| Meet Bud: First dog that went on a road trip |
[Jun. 7th, 2009|08:01 pm] |
From PBS's Horatio's Drive (documentary you can watch on netflix!):
As early in the trip as Sacramento (and for reasons unexplained), Jackson had been looking for a small dog to accompany him on his attempt to cross the continent. In Idaho, he finally got his chance -- thanks to the kind of misadventure that had now become almost routine. They had pulled out of Caldwell early on the morning of June 12, but after driving a few miles Jackson realized he had left his coat at the hotel. "On our way back," he wrote Bertha, "we were stopped by a man and asked if I didn't want a dog for a mascot. As I had been trying to steal one we were glad to get him so accepted the present (consideration $15.00). So Bud is now with us."
Bud was a young, light-colored bulldog, and whatever the rationale for adding this third member to the expedition, he almost immediately began attracting as much attention as the Vermont. Some newspapers would report that Jackson had rescued Bud from a savage dog fight; others wrote that he was a lonesome stray who had chased after the car for two miles before being taken on board.
"Bud soon became an enthusiast for motoring," Jackson bragged, especially after his masters put a pair of their goggles on him to keep the stinging, alkali dust out of his eyes. Riding in front, Bud learned to watch the road ahead as intently as Crocker and Jackson, bracing himself for every bump and turn -- and becoming, his owner said, "the one member of [our] trio who used no profanity on the entire trip."
Bud apparently lived a full dog's life after the cross-country trip, content to guard the Jackson home in Vermont and take short automobile trips around Burlington with his master. Following Bud's death, the Jacksons always kept at least one dog in their house, although none ever became as celebrated as the begoggled-bull pup who had crossed the continent.
http://www.pbs.org/horatio/wheel/
x-posted to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) bygone_dogs |
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| The Dionne Quintuplets |
[May. 31st, 2009|08:54 pm] |
The Dionne quintuplets - Annette, Cecile, Emilie, Marie and Yvonne - were born two months premature in a small farmhouse on May 28, 1934 near the French - Canadian village of Corbeil in northern Ontario. The family was not even aware that Elzire Dionne was pregnant with quintuplets. They were identical - created from a single egg.
Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe is credited with the birth of the quintuplets. The quintuplets were immediately wrapped in cotton sheets and old napkins and laid in the corner of the bed. Dr. Dafoes didn't think that the babies would survive. The babies were kept in an ordinary wicker basket borrowed from the neighbors with heated blankets. They were soon brought into the kitchen and set by the open door of the stove to keep warm. One by one, they were taken out of the basket and massaged with olive oil. Every two hours, for the first twenty-four, they were only given sweetened water.
By the second day they were moved to a laundry basket, which was slightly larger, and heated with hot-water bottles. They were watched constantly and often had to be roused when it seemed that they were losing life. They were then fed with seven-twenty formula. It consisted of cow's milk, boiled water, two spoonfuls of corn syrup, and one or two drops of rum for stimulant. News spread quickly and the family benefited from much assistance during the first several months.
Just days after the birth of the girls, when it was thought unlikely that they would survive, Oliva Dionne, their father, signed a contract to exhibit the Quints at the Chicago Century of Progress Exposition. Elzire was not consulted.
Four months after the birth of the sisters, the Ontario government intervened, found the parents to be unfit for the quintuplets, and removed them in 1935, originally for a guardianship of two years. They were put under the guidance of Dr. Dafoe and two other guardians. The stated reason for removing the quintuplets from their parents' legal custody was to ensure their survival into healthy toddlers. The government realized the massive interest in the sisters and proceeded to engender a tourist industry around them. The girls were made wards of the provincial crown, planned until they reached the age of 18. The Ontario government eventually made millions from the dozens of commercial products endorsed by the Quints.
( read the rest )
sources: http://www.anthonydepalma.com/articles/nyt/namerica/03041998.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionne_quintuplets
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3683/is_199401/ai_n8716816/
pictures: http://www.city.north-bay.on.ca/QUINTS/DIGITIZE/archive.htm |
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| Top Ten Grimoires |
[Apr. 9th, 2009|08:21 pm] |
According to Owen Davies, author and professor of social history, a grimoire is a book that contains a "mix of spells, conjurations, natural secrets and ancient wisdom." " Their origins date back to the dawn of writing and their subsequent history is entwined with that of the religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the development of science, the cultural influence of print, and the social impact of European colonialism."
Owen Davies counts down the top ten grimoires at the Guardian.
