Saturday, August 30, 2008

Thank You to my readers

I just wanted to take a minute and tell you readers how much I appreciate your comments.

Although my posts are mostly copies of other things I have found on the internet instead of my own meanderings of the mind, it is nice when a reader takes the time to make a comment so that I know someone is out there actually reading some of my posts.

This blog is mostly a place to store information and timelines that I might use in the future when writing stories. (I truly doubt that I will ever have the time to do this.)

Maybe someone else can use this information, too.

Thanks for all the positive comments you have left me. It is most encouraging.

One Humongous Timeline

TIMELINE

May 24, 1797 -- Thomas Jefferson inquires about a former flame -- On this day in 1797, future President Thomas Jefferson writes to his friend Angelica Church, inquiring casually about their mutual friend, Maria Cosway, a woman who had once captured his heart and inspired a romantically-themed essay. In 1786, a widowed Thomas Jefferson met Maria (pronounced Mariah) Cosway in Paris while he was serving as the U.S. minister to France. Cosway was born to English parents in Italy and, by the time she met Jefferson, had become an accomplished painter and musician. She was also married. The two developed a deep friendship and possibly more, although a sexual relationship has never been proven. The usually self-contained Jefferson acted like a giddy schoolboy with Cosway, at one point leaping over a stone fountain while the two were out walking and falling and breaking his right wrist. After the wrist healed, a chagrined Jefferson wrote his famous “Head and Heart Letter” to Cosway in October 1876, just after she left for London with her husband for an undetermined period of time. The letter reveals him to have been a lovesick man whose intellect battled with a heart aching for a woman he could not have. In the Head and Heart letter, Jefferson pines for a woman who has made him “the most wretched of all earthly beings” and at the same time chides himself for giving in to emotional attachments. The dialogue reveals Jefferson’s struggle between his desire for Cosway and his wish to maintain his integrity (she was, after all, married). In the end the head “wins” over the desires of the heart and Jefferson declares that the only “effective security against such pain of unrequited love, is to retire within ourselves and to suffice for our own happiness.” Two years later, though, his letters to her still expressed an unrequited longing. In 1787, Jefferson wrote to Cosway while traveling in Italy, painting an idyllic picture of the two of them together one day in the future: “we will breakfast every day…[go] away to the Desert, dine under the bowers of Marly, and forget that we are ever to part again.” He wrote to her again in 1788 from Paris and expressed his “tenderness of affection” and wished for her presence though he knew he “had no right to ask.” Eventually Jefferson’s physical separation from Maria and the hopelessness of a relationship with her cooled his ardor. After returning to America in 1789, his letters to her grew less frequent, partly due to the fact he was increasingly preoccupied by his position as President George Washington’s secretary of state. She, however, continued to write to him and vented her frustration at his growing aloofness. In his last letters, he spoke more of his scientific studies than of his love and desire for her, finally admitting that his love for her had been relegated to fond memories of when their relationship had been “pure.” Cosway left England in 1789 after her husband died and moved to a village in Italy to open a convent school for girls.

May 22,1843 : Great Emigration departs for Oregon -- A massive wagon train, made up of 1,000 settlers and 1,000 head of cattle, sets off down the Oregon Trail from Independence, Missouri. Known as the "Great Emigration," the expedition came two years after the first modest party of settlers made the long, overland journey to Oregon. After leaving Independence, the giant wagon train followed the Sante Fe Trail for some 40 miles and then turned northwest to the Platte River, which it followed along its northern route to Fort Laramie, Wyoming. From there, it traveled on to the Rocky Mountains, which it passed through by way of the broad, level South Pass that led to the basin of the Colorado River. The travelers then went southwest to Fort Bridger, northwest across a divide to Fort Hall on the Snake River, and on to Fort Boise, where they gained supplies for the difficult journey over the Blue Mountains and into Oregon. The Great Emigration finally arrived in October, completing the 2,000-mile journey from Independence in five months. In the next year, four more wagon trains made the journey, and in 1845 the number of emigrants who used the Oregon Trail exceeded 3,000. Travel along the trail gradually declined with the advent of the railroads, and the route was finally abandoned in the 1870s.

In 1849, Austria launched the first air raid in history: Pilotless balloons against the Italian city of Venice.

May 31, 1859 : Big Ben goes into operation in London -- The famous tower clock known as Big Ben, located at the top of the 320-foot-high St. Stephen's Tower, rings out over the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London, for the first time on this day in 1859. After a fire destroyed much of the Palace of Westminster--the headquarters of the British Parliament--in October 1834, a standout feature of the design for the new palace was a large clock atop a tower. The royal astronomer, Sir George Airy, wanted the clock to have pinpoint accuracy, including twice-a-day checks with the Royal Greenwich Observatory. While many clockmakers dismissed this goal as impossible, Airy counted on the help of Edmund Beckett Denison, a formidable barrister known for his expertise in horology, or the science of measuring time. Denison's design, built by the company E.J. Dent & Co., was completed in 1854; five years later, St. Stephen's Tower itself was finished. Weighing in at more than 13 tons, its massive bell was dragged to the tower through the streets of London by a team of 16 horses, to the cheers of onlookers. Once it was installed, Big Ben struck its first chimes on May 31, 1859. Just two months later, however, the heavy striker designed by Denison cracked the bell. Three more years passed before a lighter hammer was added and the clock went into service again. The bell was rotated so that the hammer would strike another surface, but the crack was never repaired. The name "Big Ben" originally just applied to the bell but later came to refer to the clock itself. Two main stories exist about how Big Ben got its name. Many claim it was named after the famously long-winded Sir Benjamin Hall, the London commissioner of works at the time it was built. Another famous story argues that the bell was named for the popular heavyweight boxer Benjamin Caunt, because it was the largest of its kind. Even after an incendiary bomb destroyed the chamber of the House of Commons during the Second World War, St. Stephen's Tower survived, and Big Ben continued to function. Its famously accurate timekeeping is regulated by a stack of coins placed on the clock's huge pendulum, ensuring a steady movement of the clock hands at all times. At night, all four of the clock’s faces, each one 23 feet across, are illuminated. A light above Big Ben is also lit to let the public know when Parliament is in session.

May 25, 1861 -- President Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War -- John Merryman, a state legislator from Maryland, is arrested for attempting to hinder Union troops from moving from Baltimore to Washington during the Civil War and is held at Fort McHenry by Union military officials. His attorney immediately sought a writ of habeas corpus so that a federal court could examine the charges. However, President Abraham Lincoln decided to suspend the right of habeas corpus, and the general in command of Fort McHenry refused to turn Merryman over to the authorities. Federal judge Roger Taney, the chief justice of the Supreme Court (and also the author of the infamous Dred Scott decision), issued a ruling that President Lincoln did not have the authority to suspend habeas corpus. Lincoln didn't respond, appeal, or order the release of Merryman. But during a July 4 speech, Lincoln was defiant, insisting that he needed to suspend the rules in order to put down the rebellion in the South. Five years later, a new Supreme Court essentially backed Justice Taney's ruling: In an unrelated case, the court held that only Congress could suspend habeas corpus and that civilians were not subject to military courts, even in times of war. This was not the first or last time that the U.S. federal government willfully ignored its own laws during times of strife. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps following the attack on Pearl Harbor and America's entry into World War II. Some forty years later, a U.S. congressional commission determined that those held in the camps had been victims of discrimination. Each camp survivor was awarded $20,000 in compensation from the U.S. government.

July 6, 1862 -- Mark Twain begins reporting in Virginia City -- Writing under the name of Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens begins publishing news stories in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. Born in Missouri in 1835, Clemens followed a circuitous route to becoming an observer and writer of the American West. As a young man he apprenticed as a printer and worked in St. Louis, New York, and Philadelphia. In 1856, he briefly considered a trip to South America where he thought he could make money collecting coca leaves. A year later, he became a riverboat pilot apprentice on the Mississippi River, and worked on the water for the next four years. In 1861, Clemens' brother Orion was appointed secretary to the territorial governor of Nevada. Clemens jumped at the offer to accompany Orion on his western adventure. He spent his first year in Nevada prospecting for a gold or silver mine but was no more successful than the vast majority of would-be miners. In need of money, he accepted a job as reporter for a Virginia City, Nevada, newspaper called the Territorial Enterprise. His articles covering the bustling frontier-mining town began to appear on this day in 1862. Like many newspapermen of the day, Clemens adopted a pen name, signing his articles with the name Mark Twain, a term from his old river boating days. Clemens' stint as a Nevada newspaperman revealed an exceptional talent for writing. In 1864, he traveled farther West to cover the booming state of California. Fascinated by the frontier life, Clemens drew on his western experiences to write one of his first published works of fiction, the 1865 short story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." The success of this classic western tall tale catapulted Clemens out of the West, and he became a world-hopping journalist for a California newspaper. In 1869, Clemens settled in Buffalo, New York, and later in Hartford, Connecticut. All told, Clemens spent only a little more than five years in the West, and the majority of his subsequent work focused on the Mississippi River country and the Northeast. As a result, Clemens can hardly be defined as a western writer. Still, his 1872 account of his western adventures, Roughing It, remains one of the most original and evocative eyewitness accounts of the frontier ever written. More importantly, even his non-western masterpieces like Tom Sawyer (1876) and Huckleberry Finn (1884) reflected a frontier mentality in their rejection of eastern pretentiousness and genteel literary conventions.

May 24, 1863 -- Henry Plummer is elected sheriff of Bannack, Montana -- The good citizens of Bannack, Montana, elect Henry Plummer as their new sheriff, not realizing he is a hardened outlaw who will use his office to rob and murder them. Born and reared in Maine, Plummer went west in 1852 and settled in the California gold mining town of Nevada City. There he opened a bakery and became active in the Democratic Party. Well-spoken, friendly, and ambitious, Plummer won election to sheriff in 1856 and performed well enough to win re-election the following year. Later in 1857, however, Plummer suffered two setbacks. First, he lost his bid to win a seat on the California legislature. Then he was convicted of second-degree murder for killing an unarmed man in the line of duty. Plummer claimed he had acted in self-defense, but the jury apparently believed witnesses who said the true motive lay in an affair he was having with the murdered man's wife. Plummer served six months in San Quentin prison before the governor pardoned him. When he returned to Nevada City, he won reappointment as an assistant marshal. In 1861, however, he fatally wounded a man in a whorehouse brawl and fled to avoid prosecution. During the next several years, he wandered through the gold country of Nevada and Idaho. Eventually, he took up with a band of desperados who were robbing and killing miners in Idaho. When a blunt and brave saloonkeeper named Patrick Ford began to voice suspicions about Plummer, the outlaw arranged for him to be killed in a shootout. Misgivings about Plummer continued to grow, however, and he fled once more. When Plummer arrived in Bannack, Montana, in October 1862, the people of the booming little mining town knew nothing of his record. With the Idaho gold fields beginning to give out, many of Plummer's old partners in crime followed him to Montana. Plummer quickly reorganized his gang and called the motley band "The Innocents." Skillfully maintaining his public role as an honest citizen, Plummer then managed to convince 307 inhabitants of Bannack to elect him sheriff in May of 1863. Plummer's office of sheriff was the perfect cover for operating an effective and deadly criminal ring. Plummer provided his henchmen with information on the movements of gold shipments and ensured that they avoided capture. During the next six months, road agents ruthlessly terrorized the people of Bannack and the nearby town of Virginia City. To the dismay of the townspeople, Sheriff Plummer seemed unable to stop them. After more than 100 people were robbed or murdered, the settlers organized a vigilance committee of nearly 2,000 members in December 1863. The Montana vigilantes destroyed Plummer and his gang in a surprisingly short time. Among their first victims was Erastus "Red" Yeager, who revealed Plummer's complicity and the names of the other gang leaders before he was hanged. Early on a bitterly cold Sunday morning, January 10, 1864, the vigilantes arrested Plummer and two of his lieutenants. While his cronies swore and resisted, Plummer reportedly wept and begged to be spared, but to no avail. All three men were hanged at once on a Bannack gallows Sheriff Plummer had prepared for another. The vigilantes rode away, "leaving the corpses," as one contemporary wrote, "stiffening in the icy blast." By spring, all of Plummer's Innocents were either dead or departed.

