Down the Rabbit Hole, Part 7

 

"On Tenterhooks"

Have you ever been "on tenterhooks" about something?  Or did you think the expression was "tenderhooks," whatever they are?  Actually, the correct word is tenterhooks, so what are they?

Tenterhooks are crooked nails driven into a tenter.  A tenter is a wooden frame used as far back as the 14th century to stretch wet woolen cloth for drying without shrinkage.  The tenter hooks hold the cloth.  Often, fields or meadows would be covered with many tenters, each stretching cloth.  In the UK, the word tenter can still be found in some street names and other place names, indicating that area's woolen past.

In the early 17th century, writers started using the phrase "on tenterhooks"  or "on the tenters" as a metaphor for being in a state of tension or anxiety, referencing the taut state of the cloth hanging between hooks.

According to Merriam-Webster, "The word shares its origin with that of our word tent—the Latin tenta, the feminine past participle of the verb tendere, meaning 'to stretch.' A tent, of course, consists of a fabric stretched over poles and sometimes pinned to the ground."  The misuse of the phrase "tender hooks" instead of tenterhooks is a common error.

Crumpets vs English muffins

I think most non-Brits have wondered at least once what a crumpet is and how it differs from an English muffin.   Well, here are answers.

Crumpets and English Muffins are both cooked on a griddle or stove top. They’re about the same size and have craters or holes. The differences are that crumpets are always made with milk (you won’t find any milk in English muffin recipes) and are only griddled on one side, leaving one side toasted and the other soft—think sort of like a pancake's texture, only a little more spongy. Crumpet recipes don’t require yeast, and they have a looser batter. They’re also served whole, while English muffins are split. As for English muffins, they have a breadier texture and are toasted on both sides.

Crumpets are thought to have been developed in Wales in the 17th century and became common because they are cooked on a griddle, often more accessible than ovens.  However, some sources trace similar foods to Scots or Anglo-Saxons.  The first use of the word muffin appears in 1703, and recipes for muffins (flat breads that we know as English muffins) first appeared in cookbooks in  the mid 1700s.  In the late 1700s and first half of the 1800s, "muffin-men" would ring bells in the streets and sell door to door, muffins for a half-penny each and crumpets for a penny.

Bolo Knife

During the Filipino revolution against Spanish and then American colonizers in the late 1800s and early 1900s, revolutionaries had few firearms.  The most common weapon wielded by Filipino guerillas was the bolo knife, and the fighters were known as "bolomen."  Bolo is in fact a general term for the large knives used in the Philippines both as a tool and as a weapon, similar to a machete.  However, there was a huge variety of bolos in the Philippines that differed in size and shape from island to island. They are characterized by a curved (usually convex) wide blade that narrows towards the hilt, with pointed or blunt tips, ranging from large knives to short swords to specialized agricultural equipment. They had a wide range of use, from hunting to scything grass, opening coconuts, harvesting crops, or clearing dense brush.

Mellified Man

Stories abound of strange ingredients being used in medicine around the world, and some of those ingredients have historically been human based.  For centuries, Christian churches throughout Europe have touted healing powers of their relics, sometimes allegedly preserved body parts of saints. From the Middle Ages into the 1800s, Egyptian mummies were ground to dust and sold as medicines.  However, one of the strangest such stories might be the legend of mellified men.

There is no historical evidence for their existence, and only second-, third-, and hundredth- hand references are found in Chinese texts dating back to the 1300s or so.  The story is that sometimes a dying Arabian man would offer to sacrifice himself for the good others. He would stop eating everything but honey and bathe in honey until his death.  When he died, his body would be submerged in a honey-filled stone coffin.  After 100 years, the casket would be opened revealing a miraculous concoction which would be used, in the smallest doses, to treat and cure multiple wounds and illnesses.

Most likely the story arises from a combination of legends and bits of real practice around the world.  Herodotus reported in the 4th century BC that the Assyrians had used honey in embalming, as did the Egyptians.  Alexander the Great's corpse was said to have been preserved in a honey-filled sarcophagus.  There was also a longstanding tradition in Burma of using honey to preserve corpses of revered Buddhist monks.  While bits of mellified men were likely sold on some streets and in some apothecaries as cure-alls, their actual origin is cloudy at best.

The Mechanical Turk

Five years before the battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte suffered another defeat when he lost a chess match to an automaton, a machine built to play chess, called the Mechanical Turk.  The device had also defeated Benjamin Franklin and a swath of other opponents during numerous tours of Europe.  The Turk was invented in 1770 by Wolfgang von Kempelen, and presented to Empress Maria Theresa of Austria.  It was housed at Schonbrunn Palace for many years when not on tour.  For nearly 84 years, The Turk bested most of its opponents in Europe and America.  The machine consisted of a cabinet and a life-sized head and torso dressed in Ottoman style robes and a turban, billed as an "oriental sorcerer."  Inside the cabinet, there were numerous gears and cogs resembling clockwork.