Also, my moment of shameless promotion: I kept finding articles and links about history that I liked, but I never knew where to post them, so I started my own community: history_talk
The only rules so far are 1)post something related to a time period prior to 1990 2) don't copy and paste articles in their entirety (unless you have permission to do so) because I don't want the Associated Press or LJ High Command to come after me and 3) don't be a jackass to the other posters. |
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| Ghosts of Past and Present, Autographed |
[Apr. 3rd, 2009|12:14 pm] |
I'd read about turn-of-the-century autograph book "The Ghosts of My Friends" quite some time ago, and after patiently scouring ebay managed to score the ideal- one older, more decrepit book filled with signatures and one empty book in excellent condition. I've finally photographed the former, and will begin to fill the latter with signatures of my friends.
Here's how it works: the book's pages are pre-creased; your friends sign their name in ink on the semi-glossy pages and fold it over to create a personalized Rorschach blot, to which they can then add little legs, arms and features, should they so wish (only one or two examples in my book had this). The same company created a book for 'Hand-O-Grams', something most of us have done in Kindergarten- leaving one or more thumbprints on a page, you doodle a little picture on them. Birds seemed rather popular.
This book features signatures from three periods- 1909-1912, when the owner of the book had her friends and family sign the majority of the pages in a heavier brown-black ink, 1922 & 1930, when another relative picked up the book and had some repeat signatures along with new ones in a thinner black ink, and on the back of some pages, 1943 from a younger generation of the family done in a blue ink. The images are presented in the order they appear in the book.
( Click onward for additional ghosts ) |
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| L.E.S. Mystery Theater |
[Mar. 5th, 2009|12:16 pm] |
(Excerpted from a previous journal post)
Though lately Manhattan has little to draw me to it, Cakeshop, a pleasant coffee shop/bar/music venue, remains one of the few places I feel comfortable. It too has its share of overly loud, fashionable patrons, more so on Fridays and Saturdays, but their cheap and interesting lineups and parties are worth some crowding. It's also run by the people behind the now-defunct Alt.Coffee, my college hangout. Across the street from Cakeshop are a wall of boutiques selling fancy clothes for fancy people. I'd never really walked along there though it's only about 12 feet away, the only thing on that side worth the effort being Le Creperie when one has a late-night hankering for some ungodly combination of Nutella, chocolate, marshmallows and graham crackers all tucked up in a crepe.
However, en route to the Tenement Museum (possibly the most depression for your dollar, second only to the Holocaust Museum in DC), a tiny shrine caught my eye, tucked into the niche between two of the stores:
I tried looking up the woman's name and date of death in the public record, but with no luck. Does anyone have a better idea what happened here? The wording on the urn's plaque is so strange; it could mean 'they denied her children..." as in they denied children she had as legitimate, or 'they denied her children, as in they wouldn't let her have children. Both the photo and the plaque also imply some sort of suicide in response to whatever the incident left unsaid might be. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 25th, 2009|12:34 pm] |
In 1941, Alex Kurzem fled alone into the forest, and watch his family as they were murdered by nazi soldiers. He was later captured by SS soldiers and, unaware of his Jewish heritage, made him their mascot.
Watch CBS Videos Online |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 19th, 2009|11:33 am] |
I am interested in special kind of games children (c. 5-10 years old) use to play all over the world. This kind of play involves two (some times more) kids, standing one in front of another, singing semi-meaningless repetitive song, which is accompanied by a strict set of movements and hand gestures (like clapping, stamping, etc.). I don't know if there is a special term for this kind of games, but I am fascinated by them... I can look at them for ever - their complexity, their ritualistic character, their sectarian, religious-like rhythm... I know it exist all over the globe, in all possible societies. What is the proper term to call them? Anybody knows a book, a study, or a site collecting them and studying them? |
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| lol at calvin coolidge |
[Jan. 30th, 2009|04:59 pm] |
Weird Facts about American Presidents
- The tall stovepipe hat that Abraham Lincoln (President #16) is usually depicted wearing was, in fact, a useful wardrobe device. He stored important papers inside of it.
- Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president, was reported to be a very interesting character. When not having his head massaged with Vaseline during breakfasts in bed or riding his own mechanical bull, he was ringing the White House doorbell and then running off to hide.
- Grover Cleveland was the only president to openly admit that he had fathered an illegitimate child. When the allegations came out during his presidential campaign, he instructed his staff to tell the truth about the child. In reality, it was never determined whether Cleveland was the child’s real father; he paid child support because he was the only single man among the mother’s suitors.
-Ulysses S. Grant was convicted of exceeding the speed limit while riding with his horse in the streets of Washington, D.C. late one night. The accusing police officer was reluctant to issue the $20 fine when he realized that the offender was President Grant, but Grant insisted the he be fined.
- The inauguration of Andrew Johnson as Abraham Lincoln's vice-president in 1865 was marred slightly by the fact that Johnson was incredibly drunk. He'd been downing whiskey in an effort to medicate himself for typhoid fever (that was his excuse, anyway) and was so far gone by the time he was sworn in that he slurred his oaths, and had to abandon his attempts to swear in new senators.
