Tug of War

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cynthia.jpg

In 1860, a party of Texas Rangers killed a camp of Comanche Indians near Pease River. Afterward, they noted that one of the women they had captured had blue eyes. She spoke no English, but when Col. Isaac Parker mentioned that his 9-year-old niece Cynthia Ann had been abducted by Comanches 24 years earlier, the woman slapped her chest and said, “Me Cincee Ann!”

As it turned out, Cynthia Ann Parker had been kidnapped twice. In 1836, when she was 9, the raiding Comanches had slaughtered her parents and taken her with them. She adopted their ways, grew to womanhood, married a native man, and bore three children. Then in 1860 the raiding Rangers killed her husband and abducted her back into white society.

She would be transplanted a third time: Forty years after her death in 1870, her son had her disinterred and buried on an Oklahoma reservation, reuniting her finally with her native family.

| History

Damn Rebs

http://www.google.com/patents?id=5QBwAAAAEBAJ&dq=ininventor:French&as_drrb_ap=q&as_minm_ap=1&as_miny_ap=2008&as_maxm_ap=1&as_maxy_ap=2008&as_drrb_is=b&as_minm_is=1&as_miny_is=1862&as_maxm_is=12&as_maxy_is=1862&num=50

A combination plow and cannon, patented in 1862 by C.M. French and W.H. Fancher:

As a piece of light ordnance its capacity may vary from a projectile of one to three pounds weight without rendering it cumbersome as a plow. Its utility as an implement of the twofold capacity described is unquestionable, especially when used in border localities, subject to savage feuds and guerrilla warfare.

“As a means of defense in repelling surprises and skirmishing attacks on those engaged in a peaceful avocation it is unrivaled.”

| History · Technology

Angry Planet

History’s 10 deadliest natural disasters:

  1. Yellow River flood, China, summer 1931: 1 million to 2 million dead
  2. Yellow River flood, China, September-October 1887: 900,000 to 2 million dead
  3. Bhola cyclone, East Pakistan, Nov. 13, 1970: 500,000 to 1 million dead
  4. Shaanxi earthquake, China, Jan. 23, 1556: 830,000 dead
  5. Cyclone, Coringa, India, Nov. 25, 1839: 300,000 dead
  6. Kaifeng flood, China, 1642: 300,000 dead
  7. Indian Ocean earthquake/tsunami, Dec. 26, 2004: 283,100 dead
  8. Tangshan earthquake, China, July 28, 1976: 242,000 dead
  9. Banqiao Dam failure, China, August 1975: 231,000 dead
  10. Aleppo earthquake, Syria, 1138: 230,000 dead

Six of the 10 occurred in China. See also Death Tolls.

| Death · History · Trivia

Trevanion’s Escape

Confined in Colchester Castle during the English civil war, the royalist officer Sir John Trevanion was awaiting execution when he received this letter:

Worthie Sir John:- Hope, that is ye beste comfort of ye afflicted, cannot much, I fear me, help you now. That I would saye to you, is this only: if ever I may be able to requite that I do owe you, stand not upon asking me. ‘Tis not much that I can do: but what I can do, bee ye verie sure I wille. I knowe that, if dethe comes, if ordinary men fear it, it frights not you, accounting it for a high honor, to have such a rewarde of your loyalty. Pray yet that you may be spared this soe bitter, cup. I fear not that you will grudge any sufferings; only if bie submission you can turn them away, ’tis the part of a wise man. Tell me, an if you can, to do for you anythinge that you wolde have done. The general goes back on Wednesday. Restinge your servant to command. — R.T.

Sir John studied the message for several hours, and then, apparently despairing, asked to spend some time alone in prayer. His captors agreed — and never saw him again.

Read the third letter after each punctuation mark.

| History · Puzzles

Accidentally Famous

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boulevard_du_Temple.jpg

In 1838, a man made history by having his boots polished.

The man, in the lower left, was the only thing standing still when Louis Daguerre took this photograph of a busy Parisian street. Because the film was exposed for 10 minutes, the rest of the traffic blurred into nothing — and the anonymous man became the first person ever to appear in a photograph.

| History · Technology

“A Christmas Pie of Ye Olden Time”

James, Earl of Lonsdale, sent a Christmas pie to King George III, which contained 9 geese, 2 tame ducks, 2 turkeys, 4 fowls, 6 pigeons, 6 wild ducks, 3 teals, 2 starlings, 12 partridges, 15 woodcocks, 2 Guinea fowls, 3 snipes, 6 plovers, 3 water-hens, 1 wild goose, 1 curlew, 46 yellow-hammers, 15 sparrows, 15 chaffinches, 2 larks, 4 thrushes, 12 fieldfares, 6 blackbirds, 20 rabbits, 1 leg of veal, half a ham, 3 bushels flour, and 2 stones of butter. It weighed 22 stones, was carried to London in a two horse wagon, and if it was not as dainty as the celebrated pie containing four-and-twenty blackbirds, which, when the pie was opened, began to sing, it was, at all events, a ‘dish to set before the king.’

— Bizarre Notes & Queries, January 1886

| History · Oddities · Society

Economy

On the way to one of his many duels, Georges Clemenceau requested a one-way railway ticket.

“Isn’t that a little pessimistic?” asked his second.

“Not at all,” Clemenceau said. “I always use my opponent’s return ticket for the trip back.”

| History

The New World Prophecy

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:La_mort_de_seneque.jpg

There’s a passage in Seneca’s Medea that seems to have foretold the discovery of America 1400 years before the event:

Venient annis secula seris,
Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum.
Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus
Tethysque novos detegat orbes
Nec sit terris ultima Thule.

“The times will come in later years when ocean may relax the chain of things, and a vast continent may open; the sea may uncover new worlds, and Thule cease to be the last of lands.”

| History · Literature · Oddities

Cold Case

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A son of William the Conqueror, William II of England is remembered mostly for the curious manner of his death. In August 1100, William organized a hunting expedition in the New Forest. In sharing arrows with the Anglo-Norman nobleman Walter Tirel, he said, “It is only right that the sharpest be given to the man who knows how to shoot the deadliest shots.” That was tempting fate, apparently: The king did not return after the hunt, and his body was discovered the next day with an arrow piercing his lungs.

Walter fled to France, but chroniclers generally don’t consider him a murderer. He was a skilled bowman, unlikely to fire impetuously, and the abbot who sheltered him in France heard him swear repeatedly that he had not been in the part of the forest where the king was hunting. On the other hand, William’s brother Henry was also in the hunting party, and he stood to gain (and did) from William’s death.

So what really happened? We’ll never know.

| Death · History · Oddities