Category: History

Brief narratives about people and events in the American past.

The Thanksgivings before the Pilgrims

To see what the first Thanksgiving was like you have to go to: Texas. Texans claim the first Thanksgiving in America actually took place in little San Elizario, a community near El Paso, in 1598 — twenty-three years before the Pilgrims’ festival. For several years they have staged a reenactment of the event that culminated in the Thanksgiving celebration: the arrival of Spanish explorer Juan de Onate on the banks of the Rio Grande. De Onate is said to have held a big Thanksgiving festival after leading hundreds of settlers on a grueling 350-mile long trek across the Mexican desert.

Then again, you may want to go to Virginia.. At the Berkeley Plantation on the James River they claim the first Thanksgiving in America was held there on December 4th, 1619….two years before the Pilgrims’ festival….and every year since 1958 they have reenacted the event. In their view it’s not the Mayflower we should remember, it’s the Margaret, the little ship which brought 38 English settlers to the plantation in 1619. The story is that the settlers had been ordered by the London company that sponsored them to commemorate the ship’s arrival with an annual day of Thanksgiving. Hardly anybody outside Virginia has ever heard of this Thanksgiving, but in 1963 President Kennedy officially recognized the plantation’s claim.

Rick Shenkman at the History News Network

What historians do know about Thanksgiving

Conclusion from a thoughtful and thorough article in The Christian Science Monitor (November 27, 2002).

There are many myths surrounding Thanksgiving. Here are nine things we do know are true about the holiday.

1. The first Thanksgiving was a harvest celebration in 1621 that lasted for three days.

2. The feast most likely occurred between Sept. 21 and Nov. 11.

3. Approximately 90 Wampanoag Indians and 52 colonists – the latter mostly women and children – participated.

4. The Wampanoag, led by Chief Massasoit, contributed at least five deer to the feast.

5. Cranberry sauce, potatoes – white or sweet – and pies were not on the menu.

6. The Pilgrims and Wampanoag communicated through Squanto, a member of the Patuxet tribe, who knew English because he had associated with earlier explorers. [In fact, Squanto (or Tisquantum), had spent several years in Europe and England.]

7. Besides meals, the event included recreation and entertainment.

8. There are only two surviving descriptions of the first Thanksgiving. One is in a letter by colonist Edward Winslow. He mentions some of the food and activities. The second description was in a book written by William Bradford 20 years afterward. His account was lost for almost 100 years.

9. Abraham Lincoln named Thanksgiving an annual holiday in 1863.

How I thought I’d become a footnote to history

In 1976, the House of Representatives established a Select Committee on Assassinations to investigate the murders of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Among the things the Committee sought was a thorough examination of all the photographic evidence in the Kennedy murder. At that time it took a mainframe computer to do what probably could be done on a personal computer today — that is, scan, enhance and thoroughly analyze the images. The image enhancement would be done at the Aerospace Corporation in California. The agreement with the National Archives, which had custody of the Kennedy assassination evidence in Washington, stipulated that the photographic records must be in the custody of the Archives or an Archives employee at all times. For two days I was that employee.

The only copy of the photographs, film, x-rays, etc., was brought by courier to California and put in a safe within a secure area at the National Archives facility in Laguna Niguel, where I worked at the time. The image enhancement was being done in El Segundo near Los Angeles International Airport, some 60 miles away. Each day we opened the safe, verified that each item was present, put the briefcase and “suit” box (think of a four-inch high pizza box) into the trunk of a rented car and made the commute.

That first day (it was Easter week 1978) I followed the procedure carefully even taking the materials with me to lunch, thinking to myself “if the people around me only knew what I had.” It was fascinating to see the enhancements and hear the analysis of the few experts working on the project and sworn to secrecy (as was I). Late in the afternoon I packed everything back up, put it in the trunk, returned to the office and locked it all in the safe. I remember thinking on the way home, this stuff would be worth a million dollars or more on the black market. Am I being followed? Am I in danger?

The second morning we began the inventory. Everything was there, of course. Except — EXCEPT! — on one x-ray, right in the middle of the damaged part of President Kennedy’s skull, there was a bubble. I didn’t remember any damage to any of the x-rays. Now it looked as if this one x-ray had been too close to heat and the image had been burned. How did this happen? Where had I put the box that this could have happened? Was the computer console in the lab too hot? Was there a problem with the exhaust in the rental car that the trunk floor got excessively hot? My god, somehow I’ve damged the only copy of a piece of evidence in the most important murder of the 20th century. My boss was visibly shaken. I was hyper-ventilating. My career is over. I’m a footnote in the Kennedy conspiracy books.