July 5, 1865 -- Salvation Army founded -- In the East End of London, revivalist preacher William Booth and his wife Catherine establish the Christian Mission, later known as the Salvation Army. Determined to wage war against the evils of poverty and religious indifference with military efficiency, Booth modeled his Methodist sect after the British army, labeling uniformed ministers as "officers" and new members as "recruits." The Christian Mission, in which women were given ranks equal with men, launched "campaigns" into London's most forsaken neighborhoods. Soup kitchens were the first in a long line of various projects designed to provide physical and spiritual assistance to the destitute. In the early years, many in Britain were critical of the Christian Mission and its tactics, and the members were often subjected to fines and imprisonment as breakers of the peace. In 1878, the organization was renamed the Salvation Army, and two years later the first U.S. branch opened in Pennsylvania. During the Great Depression, the Salvation Army provided food and lodging for those in need, and during both world wars it distinguished itself through its work with the armed forces. By then, it had come to be appreciated as an important international charity organization. Today, the Salvation Army, still based in London, has branches in more than 75 countries. The Army operates evangelical centers, hospitals, emergency and disaster services, alcohol and drug rehabilitation programs, community centers, social work centers, secondhand stores, and recreation facilities. Voluntary contributions and profits from the sale of its publications fund the organization.

May 30, 1868 -- Civil War dead honored on Decoration Day -- By proclamation of General John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic, the first major Memorial Day observance is held to honor those who died "in defense of their country during the late rebellion." Known to some as "Decoration Day," mourners honored the Civil War dead by decorating their graves with flowers. On the first Decoration Day, General James Garfield made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, after which 5,000 participants helped to decorate the graves of the more than 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers buried in the cemetery. The 1868 celebration was inspired by local observances that had taken place in various locations in the three years since the end of the Civil War. In fact, several cities claim to be the birthplace of Memorial Day, including Columbus, Mississippi; Macon, Georgia; Richmond, Virginia; Boalsburg, Pennsylvania; and Carbondale, Illinois. In 1966, the federal government, under the direction of President Lyndon B. Johnson, declared Waterloo, New York, the official birthplace of Memorial Day. They chose Waterloo--which had first celebrated the day on May 5, 1866--because the town had made Memorial Day an annual, community-wide event, during which businesses closed and residents decorated the graves of soldiers with flowers and flags. By the late 19th century, many communities across the country had begun to celebrate Memorial Day, and after World War I, observers began to honor the dead of all of America's wars. In 1971, Congress declared Memorial Day a national holiday to be celebrated the last Monday in May. Today, Memorial Day is celebrated at Arlington National Cemetery with a ceremony in which a small American flag is placed on each grave. It is customary for the president or vice president to give a speech honoring the contributions of the dead and to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. More than 5,000 people attend the ceremony annually. Several Southern states continue to set aside a special day for honoring the Confederate dead, which is usually called Confederate Memorial Day.

May 31, 1870 -- Asphalt receives patent -- Professor Edward Joseph De Smedt of the American Asphalt Pavement Company, New York City, received two patents for his invention known as "French asphalt pavement." De Smedt had invented the first practical version of sheet asphalt. On July 29 of the same year, the June 2, 1823 -- Ashley's fur trappers attacked by Indians -- Arikara Indians attack William Ashley and his band of fur traders, igniting the most important of the early 19th century battles between Indians and mountain men. Two years before, William Ashley and his partner Andrew Henry had started the business that would eventually become the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. In 1822, Ashley advertised for "enterprising young men" to join him in an ambitious fur trapping expedition up the Missouri River into the Yellowstone country of present-day Montana. Many who signed on would later become celebrated mountain men, including Jim Bridger, the Sublette brothers, Jed Smith, and Edward Rose. For the first few years, though, Ashley and his men were greenhorns who learned to survive in the wilderness through hard experience. In the spring of 1823, Ashley led a force of about 70 men up the Missouri to begin a summer of trapping along the Yellowstone. On May 30, they reached the territory of the Arikara Indians near the present-day border between North and South Dakota. The Arikara were no friends to the fur trappers. Generally, they resented the Anglo trappers' attempts to undercut the Indians' central role as fur suppliers. More specifically, the Arikara were upset that several weeks earlier a group of trappers had rescued several Sioux warriors that the Arikara had been hunting. On the morning of this day in 1823, a force of about 600 Arikara Indians attacked Ashley's small band of trappers. Ashley later reported that the majority of the Indians were, "armed with London Fuzils [muskets] that carry a ball with great accuracy, and force, and which they use with as much expertness as any men I ever saw handle arms." Those lacking guns attacked with bows and arrows and war axes. The fierce Arikara warriors overwhelmed Ashley's small band of mountain men, killing 12 and wounding many more. The survivors fled downstream; luckily, the Arikara did not pursue them. After the mountain men had regrouped, Ashley dispatched a messenger to St. Louis asking for military assistance. Colonel Henry Leavenworth immediately assembled a force of about 200 men and started up the river, gathering additional fighters along the way, including about 700 Sioux Indians. By the time Leavenworth's army reached Ashley in early August, that number had grown to at least 1,100 men. The subsequent skirmishes, later somewhat ostentatiously referred to as the Arikara Campaign, proved indecisive. Despite his overwhelming superiority in numbers and armaments, Leavenworth failed to engage the Indians. Following a few minor encounters, the Arikara quietly withdrew under the cover of night and disappeared. Everyone knew, however, that the Indians would return after the soldiers had departed. Since Leavenworth failed to seriously damage the Arikara fighting ability, the Upper Missouri River route continued to be too dangerous for the trappers for several years to come. Desperate to keep his fledgling business alive, Ashley decided he had no choice but to abandon the traditional river routes and go overland. The next year, Ashley's trappers headed west on horses rather than in boats. Ironically, this desperate gambit revolutionized the fur trade by vastly increasing the mobility of the fur trappers and opening up whole new regions of the American West. Three years later, Ashley retired from the fur trade a wealthy man.first road pavement of sheet asphalt was laid on William Street in Newark, New Jersey.

In 1873, Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets. May 20: General Interest -- 1873 : Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive patent for blue jeans -- On this day in 1873, San Francisco businessman Levi Strauss and Reno, Nevada, tailor Jacob Davis are given a patent to create work pants reinforced with metal rivets, marking the birth of one of the world's most famous garments: blue jeans. Born Loeb Strauss in Buttenheim, Bavaria, in 1829, the young Strauss immigrated to New York with his family in 1847 after the death of his father. By 1850, Loeb had changed his name to Levi and was working in the family dry goods business, J. Strauss Brother & Co. In early 1853, Levi Strauss went west to seek his fortune during the heady days of the Gold Rush. In San Francisco, Strauss established a wholesale dry goods business under his own name and worked as the West Coast representative of his family's firm. His new business imported clothing, fabric and other dry goods to sell in the small stores opening all over California and other Western states to supply the rapidly expanding communities of gold miners and other settlers. By 1866, Strauss had moved his company to expanded headquarters and was a well-known businessman and supporter of the Jewish community in San Francisco. Jacob Davis, a tailor in Reno, Nevada, was one of Levi Strauss' regular customers. In 1872, he wrote a letter to Strauss about his method of making work pants with metal rivets on the stress points--at the corners of the pockets and the base of the button fly--to make them stronger. As Davis didn't have the money for the necessary paperwork, he suggested that Strauss provide the funds and that the two men get the patent together. Strauss agreed enthusiastically, and the patent for "Improvement in Fastening Pocket-Openings"--the innovation that would produce blue jeans as we know them--was granted to both men on May 20, 1873. Strauss brought Davis to San Francisco to oversee the first manufacturing facility for "waist overalls," as the original jeans were known. At first they employed seamstresses working out of their homes, but by the 1880s, Strauss had opened his own factory. The famous 501 brand jean--known until 1890 as "XX"--was soon a bestseller, and the company grew quickly. By the 1920s, Levi's denim waist overalls were the top-selling men's work pant in the United States. As decades passed, the craze only grew, and now blue jeans are worn by men and women, young and old, around the world.

In 1876, Thomas Edison patented the mimeograph.

June 4, 1876 -- Express train crosses the nation in 83 hours -- A mere 83 hours after leaving New York City, the Transcontinental Express train arrives in San Francisco. That any human being could travel across the entire nation in less than four days was inconceivable to previous generations of Americans. During the early 19th century, when Thomas Jefferson first dreamed of an American nation stretching from "sea to shining sea," it took the president 10 days to travel the 225 miles from Monticello to Philadelphia via carriage. Even with frequent changing of horses, the 100-mile journey from New York to Philadelphia demanded two days hard travel in a light stagecoach. At such speeds, the coasts of the continent-wide American nation were months apart. How could such a vast country ever hope to remain united? As early as 1802, Jefferson had some glimmer of an answer. "The introduction of so powerful an agent as steam," he predicted, "[to a carriage on wheels] will make a great change in the situation of man." Though Jefferson never saw a train in his lifetime, he had glimpsed the future with the idea. Within half a century, America would have more railroads than any other nation in the world. By 1869, the first transcontinental line linking the coasts was completed. Suddenly, a journey that had previously taken months using horses could be made in less than a week. Five days after the transcontinental railroad was completed, daily passenger service over the rails began. The speed and comfort offered by rail travel was so astonishing that many Americans could scarcely believe it, and popular magazines wrote glowing accounts of the amazing journey. For the wealthy, a trip on the transcontinental railroad was a luxurious experience. First-class passengers rode in beautifully appointed cars with plush velvet seats that converted into snug sleeping berths. The finer amenities included steam heat, fresh linen daily, and gracious porters who catered to their every whim. For an extra $4 a day, the wealthy traveler could opt to take the weekly Pacific Hotel Express, which offered first-class dining on board. As one happy passenger wrote, "The rarest and richest of all my journeying through life is this three-thousand miles by rail." The trip was a good deal less speedy and comfortable for passengers unwilling or unable to pay the premium fares. Whereas most of the first-class passengers traveled the transcontinental line for business or pleasure, the third-class occupants were often emigrants hoping to make a new start in the West. A third-class ticket could be purchased for only $40--less than half the price of the first-class fare. At this low rate, the traveler received no luxuries. Their cars, fitted with rows of narrow wooden benches, were congested, noisy, and uncomfortable. The railroad often attached the coach cars to freight cars that were constantly shunted aside to make way for the express trains. Consequently, the third-class traveler's journey west might take 10 or more days. Even under these trying conditions, few travelers complained. Even 10 days spent sitting on a hard bench seat was preferable to six months walking alongside a Conestoga wagon on the Oregon Trail. Railroad promotions, however, naturally focused on the speedy express trains. The arrival of the Transcontinental Express train in San Francisco on this day in 1876 was widely celebrated in the newspapers and magazines of the day. With this new express service, a businessman could leave New York City on Monday morning, spend 83 hours in relaxing comfort, and arrive refreshed and ready for work in San Francisco by Thursday evening. The powerful agent of steam had effectively shrunk a vast nation to a manageable size.