The Mechanical Turk drew lots of attention during its run, and stimulated lots of speculation about how the machine actually worked.  Some even charged that there was a human inside the contraption making the moves, but nobody could actually prove any fraud during the machine's run.  In 1854, the machine was destroyed in a fire that swept through its museum home.  Shortly after the fire, a son of the device's owner published a series of articles confirming that it was all a hoax.  In fact, a series of chess masters had secreted themselves within the cabinet over the years and had made the moves.  (Human players did not sit at the same table as The Turk; they sat at a separate table and chess board, and an official would go back and forth and actually move the pieces.)  

American National Exhibition (Moscow 1959)

In 1959, the Cold War between the US and USSR was in full swing, and the two countries engaged in a remarkable cultural exchange.  Each country set up a showcase in the other country to display its technological marvels to the citizens of its rival superpower.  The Soviet exhibition was in new York City, and the American exhibition ran from July through September in Moscow.  Three million Soviets toured over six weeks and marveled at American art, fashion, cars, music, and futuristic kitchens before sampling their very first Pepsi, as American guides modeled, demonstrated, and answered questions about the latest and greatest  consumer goods made possible by American capitalism. The guides were all chosen  because they were attractive, under 35, and fluent Russian speakers.  Overall, about 450 American corporations contributed to the exhibition, including Sears, IBM, General Mills, Kodak, Whirlpool, Macy's, Pepsi, General Motors, RCA, and Dixie Cup.  Coca-Cola declined to participate, and Pepsi seized the opportunity to crack the new market.

Communist Party officials trained operatives to infiltrate the tour groups and attempt to disarm the guides by challenging them with politically charged questions designed to throw them off balance, specifically asking about race relations and wealth inequality in the US.

Historically, the exhibition is significant because of the so-called "Kitchen Debate."  Vice-President Richard Nixon and Communist Party Chairman Nikita Khrushchev toured the exhibit before it opened to the public.  Nixon used the opportunity to show off his debating skills by attempting to demonstrate American superiority to Khrushchev.

Competitive Pedestrianism

In the 1870s and 1880s, the biggest spectator sport in America and the UK may have been walking.  Huge crowds packed indoor arenas like the first Madison Square Garden in New York to watch the best walkers walk. Think of it as a six-day NASCAR race ... on feet.  They usually walked for 6 days (no public amusements allowed on Sunday), some 600 miles, taking short naps on cots set up inside the track.  For up to 21 hours a day, they were in motion. "But people didn't go just to watch the people walk. It was a real spectacle. There were brass bands playing songs; there were vendors selling pickled eggs and roasted chestnuts. It was a place to be seen. There were a lot of celebrities who attended the matches: James Blaine, the senator from Maine, was a fan. So was future president Chester Arthur. Tom Thumb attended many matches. And so people went to see celebrities and see the spectacle, not just to watch the people walk." (Author Matthew Algeo, https://www.npr.org/2014/04/03/297327865/in-the-1870s-and-80s-being-a-pedestrian-was-anything-but )

The sport's popularity began to wane due to growing gambling, race-fixing, and "performance-enhancing drug" (chewing coca leaves) scandals and the rise in popularity of bicycle racing.   Race walking is still an Olympic sport today.

Down the Rabbit Hole, Part 6

 

Black Caesar

Florida was, in many ways, a wild and lawless place well into the 19th century, so it's no surprise that pirate lore abounds.  While there were most definitely real pirates operating off Florida's coasts for years, Floridians have also created pirate legends, most famously for example Jose Gaspar.  There is absolutely no evidence that Gaspar ever existed, but at the beginning of the 20th century, Tampa's civic leaders wanted to create a festival to draw attention to the city, and they created Gasparilla, a week -long January festival that continues today, 120 years later.

Farther south, in the Keys, there is another legendary pirate called Black Caesar.  In this case, there is at least a little historical fact to support Black Caesar's existence, but the details are very few and fuzzy.  Florida Man fiction author Tim Dorsey mentions Black Caesar in one of his Serge Storms novels, and I looked him up.  Caesar, real name unknown, may have been a West African warrior chieftain who was captured by slave traders.  Stories say that he led a mutiny and took over the slave ship off of Florida's coast and began a profitable life of piracy.  Other pirates joined his command, and he maintained bases in the Florida Keys from which to to attack passing ships.  Supposedly, he buried treasure on Elliott and Old Rhodes Keys, but nothing has ever been found.  He also supposedly acquired a harem of dozens of women, leading to dozens of women, and he ruled over a thriving pirate community in the early 1700s.  At some point, he joined the infamous Blackbeard in his pirate adventures.  There, history gets vague again.  There is no reference to a Caesar in the stories of Blackbeard's capture and trial, but there are references to a "Negro" pirate lieutenant of great ability.  Some stories claim that this man was captured and executed along with Blackbeard, or imprisoned.  Other stories claim that Caesar survived Blackbeard's defeat and lived a law-abiding life, maybe in Virginia, maybe as a cooper. 

"Don't cross Your Feet While Dancing Or it's a Sin"

In The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, one black character explains to other black characters that their churches are different, saying that in her church, they dance in church, but they never cross their feet when they dance because that would make the dance worldly and sinful.  Even casual observers of Christianity in America know that methods of worship differ broadly from denomination to denomination as well as regionally and racially.  Some churches incorporate music, dance, and other activities that other churches deem blasphemous, but I had never heard about a distinction being made on whether or not feet cross.

Scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s book and documentary of the Black Church also address music and dance in church services.  Throughout the Old Testament, there are numerous examples of religious dancing to express joy and worship.  However, in the first centuries following Jesus' crucifixion, dancing all but disappeared as a part of worship, and it was condemned by church leaders.  According to early theologians, dance incited idolatry, paganism, lust, and damnation. Beginning in the ninth century, however, some church leaders started allowing dance to manifest itself during certain celebratory services, and by the 13th century, church leaders embraced the passages in the Old Testament that cited figures like Miriam and David dancing to the glory of God.  St. Francis of Assisi was said to dance during his sermons.  By the 16th century,  however, Puritans and other Protestant sects brought dancing to an end, calling it sinful and even linking it to witchcraft.  When African slaves were brought to America and converted to Christianity, they incorporated their traditions of music and dance  into worship.  I still haven't found specific references to crossing feet, but it was interesting to read a few articles about dancing in church.

Ross Allen Reptile Institute

Today, as it seems developers and politicians are racing to destroy every last square inch of undeveloped Florida, it's difficult to imagine things are much better now than in the past. One story that unites Florida attractions, zoological research, and animal abuse is the story of Ross Allen's Reptile Institute, founded in 1929 and operated until it finally shut down in 2015, after having been absorbed by the Silver Springs attraction in the 1970s.  It was founded by herpetologist Ross Allen (1908-1981). An Eagle Scout born in Pittsburgh, he was drawn to nature from a young age, and he literally set the standards for numerous wildlife badges and programs for the Boy Scouts.  After moving to Florida, he established the Institute for reptile research and became America's leading reptile expert. The role combined his passion for naturalism and his own personal Tarzan-complex.  He even worked as a stand-in for Johnny Weismuller in some of the Tarzan movies filmed at Silver Springs.

However, I really across the horrifying stuff in Cathy Salustri's book Backroads of Paradise. During the 1950s and 1960s, Allen was one of many Florida purveyors of live exotic animals through the mail, sold through ads comic books to kids across the country.  From the Institute, one could order alligators, crocodiles, snakes - including rattlesnakes and coral snakes, lizards, turtles, monkeys, and kinkajous at prices ranging from a dollar or two up to about $35 for a kinkajou.  (The monkey ad pictured is not from Ross Allen, but another Florida dealer.)  Sadly, as humans are still idiots, the exotic-animals-as-pets trend continues today.

 Animals That Serve

A friend inspired this rabbit hole post with a mention of Corporal Jackie, a baboon in the South African army during World War I.  That led me to think about other famous animals that served.

Corporal Jackie's story started when he was captured by a South African farmer named Albert Marr around 1910.  When Marr was drafted in 1915, he refused to leave Jackie behind, and his commanding officer shockingly acquiesced.  Jackie became a unit mascot for the 3rd South African Infantry Regiment, given a uniform, and trained to salute officers.  He was an able sentry as well, with his heightened senses.  He served along with his master in France and Egypt, suffering shrapnel wounds which led to the amputation of a leg.  Sadly, he died at home a year after the war in a house fire.

Wojtek the Bear was born in 1942 in Iran, and members of a Polish artillery unit purchased him from an Iranian boy.  He developed an appetite for condensed milk, fruit, marmalade, honey, syrup and cigarettes.  He drank coffee in the morning, but his favorite drink was beer.  The unit fought alongside British units in Italy, often marching alongside on two legs and carrying cases of equipment.  He survived the war and lived the rest of his life in a Scottish zoo, dying in 1963.

Jack the Baboon was the pet and assistant of  signalman James Wide, who worked for the Cape Town–Port Elizabeth Railway service. James "Jumper" Wide had been known for jumping between railcars until an accident where he fell and lost both of his legs at the knee. To assist in performing his duties, Wide purchased Jack in 1881, and trained him to push his wheelchair and to operate the railways signals under supervision. After initial skepticism, the railway decided to officially employ Jack once his job competency was verified. He was paid twenty cents a day, and half a bottle of beer  each week. It is widely reported that in his nine years of employment with the railway company, Jack never made a single mistake (died in 1890).

 Colonel Blood

Colonel Thomas Blood (1618-1680) is one of many rascals and rapscallions in English history. Blood was born to a prosperous Anglo family in Ireland. When the English Civil War erupted, Blood was a Royalist, a Cavalier, supporting King Charles I, but he switched sides during the war, joining the Roundheads of Oliver Cromwell.  For his service, he was rewarded with land grants the a justice of the peace position.  When the Restoration occurred, and Charles II took the throne, he lost all of that and fled to Ireland.  Ruined, he became a leader of a growing Irish independence movement, He led a botched attempt to kidnap for ransom, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the 1st Duke of Ormond, an old nemesis.  When that plot fell apart, he moved to London and took an assumed name and worked as either a physician or apothecary.  He then plotted to murder Ormond, another failure.

