Every New Year’s Day, we would watch the Mummer’s Parade. It’s a Philadelphia tradition full of color and music and fun! There are districts, clubs and bands competing in different categories—even a comedy division! There’s even an official dance move called “the Mummer’s Strut”! I found the following info on the National Today website.
History of Mummer’s Parade
If you live in the Philadelphia area or plan on spending your holiday there, the Mummer’s Parade is the place to be, so don’t go too wild the night before. This 120-year-old parade is a staple of the Philadelphia cultural scene, with tens of thousands of people taking part, making it one of the most exciting events on the U.S. calendar. It all started in the mid-seventeenth century when the first parade was created, infusing dance, music, and costume styles from Swedish, Irish, German, and African cultures and heritages to celebrate art and tradition. It was also loosely based on the British and Irish Mummer’s plays, which were folk plays performed by troupes of amateur actors, almost like pantomimes, but with more of a mythical narrative.
Naturally, through the years, it has grown and evolved into a massive celebration that today symbolizes the amalgamation and coming together of different cultures in America and pays homage to those rich backgrounds and heritage of the people that chose to participate in the actual parade events.
Today, local clubs — who have started referring to themselves as New Year’s Brigades — collectively will compete in one of five categories, including comics, wench brigades, fancies, string bands, and fancy brigades. They spend months creating elaborate costumes, performance routines, and movable scenery. This is done in clubhouses, many of which are located on or near 2nd Street in the Pennsport neighborhood of the city’s South Philadelphia section and serve as social gathering places for members.
It’s no secret that one of the most popular destinations in the world for the most highly anticipated night out of the year – New Year’s Eve – is New York City. It’s all about the sights, sounds, and unique entertainment that this city has to offer—centered, of course, on the Times Square Ball. When you gather in Midtown to watch the Ball Drop, you’re part of a long, rich history of partying!
In 1903, The New York Times newspaper was about to open their new headquarters, the city’s second tallest building, in what was then known as Longacre Square. The paper’s owner, Adolph Ochs, decided to commemorate their opening with a midnight fireworks show on the roof of the building on December 31, 1903. After four years of New Year’s Eve fireworks celebrations, Ochs wanted a bigger spectacle at the building to draw more attention to the newly-renamed Times Square. An electrician was hired to construct a lighted Ball to be lowered from the flagpole on the roof of One Times Square. The iron Ball was only 5 feet in diameter! The very first drop was on New Year’s Eve 1907, one second after midnight. Though the Times would later move its headquarters, the New Year’s Eve celebration at One Times Square remains a focal celebration for the world.
The Ball has gone through some major transformations in its 100-plus years of partying. The original Ball was replaced in 1920 with a 5-foot, 400-pound iron Ball. This Ball lasted to 1995, when a third Ball debuted, adding rhinestones and a computerized lighting system featuring strobe lights. For the arrival of the new millennium, an entirely new Ball was constructed. Weighing 1,070 pounds and measuring 6 feet in diameter, the fourth ball was covered with 504 Waterford Crystal triangles illuminated with 168 halogen bulbs outside. Internally, 432 bulbs of clear, red, blue, green and yellow colors along with strobe lights and spinning mirrors lit up the night. It was retired on December 31, 2006 newly rigged with light-emitting diodes.
In honor of the Ball Drop’s 100th anniversary, a fifth design debuted New Year’s Eve 2008. Manufactured again by Waterford Crystal with a diameter of 6 feet, weighing 1,212 pounds, it used LEDs, computerized lighting pattern, and can produce over 16.7 million colors, but only consumes the electricity of 10 toasters! The 2008 Ball was only used once— a sixth new Ball debuted on New Year’s Eve 2009 and is still in use.
Today’s Ball is 12 feet in diameter, weighing 11,875 pounds. While retaining the 2008 design, this Ball was rebuilt double its previous size. To accommodate this new Ball, the flagpole was also enlarged, now rising 475 feet above the street. It remains atop One Times Square year-round, reminding the people below of the most exciting night of the year, and building the anticipation. Where will you be this New Year’s Eve? How will you become a part of the Ball’s history?
