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Chapter 18 HISTORY The population of the whole world in the year 5,000 B.C. was about five million. Now there are more people just in New York City. There is a marble arch in Libya that was built in the year 164. It is still standing, but it has been covered with modern cement and made into a grocery store. Eyeglasses were worn in China five hundred years before they were worn in Europe or America. Christopher Columbus spent less money coming to the New World than it costs the average American to buy a new car today. America was named after Amerigo Vespucci, who a map maker mistakenly thought was Christopher Columbus, the discoverer of North America. Vespucci discovered South America. Served at the first Thanksgiving meal in 1621 were lobster, roasted pigeon, eel, stuffed cod, turkeys, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, popcorn and cranberry sauce. There were 92 native Americans at this breakfast. Evidently the Pilgrims had a unique gadget that was used in church to keep members of the congregation awake. It was a wooden ball on a string that was used to bop people on the head who were drifting off during the seven-hour-long sermons. In 1637, one out of every four shops in New York City were taverns. Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), the famous astronomer, spent so much time looking at the sun with his telescope, that he went blind for the last four years he lived. On December 5, 1664, a ship sank off the coast of Wales. The only survivor was a man named Hugh Williams. On December 5, 1785, another ship sank. One man survived, another Hugh Williams. On December 5, 1860, yet another ship went down with only one survivor - you guessed it - his name was Hugh Williams. Casimir Polemus of France survived three shipwrecks. In each case, he was the only survivor. Frank Tower was a shipworker who was on the Titanic when it sank, the Empress of Ireland when it sank, and the Lusitania when it sank. He escaped all three times. Until 1687 clocks had no minute hand, just an hour hand. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was an alchemist for 30 years. He invented the ridges found on quarters and dimes to deter counterfeiting while heading the English mint. Some people used to shave off the edges of coins to make a valuable pile of precious metal which they could then melt down and sell. The coins looked about the same. With ridges a shaved coin would be easier to notice. The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 were the result of the pranks of a bunch of teenage girls. Some people of the town started saying that the girls might be "bewitched." When the adults seriously wanted to know who had bewitched them, these girls named about 150 random residents of the community. Twenty-two "witches" were killed, mostly by hanging. Philadelphia used to be the biggest city in America. Because the Americans felt unqualified to cast a bell so large, the Liberty Bell was made in England and shipped to America. It arrived in 1752. It cracked the very first time it was rung. This was the only bell made by the Whitechapel Foundry of London that ever cracked in the 400 years they had been making them. The colonists melted it down and tried to re-cast it themselves, but it did not sound good when finished. They tried again, and then it worked fine for 83 years until 1835 when it cracked again. They used it for 11 more years, but finally the crack was growing too big to ignore. It was supposed to be melted down and poured into a mold to make a new bell twice as big, but the man hired for the job refused to do it. He said "Your children and my children will some day come to value it, so let it stand." To those who have been to Philadelphia and seen the Liberty Bell, it seems huge. But it is far from the largest bell in the world. In Russia is a great bell that is so big that 24 people are needed to ring it. It was originally cast in the sixteenth century. It fell off its support and was recast in 1654. Its support broke again in 1706, and it was recast again. It is taller than three people, and as big in diameter as a car. It weighs 443,732 pounds, about the same as 4,000 people. In Thomas Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration of Independence, he included a proposal to put an end to slavery. Other politicians forced him to delete that portion in the final draft. John Hancock's signature on the Declaration Of Independence was very large, causing the modern term "put your John Hancock" which means to sign something. His signature on other documents was rather large too, but he had a particular reason for writing big on the Declaration. Signing the