Posts Tagged ‘American history’
“Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?…”*
Animals have evolved a variety of defensive techniques– camouflage, tough skins, fierce looks. But as National Geographic explains, olfactory defenses are among the most effective. Consider the hoatzin…
Hoatzins on the Rio Napo in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Photograph by Jared Hobbs, All Canada Photos/Getty Images
Hold your nose and meet the hoatzin, a bird with a number of distinctions, not the least of which is that it smells like fresh cow manure. The animal mostly eats leaves, which it digests in its crop, a pouch some birds have high up in their alimentary canal. It’s the only bird known to digest by fermentation, like a cow. This process is what causes its odor and has earned it the nickname the “stink bird.”
Don’t knock it, though. That stink means that even people don’t want to eat the hoatzin…
More on feral fragrance at “5 Animals With Stinky Defenses.”
* Friedrich Nietzsche
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As we hold our noses, we might spare a thought for Hannah Wilkinson Slater; she died on this date in 1812. The daughter and the wife of mill owners, Ms. Slater was the first woman to be issued a patent in the United States (1793)– for a process using spinning wheels to twist fine Surinam cotton yarn, that created a No. 20 two-ply thread that was an improvement on the linen thread previously in use for sewing cloth.
A waxen Hannah, at the Slaters’ Mill Museum in Pawtucket, RI
Every picture tells a story…
… and some tell more complicated stories than others…
This [1897] chart, digitized by the Library of Congress, depicts major battles, troop losses, skirmishes, and other events in the American Civil War. (Click on the image to arrive at a zoomable version, or visit the LOC’s website.)
The “Scaife Synoptical Method,” advertised at the top of the timeline, aimed to fit as much information as possible into a single chart. Information on Arthur Hodgkin Scaife is scant, but the Comparative Synoptical Chart Company, apparently based in Toronto, also published his “Synoptical Charts” of the “Cuban Question,” English history, and the life of William Gladstone…
Read the whole story at Vault.
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As we concentrate on consolidation, we might recall that it was on this date in 1863 that Union Generals Alexander M. McCook and Thomas Crittenden were relieved of their commands and ordered to Indianapolis, Indiana, to face a court of inquiry following the Federal defeat at the battle of Chickamauga in Georgia (c.f., the chart above). As History. com explains…
Eight days before, the Union Army of the Cumberland, commanded by General William Rosecrans, had retreated from the Chickamauga battlefield in disarray. On the battle’s second day, Rosecrans mistakenly ordered a division to move into a gap in the Federal line that did not exist, creating a real gap through which the Confederates charged, thus splitting the Union army. One wing collapsed, and a frantic retreat back to Chattanooga,Tennessee, ensued. The other wing, led by General George Thomas, remained on the battlefield and held its position until it was nearly overrun by Confederates.
The search for scapegoats began immediately, and fingers soon pointed to McCook and Crittenden. Their corps had been part of the collapsed flank, so Rosecrans removed them from command. Crittenden’s removal stirred anger in his native Kentucky, and the state legislature sent a letter to President Abraham Lincoln demanding a reexamination of the firing. In February 1864, a military court cleared McCook and Crittenden, but their careers as field commanders were over. By quickly removing McCook and Crittenden, Rosecrans had been trying to save his own job. Within weeks after firing the generals, Rosecrans was himself replaced by Thomas.
lithograph by Kurz and Allison, 1890
Greater love hath no man…
50 years ago, Paul Brockmann worked at the seaport in Bremen; when the bales were opened, the workers were allowed to pick out what they liked. Paul selected 10 dresses. He gave them to his then-girlfriend, Margot.
“I was fascinated by the dresses from the ’50s. The petticoats and the wide skirts made a woman look real feminine. And that is what I really liked. When I seen a gal with a dress like that,” he says, “I wanted to get her on the dance floor.”
