NAME THAT BATTLE

BATTLE OF ANTIETAM a/k/a
BATTLE OF SHARPSBURG

Many American Civil War* battles bear two different names--one for the North, and one for the South. Yankees, being more urbanized, tended to have been blasé about man-made projects and frequently named their battles after geographical features. Confederates, on the other hand, often lived in wilderness types of areas and found unnatural man-made things more noteworthy. For example, the First Battle of Bull Run was named by the Bluebellies after a creek by that same name, while the identical battle was called the First Battle of Manassas by the Rebs, in honor of a railway station at that location. The Southerners spoke of the Battle of Sharpsburg (a Maryland village), while the Northerners called it the Battle of Antietam (referring to a nearby river).  And so forth.

*Or, as known south of the Mason-Dixon line, the "War Between the States."

"ARE NOT FIVE SPARROWS SOLD FOR TWO PENNIES? YET NOT ONE OF THEM IS FORGOTTEN BEFORE GOD." LUKE 12:6

In 1958, Chinese dictator Mao Tse Tung (also known as "Mao Zedung"), implemented as part of his "Great Leap Forward" (a plan to industrialize Red China and perfect a socialistic utopia) the "Four Evils Campaign." This was a militant extravaganza directed at the elimination of four natural pests--rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows.

With the same type of patriotic fervor and eye-catching propaganda displayed by various nations in mobilizing their citizens during World War II, Mao exhorted everyone in the population over the age of five to engage in a full-court press to destroy every sparrow in the nation. Hordes of schoolchildren and adults combed the countryside killing the birds, destroying their nests, and beating gongs at night to interrupt their roosting. The campaign resulted in the massacre of approximately 1 billion birds with only a few survivors, including a handful which had unknowingly obtained sanctuary on the grounds of the Polish embassy.

What did the government have against sparrows? Sparrows eat grain, and the officials wanted to protect the grain stores from consumption by the birds. Unfortunately, the government overlooked the fact that sparrows also eat insects. Without the predation of the sparrows, the locust population ballooned drastically and swarmed and destroyed vast amounts of rice and other grains in the fields. The resulting famine from 1958-1962 killed some 20 to 30 million people through starvation. Eventually, the government realized its boo-boo and substituted bed bugs for sparrows as a target for elimination.

Sometimes, it is not a good idea for politicians to pretend that they know science.

China Government, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

THE NOTORIOUS LAND OF LINCOLN/LONE STAR STATE VEHICLE REGISTRATION TAG COLLABORATION

Unlike most states, Illinois does not use its prisoners to make license plates. It did so from 1933 to 1935, but it then decided that it was better to award the manufacturing of the plates through competitive bidding in order to insure higher quality plates and to avoid taking jobs away from private industry.

Ironically for those Illinois plates issued from 1979 through 2002, the producer turned out to be the Texas State Prison facility located in Huntsville. The Texas prison plates made for Illinois were of very high quality and were stronger, less flimsy, and more durable than those plates issued by Illinois previously (although, admittedly, the increase in quality was no doubt due, at least in part, to the fact that Illinois converted to multi-year plates in 1979).

Considering the current financial condition of the state, Illinois may wish to revisit the concept of making its own plates in prison rather than paying outsiders to do it. However, considering the number of totally incompetent Illinois politicians serving time within those facilities, maybe it would not be such a good idea after all.

THE BATH MASSACRE

The worst school massacre in the United States, in terms of numbers of fatalities, did not take place in Virginia, Colorado, or Connecticut. It occurred instead in Bath Township, at the time a small agricultural community about fourteen miles from Lansing, Michigan. On that tragic day on May 18, 1927, Andrew Kehoe murdered 38 elementary school children and six adults and injured 58 others.