Blood then set his sights on stealing the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London.  In 1671, he initiated his long-range plan.  First, he formed a relationship over several months with the keeper of the jewels, even arranging to marry his nonexistent daughter to the keeper's son.  One day, while visiting the Tower, a group of Blood's associates assaulted Blood and the keeper, tying up and blindfolding the keeper.  Blood then used a mallet to flatten the Imperial State Crown and disassembled some other valuable pieces so that they could be hidden in the men's clothing for the getaway.  The keeper's son surprised the men during the act, leading to a foot chase and Blood's capture.  Blood refused to answer any questions from anyone but the king.  Surprisingly, Charles II summoned him for interrogation.  Even more surprisingly, when the "interrogation" ended, not only did Blood receive a full pardon, but he was also granted valuable land holdings in Ireland.  There are multiple theories to explain why, but they're just theories. For the rest of his life, Blood was a bit of celebrity around London, even making appearances in the Royal Court, until he got into a dispute with the Duke of Buckingham, leading to his fall from royal favor.

Get Forked!

Forks have been around for a long time.  Forks made of bone have been discovered dating back to around 2000 BC in China, and ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians all used forks, but these forks were mostly used as cooking utensils.  Table forks seemed to have really caught on in the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire and became quite common by the 4th century.  Persians used them by the 9th century, and they became prevalent throughout the Middle East by the 10th century.  The rising popularity of pasta and the close contact and trade with the Byzantine Empire introduced forks to Italians in the 11th century and they became commonplace for the middle and upper classes.  Catherine de Medici and her Italian courtiers then brought forks to France, and they spread to Portugal and Spain, but they were pretty much confined to nobility throughout southern Europe.  They didn't really begin to grow in popularity in the rest of Europe until the 17th and 18th centuries.  Some Europeans saw them as unmanly, Italian affectations. Spearing food was considered uncouth and barbaric.  The Catholic Church even weighed in, with some Church leaders labeling the use of forks as the height of sinful vanity.

In the American colonies, forks were not all that common until after the American Revolution.  The Puritans who settled Massachusetts Bay Colony disdained forks, believing them to be sinful.  Puritan governor John Winthrop himself called forks evil and wrote that the only things worthy of touching God's food were fingers.  

Christian Endeavor Society

The Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor was founded in February 1881 in the Portland, Maine home of Reverend Francis E. Clark, the idea of his wife Harriet.  Thanks to the publicity of a magazine article and the work of its founders, the movement spread throughout the US, UK, and the British Empire within a few years.  By 1908, there were some 67,000 chapters and 4 million members, operating internationally as the World's Christian Endeavor Union.  The society was the first major international evangelical youth movement, and it was very much a part of the social gospel movement of the Gilded Age, based on the idea that Christians should work to better society and lift the less fortunate.  Members worked in charitable projects, attended large state, national, and international meetings and conventions, and promoted causes like chastity and temperance.  Many churches and denominations followed the Society's lead and began establishing their own youth ministries: the idea of specifically cultivating teens and young adults and tailoring church to them was a relatively new one.  

The organization still exists today.  The World's Christian Endeavor Union (WCEU) office is located in Ephrata in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. As of 2022 the society unites 40 independent National Christian Endeavor Unions in 32 countries around the world.  According to the WCEU, Christian Endeavor Societies are under development in 20 additional countries.

Linda Martell

If you've seen the track listings for Beyonce's new country album, you've seen the name Linda Martell attached to a couple of the songs, and you've probably wondered who she is. Linda Martell was born Thelma Bynem in South Carolina in 1941.  Her father was a sharecropper and a preacher, and her mother worked in a chicken slaughterhouse.  As she grew up, her family listened to and sang gospel and country music.  As a teenager, she, a sister, and a cousin formed a girls trio and started singing R & B in venues in and around Columbia, S.C, and a local DJ convinced Bynem to change her name.  In 1962, the trio recorded some songs for Fire Records in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Their music didn't take off, however, and the cousin eventually got married, so the trio fell apart.  In 1969, a Nashville businessman heard Martell sing and decided that she could be the first black female star in country music, the female Charley Pride.  Martell signed a management contract with him, moved to Nashville, and began recording.  From 1969 to 1974, she was the most commercially  successful black female country artist and appeared at the Grand Ole Opry, but she felt her management was neglecting her career in favor of their white artists. Martell left Nashville and performed in small clubs, forced to take other jobs during the week and perform on weekends.  She retired as a school bus driver in South Carolina in the mid 2000s, and she last performed publicly in 2011.  In the  early 2000s, her contributions and importance in the music industry started being recognized, and Beyonce's nods on her new album will go far to garner the recognition that she deserves.

from Ebony Magazine, 1970

Down the Rabbit Hole, Part 5

 

As I read or watch things, I often come across mentions of things that stimulate my interest, and I go down a short rabbit hole of research on my phone.  Follow me if you want.

1939 World's Fair

The book Twilight At The World of Tomorrow introduced me in detail to the 1939 New York World's Fair, and it's a very good account of the Fair's history, attractions, and impact.  The exhibits ran the whole gamut:  educational, entertaining, exciting, thrilling, and weird.  

The Fair was divided into several zones, and crowds were usually drawn to the Amusement Zone, due less to the amusements representing the theme of "The World of Tomorrow" and more to their lurid nature, with several exhibits featuring scantily clad or topless models.

