OCTOBER 26, 2010: WELL-ARMED SOOTHSAYER

Posted on by Richard Daybell

Paul the Oracle was somewhat of a child prodigy, demonstrating a marked intelligence right from the get-go. “There was something about the way he looked at our visitors,” said the adult in Paul’s early life. “It was so unusual, so we tried to find out what his special talents were.”

Paul was hatched from an egg at the Sea Life Centre in Weymouth, England, then moved to his permanent home, a tank at a center in Oberhausen, Germany.  Paul took his name from a German children’s poem, Der Tintenfisch Paul Oktopus. He quickly became a celebrity by virtue of his divination of the outcome of international football matches, choosing the winners through a stratagem typical of German engineering in its complexity — picking boxes of oysters emblazoned with competing nations’ flags.

Octopuses are some of the most intelligent of invertebrates, with complex thought processes, memory, and different personalities (good octopus, bad octopus). They can use simple tools, learn through observation, and are particularly sensitive to pain. This according to PETA, the animal rights group. PETA argued that it was cruel to keep Paul in permanent confinement. Sea Life Centres contended that releasing him would be dangerous, because being born in captivity, he was only accustomed to sitting around a tank, popping oysters and using a remote, not fending for himself.

Paul’s accurate choices for the 2010 World Cup, broadcast live on German television, made him a star. Paul predicted the winners of each of seven matches that the German team played, against Australia, Serbia, Ghana, England, Argentina, Spain, and Uruguay. His prediction that Argentina would lose prompted Argentine chef Nicolas Bedorrou to post an octopus recipe on Facebook.

“There are always people who want to eat our octopus,” said Paul’s keeper. “He will survive.”

Paul’s correct prediction of the outcome of the semi-final, with Germany losing to Spain, led to death threats. Spain’s prime minister offered to give Paul safe haven in Spain.

Paul died on October 26, 2010, at the age of two-and-a-half, a normal lifespan for an octopus.  German attempts to find other oracles have never fared well. The animals at the Chemnitz Zoo were wrong on all their predictions.  Leon the porcupine incorrectly picked Australia, Petty the pygmy hippopotamus failed to be swayed by Serbia’s pile of hay topped with apples , and Anton the tamarin mistakenly ate a raisin representing Ghana.

The E-ri-e Was Arisin’

Back at the beginning of the 19th century, shipping goods from one end of New York to the other was a costly and cumbersome. Thereerie2 was no railroad, no trucking, no Thruway — just a two-week ordeal by stagecoach to get from New York City to Buffalo. The New York State Legislature leaped into this transportation breach. They proposed and Governor DeWitt Clinton enthusiastically endorsed a proposal to build a canal from Buffalo, at the eastern point of Lake Erie, to Albany, and the Hudson River. By 1817, they had authorized $7 million for the construction of what would laughingly be referred to as Clinton’s Ditch, 363 miles long, 40 feet wide, and four feet deep.

Work began in August 1823. Teams of oxen plowed the ground, and Irish workers did the digging, using only basic hand tools. It was a lot of work for $10 a month, but officials cleverly left barrels of whiskey alsong the route as an added inducement.

Governor Clinton opened the 425-mile Erie Canal on October 26, 1825, sailing from Buffalo in the Seneca Chief.  News of his departure was relayed to New York City by cannons placed along the entire length of the canal and river, each within hearing distance of the next cannon. The firing of each signaled the next to fire. It took 81 minutes to get the word to New York— the fastest communication the world had yet known. Clinton arrived in New York on September 4, where he ceremoniously emptied a barrel of Lake Erie water into the Atlantic Ocean — the “Marriage of the Waters” of the Great Lakes and the Atlantic.

The canal put New York on the map as the Empire State, transformed New York City into the nation’s principal seaport, and opened the interior of North America to settlement. It has been in continuous operation longer than any other constructed transportation system on the North American continent.