Kehoe's attack was cold-blooded, cruel, premeditated, and methodical. Over a course of several months, he accumulated hundreds of pounds of dynamite and pyrotol--not a difficult thing to do in those more innocent times, as the explosives were commonly sold to farmers (such as Kehoe) for legitimate purposes and were not regulated as they are today. Kehoe purchased them in small quantities at various locations to avoid suspicion. He bought new tires for his truck so that he would not get a flat when hauling around heavy loads of dynamite.

The Bath Consolidated School was built in 1922 as a single structure to replace numerous one-room country schoolhouses which were located in the area. Kehoe was a member of the school board. He was also an electrician who performed repairs on the lighting system in the building. He thus had ample opportunity, which he unfortunately utilized, to install and wire explosives throughout the structure.

On May 18, 1927, or perhaps a day or two prior, Kehoe murdered his wife at his farm. He placed bombs within the house and outbuildings and wired the legs of his horses together so that they could not escape the barn. He also cut all of his fences and girdled his fruit trees so that they would die. At about 8:45 AM on May 18, Kehoe detonated the explosives and blew up his farm.

Meanwhile, at the school, classes started at 8:30 AM. Kehoe, using an alarm clock as a timer, arranged for his school explosives to go off at about the same time as he blew up his house--8:45 AM. The initial blast demolished the north wing of the school and killed 38 people--primarily children. Kehoe had also set a second time bomb composed of 500 pounds (230 kg) of dynamite in the south wing, but the explosion in the north wing apparently caused a short which disarmed the second bomb.

Kehoe was not through. About a half-hour after the initial blast, he drove up to the scene at the school in his truck and called over the Superintendent of Schools. Eyewitnesses indicate that they saw the two men wrestling over a long gun, and the truck then exploded, killing Kehoe, the Superintendent, a retired farmer, the postmaster, and an 8-year old boy.

Why did Kehoe commit his atrocities (other than the fact that he was an evil sadistic wacko)? He was upset about taxes.

THE NAUTICAL WARRIOR INEQUITY

National Archives at College Park, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

No one should gainsay the sacrifices and contributions made by those who served in the US Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard during WWII. The monuments to them and the benefits available to them for education, health care, and subsidized home loans are far less than deserved and constitute grossly inadequate compensation for what most of them endured during that conflict.

What about the Merchant Marine? Sailors who manned Liberty ships and other vessels carrying troops and materials in the war effort bled, burned, and drowned just as easily as Navy personnel when their ships were torpedoed. However, until the issue was litigated in 1988, mariners were not entitled to any of the basic veterans' benefits.

This attitude was summarized by Terry Vance, state adjutant and quartermaster for the Illinois VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars), who explained to the Belleville News-Democrat why the Merchant Marine is not considered by the VFW to be a branch of the armed services, why mariners cannot join the VFW, and why mariners are not included in military monuments sponsored by the VFW: "Memorials are built for the warriors. So people need to understand that it's warriors we're remembering, not necessarily the wars."

Does putting yourself in harm's way to support your country's military objectives make you a warrior? If so, then the mariners on the more than 400 cargo ships sunk by German subs in just the first three months of 1942 should be considered warriors--even if knowledge of their losses was kept secret from the American public by President Roosevelt in order to avoid injuring national morale.

About 243,000 men served in the Merchant Marine during the conflict and 9,497 died as a result, for a mortality rate of 3.90%. The death rates for the official American armed forces were "only" 2.94% for the Marine Corps, 2.08% for the Army, 0.88% for the Navy, and 0.24% for the Coast Guard.

"Non-warriors" my butt.

POST NO BILLS (OR CHARLIES OR SYLVIAS OR....)

Photo from Smithsonian's National Postal Museum Blog at
http://postalmuseumblog.si.edu/2013/02/very-special-deliveries.html,
which is not affiliated with Henry's Daily Factoids

The US Post Office (succeeded in 1970 by the US Postal Service) did not accept packages for mailing until January 1, 1913. At the time there were few restrictions, and you could, for example, mail a rifle to somebody simply by writing the recipient's name and address on the stock and slapping on the appropriate postage stamps.

