THE GILDED AGE

GILDED AGE

ROBBER BARON PARTIES –   One rich lady gave a dinner party where the guests sat on horses at the dining table.  The party cost $250 per person.  Most of the money was for the specially made trays that attached to the horses.  At another party, the guests were shown into the banquet hall where a large table had a sand box on it.  Each guest was given a silver pail and shovel like what you had at the beach as a kid.  The entertainment was to dig in the sand for precious gems like diamonds, rubies, and emeralds.  You got to keep whatever you uncovered, plus the pail and shovel.  Shenkman p. 174

HEROIN COUGH SYRUP –  In 1898, the Bayer Company introduced its new cough cure – heroin.  This was not the first time a dangerous drug was put in medication.  Until 1906, there was no government regulation of foods or medicines.  It was caveat emptor – “let the buyer beware”.  There were cocaine tablets for nerves and sore throats, morphine could be found in baby syrups, and alcohol was a major ingredient in most medicines.  Shenkman p. 176

CHARLES GOODYEAR, DEBTOR –  Charles Goodyear knew that India rubber would become pliable when heated, but what ingredient to make it useful?  He tried all sorts of things such as soup, ink, salt, and even creamed cheese.  Once he thought he got it right and sold hundreds of pairs of rubber shoes, only to have them melt in the heat when worn outside.  He was perpetually in debt and once sold his kids textbooks for food.  His family lived in poverty and survived on potatoes and wild roots at times.  He sometimes spent time in debtor’s prison.  Finally, he combined rubber, sulphur, and heat in a process called “vulcanization” to create the rubber we use today.  But he still did not strike it rich.  He went to France for the Great Exposition in Paris where his rubber products were a big hit and he gained the notice of Emperor Napoleon III.  This did not keep him out of debtor’s prison in France, however.  Eventually he got out and returned to America.  Before he died in 1860, he was denied renewal of his patent on rubber.  Instead of leaving his children millions, his death left them hundreds of thousands of dollars in debts.  Whitcomb p. 42-3

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON’S JOB –  After emancipation, the young Booker T. Washington was determined to get an education.  When he went to school for the first time, he noticed all the other students had last names.  He had always been called just Booker.  On the spot he chose Washington because it sounded grand.  Later, he learned that his mother had given him Taliaferro as his last name.  He used it as his middle name.  Going to school was a problem, his family was poor and needed for him to bring in some income.  He got a job packing salt into barrels.  He worked from 4 A.M. to 9 A.M., went to school, and then returned to the salt mine for two more hours of work every day.  Whitcomb p. 148, 160

GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER’S EDUCATION –  One day in 1878, Mariah Watkins found a fourteen year-old African-American boy sleeping in her wood pile.  She took him in and enrolled him in the local one room school house.  He did chores and studied until he felt he had learned all he could and he moved on, taking odd jobs and getting more schooling.  At age 25, he was accepted into Highland University, but was turned away at the door when they realized he was black.  Five years later, he attended all-white Simpson College in Iowa. He paid for his tuition with his only $12.  He earned money by washing cloths in two tubs he bought on credit.  After he graduated, he went on to teach at Iowa State and then famously at Tuskegee Institute.  Whitcomb p. 149

SUSAN B. ANTHONY VOTES –  Suffragist Susan B. Anthony was famous for voting (along with fifteen other women) in Rochester, N.Y.  She was put on trial where she was found guilty and fined $1, which she refused to pay.  What is less known is that the only way she and the other women were able to vote that day was they convinced three voting inspectors to allow them to by convincing them that the new 14^th Amendment enfranchised women.  When the inspectors refused to pay $25 fines, they were jailed.  Anthony’s friends convinced President Grant to pardon the men and they were reelected by the all-male voters.  Whitcomb p. 195

TOM THUMB MARRIES –  Twenty-five inch tall Tom Thumb was one of the most popular attractions at P.T. Barnum’s American Museum.  When he got engaged to a little woman named Lavinia Bump, the wedding was the social event of 1863.  It was photographed by the most famous photographer of the 1800s –  Matthew Brady.  President Lincoln sent Chinese fire screens as a wedding gift and later hosted the couple at the White House.  The Thumbs settled down in a $30,000 house furnished with size-appropriate furniture.  They were happily married for twenty years.  Whitcomb p. 219-220

TWEED THE KIDNAPPER –  William “Boss” Tweed was the most infamous political boss of the Gilded Age.  His Tweed Ring ran New York City and stole millions of taxpayers’ money.  In 1875, Tweed was arrested for embezzling $6 million.  Since he could not pay the $3 million bail, he was put in jail.  However, he was allowed to go out for walks and even visit his home for dinner.  One night, he told his two guards he was going upstairs to talk to his wife and disappeared.  He ended up in Spain.  He might have lived there for years if it had not been for a cartoon.  Famous political cartoonist Thomas Nast had made a career of exposing the corruption of the Tweed Ring.  A cartoon depicting Tweed in prison stripes, holding two children, and threatening them with a club, ran in Spanish newspapers.  The Spanish authorities assumed it fingered Tweed as a child kidnapper and deported him back to America where he spent the rest of his life in prison. Whitcomb p. 225, 279

Library of Congress

CARVER’S RANSOM –  When he was just a baby, George and his mother was  kidnapped by raiders during the Civil War.  His master, Moses Carver, offered a race horse as a ransom and hired a Union scout named John Bentley to track down the kidnapper or kidnappers.  Six days later, Bentley returned with the barely alive baby, but not his mother.  Bentley was given the race horse.  Carver’s wife nursed the baby back to health, but George grew up frail with a persistent cough that caused his adult voice to be high and squeaky.  Whitcomb p. 236 

TOM THUMB MEETS THE QUEEN –  In 1844, Tom Thumb visited London and was a big hit.  He did a stage show that included impersonations of Napoleon, Goliath, and Cupid.  Queen Victoria invited him to Buckingham Palace.  Upon leaving, it was etiquette to depart by backing out of the queen’s presence.  You were not to show your back to the queen.  As Tom and P.T. Barnum were backing up, Barnum’s longer legs kept opening up gaps between the two.  Tom solved the problem by occasionally turning and running to catch up and then resuming his backpedaling.  This odd movement excited Queen Victoria’s poodle who proceeded to attack Tom.  Tom defended himself with his cane, much to the amusement of the crowd.  Later, the queen apologized for her dog’s behavior.  Whitcomb p. 251

BELL’S TOY –  Alexander Graham Bell offered his telephone patent to William Orton, president of Western Union Telegraph Company, for $100,000.  Orton turned down the offer saying “what use could this company make of a toy?”  So Bell was forced to form American Telephone  and Telegraph which became one of the biggest companies in the world.  Some experts consider Bell’s telephone patent to be the most valuable ever.  And Orton’s decision is considered one of the stupidest.  Whitcomb p. 291

UNCLE CLEVE GETS MARRIED –  President Cleveland married his partner’s daughter, who was twenty-eight years younger than him.  Cleveland had known Francis (called Frank) since her birth to his law partner.  She called Grover “Uncle Cleve”.  He doted on the little girl.  When Oscar Folsom died in 1875, Cleveland became executor of his estate and like a guardian to Frank.  In 1885, Francis visited President Uncle Cleve in the White House from college.  When she left, Cleveland asked her mother for permission to write to her and the romance proceeded quickly.  They were soon engaged, although the public was not told until five days before the wedding.  Many thought he was marrying Frances’ mother!  They were married in the Blue Room of the White House (the first and only Presidential wedding in the White House).  He was 49 and she was 21 (making her the youngest First Lady).  When asked about the age difference, Cleveland quipped that he “was waiting for his wife to grow up”.  They had four children, the first of whom was born between Cleveland’s terms.  The nation loved cute little baby Ruth and she gave her name to a candy bar, not Babe Ruth.  Frank p. 6 and wikipedia 

BAD MEDICINE –  There were a lot of strange medical practices in the 19^th Century.   Doctors practiced bloodletting (sometimes called “leeching” because actual leeches were used to draw the blood), purging, sweating, and freezing.  Blistering involved the theory that the body would handle only one pain so you could substitute a lesser pain by using a blistering agent like acid to a part of the body.  Or you could use a red hot poker.  Amputations were common for bullet wounds that hit bones.  Doctors were called ‘sawbones”.  Trepanning was drilling holes in the skull to relieve pressure on the brain.  Electric shocks were used to cure everything from constipation to malaria.  The shocks could be self-induced by way of brushes, corsets, hats, or belts.  Tonics were popular for curing a variety of problems.  Ayer’s Cherry Pectoral cured coughs, colds, asthma, and consumption.  Many of the tonics had high doses of alcohol and/or opium.  The Bayer Company developed heroin and put it in cough remedies.  Cocaine was also a popular ingredient, including in remedies for children like coughs and sore throats.  Most of the tonics advertised a multitude of ailments that could be cured by one tonic.  Some of the ailments were fictional, like “internal slime fever” or “sudden death”.  Sometimes the tonics (called “snake oil”) were sold by traveling medicine shows that lured customers through bands, jugglers, dancers, and magicians.  A thriving industry was born when patent medicine producers discovered mail order sales.  The producers perfected newspaper and magazine advertising, product packaging (without ingredient labels, of course), and direct mail sales.  If you didn’t want to wait for the mail, you could go the local drug stores soda fountain and order some mineral water as a curative.  Or Coca Cola with its cocaine to cure your head ache.  Plunges Again pp. 17-20

VAUDEVILLE –  Vaudeville was a type of entertainment that was similar to a variety show.  A typical show might include:  dancers, magicians, comics, jugglers, minstrels, actors performing Shakespeare, acrobats, ventriloquists, and drunken dogs.  Some of the acts became famous, like Houdini and Will Rogers.  Others went on to great fame in the movies, like the Marx Brothers, Bob Hope, Mae West.  And then there were the acts like the Cherry Sisters (“America’s worst act”), Fink’s Mules, Nelson’s Cats and Rats, Peg Leg Bates (a female dancer), and 12 Speed Mechanics (who would assemble a car in two minutes).   The acts were usually around 15 minutes long and there might be as many as 8 in a show.  2-5 shows per day were common.  Vaudeville troupes traveled a circuit similar to circuses.  A show usually stayed in a town for a few days.  Vaudeville was popular from the 1880’s to the 1920’s.  Movies basically stole the audiences and many performers made the transition to Hollywood.  Plunges Again  pp. 112-118 

BOSS TWEED –  The Society of St. Tammany was founded in 1789 in New York City.  It started as a patriotic and charitable organization for tradesmen.  It appealed to immigrants with food, shelter, and jobs.  It soon used its good will with immigrants to organize immigrant voters.  Eventually, Tammany Hall controlled the NYC government.  William Tweed rose in the organization by bribing officials and buying votes to put his men into government positions.  He and his cronies became known as the Tweed Ring and he became known as “Boss” Tweed.  He influenced state legislators to shift state power to NYC, meaning Tammany Hall.  It made millions from graft on city projects like parks and sewers.  Many of the project contracts went to Tweed businesses.  Tweed used city gangs to intimidate his opponents and control the immigrant vote.  He controlled judges and the police and bought favorable coverage in the newspapers.  Everything was going fine until a county bookkeeper, who was upset with his share of graft, turned over incriminating evidence about the machine to the New York Times.  The newspaper published articles chronicling the corruption in the building of the Tweed Courthouse.  It was supposed to cost $500,000, but taxpayers ended up paying $13 million.  Cartoonist Thomas Nast drove a stake into the reputation of the Tammany Hall by depicting it as a voracious tiger.  He drew Tweed as a villainous, bloated tyrant.  Tweed was put on trial for forgery and larceny.  After the first trial ended in a hung jury tainted by jury tampering, prosecutor Samuel J. Tilden assigned a cop to each juror, a cop to watch the cop, and a private detective to watch both.  Tweed was sentenced to 12 years, later reduced to one year.  Plunges Again  pp. 345-349