October 25, 1938: It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing

Posted on by Richard Daybell

The swing era in American music had its roots in 1920s jazz as small improvisational groups gave way to larger ensembles using written arrangements.  A typical swing song features a strong rhythm section supporting loosely-tied wind and brass sections and in later years string and vocal sections.  It has a lively danceable beat and, well, it swings.

Although it might have seemed so, not everyone in 1930s America wanted to sing and sway and snap fingers to the music of the proliferating number of big bands.

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Francis Beckman was ordained to the Catholic Ministry in 1902, and moved steadily up the theological ladder until finally becoming Archbishop of Dubuque in 1930, guiding his flock through both the Depression and World War II.  He undertook several crusades during his tenure, the least of which was most likely his campaign against swing music beginning in 1938.  His holy war came to national attention when on October 25, 1938, in a speech before  the National Council of Catholic Women, he denounced swing music in no uncertain terms.  It was, he said, “a degenerated musical system… turned loose to gnaw away the moral fiber of young people” which would lead one down the “primrose path to Hell.”  Perhaps, it’s just as well the Archbishop was  whistling heavenly tunes when rock and roll came around (having died in 1948).

The success of his campaign can no doubt be measured by how infrequently the name Francis Beckman rings a bell compared to Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, or Count Basie.

 

Politics as Unusual

Ross Perot suddenly dropped out of the 1992 presidential race in perotJuly amid swirling controversies after having suddenly dropped into it a few months earlier with an off-the-cuff announcement on Larry King’s television show.  Campaign managers were becoming increasingly disillusioned by his unwillingness to follow their advice to be more specific on issues, and his need to run the show on his own.  They bridled at such practices as forcing volunteers to sign loyalty oaths  and his nine-to-five style  of campaigning.  When he jumped back into the race in October, the campaign professionals were gone, replaced by amateurs of unquestioned loyalty.

In another bizarre turn, Perot went on 60 Minutes on October 25, claiming his July withdrawal from the race was the result of his hearing that President Bush’s campaign was planning to smear his daughter with a computer-altered photograph and to disrupt her wedding.   Perot offered no evidence, only quoting an unidentified “top Republican.” “I can’t prove any of it today,” he said.  “But it was a risk I did not have to take,” he added, “and a risk I would not take where my daughter is concerned.”
A spokesman for the President dismissed Mr. Perot’s assertions as “all loony.”

Maybe not so unusual these days.

October 24, 1886: Aliens, the South American Way

Posted on by Richard Daybell

It was a dark and stormy night — “rainy ;and tempestuous” as one observer would describe it. Of course, rain and tempest would not be that unusual for a place like Maracaibo, Venezuela. On the night of October 24, 1886, a family of aliensnine, sleeping in a hut on the outskirts of the city, were rudely awakened by a loud humming noise and a vivid, dazzling light that lit up the entire interior of the hut.

As you might guess, these folk were alarmed — terror-stricken actually. In fact, they could not be faulted for assuming that the world was coming to an end right there and then. They got right down on their knees and began to pray like the dickens (although it was a tad late for praying). Their prayers, however, were punctuated every few moments by severe projectile vomiting. And worse still, blisters began to spread around their lips,across their faces, and down their torsos.

The blisters subsided by the following morning, leaving large black blotches in their place.  The victims did not feel any particular pain — until nine days later when the skin peeled off, and these blotches were transformed into virulent raw sores.

And yet the house sustained no damage, all doors and windows being closed at the time. No trace of lightning could be detected afterward. The victims also agree that there was no explosion and no heat, just that loud humming and dazzling light. The trees around the house showed no signs of injury until the ninth day, when they suddenly withered, almost simultaneously with the development of the sores upon the occupants of the house.

At the time this was attributed to some unknown electrical effects, the concept of radiation poisoning not being familiar. The source of the poisoning has never been explained, except by a few people who say it was most likely a passing alien spacecraft having mechanical difficulties, pulling over to the side of the planet, and inadvertently causing the incident.

