Young and restless

The Marquis de Lafayette got his commission as a major-general in the American army on this date in 1777.  He was 19.

Gilbert, Marquis de Lafayette

Nineteen!  I mean, really. He was five weeks short of being 20, but just how much combat experience could he have had?  It’s no wonder the Congress declined to give him a unit to go with the commission;  he got to be an aide to Washington for a while, but didn’t get any actual soldiers under his command for another year.

But the whole point of Lafayette was not to add a seasoned campaigner to the rolls, but to get the French to support the Revolution, which a year later they did.  And Lafayette was so connected – not only was his own family venerable and respected for its military achievements, but he married the daughter of the Duc de Noailles, which was something like marrying a Rockefeller.

Lafayette probably knew what was going on, but he seems to have been good-natured about it and ultimately served quite bravely.  But he really was just a very young adventurer – he outfitted his own boat to get here, hitched a ride when it was captured by the British, and offered immediately to serve without pay.  Just spoiling for a fight.

After an eventful life, he died in 1834 and was buried in Paris.  And just to prove that people were every bit as strange then as they are now, his grave was topped with soil from Bunker Hill.

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By Abraham VerWer (1585-1650). Painted in The Netherlands, 1620-1640.

The Pilgrim fathers left Holland on this date in 1620 in the Speedwell and sailed to Southampton, England, where they met up with like-minded dissenters aboard the Mayflower and they all set out for America. The Speedwell twice sprung leaks and finally everybody squished into the Mayflower.

It later turned out that the crew of the Speedwell had been poking holes in the ship because they’d changed their minds about the trip. For some reason, I find that absolutely hilarious.

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Happy birthday to J.K. Rowling, who once was poor, but now is rich.  Good for her – along the way she got thousands of kids not only reading, but acquiring an attention span.

Good sport, bad sport

The summer Olympics that opened in Los Angeles on this date in 1932 were a little different from what we’ve come to expect.

For one thing, L.A. was a very long way from the rest of the country and, as the Depression was getting underway, not too many people could afford a train ticket. Attendance was the lowest since 1904.

Just 37 countries entered and of the 1300 athletes that competed, only 126 were women.

(In Beijing, 204 countries showed up and of the 10,942 athletes, 4,637 were women, 6,305, men.)

But the upside was pretty good – people were thrilled with the venue. The Los Angeles Coliseum, built only nine years before, was a knockout. No one had ever seen anything quite like it, and its 100,000 seats were filled for the opening ceremonies.

The 1932 Olympics were the kind where a competitor like Britain’s Judy Guinness, on her way to a gold medal in fencing, pointed out two touches her opponent had scored that had gone undetected.  Guinness wound up with a silver and lasting fame as a good sport.

It was a good Olympics, so it was no surprise when Los Angeles was chosen host again in 1984.  Oh, alright – the truth is nobody else wanted to.  The ’76 Montreal games were such a notorious financial disaster that L.A. had the field all to itself.

Happily, the ’84 games came out ahead by about $200 million and competing for the games went back to being a good thing.

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When last we saw Jimmy Hoffa, the former Teamsters president was pacing the parking lot of a suburban Detroit steak house.  The mob bosses he was supposed to meet on this day in 1975 were late.  Apparently too late – or maybe not late enough. Whatever, Hoffa was never seen again.

Jimmy Hoffa

Hoffa was reportedly going to talk to them about his chances for running for head of the union again, which sounds a little odd, since never running the Teamsters was a stipulation of his pardon by Richard Nixon in 1971.

Hoffa, convicted of jury tampering, conspiracy and mail and wire fraud, had served only four years of a 13-year sentence, thanks to RMN. But that’s another – and very complicated – story.

In any event, he disappeared and his body was never found, so he was declared legally dead seven years later.

The FBI ended their investigation with a 56-page report that you can read on-line if you are so inclined. It’s here. Yes, it’s a PDF.

Eye on the skies

NASA was created by an act of Congress on this date in 1958.  If it had never done anything else, it would still be worth every taxpaper dollar for this

and this                                                                                                  

and these

Hubble celebrated its 20th birthday last April.  To find your own favorites among the hundreds of beautiful images available, go here.

Ms. Potter

Illustration from The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Wikimedia Commons

If you are English, please avert your eyes from the illustration on the left.  Beatrix Potter’s work is not in the public domain in your country, although it is in the US  - unless it was published after 1909, in which case it may not be used in the district of the Ninth Federal Circuit court.  Wikimedia is meticulous about these things and I think that’s noble, so I try to follow their guidelines.

That said, Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) left her more than 4,000 acres in the Lake District to the British National Trust and would probably be pretty generous with her work.  She turned down an offer from Walt Disney, which wanted to buy Peter Rabbit, among others, and thank god for that.  We all know how Disney feels about use of images.