Declaration was an act of considerable bravery, because it would be seen by the King of England as high treason. He wanted King George III, who was far-sighted, to be able to see his signature clearly. Paul Revere never made the ride for which he is so famous. Soon after he started he was asked to turn around and go home by a British soldier. Paul Revere had 16 children. Dimes were originally pronounced "deems." Early American coins were engraved with this motto: "Mind Your Own Business." Only one out of twenty Americans lived it cities in 1790. One of the United States used to be called Franklin. The name was changed in 1796 to Tennessee. George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson all played marbles. In that era the game of marbles was fashionable among adults. English lawyers and judges used to wear powder-covered wigs. More important men tended to wear bigger wigs. This is where the expression bigwig came from. During the War of 1812 Samuel Wilson, a butcher in Troy, N.Y., shipped pork to the U.S. soldiers in kegs stamped U.S. People called him Uncle Sam. Samuel Wilson did not look like the man we think of as Uncle Sam. The man who posed for the original paintings of "Uncle Sam" was really Dan Rice, a professional clown who owned a pet pig and worked for what later became the Barnum and Bailey Circus, then went on to found his own circus. He ran for the American presidency as a Republican and lost. The man who started the California gold rush, James Marshall, after a first small strike, was able to find no other gold for himself, and died a penniless alcoholic. The modern President of the United States is surrounded by Secret Service agents and the reporters and photographers of the press wherever he goes. The White House is full of guards and electronic equipment. The man does not lead anything like an ordinary life. In Abraham Lincoln's time, the situation was different. There were no secret service employees. Reporters, souvenir- hunters, even unemployed folks looking for work could come into the White House and speak with the President. Lincoln's pet goats grazed on the White House lawn and were invited inside occasionally. Plastic was first made in the year 1868. The term Gadget came from Gaget, one of the partners in the company that built the statue of Liberty. He sold miniatures of the statue to the public who mispronounced his name when referring to the little statues. The year was 1884. Although there were some women employed in each of these trades a hundred years ago, they were less than one in a million: total total one out one out occupation men women of workers of women ==================== ======= ===== ========== ========== Lumbermen 65,829 28 2,351 2,250,000 Quarrymen 37,628 30 1,254 2,100,000 Wood choppers 33,665 32 1,052 1,968,750 Architects 8,048 22 366 2,863,636 Building engineers 139,718 47 2,973 1,340,425 Livery-stable keepers 26,719 48 557 1,312,500 Locomotive engineers/firemen 79,459 4 19,864 15,750,000 Sailors 55,875 29 1,927 2,172,413 Blacksmiths 205,256 59 3,479 1,067,796 Coopers (barrel makers) 47,435 54 878 1,166,666 Masons (brick & stone) 158,874 42 3782 1,500,000 Ship and boat builders 22,929 3 7643 2,100,000 Steam boiler makers 21,272 6 3545 10,500,000 There were 205,256 men working as blacksmiths in 1890, and 59 women. Less than one in a million women were blacksmiths. The percentage of women who are blacksmiths is nearly the same today. But now the reason is because there are so few blacksmiths in general. During the summer of 1893 Chicago hosted a large fair called the Columbian Exhibition. There were approximately 75 million Americans then, and one out of every three Americans visited that exhibition. The Sears catalog and other mail-order outfits affected the easy prosperity for the rural general stores. In some places they would trade with the children of the community one movie ticket for every Sears or Montgomery Ward catalog they could bring. Then these merchants would have big bonfires to burn all the catalogs. From The Sears Catalog, 1897 10 inch skillet..........$.20 Men's suit, wool........$4.85 Family shoe repair kit..$.68 Men's straw hat......... $.25 Women's silk skirt......$2.35 Hair curling iron....... $.35 pocket watch............ $.98 violin................. $2.85 Harmonica............... $.08 rocking chair.......... $2.00 oak rolltop desk...... $17.50 "B grade" buggy....... $37.83 Mr. Roebuck, was originally a watchmaker that Sears hired. They were opposites, Sears a promoter, Roebuck a conservative careful man. They got along well anyway and became partners. After a while Roebuck sold out for $25,000 because he didn't agree with the frantic expansion of the company. He invented a typewriter and invested the proceeds of the typewriter income in Florida real estate. He lost everything in the crash of 1929. He showed up at the Sears employment office looking for any work at all. He was hired as a "celebrity" to cut ribbons at grand openings, etc. At the age of 44 Mr. Sears retired with over $17 million. In Switzerland, women were not allowed to vote until 1971. Do you know what year women gained the right to vote in the United States? Women could vote in the United States beginning in 1920. Slavery We all know how slavery ended in America. Here's how it happened in France. About 1400 years ago, a British girl, Bathilde, was taken as a slave and sold to French King Clovis II. They fell in love and married, making her queen. After the king died, she outlawed slavery. "SLAVERY AND SERFDOM. - Some of the wealthy Romans had as many as 10,000 slaves. The minimum price fixed by the law of Rome was $80, but after great victories they could sometimes be bought for a few shillings on the field of battle. The day's wages of a Roman gardener were about sixteen cents, and his value about $300, while a blacksmith was valued at about $700, a cook at $2,000 an actress at $4,000, and a physician at $11,000." - From The Century Book of Facts, 1900 There were 4,000 slaves in Pennsylvania in the year 1780. At one time in America, approximately one out of every six people were slaves. At other times the figure dropped to one out of every eight people. As late as 1876 there were over a million slaves in Brazil, which was 15 percent of all the Brazilian people. Miscellaneous One of the earliest typewriters had a piano keyboard. The Mexican term for Americans, gringos, came from a song that cowboys often sang, called "Green Grow the Lilacs." The $ was originally equipped with not one, but two vertical lines. Sometimes you still see it used that way. The two vertical lines represented a U superimposed over the S, which stand for U.S., the United States. The United States is the only country that incorporates its own name into its monetary symbol. There was an Indian in Wisconsin whose name was Chief Lepod- otemaxchoselachogaleokranioleipsanodrimupotrimmatosiphioparaomel- iokatakeclummenokichleipkossuphophattoperisteralektruonoptegkeph- alokigklopelsiolagoosiraioealetraganopterugon. A long time ago in an English pub, someone told the the bartender to mind his P's and Q's. What he was saying was to keep out of the customer's business, and mind his own, which was inventorying P's (pints) and Q's (quarts). The Dow-Jones average was never higher than 1000 until 1972. On November 14, 1972 it broke 1000 with 1003.16. The man who invented scissors was Leonardo da Vinci. Electric Pacific Power and Gas, the largest electric utility in America, was founded by George Roe, a guy who had to collect the collateral on a bad debt: a generator. When the transatlantic cable was first used, it cost $98.82 to send ten words. In the first phone company, the four operators had to remember the names of about 200 customers. When John Smith wanted to call Tom Hardin, for instance, the operator knew whose plug to put in whose hole. When two of the four operators became sick with the measles, the doctor, who was also a part owner of the phone company, suggested numbering the customers so that temporary operators who didn't know all the customers by name, could work the system. This is how phone numbers came to be. One old woman related this story: We didn't used to dial phones. You would crank the phone in a code. Ours was two short and two long. Every neighbor had their own code. You dialed a short with about a half-turn of the crank, and a long was about a full turn. Music was such a novelty, that sometimes one of the rare neighbors who had a phonograph would dial four longs, which was the signal for everyone on the line to pull down their receivers and listen. They would then wind up the Victrola and everyone would listen in wonder to the music. Of course, only one person in every family could listen to the receiver at a time, so everyone would take turns holding the thing to their ears, while the others in the family gathered around eagerly awaiting their turn. Early in the history of telephones, there were about 300 competing phone companies in America. You could call only the people who did business with the same company as you. The first phone booths were in a building in Connecticut. An attendant stood near to take the money. At one time, there were more pianos and organs in the US than bathtubs. Thomas Edison changed all that with the invention of machinery to record and play back music. We think of color television as a recent invention, but the first time color was shown on a