 

OCTOBER 23, 4004 BC: AND ON THE 29TH HE RESTED

Posted on by Richard Daybell

Those who predict the imminent end of the world display a certain amount of chutzpah if not foolhardiness (see William Miller, October 22).  It probably takes even more of those qualities to identify the exact date of the beginning of the world, but didn’t James Ussher (1581-1656) do just that.

As Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of All Ireland, and Vice-Chancellor of Trinity College in Dublin, Ussher was rather highly regarded in his day as both churchman and scholar. He was not your average man on the street (“Tell me sir, when did the world begin?”) making bold proclamations. And evidently he didn’t just pull important dates out of a hat. His declarations were based on an intricate correlation of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean histories and Holy writ, incorporated into an authorized 1701 version of the Bible, or so he explained. And they were accepted, regarded without question as if they were the Bible itself.

Through the aforementioned methods, Ussher established that the first day of creation was Sunday, October 23, 4004 BC. He didn’t give a time. On a roll, Ussher calculated the dates of other biblical events, concluding, for example, that Adam and Eve were driven from Paradise on Monday, November 10 of that same year BC. (It took them less than three weeks to get in trouble with God.) And Noah docked his ark on Mt Ararat on May 5, 2348 BC. That was a Wednesday if you were wondering.

Late-breaking news: Dr. John Lightfoot, of Cambridge, an Ussher contemporary, declared in a bold bid for oneupsmanship, that his most profound and exhaustive study of the Scriptures, showed that “heaven and earth, centre and circumference, were created all together, in the same instant, and clouds full of water,” and that “this work took place and man was created by the Trinity on October 23, 4004 B.C., at nine o’clock in the morning.”

Okay Lightfoot, Take This

Wretched Richard will jump out onto the proverbial limb and give you a few more dates you might be wondering about.

January 29, 3995 BC, 8 a.m. — God creates children.

March 12, 3906 BC, 5:00 p.m.  — Shouting something about his damn sheep, Cain slays Abel.

September 3, 3522 BC, 6:00 p.m. — God creates Facebook, then decides the world isn’t ready for it.

October 2, 2901 BC, 4:00 p.m.  God, having been in a bad mood all day, turns Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt.

June 7, 2549 BC 11:15 a.m.  God once again in a creative mood creates marijuana.

1:30 p.m. –Later that day, God, thoroughly annoyed with all his creations (except the marijuana), instructs Noah to build an ark because he, God, is going to destroy the world.

August 14, 2371 BC,  5:30 a.m. — Methuselah finally turns his toes up after 969 years on this good earth.

July 7, 1425 BC, 8:30 p.m. — God gives Moses the Ten Commandments.

March 1, 2 AD, 10:15 a.m. — God creates an amusing diversion featuring Christians and lions.

July 2, 1854 AD, 11:45 p.m. — After a few too many martinis, God creates Republicans.

November 9, 2016, 2:45 a.m. — Feeling rather wicked, God makes Donald Trump president.

December 25, 2019, 10 a.m.  –Filled with Christmas spirit, God removes Donald Trump from office and makes Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer president. Trump refuses to leave.

January 1, 2020, Noon — God decides to smite Donald Trump, but will patiently wait for just the right moment.

October 22, 1844: The Great Disappointment

Posted on by Richard Daybell

One would think they’d learn a lesson from the many prognosticators who predicted the end of the world only to end up with egg on their faces. But no, there seems to be an endless queue of folks wanting to give it a go. William Miller might well be the most famous (or infamous) of these Jeremiahs. He reached the front of the line in the 1840s.

Miller preached his doomsday story to a large group of followers known, strangely enough, as Millerites. At least Miller didn’t get as specific as many others who predicted the exact date and time of the finale. Miller hedged his bets a bit, calling for the long-awaited Second Coming and the great big beautiful bonfire to take place sometime between March of 1843 and March of 1844. He publicized the event with posters, speeches, pamphlets and tweets (no, strike that last one). As a result, he convinced 100,000 true believers to unload all their stuff and head up to the mountains to usher in the Apocalypse.