Today is her birthday.  There has always been something a bit twee about her life and her work, but having read more about her, I think she is really quite a heroine.  She did not come from a time or a culture where people wrote tell-alls basically titled ‘Look What My Family Did to Me,’ but her parents really were something.  They discouraged her intellectual efforts, isolated her from the world with nannies and governesses, eventually consigned her to the role of housekeeper and generally squashed her creative, intelligent self.

Beatrix Potter. Wikimedia Commons

But she must have had a deeply-rooted sense of self-worth.  After being turned down by six publishers, she self-published her first book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit.  Her uncle tried to get her accepted as a student at the Royal Gardens of Kew, but they would not accept a woman. She continued her studies of lichens and fungi – making exquisite drawings – and became a respected mycologist.  Her paper on the germination of spores was delivered by her uncle at the Linnean Society because they didn’t allow women at their meetings.

She kept working, publishing, studying and finally made enough money to buy her own farm in the Lake District, where she eventually became a successful breeder of sheep.  She was a plucky little thing who took herself and her work seriously and overcame real obstacles to accomplish her goals.  Like the Linnean Society in 1997, I’m tendering an apology for any previous lack of respect.

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Sir William Herschel – a civil servant in the British Raj – started taking people’s fingerprints on this day in 1858 in Calcutta for purposes of identification, the first known instance of such use.

Herschel would have been a big fan of Homeland Security – he used fingerprints for disbursing money, keeping track of prisoners and on all legal documents.  He forced government pensioners to submit fingerprints so that in case of their demise, their relatives could not continue to collect. There is no record of any protest.

Cutting edge

Today in 1794 was the coup of thermidor – not an attack of lobsters, but the fall of Robespierre.

Maximilian Robespierre

Robespierre was the prime mover in the Reign of Terror following the French Revolution, one of a handful of people responsible for the execution without trial of nearly 2,000 people by guillotine.  When Robespierre recalled two of his satellite security people after public opinion turned against the bloodbath, it seemed he had a tiger by the tail.  They worked diligently against him and finally he himself faced the guillotine.  Literally.  He was beheaded face up. Yuk.

Thermidor was one of the 12 months of the new Republican calendar.  In an effort to get rid of all of the distasteful aspects of the old monarchy and heady with the radical ideas of the Enlightenment, the ruling elite decreed a new legal system, new weights and measures and a new calendar. Many of the laws remain and the new measures became the metric system.

But the calendar, rational as it was, never caught on and Napoleon ordered everybody back to the Gregorian.  Au revoir to Vendemiare, Brumaire, Frimaire, Nivose, Pluviose, Ventose, Germinal, Floreal, Prairial, Messidor, Thermidor and Fructidor.  I think we should take another look at Floreal – it’s a nice name for May.

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Frederick Banting and his lab assistant Charles Best isolated insulin on this day in 1923 and changed the lives of millions of people.

Frederick Banting

Research had gone on since 1869 in various places by various people after Berlin medical student Paul Langerhans first observed clusters of tissue in the pancreas that came to be called the isles of Langerhans.  They were the source of insulin, the name of which comes from the German word ‘insel,’ which means island.

But it was Banting, at the University of Toronto, and Best who carried the research into clinical trials.  Initially ineffective, they worked to purify the substance to eliminate allergic reactions and ultimately got a version that was essentially pure.  Here is an excerpt  - which cannot be bettered – from Wikipedia describing the first test at Toronto General Hospital:

“Children dying from diabetic keto-acidosis were kept in large wards, often with 50 or more patients in a ward, mostly comatose. Grieving family members were often in attendance, awaiting the (until then, inevitable) death.

“In one of medicine’s more dramatic moments Banting, Best, and [biochemist James] Collip went from bed to bed, injecting an entire ward with the new purified extract. Before they had reached the last dying child, the first few were awakening from their coma, to the joyous exclamations of their families.”

Banting received the Nobel Prize for medicine the next year.  The patent on insulin was sold to the University of Toronto for one dollar.

Saluton, amiko

A lot of interesting stuff has happened on this date – in 1947, the CIA was created, in 1948, President Truman issued Executive Order 9981 which essentially integrated the armed forces, in 1953, Fidel Castro started the Cuban revolution (with a losing battle) and in 1956, Egypt seized the Suez Canal, which caused a major hullabaloo.

That’s a lot to be getting on with, but in case it gets overlooked, let’s talk about July 26, 1887.  To be truly respectful, our conversation should be in the lingva internacia, but I have to admit I’m not fluent.  Today is the anniversary of the first published book in Esperanto.

