Wednesday, June 29, 2022

Person, Place, and Thing: June 1-7




 Person.


On May 31 and June 1, 1921, mobs of white Tulsa Oklahoma residents, many deputized and given weapons by city officials, waged war on the city's black residents in the Greenwood, or Black Wall Street, district, one of the wealthiest black communities in the country at the time.

It all started when a black shoeshine was accused of assaulting a white female elevator operator. A lynch mob gathered at the jail, and a group of black men, some armed, showed up to offer protection. The sheriff persuaded the black men to leave the jail, but violence began soon after. The Oklahoma National Guard imposed martial law and ended the violence in June 1, but between 100 and 300 people died, 10,000 blacks were left homeless, and millions and millions of dollars worth of property was destroyed. Six thousand blacks were arrested and interned at three sites in the city Tulsa's residents, black and white, then proceeded to basically wipe the incident from history and never speak of it for almost 75 years.

Buck (Charles) "B.C." Franklin (1879-1957) was an attorney in Tulsa, of black and Choctaw ancestry. He was the father of iconic historian John Hope Franklin, who was six at the time of the massacre. B.C. Franklin was interned for several days in the Convention Hall. When released, he set up a tent and began working to defend the rights of the victims. When the city passed new fire ordinances which would have prevented rebuilding Greenwood, Franklin successfully sued the city and mayor, overturning the law and allowing rebuilding to begin.


Place.

Greenwood, the black neighborhood of Tulsa leveled by a white mob in 1921, was nicknamed "Black Wall Street," and it was one of the most prosperous black communities in the US at the time. While numbers vary, between 100 and 300 people were thought to have been killed, and up to 10,000 were made homeless.

Families lived in tents long after the massacre, but within ten years, most of the district was rebuilt, despite legal roadblocks put into place by white Tulsa to hamper reconstruction. With desegregation in the 1869s, Greenwood started to lose some of its original vitality. Since Tulsans finally started to deal with and speak about the massacre, after 75 years of silence, efforts are being made to commemorate, preserve, and dig into, literally, the truth of what happened there


Thing.

For a period of time following the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, in which a white mob rioted, killing up to 300 people and rendering up to 10,000 black people homeless, black Tulsans were required to heed curfew restrictions and carry ID cards signed by their employees.



Person.

On June 2, 1896, Italian engineer and inventor Guglielmo Marconi applied for a patent for a wireless telegraphy in the UK, making him the father of radio.

Thunderstruck by Erik Larson is the story of Marconi and of murderer Hawley Crippen, and how their lives intersect.

Marconi (1874-1937) was born into landed Italian nobility, and his mother was the granddaughter of John Jameson, founder of Jameson and Sons whiskey distillery. His entire education was conducted with private tutors at home. At 16 or so, he began working on the idea of wireless telegraphy, an idea others had been working in for fifty years without success, and he conducted experiments at his parents' estate in Bologna. In 1895, a breakthrough allowed him to transmit over two miles. In 1896, he decided support and financial backing would be easier to find in the UK, so he went to London at age 21, with his mother, and did demonstrations for government officials and the public. Securing support, he built towers and stations, gradually increasing radio's reach. The first transatlantic message was transmitted in 1902.

In 1923, he joined Mussolini's Fascist Party. In 1930, Mussolini appointed him head of the Royal Academy of Italy. In 2002, scholars discovered paperwork that showed that, during his tenure, he had personally identified Jewish applicants and members of the Academy, who were expelled or denied entry.


Place.

On June 2, 1896, Italian engineer and inventor Guglielmo Marconi applied for a patent for a wireless telegraphy in the UK, making him the father of radio.

Thunderstruck by Erik Larson is the story of Marconi and of murderer Hawley Crippen, and how their lives intersect.

Marconi founded his own communications company in 1897, and Marconi equipment soon found its way on board ships. Wireless telegraphy proved invaluable on April 15, 1912 and May 7, 1915 when the RMS Titanic and RMS Lusitania sunk. Both ships were equipped with Marconi's equipment, and the response time for rescuers was dramatically shortened.

Marconi had been offered free passage on the Titanic's fateful voyage, but he opted to take the Lusitania three days earlier. His daughter later said that he had a lot of paperwork to do on the trip, and the Lusitania offered a public stenographer.

Thing.