Well, they waited. And waited. 1843 became 1844. March came in like a lion and went out like a lamb. Miller recalculated and set a new date for the final comeuppance: April 18. April showers brought May flowers, but not much else. Did our plucky prophet of doom fold up his tent? No way. Another recalculation, another date. October 22, and you can take that to the bank. The Millerites, who by this time should have been used to having their expectations dashed, went once more to the mountains.

October 22, 1844: Oh somewhere in this favored land, the sun is shining bright, the band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light, and somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout; but there is no joy on the mountain — William Miller has struck out.

In some religious circles, October 22, 1844, is known as the Great Disappointment.

October 21, 2011: Was It Big and Slimy?

Posted on by Richard Daybell

They lurk in the watery depths — fearsome creatures beyond imagination created by radioactivity from atomic bomb tests, scientific experimentation, or man’s inhumanity to man. Like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Orca, orscreamw IT Came from beneath the Sea, most of us have only seen them in movies, but we know they’re down there and we know they wish us harm. Now after an October 21, 2011, discovery we can add to the list of terrors keeping us awake at night, Attack of the Giant Xenophyphores.

These guys are way down there — more than 6 miles in the depths of the Mariana Trench.  And they weren’t discovered by a couple of drunk fishermen or something. They were discovered by a crack team of scientists from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.

They may not be gigantic in absolute terms, but for single-celled animals — think amoebas — these guys are mammoth at 20 cm. in diameter. There are thousands of them, lying about on the ocean floor, sucking in food from the mud around them, secreting slimy (and most likely deadly) goo all over the place and attaching bits of dead things to themselves (in fact their scientific name means “bearer of foreign bodies”).

Don’t go near the water.

Beware the Frubious Sea-Bishop

The Elizabethan era was a time of fertile travel, abounding in discoveries that required very little exaggeration to carry them into the realm of the marvelous. And, unlike today, folks would clamor to see anything that was strange, fantastic, beyond belief. This taste for the wonderful was catered to by adventurers returning from voyages with tales of bizarre creatures, monsters even.

sea-monkSure, many of the “monsters” would not seem at all unusual today – a shark or an octopus in the possession of a fast-talking charlatan could easily separate country folk from their money. In fact inland people who had never experienced the sea were thought capable of believing just about anything.

Narrations by sixteenth century authors each attempted to outdo each other describing the oddities taken from the sea. One account from 1632, described a creature that, although a fish, bore a striking resemblance to a bishop. And there were drawings to prove its existence. The author pointed out that this was meant to assure us that bishops were not confined to land alone, but that the sea also has the advantage of their blessed presence. This particular sea-bishop was taken before the king and after a conversation expressed his wish to be returned to his own element. The king so ordered and the sea-bishop was cast back into the sea.

No sooner had the creature disappeared than another author in the best tradition of oneupsmanship (and perhaps a bow to evolution) showed us that any sea that possessed a sea-bishop must certainly have a sea-monk!

 

 

OCTOBER 20, 1720: MET A GUY IN CALICO

Posted on by Richard Daybell

It was the golden age of piracy — that period from the mid-17th to mid 18th century during which such luminaries as Henry Morgan, Captain Kidd and Blackbeard terrorized shipping throughout the New World.

New Providence Island in the Bahamas, was nicknamed the Pirate’s Republic because it was infamous as a home base for so many ne’er-do-wells. It was here in 1718 that Jack Rackham, who became known as Calico Jack thanks to his colorful attire, first sailed into notoriety. Calico Jack’s career started as member of the pirate crew under Captain Charles Vane. After robbing several ships off the coast of New York, Vane and his crew encountered a French man-o-war which was twice their size. Calico Jack wanted to do battle with the French, arguing that if they captured the ship, it would give them not only a dandy bit of plunder but a nice big ship as well. Vane demurred, ordering his ship to sail away to fight another day, even though most of the crew agreed with Jack.