Besides the rides, there was "Little Miracle Town" a community of dozens of Little People living their lives on view.  Other ethnic groups were on display wearing supposedly authentic garb and performing supposedly authentic dances and rituals.  Renowned animal collector Frank Buck displayed and performed with animals in his "Jungleland."  Artist Salvador Dali included nearly nude models in his "Dreams of Venus" pavilion.  "Billy Rose's Aquacade" featured aquatic shows starring female swimmers and Johnny Weissmuller (Tarzan).  When attendance at a replica of Buddhist temple in Manchuria started to lag, promoters added nude dancers.  The "Frozen Alive" stunt showcased a topless woman being encased in an ice block.  "The Sun Worshippers" pavilion featured women in skimpy bikini bottoms and see through shear tops (or topless) engaging in outdoor recreational activities. In other venues, there were apparently semi-nude "voodoo" dancers and topless women wrestling with "Oscar the Amorous Octopus" (a puppet maybe?  can't find much about that.

Gee, with all that going on, just in the Amusement Zone, I can't understand why the Fair lost millions of dollars.

1939 World's Fair, Part 2

The book Twilight At The World of Tomorrow introduced me in detail to the 1939 New York World's Fair, and it's a very good account of the Fair's history, attractions, and impact.  The exhibits ran the whole gamut:  educational, entertaining, exciting, thrilling, and weird.  

Of course, with the theme "The World of Tomorrow," one would expect technology to be front and center.  IBM displayed the most modern electric typewriters and an "electric calculator" that used punch cards.  AT&T displayed a voder, a new voice synthesizer.  An "Electrified Farm" and a "Town of Tomorrow" predicted how everyday life would be transformed by mechanization in the next fifty years or so.  The General Motors exhibit, called "Futurama," was a consistently big draw as visitors were strapped in for a simulated flight over a huge diorama of the future America.  Ford featured racecar drivers on a figure-8 roof-top track 24/7.  Westinghouse featured "Electro the Moto Man," a 7-foot tall robot that talked and answered questions, using current slang, differentiated colors, and smoked cigarettes.  New products introduced at the Fair included nylon, the Viewmaster, Scentovision, a streamlined pencil sharpener, Nimatron (the first fully constructed computer game), and the earliest television sets.  FDR became the first president ever to appear on television when his opening day speech was broadcast, although there were only a very small number of sets capable of receiving the transmission.

Afong Moy

We recently saw a production of a play called The Chinese Lady, based on the real-life story of the first known Chinese woman in America.  It was interesting.  However, as is too common these days, the playwright was much more interested in politically correct social commentary than in history or great storytelling.

Afong Moy was born around 1820 in Guanzhou China, Canton province, and she arrived in New York City in 1834.  Very few Chinese men were in the United States at the time, and she became the first known Chinese woman.  Her arrival was all a marketing ploy by brothers Nathaniel and Frederick Carne, businessmen specializing in Asian trade.  They likely purchased the teenager from her struggling parents and decided to make her the focal point of public relations campaign to advertise the imported goods that the Carnes wanted to sell to the American public.  They generated a fake backstory claiming that she was a high-born noble woman and created a set that supposedly reflected the strangely foreign and beautiful furnishings that she would have been accustomed too.  In reality, the fancy silks, vases, and furniture were just as foreign to Afong Moy as they were to the Average American.  Most of the goods were examples of the wonderous goods that the Carnes imported and sold.  Customers paid admission to enter the room and watch Afong Moy as she sat.  From time to time during a performance, she would eat using chopsticks, sing traditional songs, explain Chinese customs, or take small walks around her chair.  Walking was of particular interest because her feet had been bound from the time she was a small child.  It was traditional in parts of China until the 20th century for girls to have their feet repeatedly broken and bound in order to shape them and to make them as small as possible.

Thousands of people saw her performance, and she completed a successful tour of eastern cities including a meeting with President Andrew Jackson, but after a few years, the performances stopped, and she found herself in a New Jersey poorhouse for a few years.  In the late 1840s, P.T. Barnum once again put her on display in New York.  Her last public performance was April 1850, and she disappears from the public record after that.

How Did The Virgin Islands Get Their Name?

Another piece of trivia picked up on the British trivia comedy panel show "Q.I.":  The Virgin Islands were named Santa Úrsula y las Once Mil Vírgenes by Christopher Columbus in 1493 after the legend of Saint Ursula and the 11,000 virgins.  The name was later shortened to the Virgin Islands.

For those not familiar with the story of St. Ursula, the Roman Catholic Church officially labeled the story as "fabulous ( as in a fable)" in 1969, but there is still an Ursuline order of nuns and the Basilica of St. Ursuline in Cologne, Germany, and the story still appears in the Roman Martyrology.  

