The more things change, the more they stay the same line of the day

We have been reading about the “radio priest”—the young Catholic Father who broadcasts his beliefs from a small chapel in Michigan, and gets as many as three hundred and ninety thousand letters a day from members of the radio audience. He employs eighty-three secretaries to handle this mail—a larger payroll, you must admit, than most young shepherds command. He speaks against birth control, pacifism, and internationalism; and in favor of the multiplication of the body as commanded by God, and of the sanctity of patriotism. This, it seems to us, is a phenomenal leadership. We get accustomed to thinking of the radio merely as an instrument for increasing the sale of trademarked products and the vanity of tenors; yet here is an advocate of the sanctity of patriotism and other barbarous causes, with so many listeners and converts that he can’t handle them without secretaries. We happen to be, in a small way, on the other side of the fence from Father Coughlin on all his points; but we must confess, after reading the statistics about his audience, that being on the other side of the fence from him is like standing all alone in a million-acre field. What an impressive thing it is! Talking against internationalism over the radio is like talking against rain in a rainstorm: the radio has made internationalism a fact, it has made boundaries look so silly that we wonder how mapmakers can draw maps without laughing; yet there stands Father Coughlin in front of the microphone, his voice reaching well up into Canada, his voice reaching well down into Mexico, his voice leaping national boundaries as lightly as a rabbit—there he stands, saying that internationalism will be our ruin, and getting millions of letters saying he is right. Will somebody please write us one letter saying that he is wrong—if only so that we can employ a secretary?

E.B. White : The New Yorker, 1931

Katrina

Katrina made landfall five years ago this morning. The first levee at New Orleans was breached at 8:14 am. By the next day, 80% of the city was underwater.

Spike Lee’s documentaries When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts and If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise, David Simon’s Treme, and Dave Eggers’s excellent book Zeitoun all deserve your attention.

What you heard and saw on TV during the actual event was mostly bull shit.

Best lines of this date

And so let freedom ring — from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring — from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring — from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring — from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring — from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that.

Let freedom ring — from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring — from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring — from every hill and molehill of Mississippi, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual,

“Free at last, free at last.

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”
__________

Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., 47 years ago today

Steam Me Up, Scotty

On August 26, 1791, John Fitch and James Rumsey, rivals battling over claims to the invention, each were granted a federal patent for the steamboat. They devised different systems for their steamboats. Four years earlier, on August 22, 1787, Fitch demonstrated a steamboat—a Watt-type engine with a separate condenser that transmitted power to oars mounted to stroke in a paddle fashion. The forty-five-foot craft launched on the Delaware River in the presence of delegates from the Constitutional Convention. Rumsey’s craft was powered by direct force—jet propulsion. Fitch went on to build a larger steamboat that carried passengers and freight between Philadelphia and Burlington, New Jersey.

Nonetheless, Robert Fulton is generally credited as the inventor of the steamboat. In 1814, Fulton and Edward Livingston, the brother of Robert R. Livingston, brought commercial success to steamboating when they began to offer regular steamboat service between New Orleans, Louisiana, and Natchez, Mississippi. The boats traveled at the rates of eight miles per hour downstream and three miles per hour upstream. In 1816, Henry Miller Shreve launched his steamboat Washington, which completed the voyage from New Orleans to Louisville, Kentucky, in twenty-five days. Steamboat design continued to improve, so that by 1853, the trip to Louisville took only four and one-half days.

Today in History: Library of Congress

Amendment XIX

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”

It’s only been 90 years (August 26, 1920).

Washington burns

The invading British burned the public buildings of Washington on this date in 1814.

On August 24, 1814, as the War of 1812 raged on, invading British troops marched into Washington and set fire to the U.S. Capitol, the President’s Mansion, and other local landmarks. The ensuring fire reduced all but one of the capital city’s major public buildings to smoking rubble, and only a torrential rainstorm saved the Capitol from complete destruction. The blaze particularly devastated the Capitol’s Senate wing, the oldest part of the building, which was honeycombed with vulnerable wooden floors and housed the valuable but combustible collection of books and manuscripts of the Library of Congress, then located in the Capitol building. Heat from the intense fire reduced the Senate chamber’s marble columns to lime, leaving the room, in one description, “a most magnificent ruin.”