July 5, 1880 -- George Bernard Shaw quits his job -- On this day, George Bernard Shaw, 23, quits his job at the Edison Telephone Company in order to write. Shaw was born in Dublin, Ireland, and left school at the age of 14 to work in a land agent's office. In 1876, he quit and moved to London, where his mother, a music teacher, had settled. He worked various jobs while trying to write plays. He began publishing book reviews and art and music criticism in 1885. Meanwhile, he became a committed reformer and an active force in the newly established Fabian Society, a group of middle-class socialists. His first play, Widowers' House, was produced in 1892. His second play, Mrs. Warren's Profession, was banned in Britain because of its frank dealing with prostitution. In 1905, when the play was performed in the U.S., police shut it down after one performance and jailed the actors and producers. The courts soon ruled that the show could re-open. Although some private productions were held, the show wasn't legally performed in Britain until 1926. Shaw became the theater critic for the Saturday Review in 1895, and his reviews during the next several years helped shape the development of drama. In 1898, he published Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant, which contained Arms and the Man, The Man of Destiny, and other dramas. In 1904, Man and Superman was produced. In his work, Shaw supported socialism and decried the abuses of capitalism, the degradation of women, and the evil effects of poverty, violence, and war. His writing was filled with humor, wit, and sparkle, as well as reformist messages, and his play Pygmalion, produced in 1912, later became the hit musical and movie My Fair Lady. In 1925, Shaw won the Nobel Prize for literature and used the substantial prize money to start an Anglo-Swedish literary society. He lived simply, abstained from alcohol, caffeine, and meat, declined most honors and awards, and continued writing into his 90s. He produced more than 40 plays before his death in 1950.

In 1882, Standard Oil of New Jersey was established.

In 1883, the eruption of Krakatoa that ultimately led to the volcano's destruction began.

May 24, 1883 : Brooklyn Bridge opens -- After 14 years and 27 deaths while being constructed, the Brooklyn Bridge over the East River is opened, connecting the great cities of New York and Brooklyn for the first time in history. Thousands of residents of Brooklyn and Manhattan Island turned out to witness the dedication ceremony, which was presided over by President Chester A. Arthur and New York Governor Grover Cleveland. Designed by the late John A. Roebling, the Brooklyn Bridge was the largest suspension bridge ever built to that date. John Roebling, born in Germany in 1806, was a great pioneer in the design of steel suspension bridges. He studied industrial engineering in Berlin and at the age of 25 immigrated to western Pennsylvania, where he attempted, unsuccessfully, to make his living as a farmer. He later moved to the state capital in Harrisburg, where he found work as a civil engineer. He promoted the use of wire cable and established a successful wire-cable factory. Meanwhile, he earned a reputation as a designer of suspension bridges, which at the time were widely used but known to fail under strong winds or heavy loads. Roebling is credited with a major breakthrough in suspension-bridge technology: a web truss added to either side of the bridge roadway that greatly stabilized the structure. Using this model, Roebling successfully bridged the Niagara Gorge at Niagara Falls, New York, and the Ohio River at Cincinnati, Ohio. On the basis of these achievements, New York State accepted Roebling's design for a bridge connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan--with a span of 1,595 feet--and appointed him chief engineer. It was to be the world's first steel suspension bridge. Just before construction began in 1869, Roebling was fatally injured while taking a few final compass readings across the East River. A boat smashed the toes on one of his feet, and three weeks later he died of tetanus. He was the first of more than two dozen people who would die building his bridge. His 32-year-old son, Washington A. Roebling, took over as chief engineer. Roebling had worked with his father on several bridges and had helped design the Brooklyn Bridge. The two granite foundations of the Brooklyn Bridge were built in timber caissons, or watertight chambers, sunk to depths of 44 feet on the Brooklyn side and 78 feet on the New York side. Compressed air pressurized the caissons, allowing underwater construction. At that time, little was known of the risks of working under such conditions, and more than a hundred workers suffered from cases of compression sickness. Compression sickness, or the "bends," is caused by the appearance of nitrogen bubbles in the bloodstream that result from rapid decompression. Several died, and Washington Roebling himself became bedridden from the condition in 1872. Other workers died as a result of more conventional construction accidents, such as collapses and a fire. Roebling continued to direct construction operations from his home, and his wife, Emily, carried his instructions to the workers. In 1877, Washington and Emily moved into a home with a view of the bridge. Roebling's health gradually improved, but he remained partially paralyzed for the rest of his life. On May 24, 1883, Emily Roebling was given the first ride over the completed bridge, with a rooster, a symbol of victory, in her lap. Within 24 hours, an estimated 250,000 people walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, using a broad promenade above the roadway that John Roebling designed solely for the enjoyment of pedestrians. The Brooklyn Bridge, with its unprecedented length and two stately towers, was dubbed the "eighth wonder of the world." The connection it provided between the massive population centers of Brooklyn and Manhattan changed the course of New York City forever. In 1898, the city of Brooklyn formally merged with New York City, Staten Island, and a few farm towns, forming Greater New York.

June 16, 1884 : First roller coaster in America opens -- On this day in 1884, the first roller coaster in America opens at Coney Island, in Brooklyn, New York. Known as a switchback railway, it was the brainchild of LaMarcus Thompson, traveled approximately six miles per hour and cost a nickel to ride. The new entertainment was an instant success and by the turn of the century there were hundreds of roller coasters around the country. Coney Island, a name believed to have come from the Dutch Konijn Eilandt, or Rabbit Island, is a tract of land along the Atlantic Ocean discovered by explorer Henry Hudson in 1609. The first hotel opened at Coney Island in 1829 and by the post-Civil War years, the area was an established resort with theaters, restaurants and a race track. Between 1897 and 1904, three amusement parks sprang up at Coney Island--Dreamland, Luna Park and Steeplechase. By the 1920s, Coney Island was reachable by subway and summer crowds of a million people a day flocked there for rides, games, sideshows, the beach and the two-and-a-half-mile boardwalk, completed in 1923. The hot dog is said to have been invented at Coney Island in 1867 by Charles Feltman. In 1916, a nickel hot dog stand called Nathan's was opened by a former Feltman employee and went on to become a Coney Island institution and international franchise. Today, Nathan's is famous not only for its hot dogs but its hot dog-eating contest, held each Fourth of July in Coney Island. In 2006, Takeru Kobayashi set a new record when he ate 53.75 hot dogs with buns in 12 minutes. Roller coasters and amusement parks experienced a decline during the Great Depression and World War II, when Americans had less cash to spend on entertainment. Finally, in 1955, the opening of Disneyland in Anaheim, California, signaled the advent of the modern theme park and a rebirth of the roller coaster. Disneyland's success sparked a wave of new parks and coasters. By the 1970s, parks were competing to create the most thrilling rides. In 2005, Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey, introduced the Kingda Ka roller coaster, the world's tallest (at 456 feet) and fastest (at 128 mph). By the mid-1960s, the major amusement parks at Coney Island had shut down and the area acquired a seedy image. Nevertheless, Coney Island remains a tourist attraction and home to the Cyclone, a wooden coaster that made its debut there in 1927. Capable of speeds of 60 mph and with an 85-foot drop, the Cyclone is one of the country's oldest coasters in operation today. Though a real-estate developer recently announced the building of a new $1.5 billion year-round resort at Coney Island that will include a 4,000-foot-long roller coaster, an indoor water park and a multi-level carousel, the Cyclone's owners have said they plan to keep the historic coaster open for business. http://www.history.com/tdih.do

June 10, 1885 -- Arizona Deputy Sheriff Billy Daniels is killed. Two years after Arizona Deputy Sheriff William Daniels apprehended three of the five outlaws responsible for the Bisbee Massacre, Apache Indians kill him. Billy Daniels was typical of the thousands of courageous young men and women who helped tame the Wild West but whose names and stories have since been largely forgotten. For every Wild Bill Hickok or Wyatt Earp immortalized by the dramatic exaggerations of dime novelists and sensationalistic journalists, the West had dozens of men like Billy Daniels, who quietly did their duty with little fanfare, celebration, or thanks. On December 8, 1883, five desperadoes rode into the booming mining town of Bisbee, Arizona. Their leader, Daniel "Big Dan" Dowd, had heard that the $7,000 payroll of the Copper Queen Mine would be in the vault at the Bisbee General Store. The outlaws barged into the store with their guns drawn and demanded the payroll. To Big Dan's disappointment, they discovered they were too early--the payroll had not yet arrived. The outlaws quickly gathered up what money there was (reports vary between $900 to $3,000)), and took valuable rings and watches from the unlucky customers. For reasons that are unclear, the robbery then turned into a slaughter. When the five desperadoes rode away, they left behind four dead or dying people, including Deputy Sheriff Tom Smith and a Bisbee woman named Anna Roberts. The people of Arizona were shocked by the senseless brutality of the killings. The newspapers called it the "Bisbee Massacre." The sheriff quickly organized citizen posses to track down the killers, placing Deputy Sheriff Billy Daniels at the head of one. The posses, though, soon ran out of clues and the trail grew cold. Most of the citizen members gave up. Daniels, however, stubbornly continued the pursuit alone. He eventually learned the identities of the five men from area ranchers and began to track them down one by one. Daniels found one of the killers in Deming, New Mexico, and arrested him. He then learned from a Mexican informant that the gang leader, Big Dan Dowd, had fled south of the border to a hideout at Sabinal, Chihuahua. Disguising himself as an ore buyer, Daniels tricked Dowd into a meeting and took him prisoner. A few weeks later, Daniels returned to Mexico and arrested another of the outlaws. Other law officers apprehended the remaining two members of the gang. A Tombstone, Arizona, jury quickly convicted all five men and sentenced them to be hanged simultaneously. As the noose was fitted around his neck on the five-man gallows, Big Dan reportedly muttered, "This is a regular killing machine." The next year, Daniels ran for sheriff but lost. He found a new position as an inspector of customs that required him to travel all around the vast and often isolated Arizona countryside, where various bands of hostile Apache Indians were a serious danger. Early on the morning of this day in 1885, Daniels and two companions were riding up a narrow canyon trail in the Mule Mountains east of Bisbee. Daniels, who was in the lead, rode into an Apache ambush. The first bullets killed his horse, and the animal collapsed, pinning Daniels to the ground. Trapped, Daniels used his rifle to defend himself as best he could, but the Apache quickly overwhelmed him and cut his throat. His two companions escaped with their lives and returned the next day with a posse. They found Daniel's badly mutilated corpse but were unable to track the Apache Indians who murdered him.

June 2, 1886 -- President Cleveland marries in White House -- In an intimate ceremony held in the Blue Room of the White House, President Grover Cleveland marries Frances Folsom, the daughter of Cleveland's late law partner and friend, Oscar Folsom. Fewer than 40 people were present to witness the 49-year-old president exchange vows with Frances, who at 21 years of age became the youngest first lady in U.S. history. As a devoted family friend, Cleveland allegedly bought "Frank" her first baby carriage. After her father's death, he administered her estate. When Frances entered Wells College, Cleveland, then the governor of New York, asked Mrs. Folsom's permission to correspond with the young lady. After his inauguration as president in 1885, Frances visited Cleveland at the executive mansion. Despite a 27-year difference in age, their affection turned to romance, and on June 2, 1886, the couple were married in the White House. Mrs. Cleveland, who replaced Cleveland's sister Rose Elizabeth as White House hostess, won immediate popularity for her good looks and unaffected charm. After the president's defeat in his 1888 reelection bid, the Clevelands lived in New York City, where their first child, Ruth, was born in 1891. In 1892, in an event unprecedented in U.S. political history, the out-of-office Cleveland was elected president again. Frances Cleveland returned to Washington and resumed her duties as first lady as if she had been gone but a day. In 1893, the first family saw the addition of a second child, Esther, who was the first child of a president to be born in the White House. When Grover Cleveland left the presidency in 1897, his wife had become one of the most popular first ladies in history. In 1908, she was at his side when he died at their home in Princeton, New Jersey. Five years later, she married Thomas J. Preston Jr., a professor of archeology at Princeton University.

