Posts Tagged ‘American history’
“Clients often ask, jokingly, whether we learn our trade in prison”*…
I spent more than six months shadowing [Charlie] Santore because I wanted to know what the city looks like through the eyes of a safecracker, a person for whom no vault is an actual barrier and no safe is truly secure. There are a lot of safecrackers, I learned, but the good ones, like Santore, live in a state of magical realism, suspended somewhere between technology and superstition. The safecracker sees what everyone else has been hiding—the stashed cash and jewels, the embarrassing photographs. He is a kind of human X-ray revealing the true, naked secrets of a city…
A fascinating profile of L.A.’s preeminent (lock) picker: “Meet the Safecracker of Last Resort.”
* Master safecracker Ken Doyle in a McSweeney’s interview well-worth a read
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As we twist the tumbler, we might recall that it was on this date in 1773 that a group of colonists known as the Sons of Liberty, disguised as Mohawk Indians, boarded three British tea ships and dumped 342 chests of tea (worth 18,000– over half a million dollars in today’s currency) into Boston harbor. The provocation was the Tea Act of May 10, 1773, which allowed the British East India company to sell tea from China in American colonies without paying taxes apart from those imposed by the Townshend Acts— which American Patriots strongly opposed as a violation of their rights. Colonists objected to the Tea Act because they believed that it violated their rights as Englishmen to “no taxation without representation.”
The Boston Tea Party was a significant event in the gestation of the American Revolution. Parliament responded in 1774 with the Intolerable Acts, which, among other provisions, ended local self-government in Massachusetts and closed Boston’s commerce. Colonists up and down the Thirteen Colonies in turn responded to the Intolerable Acts with additional acts of protest, and by convening the First Continental Congress, which petitioned the British monarch for repeal of the acts– and probably more impactfully, coordinated colonial resistance to them. The crisis escalated, and the American Revolutionary War began near Boston in 1775.
The Boston Tea Party, as rendered by Nathaniel Currier
“Museums are places of worship for those whose faith dwells in human stories”*…
This map displays almost 26,000 museums, historical societies, and historic preservation associations in the United States
There are twenty-four history museums and historical societies in the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Even within the confines of downtown, a visitor could peruse the stately home of a nineteenth-century shipping merchant or the much more modest home of an eighteenth-century furniture maker. There are museums dedicated to the history of Charleston, of South Carolina, and of dentistry. And in 2020, the city that once imported and sold more enslaved people than any other city in the United States will be the site of the International African American Museum.
Across the country, museums explore the histories of all kinds of things—states, local communities, religious sects, music, steam engines, the Tuskegee Airmen.
The proliferation of museums of all sizes means that in the United States, one is never very far from history: the average distance between two history museums is only 2.6 miles. Because there tend to be more museums in cities than in rural areas, the “history museum density” of the country is one museum for every 147 square miles (an area about the size of Fayetteville, North Carolina)…
Read more and explore the interactive map at: “Public History.”
* anonymous
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As we ruminate on roots, we might recall that it was on this date in 1775 that, at the request fo the Second Continental Congress, the U. S. Marine Corps was founded, as the first two battalions of Marines were requested at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia. (Tun Tavern was quite the convening spot in that period: among other “foundings,” Benjamin Franklin raised the Pennsylvania militia there and it is regarded as the “birthplace of Masonic teachings in America.”)
Commemorating this event, the National Museum of the Marine Corps was opened in Triangle, Virginia (near the Quantico Marine Base) on this same date in 2006.
Sketch of the original Tun Tavern
“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life”*…
‘Tis the season: best-of lists, and some leisure time in which to put them to use…
Here’s NPR’s Best Books of 2015— 260 volumes that one can filter by type or interest.
* Mark Twain
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As we settle in, we might recall that it was on this date in 1865 that U.S. Secretary of State William Seward issued a statement verifying the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The amendment abolished slavery with the declaration: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
Thomas Nast’s engraving, “Emancipation,” 1865
“His whole life has been one continued insult to good manners and to decency”*…
A man whose wit was matched only by the looseness of his tongue, the combative John Adams quickly acquired a hefty reputation for articulate jabs and razor-sharp put-downs at the expense of his allies and (numerous) rivals alike, including some of the most celebrated figures in American history (Bob Dole once described him as “an eighteenth-century Don Rickles”)…
American history comes alive: “7 of John Adams’ Greatest Insults.”
* John Adams, on Benjamin Franklin
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As we hail the heckler, we might recall, in fairness to the heckled, that it was on this date in 1752 that Benjamin Franklin and his son tested the relationship between electricity and lightning by flying a kite in a thunder storm. Franklin was attempting a (safer) variation on a set of French investigations about which he’d read. The French had connected lightning rods to a Leyden jar; one one their experiments electrocuted the investigator. Franklin– who may have been a wastrel, but was no fool– used used a kite; the increased height/distance from the strike reduces the risk of electrocution. (But it doesn’t eliminate it: Franklin’s experiment is now illegal in many states.)
In fact, the French experiments had successfully demonstrated the electrical properties of lightning a month before; but word had not yet reached Philadelphia.
The Treasury’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing created this vignette (c. 1860), which was used on the $10 National Bank Note from the 1860s to 1890s
“Who questions much, shall learn much”*…
From the practical and concrete (“How does WiFi work?”) to the philosophical (“How am I able to ask this question?”), explanations for humans… For example,
“What does math not explain?”
Math doesn’t explain why math works. And it never, ever will.
In the late 1800s, mathematicians were doing some soul-searching. They’d been solving problems and proving theorems since forever, but none of them really knew why these methods worked. And this was getting kind of awkward.
See, math is just a bunch of rules for turning true statements into other true statements. Assume some stuff, follow the rules, prove other stuff. And the crazy thing is: the stuff you prove is always, always true. Or at least, it’s never once been wrong.
Why?
Proving that the rules of math work was, for a while, one of the biggest unsolved questions in math. In 1900, David Hilbert made a list of the problems he wanted everyone to focus on for the next century. He had 23 problems, and this was one…
Read more of this answer, and others– “complicated stuff explained at a 12 year-old level”– at Romy Asks.
* Francis Bacon
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As we satisfy our curiosity, we might send gleeful birthday greetings to Joseph Lee; he was born on this date in 1862. The scion of a wealthy Boston family, Lee introduced the first contemporary neighborhood playground in the U.S., then supported the spread of the playground movement across the country. He is, thus, known as the “Father of the American playground movement.”
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