of contradiction, that defenestration of political rivals probably is not a particularly good idea. Unless, of course, someone should double dare you to do it.

Benjamin Nathan Cardozo was born on the 24^th in 1870. In time, he would become a well-respected jurist who had a law school named after him. The list of important decisions he would write is far too long to be included here. I have always thought that someone who achieved as much as a man like Cardozo did had to have been incredibly gifted. Apparently, I was wrong. Cardozo’s own words explain his success. He said “[i]n truth, I am nothing but a plodding mediocrity—please observe, a plodding mediocrity—for a mere mediocrity does not go very far, but a plodding one gets quite a distance. There is joy in that success, and a distinction can come from courage, fidelity and industry.”

On the 25^th in 1961, President Kennedy convened a joint session of Congress. By itself, this would hardly be a remarkable event because for the most part, what Presidents have to say is generally neither terribly helpful nor interesting. His reason for holding the session however assured JFK’s place in the pantheon of truly great visionary presidents. During the session, he revealed his belief “that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” In documents from his administration that have only recently been de-classified, it has been revealed that the man Kennedy had in mind was none other than Lyndon Baines Johnson[v].

Darwin[vi]’s place in history is undeniably secure. His Origin of Species[vii] dramatically turned the world upside down. While today his theories seem a commonplace, when he published his work the effect was truly astounding. Did Darwin’s work spring fully formed from his pen on to the written page? I think not. In the late 1700s Scotsman James Burnett, Lord Monboddo[viii], proposed the theory that humans were evolved from primates, specifically the orangutan. Monboddo also believed that humans were born with tails but that midwives removed the appendages at birth. While in his sunset years he would disavow this theory, you have to give him credit for at least thinking it all through. Lord Monboddo died on the 26^th in 1799.

If the planet, yes our planet, is ever consumed by a mushroom cloud, you can thank John Douglas Cockcroft. He was born on the 27^th in 1897. He was a very bright and talented English physicist. In 1928 be began working with a similarly gifted Irish physicist, Ernest Walton. Isn’t it nice that these smart guys had someone to hang around with? The pair began fooling around, trying to see how they could annoy protons. Sometimes when people hang out with the wrong crowd they get into all kinds of trouble that they had not thought about. It’s the same old story, you try marijuana because all the other kids in school are and you want to hang out with the cool kids. The next thing you know, you are addicted to heroin and chopping people into little bits. That sort of the way it works with physicists. Some guy in the lab starts bombarding inert gases with protons and you want to try it too. Before you know it, you are bombarding lithium with protons and you’re splitting the atom[ix], ultimately giving the world the atomic bomb. Were these guys grounded for a whole week? Nope. Were they even sent to bed without dinner? No! For some reason they were both given the Nobel Prize for physics.

The Hippocratic Oath, taken by all physicians, reads in part, [n]ever to do deliberate harm to anyone for anyone else's interest. I wonder how a certain physician, born on the 28^th in 1738 was able to reconcile his advocacy of a form of capital punishment to which his name would be given. I speak of course of Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. Guillotin was very strongly opposed to the very idea of capital punishment but felt it necessary for France to develop a more humane manner in which the sentence of death could be carried out. On October 10, 1789, the good doctor strongly advocated the development of a machine to carry out the death sentence. His intentions were undeniably honorable but when the French Revolution morphed into the Terror, and people were being beheaded with the Guillotine at the rate of 35,000 a month, I am certain that he must have regretted not keeping his big mouth shut.

Rhode Island[x] may have been the first of the United States to outlaw slavery but it was the last of them to ratify the Constitution and became the last of the original 13 colonies to join the United States. It didn’t do that until the 29^th in 1790.