Creative parents quickly took advantage of this service by posting their children. If you wanted to send little Joey out of town over spring vacation, it was a lot cheaper to mail him than to buy him a train ticket. For example, six-year old May Pierstoff's parents in Idaho sent her by parcel post to her grandparents for the princely sum of 53 cents. When Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Beauge mailed their son in Ohio, they took the extra precaution of insuring him for $50.

As a practical matter, only small children or infants could be sent by this method, as there was a 50-pound (23 kilograms) weight limit for parcel post. 

Eventually, Postmaster Albert Burleson established regulations forbidding the mailing of humans, although the practice continued for about two years after his edict. 

For the benefit of you bleeding hearts out there, the children were not sealed up in boxes. Their parents would attach the appropriate amount of postage and the relevant address to the clothing of the child, and he or she would then be shepherded by postal employees with the more normal packages along the route.

For more information about the practice of mailing children, click here.

THE NIPPONESE NUMISMATIC NUANCE

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the U.S. government was quite concerned about the possibility of a Japanese invasion and occupation of the Hawai'ian Islands. Included among the problems created with such a venture would be the mischief the Japanese could inflict by capturing all of the American currency present on the Islands and using it to buy raw materials or to conduct other transactions with neutral countries. Consequently, on January 10, 1942, the military governor of Hawai'i started recalling US paper money and directed that individuals could not possess more than $200 in bills at one time with businesses allowed to hold up to $500.

On June 25, 1942, replacement bills in the denominations of $1, $5, $10, and $20 were issued by the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco for use in Hawai'i. All of these bills carried a brown seal instead of the usual blue seal found on the $1 silver certificates and the green seal found on the $5, $10, and $20 federal reserve notes. In addition, both sides of each bill were imprinted with "HAWAII." Had there been an invasion, the government would have immediately declared any money so marked invalid and thus useless to the Japanese.

Residents of Hawai'i were ordered on July 15, 1942 to turn in all of their old currency for replacement "HAWAII" bills, and no other paper money could be used on the Islands after August 15, 1942. Rather than ship the recalled currency to the mainland, the government burned the bills in Hawai'i in a crematorium and at a sugar mill.

By October 21, 1944, the government was confident that Hawai'i was no longer at risk of invasion and stopped issuing the special currency. By April of 1946, the HAWAII bills were being recalled and replaced with ordinary money. Many residents (and servicemen stationed on the Islands) kept some of the bills as souvenirs. They are prized by collectors today and command a nice but not particularly exorbitant premium.

TOOL-USING REPTILES--WHAT A CROC!

A 2014 article in the journal "Ethology Ecology and Evolution" indicates that certain crocodilians, namely Indian mugger crocodiles and American alligators, have developed the use of sticks as tools--specifically, as bait. 

Some birds, primarily egrets, build their nests near crocodilian-infested waters, as the presence of the reptiles scares off other predators. With the exception of an occasional chick which falls into the water, most egrets know how to avoid getting too close to the leathery leviathans of lethality that they seek out as guardians.

However, certain crocs and gators intentionally lie motionless on the surface with balanced sticks upon their heads and, if they have to move, they do so deliberately in such a fashion that the sticks do not fall off. An unwary egret, desperately looking for sticks for nest building, will reach down to the herptile's head for the bait stick with tragic consequences. Zoologists have further noted that the habit of wearing sticks by the reptiles abates if not totally ceases when nest building season is over.

Those of us who enjoy alligators and crocodiles have known for years that they are probably the most intelligent of reptiles. Their maternal instincts are strong (try digging up a nest of croc eggs if you dispute this assertion), and the mama croc takes care of the crockettes long after their hatching. A bunch (actually, the correct collective noun is "bask") of crocodiles will attack a large animal, and, when the prey has been killed, the participants will politely line up single file with each one taking a chomp off of the carcass in an orderly procession. A crocodile and his buddies will circle a school of fish and force the school into a tight ball where the individual reptiles will then, again in orderly fashion, swim through the center of the sphere of fishes and gulp down a meal. In a scene reminiscent of the stalking patterns of velociraptors demonstrated in the Jurassic Park film series, a single crocodile or alligator often will drive a large prey animal towards other crocodilians lying in ambush. It is thus not surprising that alligators and crocodiles have the street smarts to be master baiters.