- President Franklin Pierce was arrested during his term as President for running over an old lady with his horse, but the charges were later dropped.
- President Andrew Jackson believed the world was flat and FDR was so superstitious, that he would never leave town on a Friday and never sit at a table with 13 people.
- Franklin Roosevelt was related to Teddy Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and even his own wife, Eleanor, a second cousin. Although the relationship with the Roosevelt's was an uncomfortable situation for many people, there was stranger twist to the First Couples marriage. For 30 plus years, from 1932 on, Eleanor Roosevelt had an affair with another woman, Associated Press reporter Lenora Hickok. Eleanor wrote well over 2,300 passionate love letters to Hicky which Hicky saved on the condition that they not be published until 10 years after Eleanor's death.
sources:
http://polizine.com/2008/02/19/the-10-weirdest-facts-about-american-presidents/
http://www.civil-liberties.com/factoids/july4_02.htm
http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?Top_10_weird_Presidential_facts&in_article_id=487680 |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 28th, 2009|01:01 pm] |
Daily Routine: Truman Capote
INTERVIEWER
What are some of your writing habits? Do you use a desk? Do you write on a machine?
CAPOTE
I am a completely horizontal author. I can't think unless I'm lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I've got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis. No, I don't use a typewriter. Not in the beginning. I write my first version in longhand (pencil). Then I do a complete revision, also in longhand. Essentially I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon. Obsessions of this sort, and the time I take over them, irritate me beyond endurance.
The Paris Review, Issue 16, 1957 |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 27th, 2009|11:07 pm] |
Daily Routine: Napoleon Bonaparte
[Napoleon at Saint Helena, the site of his second exile and eventual death.]
Briefly: Napoleon’s daily routine was perforce limited. Marchand awakened him early and served coffee in bed. One or more of the valets washed him and helped him shave, then rubbed him down with a coarse brush and doused him with eau de cologne (which soon ran out and was replaced with homemade lavender water) and finally helped him dress, an elaborate process that required one or two hours.
Weather permitting, he and Las Cases usually went for a long walk or horseback ride before breakfast. The emperor breakfasted late either in his room or, in fair weather, in the small garden. When in the mood he followed this with dictation to Las Cases, Gourgaud or Bertrand. On occasion he received guests, usually lunched alone in his room, conversed in Italian with O’Meara and toward evening walked or rode with the ladies in a small open carriage in good weather but otherwise stayed by the fireplace reading. He often interrupted this routine with steaming baths that sometimes lasted for three or four hours.
Dinners were formal. The carefully coiffured and gowned ladies and uniformed generals gathered in the drawing room, everyone standing to await the emperor’s arrival after which the ladies only were permitted to sit until dinner was served. Although the food was poor it was eaten off precious china while equally inferior wine was drunk from exquisite crystal goblets. Table talk was restrained. If the emperor did not speak no one else spoke. Dinner normally lasted for forty minutes before the company returned to the drawing room. Pleasantries there consisted of Madame Montholon warbling a few French ballads followed by someone, often Napoleon, reading a play, usually one of Racine, Molière or Voltaire’s tragic dramas. Conversation was normally light, the emperor twitting the ladies, sometimes rudely, but on occasion reminiscing, often to the company’s delight. Cards or chess also whiled away the hours until the emperor retired, usually around eleven.
Robert Asprey, The Reign of Napoleon Bonaparte |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 9th, 2008|10:09 pm] |
" Year: 1572
Scientist: J. Sluperius
Now appears in: Fossils: Evidence of Vanished Worlds by Yvette Gayrard-Valy
Believe it or not, the animal that inspired this hideous depiction is a gentle vegetarian: the elephant. This 16th-century engraving of a cyclops kept alive a myth that started thousands of years before, when ancient Greeks assumed the big skulls they found must have belong to giants, and the median nasal openings must have been single eye sockets."
http://www.strangescience.net/goof.htm for even more weird stuff mostly from the 16th-19th century. It'd be way too huge if I were to post it all, but it's definitely worth a look so far as weird history goes.
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| The Lost Colony |
[Nov. 23rd, 2008|11:34 am] |
The image is one of the most haunting in American folklore: Eleanor Dare cradling her infant daughter as they struggle through a vast wilderness, seemingly forgotten by her father who brought them to an unfamiliar land, then left them to fend for themselves.
In the four centuries since their disappearance, Eleanor and Virginia Dare have become true American heroines, players in an epic unsolved mystery that still challenges historians and archaeologists as one of America's oldest. In 1587, over 100 men, women and children journeyed from England to Roanoke Island on North Carolina's coast and established the first English settlement in America. Within three years, they had vanished with scarcely a trace. England's initial attempt at colonization of the New World was a disaster, and one of America's most enduring legends was born. ( Read more... )
Source |
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| L.A. Noir |
[Oct. 15th, 2008|01:27 pm] |
I came across the L.A. Times historical homocides blog today searching for a sweater pattern, of all things. Admittedly the story that led me there does mention a sweater:
"I think I just killed a girl."