THE FIRST WOMAN TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT –  Victoria Woodhull had a tough childhood.  Her father was a small-time criminal and the family lived in poverty.  Starting at age 13, she and her sister would conduct seances and turn the money they earned over to her father.  She grew up believing in spiritualism and magnetic healing.  She also was a strong supporter of sexual freedom after her first failed marriage to an alcoholic abuser.  She met Cornelius Vanderbilt and became friends.  She would give him stock advise based on contacts with the ghosts of Demosthenes, Napoleon, and Josephine.  Vanderbilt shared the large profits with her.  She and her sister opened their own business, making her the first female stockbrocker.  She wanted to lead a social revolution to end the mistreatment of women.  She demanded that women be allowed to get out of abusive marriages.  She became the first woman to testify before the House Judiciary Committee.  She argued that the Constitution already allowed women to vote.  They didn’t listen.  In 1872, she became the first woman to run for President.  Her party was the Equal Rights Party.  She spent election day in jail for “obscenity” after her newspaper published an expose about a adulterous preacher.  Plunges Again 444-45

CHEWING GUM –   Native Americans chewed resin from spruce bark.  Early Americans chewed paraffin.  In the late 1860s New York inventor Thomas Adams was visited by deposed Mexican dictator Santa Ana.  The ex-tyrant was chewing pieces of the sapodilla plant.  He told Adams the “gum” was called chicle.  Adams got an idea and put out a product he called “Adams New York Gum – Snapping and Stretching”.  His first flavor was licorice.  Later, he invented a gum-making machine.  Uncle p. 56

THE HOT DOG –  The ancient Babylonians stuffed  spiced meat into animal intestines to produce the first sausages.  Sausages are mentioned in “The Odyssey”.  They are mentioned in the oldest Roman cook book where they are called “salaus” which became “sausage”.  In the Middle Ages, sausages were popular throughout Europe.  Each region had its own flair.  In Austria, Vienna sausages were popular.  The word “wienerwurst” became weiner.  In Frankfurt, Germany, a local butcher shaped his sausage like his pet dachshund.  The sausages were called “dachshund sausages” and were eaten with sauerkraut and mustard, but not on a bun.  The dachshund sausages were brought to America by German immigrants.  In the 1890’s, Charles Feltman sold “dachshund dogs” at Coney Island, NYC.  Later, he opened a restaurant where they were sold as “frankfurters”.  In 1904, a Frankfurt native was selling “dachshund sausages” at his booth at the St. Louis “Louisiana Purchase Exposition”.  Because of the messy nature of the sausages combined with sauerkraut and mustard, he provided gloves for his customers.  When he ran out of gloves, he got a nearby baker to produce sausage sized rolls.  Now the frankfurter had a bun.  In 1906, a cartoonist named Tad Dorgan went to a baseball game at the Polo Grounds in NYC.  A vendor was peddling “red hot dachshund dogs”.  Dorgan drew a cartoon of a dachshund in a bun.  Since he was not sure of the spelling of dachshund, he called his drawing a “hot dog”.  The name caught on.  Uncle 1 p. 182-183

THE HAMBURGER –  The Tartars, who fought Mongolians, would shred poor quality beef and cook it.  It had migrated to Germany by the 14^th Century where it became known as “Hamburg steak”.  In the 1880’s, a German immigrant brought “hamburger steak” to America.  It was also called “Salisbury steak” after English Doctor J.H. Salisbury prescribed beef three times a day for his patients.  The bun was added at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.  Uncle 1  p. 183

VULCANIZATION –  After Charles Goodyear’s hardware store went bankrupt in 1830, he was in and out of debtor’s prisons for the next few years.  When he was not in prison, he was inventing.  In 1834, he invented a rubber inner tube, but no one wanted it because rubber would melt in heat and crack in cold.  Someone need to invent a process to vulcanize rubber.  He worked at home in his kitchen using a rolling pin, marble slab, and his wife’s pots and pans.  After five years of failure, he accidentally dropped a mixture of rubber and sulphur on a hot stove.  In 1854, he got a patent for vulcanization of rubber, but the patent was challenged and other inventors stole his idea.  He spent all his money defending himself in court.  He died poor in 1860.  Uncle 4  pp. 124-125

DONKEY AND ELEPHANT –  In 1828, Andrew Jackson was running for President.  His opponents called him a “stubborn jackass”.  The Democrats decided to adopt the donkey as their symbol.  They put it on campaign posters and flyers.  In 1874, there were rumors that President Grant might run for a third term.  Political cartoonist Thomas Nast had heard a false story about wild animals escaping from the Central Park Zoo.  This gave him the idea to draw the Republican Party as a rampaging elephant in a cartoon that ran in Harper’s Weekly.  Uncle 4 p. 195

COCA-COLA –  In 1886, Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton was working on a non-alcoholic, “nerve medicine” to sell in his drug store.  He boiled a concoction of herbs, coca leaves, and kola nuts in his back yards.  He then added tap water to the “syrup”.  One day a customer with a stomach ache asked for “fizzy water” to be added to it.  Pemberton was in poor health so he sold the recipe for the syrup to a collection of drug store owners for $350.  He died in 1888.  Asa Candler bought out his fellow druggists and registered the Coca-Cola trademark.  He was great at marketing and would give gifts like clocks and calendars with the Coca-Cola logo to stores that bought the syrup.  By 1892, he was selling over 35,000 gallons of the syrup per year.  Candler resisted bottling the drink for years for fear of lawsuits from exploding bottles.  He changed his mind after a Mississippi candy store owner had success with bottles.  Candler opened Coke’s first bottling plant five years later.  In 1915, Coke hired an Indiana glass company to design a distinctive bottle.  It was loosely based on the shape of the cola nut.  Uncle 4  pp. 207-208

PEPSI-COLA –   There were many copycats of Coke and usually Coke was successful in suing them out of business.  In 1893, a North Carolina pharmacist named Caleb Bradham came up with “Brad’s Drink” which he renamed Pepsi-Cola to imply pepsin which was good for stomach ailments.  His company went bankrupt due to increases in sugar prices.  The rights were bought, but this company also went bankrupt in 1931.  Charles Guth bought the rights for $10,500.  He hated Coke because it would not give him a bulk discount even though he bought a lot of syrup to sell in his candy stores.  When people asked for Coke, he would sell them Pepsi.  Coke sued and lost.  He too was going bankrupt in the Depression and tried to sell out to Coke, but they turned him down.  Desperate, he cut the price from a dime to a nickel and since it was already being sold in bigger bottles than Coke, it was a cheaper alternative for depressed Americans.  When the Depression ended, Pepsi found hard times as it was considered a low-scale beverage.  By 1949, it was near bankruptcy again when a marketing wizard Alfred Steele (who had been fired by Coke) rebooted the company with a new logo (the current circular design) and endorsements from celebrities like Joan Crawford (Steele’s wife).  It helped that Vice President Nixon and Soviet Premier Khrushchev chilled with a Pepsi after their famous “Kitchen Debate”.  Uncle 4  pp. 209-213

DR PEPPER –  Dr (no period since the 1950’s) Pepper was invented by a pharmacist named Charles Alderton as a health tonic.  This happened in Waco, Texas in 1885.  It was called “Dr. Pepper’s Phos-Ferrates”.  No one knows where the “Dr. Pepper” came from.  The original formula contained pepsin (as did Pepsi).  Lists 213

EDISON AND THE LIGHT BULB –  Edison did not invent the light bulb.  An incandescent light bulb was invented by British inventor Joseph Swan in 1845.  The incandescent light worked by using electricity to heat a filament that would then glow with white light.  The problem was the filaments would melt or not last long.  By the 1870’s, arc lighting was being used in lighthouses and as street lighting.  In arc lighting, a spark “arcs” across two electrically charged rods.  It was not practical for other uses because it gave off too much energy and thus too much light.  Edison took on the task of inventing a cheaper, more efficient type of incandescent lighting.  At first, he concentrated on a switch that would turn the filament on and off when it got too hot.  It was a dead end, so Edison brought in Princeton physicist Frank Upton to reboot.  Upton focused on the filament and eventually came up with one that burned for forty hours.  It is a myth that Edison discovered this filament by himself in his laboratory and then watched it burn for the forty hours.  This was supposedly on October 21, 1879, which became known as “Electric Light Day”.  The story was invented by a newspaper reporter.  Uncle Lost pp. 101-102

CHANG AND ENG –  Chang and Eng were the original “Siamese twins”.  They were born attached at the chest by a band of skin in Siam (Thailand) in 1811.  There names meant “right” and “left” in the Thai language. They were discovered by an American sea captain and put on display in Europe and America.  P.T. Barnum bought their contract and they became a star attraction.  They got married to two unrelated women and had 22 kids between them.  They died within hours of each other in 1874 at age 63.  Uncle Lost 269

THE WAR OF THE CURRENTS –   In 1882, Edison attempted to parlay his invention of the light bulb by creating the Edison Electric Light Company to provide direct current to homes and businesses.  The problem was direct current lost voltage over distance so the power plants had to be located near the customers.  Edison had a monopoly on providing power for NYC, but it required over 100 power stations scattered throughout the city.  Edison’s big competitor was George Westinghouse.  Westinghouse felt alternating current was the future of electric power. In 1885, he bought a patent for a transformer that would boost the current to a very high voltage and then transformers located on poles would reduce the power before it entered homes.  Now power plants could be located outside of cities and near coal supplies and/or water sources.  Westinghouse set up plants in Buffalo, New York and in the South and West, but he wanted NYC.  As early as 1888, Edison put out a pamphlet warning about the dangers of AC.  That same year, Nicolo Tesla invented an AC motor that Westinghouse bought the rights to.  Edison’s next move was to hire “Professor” H.P. Brown, a self-proclaimed expert on electricity.  He preached that AC was dangerous and there should be a law against any voltage above 300 traveling through wires.  To prove their claim, Brown and Edison’s top engineer Arthur Kennelly conducted experiments electrocuting animals.  They would pay neighborhood kids $.25 for every animal they brought in.  They brought the press in for a gruesome electrocution of a large dog.  Around this time New York was looking for an alternative to lynching condemned criminals.  Hangings could go wrong with too loose a noose resulting in long moments of strangulation or too tight a noose resulting in decapitation.  Edison suggested electrocution by way of AC thinking the horror of seeing a human being electrocuted by something that could be coming into their homes would cause the public to turn against AC.  New York passed a law in 1888 switching the death penalty to electrocution via AC.  On August 6, 1890, William Kemmler (who had murdered his girlfriend with the blunt end of an axe) was the first to be put in the electric chair.  His lawyers had argued that electrocution was “cruel and unusual punishment”, but Edison had convinced the judge that it was “humane”.  Kemmler was hit with 17 seconds of current, but was still alive.  It took another 72 seconds to complete the job in front of a horrified audience.  However, the public just shrugged about the danger and decided they wanted the cheaper, more efficient AC coming into their homes.  In 1893, Westinghouse was awarded the contract to light the Chicago World’s Fair and the next year he got the contract to construct the first hydroelectric plant at Niagara Falls.  And that’s why we have AC and not DC powering our electric appliances.  Uncle Lost pp. 548-550, 591-593, 647-649