tv screen was in 1929. The first commercial television broadcast as we know it was in London, 1936, to about 100 tv sets. The last episode of M*A*S*H* on February 28, 1983, was seen by 125 million people. Transportation The world's first automobile was made in France, in 1871 by Nicolas Joseph Cugnot. Powered by a two-cylinder steam engine, it had a top speed of 2.3 mph. Walking speed is 3 mph. In total, 18 million Model T Fords were built. That's approximately one for every 8 men, women and children in America. Where are all these Tin Lizzies now? Old Tin Lizzie jokes: "What time is it when a Ford passes a Ford? Tin past tin." "Why, the only shock absorbers in the Model T are the passengers." Ford Model A cars had only 5,500 parts. A bicycle has over 1,000 parts, although more than half (typically 512) of these are in the chain. There are over a quarter-million Model A's still running. People often wonder how Hitler, with all his crazy ideas and rough manner could become so popular a leader. A great deal of Hitler's appeal to the masses was that he decided to control the automobile industry and promised them Volkswagens, cars that every family could afford at a time when there was only one car for every 211 people in Germany. (In America at that time, there was one car for every 5.7 people.) Hitler and Eva Braun did not get married until the day before their suicide. German Count Von der Wense was asked by the Nazis to surrender his land for the government Volkswagen plant. They offered payment, however. He took the money and bought other land, but that land was conquered by Russia. Finally, after the war, he ended up with the job of official tour guide of the Volkswagen facilities, on the very land he used to own. After World War II, Henry Ford was offered the Volkswagen factory for free by the English government, then in charge of Germany's industries. They were looking for someone who could operate the plant, thereby creating hundreds of jobs. Ernest Breech, Ford's chairman of the board looked the plant over and said, "Mr. Ford, I don't think what we are being offered here is worth a damn!" He was right in a way. At that time the factory had not yet ever produced more than a few hand-crafted prototypes and the workers could only make cars when it wasn't raining, because large areas of the roof were missing. As some of you may know, Ferdinand Porsche designed the Volkswagen, and he considered it his greatest achievement. He rated this car more important than his winning race cars because this was a car every family could afford. It was a masterpiece of economical engineering for its time, as is evidenced by the fact that the basic design survived for over 30 years. Ferdinand Porsche went to trade school to be trained as a factory foreman. He got the lowest grades in his class. One of Henry Ford's famous quotes came from this Volkswagen thing. When Ferdinand Porsche showed him the plans for Volkswagens, and Ford was asked about his concern of competition, he said, "If anyone can build a car better or cheaper than I can, that serves me right." As of 1965, Volkswagen was producing a car every 8 seconds, and Ford could have owned the company. Most people think the Wright Brothers were first to fly. The first real flight happened in France on October 9, 1890 by Clement Ader in a steam powered airplane. The altitude was only a few inches. The Wright Brothers. knew about and studied this flight. Lindbergh was the sixty-seventh man to make a non-stop flight over the Atlantic Ocean. He was, however, the first to do it solo. 1914 marked the beginning of the first passenger airline. The St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line started with two flights per day on a plane with one passenger seat. I found a 132-year-old advertisement for a book similar to the almanac you are now reading: "FIFTY THOUSAND CURES of drowsiness dejection, dolour, dulness, depression, ennui, ill-humor, indigestion, (mental,) from political or other dry reading, loss of temper, low spirits, melancholy, moroseness, mental anxiety, (as for instance on a railway journey,) sulks, stupefaction, (by a debate in Congress.) sleepiness, spleen, general used upishness, and many other complaints have already been affected by the use of that celebrated article prepared by the old lady herself - Mrs. PARTINGTON'S CARPET BAG OF FUN - with 150 laughable designs, and 1,000 of the funniest stories, &c., ever published. It is sold by everybody and bought by the rest. The infant may take it as well as the adult, as it is warranted free from all impurity, and contains nothing hurtful to the weakest mental stomach. Price 50 cents. GARRETT, DICK & FITZGERALD. Also, for sale by all Booksellers."