Ursula's legendary status comes from a medieval story in which she was a princess who, at the request of her father King Dionotus of Dumnonia in south-west Britain, set sail along with 11,000 virginal handmaidens to join her future husband, the pagan governor Conan Meriadoc of Armorica. After a miraculous storm brought them over the sea in a single day to a Gaulish (French) port, Ursula declared that before her marriage she would undertake a pan-European pilgrimage. She headed for Rome with her followers and persuaded the Pope, Cyriacus (unknown in the pontifical records, though from late 384 AD there was a Pope Siricius), and Sulpicius, bishop of Ravenna, to join them. After setting out for Cologne, which was being besieged by Huns, all the virgins were beheaded in a massacre. The Huns' leader fatally shot Ursula with an arrow in about 383 AD.  No supporting evidence of the event has ever been found.  The Basilica in Cologne claims to have the remains of Ursula and the Virgins as relics, but experts have found them to be a mix of bones, human and animal, young and old, perhaps from an ancient burial ground.

1st Galician Waffen SS

Otto Wachter (1901-1949) was a committed Austrian Nazi who rose to top positions within the SS, and he became one of the most important administrators of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, working closely with the German governor of Poland, Hans Frank, and reporting to the SS leader Heinrich Himmler.  The Ratline by Philippe Sands details his career and escape from Allied capture at the end of WWII.

While he was acting as Governor of Galicia, a region encompassing parts of modern day Poland and Ukraine, Wachter sought and gained permission form Himmler to take advantage of the deep anti-Soviet and anti-Semitic feeling of many Ukrainians to form Ukrainian regiments as part of the German SS.  In parts of eastern Europe, the Germans were seen as liberators from the Soviet threat, and many eastern Europeans joined the German cause.  Ukrainian men joined the 1st Galician and many other Ukrainian units and fought alongside German units against the Soviets; some served as guards at concentration camps and death camps.  

The 1st Galician was officially began recruiting in May 1943. Within three months 80,000 men had volunteered.  That number was whittled down to about 12,000 after selection and training.  The Galicians supported German and other Ukrainian forces in multiple battles and campaigns against Soviet forces and partisan guerillas.  Some elements of the division have been implicated as participants in the massacres of thousands of Polish civilians.

Recruitment poster

Andrey Vlasov

Andrey Vlasov (1901 - 1946) was a Soviet general mentioned in the Philippe Sands' book, The Ratline, Vlasov fought against the Germans in 1940 and 1941, distinguishing himself during the battle of Moscow, before being captured  during the siege of Leningrad.  While imprisoned, he became friends with an ethnic Baltic-German officer who sought to inspire an anti-Stalin movement within the USSR.  Vlasov quickly saw merits in the plan, and he defected to the Germans.  Upon his defection, he was transferred to Berlin and employed, with other Soviet officers, by the Wehrmacht (German Army) Propaganda Department.  Their mission was to create an anti-Stalin Russian army, and the Russian Liberation Army was born --- at least on paper.  While a few hundred pro-German Russians joined the German forces, Vlasov had no real command.  His job over the next year was to create propagandistic memos  and make occasional recruitment trips into occupied territory, with mixed results.    Finally, in 1944, SS Chief Heinrich Himmler gave Vlasov permission to form an actual Russian Liberation Army.  The ROA (Russian initials) only saw one notable battle against Soviet forces on February 11, 1945 on the Oder River.  After three days, the ROA was forced to retreat.  Following the German surrender to the Allies in May, Vlasov led his division west in an attempt to surrender to the Americans or British.  Instead, they were captured by the Soviets.  Vlasov and most of the other senior officers were tried for treason and executed.

Einstein Hated Socks

An often repeated story about Albert Einstein piqued my interest the other day.  Supposedly, Einstein's parents were worried about young Albert's cognitive development when he was a boy.  According to the story, he hardly spoke in complete sentences until age 5 (or 9 or 10 or 12 depending on who's telling the story) when he took a sip of his soup at dinner and said, "This soup is too cold (or hot, again depending)"  When his mother said, "But you've never complained before?", young Albert said, "Up until now, things have been pretty good."  Shockingly,  there is no evidence that this is anything but fiction.  (And, by the way, Einstein never failed a math class either.)

In researching the accuracy of the soup story, though, I stumbled upon another quirk that is well documented.  Albert Einstein refused to wear socks, even when meeting presidents and royalty. His footwear of choice was often sandals.

Why did he eschew shoes with socks? Well, one reason is that he had really bad feet, even in childhood.  As a child, his big toes often poked through  his socks, and he found it quite irritating, prompting him to give up socks.  Later, he was rejected for Swiss military service at age 22 because he had varicose veins and flat and sweaty feet.  As he aged and became more famous, his aversion to socks became just another element of his famously disheveled, rumpled, and absent-minded professor persona - part of what made Einstein Einstein.

Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild

I'd heard about Walter Rothschild, the 2nd Baron Rothschild, (1868-1937) in the past, but I was reminded of him when recently watching an episode of the British TV show "Horrible Histories."  Rothschild was one of the most famous zoologists and naturalists in British history.  He was of that Rothschild family, the wealthy Jewish banking family, and his father had been the first Jewish Peer (Lord) in British history.  Walter was an active politician and Zionist, instrumental in the drafting of the Balfour Declaration, outlining British policy in Palestine in regards to a Jewish state.  However, he was as well known, if not more, for his lifelong devotion to zoology and for his eccentricity.