When the Brockmanns married and moved to America, those 10 frocks emigrated as well. The couple moved from Germany to Ohio to Arizona to California. “And I kept collecting dresses,” Paul says. “With my wife in mind that she’s gonna wear ’em. We went ballroom dancing every week, and I wanted her to have a different dress for every dance.”
By the time they got to Los Angeles in 1988, they had quite a few dresses. “Probably around 25?” he estimates, meaning, of course, “25,000 to 26,000.”
He is 78 now, and Margot is 76. They have two kids, five decades of marriage behind them, and more dresses than they humanly know what to do with…
Indeed, they now have 55,000 dresses. Read the this tale of compulsive couture here; see the dresses here.
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As we stand still for our fittings, we might recall that it was on this date in 1910 that the sailing ship Tonquin left New York with 33 employees of Jacob Astor’s new Pacific Fur Company aboard. Six months later, the party arrived at the mouth of the Columbia River in (what we now know as) Oregon, where Astor’s men established the town of Astoria and began trading for furs with Native Americans– thereby initiating the first major American involvement in the lucrative far western fur trade. A few years earlier Lewis and Clark (whose Fort Clatsop camp on the Columbia was was close to the site of Astoria) had returned East to report that the region was “rich in beaver.”
The Astoria outpost
Age before beauty?…
From the oldest (Japan, 2,673 years old) to the youngest (South Sudan, which just turned 2), the countries of the world, mapped by their ages. The average of the 195 countries assessed: 158.78 years old.
(Click here for a larger interactive version of the map.)
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As we unfurl our flags, we might recall that it was on this date in 1796 that Cleveland was founded, when surveyors of the Connecticut Land Company laid out Connecticut’s Western Reserve into townships and a capital city they named “Cleaveland” after their leader, General Moses Cleaveland. Cleaveland oversaw the plan for the modern downtown area, centered on the Public Square, before returning home– never again to visit Ohio. The first settler in Cleaveland was Lorenzo Carter, who built a cabin on the banks of the Cuyahoga River; the Village of Cleaveland was incorporated on December 23, 1814.
The spelling of the municipality’s name was changed to the now-familiar “Cleveland” in 1831. The most widely-accepted explanation is that The Cleveland Advertiser, an early city newspaper shortened the name to fit on newspaper’s masthead; another version has it that it was the product of a surveyor’s mistake. In any case, of course, the more streamlined spelling stuck.
I dream of genre…
Used to be, a listener had pretty simple choices; record stores and radio stations were organized into a just a few genres: pop, rock, country, jazz, classical… Now, of course, new musical styles and movements emerge seemingly daily. Glenn McDonald is here to help the poor fan navigate the confusion. His interactive “map” of music (a small section of which, above), Hear Every Noise, lets one move through genres– clustered in ways explained here— hear examples of each, then click through to the artists playing under each banner… hours of listening pleasure (and an education in the metastasizing music scene).
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As we tap our toes, we might recall that it was on this date in 1859 that an American settler on San Juan Island, near Seattle, shot the pig of a (British) Hudson’s Bay Company employee and ignited The Pig War, a dispute rooted in the confusion over the boundary between the U.S. and Canada (specifically, the status of a group of islands in the Strait of Juan de Fuca). Militaries from both sides were invoked and the situation escalated so that, by August 461 Americans with 14 cannon stood opposed by five British warships mounting 70 guns and carrying 2,140 men.
The governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island ordered British Rear Admiral Robert L. Baynes to land marines on San Juan Island and engage the American soldiers there under the command of Brigadier-General Harney. Baynes refused, declaring that “two great nations in a war over a squabble about a pig” was foolish. Harney had given his men essentially the same orders: defend yourselves, but do not fire the first shot. For several days, the British and U.S. soldiers exchanged insults, each side attempting to goad the other into firing the first shot; but discipline held. Ultimately the powers-that-be in Washington and London reached a compromise… and the Pig War was resolved with only a single casualty– the pig.
The red line represents Britain’s pre-war boundary claim; the blue line, that of the U.S. The green line is the compromise reached.
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