Cary had killed her, all right. Strangled her with her sweater. Afterward, he drove around the Valley with her slumped under the dash until the left front wheel on his borrowed hotrod collapsed.
It's typical of the stories on the site- tragic, salacious, long-forgotten. Jumping around through decades but ordered by day, the stories present a grim march of history- February 26, 1958 proclaims 'Girl Murdered in Car on Stanford Campus', followed by a February 29, 1908 account of a mining engineer forced to shoot a young widow after she threw a cup of acid at him.
I wasn't surprised to come across a 1995 interview of James Ellroy here, the crime fiction writer whose obsession with the gritty underbelly of L.A. has made famous. They talk about his attempt to solve one of the many unsolved, random crimes listed on this page, the murder of his own mother in 1958.
Whether solved or unsolved, these crimes and murders still feel pointless, with motives so petty and obvious it's almost insulting, and so much time having gone by it seems futile to care. The victims are frozen in grainy black and white photos, and guilty or not the accused have joined them. Life will be taken away eventually anyway, with a bold print headline all that remains. |
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| Drunk History, Vol. 3 — The Story of Oney Judge |
[Jul. 29th, 2008|05:21 pm] |
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(I posted this recently in my own journal and have been meaning to post it in this community for a while...)
Drunk History is one of my absolute favorite things on the internet. Episodes pop up infrequently, and the delight I experience when I see there's a new one is indescribable. I just ran across the latest volume last night, Drunk History, Vol. 3 — The Story of Oney Judge, and it's a masterpiece. (Note: contains swear words.)
Do yourself a favor and check out the previous episodes of Drunk History as well. You'll be very glad you did.
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| The Haunted Pillar of Augusta GA |
[Jul. 27th, 2008|01:12 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  intimidated | ] |
This pillar is all that remains of a great farmers and slave market in Augusta, GA from the 1800's.
On February 7th, 1878, a tornado destroyed all this market except for this one pillar.
Many stories and legends offer insight into why this lone pillar remains.
One story says that a Preacher was denied to preach there, and because of that, he cursed the building and claimed that someday all of it will be destroyed except for this pillar.
Another story says that slaves were chained to this pillar and whipped, and the ghosts of these slaves cursed it.
It is said that anyone who attempts to move, destroy or even touch this pillar will result in death.
There's been many reports of bad things happening to construction workers who were involved in plans to move/demolish the pillar.(Not necesarily death though)
And then there's the story of the man who drove his car into this pillar, and was found dead in his car even though he had no injuries and there was no substantial damage to the car.
Source 1
Source 2
cross posted to hauntings, abandonedplaces, and useless_facts |
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| "The most-kissed face in the world" |
[Jul. 3rd, 2008|12:18 pm] |
 
I was intrigued by the little story they always tell student nurses about the resuscitation training dummies we use. They are popularly known as 'Anne' or Annie'. The face on these mannequins is more or less the same on every model, regardless of manufacturer; that of a serene, young, northern European woman with well defined cheekbones. The legend goes that the face is based on that of the drowned daughter of the doctor who invented these devices.
Apparently not, though. There is quite a bit written about this face on the internet. It actually has a much longer history than the resus dummy. It is the face of 'l'inconnue', a girl who was allegedly found floating drowned in the Seine in Paris in the 1880s. Unable to identify her, the police put her on display for a while and her sad beauty caught the public imagination. A deathmask was made from her (see above), copies of which then became a popular inspiration and talking point for several writers and artists of the day. Nabokov wrote a poem about her. Wikipedia pours cold water on this version of events, however, citing sources which claim that this deathmask was most likely taken from a living model in Germany, as a faked-up money spinner, and not the dead 'inconnue' at. It makes a nice tale though. |
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| Dancing Mania |
[May. 9th, 2008|08:04 pm] |
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Dancing mania was a phenomenon that occurred primarily in mainland Europe from the 14th century through to the 17th century, in which groups of people would dance through the streets of towns or cities, sometimes foaming at the mouth or speaking in tongues, until they collapsed from exhaustion. The first major outbreak of the mania was in Aachen, Germany, on June 24th, 1374. The dancers went through the streets screaming of wild visions, and even continued to writhe and twist after they collapsed from exhaustion. The dancing quickly caught on, and spread rapidly throughout France and the Low Countries. The mania reached its peak in 1418 in Strasbourg. At least one point, so many people had either been afflicted with the dancing mania, or caught up in the dancing, or were trying to give assistance, or simply watching the events unfold, that the town was brought to a complete halt.
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