Here at our house, we do things differently. We celebrate New Year’s promptly at 9:00 pm…if we’re still awake, because it’s usually a contest to see what drops first…the ball or our eyelids and our eyelids are undefeated at this point!
I came across this article from Reader’s Digest…Historical Facts You’ll Wish Weren’t Really True by Meghan Jones. I thought I’d share it with you.
King Tut’s parents were most likely siblings.
Once you’ve finished shuddering with disgust, here’s what researchers know about the boy king and his family. His father was almost definitely Akhenaten, who preceded Tut as pharaoh in the fourteenth century BC. The identity of his mother is pretty much unknown, but recent DNA samples from his and other mummies have revealed that she was probably one of Akhenaten’s sisters. King Tut was rather frail and suffered from a bone disorder, perhaps due to his parentage. Incestuous relationships, though, weren’t out of the ordinary in ancient Egypt, a fact which is not exactly reassuring. Despite Tut’s health issues, and his short life even by the standards back then (he died at 19), he’s gone down in history as one of Egypt’s most famous and wealthiest pharaohs.
Someone tried and failed to save Abraham Lincoln—and his life just got darker from there.
You’re probably familiar with the 1860s illustration The Assassination of President Lincoln. But who’s that pair sharing the private box with the ill-fated president and his wife? The man on the far left, rushing into action, is Major Henry Rathbone. President and Mrs. Lincoln specifically asked him and his fiancée, Clara Harris, to accompany them to the theater. After Booth fired the shot, Rathbone tried to tackle him to the ground, but Booth was able to get free by slicing Rathbone in the arm with a dagger. Rathbone was never free of the memory and guilt of that night, and he reportedly felt responsible for letting Booth get away. In the years to come, he experienced a myriad of health issues, from stomach ailments to heart palpitations, and his mental state deteriorated as well. On December 23, 1883 (18 years after the assassination), he attacked and killed Clara, now his wife, and attempted to kill himself. He would spend the rest of his life in a mental institution.
In 1494, Europe experienced the closest thing to a real-life zombie outbreak.
Italy’s Renaissance period has a major, though little-known, dark side. Sailors returning from the New World brought with them a massive outbreak of syphilis, which spread through an entire French army. The troops then brought what would become known as “the great pox” to the rest of Europe. With no such thing as antibiotics back then, the disease was able to spread unchecked—and its effects were nasty. The skin on victims’ faces would essentially rot away from the disease’s grisly ulcers. In some cases, the noses, lips, or other body parts of the affected people were essentially gone, and several of the victims eventually died from the disease. So while there was a lot to love about the Renaissance in Europe, the concurrent syphilis outbreak was basically the real-world version of the zombie apocalypse. No big deal.
19th-century New Englanders dug up a young woman’s body… because they thought she was a vampire.
You’ve undoubtedly heard of the Salem Witch Trials, but what about the “Rhode Island Accused Vampire”? In the late 1800s, a bout of tuberculosis (then called “consumption”) struck Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Vermont, and the residents didn’t know what to make of it. Since its victims tended to look sunken, pallid, and drained, people assumed that they’d fallen prey to vampires. So, naturally, a “vampire hunt” soon commenced. When members of an Exeter, Rhode Island family began dying of consumption one after the other, the other townspeople decided that someone in the family must be “feeding” on the others. Even after the mother, Mary Brown, and her two daughters had died, the townspeople decided to exhume the dead bodies, suspecting that one might, in fact, be “undead.”
Brown’s 19-year-old daughter Mercy had died much more recently than her family members, so her body was in much better condition. Her heart even still contained some decayed blood—a sure sign of vampirism, in those days. So, to prevent her from “striking” again, they burned her heart and liver and mixed the ashes with water. They then gave the concoction to another affected townsperson as a “cure.” Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work.
Thomas Edison created a seriously creepy baby doll.
For all of his successful inventions, Thomas Edison did experience a pretty major failure when he tried to create the first-ever talking dolls. His 1877 development of the tinfoil phonograph was a major breakthrough in terms of sound recording, and the endless possibilities for this technology were not lost on Edison. In 1890, thanks to the development of the wax cylinder, he was able to produce a line of baby dolls. With wooden bodies, porcelain heads, and miniature phonographs in their chests, the dolls were unlike anything the world of toys had ever seen—or heard—before. The phonographs played back recordings of young women reciting nursery rhymes like “Hickory Dickory Dock” and “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.”