May 31, 1887 -- George Goodfellow investigates earthquake -- Reflecting a scientific spirit that was rare among frontier physicians, Tombstone doctor George Goodfellow rushes south to investigate an earthquake in Mexico. Though keenly interested in earthquakes, Goodfellow is best remembered today for being one of the nation's leading experts on the treatment of gunshot wounds, a condition he had many opportunities to study in the wild mining town of Tombstone, Arizona. Born in Downieville, California, in 1855, Goodfellow studied medicine at Cleveland Medical College and graduated with honors in 1876. He practiced briefly in Oakland, but then went to Prescott, Arizona, where his father was a mining engineer. After working for a time as an army contract surgeon, he relocated to Tombstone in 1880, one year before the Earps and McLaury-Clantons shot it out at the O.K. Corral. Since Tombstone was also home to dozens of other gunslingers and criminals, Goodfellow's skills as physician, surgeon, and coroner were in steady demand. Although he was a serious and studious physician, Goodfellow was not above indulging in a bit of gallows humor, which was well suited to a town like Tombstone. Describing the condition of one murder victim, he wrote that the corpse was "rich in lead, but too badly punctured to hold whiskey." In his role as coroner, he deflected guilt from a vigilante lynch mob by officially ruling that the victim "came to his death from emphysema of the lungs, a disease common to high altitudes, which might have been caused by strangulation, self-inflicted or otherwise." Yet Goodfellow did much more than perform autopsies on murder victims and treat bullet wounds. He developed new methods of operating on the prostate gland and performed the first successful prostatectomy in history. He was among the first surgeons anywhere, much less in the remote regions of the Wild West, to use spinal anesthesia. He advocated an open-air treatment of tuberculosis that soon made the desert climate of the Southwest the home of hundreds of sanatoriums. In a time when many self-professed doctors had little or no formal training and used treatments that often did more harm than good, Goodfellow was a dedicated scientist who believed diseases could be cured with rational methods. He made frequent trips east to remain abreast of the latest medical breakthroughs. He was also a talented linguist and an avid student of geology, rushing to the Sonora Desert on this day in 1887 to study the effects of a powerful earthquake. After 12 years in Tombstone, Goodfellow returned to California and became a leading physician in San Francisco. For those 12 years, though, Tombstone-today best known for its gunslingers, gamblers, and desperados-had one of the most scientifically advanced doctors in the West. Goodfellow died in Los Angeles in 1910 at the age of 64.

In 1888, Bertha Benz drove from Mannheim to Pforzheim, Germany in the first long distance automobile trip.

June 5, 1888 -- Cleveland denies widow her husband’s military pension -- On this day in 1888, President Grover Cleveland vetoes a bill that would have given a pension to war widow Johanna Loewinger, whose husband died 14 years after being discharged from the army. Mr. Loewinger served in the Civil War, enlisting on June 28, 1861. He was discharged a little less than a year later for what the army surgeon’s certificate called “chronic diarrhea.” He received his pension until his death in 1876. After his death, his widow, Johanna, applied for a widow’s pension, but was denied since her husband died from “suicide by cutting his throat with a razor” and not from any long-term disability caused by his military service. Johanna claimed her husband had suffered from “insanity” triggered by his military service and felt entitled to the benefits. After failing to get the pension through military channels, Johanna appealed to a member of Congress to petition the president with the bill asking that her request for a pension be granted. After reviewing the matter, Cleveland declared all previous inquests into the former soldier’s unfortunate death to be satisfactory and vetoed the bill.

June 28, 1888 -- Robert Louis Stevenson sets sail for the South Seas -- Writer Robert Louis Stevenson and his family leave San Francisco for their first visit to the South Seas on this day in 1888. Stevenson, an adventurous traveler plagued by tuberculosis, was seeking a healthier climate. The family finally settled in Samoa, where Stevenson died in 1894. Stevenson was born in Scotland and studied civil engineering and law, but decided to pursue a career as a writer. His decision upset his parents, who remained alienated from him until he was 30 years old. At first, Stevenson wrote essays and travel accounts. In 1876, he fell in love with an American woman named Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne, who was separated from her husband. When she returned to San Francisco in 1879, Stevenson followed her. The couple married and returned to Scotland in 1880. Stevenson published a collection of essays in 1881 and Treasure Island, one of his most popular books, in 1883. In 1885, he published the first version of the popular nursery rhyme book A Child's Garden of Verse. In 1846, he published Kidnapped, and in 1886 he published Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. After returning to the U.S. for a year, the Stevenson family set sail for the South Seas. Stevenson wrote several travel accounts of the family's explorations of the region. He died in Samoa in 1894.

July 20, 1889 -- Homesteaders murdered by Wyoming ranchers -- Having made the mistake of homesteading on land previously controlled by a Wyoming cattle king, homesteaders Ella Watson and James Averell are accused of rustling and hanged. As the days of the open range cattle industry faded, conflicts between powerful western cattle barons and the homesteaders who were settling on "their" lands were inevitable. The homesteaders had every right to claim their 320 acres of windswept grasslands but some old-time ranchers tried to discourage the settlers in hopes of preserving more rangeland for their cattle. Usually, such discouragement was limited to cowboys cutting the settlers' barbed wire fences or diverting irrigation water, but the tactics occasionally became more violent. A common complaint among ranchers was that many of the homesteaders were actually rustlers who stole their cows and horses. The ranchers' accusations were surely exaggerated, but the charge of rustling allowed them to take drastic actions. Such may have been the case with Ella Watson and James Averell. Watson, a former prostitute from Kansas, came to Wyoming Territory in 1886. That same year, she received a license to wed James Averell, a Wyoming saloonkeeper who had a homestead on the Sweetwater River. The couple either never married or kept the union secret so that Watson could file a second homestead near Averell's place. Both claims were located on lands claimed by the powerful rancher Albert Bothwell without legal foundation, and Bothwell used the lands for grazing his herds. Bothwell-described as one of the most arrogant cattleman in the region-eventually accused both Watson and Averell of rustling. On this day in 1889, Bothwell and five of his men took the couple prisoner and hanged them. Although the men were later charged with murder, a pro-rancher jury acquitted them of any wrongdoing. It was the only incidence of a woman being executed-legally or illegally-in the history of Wyoming.

July 10, 1889 -- "Buckskin" Frank Leslie murders a prostitute -- In a drunken rage, "Buckskin" Frank Leslie murders his lover, the Tombstone prostitute Blonde Mollie Williams. Leslie was an ill-tempered and violent man, especially when he drank. He told conflicting stories about his early life. At times, he said he was from Texas, at other times from Kentucky. He sometimes claimed he had been trained in medicine and pharmacy, and he even boasted that he had studied in Europe. Supposedly, he earned the nickname "Buckskin" while working as an Army Scout in the Plains Indian Wars. None of his assertions can be confirmed in the historical record. The record does tell us that in 1880, Leslie opened the Cosmopolitan Hotel in the mining town of Tombstone, Arizona. Shortly thereafter, he committed his first known murder, shooting Mike Killeen in a dispute over the man's wife. The killing was officially ruled to have been in self-defense, but suspicion of foul play arose when Leslie married Killeen's widow two months later. Two years later, after Leslie badly pistol-whipped a man outside the Oriental Saloon, many Tombstone citizens began to suspect Leslie was a dangerous man. When the famous Tombstone gunslinger John Ringo was found murdered, suspicions again focused on Leslie, though law officers were unable to prove his guilt. Billy Claiborne, a friend of Ringo's, was so certain Leslie was the murderer that he called him out. Leslie shot the inexperienced young man dead. Even among the notorious rabble of gunslingers and killers in Tombstone, Leslie was unusually violent. The people of Tombstone finally had their chance to get rid of him in 1889. Two years earlier, Leslie had divorced his wife and taken up with a Tombstone prostitute named Blonde Mollie Williams. The relationship eventually soured, and in a drunken fit of rage, Leslie shot the defenseless woman dead. With testimony from a ranch hand that had witnessed the killing, a Tombstone jury convicted Leslie of murder and sentenced him to 25 years. Seven years later, Leslie won parole with the aid of a young divorcee named Belle Stowell. He soon married Stowell and seems to have made an effort to live a more peaceful life. He even reportedly made a small fortune in the Klondike Gold Rush. He moved to San Francisco in 1904. His fortunes thereafter quickly declined, and he disappeared from the historical record. He may have eventually committed suicide, but the true manner and date of his death remain unconfirmed.

In 1891, Thomas Edison first publicly displayed his kinetoscope prototype.

June 19, 1892 -- A bloody fingerprint elicits a mother's evil tale in Argentina -- Francesca Rojas' two young children are killed in their home in the small town of Necochea, Argentina. According to Rojas, a man named Velasquez had threatened her when she rejected his sexual advances earlier in the day. Upon returning home later, Rojas claimed to have seen Velasquez escaping out her open door. Once inside, she found both her six-year-old boy and four-year-old girl stabbed to death. Police arrested and questioned Velasquez, but he denied any involvement, even after some rather painful interrogation techniques were used to obtain a confession. Law enforcement officials even tried tying him to the corpses of the children overnight. When that didn't produce any results, Velasquez was tortured for another week. Still, he maintained his innocence throughout the ordeal. Juan Vucetich, in charge of criminal identification at the regional headquarters, had been intrigued by the new theories of fingerprint identification and sent an investigator to see if the methods could help crack the case. Until then, the only other method of identification was the Bertillonage, named after its inventor, Alphonse Bertillon, who worked for the Paris police. This method involved the recording of body measurements in more than 11 different places. In an age when photography was very expensive, Bertillonage gave police their best chance of definitively identifying a person. When the investigator examined Rojas's house, he found a bloody thumb print on the bedroom door. Rojas was then asked to provide an ink-print of her thumb at the police station. Even with only a rudimentary understanding of forensic identification, investigators were able to determine that the print on the door belonged to Rojas. Using this new piece of evidence against her, detectives were able to exact her confession. Apparently, Rojas had killed her own children in an attempt to improve her chance of marrying her boyfriend, who was known to dislike children, and then pegged the crime on Velasquez. She was sentenced to life imprisonment.

June 8, 1913 -- Forensic evidence captures a murderous father -- Two farmers walking near a quarry outside of Edinburgh, Scotland, find two small, dead bodies floating in the water, tied together. Although the bodies were so waterlogged that authorities could barely confirm that they were human, Sydney Smith, the century's first "Quincy," was able to use forensics to help solve the crime. Smith was at the beginning of his 40-year career and working as an assistant to Professor Harvey Littlejohn at Edinburgh University. The first thing he noticed about the body was the presence of adipocere, a white and hard type of fat. The level of adipocere in the bodies, which takes months to form inside the human body when exposed to water, led Smith to believe that they had been in the quarry somewhere between 18 to 24 months. The adipocere had preserved the stomachs of the bodies and Smith saw that the children had eaten peas, barley, potatoes, and leeks approximately an hour before they died. Given the seasonal nature of the vegetables, Smith figured that the kids had died at the end of 1911. Most importantly, Smith found an indication that one of the children's shirts had come from the Dysart poorhouse. With this information, law enforcement officials quickly found the killer. Patrick Higgins, a widower and drunk, had placed his two boys in the Dysart poorhouse in 1910. When he didn't pay the small fees, Higgins was jailed. He eventually took the young boys out of the poorhouse, but they had not been seen since November 1911. Higgins was arrested and pled temporary insanity at his trial in September 1913. The jury rejected his defense, and, on October 2, 1913, he was hanged. Sydney Smith went on to be a pioneer in forensic medicine.