Therefore, if you softly and surreptitiously steer your skiff into the Stygian shallows of certain southern swamps late at night, you perhaps may hear some of the the gators gently crooning, "Egrets, I've had a few, but then again..."

THE BIRTHER CONTROVERSY CONTINUES UNRESOLVED

Despite all of the rhetoric to the contrary, there still remains a reasonable possibility that a person served as President of the United States illegally because he was not a natural-born citizen as required by the U.S. Constitution. The individual in question is, of course, Chester Alan Arthur, who, as Vice-President, was sworn into the Presidency in 1881 as a result of the assassination of  President James Garfield. Rumors abounded in the 1880 election that Arthur was actually born in Canada, instead of the sleepy village of Fairfield, Vermont some fifteen miles south of the Canadian-U.S. border. 

Arthur's father was originally from Ireland before he came to the New World to serve as a teacher and clergyman in southern Canada and northern Vermont. Purportedly, his son born in Fairfield was Chester Abell Arthur and died shortly thereafter. The birthers believe that the next son, Chester Alan Arthur (who eventually become President), was born in Canada during an 18-month period when his mother resided in that country with her parents while Arthur's father was on the road.

The opposing political party (i.e. the Democrats) tried to make as much political hay as possible with these allegations when Arthur was on the ticket as the Vice-President in 1880; however, most persons presumed that Garfield would be serving his full term and really did not care that much about the Vice-Presidential candidates. During a speech to his supporters shortly after the 1880 election, Arthur coyly stated, "I don’t think we had better go into the minute secrets of the campaign, so far as I know them… while I don’t mean to say anything about my birthplace, whether it was in Canada or elsewhere, still, if I should get to going about the secrets of the campaign, there is no saying what I might say to make trouble between now and the 4th of March [Inauguration Day]." Arthur never did 'fess up about his birthplace and burned all of his personal papers prior to his death.

It is quite possible that Arthur himself did not know where he was born. He had no birth certificate, and his family freely traveled to different locations in Canada and Vermont around the time of his birth (whenever that was--even historians do not all agree as to whether it was 1829 or 1830). Records from that era are very sparse and not all that helpful.

Well, was Arthur born in Canada? The evidence is not conclusive either way. However, I do feel obligated to point out that the "Chester A. Arthur Birthplace" in Fairfield was renamed by the State of Vermont to the "Chester A. Arthur State Historic Site."

THE BOONDOGGLE OF IRENE TRIPLETT

Photo courtesy of National Archives

Like millions of other Americans, Irene Triplett of North Carolina, until her death in 2020, received a monthly government payment as a matter of law. However, unlike Social Security and other entitlement programs which were enacted by Democrats, Ms. Triplett's source of funds was championed by a Republican--Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln advocated in his Second Inaugural Address that all Americans should care for Civil War veterans and their survivors. "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

Yes, that is correct. Irene Triplett was getting approximately $75 a month from the Department of Veterans Affairs through a Civil War pension. The enabling legislation provided funds not only for Civil War veterans but also their surviving spouses and children. Ms. Triplett legally qualifies as a surviving child of Civil War veteran Moses (or, depending on the source of information, Mose) Triplett, who was born in 1846. Moses started out fighting for the Confederacy, but he deserted prior to the Battle of Gettysburg and thereafter enlisted with the Union Army. 

Moses survived the war and, in due course, married. His first wife died in the 1920s. Moses remarried in 1924 to a woman 50 years younger than him and sired Irene, who was born in 1930. Moses Triplett died in 1938.