On June 2, 1896, Italian engineer and inventor Guglielmo Marconi applied for a patent for a wireless telegraphy in the UK, making him the father of radio.

Thunderstruck by Erik Larson is the story of Marconi and of murderer Hawley Crippen, and how their lives intersect.

Marconi's system included the following (not that I know what many if these words mean):

A relatively simple oscillator or spark-producing radio transmitter;

A wire or metal sheet capacity area suspended at a height above the ground;

A coherer receiver, which was a modification of Edouard Branley's original device with refinements to increase sensitivity and reliability;

A telegraphy key to operate the transmitter to send short and long pulses, corresponding to the dots-and-dashes of Morse Code; and

A telegraph register activated by the coherer which recorded the received Morse Code dots and dashes onto a roll of paper tape.



Persons.

The Zoot Suit riots occurred from June 3-8 1943 in Los Angeles CA, when US sailors and civilians went through a heavily Mexican neighborhood attacking Mexican (and black and Filipino) young men wearing zoot suits, brightly colored and patterned, baggy coats and pants with suspenders, hats and pocket chains that had become the standard attire for young Mexicans asserting their freedom, flamboyance and culture.

Los Angeles was on edge because of war and economic tensions and ethnic tensions when a Mexican, Jose Diaz, was found dying near a swimming hole called the Sleepy Lagoon. With almost no evidence, police arrested 17 zoot suitors who were convicted and imprisoned. All convictions were overturned in 1944. Outraged by mostly false stories of zoot suitors harassing white girls and by the assertive cultural pride of the Mexican-American youths, carloads of sailors from the nearby base attacked, beat, and stripped zoot suit wearers.

The Zoot suited males called themselves pachucos, and their girlfriends pachucas. Pachucas wore high bouffant hairdos, heavy makeup, and often altered male zoot suits. Some pachucas and pachucos were involved in gang and criminal activities, and older Mexican-Americans disliked their style, but most zoot suiters were just young people who enjoyed jazz, swing, movies, and nightclubs.


Place.

Many of the pachucos and pachucas, the Mexican- American youths who created the zoot suit culture came from the Chavez Ravine area of Los Angeles. The Chavez Ravine is an L-shaped canyon in the hills north of downtown LA. The first recorded owner of the land was Julian Chavez, in 1844. The land was used to build "pest houses" for Mexican-Americans and Chinese-Americans during 1850s and 1880s smallpox outbreaks. It was also home to the first Jewish settlements in LA.

In the early 1900s, it became a majority Hispanic neighborhood. A naval training center was built nearby. Sailors from this base entered the Ravine during the Zoot Suit Riots.

In the 1950s, the city of Los Angeles bought much of the land for the construction of the LA Dodgers stadium through eminent domain. This led to major resistance from residents and a ten year unsuccessful legal battle. Some of the homes acquired through eminent domain were sold to Universal Studios for a dollar each and moved studio lots. They can be seen in movies such as To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus Finch's house was originally in Chavez Ravine. Is that ironic?

Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon is the story of the Diaz murder that led in part to the Zoot Suit Riots


Thing.

A zoot suit is a men's suit with high-waisted, wide-legged, tight-cuffed, pegged trousers, and a long coat with wide lapels and wide padded shoulders. This style of clothing became popular in African-American, Mexican-American, Filipino-American, Italian-American, and Jewish-American, communities during the 1940s.

Jazz bandleader Cab Calloway frequently wore zoot suits on stage, including some with exaggerated details, such as extremely wide shoulders or overly draped jackets.[13] He wore one in the 1943 film Stormy Weather. In his dictionary, Cab Calloway's Cat-ologue: A "Hepster's" Dictionary (1938), he called the zoot suit "the ultimate in clothes. The only totally and truly American civilian suit."

The zoot suit originated in an African American comedy show in the 1930s and was popularized by jazz musicians like Calloway. During the shortages and rationing of World War II, they were criticized as a wasteful use of cloth, wool being rationed then.

Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon is the story of the Diaz murder that led in part to the Zoot Suit Riots.



Person.

On June 4, 1615, forces under Tokugawa Ieyasu took Osaka castle in Japan, ending a major threat to his rule.

In 1975, James Clavell published Shotgun, the first of his Asian saga. Like James Michener, Clavell was a master of huge, sweeping historical fiction. In the 1980s, the golden age of great tv miniseries, Shogun was adapted into one of the greatest tv events, in my opinion, and I loved the book as much.

Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616) was the founder and first Shogun (military dictator) of the Tokugawa Shogunate which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868. He is known as one of the three "Great Unifiers" of Japan. He ruled from Edo (now Tokyo), and he implemented the bakuhan system, the complex feudal system designed to keep the daimyos (nobles or war lords) and samurais (knights, warriors, vassals of the daimyos) in check and loyal and obedient to the Shogun.

Clavell's Shogun places an English sailor in the middle of feudal Japan, the first English an in the country, based on real-life figure William Adams, who became Japan's first western samurai. He becomes an advisor to Toranaga, the character based on Tokugawa.

Clavell's first draft was 2,300 pages. A 2019 edition comes in at 1,312 pages and 3 pounds. Worth every second in my opinion.


Place.

Construction of Osaka Castle began in 1583 and was completed in 1597. The castle grounds cover 15 acres. There are two moats, with wet and dry sections, and 13 structures in the grounds. From Tokugawa Ieyasu's conquest of the castle in 1615 through World War II, elements of the castle have been destroyed and rebuilt numerous times due to fires and wars. The last restoration was completed in 1997, and the structure is now home to a museum.

Thing.

Japanese armor first appeared in the 4th century, inspired by Chinese armor. It consisted of lacquered leather and iron plates. During the Edo period, the beginning of Tokugawa's rule, it changed to become lighter but stronger due to the introduction of firearms. Samurai warriors and Daimyos (warlords) often owned multiple sets of armor. Tokugawa Iyeasu owned dozens including the replicas in these photos. Armor was worn until the 1870s.

James Clavell's Shogun is a classic book about Tokugawa Japan.



Persons.

D-Day. Cornelius Ryan wrote the classic book, The Longest Day, based on over 3,000 interviews with participants from all perspectives and countries: US, Canada, UK France, and Germany, soldiers and civilians.

I thought I'd highlight a few participants you might know.

James Doohan- Canadian artillery, Juno, took out two snipers, took six machine gun bullets, lost middle right finger, cigarette case stopped bullet to chest

David Niven -Lt. Colonel British commandos, commanded signals/communications unit on D-Day

Yogi Berra - manned naval support craft, firing machine gun

Medgar Evers - sergeant, 325th Port Co., landed supplies on beaches

J.D. Salinger- landed in Utah Beach, supposedly carrying a few draft chapters of The Catcher in the Rye with him

Henry Fonda - quartermaster USS Satterlee, naval support

Alex Guinness - landing craft officer

Golfer Bobby Jones- US Army Reserve, landed at Normandy at age 42 (convinced commanding officer to let him go)

Charles Durning - Omaha Beach, most of the men in his group died. He was shot several times and awarded the Silver Star


Place

The Normandy coast was selected as the target of the Allied attack from the sea on June 6, 1944, D-Day. Following the overnight air drop of 24,000 American, British, and Canadian troops by parachute and gliders, the plan was to land over 150,000 troops in the early morning hours, supported by 200,000 naval personnel.

There were five beaches, each assigned a code name. American forces would take Omaha and Utah, and British and Canadian forces were assigned Gold, Juno, and Sword. The German forces were thought to number just over 50,000 with 170 coastal artillery guns, and multiple barriers erected on the beaches.

The Germans never knew for certain where the attack would come because the Allies had employed Operation Bodyguard for months, staging fake attack launch sites with inflated balloons made to look like tanks, among other elaborate deceptions, all intended to keep the Germans guessing.

Allied casualties were counted as 10,000+ with 4,414 dead, and German casualty estimates range from 4,000 to 9,000.

Thing.

Have you ever wondered why the National WW II Museum (originally the D-Day Museum) is in New Orleans? Because the landing craft that made D-Day and other landings possible, the Higgins boat, was invented in New Orleans by Andrew Higgins. Higgins developed a whole line of boats that changed (created maybe?) amphibious warfare.

Each LCVP ( Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel) or Higgins boat could carry either 36 troops, a jeep and 12 troops, or 8100 pounds of cargo. Manned by a crew of four, it could float in three feet of water, reach a speed of 12 knots, and was armed with two .30 caliber machine guns.

Higgins, holder of 18 patents, also developed high speed PT (Patrol Torpedo) boats.