There was nothing to do but put the briefcase and box in the car (inside with me this time) and make the drive to El Segundo. It was a lonely 90 minutes. Once there I trudged in and immediately confessed my crime.

“Oh, that. Some doctor got it too close to a lamp years ago.”

[The photographic and forensic experts I talked to were convinced the photographic evidence at least was consistent with one shooter — Oswald. As a reward for my participation in this project I was later permitted to see some other the other evidence including Oswald’s clothing (blood stained) and his Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.]

222 years ago today

Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent, the marquis d’ Arlandes, flew in a untethered hot air balloon over Paris for 20 minutes on this date in 1783. The balloon was made of silk and paper and was constructed by Jacques Étienne and Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, who first took notice that smoke (i.e, hot air) would cause a bag to rise. The Montgolfiers experimented with paper bags before sending a balloon aloft with a sheep, a rooster and a duck (September 19, 1783). De Rozier went up in a tethered balloon on October 15.

But November 21 is the date man first flew, untethered to the earth.

The winds have welcomed you with softness,
The sun has blessed you with his warm hands
You have flown so high and so free,
That God has joined you in laughter,
And set you gently again,
Into the loving arms of mother earth.

The Balloonists Prayer

On this date, the letter to Mrs. Bixby

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864

Dear Madam, –I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom. Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln.

[As it turns out, this letter, made even more famous when read in the film Saving Private Ryan, may have been written by John Hay, Lincoln’s secretary. Further, only two of Mrs. Bixby’s five sons had died in battle. One was honorably discharged, one was dishonorably discharged, and another deserted or died in a prison camp. Not that losing three sons in whatever way isn’t horrible enough.]

The man they named the telescope for

Astronomer Edwin Hubble was born on this date in 1889.

During the past 100 years, astronomers have discovered quasars, pulsars, black holes and planets orbiting distant suns. But all these pale next to the discoveries Edwin Hubble made in a few remarkable years in the 1920s. At the time, most of his colleagues believed the Milky Way galaxy, a swirling collection of stars a few hundred thousand light-years across, made up the entire cosmos. But peering deep into space from the chilly summit of Mount Wilson, in Southern California, Hubble realized that the Milky Way is just one of millions of galaxies that dot an incomparably larger setting.

Hubble went on to trump even that achievement by showing that this galaxy-studded cosmos is expanding — inflating majestically like an unimaginably gigantic balloon — a finding that prompted Albert Einstein to acknowledge and retract what he called “the greatest blunder of my life.” Hubble did nothing less, in short, than invent the idea of the universe and then provide the first evidence for the Big Bang theory, which describes the birth and evolution of the universe. He discovered the cosmos, and in doing so founded the science of cosmology.

Source: TIME 100: Edwin Hubble

The Gettysburg Address delivered on November 19, 1863

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate — we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Those naval officers sure have a way with words

“I have not yet begun to fight!”
Captain John Paul Jones, during the battle between Bonhomme Richard and Serapis, September 23, 1779

“Don’t give up the ship!”
Captain James Lawrence, during engagement between his ship, the U.S. frigate Chesapeake, and HMS Shannon, June 1, 1813 (Lawrence died and the ship was lost, but it became a rallying cry for the Navy)

“We have met the enemy and they are ours…”
Oliver Hazard Perry, dispatch to Major General William Henry Harrison after victory in the Battle of Lake Erie, September 10, 1813

“Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”
Admiral David Glasgow Farragut in Mobile Bay, Alabama, August 5, 1864, after the first ship in his attack was demolished and the second stopped by mines

“You may fire when you are ready Gridley.”
Commodore George Dewey, at the Battle of Manila Bay, Spanish-American War, May 1, 1898

“Sighted Sub, Sank Same.”
AMM 1/c Donald Francis Mason, after the sinking of a German U-boat off Argentia, Newfoundland, January 28, 1942

The Santa Fe Trail …

opened on this date in 1821.

William Becknell, under forced escort by Mexican troops, arrives at Santa Fe. New Mexicans, who are still celebrating their newly won independence from Spain, quickly purchase all of his goods, which he initially intended to trade with the Indians. This marked the birth of the Santa Fe Trail, originating from Independence, Mo.