And if ever there were dolls that deserved their own horror flick, it was these. The old, garbled technology, the shrill voices, and the dolls’ eerie faces combine to make them into nightmare fuel for us today. But that’s not actually the reason the dolls were unsuccessful. Their failure was due more to several different things; the pieces were easy to lose, the sound didn’t last long and was hard to understand, and the mini phonographs were highly breakable. And, finally, the dolls were simply expensive.
Dentures used to be made from the teeth of dead soldiers.
Why have false teeth when you can have real teeth?! That must have been the mentality of nineteenth-century dentists. They combated the outbreak of tooth decay with makeshift dentures—ivory base plates with real human teeth attached. Scavengers were already looting corpses from the Battle of Waterloo for their teeth, and now they could sell the teeth to dentists. The dentists would boil the choppers, cut off the roots, attach them to ivory plates, and sell them to customers. Mental Floss doubts that the customers had any idea where the teeth came from. Whether that makes it more or less creepy is up to you to decide.
Researchers once turned a cat into a telephone. A live cat.We know what you’re thinking: “You’ve got to be kitten me!” Well, unfortunately not. In 1929, a pair of scientists at Princeton University wanted to test how the auditory nerve perceives sound. Their test subject was a heavily sedated, but alive, cat. The scientists, Ernest Wever and Charles Bray, cut out part of its brain and attached one end of a telephone wire to its auditory nerve and the other end to a receiver. When Bray said something into the cat’s ears, Wever could hear him through the receiver in a soundproof room. Though it might just seem like a sick experiment, it actually did have some beneficial effects; many researchers believe it helped lead to the development of cochlear implants. As for the feline-turned-phone, it incredibly survived the experiment… but Wever and Bray didn’t release it back into the world. Instead, they killed it to see if the experiment would work on a dead cat. It didn’t.
Boston experienced a deadly molasses flood.
This makes the Boston Tea Party look tame. In January of 1919, an enormous molasses tank burst in the North End of Boston. While a molasses flood might sound like a scene from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, it was no laughing matter. The tank contained—and released—nearly two and a half million gallons of the sticky substance, which surged through the streets at a whopping 35 miles per hour. It was essentially a full-on tidal wave, reaching nearly fifteen feet tall and killing twenty-one people. A hundred and fifty more people were injured, and buildings and houses were knocked from their foundations. Emergency responders had trouble reaching the victims since they had to clamber through the sticky sludge. It took Bostonians weeks to clean up the mess, and many residents would claim that, in the summer heat, they could smell the sickly-sweet odor of molasses even years later.
A computer once did in 40 seconds what took a mathematician an entire lifetime.
Say it isn’t so! While not gross or scandalous, this history fact is still something of a downer. William Shanks, a nineteenth-century mathematician, spent his entire life calculating the digits of pi. He successfully calculated the first 527 digits, and found another 180 digits, though those calculations were incorrect. But calculating the first 527 digits is still impressive… or, rather, it was in 1873. In 1958, a computer calculated that same number of digits in less than a minute…and then calculated another ten thousand. Perhaps it’s better poor Shanks wasn’t alive to see that. If it’s any consolation, though, humans did invent that computer.
A king made his subjects worship the corpse of his beloved.
This case of star-crossed lovers got weird fast. In fourteenth-century Portugal, the king’s son, Don Pedro, fell in love with Inês de Castro. There were only a couple of problems with this: for one, his father, King Afonso IV, did not approve, because Inês was illegitimate. For another, Don Pedro was married. His father had arranged for him to marry a noblewoman named Constanza, and Inês was Constanza’s lady-in-waiting. When Don Pedro refused to stop seeing her, the king had her killed. When Don Pedro acceded to the throne two years later, he exhumed her body, had it clothed in royal dress, and “crowned” her queen. According to historical legend, he made the other nobles all kiss her hand as a sign of their devotion.