Source: U.S. Senate Art & History

After 26 hours in Washington, the British moved toward Baltimore, where they met with resistance and the Star-spangled banner still waved.

August 21st in History and Birth

1680: The Pueblo Revolt

On this date in 1831 “… a 30-year-old black slave named Nat Turner, supported by about 60 followers armed with guns, clubs, axes and swords, launched the bloodiest slave revolt in American history.” Joshua Zeitz has more on the revolt, its context, aftermath and legacy at AmericanHeritage.com.

1858: Lincoln-Douglas

Kenny Rogers is 72 today.

Patty McCormack is 65. The actress, known now as Patricia McCormack, was nominated for the supporting actress Oscar as an 11-year-old for her performance in The Bad Seed.

Kim Cattrall of Sex in the City is 54.

Hayden Panettiere of Heroes is 21.

William “Count” Basie was born on this date in 1904.

Count Basie was a leading figure of the swing era in jazz and, alongside Duke Ellington, an outstanding representative of big band style.

Quotation from the PBS website for Jazz: A Film by Ken Burns. The page has a nice biography of Basie with some audio clips, including Basie’s 1937 recording of “One O’Clock Jump,” one of NPR’s 100 “most important American musical works of the 20th century.”

Wilt Chamberlain was born in Philadelphia 74 years ago today. Usually called “The Stilt” because it rhymed with Wilt, Chamberlain actually preferred the nickname “The Big Dipper.”

• Scored 800 points in first 16 high school games.
• Unanimous All-American at Kansas 1957, 1958, averaging nearly 30 points per game.
• Four-time NBA MVP.
• Scored 31,419 points (30.1 ppg) in 1,045 pro games, including 100 in one game against the Knicks.
• All-time scoring leader when he retired, since surpassed.

Chamberlain died in 1999.

Hawaii entered the Union as the 50th state on this date in 1959. The eight major islands in the chain are Ni’ihau, Kaua’i, O’ahu, Moloka’i, Lāna’i, Kaho’olawe, Maui and Hawai’i.

My Favorite August

I’m not ready to resume this slog, but I wouldn’t want you to miss Gail Collins today.

Redux post of the day

First posted here three years ago today.

Dollar Days

In Bohemia, in what is now part of the Czech Republic, there is a town called Jáchymov. When the town was part of Bavaria, it was known in German as Sankt Joachimsthal or in English as Joachimsthal. The town was named for Saint Joachim who, according to some sources, was the maternal grandfather of Jesus.

In 1519, the local sovereign, Count Schlick, began striking one-ounce silver coins in Sankt Joachimsthal. These coins became known as “Joachimsthalers” and then simply “thalers.” The pronunciation changed as the term passed into other languages — dahlers in northern Germany, dalers in Dutch, dallers in English. By 1700 the accepted English pronunciation was “dollars” and the term everywhere applied to any one-ounce silver coin.

After 1497 Spain minted a silver coin called reales de a ocho or pieces of eight (they were valued at eight times the underlying coin, the real). Because the pieces of eight were similar to the thaler, they often came to be called the Spanish dollar. They were the first world currency, and were common throughout the Americas including the English colonies.

Eager still to abandon many things English, on July 6, 1785, the Continental Congress unanimously “Resolved, That the money unit of the United States be one dollar.” The following year the Congress further declared that, “The Money Unit or Dollar will contain three hundred and seventy five grains and sixty four hundredths of a Grain of fine Silver. A Dollar containing this number of Grains of fine Silver, will be worth as much as the New Spanish Dollars.” The decimal system for sub-dividing the dollar was adopted from the French on the suggestion of Thomas Jefferson.

Spanish coinage was legal tender in the United States until 1857. The pieces of eight, of course, are the source for two-bits, four-bits, six-bits, a dollar (the coins could be and were actually cut into eight pieces).