INVENTION OF THE TELEPHONE –  On Feb. 14, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell filed a patent for the telephone, just hours before Elisha Gray filed a similar patent for a phone using a liquid transmitter.  Some historians believe Bell was given access to Gray’s idea and he incorporated it in his invention.  Three days later, Bell was working in his laboratory, when according to legend, he spilled acid on himself.  Instinctively he cried out to his assistant:  “Watson, come here.  I want you!”  His assistant, Thomas Watson, came running from another room where he was working on the receiver.  That was the moment Bell realized his invention worked.  Bell tried to sell the invention to the Western Union Telegraph Company for $100,000, but it turned down his “electric toy”.  Bell found investors and created his own telephone company.  In 1877, Charles Williams of Somerville, Massachusetts installed the first phone in his home.  Since it was the only phone in town, he had one placed in his office so his wife could call him.  Originally phone calls were placed by calling an operator.  At first, teenage boys were hired, but they tended to be rude so the telephone company went exclusively with adult females.  In 1879, phone numbers were first suggested, but the public found the idea too impersonal so it took a while for  the idea to catch on.  For a long time after numbers were adopted, homes shared “party lines” which meant they shared the same line.  Each home would have a different ring to tell you if the call was for you.  Another problem was what to say when you answered the phone.  Bell suggested the nautical “Ahoy”, but most people would say “Are you there?”  It was Edison that pushed for a simple “Hello”.  Uncle 10^th Anniversary pp. 222-223

POTATO CHIPS –  Cornelius Vanderbilt was dining at a restaurant called Moon’s Lake House in 1853.  He asked the waiter to bring him some fried potatoes. He had tasted them in France.  He described how to prepare them.  Before this in America, potatoes were either baked, boiled, or mashed.  Oil was too expensive for frying.  When his order arrived, Vanderbilt sent them back because they were too large and not crisp enough.  The next batch was also sent back.  The chef George Crum got angry and cut the potato paper-thin and then added salt.  Vanderbilt loved them.  Uncle Great Big p. 168

EDISON’S CIGARS –  Edison was having trouble with people taking his expensive Cuban cigars off his desk.  He got fed up and complained to a friend who suggested he pull a prank by having a cigar maker use cabbage leaf to make a box of cigars for him.  A couple of weeks passed by and Edison complained to his friend about it taking so long for the cabbage cigars to arrive.  When they asked his manager about it, he said the cigars had arrived the previous week and he had packed the box in Edison’s suitcase because he was going on a trip.  Edison:  “ I smoked every one of those damned cigars myself!”  maroon book p. 11

EDISON OUTKICKS FORD –  Thomas Edison and Henry Ford were good friends.  They were once eating dinner at a fancy hotel.  Their hotel had an expensive chandelier above the table.  The chandelier featured large glass globes over the lights.  In the middle of the meal, Ford looked up and bet Edison he could knock off one of the globes with a foot.  Edison was game so the table was moved and he began to stretch to get ready for his jump.  He made a mighty leap and knocked one of the globes off.  On his turn, Ford barely missed and lost the bet.  For the rest of the meal, Ford had to listen to Edison taunting him:  “You are a younger man than I, but I can outkick you!”  maroon book p. 12

LEGAL HEROIN –  In 1898, Dr. Heinrich Dreser, the head of research for Bayer Company, derived heroin from morphine.  (One year later, he invented aspirin.)  He envisioned heroin as a non-addictive substitute for morphine.  It was first used in cough medicines, but was also used as a painkiller and even as a cure for morphine addiction!  Soon it was an ingredient in remedies for headaches and menstrual cramps.  It took twelve years for doctors to determine that it was highly addictive and ruined lives.  In 1914, Congress passed the Harrison Narcotics Act which basically ended the use of heroin in medicines.  In 1924, Congress went all the way and banned heroin in the U.S.  In 1956, all legal supplies were destroyed, but by then the Mafia had gotten into the profitable heroin trade.  maroon p. 30 

CARNEGIE DONATION –  Andrew Carnegie donated millions to charity. One day a donation seeker knocked on the door of his mansion.  He was shown into Carnegie’s office and made a strong case for his charity, but Carnegie responded by telling him he was tired of all the people begging him for money.  The donation-seeker was not to be put off and continued to make a case for his charity.  Finally, Carnegie told the man that if he could find someone to donate the other half of what he needed, Carnegie would match it.  The man agreed and left, but soon returned.  Carnegie was upset and asked the man if he did not understand what the deal was.  Carnegie:  “Where did you get half the money in so short a time?”  Donation-seeker:  “From your wife.”  Carnegie chuckled and reached for his check-book.  maroon p. 33

STATUE OF LIBERTY –  When Frederic Auguste Bartholdi was sculpting “Liberty Enlightening the World”, he need a model.  He chose to fashion the arms after his girlfriend Jeanne-Emilie Baheux.  For the face, however, he felt she was too beautiful.  He wanted someone more mature.  He chose his mother Charlotte.  maroon p. 36

ADDLED EDISON –  Thomas’ father thought he was stupid.  When his first grade teacher reinforced this by calling him “addled”, he ran away from school after only three months.  He never returned.  He was home-schooled by his mother who had been a teacher.  It seems to have worked out for him.  Whitcomb 148

EDISON’S FIRST CHECK –  In 1869, the twenty-two year old Edison arrived in New York City looking for a job.  He got one with a telegraph company and was soon fixing equipment that no one had been able to fix.  He went on to make other improvements and inventions to improve the efficiency of the company with no extra compensation.  One day he invented an improved stock ticker that so impressed the head of the company that the man asked Edison how much he owed him for all his improvements.  Edison was thinking to ask for $3,000, but asked the boss how much he thought would be reasonable.  He was given a check for $40,000,  He used the money to set up his first manufacturing shop.  maroon 115

ROCKEFELLER’S ESTATE –  John D. Rockefeller had an estate at Pocantico Hills, New York.  It had 75 buildings, a garage for 50 cars (although he drove the same car for fifteen years), 70 miles of paved roads, a private golf course, and 1000-1500 employees.  Lawrence 113

MORGAN’S NOSE –  J.P. Morgan had a skin condition that caused his nose to be large and ugly.  He was self-conscious about this and there is a famous picture of him trying to hit a Gilded Age paparazzi with his cane.  One day he was scheduled to visit Mrs. Dwight Morrow for tea.  Mrs. Morrow was extremely worried about what her young daughter Anne (the future Mrs. Charles Lindbergh) might do when she saw the nose.  She tried to prepare Anne by describing the nose and begging her not to say anything about it, not to point at it, not to be shocked by it, etc.  When the door bell rang, Anne ran to open it and as her mother sweated, Anne was a perfect angel.  She made no reference to the nose and her mother began to feel less tense.  Things were going swimmingly well until the tea arrived.  As she poured a cup for Morgan, Mrs. Morrow asked:  “Do you take nose in your tea?”  Lawrence 113

ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL –  His father wrote books on proper speech.  He and his brothers learned to make a dog “speak” by manipulating their vocal cords.  At age 21, he got a job teaching the deaf in a school in Boston.  One day, he read a book by a German scientist, but he misunderstood his description of using electricity to vibrate tuning forks. He though the scientist was talking about transmitting sound from one tuning fork to another.  He went to a local electrical shop to learn about electricity from its owner, Thomas Watson. Watson became Bell’s assistant in developing his “harmonic telegraph”.  Lawrence 128-130

LAZY ALVA –   Thomas Alva Edison was called Alva by his family and Al by his friends.  As a boy, he hated chores.  He used poor health as an excuse to get out of most of his jobs.  One day when his father ordered him to plant six acres of turnips, he finished in 2½ hours by planting the turnips fourteen feet apart.  He was not a big believer in hygiene.  He took only one bath a week and did not care about his appearance.  He would spit his chewing tobacco on the floor.  When asked why he didn’t use the spittoon, he said if he spit on the floor, he couldn’t miss.  He did not believe in sleep and got by with twenty-minute cat naps.  Sometimes his workers would find him in a closet curled up on some newspapers like a cat.  He was almost deaf so he could fall asleep quickly and almost anywhere.  He only was interested in inventing practical things that would make him a profit.  After his first job as a telegraph operator, he made his first invention – an electric vote counter. It was not a success, but his next, a stock ticker, had him on his way to fame and 1,093 patents.  Lawrence 130-132

THE EVOLUTION OF THE AUTO –  The car was first invented in Europe, but it took Americans to make it affordable.  In 1894, Elwood Haynes invented a “horseless carriage” that could go 6 MPH.  The next year George Selden received the first patent for a gasoline-powered auto.  He did not build it, he was happy to get royalties on every car built.  Until 1911, when Henry Ford won a case in court ending his monopoly. Charles Duryea is sometimes called the Father of the Automobile.  His car was a buggy with a water-cooled engine in the rear and rubber tires. It could go 18 MPH.  He founded the Duryea Motor Company in 1895 and built 13 cars the next year, but the business was not a success.  Ransom Olds built the first steam carriage.  His Olds Motor Works had the first auto assembly line and used standardized parts.  He built his factory in Detroit.  Henry Ford was a mechanic in Detroit.  He put together his “quadricycle” from parts of old steam carriages, bicycles, motorcycles, buggies, and scrap metal.  In 1903, he started Ford Motor Company and five years later invented the iconic Model T.  Lawrence 133-136

ROBBER BARON EXTRAVAGANCES

                –  Mrs. Martin Bradley hosted a costume ball that cost $250,000

                –  guests at a party were shown into the banquet hall and handed a sterling silver pail and shovel like you might have at the beach;  on the huge table was a sand box;  the guests were encouraged to dig for precious jewels like diamonds, rubies, and emeralds and could keep what they found, along with the pail and shovel

                –  a wife had a birthday party for her dog and gave him a $15,000 diamond collar

                –  some Robber Barons smoked cigarettes made from $100 bills

CARNEGIE AND THE COLLECTION PLATE –  One Sunday Carnegie was traveling through the rural South when he had his chauffeur stop at a little Baptist church for mass.  He sat in the back pew and was the only white person in the church.  The rest of the congregation were poor blacks.  When the collection plate was passed around, the people put in nickels and dimes, whatever they could afford.  When it got to Carnegie, he tossed in a $100 bill, causing the usher’s eyes to light up.  He immediately brought the collection to the priest.  A hush dropped over the church as the priest could be seen whispering to the usher and holding up the $100 bill.  He then stepped to the podium and said:  “Brothers and sisters, God has been good to us today.  We have collected $3.37 to do his work.  And if the $100 bill the white man put in is real, God has been great to us!”

VAUDEVILLE JOKES

                –  Marriage is like a three ring circus:  engagement ring, wedding ring, suffering

                –  A Scotsman’s wife was running a fever of 105 degrees so he put her in the basement and used her to heat his house

                –  A prisoner was being led to his execution by firing squad through a pouring rain.  He complained to his executioner:  “What brutes you are to make me walk through this rain!”  The executioner responded:  “What are you complaining about?  We have to walk back through it.”