It was a textbook and I am surprised to find that thousands of people are still studying and speaking L.L. Zamenhof’s artificial language. Zamenhof, a Pole who spoke Yiddish, Russian and Polish while he was growing up in Bialystock, decided that language was the great barrier to world peace.  And so, even as he studied to become an ophthamologist, he worked on his language.  Interestingly, he decided English grammar was the most efficient, so he used it as a basis for his own grammar.

'Doktor Esperanto' - Ludwig Zamenhof. Wikimedia Commons.

‘Esperanto,’ btw, means ‘the hopeful one’ in Esperanto – Zamenhof authored his text as Doktor Esperanto. ( ‘Saluton, amiko’ means hello, friends.)

There are even about a thousand native speakers, meaning that parents are teaching their children Esperanto along with a first language.  Esperanto even has its own flag (above). There is a whole lot more to say about Zamenhof and his language, but two things must be mentioned – UNESCO has officially recognized Esperanto and Zamenhof is considered a deity in the Japanese religion of Oomoto. For some Esperanto fun, try this.

* * *

Elizabeth Cady Stanton. LoC PPD.

In 1848, the first Women’s Convention was held in Seneca Falls NY, and in 1920, on the same day, the 19th Amendment – giving women the vote – was ratified.  At Seneca Falls, Elizabeth Cady Stanton read her women’s version of the Declaration of Independence and all of the resolutions proposed by the convention passed except one – women’s suffrage.  It was just too novel an idea.

Many happy returns to the following stellar celebrants :  Avery Zia, Helen Mirren, Kevin Spacey and Sandra Bullock.  They all help brighten our days.

Yo -umami!

Tomatoes are very umami

I see that the Ajinomoto company was founded on this date in 1908 and that the next year they got together with Kikunae Ikeda of Tokyo University.  A chemistry professor, Ikeda had figured out what made seafood broth so tasty, so full of umami.  It was the glutamates, and soon he and Ajinomoto were making MSG.

(N.B.: Cooks prefer to call it umame, but in general it’s correctly spelled umami.)

Ajinomoto now produces a third of the world’s supply of MSG and many of the chemicals that are used to intensify its effect.

We in the West used to be taught that there were only four basic tastes – bitter, sweet, sour and salty.  Then we learned about umami, which can best be translated as ‘savory.’  Tomatoes, especially in the form of sauce, cheese, meat and fish are all excellent sources of umami. Asian cooking has always used such umami enhancers as soy sauce, fish paste, and seaweed.

Professor Kikunae Ikeda

Italian cooking is umami-rich with tomato sauce, anchovies and aged cheese. The French specialize in meat glazes, which are pure umami – Brillat-Savarin understood  that special savory flavors were coming from somewhere and even invented a word for it (osmazome), but it never caught on.

A nice Gorgonzola makes for a lot of umami

Interestingly, your stomach can actually kind of taste glutamates. It has special receptors for them and when stimulated, the receptors send a message of palatability to the limbic system in the brain.  There is one little problem  - palatability is not the same as satiety and can actually suppress satiety cues. Palatability makes you want more, so umami can make you overeat.

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It’s Constitution Day in Puerto Rico, also the anniversary of the day US troops landed on the island during the Spanish-American War.  Since the Constitution of Puerto Rico had to be ratified by Congress and approved by President Truman before President Munoz Marin could proclaim it in 1952, I’m not sure what’s being celebrated.

Departures

Among the earliest settlers who came to the new world in search of religious freedom were the many dissenters from Germany – the Amish, Moravians, Mennonites, German Quakers and dissenting Reformed and Lutheran.  They had heard about William Penn and his policy of tolerance and so they headed for Pennsylvania.  On July 24, 1683, the first large group left aboard The Concord.

I imagine they looked a lot like the Amish shown in the photographs below, taken in 1941 and 1942 by WPA photographers.  The cultivator may be a modern invention, but the people would have been instantly recognizable.

Visiting Amish observing farming methods in Florida. Marion Post Wheeler, LoC PPD.

Pennsylvania Amish farmer in unmotorized cultivator with steel wheels. John Collier, LoC PPD.

A number of other significant events have occurred on this date:  Brigham Young and a band of Mormons reached the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, the Supreme Court ruled the Richard Nixon had to release the Watergate tapes in 1974 and – best of all – the first political poll results were published in 1824.  The Harrisburg Pennsylvanian printed the results of a straw poll that showed that Andrew Jackson was the overwhelming presidential favorite, correctly as it turned out.

And it is Ambrose Bierce’s birthday.  Born in Ohio in 1842, he was well-known for his writing (The Devil’s Dictionary, Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge), respected for his Civil War service and famous for derailing Collis Huntington’s efforts to sneak legislation through Congress forgiving a $130 million loan to the railroad tycoon and his buddies.