June 13, 1966 : The Miranda rights are established -- On this day in 1966, the Supreme Court hands down its decision in Miranda v. Arizona, establishing the principle that all criminal suspects must be advised of their rights before interrogation. Now considered standard police procedure, "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can, and will, be used against you in court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be appointed to you," has been heard so many times in television and film dramas that it has become almost cliché. The roots of the Miranda decision go back to March 2, 1963, when an 18-year-old Phoenix woman told police that she had been abducted, driven to the desert and raped. Detectives questioning her story gave her a polygraph test, but the results were inconclusive. However, tracking the license plate number of a car that resembled that of her attacker's brought police to Ernesto Miranda, who had a prior record as a peeping tom. Although the victim did not identify Miranda in a line-up, he was brought into police custody and interrogated. What happened next is disputed, but officers left the interrogation with a confession that Miranda later recanted, unaware that he didn't have to say anything at all. The confession was extremely brief and differed in certain respects from the victim's account of the crime. However, Miranda's appointed defense attorney (who was paid a grand total of $100) didn't call any witnesses at the ensuing trial, and Miranda was convicted. While Miranda was in Arizona state prison, the American Civil Liberties Union took up his appeal, claiming that the confession was false and coerced. The Supreme Court overturned his conviction, but Miranda was retried and convicted in October 1966 anyway, despite the relative lack of evidence against him. Remaining in prison until 1972, Ernesto Miranda was later stabbed to death in the men's room of a bar after a poker game in January 1976. As a result of the case against Miranda, each and every person must now be informed of his or her rights when arrested. http://www.history.com/tdih.do

On August 8th in 1988, the temperature hit a high of 88 in New York City, making it 88 on 8/8/88.

June 24, 1997 : U.S. Air Force reports on Roswell -- On this day in 1997, U.S. Air Force officials release a 231-page report dismissing long-standing claims of an alien spacecraft crash in Roswell, New Mexico, almost exactly 50 years earlier. Public interest in Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFOs, began to flourish in the 1940s, when developments in space travel and the dawn of the atomic age caused many Americans to turn their attention to the skies. The town of Roswell, located near the Pecos River in southeastern New Mexico, became a magnet for UFO believers due to the strange events of early July 1947, when ranch foreman W.W. Brazel found a strange, shiny material scattered over some of his land. He turned the material over to the sheriff, who passed it on to authorities at the nearby Air Force base. On July 8, Air Force officials announced they had recovered the wreckage of a "flying disk." A local newspaper put the story on its front page, launching Roswell into the spotlight of the public's UFO fascination. The Air Force soon took back their story, however, saying the debris had been merely a downed weather balloon. Aside from die-hard UFO believers, or "ufologists," public interest in the so-called "Roswell Incident" faded until the late 1970s, when claims surfaced that the military had invented the weather balloon story as a cover-up. Believers in this theory argued that officials had in fact retrieved several alien bodies from the crashed spacecraft, which were now stored in the mysterious Area 51 installation in Nevada. Seeking to dispel these suspicions, the Air Force issued a 1,000-page report in 1994 stating that the crashed object was actually a high-altitude weather balloon launched from a nearby missile test-site as part of a classified experiment aimed at monitoring the atmosphere in order to detect Soviet nuclear tests. On July 24, 1997, barely a week before the extravagant 50th anniversary celebration of the incident, the Air Force released yet another report on the controversial subject. Titled "The Roswell Report, Case Closed," the document stated definitively that there was no Pentagon evidence that any kind of life form was found in the Roswell area in connection with the reported UFO sightings, and that the "bodies" recovered were not aliens but dummies used in parachute tests conducted in the region. Any hopes that this would put an end to the cover-up debate were in vain, as furious ufologists rushed to point out the report's inconsistencies. With conspiracy theories still alive and well on the Internet, Roswell continues to thrive as a tourist destination for UFO enthusiasts far and wide, hosting the annual UFO Encounter Festival each July and welcoming visitors year-round to its International UFO Museum and Research Center.

More Quotes

Take Every Thought Captive by Max Lucado

Today's thoughts are tomorrow's actions.
Today's jealousy is tomorrow's temper tantrum.
Today's bigotry is tomorrow's hate crime.
Today's anger is tomorrow's abuse.
Today's lust is tomorrow's adultery.
Today's greed is tomorrow's embezzlement.
Today's guilt is tomorrow's fear.



Change the thoughts, and you change the person. -- Max Lucado


Today's thoughts are tomorrow's actions. -- Max Lucado


Rita Rudner - "When I eventually met Mr. Right I had no idea that his first name was Always."


Just because two people argue, it doesn't mean they don't love each other.


You can keep going long after you think you can't.


You control your attitude or it controls you.


If you’re discouraged, that’s your choice. We make a choice to be discouraged. We make a choice to let discouraging thoughts move freely through our minds. But, we can also make a choice to change our thoughts at any time, taking them captive in the Lord. You get to choose what to focus on – your purpose or your problems, God’s power or your weakness, or your circumstances. -- Rick Warren


Anais Nin - "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."


Walt Disney - "All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them."

Friday, August 29, 2008

Some new words (for me, anyway)

ubiquitous: being everywhere.

The Raggedy Man is a percussion instrument used in folk music to tap out rhythms, often played with old-time string band music. More common names for this unique instrument are "Limberjack", "Ricki-tick" or "Dancing Dan". The realistic dancing motions produced by this little man are remakably similar to the actual "buck-dance", a pre-cursor to "clogging", both of which are popular dance styles in the Appalachian region. Because it is so easy to play, this little toy is a perfect "first instrument" for anyone wishing to be involved in folk music.

Worry is the opposite of peace; they cannot coexist. Our word worry comes from the German word wergen, which means "to choke" That is what worry does--it chokes your life. – Betty B.

Iatrogenesis literally means "brought forth by a healer" (iatros means healer in Greek); as such, it can refer to good or bad effects, but it is almost exclusively used to refer to the causation of a state of ill health or adverse effect or complication caused by or resulting from medical treatment.

lucullan: Lavish, luxurious.

The Finnish word "sisu" means resilience and survival under difficult circumstances. In shorthand, it's often translated as “guts,” and is regarded as a characteristic Finnish trait.
-- From the introduction to Sisu Cinema: Nine from the Finnish New Wave

Cupid Asleep -- a poem by Aimee DuPre

Cupid Asleep

by Aimee DuPre

I wrote this a long time ago, when I had a different name (ex-marriage), to a picture handed down to me by my grandmother called Cupid Asleep. Google it to see what it looks like.



Cupid asleep, young god of love,
Can you tell me what you dream of?

Fair-skinned maids
And tall, strong lads;
Soft woven braids
In time-worn fads.

Cupid asleep, your fragile bow –
How do you know where arrows go?

On bent knee
Where lovers park
Mischievously
They hit their mark.

Cupid asleep, young sad-faced child,
Were you ever happy and wild?

Days long past
Were filled with joy.
Though times won’t last,
I’ll stay a boy.

Cupid asleep, you’re much too bold.
Will you still be here when I am old?

Endless times
With passion darts,
I strike the minds
Of love-worn hearts.