For more information on Irene Triplett and how she had contributed to the massive national debt of the USA, click here.

BRIDES IN THE BATH

George Joseph Smith was an English bigamist (technically, a septgamist, since he had seven wives at once) who plied his craft about 100 years ago. He was also a serial killer famous for his participation in the "Brides in the Bath" murders, where he killed three of his wives by drowning them in bathtubs and making the deaths look like they were from natural causes--i.e. that each victim drowned in the tub while in the throes of an epileptic fit.

Smith's undoing is a prime example of the axiom that "when a pig becomes a hog, it gets slaughtered." Individually, none of the deaths caught the attention of the authorities, and none of them were initially suspected as homicides. It was only when the police discovered that the same man was married to three different women who all died in the tub that they became really suspicious.

However, the Home Office Pathologist Bernard Spilsbury could not find any appreciable markings on the bodies consistent with the struggle which would have resulted from an unwilling drowning victim, nor could he locate any evidence that the victims were drugged prior to their immersion. He did drowning experiments using volunteer female divers but could not immerse the heads of any of them under water without violent resistance which would have left tell-tale bruising. Finally, he suddenly pulled on the ankles of one of the divers, forcing her head underwater. She instantly fell into shock and lost consciousness, and Spilsbury had an apprehensive half-hour trying to resuscitate her before he succeeded.

As a result of Spilsbury's experiments and the testimony of the female diver (who apparently was a good sport about the whole incident), Smith was convicted of the three murders and executed in 1915.

Photo by Yannick Trottier through Wikimedia Commons

THE UNWELCOME IMPERIAL

Photo courtesy of Leslie Hellrung

Aficionados of county fairs are familiar with the demolition derby, where contestants crash into each other with automobiles until only one car still running (called "the winner") is left. Because the sport is dangerous, the event usually takes place on a muddy field or arena in order to reduce speed, and participants can be disqualified if they hit the driver's door of their opponents. The specific rules for the event vary from venue to venue.

The traditional equipment for this endeavor was a 1960s or 1970s full-sized American sedan or station wagon which could withstand more abuse than its smaller, less beefy brethren. Due to the limited availability of such behemoths in modern times, many derbies now are devoted to the more plentiful and newer smaller vehicles.

One contestant, however, has been traditionally banned from almost all variations of the demolition derby. We are talking, of course, about the Chrysler Imperial--especially the 1964-1966 version. Its size, ruggedness, and crashworthiness were deemed to make it an unfair competitor. Chrysler executives were probably not all that displeased about their product being disqualified because it was "too tough."

By Crwpitman (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

THE FIRST RECALL

 

A ubiquitous sight on trees (especially southern live oak and bald cypress) in the Southeastern U.S. is the phenomenon of Spanish moss--so named because it resembled the beards of the conquistadors who explored the New World several centuries ago. The Spaniards called it "French Hair" in retaliation.

Actually, Spanish moss is not a moss but instead is a bromeliad and related to pineapples. It is not parasitic but merely uses the tree as support while it nourishes itself from the water and dust in the air. In doing so, it provides a haven for various creatures such as bats and birds.

It has been used as material for dresses, tinder, blankets, ropes, mortar, mulch, and mattress stuffing.

In 1915, Henry Ford decided that what was good for mattresses would also be good for the upholstery in his Model T production, and he turned to Spanish moss as a cheap, plentiful, and renewable source for stuffing for seats. Unfortunately, Ford did not realize that Spanish moss was not only a haven for bats and birds but was also prime real estate for chiggers. Because Ford used for his upholstery raw Spanish moss which had not been boiled or otherwise treated, Model T owners could be identified by the plethora of angry red bites (especially around the groin) and extreme pruritus associated with a major attack by the red bugs. 

Ford instructed the relevant Model T victims to bring their vehicles back for the installation of replacement vermin-free seats. This was the first known automotive recall.