Two things about Bierce are uniquely memorable: First, he was one of 13 children, all of whom had names beginning with the letter A - Abigail, Amelia, Ann, Addison, Aurelius, Augustus, Almeda, Andrew, Albert, Ambrose, Arthur, Adelia, and Aurelia.

Ambrose Bierce in 1866

Second, he went to Mexico in 1913 as an observer of Pancho Villa’s army, traveling with them as far as Chihuahua.  At that point he completely disappeared.  No trace of him was ever found. It is a mystery that frequently prompts fiction, notably Carlos Fuente’s The Old Gringo, which was made into a movie starring Gregory Peck.

O Canada

Aki-tanni ('Two Guns'), Sarsi warrior. Eward Curtis Collection, LoC PPD,

Today we observe the creation of the province of Canada by the Act of Union on July 23, 1840.

And on a personal note, I’d like to apologize to our neighbors to the north for knowing almost nothing about the history of Canada.  Assuming it had sprung full-blown on our northern border sometime after the revolutionary war, I was astounded to learn that it wasn’t the Canada we know until about 1870.

As late as 1949, Newfoundland and Labrador were a Dominion equal to Australia and Canada.  But they gave up their status and joined Canada as a province.

So, not only was Canada not cooked until 1949, its national flag – the Maple Leaf flag – wasn’t adopted until 1965.

Upper and Lower Canada in green and orange, modern Canada in pink. Map by Astrokey44.

Anyway, the Canada created in 1840 looked like this:It consisted of Upper and Lower Canada, one part English- speaking and one French-speaking, the orange and green bits.  Clearly, Canada still had a long way to go.

One of the nicest things about Canada is the way the aboriginal peoples are all referred to as ‘First Nations.’  The First Nations include Blackfoot, Micmac, Cree, Iroquois, Wyandot, Algonkian, Salish, Tlingkit, Sarsi, Haida, Chipewyan and many others.  All aboriginals except Inuit and Metis are First Nations.  That they were particularly well-represented in the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics was not a token appearance – they have always had a larger cultural presence in Canada than in the U.S., and much less violent history.

Horn Society (Kainah) tipi, Alberta Canada. Edward Curtis Collection, LoC PPD.

Canada’s name, in fact, is an Iroquoian word  (kanata) meaning settlement or village;  use of the word began with Jacques Cartier and gradually became universally used.

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Today is Haile Selassie’s birthday.  He ruled as Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 until 1974.  Also known as Ras Tafari Makonnen, he is worshipped by Rastafarians as Jesus incarnate.  He was heir to a dynasty that dated to the 13th century and was said to be a direct descendant of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. He died in questionable circumstances after a military coup in 1975.

Lost

Roanoke Island today. Photo, CooperativeConservation.org.

On July 22, 1587, 117 colonists were dropped off on an island off what is now North Carolina. They were led by an artist and adventurer named John White, who had brought his family with him.  A month after landing, his daughter, Elizabeth Dare, gave birth to a girl who was named Virginia.

White returned to England almost immediately, promising to bring back more colonists and more supplies for the fledgling colony.

What with one thing and another, he didn’t get back to the island until 1590. What he found was an empty settlement. There was no sign of the 114 people who had been there three years earlier.  There were no signs of violence or signs of hurried departure.  The buildings had been dismantled. There was only the word “CROATAN” carved on a post.

The mystery of the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island has fascinated both professionals and amateurs for centuries now.  What did the cryptic sign mean?  Where had the colonists gone?  Did the sign mean they’d gone to Croatan Island?

There still is no answer.  But here’s a bit of back story:  Queen Elizabeth had granted Virginia to Sir Francis Drake, with the proviso that he establish a permanent colony within ten years.  He sent a group in 1584 to survey the area; they selected Roanoke Island as a likely place.  The next spring, another group, led by Sir Robert Grenville  and also expeditionary, landed and began to explore further.  They encountered the local Algonquians, called the Croatan.  At some point, a group of Native Americans were accused of stealing a silver cup, so Grenville ordered their village sacked and burned, and the village chief was executed.

Enter the new group.  My theory is that once the ship left, the Algonquians – having learned an important lesson about Europeans – kept a watchful eye on the colonists and when the right time came, did them all in, got rid of the bodies and removed every sign of the colony’s existence. Just a theory.

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Surveyor Moses Cleaveland, traveling and mapping the shores of Lake Erie in 1796, reached the mouth of the Cuyahoga River on this date and decided it would make a good city.  Four hardy souls agreed to settle there and that was the total population of Cleveland in its first year.

And on July 22, 1994, O.J. Simpson entered a plea of not guilty to the murders of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goodman.