Another Inventions Timeline

INVENTIONS
"But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased" (Dan 12:4).
4000 BC: Canal in Mesopotamia
3500 BC: Plywood in Egypt
3500 BC: Writing in Sumer
3500 BC: Carts in Sumer
3000 BC: Drainage in the Indus Valley (India/Pakistan)
3000 BC: Bronze: Susa
3000 BC: Silk in China
3000 BC: Cement in Egypt
2800 BC: Soap in Mesopotamia
2800 BC: Button in the Indus Valley
2600 BC: Artificial sewage systems in the Indus Valley
2000 BC: Currency
2000 BC: Candles in Egypt
600s BC: Coins in Lydia
500s BC: Sugar in India
500s BC: Dental bridge in Etruria
500s BC: Trebuchet in China
400s BC: Plastic surgery: Sushruta
300s BC: Compass in China
300s BC: Screw: Archytas
200s BC: Crossbow in China
200s BC: Compound pulley: Archimedes
200s BC: Odometer: Archimedes?
150s BC: Clockwork (the Antikythera mechanism)
150s BC: Astrolabe: Hipparchus
100s BC: Parchment in Pergamon
50 AD: Mouldboard plough in Gaul
100s: Aeolipile : Egypt by Hero of Alexandria
100s: Stern mounted rudder in China
100s: Paper
200s: Wheelbarrow: Zhuge Liang
200s: Horseshoes in Germany
300s: Wootz steel in India
300s: Stirrup in China
300s: Toothpaste in Egypt
600s: Windmill in Persia
670s: Greek fire
700s: Quill pen
800s: Gunpowder in China
900s: Horse collar in Europe
900s: Solid rocket in China
1100s: Framed Bead Abacus in China
1041: Movable type printing press: Bi Sheng
1128: Cannon in China
1200s: Eyeglasses in Northern Italy
1200s: Mechanical clocks in Northern Italy
1200s: Sandpaper in China
1350: Suspension bridges in Peru
1441: Rain gauge: Jang Yeong-sil
1450: Alphabetic, movable type printing press
1451: Concave lens for eyeglasses
1498: Toothbrush in China
1510: Pocket watch
1540: Ether
1576: Ironclad warship
1581: Pendulum
1582: Gregorian calendar
1589: Stocking frame
1593: Thermometer
1600: Musket in Europe
1600: Pencil in England
1608: Telescope: Hans Lippershey
1609: Microscope: Galileo Galilei
1620: Slide rule: William Oughtred
1623: Automatic calculator
1642: Adding machine
1643: Barometer
1645: Vacuum pump
1657: Pendulum clock
1672: Steam car
1679: Pressure cooker
1698: Steam engine
1700: Piano
1701: Seed drill
1709: Iron smelting using coke
1712: Steam piston engine
1710: Thermometer
1711: Tuning fork
1714: Mercury thermometer
1730: Mariner's quadrant
1731: Sextant: John Hadley
1742: Franklin stove
1752: Lightning rod
1764: Spinning jenny
1767: Carbonated water
1769: Steam engine
1769: Steam car
1776: Steamboat
1777: Circular saw
1783: Parachute
1783: Hot air balloon
1784: Bifocals
1784: Argand lamp
1784: Shrapnel shell
1785: Power loom
1785: Automatic flour mill
1786: Threshing machine
1793: Cotton gin
1793: Optical telegraph
1797: Cast iron plow
1798: Vaccination
1798: Lithography
1799: Seeding machine
1800: Electric battery
1802: Gas stove
1804: Locomotive
1808: Band saw
1809: Arc lamp
1811: Gun Breechloader
1814: Steam Locomotive
1816: Miner's safety lamp
1816: Stethoscope
1817: Kaleidoscope
1819: Breech loading flintlock
1821: Electric motor
1823: Electromagnet
1826: Photography
1826: Internal combustion engine
1827: Insulated wire
1827: Screw propeller
1827: Friction match
1830: Lawn mower
1831: Reaper
1831: Electrical generator
1834: The Hansom cab
1834: Braille system
1834: Refrigerator
1834: Combine harvester
1835: Photogenic Drawing
1835: Revolver
1835: Morse code
1835: Incandescent light bulb
1837: First US electric printing
1837: Steel plow
1837: Camera Zoom Lens
1837: Magnetic telegraph
1838: Electric telegraph
1839: Vulcanization of rubber
1840: artificial fertilizer
1842: Anaesthesia
1843: Typewriter
1843: Ice cream maker
1845: Portland cement
1845: Double tube tire
1846: Sewing machine
1846: Rotary printing press
1849: Safety pin
1849: Francis turbine
1852: Airship
1852: Passenger elevator
1852: Gyroscop
1855: Bunsen burner
1855: Bessemer process
1856: First celluloids
1858: Undersea telegraph cable
1858: Shoe sole sewing machine
1858: Mason jar
1859: Oil drill
1859: rechargable storage battery
1860: Linoleum
1860: Repeating rifle
1860: Self-propelled torpedo
1862: Revolving machine gun
1862: Mechanical submarine
1862: Pasteurization
1863: Player piano
1865: Roller Coaster
1865: Barbed wire: Louis Jannin
1866: Dynamite
1868: First practical typewriter
1868: Air brake (rail)
1868: Oleomargarine
1869: Vacuum cleaner
1870: Magic Lantern projector
1870: Stock ticker
1871: Cable car (railway)
1871: Compressed air rock drill
1872: Adding machine
1873: Railway knuckle coupler
1873: Modern direct current electric motor
1874: Electric street car
1875: Dynamo
1876: Carpet sweeper
1876: Loudspeaker
1877: Stapler
1877: Induction motor
1877: Phonograph
1877: Electric welding
1877: Twine Knotter
1877: Microphone
1878: Cathode ray tube
1878: Transparent film
1879: Pelton turbine: Lester Pelton
1879: Automobile engine
1879: Cash register
1879: Automobile (Patent)
1880: Roll film
1880: Safety razor
1880: Seismograph
1881: Metal detector
1882: Electric fan
1882: Electric flat iron
1883: Auto engine - compression ignition
1883: two-phase (alternating current) induction motor
1884: Linotype machine
1884: Fountain pen
1884: Punched card accounting
1884: Trolley car, (electric)
1885: Automobile - internal combustion engine powered
1885: Automobile, differential gear
1885: Motor cycle
1885: Alternating current transformer
1886: Dishwasher
1887: Monotype machine
1887: Contact lens
1887: Gramophone record
1888: Kodak hand camera
1888: Ballpoint pen
1888: Pneumatic tube tire
1891: Automobile Storage Battery
1891: Zipper
1891: Carborundum
1893: Carburetor
1893: Wireless communication
1893: Radio: Nikola Tesla
1894: Radio transmission
1895: Diesel engine
1895: Radio signals
1895: Shredded Wheat
1896: Steam turbine
1896: Electric stove
1897: Automobile, magneto
1897: Modern escalator
1898: tapered roller bearing
1898: Remote control
1899: Iron-Mercury coherer with telephone detector
1899: Automobile self starter
1899: Magnetic tape recorder
1899: Gas turbine
1900: Rigid dirigible airship
1900: Self-heating can
1901: Improved wireless transmitter
1901: Instant coffee
1901: Mercury vapor lamp
1901: Disposable razor blade
1901: Vacuum cleaner
1902: Radio magnetic detector
1902: Air Conditioner
1902: Neon lamp
1902: Radio telephone
1902: Rayon
1903: Electrocardiograph (EKG)
1903: Powered airplane
1903: Windshield wiper
1904: Tractor
1907: Color photography
1907: Helicopter
1907: Radio amplifier
1907: Vacuum cleaner, (electric)
1907: Washing machine, (electric)
1908: Cellophane
1908: Geiger counter
1908: Gyrocompass
1908: Tea bag: Thomas Sullivan
1909: Monoplane: Henry W. Walden
1909: Bakelite
1909: Gun silencer
1911: Air conditioner
1911: Cellophane
1911: Hydroplane
1913: Cracking process for Gasoline
1913: Double acting wrench
1913: Radio receiver, cascade tuning
1913: Stainless steel
1913: X-Ray
1914: Radio transmitter
1914: Liquid fuel rocket
1914: Tank, military
1915: Tungsten Filament
1915: Searchlight arc
1915: Radio tube oscillator
1915: Pyrex
1916: Browning Gun
1916: Thompson submachine gun
1916: Incandescent gas lamp
1917: Sonar echolocation
1917: Cruise missile
1918: Superheterodyne receiver
1918: Interrupter gear
1918: Radio crystal oscillator
1918: Pop-up toaster
1921: Polygraph
1922: Radar
1922: Technicolor
1922: Water skiing
1923: Sound film
1923: Television Electronic
1923: Wind tunnel
1924: frozen food
1926: Aerosol spray
1927: Mechanical cotton picker
1927: PEZ Candy
1928: Sliced bread
1928: Electric dry shaver
1928: Antibiotics
1928: Preselector gearbox
1929: Kinescope
1929: X-Ray motion picture camera
1930: Neoprene
1930: Nylon
1930: Underwater Motion Picture Camera
1931: the Radio telescope
1931: Iconoscope
1935: microwave radar
1935: Trampoline
1935: Spectrophotometer
1936: Pinsetter (bowling)
1937: Turboprop engine
1937: Jet engine
1937: O-ring
1938: Ballpoint pen
1938: Fiberglass
1939: FM radio
1939: Helicopter
1939: View-master
1939: Automated teller machine
1942: Bazooka Rocket Gun
1942: Undersea oil pipeline
1943: Aqua-Lung
1944: Electron spectrometer
1945: Slinky
1945: Nuclear weapons
1946: Microwave oven
1946: Mobile Telephone Service
1946: Computer
1947: Transistor
1947: Polaroid camera
1948: Long Playing Record
1948: Holography
1949: Atomic clocks
1951: Liquid Paper
1951: Nuclear power reactor
1952: Optical fiber
1952: Fusion bomb
1952: Hovercraft
1953: Medical ultrasonography
1954: Transistor radio
1954: Geodesic dome
1955: Velcro
1955: Hair spray
1955: Hard Drive
1956: Digital clock
1956: Videocassette recorder
1957: Bubble Wrap
1958: Integrated circuit
1958: Communications satellite
1959: Snowmobile
1960: Laser
1961: Optical disc
1961: Cochlear implant
1962: Light-emitting diode
1962: Space observatory
1963: Computer mouse
1967: Automatic Teller Machine
1967: Hypertext
1968: Video game console
1969: ARPANET (first wide-area packet switching network)
1971: E-mail
1971: Liquid Crystal Display
1971: Microprocessor 1971: Pocket calculator
1971: Magnetic resonance imaging
1971: Floppy Disk
1972: Computed tomograph
1973: Ethernet
1973: Genetically modified organism
1973: Personal computer
1974: Rubik's Cube
1974: Hybrid vehicle
1975: Digital camera
1976: Gore-Tex fabric
1977: Personal stereo
1977: Cellular mobile phone
1978: Spreadsheet
1981: Scanning tunneling microscope
1983: Camcorder
1983: Internet: first TCP/IP network
1984: Lithotripsy
1985: Polymerase chain reaction
1985: DNA fingerprinting
1986: Breadmaker
1987: Statin
1987: Digital Light Processing
1990: World Wide Web
1993: Global Positioning System
1993: Blue LED
1997: Non-mechanical Digital Audio Player
1997: DVD
1997: Wi-Fi
1998: Viagra
2001: Digital satellite radio
2001: Self-contained Artificial heart
2002: Scramjet

Memory Techniques -- New Behavior Generator

New Behavior Generator

June 19th, 2008

Here is an NLP technique I learned a while back that I have found very useful and extremely effective. It’s called the New Behavior Generator, and it’s something you can use to help you get motivated for something that you’d like to get done but don’t necessarily feel like doing.

1. Find a comfortable place to relax before beginning. Gaze off to your right and imagine seeing an “other you.” This “other you” will be the one learning this new behavior. Sometimes it’s helpful to imagine this other you in a bubble or on the other side of a glass wall to help you separate the “other you” from yourself.

2. Choose something you want to get done but don’t really feel like getting motivated to do. Something like balancing your checkbook or getting up early to exercise.

3. Imagine this “other you” enjoying the benefits of having done the activity. For example, imagine that “other you” feeling relieved at not having the an unbalanced checkbook hanging over your head or feeling invigorated and ready to start the day full of energy after exercising in the morning. Really make the images in your head vivid and compelling and specific.

4. Now imagine that “other you” actually doing the activity. Imagine him feeling motivated by everything you did in step 3, in other words feeling motivated by the benefits of the end result.

5. Next, step into that “other you” so that you’re experiencing the world through their eyes, ears, and other senses. And now experiencing everything from this 1st person perspective, repeat steps 3 and 4, and notice how good it will feel after having done the activity (i.e. balancing checkbook, etc.).

6. Finally, think of the next specific time you’ll be doing this action (for example, getting up tomorrow morning to exercise), and see yourself doing it easily and feeling super motivated.

I’ve used this exercise many times and had great success with it. For example, on my recent trip to New York and DC/northern Virginia, I wanted to get up at 6:45 to work out before starting our day. I did this exercise the night before shortly before bed, and without an alarm clock, I woke up at exactly 6:42 and bounced out of bed feeling super motivated to go do the elliptical machine for an hour. This is incredibly powerful and useful. I hope some other people find it as beneficial as I have.

(I learned this technique in the excellent book NLP: The New Technology of Achievement by Steve Andreas and Charles Faulkner.)

Posted in Jedi mind tricks

http://stalkingelmo.net/blog/

Memory Techniques

I said, “Remembering hunks!”

January 5th, 2008

First, I’d like to thank my parents for helping me get this written and posted while I’m home for the holidays since my computer use is rather limited these days.
Anyway, I thought I would share a memory technique I came up with last year.

Hopefully this will be of practical use for some of my readers.

Do you ever find yourself intending to do something like picking something up at the grocery store and then realizing afterwards that you forgot to do it? I’ve found the following technique to be a reliable way to trigger my memory.

The basic idea is that you imagine yourself in the situation where you want to remember to do something, and then you imagine something that you know will happen in that situation reminding you to do whatever it is you wanted to remember. For example, recently I went to my physical therapist and I knew I needed to ask about changing my appointment time for the next Friday. I know from experience that’s exactly the sort of thing that I would forget until it’s too late. So before I left the house, while I was still thinking about it, I imagined myself walking into the physical therapy room, seeing the receptionist’s desk, the posters on the walls, etc., and me setting my backpack down. Then I imagined that particular event triggering my memory to ask about my Friday appointment. Sure enough, when the trigger event actually took place several hours later, like clockwork it popped into my head that I needed to ask about changing my appointment.

I’ve used this technique in a variety of situations, such as remembering to put my keys back in my pocket once I’m done with the treadmill at the gym (I imagine the act of getting off the treadmill, feeling tired, and wiping the sweat off my face reminding me to get my keys again), or picking up something at the grocery store. So far the technique is pretty reliable. The more vividly and accurately you imagine the trigger situation, the more reliable it is. I don’t think it’s ever not worked for me when I’ve vividly imagined the trigger situation.

Posted in Jedi mind tricks

http://stalkingelmo.net/blog/

Four Religious Truths

During these serious times, people of all faiths should remember these four religious truths:

1. Muslims do not recognize Jews as God's chosen people.

2. Jews do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah.

3. Protestants do not recognize the Pope as the leader of the Christian world.

4. Baptists do not recognize each other at Hooters

Now I know why I've always liked cowboys!

Three strangers strike up a conversation in the airport passenger lounge in Bozeman, Montana, while awaiting their respective flights.

One is an American Indian passing through from Lame Deer. Another is a Cowboy on his way to Billings for a livestock show and the third passenger is a fundamentalist Arab student, newly arrived at Montana State University from the Middle East.

Their discussion drifts to their diverse cultures. Soon, the two Westerners learn that the Arab is a devout, radical Muslim and the conversation falls into an uneasy lull.