The Longest Day, by Cornelius Ryan, is the go-to book in D-Day.




Persons.

The Gilded Age was full of scandals. Newspapers competed tooth and nail to out-scandalize their competition. And then this story breaks: the great-grandson of founding father Alexander Hamilton (who was no stranger to scandal in his lifetime), a cunning female con artist, an orphan baby, life in a brothel, bigamy, a stabbing, lurid divorce details, and charges of a faked death. In the early 1890s, this was the story in the headlines.

Robert Ray Hamilton (1851-1890), was the great-grandson of Alexander Hamilton. The surname made him a member of American high society, but his given name and fortune came from his maternal grandfather, Robert Ray. He lived a relatively quiet life until Evangeline L. Mann set her sights on his fortune, telling him she was pregnant with his child. He married her, and his life fell apart as truths emerged which threatened to besmirch his name, reputation, and family.

The Scandalous Hamiltons, by Bill Shaffer, is scheduled for release on July 26. Look for a 7 Questions chat with the author on June 24 and a review in the next couple of weeks

Place.

One of the real horrors of the Gilded Age/Victorian Age in American and British cities was baby farms. Unwanted children were turned over to women who collected either lump sums upfront or weekly payments to take care of the infants. Often, they then turned around and sold the babies, for $5 to $10 in the US or up to £10 in Britain. Unfortunately, some women discovered that high turnover meant high profits.

In Britain, Amelia Dryer was hanged in 1896, convicted of murdering one infant. It's thought that she killed at least 400, via opiates or strangling. Thousands of children died in baby farms.

The Scandalous Hamiltons, by Bill Shaffer, is scheduled for release on July 26. Look for a 7 Questions chat with the author on June 24 and a review in the next couple of weeks


Thing

The author Bill Shaffer was inspired to research Robert Ray Franklin because he often passed by the Hamilton Fountain, located at West 76th St. and Riverside Drive, New York. Following his tragic death in 1890, it was discovered that Robert Ray Hamilton, the great-grandson of Alexander, has bequeathed $9,000 to the people of New York to build a fountain, chiefly for horses.

When the fountain was finally installed in 1906, the age of the horse was passing, and the fountain soon fell into vandalized disrepair and disuse. In 2009, the Riverside Park Conservancy used donations to restore the site to working order.

Wednesday, June 22, 2022

Person, Place, and Thing: May 24-31



 Person


Archibald "Chick" Andrews and his buddies Betty Cooper and Jughead Jones first appeared in the December 1941 comic book Pep Comics #22. Inspired by the Andy Hardy movie series starring Mickey Rooney, Vic Bloom and Bob Montana created a comic character who just an average teenager. Archie's adventures were published under Archie Comics continuously from the winter of 1942 to July 2015. Archie Comics created a whole universe of characters, many of whom had their own comic lines as well. Some of the characters like Josie and the Pussycats and Sabrina, the Teenaged Witch had success outside of comics.

Archie and his pals had radio shows, movies, animated cartoon shows, and hit records. On May 24, 1969, The Archies, a band of studio musicians, released "Sugar, Sugar," the Billboard Song of the Year for 1969.

Following a TV reboot of the Archie universe, called Riverdale, the comic book line has been rebooted as well. I tried watching one episode of Riverdale and couldn't get passed the hot and sexy thirty year old actors playing the high school kids and old spinster teacher Miss Grundy being played as a hot teacher seducing her students. Give me the golden age of Archie.


Place.

When Archie and the gang weren't in school or up to their eyeballs in hijinks, they could usually be found at Pop Tate's Chok'lit Shoppe, an old-fashioned soda shop where teens could enjoy sodas,shakes, malts, and burgers, and Terry "Pop" Tate was always behind the counter to hear their problems and even offer advice.

Archie and his pals had radio shows, movies, animated cartoon shows, and hit records. On May 24, 1969, The Archies, a band of studio musicians, released "Sugar, Sugar," the Billboard Song of the Year for 1969.


Thing.

Came across this while researching today's post: Archie 1941. Published in 2019, and billed as "a small town deals with effects of war." Apparently, Archie and Reggie both enlist and are sent to the North African theater. So I had to order it

Archie and his pals had radio shows, movies, animated cartoon shows, and hit records. On May 24, 1969, The Archies, a band of studio musicians, released "Sugar, Sugar," the Billboard Song of the Year for 1969.




