Auguries

In 1900 the Ladies Home Journal made 29 predictions about the year 2000. Sample:

There will be air-ships, but they will not successfully compete with surface cars and water vessels for passenger or freight traffic. They will be maintained as deadly war-vessels by all military nations. Some will transport men and goods. Others will be used by scientists making observations at great heights above the earth.

These prophecies reveal as much about the nature of science fiction as about the nature of science. They’re often utopian, or naive extrapolations of existing knowledge. And change is accelerating. I’m sure the world of 2100 is literally unimaginable to us today. It’s not even worth trying.

| History · Technology

Churchill Anecdote #1

When Winston Churchill won a seat in Parliament at age 26, he grew a mustache to make himself look older.

“Winston,” said a female opponent, “I approve of neither your politics nor your mustache.”

“Madam,” he replied, “you are not likely to come in contact with either.”

| History · Humor

The Experts Speak

“The bow is a simple weapon, firearms are very complicated things which get out of order in many ways … a very heavy weapon and tires out soldiers on the march. Whereas also a bowman can let off six aimed shots a minute, a musketeer can discharge but one in two minutes.”

That’s Colonel Sir John Smyth in 1591, advising the British Privy Council to skip muskets and stick with bows.

InfoToday collected a lot of similarly farsighted advice into an online feature, appropriately called OOPS!

| History · Technology

Down in Front

George Bush and Dan Quayle are famous for fractured oratory, but the godfather of political malaprops is Sir Boyle Roche, an Irish member of Parliament in the 18th century. Highlights:

  • “Mr. Speaker, I smell a rat; I see him forming in the air and darkening the sky; but I’ll nip him in the bud.”
  • “While I write this letter, I have a pistol in one hand and a sword in the other.”
  • “All along the untrodden paths of the future I can see the footprints of an unseen hand.”
  • “He is the kind of opponent who would stab you in front of your face and then stab you in the chest when your back is turned.”
  • “We should silence anyone who opposes the right to freedom of speech.”
  • “I answer in the affirmative with an emphatic no.”

The best I’ve seen: “It would surely be better to give up, not only a part but, if necessary, the whole of our constitution, to preserve the remainder.”

| History · Language

The Earth Moved

The New Madrid Compendium collects eyewitness descriptions of the worst earthquake in American history. The Richter scale hadn’t been invented in 1811, but this quake would have measured 8.0:

The vibration of the earth shook down trees, thousands of willows were swept off like a pipe stem, about waist high, and the swamps became high ground, and the high land became low ground, and two islands in the river were so shaken, washed away and sunk, as not to be found.

The kicker: This happened in Missouri, rocking the state hard enough to ring bells in Boston. Seismologists say there’s a 90 percent chance of a magnitude 6.0 to 7.0 quake in the same area before 2040, affecting as much as 20 times the area of a West Coast quake. I wonder if their insurance rates reflect this?

| History · Science & Math

Jack the Ripper

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FromHellLetter.jpgThis is the “From Hell” letter, sent by Jack the Ripper to the president of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee that was pursuing him. He included a bloody fragment to prove his identity:

“I send you half the Kidne I took from one woman and prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise. I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer”

Whoever he was, Jack certainly had a flair for dramatic horror. But much of his fame is really due to newspapers, which were becoming popular at the time. His crimes, which combined sex, violence, mystery, class warfare and police ineptitude, were tailor-made for cheap sensation. (In fact, it was probably a journalist who invented the “Ripper” nickname.)

Casebook: Jack the Ripper has gathered examples of lurid accounts from as far away as Poland, Jamaica, and Mexico. “All London is ringing with the horror of the thing,” writes one New Zealand editor. “The woman who reads, with hair standing on end, the details of some fresh outrage to-night cannot feel sure that on the morrow she may not be the next victim.” The whole episode is a low point for responsible journalism.

BTW, today the Ripper’s story has spawned a rather unwholesome fanbase, with concentration games, crossword puzzles, and fan fiction. Somehow time can make even serial murder seem quaint.

| Crime · History · Oddities

Self-Defense With a Cane

Here’s a little light reading before you go strolling downtown: “Self-Defence With a Walking-Stick: The Different Methods of Defending Oneself With a Walking-Stick or Umbrella When Attacked Under Unequal Conditions.” It originally ran in Pearson’s Magazine in January 1901.

Apparently those things were pretty deadly: If you use your wrists and swing from the hip, “it is possible to sever a man’s jugular vein through the collar of his overcoat.”

| History · Literature

Churchill Anecdote #7

In 1931, George Bernard Shaw wired Winston Churchill: “Am reserving two tickets for you on opening night of my new play. Come bring a friend — if you have one.”

Churchill wired back: “Impossible for me to attend first performance. Would like to attend second night — if there is one.”

| History · Humor · Literature

Historical Cats

Cats and their owners:

  • Hodge: Samuel Johnson, British writer and lexicographer
  • Selima: Horace Walpole, British writer and historian
  • Langbourne: Jeremy Bentham, British writer, reformer, and philosopher
  • Old Foss: Edward Lear, British poet and humorist
  • Siam: Rutherford B. Hayes, American president
  • Appolinaris, Beelzebub, Blatherskaite, Buffalo Bill: Mark Twain, American author
  • Bismarck: Florence Nightingale, British nurse
  • Cobby: Thomas Hardy, British writer
  • Chess, Checkmate: Alexander Alekhine, Russian-French chess player
  • Taki: Raymond Chandler, American novelist
  • Jellylorum, George Pushdragon: T.S. Eliot, American-born British critic and writer
  • Blackie, Jock, Nelson, Tango: Winston Churchill, British politician and writer
  • Beppo: Jorge Luis Borges, Argentinian writer
  • Gujarat: John Kenneth Galbraith, Canadian-born American economist, writer, and diplomat
  • Fuckchop: Trent Reznor, leader, Nine Inch Nails
| History · Trivia