The American currency is based on Bavarian, Spanish and French precedents (and Mexican silver).

Today, July 23rd, ought to be a national holiday

On July 23, 1904, according to some accounts, Charles E. Menches conceived the idea of filling a pastry cone with two scoops of ice-cream and thereby invented the ice-cream cone. He is one of several claimants to that honor: Ernest Hamwi, Abe Doumar, Albert and Nick Kabbaz, Arnold Fornachou, and David Avayou all have been touted as the inventor(s) of the first edible cone. Interestingly, these individuals have in common the fact that they all made or sold confections at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, known as the St. Louis World’s Fair. It is from the time of the Fair that the edible “cornucopia,” a cone made from a rolled waffle, vaulted into popularity in the United States.

Library of Congress

July 21st ought to be a national holiday

On July 21, 1959, Judge Bryan ruled in favor of Grove Press and ordered the Post Office to lift all restrictions on sending copies of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” through the mail. This, in effect, marked the end of the Post Office’s authority — which, until then, it held absolutely — to declare a work of literature “obscene” or to impound copies of those works or prosecute their publishers. This wasn’t exactly the end of obscenity as a criminal category. Into the mid-1960s, Barney Rosset would wage battles in various state courts over William Burroughs’s “Naked Lunch” and Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer,” other Grove novels now widely regarded as classics. But the “Chatterley” case established the principle that allowed free speech its total victory.

Excerpt from Fred Kaplan, “The Day Obscenity Became Art” – NYTimes.com.

A holiday not because of Lawrence’s book, but to celebrate the expansion of freedom this decision represented.

While it lasts.

Anne Marbury Hutchinson

Anne Marbury was baptized on this date in 1591. She married Wiiliam Hutchinson when she was 21, and they had 15 children. The family emigrated to Massachusetts in 1634.

Serving as a skilled herbalist and midwife in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Anne Hutchinson began meeting with other women for prayer and religious discussion. Her charisma and intelligence soon also drew men, including ministers and magistrates, to her gatherings, where she developed an emphasis on the individual’s relationship with God, stressing personal revelation over institutionalized observances and absolute reliance on God’s grace rather than on good works as the means to salvation. Hutchinson’s views challenged religious orthodoxy, while her growing power as a female spiritual leader threatened established gender roles.

Called for a civil trial before the General Court of Massachusetts in November 1637, Hutchinson ably defended herself against charges that she had defamed the colony’s ministers and as a woman had dared to teach men. Her extensive knowledge of Scripture, her eloquence, and her intelligence allowed Hutchinson to debate with more skill than her accusers. Yet because Hutchinson claimed direct revelation from God and argued that “laws, commands, rules, and edicts are for those who have not the light which makes plain the pathway,” she was convicted and banished from the colony, a sentence confirmed along with formal excommunication in the ecclesiastical trial that followed.

Library of Congress

Anne Marbury Hutchinson and five of her six children living with her were killed by Siwanoy Indians in New Netherlands (in what is now Pelham Bay Park, The Bronx, New York City) in 1643.

Among her descendants are Franklin Roosevelt, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Stephen A. Douglas and Mitt Romney.

Sheep in the wolf’s lair — but brave sheep

Sixty-six years ago today, German military officers failed in an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler with a bomb in a briefcase. Four were killed but Hitler, though wounded, was saved by the heavy wooden table on which he was reviewing maps. This from the BBC —

Adolf Hitler has escaped death after a bomb exploded at 1242 local time at his headquarters in Rastenberg, East Prussia.

The German News Agency broke the news from Hitler’s headquarters, known as the “wolf’s lair”, his command post for the Eastern Front.

A senior officer, Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, has been blamed for planting the bomb at a meeting at which Hitler and other senior members of the General Staff were present.

Hitler has sustained minor burns and concussion but, according to the news agency, managed to keep his appointment with Italian leader Benito Mussolini.

*****

Von Stauffenberg was arrested the same day and shot. The rest of the conspirators were tried and hanged or offered the chance to commit suicide.