Person

On May 25, 1961, JFK stood before Congress and proposed that the US should commit itself to landing a man in the moon and returning him safely before the decade was done. A Gallup poll taken at the time indicated that 58% of Americans opposed the idea

When NASA began its astronaut search, President Eisenhower decreed that only pilots should be considered, although there was actually zero piloting required. The greatest military pilot of them all, according to many, was US Air Force Major Chuck Yeager ( 1923-2020).

Yeager began his career as an Army private in WWII, assigned to the Army Air Corps as a mechanic in 1941. He entered pilot training in September 1942. In Europe he flew his P-51 Mustang and shot down 11.5 enemy planes. He earned "ace in a day" status on October 12, 1944, shooting down five enemy planes in one mission.

After the war, he became a test pilot, the first man to break the sound barrier. He set and broke several other speed and altitude records. NASA, however, decided that only college graduates would be considered as astronauts, knocking Yeager out of consideration. In 1962, he became the first Commandant of the pilot school that trained Air Force and NASA pilots. By the time he retired in 1975, Brigadier General Chuck Yeager had flown more than 360 different types of aircraft over seventy years. And he even appeared on an episode of "I Dream of Jeannie"!

Tom Wolfe's historical fiction novel, The Right Stuff, was based on extensive research and interviews with the "Mercury 7", their wives, and others, including Yeager and became the basis of a fantastic movie.

Place.

The original Mercury 7 underwent grueling and fast-paced training that also included training on how to handle dangerous landing scenarios. To that end, they trained with Navy SEALS for water landings, and they trained at Stead Air Force Base in Nevada to learn desert survival.

Tom Wolfe's historical fiction novel, The Right Stuff, was based on extensive research and interviews with the "Mercury 7", their wives, and others, including Yeager and became the basis of a fantastic movie

Thing.

Tom Wolfe was assigned to write a story about the early days of the space program by the editor of Rolling Stone in 1972. He wrote the story but became interested in NASA and did more research over the next few years. After interviews and research, he began to focus on "the right stuff" - the mix of bravery and machismo that he discovered in the Mercury 7 and test pilots like Chuck Yeager. What kind of men were these who willingly allowed themselves to be exploded into outer space? He decided that they had the "right stuff." The phrase might have been first used by author Joseph Conrad in the short story, "Youth."



Person.

Bram Stoker's Dracula was published May 26, 1897 in London. Stoker (1847-1912) worked in theatre for much of his adult life, first as the personal assistant of famous actor Sir Henry Irving, then as a theatre manager and theatre critic for an Irish newspaper. He wrote stories as a hobby.

Born in a suburb of Dublin Ireland, he was a very sickly child until age 7, the cause unexplained. He wrote "Till I was about 7 years old, I never knew what it was to stand upright. In college, however, he became very athletic: rugby, high jump, long jump, gymnastics, trapeze, rowing, weightlifting, and endurance walking.

He never visited Transylvania, but the inspiration for Dracula came from the seaside resort of Whitby. Once inspired, he spent the next seven years at work on Dracula. His writing never brought him much money. In fact, he applied for financial assistance toward the end of his life, but Dracula is one of the most famous novels ever written today, and the character has inspired hundreds of movies, plays and books.

Place.

Bram Stoker's Dracula was published May 26, 1897 in London. Bran Castle in Bran Romania has been designated "Dracula's Castle" since the 1970s. However, Bram Stoker never visited the region of Transylvania, the setting of Dracula. In fact, his supposed inspiration for Dracula, Vlad the Impaler, a Wallachian ruler in the 1400s, never set foot in the castle either. The Communist Party of Romania just decided in the 1970s that the castle might draw some tourist money, and "Dracula's Castle* was born. It remains a museum and tourist attraction today.

(Actually, there is little to no evidence that Vlad the Impaler was an inspiration for Stoker at all.)


Thing.

Bram Stoker's Dracula was published May 26, 1897 in London.

Even before Dracula was published, vampire lore had caused the New England vampire panic. In the 19tg century in New England, there was an outbreak of tuberculosis, called consumption because because it was thought to be caused by the deceased consuming the life of their surviving relatives. Since TB is a bacterial disease, it was not uncommon for it to spread through a family.