The cowboy leans back in his chair, crosses his boots on a magazine table and tips his big sweat-stained hat forward over his face The wind outside is blowing tumbleweeds around, and the old windsock is flapping; but still no plane comes.

Finally, the American Indian clears his throat and softly he speaks, 'At one time here, my people were many, but sadly, now we are few.'

The Muslim student raises an eyebrow and leans forward, 'Once my people were few,' he sneers, 'and now we are many. Why do you suppose that is?'

The Montana cowboy shifts his toothpick to one side of his mouth and from the darkness beneath his Stetson says in a smooth drawl . . .

'That's 'cause we ain't played Cowboys and Muslims yet, but I do believe it's a-comin'.'

Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road?

BARACK OBAMA:
The chicken crossed the road because it was time for a CHANGE! The
chicken wanted CHANGE!

JOHN MC CAIN:
My friends, that chicken crossed the road because he recognized the
need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the
other side of the road.

HILLARY CLINTON:
When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross
the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure --
right from Day One! -- that every chicken in this country gets the chance
it deserves to cross the road. But then, this really isn't about
me.......


DR. PHIL:
The problem we have here is that this chicken won't realize that he
must first deal with the problem on 'THIS' side of the road before it goes
after the problem on the 'OTHER SIDE' of the road What we need to do is
help him realize how stupid he's acting by not taking on h is 'CURRENT'
problems before adding 'NEW' problems.


OPRAH:
Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he
wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the chicken learn
from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to
give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the road and
not live his life like the rest of the chickens.


GEORGE W. BUSH:
We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to
know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The chicken is
either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here.


COLIN POWELL:
Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite image
of the chicken crossing the road...


ANDERSON COOPER - CNN:
We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been
allowed to have access to the other side of the road.


JOHN KERRY:
Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against
it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken's
intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against it.


PAT BUCHANAN:
To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.


MARTHA STEWART:
No one called me to warn me which way that chicken was going. I had a
standing order at the Farmer's Market to sell my eggs when the price
dropped to a certain level. No little bird gave me any insider
information.


DR SEUSS:
Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the
chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I've not been told.


ERNEST HEMINGWAY:
To die in the rain. Alone.


JERRY FALWELL:
Because the chicken was gay! Can't you people see the plain truth?'
That's why they call it the 'other side.' Yes, my friends, that chicken
is gay. And if you eat that chicken, you will become gay too. I say we
boycott all chickens until we sort out this abomination that the
liberal media white washes with seemingly harmless phrases like 'the other
side. That chicken should not be crossing the road. It's as plain and as
simple as that.


GRANDPA:
In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told
us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough.


BARBARA WALTERS:
Isn't that interesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the
chicken tell, for the first time, the heart warming story of how it
experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish its
life long dream of crossing the road.


ARISTOTLE:
It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.


JOHN LENNON:
Imagine all the chickens in the world crossing roads together, in
peace.


BILL GATES:I have just released eChicken2008, which will not only cross
roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance
your check book. Internet Explorer is an integral part of the Chicken.
This new platform is much more stable and will never cra...#@&&^(C%
........ reboot.


ALBERT EINSTEIN:
Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the
chicken?


BILL CLINTON:
I did not cross the road with THAT chicken. What is your definition of
chicken?


AL GORE:
I invented the chicken!


COLONEL SANDERS:
Did I miss one?


DICK CHENEY:
Where's my gun?

DICTIONARY FOR WOMEN

Argument (ar*gyou*ment) n.
A discussion that occurs when you're right, but he hasn't realized it yet.

Airhead (er*hed) n.
What a woman intentionally becomes when pulled over by a policeman.

Bar-be-que (bar*bi*q) n
You bought the groceries, washed the lettuce, chopped the tomatoes, diced the onions, marinated the meat and cleaned everything up, but, he "made the dinner."

Blonde jokes (blond joks) n.
Jokes that are short so men can understand them.

Cantaloupe (kant*e*lope) n
Gotta get married in a church.

Clothes dryer (kloze dri*yer) n.
An appliance designed to eat socks.

Diet Soda (dy*it so*da) n.
A drink you buy at a convenience store to go with a half pound bag of peanut M&Ms.

Eternity (e*ter*ni*tee) n.
The last two minutes of a football game.

Exercise (ex*er*siz) v
To walk up and down a mall, occasionally resting to make a purchase.

Grocery List (grow*ser*ee list) n.
What you spend ½ an hour writing, then forget to take to the store.

Hair Dresser (hare dres*er) n.
Someone who is able to create a style you will never be able to duplicate again. See "Magician."

Hardware Store (hard*war stor) n
Similar to a black hole in space -- if he goes in, he isn't coming out anytime soon.

Childbirth (child*brth) n.
You get to go through 36 hours of contractions; he gets to hold your hand and say "focus,...breathe...push..."

Lipstick (lip*stik) n
On your lips, coloring to enhance the beauty of your mouth. On his collar, coloring only a tramp would wear...!

Park (park) v./n.
Before children, a verb meaning, "to go somewhere and neck." After children, a noun meaning a place with a swing set and slide.

Patience (pa*shens) n.
The most important ingredient for dating, marriage and children. See also "tranquilizers."

Waterproof Mascara (wah*tr*pruf mas*kar*ah) n.
Comes off if you cry, shower, or swim, but will not come off if you try to remove it.

Valentine's Day (val*en*tinez dae) n
A day when you have dreams of a candlelight dinner, diamonds, and romance, but consider yourself lucky to get a card.

Commonly Held Misconceptions About Historic Costume

Commonly Held Misconceptions About Historic Costume

by Elizabeth Walton

http://www.clotheslinejournal.com/victorian.myths.html

Author's note:
The following paper is a response to questions people have asked or opinions I have seen stated as fact. Those of us who study costume at length learn early that many commonly held beliefs are wholly untrue or only partially true. As these beliefs are common, false information is often passed without question. There is rarely an easy answer to any question of dress and history and for this reason, I want to give a more lengthy, detailed, and researched account for interpreters and enthusiasts to refer to or start from. I hope that this paper, and this site, can answer many of the questions people have and I welcome any questions you have heard and answers you wish to know.

Common misconceptions about historic costume

The study of costume is based on the most fundamental needs and wants of humans. Since the dawn of time we have worn clothing for many purposes, including warmth, modesty, seduction, show of wealth, social standards, and cultural identity. Clothing has subtly or obviously been a part of every historical event and period, so naturally questions arise. This paper focuses primarily on the fashions and customs of the European and American middle and upper classes in the last three centuries. It is in this time span that dress as we know it today developed.

These questions also tend to bring up subjects that are much more vast than can be discussed thoroughly in this article. Changing ideas of masculinity and femininity, technological advances, child rearing techniques, social movements, medical advances and philosophies all play large roles in the clothes we wear and those worn by our ancestors. Nothing in this field is concrete and easily answered. The answers offered here can, at times, bring up more questions. Further clarifications can be found in the sources cited below.

Most current misconceptions stem from ideas passed down from the Victorian era. Of all periods of history, the Victorian era is among the most important and familiar to people of today. It is also one of the most misunderstood. Behind the exorbitant amounts of cloth used for clothing were strict social guidelines and stiff, restrictive undergarments. By today's standards, Victorians were known to be easily shocked (by women's pants and bare ankles for example). At the same time, they were not as conservative as people tend to think today. Their way of life greatly affected our own and remains misunderstood in many ways.

Corsets

Corsets fascinated people for centuries, probably since their inception. They have altered the shapes of women and men to suit the ideals of beauty. They have been heralded by the medical community as necessary for the health of weak bodies and at the same time blamed for maladies and even deaths to these same bodies. They have been both the targets of sexual fetish and a staple in most female wardrobes. Corsets have been seen as symbols of the restrictions put upon women even in their most intimate state. Though the shape of the corset, and even the names for it have changed over time, women and men have remained fascinated with this curious contraption.

Did women really pull their corsets so tight that they had 16 inch waists like Scarlet O'Hara?

This belief is almost certainly untrue. The belief that waists could be so small stems from a great deal of photographic and written "proof." However, most, if not all of this "proof" is extremely arguable.[1] Actual proof, for example, surviving corsets and garments, have not been found despite the fact that smaller pieces of clothing are more likely to survive through the generations as so few people could wear them. The 17 inch waist was a memorable feature of Gone With The Wind and like much of the book, an exaggeration. If such a small waist did exist it was more likely the result of a fetish related behavior deemed "tight lacing."

The two primary sources of proof of waists laced as small as fourteen inches are photographs and magazine editorials. Since the invention of photography people have tended to believe what they see. However, the manipulation of images to create what is wanted rather than what is true is not a recent occurrence. Many examples of retouched waists have been found, all of which present an impossibly small waist. These images may have been created for a tight lacing woman herself or for an admirer with this particular fetish. Written correspondence and even medical literature has also proven to be highly unreliable upon close examination. These letters and articles were published in small circles and include aspects of common fetishes including masochism and bondage.[2]

The actual size of a sixteen inch waist is rarely physically imagined and as a result, "Visitors to costume exhibitions exclaim with horror at the sight of nineteenth century corsets. Yet the measure of existing nineteenth century corsets and dresses are not excessively small: twenty-one or twenty-two-inch waists were not uncommon... and sixteen inch apparently nonexistent."[3]

Waists on these dresses do appear very small by today's standards, especially to the untrained eye. Mid 19th century corsets create waists that appear rounder and shorter than the ideal waists seen in today's media. A "flat" stomach was not the ideal and hips appeared much larger due to the movement of flesh from the waist. The external forces of the corset have become internal by the forces of diet and exercise needed to create the ideal figure of today.

Did women really remove ribs to have a smaller waist?

This belief remains strong and particularly fascinating to many people. As a matter of fact, rumors of rib removal remain in today's society (Cher is most commonly mentioned). Such urban myths easily spread as they sound so interestingly gory. Many factors make this highly unlikely. The primary factor is the idea of surgery itself. In the twentieth century we became accustomed to the idea of improving our looks through surgery. In the latter half of the century surgeries were developed that could "fix" the most minor of flaws with seemingly little or no risk. The nineteenth century (and earlier) was not characterized by such a casual idea of surgery.
Medicine was still primitive by today's standards and risk of infection was very high (antibiotics were not yet found). Needed surgeries were often deadly and it is unlikely that someone would be vain enough to risk death so boldly. [4]

These beliefs may also come from the photographic images discussed above. Through time the unbelievable has been manipulated to become believable to many people. No reliable evidence has proven that rib removal has ever been more than conjecture.
These myths seem to come about from people speculating from jealousy or disbelief. My own speculation is that someone wonders, "how can that girl's waist be so tiny? She must have removed ribs to make that possible." Eventually, like a game of telephone, it changes to "that girl had ribs removed."

Women

Is it true that WWI shocked people so much that women got the vote, stopped wearing corsets and shortened their skirts in a wave of feminine liberation?

This is a common idea based ideas of before and ideas of after, without looking at the war years themselves. Despite the war, women on the home front still wanted some vestige of normality and still looked to fashion. In America, women still sought out fashion as the US was not in the war until 1917. Magazines mourned the loss of Paris styles and applauded female war workers on both sides of the fight. Corsets were becoming less necessary to create the ideal form both before and during the war as the fashionable shape changed. The "youthful" figure which gradually replaced the S-curve did not require corsets shaped like those from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Furthermore, around this time the brassiere was greatly advertised and worn with corsets that held in the hips. The word corset was also gradually being replaced with descriptions like girdle or foundation which still contained the boning seen in corsets.