THE ELEVATOR –  Elisha Otis (a descendant of Revolutionary hero James Otis) was a master mechanic.  He invented a safety lift for a warehouse, but the company went out of business.  He was headed for California in 1852 to seek gold when a furniture maker commissioned two of his elevators.  He used a steam engine to raise and lower the elevator.  He started his own company.  He made a big splash at an exposition when he theatrically cut the rope holding his elevator with an ax and the elevator only plunged three inches, thus proving to the shocked crowd that the contraption was safe.  Unfortunately, he was not a good businessman and when he died at age 49, he left his two sons in debt.  They proved to be superior businessmen and the company prospered.  By 1873, they had installed over 2,000 elevators.  The invention was crucial to the boom in skyscrapers.  It made higher floors in hotels more popular.  In 1900, the Otis company bought the escalator.  Over the years, the medical profession backed off on claims that the sudden acceleration and deceleration was unhealthy.  Originally, cities established speed limits of 40 feet per minute.  This was raised to 1,200 in the 1930s.  Today, the standard is 2,000 feet per minute.  Amazing 25-26

THE HAYMARKET AFFAIR –  The workers were protesting for an eight-hour working day instead of their current 12-14 hour days.  Things were peaceful until the Mayor of Chicago, who had come to show his support, left.  At this point, the police began to disperse the crowd.  Someone threw a bomb into the police, killing eight.  The police opened fire on the crowd, injuring many.  Police fanned out through the city arresting eight anarchists. Only two had been at the rally.  All eight were found guilty and seven were sentenced to death.  One committed suicide the night before his execution.  He bit down on a blasting cap that he had hidden in his jail cell.  Four were hanged.  In 1893, the Governor pardoned the three that were serving life imprisonment.  Historians have tried to determine who actually threw the bomb.  The leading candidates are two anarchists, Rudolph Schnaubert or George Meng, both of whom had been at the rally.  Neither was arrested.  Amazing 179-180  

CIVIL WAR PRESIDENTS

                 –   Hayes –  enlisted after Fort Sumter;  he was appointed Major in a volunteer infantry regiment;  he fought in the Battle of South Mountain;  he had a horse shot from under him in the Shenandoah Valley Campaign

                –  Garfield –  he raised a regiment;  fought at Shiloh;  he led a charge that evicted the Confederate army from Kentucky;  fought in the Battle of Chickamauga;  left the army when he was elected to Congress in 1863

                –  Arthur –  was quartermaster general (in charge of supplies) for the state of New York;  rose to Brigadier General

                –  Cleveland –  hired a substitute because he had to support his ailing widowed mother

                –  Harrison –  raised a unit of volunteers;  participated in Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign;  rose to Brigadier General

                –  McKinley –  enlisted as a private;  was a sergeant at Antietam where he had a dangerous job of driving a wagon;  promoted to Lieutenant by his commanding officer – Rutherford Hayes;  eventually reached major

                –  Amazing 356-357

VICTORIA WOODHULL –  She was a proponent of women’s suffrage and equal rights.  Before she got into politics, she and her sister followed in their mother’s footsteps by becoming clairvoyants.  Her first marriage ended in a rare wife-initiated divorce due to her husband’s alcoholism.  Her second marriage was to a man who agreed with her about free love.   They moved to New York City where the sisters opened a salon where they continued to practice clairvoyance.  One of their customers was Cornelius Vanderbilt, who made them wealthy with his stock tips.  The sisters opened their own stock brokerage, becoming the first female stock brokers.  In 1870, she became the first woman to run for President.  The sisters published the first weekly newspaper run by women.  It concentrated on women’s issues.  In 1871, she became the first woman to testify before a congressional committee.  She argued that the 14^th Amendment provided for women’s suffrage.  In 1872, she became the first woman nominated for President when the Equal Rights Party tabbed her.  Her espousal of free love hurt her chances.  She got in trouble when her newspaper published an expose about the infidelities of Reverend Henry Ward Beecher.  The sisters were jailed for libel and obscenity.  She spent election night in jail.  They were found not guilty, partly because the expose was true, but court fees impoverished her.  She moved to England, married a banker and restored her finances.  Amazing 395-397

TYPHOID MARY –  Mary Mallon immigrated to America from Ireland at age 15 in 1883.  She started as a domestic servant and moved up to cook.  She cooked for some of the wealthiest families in New York City.  Apparently, during her years as a domestic servant she had what she thought was the flu, but was actually a mild case of typhoid.  This made her a carrier.  When several members of banker Charles Warren’s family contracted the disease, he brought in a sanitary inspector who discovered that 7 out of 8 previous employers of Mary had family members get typhoid.  When he visited Mary at her current job and asked for urine and blood samples, she ran him off with a knife.  After all, she was perfectly healthy.  The inspector got the police to cart her off to a hospital where tests revealed she was a carrier.  She was quarantined in a cottage on the hospital grounds.  A few years later, after promising never to work as a cook again, she was freed.  However, cooking was her only way of making a living, so she soon broke her promise.  In 1915, an outbreak at Sloane Maternity Hospital led to over twenty cases and two deaths.  The infections were traced to the cook, Mary Brown.  When they realized Brown was Mallon, Mary was put back in the cottage for the rest of her life.  Amazing 419-421

LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD –  Interesting facts about the Statue of Liberty:

                –  it was originally called “Liberty Enlightening the World”

                –  it was sculpted by Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi;  the structural engineer was Alexandre-Gustave Eiffel

                –  the face is supposedly Bartholdi’s mother Charlotte

                –  it was started in 1875 and completed in 1884 , reassembled in America and dedicated in 1886

                –  a smaller version (35 feet tall) was dedicated to Americans living in Paris and is still on an island in the Seine River a mile from the Eiffel Tower

                –  the crown has 25 windows and 7 spikes (one for each of the seven seas)

                –  the tablet has the date July 4, 1776 in Roman numerals

                –  it is 152’ from the base to the torch and 305’ to the tip of the torch

                –  there are 192 steps from the ground to the top of the pedestal and 354 more to the crown

                –  the index finger is 8 feet long

                –  the sandal size is 879

                –  from 1886-1902 it was a functional lighthouse

                –  a new torch was put on in 1986

Amazing 499-500

TO THE EGRESS –  P.T. Barnum was having a problem in his New York museum of oddities.  People would come in and wouldn’t want to leave.  He solved the problem by putting a sign “TO THE EGRESS” above the exit door.   Fuller 98

EDISON’S TURNSTILE –  Edison was giving a guest a tour of his home, which had all sorts of modern conveniences.  As the guest left he had to pass through a turnstile which was hard to push through.  When the guest complained about Edison having such a modern home, but a stiff turnstile, Edison explained that every time a guest pushed through the turnstile, it pumped eight gallons of water into a tank on the roof.  Fuller 199-200

CARNEGIE AND THE SOCIALIST –  Carnegie was debating with a visiting socialist.  The socialist was arguing that it was unjust for one man to have so much wealth.  Wealth should be equally distributed.  Carnegie summoned his secretary and whispered in his ear.  Later, the secretary returned with a paper listing all of Carnegie’s assets.  Carnegie reached for an almanac and did some calculating.  Then he reached in his pocket and gave the socialist 16 cents.  “Here is your share of my wealth.”  Fuller 367

I WILL RUIN YOU –  Cornelius Vanderbilt once sent the following telegram to a business rival:

                “You have undertaken to cheat me.  I will not sue you for the law takes too long.  I will ruin you.”

                                Fuller 381

THE “TELEPHONE REPEATER” –  Edison helped Bell’s invention by inventing the transmitter, but he had no confidence in the telephone.  He felt it would be too expensive for the average American.  But what if they could use it like the telegraph.  You would record a message and then go to a telephone exchange to send your message.  He called the invention “the telephone repeater” and was shocked when it worked the first time he tried it.  He said “Mary had a little lamb” into the microphone and heard it played back to him.  The machine did not use disks, it used cylinders, but it was essentially like a record player.  He did not see it as entertainment, however.  He saw it as a replacement for letter-writing and stenographers.  He refused to recognize its potential, even after it turned out to be affordable.  In 1894, he finally put a record player on the market, but it took a while for it to catch on because people preferred the cheaper alternative of paying a nickel to listen to songs on a jukebox.  Shenkman 147-8

FROZEN FISH –  In 1912, Clarence Birdseye was on a fur-trading expedition in Labrador.  He decided to go ice-fishing in 20 degrees below zero weather.  It was so cold that whenever he would pull a fish out of the water, it would instantly freeze.  When he returned to camp and put the fish in a pail of water, they revived.  This gave him the idea for preserving foods, but it took a while to put it into effect.  In 1925, he marketed the first frozen food – fish.  Shenkman 203-4 

TOM THUMB  –  In 1842, P.T. Barnum hired four year-old Charles Stratton who was a little person standing 25 inches tall.  Barnum renamed him “General Tom Thumb”.  He toured with the circus doing a variety of things. He sang and danced.  He impersonated Napoleon and Cupid.  He became an international celebrity after a tour of Europe in 1844.  Tom Thumb performed for Queen Victoria.  In 1863, Barnum put on the ultimate publicity stunt when he arranged the marriage between Tom and a little woman named Lavinia Warren who was 2’8”.  At the time, Tom had reached his adult height of 2’11”.  Barnum sold tickets to the event for $75 each and 2,000 people attended.  On their honeymoon, the couple had dinner with the Lincoln’s at the White House. Tom died of a stroke in 1883 at age 45. Lavinia remarried and lived until 1919.    Lists 73

EARLY BASEBALL RULES – 

                –  Until 1883, pitchers could not move their feet when they delivered the ball and they had to pitch underhand.  A batter could request a high or low ball. 

                –  There were no called strikes originally.  The batter could wait for the pitch he wanted.  In 1879, it was decided that nine balls would equal a walk.  It was in 1889 that the standard four balls was put in.

                –  Until the 1920s, pitchers could put spit, mucus, and petroleum jelly on the ball.

THE GREAT CHICAGO FIRE –  On Oct. 8, 1871, the most famous fire in American history broke out in Chicago.  Before it was over it had created $200 million in damages and cost the lives of 300 people.  90,000 were left homeless.  The city was ripe for a fire due to a long drought.  There had recently been 700 small fires.  In a case of bad timing, a lumberyard caught fire on Oct. 7 and took 17 hours to put out.  It left the firemen exhausted and not in the best shape when the big fire broke out 12 hours later.  To make matters worse, the fire department was given the wrong address and the second fire engine to arrive did not have enough fuel to run its water pump.  The neighborhood was completely wooden and the fire quickly spread to Conley’s Patch which was a slum area.  Early on a gasworks exploded plunging the city into darkness.  The business district was supposedly “fireproof” with its brick and stone buildings, but the roofs were wooden.  The fire jumped the river to reach the north side.  There was widespread looting, including by escaped inmates from the courthouse jail.  The fire needed air which created gale-force winds.  When the waterworks went up, there went the water for fire hoses.  The fire did not burn out until Oct. 10 when a drizzling rain finished it.  Lists 420-421

HOUDINI’S DEATH –  Harry Houdini was 52 and touring with his act.  As part of the act, he would allow an audience member to punch him as hard as he could in his stomach.  Houdini would tighten his stomach muscles and not get hurt.  After a show in Montreal, Houdini was relaxing in his room when a college student was shown in to meet him.  Without warning the young man punched Houdini several times without warning, leaving Houdini on the floor in pain.  Coincidentally, Houdini had been diagnosed with appendicitis a few days before but had disregarded it.  The assault resulted in peritonitis (stomach inflammation), but Houdini continued his tour.  In Detroit a week later, he developed a fever of 104 degrees and collapsed on stage.  He finished the show, but was then rushed to the hospital, where he passed away.  Lists 460

EDISON’S VACATION –  Edison was a workaholic who did not sleep much.  When he was working on the light bulb, it was all about the perfect filament.  He tried everything he could think of.  Finally, he discovered that carbonized bamboo gave off the longest light.  He knew this because he sat in his laboratory for forty hours waiting for it to burn out.  It was because of this type of obsessive work schedule that his wife became concerned with his well-being.  One day she suggested that he go on a vacation.  When Edison asked where, she suggested he go to the place he most wanted to be.  Edison said okay and promised that he would go tomorrow.  The next day Edison was in his favorite place – his laboratory.  Humes 77

THE QWERTY KEYBOARD –  Christopher Sholes knew he had something special when he invented the modern typewriter in the 1860’s, but there was a problem.  The machine used metal rods with the letters engraved on the end.  When you pressed the key, the rod would swing up and imprint the letter on the paper.  The keyboard was set up in alphabetical order, naturally.  Unfortunately, when the typist would type fast, the rods would often entangle.  This happened when the two letters were next to each other.  Sholes did a study of which letters appeared the most next to each other in words and organized the letters on his new keyboard with the most often used letters as far from each other as possible.  The new keyboard, which is still used even though we gave up the metal rods long ago, got its name from the first six letters on the upper row – QWERTY.  Strange 209 