Eight of those executed were hanged with piano wire from meat-hooks and their executions filmed and shown to senior members of the Nazi Party and the armed forces.

Sitting Bull surrenders

The Lakota Tatanka-Iyotanka (Sitting Bull) surrendered to the U.S. Army on this date 129 years ago (1881).

This from a fine, brief biographical essay at AmericanHeritage.com:

On the morning of July 20, in front of American and Canadian soldiers and a Minnesota newspaperman, Sitting Bull had his eight-year-old son, Crow Foot, hand [Major] Brotherton his Winchester rifle. “I surrender this rifle to you through my young son,” said the chief, “whom I [thereby] desire to teach . . . that he has become a friend of the Americans. . . . I wish it to be remembered that I was the last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle. This boy has given it to you, and he now wants to know how he is going to make a living.”

Fly Me to the Moon

And let me play among the stars. It was 41 years ago this evening (U.S. time) that man first walked on the moon, an event that I believe centuries from now will rank as the most historic happening in our lifetimes. I can remember watching the TV that evening thinking how cool it would be if some creature came crawling over the horizon into the field of view of the live camera. That was crazy, but at the time who really knew? The New York Times has its next day coverage on-line, including the historic front page. As Walter Cronkite said that afternoon when the lunar modular set down, “Oh, boy.” It was exciting in a way that you can’t explain now.

Redux post of the day

I posted this a year ago, the day after Walter Cronkite died.

I’ve seen a few “celebrities” including politicians, met a couple of former presidents, and seen [five actual U.S. presidents], talked to Lady Bird Johnson more than once, had a meeting in the West Wing, seen Dylan, and Benny Goodman, and Edward G. Robinson playing cards, attended a reception with Edward Kennedy in the crowd, another with John Glenn mingling, went to a movie premiere with two of the Apollo 13 astronauts.

But I’ve always considered two people I’ve seen in person in a class above all the others.

Earl Warren and Walter Cronkite.

A blast

At 5:30 AM, 65 years ago today, 120 miles south of Albuquerque, the first atomic bomb was detonated.

A scientist who witnessed the test reported: “We were lying there, very tense, in the early dawn, and there were just a few streaks of gold in the east; you could see your neighbor very dimly. … Suddenly, there was an enormous flash of light, the brightest light I have ever seen. … It blasted; it pounced; it bored its way right through you. It was a vision which was seen with more than the eye. It was seen to last forever. … There was an enormous ball of fire which grew and grew and it rolled as it grew; it went up into the air, in yellow flashes and into scarlet and green. It looked menacing. It seemed to come toward one.”

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Billy the Kid

… was killed 129 years ago tonight.

Henry McCarty was born in New York City (or Brooklyn) in the fall of 1859. With his mother and brother he moved west — Indiana, Kansas, New Mexico. Mrs. McCarty married a man named William Antrim in Santa Fe. After she died in Silver City in 1874, the boy got into minor trouble, escaped jail to Arizona Territory, and used the name William Antrim. His size and age led to “Kid” or “Kid” Antrim.

Arrested for shooting and killing a blacksmith who was beating him in 1877, the Kid escaped back to New Mexico and assumed the name William H. Bonney. He enlisted in the range war in Lincoln County on the side of John Tunstall against Lawrence Murphy. After Tunstall was killed, the Kid rode with a group called the Regulators, a quasi-legal vigilante gang. The Regulators captured two of Tunstall’s killers and someone, most likely the Kid, killed both before they reached Lincoln and the jail. Later the Kid was among the group that killed Sheriff William Brady. The Kid was wounded in the fight at Blazer’s Mill with “Buckshot” Roberts. There were other gunfights between the warring parties. In July, the Kid was in the “five-day battle” in Lincoln where the leader of his group, Tunstall’s lawyer Alexander McSween, was killed. After that the war was considered over and the Kid lost any legitimacy. In August 1878, he was present when the clerk at the Mescalero Indian agency was killed.