His study and collecting began when he was a child.  By the time of his death, he had acquired collections which became the property of the British Museum (Later, it became the core of the British Natural History Museum.).  At its largest, Rothschild's collection included 300,000 bird skins, 200,000 birds' eggs, 2,250,000 butterflies and 30,000 beetles as well as thousands of specimens of mammals, reptiles and fishes. They formed the largest zoological collection ever amassed by a private individual.

However, his eccentricity was most obvious at his large estate, where he maintained a huge menagerie of living animals from around the world.  He often had dozens of live snakes coiling staircase banisters and railings. He kept a matched set of zebras and used them to pull his carriage. He sometimes hosted dinner parties that included chimps and monkeys as guests, and he had a bear trained to playfully swat ladies bottoms. And much, much more.

Down the Rabbit Hole, Part 4

 

(Follow me down the rabbit hole as I look up references to obscure things that pique my interest.)

  Will Sommers

Another real-life character introduced to me by an episode of "Horrible Histories" is Will or William Sommers.  Sommers was a long-time court jester of King Henry VIII, and it was often said that Sommers was the only person in the English court who could get away with criticizing the King or telling him the truth without obfuscation and flattery.  

Little is known about Sommers.  He was first mentioned in 1535, said to have been presented to the king in 1525, and he died in 1560.  He is thought to have been a "natural fool" rather than an "artificial fool."  There were two varieties of jesters.  "Natural fools" had some sort of mental or physical disability that became a part of their character.  Of course, times and sensibilities were different then, and the life of a fool was thought to have been better than that person's life would have been outside of the court.  Artificial fools were relatively "normal," but they often mimicked disability and used that along with their wit, physical comedy, or musical talents to entertain the court.

Sommers is said to have clashed with some of  Henry's closest advisors, including Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell, and even angering Henry himself, but Cromwell wrote that Sommers had a shrewd wit and often pointed out extravagances and follies of the court to the king using jokes.

Battle of the Crater

This is another rabbit hole journey inspired by the British TV show "Horrible Histories,"  a story I'm sure most Civil War historians well know, but I've never been a great military historian, usually bored by details of battles. The Battle of the Crater stands out though.

The Battle of the Crater took place on Jul 30, 1864, part of the siege of Petersburg, Virginia.  Confederate General Robert E. Lee's attempt to take Petersburg had been thwarted by Union General Ulysses Grant, and the siege began.  Lee's forces built elaborate trenches and fortifications which made it impossible for Union troops to gain an offensive advantage.  Union Lt. Col. Henry Pleasants went to General Ambrose Burnside with a radical idea. Many of Pleasants' men were Pennsylvania miners as civilians, and he proposed building a tunnel underneath Confederate fortifications, placing, and detonating explosives.  Burnside agreed.  The tunnel was dug, and the explosion opened up a hole 170 feet by 120 feet and 30 feet deep;  278 Confederate soldiers were killed.  The plan was for a Union charge to follow immediately, but the charge was a fiasco.  Union soldiers became confused, with many running into the crater and getting trapped.  Confederate troops regained their senses much quicker than anticipated and lined up around the crater firing downward onto the Union troops, making it a slaughter.  A Confederate general called it a "turkey shoot." Union casualties ended up being 2.5 times higher than Confederate casualties. Many of those killed were soldiers of a division of the US Colored troops who were shot down by the Confederates even as they tried to surrender.  It was one of the most embarrassing defeats Union forces suffered in the Civil War, and Burnside and a couple of other commanders lost their commands as a result.

Turnspit Dogs

(From British TV show "QI")  

The Turnspit Dog is an extinct breed of short-legged, long-bodied dogs that was bred specifically to run in wheels connected to spits in British kitchens in order to keep roasting meat rotating.  It is thought to have been related to terriers or corgis, but so little was thought of the breed that detailed records weren't kept.  They were used from the 1500s into the early 1800s, when new inventions made their use redundant.  The breed then became extinct. 

Kitchens often alternated the dogs in shifts as they tired out.  Even Sundays weren't days of rest for Turnspits, as they were often taken to church to be used as feet warmers.

Rupert Holmes, Pina Coladas, and Timothy

Rolling Stone Magazine now seems to be solely in the business of generating lists of songs and artists designed to generate debate and social media buzz.  One recent list was of the "Ten Worst Songs of the 1970s," and "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" by Rupert Holmes appears on that list.  Holmes, born David Goldstein in 1947, comes from an accomplished musical family and has had a notable career in Broadway and pop music, including a couple of Tony Awards to his credit.  His 1979 hit "Escape" was not his first taste of pop notoriety however.

In 1970, Holmes was a member of a group called "The Buoys."  The band signed a one-single only contract with Scepter Records, but the record company made it plain that it would do nothing to promote the song. Holmes had a brainstorm:  why don't we put out a single that is so controversial that it generates its own free publicity and drives sales?  So, naturally, he sat down a wrote a song about cannibalism.  "Timothy" tells the song of three miners who are trapped by a cave-in.  When reached by rescuers, only two of the three men, Joe and the unnamed singer of the song, have survived.  Timothy's fate is never explicitly stated, but there are definite tongue-in-cheek (pun intended) implications that he was eaten by the survivors.  