In some cases in New England, the corpse if the suspected recently dead was exhumed. If the body appeared "fresh" - too fresh - it was thought to have been feeding off their relatives. In those cases, the corpse was sometimes decapitated. Usually, the heart was burned, and the sick family member would inhale the smoke or perhaps even drink the ashes mixed with water.

Technically, the people who participated in these acts would not have used the terms vampire or vampirism, but outsiders and newspapers would have.



Person.

On May 27, 1943, a B-24 carrying US airman Louis Zamperini and ten others crashed into the Pacific; three survived. Zamperini and two others floated on a raft for more than a month. Zamperini and one other survivor were picked up by Japanese sailors on their 47th day adrift.

For the next two years, the two men were held in a series of prison camps, where they, and the other prisoners, were routinely beaten and starved. Zamperini was kept alive as a propaganda tool and, simultaneously, singled out for particularly harsh torture because in 1936 Zamperini had run in the 5,000 meter race in the Berlin Olympics. While he finished 8th in the race, Hitler was so impressed by his final lap that he insisted on meeting Zamperini.

After the war, Zamperini became an alcoholic, and he was haunted by his war experiences. Inspired by evangelist Billy Graham in 1949, he turned his life around and became an inspirational speaker. He died in 2014, at age 97.

Laura Hillenbrand's biography Unbroken was published in 2010 and adapted into two films, the first in 2014 stopped at his return to the US, and the second, released in 2018, covers his post-war recovery.

Place.

Four days before his 81st birthday in January 1998, Zamperini ran a leg in the Olympic Torch relay for the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, not far from the POW camp where he had been held. While there, he attempted to meet with his chief and most brutal tormentor during the war, Mutsuhiro Watanabe, also known as "the Bird", who had evaded prosecution as a war criminal, but Watanabe refused to see him.  However, Zamperini sent him a letter, stating that while he suffered great mistreatment from him, he forgave him. It is unknown whether Watanabe even read the letter; Zamperini never received any response, and Watanabe died in 2003. In March 2005, Zamperini returned to Germany to visit the Berlin Olympic Stadium. for the first time since he had competed there.

-from Wikipedia

Laura Hillenbrand's biography Unbroken was published in 2010 and adapted into two films, the first in 2014 stopped at his return to the US, and the second, released in 2018, covers his post-war recovery.


Thing.

Louis Zamperini was a crewman on B-24 bombers.

At its inception, the B-24 was a modern design featuring a highly efficient shoulder-mounted, high aspect ratio Davis wing. The wing gave the Liberator a high cruise speed, long range and the ability to carry a heavy bomb load. Early RAF Liberators were the first aircraft to cross the Atlantic Ocean as a matter of routine. In comparison with its contemporaries, the B-24 was relatively difficult to fly and had poor low-speed performance; it also had a lower ceiling and was less robust than the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. While aircrews tended to prefer the B-17, General Staff favored the B-24 and procured it in huge numbers for a wide variety of roles. At approximately 18,500 units – including 8,685 manufactured by Ford Motor Company – it holds records as the world's most produced bomber, heavy bomber, multi-engine aircraft, and American military aircraft in history.

The B-24 was used extensively in World War II. It served in every branch of the American armed forces as well as several Allied air forces and navies. It saw use in every theater of operations. Along with the B-17, the B-24 was the mainstay of the US strategic bombing campaign in the Western European theater. Due to its range, it proved useful in bombing operations in the Pacific, including the bombing of Japan. Long-range anti-submarine Liberators played an instrumental role in closing the Mid-Atlantic gap in the Battle of the Atlantic. The C-87 transport derivative served as a longer range, higher capacity counterpart to the Douglas C-47 Skytrain.

From Wikipedia.



Person.

On May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, leading to the forced removal of the "Five Civilized Tribes": Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole from the Southeast US in the late 1830s, under President Van Buren.

Tsali was a noted Cherokee warrior and prophet who had urged his people to ally with Tecumseh in 1812. During the 1838, he and his family attempted to hide but were discovered by US troops. The actual truth of the encounter is unclear, but legend has it that soldiers threatened Tsali's wife and may have been indirectly responsible for his infant's death. Tsali and his male relatives attacked the soldiers, killing 1-2 and injuring the other three. Tsali and family fled into the mountains and were joined by hundreds more. The American commander either forced, threatened, or bribed, with promises to be able to stay, two Cherokee men to hunt him down. Some stories say that Tsali was told that if his family surrendered, the rest could stay in the mountains.