Shortly afterward, Rackham called a vote in which the men branded Vane a coward, impeaching but not keelhauling him, nor treating him to any other pirate punishments. In fact, they sent him away with a nice gold watch for his years of service. Calico Jack was swept into office with a pillaging and plundering mandate.

One of Calico Jack’s most famous adventures, as spelled out in A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates, was an encounter with a Spanish warship. He and his men were docked in Cuba, refitting their small sloop, when the warship patrolling the Cuban coast entered the harbor, along with a small English sloop they had captured. Although the Spaniards spotted the pirates, low tide prevented their capture, so they remained in the harbor awaiting the higher tide of the morning. But during the night, that sneaky Calico Jack and his men rowed to the captured English sloop and overpowered its guards. Come dawn, the warship began firing at Calico Jack’s now vacated ship as Calico Jack and his men brazenly sailed past in their brand new ship.

Calico Jack and his men sailed back to Kingston where they applied to the governor for a royal pardon, claiming that the devil Vane had made them do that pirate stuff. They received a pardon, but by 1720, Calico Jack and his new life partner Anne Bonny were back to plundering. Unfortunately, it was a short-lived comeback. They were captured on October 20 by pirate hunter Jonathan Barnet. Calico Jack was hanged in November of the same year.

Calico Jack’s career was short but he will always be remembered for one important contribution to the world of piracy: the design of his Jolly Roger flag, a skull with crossed swords.

♥

TERRYCOVERjune13Please check out my humble contribution to the world of piracy — Terry and the Pirate — it’s got romance, adventure and plenty of gratuitous swashbuckling.

October 19, 1936: Girl Around the World

Posted on by Richard Daybell

Reporters Leo Kieran of the New York Times and Herbert Ekins of the World-Telegram were out to demonstrate that air travel was shrinking the world and that it was pretty much in the reach of most people. They would do this by means of a race around the globe using kilgallen2commercial transportation available to anyone with the price of a ticket. When the race started on the evening of September 30, 1936, they had been joined by a last-minute participant from the Evening Journal — a 23-year-old rookie crime reporter named Dorothy Kilgallen.

A fierce rainstorm kept the three contestants out of the air for the first leg of the race — a short hop to Lakehurst, New Jersey, to catch the airship Hindenburg. Kilgallen almost missed the flight, but the crew delayed departure until she boarded.

Ekins quickly proved to be the savviest traveler as well as the most competitive. Arriving late in Frankfurt, Germany, he quickly boarded a KLM DC-2, a plane that had finished second in an air race from London to Melbourne. Kilgallen and Kieran, on the other hand, headed to Brindisi, Italy, by train to catch a flight from there to Hong Kong on a British carrier, Imperial Airways. The train was excruciatingly slow, and the flight was delayed for seven hours because of wind.

When the two reporters arrived at a stopover in Bangkok, Siam, Kilgallen opted to hire a single-engine plane whose pilot lost his way in Indochina and made a frightening landing in the middle of a field before finding his way to Hong Kong.

Waiting to board a steamship headed from Hong Kong to Manila and the Pan Am China Clipper for the flight back to the States, Kieran and Kilgallen learned that Ekins had come and gone. He had talked his way onto a Pan Am trial flight as a crew member. Although taking the no-passenger flight was cheating, Ekins was pronounced the winner, having completed his journey on October 19.

With just the tiniest bit of grousing, the two defeated reporters acknowledged his victory in a cable from Manila while waiting for a typhoon to pass. They completed the journey in 24 days. In some ways, Kilgallen was the real winner, despite her second-place finish. Her accounts of the journey, cabled back to the Evening Journal each day, filled with descriptions of exotic lands, jungles full of dangerous beasts and shark-infested waters, made her a celebrity. It also launched her successful career which ended abruptly in 1965 with her mysterious death (a story for another day).

Bad Bad John

England’s King John, who has no number because he was the only royal John, reigned from 1199 until his death on October 19, 1216. Most historian’s agree he was a so-so monarch who had his share of disagreeable traits — belligerence, pettiness, narcissism, cruelty and strange orange hair.