EDWIN DRAKE –  The Father of the Petroleum Industry died broke.  Drake did not discover oil.  “Rock oil” (as opposed to “vegetable oil”) had been seeping from the ground for centuries.  The problem was it did not seep much and people assumed it was because there was not much below the surface.  The best you could hope for would be a seep (like a pool) where it collected in some quantity.  There was one at Titusville, Pa. that produced 3 barrels a day, but that was not very profitable.  Some had tried drilling a hole to bring underground oil up, but inevitably water infiltrated the hole and would cause it to collapse.  Drake’s breakthrough was to insert a “drive pipe” as he drilled down to prevent water seepage.  Soon, he was producing 35 barrels a day at that same site.  Unfortunately, Drake did not patent his innovation and he speculated in the oil industry at the same time that his invention had caused a plunge in oil prices due to increased production.  He ended up begging friends to give him money to keep his family from starving and he died poor.  Uncle John’s Fully Loaded 73-74

THE TWEED COURTHOUSE –  In 1858, the County of New York decided it needed a new courthouse.  It budgeted $250,000 (about $5 million today).  Unfortunately for taxpayers, William “Boss” Tweed and his political machine known as Tammany Hall controlled politics in New York City.  The Tweed Ring saw the project as a good way to line their pockets.  Contracts were given out to friends who were willing to pay the machine kickbacks.  In other words, they would bid way above what their cost plus profits would be for a job and then pay the surplus back to the machine.  For instance, one businessman submitted an invoice for $350,000 of carpets.  The carpets actually cost $13,000.  A furniture maker charged $179,000 for three tables and forty chairs.  A man dubbed the “Prince of Plasterers” submitted a bill for $133,000 for two days work (and later billed $1 million for repairs).  By 1871, Tweed and his cronies had embezzled $13 million (equivalent to $230 million today) from a total of $15 million paid by the taxpayers.  Purchasing Alaska had cost the U.S. $7 million.  Uncle John’s Fully Loaded 112-113

WHAT’S IN A NAME?  George Eastman invented the first affordable camera, but did not name it for himself.  He wanted a name that was short, energetic, could not be misspelled, and meant nothing.  He loved the letter K because it is a strong letter so he started with it and then played around until he got Kodak.  People’s I  354-5

HETTY GREEN –  Hetty inherited $10 million from her father.  She built it up to the point where she was the wealthiest woman in the world.  She did this through shrewd investments and living a very frugal life.  When she married millionaire Edward Green, she made him sign a prenuptial agreement so he couldn’t have access to her money.  They separated several years later and she kept building her fortune (he went bankrupt).  She lived in a low rent apartment and wore the same old clothes every day.  When her son broke his leg, she tried to nurse him at home.  That wasn’t working so she dressed him in rags and brought him to the charity hospital.  The doctors recognized her and demanded payment.  She immediately took her son home and went back to nursing him on her own.  Eventually, he had to have his leg amputated.  Peoples I 215-6

THE EVOLUTION OF BASKETBALL

                November 6, 1861 was the birthday of the Father of Basketball. James Naismith was born in Canada.  He moved to the U.S. to become a physical educator.  He was in graduate school at Springfield College in Massachusetts when his professor, Luther Gulick (the Father of Physical Education), assigned his class the task of inventing a non-violent game that could be played indoors in bad weather.  Later, one of those days came along, and Naismith remembered the assignment.  He asked the janitor to find some square baskets. He came back with peach baskets.  They were nailed on the railing of the balcony above the gymnasium floor.  It happened to be ten foot high.  The ball was a soccer ball.  The game was an immediate hit and by 1905 it was established as the number one indoor participation sport.  In the beginning, Naismith created 13 rules, which have undergone a lot of changes over the years.  Here is the evolution of the game:

1. Since Naismith envisioned the game as recreation for PE classes, the number of players was not set. As many as 50 played in the early days.  Nine each side was common.  By 1897, five was standard.
2. In 1895, wire mesh backboards replaced walls. By 1904, wood came in and glass in 1909.  A two- foot gap from the wall was added so players would stop running up the wall for layups.  In 1939, the gap was expanded to 4 feet.
3. In 1892, wire rims replaced the peach baskets. Nylon nets came in around 1912.
4. Naismith wanted the game to be physically exerting, so when the ball went out of bounds, whoever touched it first kept possession. This created problems because when it went into the balcony, there was a mad rush up the stairs to get it.  Some tried hoisting teammates over the railing.  To stop the chaos, chicken wire was put up along the sidelines.  The game was called “the cage game” and players became known as “cagers”.  This created another problem as players would bump each other into the wire.  Eventually it was ruled that the team that touched the ball last lost possession when the ball went out of bounds.
5. There was no mid-court line until 1932 so stalling was very common since you could use the whole court. In 1933, the ten second rule was added to force teams to advance the ball into the front court.  And the shot clock got rid of stalling in 1954, but not until 1985 in college!
6. Originally, each goal counted one point. The ball had to stay in the basket (it took a while for the bottom of the basket to be open). Someone was stationed on the balcony to retrieve the ball, which didn’t happen often.  The first game ended 1-0.   It went to two points in 1896.  The three-pointer did not arrive until 1977 for the NBA and 1980 for the NCAA.
7. At first, there was no dribbling. You advanced the ball by passing it.  You could take a few steps when you caught it on the run.  Dribbling arrived in 1909.
8. Three consecutive fouls by one team resulted in a point. The fouls were basically the same as today.  Free throws were introduced in 1894.  They were taken from 21 feet.  The next year it was moved to 15 feet.
9. The three-seconds in the lane rule ended very rough play in the lane in 1936. And in 1944 goal-tending ended the stationing of a tall guy in front of the goal to swat away shots.
10. The first dunk was in 1944. Bob “Foothills” Kurland, one of the first seven-footers, was playing for Oklahoma A&M.  He found himself under the basket with the ball.  He jumped up and stuffed it.  Dunking did not become common until the 1960s.  When Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) made it look easy, college banned it from 1967 to 1977.

https://medium.com/@OfficialNBARefs/how-has-basketball-changed-over-125-years-here-are-the-13-original-rules-a3e35d98962

https://hooptactics.net/premium/basketballbasics/bb8rulesevolution.php

https://springfield.edu/where-basketball-was-invented-the-birthplace-of-basketball

https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2018-07-26/story-behind-first-known-dunk-college-basketball-history

NELLIE BLY BEATS PHILIEAS FOGG (AND ELIZABETH BISLAND)

                Nellie Bly was the first investigative reporter.  She had famously masqueraded as a mentally ill woman to go undercover in an insane asylum for ten days, among other sensational stunts for the New York World newspaper.  By 1889, she was the most famous female reporter in the U.S., but her popularity was waning due to competition from other “stunt girls”.  So she proposed a trip around the world to beat the fictional record set by Jules Vernes’ Phileas Fogg in his 1873 novel “Around the World in Eighty Days”.  At first, her editor was appalled by the idea of an unchaperoned woman travelling alone and thought a man should do it instead.  When Nellie told him to go ahead and she would make the trip for another newspaper, he backed down.  She left on Nov. 14, 1889 on the steamer “Augusta Victoria”, carrying one suitcase containing underwear, a dressing gown, a tennis blazer, slippers, three veils, and assorted items.  The 25-year old fought off seasickness and arrived in London in seven days.  A stop in Amiens, France was not on the itinerary, but she could not pass up an invitation from Jules Verne.  They had a nice visit and he wished her well.  It was then on to Italy and through the Suez Canal.  Along the way she sent short dispatches by cable and longer stories by ship.  She wrote about Japanese fashion, Italian cuisine, and Egyptian alligator-hunting.  In Hong Kong (where she bought a monkey), she learned that she was in a race with Elizabeth Bisland.  Bisland was the literary editor for Cosmopolitan magazine.  Bisland had been strong-armed into setting off in the opposite direction from New York City the same day Nellie left.  Bly was not fazed. From Japan, she sailed to San Francisco where her newspaper had a single car train ready to whisk her across the country.  She was greeted by cheering crowds along the way.  Arriving on Jan. 25, 1890, she had been gone 72 hours, 6 hours, 11 minutes, and 16 seconds.  She beat Bisland by four days.  She had covered 24,899 miles and proved a feisty female could beat a fictional man.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/nellie-blys-record-breaking-trip-around-world-was-to-her-surprise-race-180957910/

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/52745/nellie-blys-72-day-trip-around-world

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Around_the_World_in_Seventy-Two_Days

THE WITCH OF WALL STREET

Henrietta Robinson was born on Nov. 21, 1834.  She came from a wealthy Quaker family.  She learned business and finance from her father and grandfather.  At age 13, she took over as accountant for her family business.  At age 20, her father bought her an expensive wardrobe of dresses to attract wealthy suitors.  She sold the dresses and invested in government bonds.  She did eventually marry Edward Green, a wealthy businessman.  She insisted he sign a pre-nuptial so he could not touch her money.  Hetty had inherited $10 million from her father and maternal aunt.  Not content with most of her aunt’s fortune, she sued for all of it claiming to have an earlier will that negated the official will.  Five years later, a court determined Hetty had forged her aunt’s signature.  This woman really loved money.  She built up her inheritance to the point where she was the wealthiest woman in the world.  She did this through shrewd investments in real estate, stocks, and bonds.  She was not an industrialist like the Robber Barons.  She was an accumulator of money.  She became the wealthiest woman in American and the most famous miser.  During the Panic of 1907, wealthy men had to come hat in hand to get loans.  She became known as the “Witch of Wall Street”.    She lived a very frugal life.  She lived in a low rent apartment with her son and daughter.   She wore the same old black dress every day.  When her son broke his leg, she tried to nurse him at home.  That wasn’t working so she dressed him in rags and brought him to the charity hospital.  The doctors recognized her and demanded payment.  She immediately took her son home and went back to nursing him on her own.  Eventually, he had to have his leg amputated.  When she died in 1916, her estate was $100 million. 

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hetty-Green

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/peculiar-story-hetty-green-aka-witch-wall-street-180967258/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetty_Green

FACTS ABOUT MARK TWAIN

1. He was born two-months premature on November 30, 1835 as Samuel Langhorne Clemens. His home town was Florida, Missouri.  His father was a self-educated lawyer who ran a general store.  At age 4, the family moved to Hannibal, Mo.  His father died when Samuel was 11 of pneumonia.  He was forced to go to work.
2. His first job was as a printer. He moved around including to New York City and Philadelphia.
3. At age 22, he started his career on steamboats and became a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River. He got a job for his brother, but a boiler explosion killed him.  He head to find other work when the Civil War shut down the steamboat business.
4. When the Civil War broke out, he joined a Confederate militia unit. After two weeks of training, the unit disbanded because a Union force led by Ulysses S. Grant approached.  Later, Twain was instrumental in publishing Grant’s memoirs which saved Grant financially and made a lot of money for Twain, too.
5. Clemens moved to Nevada to mine for silver. He failed, so he got a job as a reporter for a newspaper.  This was the first time he wrote anything.  He took the pen name Mark Twain based on the riverboat slang for two fathoms (twelve feet) which indicated a safe depth of water.  Before this he had used other pen names like W. Epaminondas Adrastus Blab and Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass.
6. He moved on to California to escape a duel. He bounced around.  One day in a saloon, he heard the story of a frog-jumping contest.  Later, he wrote it up as “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog”.  It was published on Nov. 18, 1865 and got national attention.  He retitled it as “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.”
7. His most successful book was his first – “The Innocents Abroad”.  It was based on letters he sent to newspapers from a trip Europe, Egypt and the Holy Land.  It was a big hit partly because of a rave review from an anonymous critic –  Twain himself.
8. He published “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” in 1876. It introduced Huckleberry Finn who was based on a poor, uneducated boy with a good heart that he knew growing up in Hannibal. “Huckleberry Finn” was published in 1885 and within a month was banned by a library for bad language and indecency.  Nobody had a problem with its racism until the 20^th Century.
9. He had trouble financially. He once lost $200,000 investing in an automatic typesetting machine.  He turned down a chance to invest in Bell’s telephone.  He was an inventor himself.  He had patents for a self-pasting scrapbook and an elastic strap for pants.  He invented a game called Memory Builder based on knowledge of British monarchs.  It was not a success.
10. Twain went bankrupt and moved to Europe because it was cheaper to live there. He had to go on a world speaking tour to get back to solvency.
11. Edison filmed him in 1909. Twain was close friends with Nicola Tesla.
12. He loved cats and owned 19 at one time. Some of his cat’s names were Beelzebub, Blatherskite, Zoroaster, Soapy Sal, Pestilence, and Satan.
13. He was born in a year where Haley’s Comet appeared. Later, he predicted he would die the year the comet returned.  He died on April 21, 1910, the day after the comet appeared.