Tsali, his brother, and his three sons surrendered, and all but the youngest son was executed. Tsali's story is the origin story of the Eastern Band of Cherokees and a major part of the annual folk play, "Until These Hills," performed in Cherokee, NC.

John Ehle's book The Trail of Tears is a classic history of Cherokee removal.

Place.

Cherokee North Carolina is the capital of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation. In 2010, the population was just over 2,000.

There are about 16,000 members of the Eastern Band. They are the descendants of the 800-1,000 Cherokee who escaped the 1838 roundup and forced move to Indian Territory.

John Ehle's book The Trail of Tears is a classic history of Cherokee removal.

Thing.

While few Cherokee traveled the Trail of Tears by steamboat, some of the other tribes' members did. On October 31, 1837, 700 Creek Indians were packed into the steamboat Monmouth. It was a rainy night as the steamboat headed north up the lower Mississippi from New Orleans. Suddenly the pilot began ringing the alarm bell. Before the captain knew what was going on, a sailboat called the Trenton, which was being towed by a steamboat called the Warren, collided with the Monmouth. Hundreds of Creeks on the decks were thrown overboard. At least 300 died. Arguments raged for several years over which boat was at fault, and safety measures like lights, whistles, markers, and buoys didn't uniformly begun to appear until after the Civil War.

John Ehle's book The Trail of Tears is a classic history of Cherokee removal.



Person.

On May 29, 1886, American physician and pharmacist John Pemberton (1831-1888) first advertised Coca- Cola in The Atlanta Journal newspaper.

Pemberton earned a medical degree at age 19 in 1850, but decided his talent was in chemistry. He opened a pharmacy in Columbus, Georgia instead of a medical practice. He joined the Confederate Army in the Civil War and suffered a saber wound in April 1865; this would led him, like many Civil War veterans, to develop an addiction to morphine. In 1866, he began experimenting with morphine substitutes. Trials led him to the use of coca, coca wines, and kola nuts, creating Pemberton's French Wine Coca.

Living in Atlanta in 1886, he had to develop a non-alcoholic drink because temperance legislation was passed. Through trial and error and testing at a friend's pharmacy, he developed Coca-Cola, mixing syrup and carbonated water at the counter and charging 5 cents a glass. He claimed that the drink was "a valuable brain tonic" that would cure headaches, exhaustion, and nerve problems, calling it "delicious, refreshing, pure joy, exhilarating, .... invigorating."

Unfortunately, it did not replace his morphine habit which worsened as he developed stomach cancer, and he was forced to sell off rights to his formula. When he died broke in 1888, his son sold the last remaining family claim.

History of the World in Six Glasses is a unique and extremely interesting look at the impact of beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and cola on world history.

Place.

The first soft drinks were all touted as medicines which explains why they were sold at pharmacy soda fountains. They arrived as jugs of syrup, and the soda jerk would mix it with carbonated water. Coca Cola was priced at 5 cents per glass, and it was not available in glass bottles until 1894.

History of the World in Six Glasses is a unique and extremely interesting look at the impact of beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and cola on world history.


Thing.

Coffee is another of the six beverages that changed the world. According to legend, coffee's effects were first discovered hundreds of year ago when Arab goatherders noticed their goats eating the coffee beans and "dancing" afterwards. Somehow, somebody discovered what to do with coffee, and it swept through the Muslim world and into Europe, long before tea arrived.. in the early 1700s, there were coffeehouses in nearly every major European city, especially popular in London.

In these coffeehouses, men met, drank coffee, socialized, debated and argued as they discussed the news of the day. Some coffeehouse proprietors and regulars began printing pamphlets and news sheets and distributing them in coffeehouses; leading to the first newspapers. Writers worked on their writing, and readers gathered to read the available printed material, or hear it read if they were illiterate. Many of the ideas of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution were germinated - or maybe, percolated (old people might get that), in coffeehouses.



Person.

On May 30, 1539, Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto (c.1500-1542) landed with 9-10 ships and about 700 men somewhere on Tampa Bay. He had already made a name and fortune for himself when he served under Pizarro in the conquest of the Incas and returned to Spain, where he was granted the governorship of Cuba. When he read of the odyssey of Cabeza de Vaca, he was inspired to search for more riches on the mainland of North America.