Perhaps John suffered by comparison to his brother Richard I (although he was not I until Richard II came along a century or two later). Mom (Eleanor of Aquitane) always liked Richard best. Richard was tall and lionhearted; John was short and weasely.

Historians began picking on John almost immediately. And then the writers chimed in. Shakespeare gave him a bad rep, Sir Walter Scott goosed it along in Ivanhoe, and Howard Pyle really skewered him in The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, portraying him as the unmerriest of villains who, along with his loathsome pal the Sheriff of Nottingham, doubled down on atrocity. Even A. A. Milne mostly known for warmth and fuzziness got his licks in with the poem King John’s Christmas:

King John was not a good man—
He had his little ways.
And sometimes no one spoke to him
For days and days and days.
And men who came across him,
When walking in the town,
Gave him a supercilious stare,
Or passed with noses in the air—
And bad King John stood dumbly there,
Blushing beneath his crown.

OCTOBER 18, 1963: SPACE, THE FELINE FRONTIER

Posted on by Richard Daybell

The story of cats in space is a dramatic tale indeed. It begins in an unlikely place with the 1957 Soviet launch of Sputnik 2, carrying of all felicettethings a dog named Laika. Laika was a stray found on the streets of Moscow who could have been the star of a dandy rags-to-riches shaggy dog story, except that things didn’t go all that well and the pooch perished under mysterious circumstances.

This was viewed as an early skirmish in the superpower space race to which NASA responded by sending a chimp into space and successfully returning him.

The French meanwhile had been plotting their own animal space probe. Fifteen cats had been chosen to undergo extensive training involving centrifuges, compression chambers and other medieval torture devices for a space mission in which the French would prove that they belonged at the table with the big guys and a cat would demonstrate to its fanciers everywhere that cats were superior to dogs in yet another way.

A pretty black and white Parisian chatte was eventually selected for the mission, because she was the only one who hadn’t become overweight during training, something to do with croissants most likely. On October 18, 1963, at 8:09 am, Chatte Félicette boarded a Véronique AGI 47 rocket at a base in the Algerian Sahara Desert and was blasted 97 miles into space. Fifteen minutes later, she parachuted safely to earth and pussycat immortality. Voilà!

OCTOBER 17, 1814: THIS ROUND’S ON ME

Posted on by Richard Daybell

An unfortunate incident involving beer – aged porter to be precise – occurred in London back in 1814.

The central London parish of St Giles was, as slums go, one of the slummiest.  Although it has since been rather gentrified with theaters, Covent Garden and the British Museum nearby, it was then mostly squalid housing where immigrants crowded into its ramshackle buildings, often more than one family to a room. Near one end of the parish stood the massive Meux and Company Horse Shoe Brewery, its giant vats filled with thousands of gallons of aging porter.

One particular vat which held over 135,000 gallons had seen better days. Like the shanties surrounding the brewery, it suffered from age, and on October 17 it succumbed, bursting and letting loose enough precious liquid to give all of St. Giles and then some a pretty good buzz, although the fury with which it was released made tippling difficult. Like giant shaken cans of beer, nearby vats ruptured and joined the game of dominoes.

Within minutes the brick structure that was the Meux and Company Horse Shoe Brewery was breached, and the deluge roared down Tottenham Court Road, flinging aside or burying in debris anyone or anything in its path.

Homes caved in. A busy pub crumbled, burying a buxom barmaid and her ogling patrons for several hours.  All in all, nine people were killed by drink that day. Those who didn’t lose their lives lost everything they owned to evil alcohol. Soon after the suds subsided, survivors rushed in to save what they could of the precious brew, collecting one or more for the road in pots and cans.

St. Giles smelled like the morning after a particular robust party for weeks. The brewery was later taken to court over the accident, but they pleaded an “Act of God,” and the judge and jury bought it, leaving them blameless. The brewery even received reparations from the government.  God, it would seem, has a soft spot for brewers.

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer. ~ Abraham Lincoln