https://www.history.com/news/8-things-you-may-not-know-about-mark-twain

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/565150/mark-twain-books-facts

https://www.factinate.com/people/27-little-known-facts-mark-twain/

HISTORY OF SANTA CLAUS

            St. Nicholas was born around 280 in present-day Turkey.  According to legend, he gave away his inherited fortune to the poor.  In the most famous story, he kept three sisters out of slavery or prostitution by dropping bags of gold down their chimney for their dowries.  He was depicted as a bearded bishop in robes.  The leaving of gifts for children was added on later.  His feast day was Dec. 6.  On the eve, it became a tradition in Europe to leave treats in children’s shoes.  Although he was one of the most popular saints of the Middle Ages, the Reformation made veneration of saints out of vogue.  But the idea of leaving presents for kids could not be ended.  Martin Luther pushed the belief in Christkind (Kris Kringle in America).  He was a golden-haired winged baby Jesus who left gifts for good boys and girls.  He was popular in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.   In England, around the time of Henry VIII, St. Nicholas was replaced by St. Christmas, Father Christmas, or Old Man Christmas because someone had to continue the gift-giving.  The day was moved to Dec. 25 to coincide with Jesus’ birthday.  He was depicted as wearing green or scarlet robes lined with fur.  The Dutch brought their equivalent to colonial America as Sinter Klaas in the 1700’s.  Woodcuts in the early 1800’s showed stockings with toys and fruits hanging over the fireplace.  In 1809, Washington Irving mentioned him in a book as “Santa Claus”.  Images varied with one popular look being with a blue, three-cornered hat, a red waistcoat, and yellow stockings.   Stores began advertising Christmas shopping in the 1820’s and by the 1840’s Santa Claus first appeared in the ads.  Soon, live Santas became part of Christmas promotions by stores.  By then, today’s image was evolving.  In 1821, an anonymous poem entitled “Old Santa Claus with Much Delight” added the reindeer sleigh.  In 1823, Clement Clarke Moore wrote “An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas” (soon to be known as “Twas the Night Before Christmas”) for his three daughters.  (Some historians believe his authorship was bogus and the actual author was Henry Livingston, Jr.).  The story established that Santa was fat, jolly, and old.  He had an eight reindeer sleigh.  He named the reindeer.   In 1863, famous cartoonist Thomas Nast drew Santa as wearing a stars and stripes suit!  By 1881, he had adjusted his character to a red suit with a white beard.  Nast invented the idea of a workshop with elves at the North Pole.  The public adopted Nast’s Santa after seeing him in numerous Harper’s Weekly issues.  By the 1890’s, the Salvation Army pushed the image by dressing unemployed men up in red costumes, giving them bells, and asking for donations in front of stores around Christmas time.  Coca-Cola put its stamp on the image starting in 1931.  Hadoon Sundblum made the decision to draw him as extra chubby.  In 1939, Rudolph was invented by Robert May for Montgomery Ward.  His story sold 2 ½ million copies.  In 1949, his friend Johnny Marks wrote the song which was recorded by Gene Autry.  The TV show first aired in 1964.    

https://www.history.com/topics/christmas/santa-claus

https://www.whychristmas.com/customs/fatherchristmas.shtml

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Claus

ROCKEFELLER SPANKING

                John D. Rockefeller had a rough upbringing.  His father would routinely cheat his children to toughen them up.  He mother dealt out the beatings.  Once, he was being spanked by his mother.  When he convinced his mother that he was not guilty, she responded:  “I believe you, but I’ve already gotten started, so I’m going to finish.  I’ll credit these to your account for next time.”

                –  Fuller 17

A BEAUTIFULER VALLEY

                Edison was traveling with a friend when the train overlooked a valley.  He turned to his friend and asked him what he thought of the view.  The friend told him that he thought the valley was beautiful.  Edison:  “Well, I’m going to make it more beautiful.  I’m going to put a bunch of factories in it.”

                –  Fuller 403

THE SECRET SERVICE

                The Secret Service was created on April 14, 1865.  Later that day, Lincoln was assassinated.  Not that the Secret Service could have prevented it.  Originally, it only had the mission of preventing counterfeiting of money.  It is estimated that around 1/3 of all currency was bogus.  With the assassination, Congress debated providing protection of Presidents, but it was just talk.   Even after Garfield was killed, the Secret Service’s mission was not expanded.  In 1894, it began to provide informal, part-time protection for Cleveland.  This was thirteen years too late to save Garfield.  It was not until 1902 that official body guards were assigned.  Teddy Roosevelt was guarded by two agents. 

–  Bathroom I   122-124

“I WILL RUIN YOU”

                In 1849, Cornelius Vanderbilt created a steamship line to carry passengers from the east coast to California, via Nicaragua.  It was cheaper and faster than any other way to reach the gold fields and Vanderbilt made over one million dollars in the first year.  In 1853, Vanderbilt decided to move in another direction, so he sold most of his stock to investors who renamed the company the Nicaragua Transit Company.  Unfortunately, his new partners refused to pay him for his stock.  Knowing the cons of law suits, Vanderbilt sent the following telegram:  “Gentlemen, You have undertaken to cheat me.  I won’t sue you, for the law is too slow.  I will ruin you. Yours truly, Cornelius Vanderbilt.”  Vanderbilt was Robber Baron of his word.  He created a new company to compete with his foes and ran them out of business.

–  Shenkman  96

BARNUM’S EXIT

In 1841, Barnum opened his museum of oddities in New York.  It was an instant hit as people flocked  to see exhibits like the Fiji Mermaid.  In fact, the exhibits were so fascinating that he had trouble getting people to leave the building.  So Barnum labeled the exit door “TO THE EGRESS”.

•  Little, Brown  p.  38

THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD

                One of the worst disasters in American History occurred on May 31, 1889.

                The South Fork Dam was on the Little Conemaugh River, 14 miles upriver from Johnstown, Pa.  At 3:10 P.M. on May 31, 1889, the dam burst.  There had been several days of heavy rain.  The spillway had become clogged with debris.  An engineer saw the danger and tried to issue a warning, but the telegraph lines to Johnstown were down.  The citizens were taken totally by surprise when a wall of water from 35-40 feet high hit the city traveling 40 miles per hour.  The force of the wave was so great that locomotives were moved over 4,000 feet from their tracks.  Many houses collapsed and many people were killed or drowned.  A total of 2,208 people died.  This included 99 entire families and 396 children.  Four square miles of downtown were destroyed.  On June 5, the American Red Cross, led by Clara Barton, arrived.  This was the first disaster the organization had to deal with. 

https://www.jaha.org/attractions/johnstown-flood-museum/flood-history/facts-about-the-1889-flood/

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-johnstown-flood

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnstown_Flood

THE MOST DANGEROUS WOMAN IN AMERICA

                May 1, 1830 is the official date for the birth of a woman who was described as “the most dangerous woman in America” during the growth of labor unions. 

1..Mary Harris Jones was born in Ireland.  Her family was forced to immigrate to Canada at age ten due to the Irish Potato Famine.  Her first job was as a teacher making $8 per month.  She quickly decided that was not for her and moved to Memphis as a dressmaker. 

2. She married a labor union organizer, but in 1867 a yellow fever epidemic took her husband and four kids (all under age 5). Four years later, she lost her home in the Great Chicago Fire.  Support from the Knights of Labor caused her to join the labor union movement.  When the Knights died out due to the Haymarket Affair, she joined the United Mine Workers. 
3. She traveled the country supporting strikers. It was around this time she took on the persona of “Mother Jones”,  dressing in black and exaggerating her age.  She was a feisty grandmother to her boys.  “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.”  She organized women and children to demonstrate in support of strikes.  She led them on marches banging pots and pans to intimidate strike-breakers.  In 1903, she led children who worked in the mills and mines on a “children’s march” from Philadelphia to Pres. Teddy Roosevelt’s home in Oyster Bay, New York.  Many of the kids had suffered from injuries on the job.  Their mantra was “we want to go to school and not the mines.”  The President refused to meet them, but the publicity brought attention to child labor abuses.  
4. In 1905, she helped organize the radical International Workers of the World (“the wobblies”).
5. She angered many suffragists by being opposed to women voting. She felt it would take away from her main emphasis on worker rights.  “You don’t need the vote to raise hell.”
6. It is claimed that the song “She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain” is about her travels in the Appalachian coal mining country.
7. She was arrested at age 82 for supporting a strike in West Virginia. Sentenced to 20 years, her supporters put pressure on the governor to give her a pardon.
8. When she was in her 90’s, she was visiting a friend. When a burglar broke into the house, Mother Jones KICKED HIM TO DEATH WITH HER HEAVY BOOTS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Jones

https://www.biography.com/activist/mother-jones

FACTS ABOUT “LITTLE SURE SHOT”

1. She was born on August 13, 1860 in a log cabin to a poor farm family in Ohio. Her father died at age 6 and she was sent to life in a poor house and later spent two years as a servant to a couple who abused her.  She escaped and returned to her mother and paid off the mortgage by providing game to the local grocery store.
2. While her sisters played with dolls, she would go hunting, at first with her father. Her first remarkable shot was at age 8.  She used her father’s musket to shoot a squirrel in the head.
3. She had developed a reputation by her teens so when the famous marksman Frank Butler came to the area and challenged any local shots, she beat him in a shooting contest. He hit 24 of 25 targets, she hit all 25.  One year later, they were married and stayed that way for 50 years.  When she died at age 66 in 1926, he died three weeks later after refusing to ear any more.
4. Originally, Buffalo Bill passed on hiring her for his Wild West Show because he already had a sharpshooter. When he lost his mojo after his weapons were lost in a steamboat sinking and quit, Cody hired her and Frank in 1885.  She quickly became one of the main attractions and reportedly made more money than any performer besides Buffalo Bill.
5. Sitting Bull was so impressed when he saw her perform, he asked for an autographed photo. This began a long friendship.  He gave her the name “Little Sure Shot”.
6. Here are some of her tricks:

            –  shooting dimes tossed in the air

            –  shooting a cigar from her husband’s lips

            –  cutting a playing card held edge-on at 30 paces

            –  shooting the cork out of a bottle at 90 feet

            –  snuffing out a candle at 90 feet

 

7. Edison filmed her doing her act for an early film that was shown in nickelodeons.

 

8. She was also famous in Europe where she performed before kings and queens. She amazed Queen Victoria for her Golden Jubilee.  She supposedly shot the ash off a cigarette held in the lips of Kaiser William II.

 

9. She sued William Randolph Hearst when his newspapers libeled her by printing articles about a poverty-stricken Oakley stealing a pair of pants to pay for her cocaine addiction. It was actually a burlesque performer who used the name Annie Oakley.  She ended up winning $27,000 from the newspaper tycoon, but it was a matter of principle for her.