New Mexico Magazine

The 1940 film Santa Fe Trail, with Ronald Reagan playing George Armstrong Custer — and starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland — has little basis in historical fact other than that there was a Santa Fe Trail.

Oklahoma!

… was admitted to the Union as the 46th state on this date in 1907.

The official song and anthem of the State of Oklahoma is “Oklahoma,” composed and written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein.

Brand new state, Brand new state, gonna treat you great!
Gonna give you barley, carrots and pertaters,
Pasture fer the cattle, Spinach and Termayters!
Flowers on the prairie where the June bugs zoom,
Plen’y of air and plen’y of room,
Plen’y of room to swing a rope!
Plen’y of heart and plen’y of hope!

Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain,
And the wavin’ wheat can sure smell sweet
When the wind comes right behind the rain.
Oklahoma, ev’ry night my honey lamb and I
Sit alone and talk and watch a hawk makin’ lazy circles in the sky.

We know we belong to the land
And the land we belong to is grand!
And when we say – Yeeow! Ayipioeeay!
We’re only sayin’ You’re doin’ fine, Oklahoma! Oklahoma – O.K.

Oklahoma comes from two Choctaw words: “okla” meaning people and “humma” meaning red, so the state’s name means “red people.”

Highest point: Black Mesa (4,973 feet)
Lowest point: Little River (287 feet)
Oklahoma has 77 counties
The state ranks 20th in size (69,898 square miles)
The Oklahoma state animal is the American buffalo (Bison bison)

On This Date

… in 1789, Benjamin Franklin wrote, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Franklin died in 1790.

… in 1940, the Disney film Fantasia premiered.

… in 1977, the comic strip “Li’l Abner” ended.

… in 1982, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington was dedicated.

Whoopi Goldberg is 50 today; Chris Noth 49.

In honor of all veterans

Arizona Memorial

The Allied powers signed a cease-fire agreement with Germany at Rethondes, France on November 11, 1918, bringing World War I to a close. Between the wars, November 11 was commemorated as Armistice Day in the United States, Great Britain, and France. After World War II, the holiday was recognized as a day of tribute to veterans of both world wars. Beginning in 1954, the United States designated November 11 as Veterans Day to honor veterans of all U.S. wars.

Source: Library of Congress

Official Department of Veterans Affairs Veterans Day website.

Photo taken by Donna at the Arizona Memorial, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Montana

… entered the Union as the 41st state on this date in 1889.

According to the last estimate (2004), 926,865 people reside in Montana, the fourth largest state with 147,046 square miles. That’s just more than six people per square mile.

The state animal is the Grizzly Bear (Ursus arctos horribilis); the state bird the Western Meadowlark; and the state fossil the Duck-billed dinosaur (Maiasaura Peeblesorum).

Officially Montana is the Treasure State but it’s also known as Big Sky Country.

The highest point is Granite Peak, 12,799 feet (3,901 meters) above sea level. The lowest elevation is 1,820 feet.

Friends of Abe

Eminent Civil War historian James McPherson reviews Doris Kearns Goodwin’s newest book: Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. McPherson begins:

More books about Abraham Lincoln line the shelves of libraries than about any other American. Can there be anything new to say about our 16th president? Surprisingly, the answer is yes. Having previously offered fresh insights into Lyndon Johnson, the Kennedys and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Doris Kearns Goodwin has written an elegant, incisive study of Lincoln and leading members of his cabinet that will appeal to experts as well as to those whose knowledge of Lincoln is an amalgam of high school history and popular mythology.

Influenza trivia

NewMexiKen began reading John M. Barry’s The Great Influenza yesterday on the plane from Baltimore to Albuquerque. The book describes the 1918 influenza outbreak worldwide — the deadliest plague in history. 170 pages in and it’s been mostly background — not uninteresting, but a little tedious and repetitious. I’ll sum up and make a recommendation regarding the book when I’m done.

In the meanwhile, some interesting tidbits:

It was called the Spanish flu because Spain wasn’t fighting in World War I and therefore its press remained free to print what was going on. Elsewhere, including particularly the U.S., the press was censored and did not report the epidemic at first.

The influenza began, more than likely, in Haskell, Kansas (west of Dodge City), in March 1918. It spread rapidly because of crowded wartime military camps and troop movements. It was worldwide by fall.

Pandemic is the term for a worldwide epidemic. An epidemic is local or national.