Incoming New Mexico Territorial Governor Lew Wallace (the author of Ben Hur) issued a general pardon for the Lincoln County war, but it did not apply to Billy Bonney because he had been involved in the killing of Sheriff Brady. After another outburst of violence led to the killing of a lawyer named Chapman, Governor Wallace offered the Kid a full pardon if he’d testify against Chapman’s killers. Bonney agreed and was arrested in early 1879. Meanwhile Chapman’s killers escaped.

After waiting several months for the pardon, the Kid, who had some liberties, walked away from his guards, mounted a horse and escaped. He became a cattle thief, claiming it was owed him for back wages. He killed a saloon braggart whose gun misfired. Another man was killed in an attempt to capture Bonney.

The new Lincoln County sheriff, Pat Garrett, finally caught the Kid at Stinking Springs, 25 miles from Fort Sumner. After a gunfight the Kid was arrested. He was first charged in the murder of “Buckshot” Roberts, but eventually brought to trial and convicted for the murder of Sheriff Brady. Before Bonney could be hanged, he killed two deputies and escaped. Garrett located the Kid at Pete Maxwell’s ranch, waited in the dark bedroom, and shot him twice when he saw him outlined in the opened bedroom doorway. The Kid died without knowing who had killed him. He was 21 years old.

NewMexiKen photo, 2006. Souvenir hunters have chipped away.

Among the best of the many books on Billy the Kid is Michael Wallis’s Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride.

Nipper

The trademark His Master’s Voice was registered 100 years ago today. It was based on a painting done in 1898 by Francis Barraud of his mutt Nipper. Nipper had died in 1895, but Barraud remembered the scene of the dog, which had belonged to his brother, listening to a gramophone.

When Barraud visited the Gramophone Company to see if they would lend him a horn so he could repaint the work, Gramophone asked to buy the painting (with their instrument in it).

The work went on display as advertising in January 1900. Emil Berliner bought the copyright for America and his company eventually became Victor Talking Machine Company and ultimately RCA Victor.

Hey, he’s important, don’t shoot him

English and American troops under British Major General Edward Braddock were routed by French and Indian forces near Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh) on July 9th in 1755. The leading colonial officer, George Washington, had two horses shot out from under him, his coat torn by bullets and his hat shot off, but — as you may have heard — he survived.

How now Dow?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average had an intra-day low of 40.56 on July 8th in 1932, its Great Depression bottom. It closed that day at 41.22.

34 months earlier (September 3, 1929) it had been at 381.17; the drop was 89.3%.

The Dow did not reach that September 1929 level again in inflation-adjusted value until 1954.

It’d be funny if it weren’t tragic

Let’s go to the tape:

Kissinger: They’re blaming the CIA.

Nixon: Why the hell would we assassinate him?

Kissinger: Well, (a) we couldn’t. We’re—

Nixon: Yeah.

Kissinger: CIA’s too incompetent to do it. You remember—

Nixon: Sure, but that’s the best thing. [Unclear].

Kissinger: —when they did try to assassinate somebody, it took three attempts—

Nixon: Yeah.

Kissinger: —and he lived for three weeks afterwards.

The Case Against Kissinger Deepens, Continued—By Scott Horton (Harper’s Magazine)

145 years ago today

In 1865 at Fort McNair, Mary E. Surratt, Lewis Payne, David E. Herold and George A. Atzerodt were executed for their part in the Lincoln assassination conspiracy.

Booth Conspirators

Alexander Gardner photo from the Library of Congress. Click for larger version.

Manifest Destiny

This date, July 7, is significant in American imperial growth. On July 7, 1846, Commodore John D. Sloat captured Monterey and officially raised the American flag over California. On July 7, 1898, President William McKinley signed the Newlands Resolution which annexed the Hawaiian Islands to the United States.

Happy Independence Day

Jefferson's draft Declaration of Independence with Franklin's edits

It was the Declaration of Independence that was approved by the Second Continental Congress on this date in 1776.

Independence itself was voted two days earlier. We celebrate the anniversary of the birth certificate, not the birth.

The signing of the embossed copy we recognize as THE Declaration of Independence began on August 2nd.