Amelia Earhart[xi] by virtue of her many long-distance airplane flights is well known. Well because of that and because she disappeared over the Pacific and was never seen again. On December 28, 1920,[xii] Amelia went on her first airplane ride as a passenger. Earhart’s days as a serious flier began in October 1922 when she set a record for altitude achieved[xiii]. She followed this with the impressive string of firsts for which she is rightfully well known. However, she was not the only woman to engage in feats of such derring-do. Born on the 30^th in 1907, Elly Beinhorn Rosemeyer was almost ten years younger that Amelia, but she managed to offer some stiff competition in the girl-flier game. In 1931, she began long-distance flights between her home in Germany and West Africa. In March 1932, Elly became the second woman to fly solo, non-stop, from Europe to Australia. No, the first woman to do that was not Earhart; it was England’s Amy Johnson[xiv], when she landed in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia on May 24, 1930.

[i] Fort was born on August 6, 1874 in Albany, New York. When he turned 18, he left New York to tour Europe so that he in his words could “put some capital in the Bank of Experience.”

[ii] Brooks, from South Carolina, had become quite angry by a speech that Sumner had made that criticized the pro-slavery violence in Kansas during the Bloody Kansas period. It had been Brooks’ original plan to challenge Sumner to a duel but was talked out of that by a colleague who pointed out that the etiquette of dueling required the participants to be of the same social standing. Feeling that Sumner was on par with a common drunkard, Brooks quickly abandoned that option.

[iii] Charles Sumner (was the senator from Massachusetts and the one of the states’ most ardent opponents of slavery.

[iv] This defenestration resulted in the Thirty Years War. I’ll bet you can’t guess why it is called that. Here is a hint: it lasted from 1618 to 1648.

[v] Johnson’s father Samuel Ealy Johnson, Jr. served 5 terms in the Texas legislature and ruffled a lot of feathers by his constant attacks, made on the floor of the legislature, on the Ku Klux Klan in Texas

[vi] John Edmonstone taught Darwin taxidermy and ignited Darwin’s interest of the diversity of life in the rainforests of South America. Edmonstone was a freed black slave from Guyana, South America. John had learned taxidermy under the tutelage of Charles Waterton, a very wealthy, very eccentric, aristocrat and explorer.

[vii] In his foreword to Origin of Species, Darwin credits Aristotle not, as many in Scotland did, Moboddo, with hinting at the idea of natural selection

[viii] Moboddo was no slacker in the smarts department. He graduated from Marischal College, Aberdeen in 1729. He continued his studies at both Edinburgh University and the University of Groningen. At Edinburgh University, he was given a law degree and was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1737.

[ix] The pair did not technically split an atom. What they managed to do was transmute lithium into helium and other chemical elements. That is really just shuffling the deck and rearranging things but saying that they split the atom makes for a much more dramatic press release and gets the idea across as well as insuring that they got the attention of the Nobel committee.

[x] I know that the USA didn’t exist until 1776. I also know that I’m pushing it here. On May 18, 1652, the governing body of the area that was destined to be Rhode Island passed a law abolishing slavery.

[xi] Amelia was taught how to fly by Anita ‘Neta’ Snook Southern (, the first female aviator in Iowa and the first female student accepted to the Curtiss Flying School in Virginia. She taught Amelia to fly using a surplus Curtiss JN-4, an open cockpit bi-plane.

[xii] She attended a fair in Long Beach, California and from the moment the airplane, piloted by Frank Monroe Hawks, lifted off the field, Amelia was convinced that she had to fly. On June 2, 1933, Hawks would set the west-east transcontinental airspeed record. He flew from Los Angeles, California to Brooklyn, New York in 13 hours, 26 minutes and 15 seconds.

[xiii] Earhart reached an altitude of 14,000 feet.

[xiv] Amy Johnson left Croydon, England on her flight to Australia on May 5, 1930 and landed in Darwin, Australia on May 24. I realize that I could have put her in the main body of this thing. I could probably have made the whole issue about her, but I found Rosemeyer first, so I consigned Amy to the notes section. So sue me. In the Second World War, Johnson served as a pilot in Britain’s Air Transport Auxiliary, ferrying warplanes and military personnel from the UK to pretty much anywhere in the world except to aircraft carriers.