The fashions of the late teens and early twenties further show that "flappers" did not suddenly appear. Hemlines began to rise in 1913, not 1918 and the high collars and long sleeves of the Victorian era were being rejected as early as 1908. Dress reform movements of the late nineteenth century criticized the need for corsets and promoted loose comfortable clothing. Mariano Fortuny and Liberty of London both found success in "reform" dress long before the first World War.

Many of the behaviors associated with flappers began earlier than 1919 when these women were still children or young ladies. Magazines of the early teens refer to women driving, voting, dancing, smoking, and going out without escorts. Women were participating increasingly in sports and other physical activities which helped them become comfortable being seen in looser, more freeing styles. While the Great War did have a role in changing society, other factors had great roles also. These included art and theater movements, cinema, music, prohibition, and increased urbanization.

The wearing of restraining garments also did not end with the war. To create the desired "boyish" look women wore girdles to restrain the hips and chest. Though many of the layers of the past were cast aside, the everyday wear of the 1920's was not generally as daring as we tend to believe when seeing the most daring images on film.

Isn't it true that when the economy is bad skirts get longer?

This is a 20th century belief that has arisen from some fashion trends, but is overall unsubstantiated and coincidental. The first instance that is quoted of this phenomenon is the 1920s flapper dresses, during a time in which the financial markets were booming. However, as I stated above, skirts began shortening long before the boom of the twenties. They also began to lengthen again before the stock market crash of 1929. The changing of skirt lengths are more a result of a fashion growing old and being reacted to or are the result of other circumstances.

This was the case in World War II. During the war the American economy boomed. However, skirt lengths shortened directly because of rationing. Government regulations forbid the use of excess fabric on new clothes and women strove to appear patriotic. After the war designers returned to excessive use of fabric because it had been forbidden for several years.

In the 1960s short skirts again came into fashion, but no major economic forces were there to react to. The impetus was primarily social and cultural as fashion turned away from tradition and towards youth culture. The Seventies and Eighties were characterized by constantly shifting hemlines in the fashion press as designers strove to create and adapt to the new practices of the fashion industry.

Weren't women kept immobile by their clothes until the 20th century?

Generally, yes. For the fashionable elite clothing was created from yards and yards of fabric and supported by layers of undergarments which limited the ways in which a woman could move. Some garments were made for specific sports, but remained more restrictive than that of men in order to retain the ideals of modesty and feminine silhouettes.

In public life, women who could afford it wore clothes which gave the impression that there was no need to work. Being fashionable exclaimed social status. Women who needed to work (most of the population) wore clothes which allowed for necessary movement. Women working in fields even wore pants on occasion (see next section). While working in the kitchen women wore informal clothes. They also did not expect to be seen by anyone other than family and very close friends. They were most likely not fully corseted either. Some support would be wanted, as we wear bras today, but women were not impractical and did not generally seek pain. A loosely laced corset for everyday wear would supply this.

The increased participation of women in sports caused the creation of new forms of clothing in the late 19th century which helped bring about the freedom of movement we know today. Tennis, archery, horseback riding, badminton and other pastimes each had their own "uniform" which was related to current fashion and was publicly acceptable in the right circumstances. They were not however as freeing as today's athletic equipment and clothing.

Swimwear was especially restricting for women until well into the twentieth century. In the early nineteenth century women began to go to the beach and step into the water. Acceptable and specialized clothing developed, but was only slightly less voluminous than normal day wear. These ensembles were made of wool and fully covered the body. When wet these outfits could weigh as much as 50 pounds, making it virtually impossible for women to do more than step a few feet into the water.

Isn't it true that women never wore pants until 50 years ago?

It is true that skirts have been the accepted wear for women throughout the world for centuries. However, women did wear pants, in public, on occasion. In the Eighteenth century, costume balls were enormously popular. Empress Elizabeth of Russia regularly required that women dress as men and vice versa. [5] When riding horseback she would wear pants much like that of her male counterparts. Costume balls continued to be popular in wealthy circles and it was not unusual for women to wear shortened skirts with visible pants. [6]

In the early 1850s the "bloomer" or "Turkish" costume was created as a form of dress reform to give women a more comfortable and practical form of women's dress. Shorter skirts with loose trousers were controversial. They were worn by feminists of the time including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Amelia Bloomer (after whom it was named).

These outfits never gained wide popularity but remained a symbol of dress reform and liberation and were worn for several decades by a small number of women. [7] These ensembles also allowed for greater movement and comfort for women who worked in fields. Wonderful examples and photographs of these outfits can be found in the book Dressed for the Photographer by Joan Severa.

In the twentieth century pants slowly gained acceptance as casual wear. Movie stars, especially Marlene Dietrich and Katherine Hepburn, were shown wearing pants and were emulated by many, though not all women. It was not until the 1970s that pants gained acceptance in public and formal spheres.

Weren't Victorian women always covered up?

As Victorian etiquette followed specific rules, the amount of skin remaining visible could easily indicate a person's class and or personality. Modesty was an admirable trait for women to possess and public display of immodesty could greatly affect a reputation. However, looking at an evening gown, one might be surprised at the amount of visible cleavage (décolletage) which would never be seen on the street. The necklines of evening gowns would display bare shoulders, necks and backs. The well-covered styles usually associated with the Victorians are more typical of daytime wear, where it was not seemly to display excess skin.

Is it true that only loose women wore makeup before the 1920s?

It is true that women would not wear any amount close to what is worn now during much of the Victorian era, but cosmetics were available in the forms of face power, rouge and hair dyes. As women were conscious of their flaws as much as today, it is not surprising that they would enlist the help of cosmetics.

Cosmetics have been in existence for centuries. The ancient Egyptians used charcoal eyeliner. Elizabethans "used white lead to obtain their fashionable pallor"[8] In the eighteenth century a person could not be fashionable without white face powder and rouge. Victorians tended to look down on cosmetics as unclean in their "fetish for cleanliness."[9] Cosmetics were used surreptitiously by respectable women wanting to improve their appearance. Rouge and face creams were commercially available in the late nineteenth century though, "it could be risky to buy commercial beauty products" [10] due to the uncertainty of the contents.

Didn't people see how ridiculous bustles and hoops looked?

My response to this question is: Didn't you know you looked ridiculous in high school? It is a safe question as everyone looked ridiculous at some point in his or her life. Also, it makes them think about the tendency to judge others based on today's standards.

During those periods of extreme fashion, wide hoops and bustles, poofy pants, layers of petticoats people knew that they were greatly exaggerating the true figure. The fashions began deliberately. Much of this provided a means for conspicuous consumption, meaning a way to show off how much unnecessary fabric you can afford to buy because you are so rich and desirable. This is related to label lovers today. The more designers you wear, the wealthier you are. As fashions tended to trickle down from the wealthy, others would imitate the shapes and designs often in less expensive ways.

Furthermore, these hoops often were not as cumbersome as they appear. The large hoops of the second half of the 19th century were initially a relief for women who were trying to have fashionable silhouettes with heavy layers of underskirts. The crinoline provided a lighter and more flexible support for the fashions of the day. They also, however, contributed to the increase in size and awkwardness of later fashions. As shapes of hoops developed and changed so did ways of moving and even furniture shape (the chaise lounge for instance) to allow for women to sit and rest at a social function while keeping a graceful appearance. Nor must we think that all hoops were enormous. Women wore hoops of different sizes for different occasions and could forego hoops and crinolines at home. At royal courts, hoops reached record widths in the 18th century, even after they were very much out of style in other circumstances. The greater weight and difficulty of hooped fashions were the yards of cloth draped over them, at times forming a train as well.

Children

Why did they dress little boys like little girls?

The way children have been dressed first relates to ideas of infancy, development, and gender identity. Until the eighteenth century most babies were wrapped in swaddling cloth, put in short dresses, then dressed in miniature adult clothing while still quite young in preparation for adult roles. The 1760's brought in philosophies of Rousseau which promoted clothing that allowed for children's natural development. Dresses promoted movement and ease for both sexes. Though adult roles were extremely gender specific, small children's clothing was not. The specifics of dress in every period of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries cannot be discussed here as they changed with fashion, science and culture. General theories and tendencies, however, can be discussed.

Many images of small boys from the Victorian period and earlier appear feminine by today's standards. Some images show young boys in dresses almost identical to those of girls. Late nineteenth century images show boys in the little pantsuits with lace and velvet deemed the Little Lord Fauntleroy suit after one described in the Frances Hodgeson Burnett book. Boys' clothing was not dissimilar to women's fashions of the nineteenth century. It was not unusual in the nineteenth century for small girls to wear bloomers, or pants beneath their dresses as well. Though the shapes and details of this form of dress are feminine by today's standards, people living at the time would not confuse these boys for girls, nor would a parent be appalled at the idea of someone thinking their infant son was a little girl or vice versa.

Like many other aspects of dress, the visible implicators of masculine and feminine have changed over time. The color schemes we associate with the identification of an infant's gender did not develop until the early to mid twentieth century. Pinks and blues were used interchangeably on children when colors were used, but infants of the nineteenth century would most likely be attired in white. It displayed purity and could be bleached clean, an issue of practicality. Visible designs and accessories were recognizable by contemporaries as masculine or feminine, but the dress itself would not necessarily be an indicator. Finally, the use of pants for infant and toddler boys could create additional difficulties as fasteners commonly used today (snaps, zippers and velcro) were not available until the twentieth century. In the time before a child was potty trained, dresses would provide cover and access to diapers.

Until recent decades parents were not as concerned with declaring a child's sex. Children would rarely be exposed to strangers until well into their toddler years due to the more home-based lives most people lived.[11] Gender would not need to be advertised to others who most likely knew the parents and the gender of the child already.

Beliefs about the nature of children also supported the idea that children developed personalities and individual traits as they grew, but were not necessarily born with them. Until babies grew into toddlers (2 or 3 years old) gender would not play a role in their lives. This may have been partially due to the high rates of infant mortality. This lack of individuality may have been a form of psychological protection for parents facing the likelihood of losing infant children.[12]

Men

Wasn't it revolutionary for men to have long hair in the sixties?

Hair length has often had some connections with ideas of masculinity and femininity. The idea in the 1960s that men with long hair were revolutionary and turning society upside down was true only in the narrow ideals of mid-twentieth century America. In past centuries men have often worn long hair and women have on occasion worn short hair. Men of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries wore long elaborate hairstyles created with their own hair or wigs. In the Napoleonic Era women wore classically inspired short hairdos.

**All photographic images are courtesy of the Phoenix Art Museum Fashion Design Collection.

Notes
1 Kidwell, Claudia Brush and Steele, Valerie. Men and Women: Dressing the Part. (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989.) 53
2 ibid. pg. 53. This aspect is further examined in Fashion and Eroticism by Valerie Steele
3 ibid. p. 52
4 Steele, Valerie. Fashion and Eroticism: Ideals of Feminine Beauty from the Victorian Era to the Jazz Age. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). p.170
5 Maroger, Dominique, ed. The Memoirs of Catherine the Great. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1955.) p. 78
6 Kidwell, Claudia Brush and Steele, Valerie. Men and Women: Dressing the Part.
7 Severa, Joan. Dressed For the Photographer: Ordinary Americans and Fashion, 1840-1900. (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1995)
8 De Castelbajac, Kate. The Face of the Century: 100 Years of Makeup and Style. (New York: Rizzoli 1995) p. 7
9 Ibid. p. 7
10 Mulvey, Kate and Richards, Melissa. Decades of Beauty: The Changing Image of Women 1890s-1990s. (New York: Octopus Publishing Group, 1998.) p. 20
11 Kidwell, Claudia Brush and Steele, Valerie. Men and Women: Dressing the Part. p. 29
12 Ibid. p. 24

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