Despite media outrage and attempts by some radio stations to ban the song, it climbed the charts, reaching #17 on Billboard's chart and #13 on the Cashbox chart in the US, and #9 in Canada. It became "The Buoys'" most successful song.

Vladimir Nabokov and Butterflies

You might know the name Vladimir Nabokov.  Nabokov was an acclaimed Russian-born novelist (1899-1977), probably most famous for his novels Lolita and Pale Fire, considered by many to rank highly among the greatest works of 20th century literature.  I've never been interested in reading his work, but I was well aware of him.  However, I had no idea, until recently watching the British panel quiz show "QI," that he was also one of the world's most highly regarded lepidopterists (butterfly experts) and that butterflies are important symbolically in his writing and as a common motif.  

Nabokov was born to a very wealthy and prominent Russian noble family, forced to flee during the Revolution.  He began writing and became a professor of Russian literature, living and teaching in various places in Europe and the US.  He arrived at Cornell University in 1948, where one of his students was future Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In the early 1940s, he had volunteered as an entomologist at the Museum of Natural History, having already developed his interest in butterflies. While teaching at Wellesley College, he served as the de facto curator of lepidoptery at Harvard's Museum of Zoology.  He wrote and pursued butterflies when he wasn't teaching.  Following Lolita's success, he gave up teaching for writing and for butterflies.  He published several scientific papers on lepidoptery, and his work was highly influential in butterfly taxonomy.  His specialty was "sexing" butterflies.  He never bought into the idea that species could be distinguished by chromosomes, and followed the traditional lepidopterist means of distinguishing by genitalia.  He spent 6-7 hours a day, 7 days a week, bent over a microscope examining butterfly genitalia, causing permanent damage to his eyesight.  Harvard still owns his cabinet of blue butterfly male genitalia, while the bulk of his butterfly collection is in a museum in Switzerland.

Madalena

I was introduced to the story of  Madalena in the book On Savage Shores, an account of a little discussed part of history, the 16th century travels, voluntary and involuntary, of hundreds of thousands of indigenous Americans to Europe.  

One of those travelers was called Madalena by the Spanish; we don't know her indigenous name.  Madalena was member of the Tocobaga society of Tampa Bay.   The Tocobaga were one of numerous Florida peoples at the time of Spanish contact.  Within 150 years of contact, almost none of these peoples existed due to disease, murder, and enslavement.  During the 1700s, the survivors coalesced with remains of northern groups forced south by Europeans and formed the Seminoles.

Madalena was captured by Hernando de Soto during his 1539 rampage across Florida and the southeastern US before his death at the Mississippi River.  She was sent to the Florida Panhandle to become a slave in the home of Soto's wife, Isabel de Bobadilla. There she scrubbed pans, fetched water, and did whatever else was needed from a slave or servant living in that household.

Footnote As Bobadilla's criada (servant), Madalena traveled with the young widow to Seville, where her mistress pursued a lawsuit to save her dowry from her deceased husband's business partner. After the widow's death, Madalena drifted back to Havana, perhaps in the company of a fellow servant from the same household. There she drew the attention of the Dominican friar Luis Cáncer, a close collaborator of Bartolomé de Las Casas and the leader of the mission that would bring her home. Madalena knew Cáncer for only a brief time, but he placed a great deal of his hope for his mission on her. She taught him basic phrases in her language and made the world of local politics legible to him. After he helped her lead her own Christian ritual on a Florida beach, she disappeared from the written record.  We have no clue what happened to her. 

Madalena greeting Cancer in Havana

Gonzalo Guerrero

I was introduced to the story of  Gonzalo Guerrero in the book On Savage Shores, an account of a little discussed part of history, the 16th century travels, voluntary and involuntary, of hundreds of thousands of indigenous Americans to Europe.  

Guerrero was a Spanish sailor who was shipwrecked in 1511 off the coast of Jamaica, along with 15 other sailors.  The marooned men fashioned a raft and set sail, landing on a beach on the Yucatan Peninsula 13 days later, where they were immediately captured by Mayan warriors.  Some of the men were killed, and the others, Guerrero included,  were enslaved.  Guerrero became the property of the local governor, and he demonstrated great military  prowess, earning a high rank as a commanding officer, but remaining in the service of the governor.  In the process, he fully assimilated into Mayan culture and married a high-born Mayan woman, perhaps a daughter of the governor, and he fathered and raised some of the first mestizo (mixed European and Native American ancestry) children in the Americas.

When Cortes landed in Mexico in 1519, he immediately heard of a couple of Spaniards living amongst the indigenous and sent messengers to find them and invite them to join his expedition. Guerrero refused, citing his allegiance to his family and to his Mayan lord.  Over the next 13-17 years, Guerrero led Mayan warriors in battle against Spanish forces, successfully defending his home city and defeating the conquistadors in several engagements.  Accounts differ on the year, either 1532 or 1536, but they agree on Guerrero's demise;  his nude and tattooed body was found among the Mayan dead after a battle. While there are questions and discrepancies in the story of Guerrero's life, he has become a folk hero in Mexico and Central America, appearing as character in literature and popular culture and the subject of paintings and monuments.