 

10. She cut back after a train accident in 1901. She did some acting, but soon went into comfortable retirement. 
11. On April 16, 1922, at age 62 she set a record by hitting 100 clay targets in a row.

https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-annie-oakley

https://www.historynet.com/annie-oakley

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Oakley

THE FATHER OF CEREAL

            Willie Kellogg was born the seventh of sixteen kids on April 7, 1860 in Battle Creek, Michigan.  A poor student, Will dropped out after sixth grade and went to work as a broom salesman for his father’s broom company.  After eight years, he took a three-month business course and got a job working for his brother John at this famous Battle Creek Sanitarium.  The sanitarium incorporated the philosophy of the brothers’ Seventh Day Adventist upbringing.  Patients were cured using hydrotherapy, lots of exercise, and a strict vegetarian diet.  In 1877, they invented granola.  They developed peanut butter.  In 1894, a batch of cooked wheat was left out overnight.  Will decided to run it through the rollers and it came out as flakes.  He convinced John to serve them with milk.  In 1898, he developed corn flakes.  They proved so popular that Will formed the Battle Creek Toasted Flake Company in 1903.  It later was renamed Kellogg’s.  Will was a genius at marketing.  The company put up large billboards.  The boxes were colorful with wonderful designs, including by famous artists like Norman Rockwell.  He invented the “cereal box toy”.  The first was “The Funny Jungleland Moving Pictures Book.”  His company built brand recognition with stunts like “Wink Day” where if you winked at the grocer, he gave you a free box of cereal.  Kellogg’s life was marred by family dysfunction.  He had a falling out with his brother partly over his treatment like an underling.  John paid him $87 a month when Will was a key part of the sanitarium.  Will had to shine John’s shoes and shave him.  The break came in 1906.  Much later, John sent a conciliatory letter, which Will left unopened until after his brother’s death.  Will also broke with his son after he left his wife.  The son had been a core part of the company, but he was fired.  Will then groomed his grandson to run the company, but demoted him for incompetence.  His grandson committed suicide.  In spite of his family problems, Kellogg proved to be a real humanitarian.  He donated millions to charity through the Kellogg Foundation, which was originally created to provide medical care for children.  During the Depression, he ran four 6-hour shifts to provide more jobs.

https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/economics-magazines/kellogg-will-keith

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Keith_Kellogg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cereal_box_prize

FACTS ABOUT HARRY HOUDINI

1. He was born Erik Weisz in Hungary on March 24, 1874. His family moved to Wisconsin when he was 4.  He was nicknamed Harry.  As a child he developed a love of magic.  In particular, he idolized a French magician named Jean-Eurgene Robert-Houdin.  He adopted his name, adding an i (thinking it meant “similar to” in French), as his stage name.  Ironically, Houdini later wrote a book accusing Houdin of stealing other magician’s tricks.
2. He started as an entertainer at age 9 as a trapeze artist. He shifted to magic after a while.  His career as a magician was going nowhere as he was nothing special at card tricks.   Things changed when it was suggested he concentrate on escapes.  He joined the vaudeville circuit and became its highest paid performer.  He promoted his act by having himself handcuffed and put in the local jail.  He once escaped from the jail cell that had housed the assassin of Pres. Garfield.  He confounded the guards at Scotland Yard.  His escapes were well-publicized.  He became known as the “King of Handcuffs”.  A typical escape had him manacled behind his back and thrown in a lake.
3. He and his brother Theo had an act called “The Brothers Houdini” until Harry met Bess Rohner in 1894 and she replaced Theo. She was her husband’s stage assistant for the rest of his career.  Theo created his own act as Hardeen.  He performed some of Houdini’s tricks and the brother’s developed a rivalry that was feigned for their mutual benefit.  Theo is credited with giving Houdini the idea of escaping from a straitjacket.
4. In Sept., 1911, some Boston businessmen got Houdini to escape from a 1,500 pound “sea monster” that had washed ashore. Houdini was put in handcuffs and leg irons and wedged into the carcass.  He escaped in 15 minutes.
5. Some of his more famous stunts included:

            –  being hung upside down from a building in a straitjacket

            –  placed in a water-filled milk can (the Milk Can Escape) or a barrel full of beer (which failed because the mixture of alcohol and carbon dioxide knocked him out)

            –  escaping from a packing crate lowered into water

            –  the Chinese Water Torture Cell –  a glass-and-steel cabinet where he would be placed manacled upside down

            –  he almost died when buried under ground and just barely managing to get a hand above the surface

6. He was an avid aviator and may have been the first private pilot. He was credited with making the first airplane flight in Australia, in 1910.
7. Houdini was a patriot and supported American involvement in WWI. He entertained the troops and raised money for the war effort.  He taught doughboys how to escape from sinking ships and how to get out of ropes and handcuffs if captured.
8. He had a brief movie career. In 1919, he starred in “The Master Mystery” which featured the first on-screen robot.  The film was big hit, but subsequent ones weren’t and his movie acting soon ended.
9. In the 1920’s he took on the role of debunker of spiritualists, fortune tellers, psychics, and mediums. He and his friend Arthur Conan Doyle were on opposite ends of the spiritualism debate.  He sometimes attended seances in disguise to reveal the sham.  He offered $10,000 to anyone who could prove a “physical phenomena” using logic.  No one claimed the reward.  As President of the Society of American Magicians from 1917-1926, he worked to maintain high standards for the profession and expose fraud.  He encouraged people to enter the profession and supported Magician’s Clubs throughout the nation.
10. The belief that he died from a sucker punch, may not be true. He was already suffering from the effects of appendicitis, and although the punch certainly did not help, he went on to perform several more days before going to the hospital.  He died from peritonitis associated with the appendicitis.
11. Before he died, he made arrangements with his wife to communicate with her from the afterlife, if it could be done. He would communicate “Rosabelle- answer- tell- pray, answer- look- tell- answer, answer- tell.”  He was a skeptic and it may have been his way of proving from the grave that it was not possible to communicate after death.  She gave up after ten years.

https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-harry-houdini

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/21181/quick-10-10-facts-about-harry-houdini

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Houdini

https://www.factinate.com/people/42-mystifying-facts-harry-houdini/

THE FIRST PHONE CALL

            In 1875, Alexander Graham Bell began work on a device to send multiple telegraph messages over the same wire using harmonics.  He did not envision it transmitting voices, but one day he heard a twang and expanded the idea to creation of a “harmonic telegraph”.  He hired an electrical designer and mechanic named Thomas Watson to work with him.  On Feb. 14, 1876, Bell beat Elisha Gray by a few hours in submitting his patent application.  Some historians believe that Gray deserves the title “Father of the Telephone”.  There is some evidence that Bell stole ideas from Gray and may have gotten a look at Gray’s patent application by bribing a patent official.  But Bell had better lawyers and after years of litigation, he won the battle.  Three days after the patent was approved on March 7, Bell and Watson were working in Bell’s home in Boston.  Bell spilled some sulfuric acid on his pants and called out “Mr. Watson, come here – I want to see you!”  (This was the quote he used in his diary.  Watson in his journal had it:  “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.”)  The men exchanged places and Watson read some passages from a book to Bell.  The darned thing worked!  And mankind would never be the same.

https://www.wired.com/2008/03/dayintech-0310/

https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/ahoy-alexander-graham-bell-and-first-telephone-call

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/speech-transmitted-by-telephone

BARNUM’S HUMAN CURIOUSITIES

P.T. Barnum is most famous for his circus known as the Greatest Show on Earth.  But he also made a lot of money off unusual people known as “human curiousities” or more cruelly, “freaks”.  Some toured with the circus and others were attractions at his American Museum in New York City.  Barnum paid them well and some became rich.  Here are some of the more interesting ones.  I have left out Tom Thumb and Chang and Eng because I did separate articles on them.

1. Joice Heth – George Washington’s Nursemaid

Barnum claimed she was 161 years old.  She would sing hymns and tell stories about Washington as a child.  In 1836, as he had promised, Barnum allowed an autopsy witnessed by 1,500.  The doctor determined she was about 79.

2. Fedor Jetichew – Jo Jo the Dog-faced Boy

He was born with hypertrichosis, as was his father.  This caused long hair to grow all over his body.  They toured together until his father died and then Fedor hooked up with Barnum, as with most of his oddities, concocted a back-story.  Crowds were told Jo Jo was found by a hunter living in a cave.  As part of his “act” he would growl and bark.

3. Isaac Sprague – The Living Skeleton

Human skeletons were popular back then.  Sprague was probably the most famous.  At age 12, his weight rapidly went down and he ended up weighing 43 pounds.

4. Anna Swain – The Giantess of Nova Scotia

Anna was over 6 feet tall at age 10.  She reached 7’5 by age 17.

5. Zalumma Agra – The Circasian Beauty

There was legend that women from the Caucusus were the most beautiful women in the world.  They were sought out as concubines and for harems.  Agra was one of several who toured with circuses.  She dressed in Oriental clothing and recited poetry.  Later, she added sword-swallowing to her act.

6. Chang Yu Sing – The Chinese Giant

Chang was already famous in China and Europe when he went to work for Barnum.  He was almost 8’ tall.  He was paid $600 per week!

7. Hannah Perkins – The Fat Lady

She weighed over 700 pounds and was over 6 feet tall.  Naturally, she was married to a skeleton man named John Battersby.

8. Rudolph Lucas and His Albino Family

The group of albinos were advertised as “white Africans born to black parents”.

9. Prince Randian – The Human Torso

Of course he was not royalty.  He was born with tetra-amelia syndrome which means no arms and no legs.  His parents made the best of the situation and put him in the circus.  He entertained for the next 45 years.  In his act, he would roll and light a cigarette with his lips.  He also painted and wrote with his mouth.  He ended up marrying and had four children.

10. Myrtle Corbin – The Four-Legged Woman

She was born with dipygus, which resulted in her being born with two pelvises.  This meant she had four legs – two small ones in the middle.  She joined the circus at age 13 and at the peak of her career was making $450 per week. 

11. Stephan Bibrowski – Lionel the Lion-faced Boy

He took Jo Jo’s place when he retired.  He suffered from the same condition.  Barnum told crowds that Lionel’s mother had witnessed her husband being killed by a lion when she was pregnant and this caused the child to be born with hair all over his head.  He would growl and snarl at the audience.

12. William Henry Johnson – Zip the Pinhead

He was born to poor former slaves.  Early in life, his head stopped growing.  His parents saw an opportunity and “sold” him to the circus for a cut of his earnings.  He was billed as a “missing link” found in the Amazon.  He supposedly ate only raw meat and nuts.  He worked for the circus for 67 years.

13. Nora Hidebrandt – The Tattooed Lady

Her father had a tattoo parlor in New York City and practiced on her.  She ended up with 370 tattoos.  Barnum claimed she had been captured by Indians, tied to a tree, and tattooed.