Influenza (a virus) mutates rapidly, even within a host cell. In humans influenza is exclusively a respiratory disease, though it may indirectly affect many parts of the body (headaches, sore muscles). The stomach “flu” we get is not influenza.

And, as you all know, antibiotics have no effect whatsover on viruses. They work exclusively on bacteria.

400 years ago

Today is Guy Fawkes Day, celebrating the day in 1605 when police foiled the so-called Gunpowder Plot by seizing Guy Fawkes before he could blow up the English Parliament. Fawkes was a British soldier who had converted to Roman Catholicism at a time when the British government was making it a crime to be a Catholic. Catholic masses were held in secret chapels, clergy had to go into hiding and sleep in closets, and families that refused to attend Protestant mass suffered crippling fines.

Fawkes became so disgusted by British Protestantism that he left England and enlisted in the Spanish Army in the Netherlands. He became known as a soldier of great courage. At that time, a small group of Catholics were secretly planning to assassinate the Protestant King James I, and they enlisted Fawkes to help them execute the plot, and he agreed.

They rented a cellar under the Parliament building, and Fawkes planted more than 20 barrels of gunpowder there, in the hopes of blowing up the king. The rest of their plan included an uprising in the Midlands, and the crowning of a puppet queen, the king’s young daughter Elizabeth. But an anonymous tip gave up the plot to the authorities and Guy Fawkes was caught red-handed, ready to light the fuse. He managed to withstand torture on the rack for two days before giving up the names of his co-conspirators.

For Catholics, the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot only worsened their oppression. They could no longer practice law, serve as officers in the army or navy, nor vote in local or parliamentary elections. Some British authorities even suggested that Catholics should have to wear red hats in public.

November 5th came to be celebrated as a holiday in England and in the early American colonies. People would build bonfires, light off fireworks, and burn Guy Fawkes in effigy. But even in England, the holiday has been overshadowed by the American import of Halloween.

Source: The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media

You can hear Garrison Keillor relate the above and more by clicking here.

North and South

… Dakota were admitted to the Union as the 39th and 40th states on this date in 1889.

North Dakota is the 19th largest state; 70,704 square miles.

The capital of North Dakota is Bismarck.

North Dakota is the least visited state of the 50.

The highest point is 3,506 feet above sea level.

The North Dakota state bird: Western Meadowlark
State flower: Wild Prairie Rose “Rosa arkansana”
State tree: American Elm “Ulmus americana”

South Dakota is the 17th largest state; 77,121 square miles.

The capital of South Dakota is Pierre.

The South Dakota state flower: Pasque
State insect: Honey bee (Apis Mellifera L.)
State tree: Black Hills spruce
State animal: Coyote

Update: The highest point in South Dakota is indeed Harney Peak, 7,242 feet.

Ehrich Weiss

… better known to us as Harry Houdini, died on this date — Halloween — in 1926.

But during a stay in Montreal in October, Houdini was assaulted by a young man in his dressing room. The stomach blows — which he had invited as a test of his legendary strength — aggravated a case of appendicitis, and he soon became seriously ill. In a final display of stamina and willpower, Houdini performed the next day and again in Detroit. His appendix was removed on October 25th, but the delay had allowed an infection to set in, and he died in Detroit on Halloween.

Source: The American Experience, which has a brief biography.

Nevada

Nevada was admitted to the Union as the 36th state on this date in 1864.

In Spanish “nevada” means snow-capped.

The Nevada state bird: Mountain Bluebird
State animal: Desert Bighorn Sheep
State reptile: Desert Tortoise

Nevada is the seventh largest state: 110,540 square miles. It has 17 counties.

The War of the Worlds

It’s the anniversary of Orson Welles’s broadcast of “The War of the Worlds” in 1938. Welles wrote an adaptation of an H.G. Wells novel in which Martians invade Earth, and presented it as if it were really happening on the Halloween broadcast of a show called “Mercury Theater on the Air.” It began, “Ladies and gentlemen, I have a grave announcement to make. Incredible as it may seem, strange beings who landed in New Jersey tonight are the vanguard of an invading army from Mars.” Thousands of listeners missed the first part of the show and didn’t know it was Welles’s “The War of the Worlds.” People clogged the switchboards trying to get more information about the landing. A few people reported seeing the aliens.

— The Writer’s Almanac

If you’ve never heard the broadcast, you should give it a listen — the first half, at least. Here’s an mp3 version from a Mercury Theatre on the Air website.