From Tampa Bay, he and his men marched north, attacking villages, seizing food stores, raping women, kidnapping chiefs and family members for ransom, and forcing men and boys into service as guides and porters, demanding gold and other riches along the way. They terrorized the entire southeast and turned West, reaching the Mississippi River in May 1541. De Soto died of fever on May 21. Because the Spanish had tried to convince the Indians that de Soto was immortal, they likely weighted his body and put it in the river.

Of the original 700 Spaniards, 300-350 made it safely to Mexico City.

Conquistador's Wake, published in 2020, joins in the debate over de Soto's exact route, a mystery for centuries that may be clearing up thanks to some major archaeological finds in the past few decades.


Place.

Historians and archaeologists have debated what de Soto's actual route was for decades. In the early 2000s, an exciting find was made in Telfair County Georgia, near the convergence of the Oconee and Ocmulgee Rivers to form the Altamaha (about 40 miles from my hometown).

Archaeologists have so far discovered lots of artifacts, leading them to believe that the site was once Ichisi, a village of the Utinahica, an offshoot of the Timucua, who populated northern Florida and southern Georgia at the time of Spanish arrival, and the ancestors of the Creek Indians. Later (about 1610 to 1640), the site was the site of a small Spanish mission, marking the farthest penetration of Spanish priests in the Eastern US, probably home to one Spanish priest with the mission of converting the Utinahica.

More Spanish artifacts, including glass trade beads and metal objects, have been discovered at this site than anywhere else outside of Florida. In Conquistador's Wake, archaeologist Dennis Blanton argues that de Soto and his men passed through this very Indian village, perhaps inspiring the mission site fifty years later.

Things.

In 2015, some 80 Spanish metal artifacts were discovered in digs at Stark Farm in Mississippi. It was theorized that the objects had been left behind by de Soto and his men as they hastily fled from the Chickasaw. Interestingly, they had been recycled into tools and decorations by the Chickasaw, who had had no metalworking experience before Spanish contact.




Person.

On May 31, 1895, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg filed a patent for "flaked cereal." Kellogg's Corn Flakes changed the way Americans are breakfast, inventing morning cereal.

John Harvey Kellogg ( 1852-1943) was a doctor, nutritionist, inventor, health activist, eugenicist, and businessman. He made the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Battle Creek Michigan world famous. Built by Seventh Day Adventists, the sanitarium was a spa, hotel, and hospital combined, where people were treated holistically, following Adventist principles of "clean living." Kellogg was ahead of his time in many ways, an early proponent of the germ theory and of the idea that good gut health was important, he advocated fresh air, exercise, water therapy, and vegetarianism. He spoke out against alcohol, tobacco, and excessive sexual activity. As a eugenicist, he also spoke out against race mixing and in favor of sterilizing "mentally defective persons."

He developed flaked cereal as something easy to digest for his patients, nutritious, and even capable of controlling curtailing impure sexual thoughts (i.e. masturbation). The product became a hit. His brother Will suggested adding sugar, leading to a split and Will creating his own competing company. A former Kellogg patient, C.W. Post, also created a competing cereal company.


Place.

Dr. John Harvey Kellogg managed the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan from 1876 to 1943. Built by members of the Seventh Day Adventists Church in 1866, it started as a place for relaxation and calm and expanded into a huge, spa, hotel, and hospital. After WWII, it continued operating as a mental health facility through the 1970s. In 1902, the original structure was lost in a fire.

Things.

Besides flaked cereal, Dr. Kellogg prescribed these other treatments and therapies at the Battle Creek Sanitarium.
-Chewing every bite at least 40 times (aka fletcherism)
-electric light bath
-electric current applied directly to the skin, even eyeballs
-46 different kinds of baths, including "continuous baths" lasting days, weeks, or months - with toilet breaks
-15 quart enemas
-yogurt enemas
-vibrating chairs and tables
-cures for masturbating boys: hands tied, bandaging or caging genitals, circumcision without anesthetic (side note: circumcision became popular in the US in late 1800s, early 1900s because it was thought to discourage masturbation)
-cures for masturbating girls: applying carbolic acid to clitoris or surgical removal

Read Howard Markel's book the Kelloggs: the Battling Brothers of Battle Creek.