14. Madame Clofullia – The Bearded Lady of Geneva

She had a beard by age 8.  Her family sent her to boarding school, but when she graduated she accepted her destiny and began to tour Europe with her father.  She trimmed her beard to look like Napoleon III.  She eventually got married and had a son who was hairy.  

https://allthatsinteresting.com/p-t-barnum-oddities#12

https://historycollection.com/20-tremendous-human-curiosities-of-p-t-barnums-shows/20/?fbclid=IwAR3i6ABbZzooldsaLHtuOPymyMH7f5czo_CZEFB5y6BnTuRVj7eHF1o-VmM

THE ORIGIN OF BASEBALL

                According to legend, baseball was invented on June 12, 1839 by Abner Doubleday.  One problem was that Doubleday was busy with his studies at West Point in 1839.  Doubleday went on the participate in the Civil War where he was at Fort Sumter when it was bombarded.   He rose to generalship in the war and probably witnessed soldiers playing his game.  He would not have smiled and thought “I invented that”.  So who did?  We’ll never know.  Most likely the game evolved from a children’s game called “rounders”.  The earliest reference to a ball and bat game appears in a children’s book entitled “A Little Poetry Pocket Book” by John Newbery.  An illustration shows a triangular field of posts, instead of bases.  The poem calls the game “base-ball”.  Rounders was brought to America where it became especially popular in the rising cities of the 19^th Century.  In 1845, the New York Knickerbocker Baseball Club was formed to organize the sport.  Alexander Cartwright codified the rules.  The game would be played on a diamond.  Three strikes and you were out.  9 balls resulted in a walk.  Pitching was underhand.  You were out if the ball was caught on the first bounce.  Significantly, “soaking” or “plugging” (getting a player out by hitting him with the ball) was forbidden.  This allowed for a harder ball, which improved the game.  In 1857, the National Association of Base Ball Players was formed to organize the sport.  It determined that the based would be 90’ apart and there would be 9 men and 9 innings.  The game caught on and was popular by the time of the Civil War.  In 1907, sporting goods magnate A.J. Spalding was determined to end the debate about the origin of the game.  The British claimed the sport came from rounders, but Spalding insisted it originated in America.  He set up a commission to investigate the subject and made sure it reached the conclusion he favored.  An Abner Graves claimed that he witnessed Doubleday inventing the game in Cooperstown, N.Y.  He had no corroboration, but his word was good enough for the commission.  Doubleday would have been surprised, but he had died fifteen years earlier.

https://www.history.com/news/who-invented-baseball

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_baseball

http://www.19cbaseball.com/rules.html

HELEN KELLER LEARNS TO SPEAK

                Helen Keller was born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama.  Her father had been a captain in the Confederate army and was running a cotton plantation at the time.  She was a normal child until age 19 months when she caught what doctors called “brain fever”.  It was probably scarlet fever or meningitis.  By age 6, she used about 60 hand gestures to communicate with her parents, but she was frustrated and often acted out.  She would throw things and hit people.  In 1887, at age 6, her parents learned of a deaf-blind girl who had been taught to communicate.  They went to a doctor who put them in touch with Alexander Graham Bell.  Bell was noted for teaching the deaf.  He recommended the Perkins Institute for the Blind.  The school provided one of its valedictorians, Anne Sullivan.  Anne had been left almost blind at age 5.  Subsequent operations had restored some of her sight.  She was 20 when she met Helen.  She brought a doll and hand-spelled D-O-L-L in Helen’s palm.  Helen did not make the connection between objects and the spelling.  She once broke a M-U-G  in frustration.  The eureka moment came when Anne signed the word water while Helen’s other hand was held under flowing water from a pump.  Helen began to attend the Perkins Institute and went on to became an author, speaker, and advocate for the disabled.  She and Anne were together for 50 years. 

https://www.perkins.org/history/people/helen-keller/faq

https://people.howstuffworks.com/helen-keller.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Keller

HENRY FLIPPER

                Henry Flipper was born to slave parents in 1856.  He got an appointment to West Point in 1873 and persevered through the “silent treatment” to become the first African-American to graduate in 1877.  (The four blacks who had entered before him did not make it to graduation.)  He was assigned to the 10 Cavalry Regiment (“The Buffalo Soldiers”) as a 2^nd Lt.  He participated in the Apache Wars and had a good record.  He was mentored by a white officer named Nicholas Nolan.  Flipper had a relationship with Nolan’s sister-in-law which involved the exchange of letters.  Later, Flipper was assigned to be quarter master under a racist officer.  He was “asked” to keep the quartermaster’s safe in his private quarters.  When Flipper discovered $2,000 missing, he tried to cover it up and ended up being charged with embezzlement.  During the trial, the letters were introduced and a charge of misconduct was added.  Although found innocent of embezzlement, he was court martialed for “conduct unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman”.  Flipper was given a dishonorable discharge.  He went on to a distinguished career as a surveyor and engineer, but always proclaimed his innocence.  In 1999, Pres. Clinton granted him a pardon.  Clinton proclaimed:  “Henry Flipper did everything his country  asked him to do.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ossian_Flipper

https://history.army.mil/html/topics/afam/flipper.html

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-african-american-graduate-of-west-point

WAS LIZZIE BORDEN GUILTY?

                Lizzie Borden took an axe

                And gave her mother 40 whacks

                When she saw what she had done

                She gave her father 41

 

                Andrew Borden now is dead

                Lizzie hit him on the head

                Up in Heaven he will sing

                On the gallows she will swing

                You have probably heard the first stanza of the poem, but not the second.  That’s because its prediction of her conviction did not come true.  So, did she cheat justice?  Lizzie Borden was a 32 year-old spinster when she allegedly killed her step-mother and father.  The crime occurred on August 4, 1892.  Abby Borden was killed while changing sheets on a bed.  She was actually struck 19 times and by a hatchet, not an axe.  90 minutes later, Andrew was killed after he returned home from a walk.  He was found on a couch.  He had been hit 10 times in the face.  Lizzie claimed to be outside at the time and then discovered her father’s body.  A Portuguese immigrant was arrested, but quickly determined to be innocent.  Police were suspicious of Lizzie from the beginning. She seemed creepily calm.  Her story kept changing.  For instance, she claimed that she had removed her father’s boots before he took a nap on the couch, but he was found with his boots on.  Plus, there was no evidence of a break-in and nothing had been taken.  It seemed highly unlikely a stranger would have waited 90 minutes in the house for Andrew to come home.  A broken-handled hatchet was found in the basement, but not confiscated.  Later, when she was arrested on August 11, it was found to not have any blood on it, but she had plenty of time to clean it.  At the trial, Lizzie was represented by a prominent lawyer.  She was supported by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and suffragists.  Her sister vouched for her and her doctor explained her confused stories as being due to a prescription of morphine to help her sleep.  It was pointed out that she taught Sunday school.  And how could such a lovely, petite woman commit such a heinous crime?  The most damaging evidence came from a friend who witnessed Lizzie burning a dress several days after the crime.  But that was circumstantial and there was no murder weapon.  And no clear motive.  Since then, historians have surmised that Lizzie resented the frugality of her father. He was rich and yet they lived in a modest house with no indoor plumbing.  He had given real estate to his wife’s family and Lizzie might have had a problem with that.  She already disliked her step mother.  She was quickly acquitted by the all-male jury and went on to live another 35 years, mostly as a recluse because society shunned her.  But she got away with murder and became famous and we’re still talking about her today.

                P.S. The wildest theory is Lizzie was caught in a lesbian affair with the maid by Abby.  Abby was shocked and Lizzie killed her for it.  Andrew was likewise not tolerant of his daughter’s sexuality and paid for it with his life.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-19th-century-axe-murderer-lizzie-borden-was-found-not-guilty-180972707/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizzie_Borden

https://famous-trials.com/lizzieborden/1442-evidence

THE SPARK THAT STARTED THE GREAT WAR

                World War I should not have happened when it did.  It started due to one of the worst examples of bad luck in history.  Not that the war would not have occurred.  All the long-term causes were in place and unavoidable.  However, we would be teaching a different immediate cause if it was not for a series of remarkable moments on June 28, 1914.  Here is the story of the spark that led to the deaths of more than 60 million people.

                In 1908, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia.  This caused immediate problems because there were a lot of Slavs living in the province and they did not like their minority status. Plus, bordering on Bosnia was the Slavic nation of Serbia.  The Serbian government thought it would be great if Serbia united with Bosnia to create a larger Slavic nation.  Franz Ferdinand was the son of Emperor Franz Joseph.  He had a troubled relationship with his father over his marriage.  Franz had insisted on marrying the daughter of a minor nobleman.  Joseph relented, with the caveat that none of the couple’s children would ever inherit the throne.  Sophie was treated miserably.  For instance, at state banquets she had to sit far from her husband.  But it was a love match and they had several children.  What was to happen was tragic, partly because Franz would likely have been a fairly liberal ruler and had mentioned giving Bosnia more rights.  Slavic nationalists could not let this happen!

                In June, 1914, an opportunity to rock the boat arose when the heir to the Austrian throne was scheduled to make a trip to Bosnia to inspect military forces.  A terrorist group called the Black Hand, which had connections to the Serbian government, decided to use students from the Young Bosnians (a Slavic nationalist group) to assassinate the archduke.  Seven students were recruited and provided with bombs, pistols, and cyanide to commit suicide.  On June 28, the Archduke and his wife were to go on a parade through the streets of Sarajevo.  Since the parade route was published, the seven were able to station themselves along the route.

                When the convertible reached the first assassin, he threw the bomb, but Ferdinand’s driver saw an object flying toward his car.  He speeded up and the bomb actually exploded under the next car, wounding several occupants, including aides to the Archduke.  The assassin took the cyanide, but it didn’t work and he was arrested.  Princip heard the explosion and ran to the site.  He was disappointed to see his buddy being arrested and the Archduke still very much alive.  He returned to his stakeout spot and went into a nearby café to drown his sorrows.  After a good bit of chaos, the parade continued to City Hall, where speeches were made.  Then the parade resumed, but somewhere along this stretch the Archduke decided he wanted to abort the parade and go to the hospital to see his wounded aides.  Before the driver could be made aware of the change, he had made a turn on the parade route.  Franz yelled at the driver to back up and go to the hospital.  The driver pulled to a stop in front of the café.  Princip heard a commotion and turned to see the Archduke sitting in the middle of the road.  After rubbing his eyes, Princip walked up to the backing-up car and fired a shot that hit the Archduke in the neck.  His arm was grabbed so the second shot accidentally hit Sophie in the stomach.  Princip was arrested as the car rushed to the hospital. Franz begged Sophie to “stay alive for the children”.  She died on the way and Franz died at the hospital.  Princip was sentenced to 20 years in prison.  He avoided death because he was three weeks too young.  He died in 1918 of tuberculosis.  He did not live to see his dream of a larger Slavic nation (Yugoslavia) being achieved.  But he must have known that his action had started a huge war.  But it wouldn’t have started in 1914 if the Archduke’s driver had not taken a wrong turn and stopped in front of a certain café.  Never underestimate the role of luck in history.

https://www.history.com/news/the-assassination-of-archduke-franz-ferdinand

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand

THE HISTORY OF THE PHONOGRAPH

                In 1877,  Thomas Edison began experimenting with a hybrid of the telephone and telegraph.  He was hoping for a message that could be transmitted repeatedly over the telegraph.  The message was to be a series of indentations on a spool of paper.  This evolved into embossing on a tin foil-wrapped cylinder.  He handed over the sketches to one of his workers at Menlo Park.  John Kreusi built the machine in just 30 hours.  He created a machine with a diaphragm with an embossing stylus that made indentations on paraffin paper when you spoke.  Another stylus would play the sounds back.  On Dec. 6, 1877,  he brought it to the boss, Edison recited “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and they were shocked that it worked the very first time.  However, Edison, ever the capitalist, deemed the invention to not be a potentially profitable one.  His attention shifted to the light bulb.  He did get a patent on Feb. 19, 1878, but it was Alexander Graham Bell who improved the invention by switching it to engraving on a wax cylinder.  He called the machine a gramophone.  Companies, including Edison’s, began to produce cylinders that had two minutes of music, comedy monologues, songs, etc.  But Edison was sure the market would be for dictation.  His usual stubbornness caused him to fall behind other companies like Victor and Columbia which developed a wax disc that became popular with the public for entertainment.

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/thomas-alva-edison-patents-the-phonograph

https://www.loc.gov/collections/edison-company-motion-pictures-and-sound-recordings/articles-and-essays/history-of-edison-sound-recordings/history-of-the-cylinder-phonograph/

https://blog.electrohome.com/history-of-the-phonograph/