…to periods that reflected much of who we are, who we have become, and who we can be. Back to events that affected all of us today but were almost imperceptible to those living them. Perhaps with one exception. It was Christmas time. The nation had been at war for almost two years. Things had not gone well. News of early defeats had streamed into the nation’s Capital. Richard Rush wrote to his old friend John Adams about the mood in Washington D.C. in December 1813. The nation was fighting, to be sure:
Richard Bush
“But it seems to fight for nothing but disaster and defeat . . . and disgrace. What, sir, should be done? The prospect looks black. It is awful. Is not another torrent rolling too fiercely upon us to be turned back? Where shall we find [leaders]? And may we not be doomed to pass yet another and another and another campaign in the school of affliction and disgrace? [I] am sick at heart at the view of our public affairs. Have we, sir, even seen worse times and survived them? And how?”
The aging ex-president John Adams agreed with Rush. “The times are too serious to write.” He didn’t know what prevented the White House—not called that yet—or the “proud Capitol” from becoming the headquarters of the British. The country, Adams said:
“Must have a winnowing, the chaff must be separated from the wheat. The real . . . genius and experience have been neglected [while] froth and ignorance have been promoted.” But, said the aged patriot, “don’t be discouraged. In our Revolution, we had seen infinitely more difficult and dangerous times.”
John Adams
What stands out about that exchange—and Adams’s comment about the British being in the White House and the Capitol—is that it came just eight months before that very thing occurred. In August of 1814, British troops landed, and though badly outnumbered and utterly embarrassed, an army was sent to stop them at Bladensburg, New Jersey. They marched on to Washington, with the President, James Madison, on a horse just miles ahead of them. Indeed, the defeat at Bladensburg was so humiliating—referred to this day as the “Bladensburg Races”—that Madison couldn’t find his own Secretary of War, John Armstrong, who was in command of the army in the field.
As the War of 1812 neared its conclusion, British forces torched the White House, the Capitol, and nearly every other public building in Washington. In the darkness, Madison, Attorney General Richard Rush, and John Mason, having watched from a distance as American forces threw down their weapons and ran had ridden back to find the White House deserted.
Dolly Madison had left their supper on the table, then left at three in the morning carrying some papers, a few books, and the full portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart. Everything else—silver, valuables, clothes, thousands of dollars worth of fine wines in the cellar—was abandoned.
Among the most familiar images of Dolly Madison is this fanciful scene of her heroic rescue of George Washington’s portrait from the fire set by the British in 1814.)
Madison urged everyone out. The British were literally right behind them. According to one account, he “cooly mounted his horse and rode off to the ferry across the Potomac.” He needed to find Dolly, and he needed to find the army or what was left of it. Already the British were burning the Capitol and soon reached the White House and burned that. British General Cockburn planned to capture Madison and “carry him to England for a curiosity.”
Madison and his companions didn’t find Dolly across the river. She had left much earlier and, due to her husband’s unpopularity, had to disguise herself. At one tavern, she was refused admittance. When a friend offered her refuge at his country house, the cook refused to make coffee for her, saying, “I don heerd Mr. Madison and Mr. Armstrong done sold the country to the British.”
The President rode on to Great Falls and, not finding his wife there, continued during a vicious wind storm that only fanned the flames back in Washington. But then he learned that the Secretary of War and some of his army were at Rockville, Maryland, 15 miles north of Washington, so he rode there, only to find them gone to Baltimore. Having been in the saddle for 18 hours, Madison rode to Brookville—another 10 hours away, where finally he was able to sleep.
When he finally returned to the White House, it was “in ashes, not an inch, but its cracked and blackened walls remained.” Other public buildings were burned. Dead horses lay all over the grounds. The people were terrified. Many wanted to quit.
Library of Congress Summary Cartoon showing President James Madison and probably John Armstrong, his secretary of war, both with bundles of papers, fleeing from Washington, with burning buildings behind them.
Mr. Madison wasn’t a quitter. He finally caught up to Secretary of War Armstrong—and fired him on the spot, throwing him out of Washington. In his stead, he appointed another great future president as the new Secretary of War, James Monroe. When Madison and Armstrong had both disappeared on horseback, Monroe simultaneously held the acting position of both President and Secretary of State. Now James Monroe was Secretary of War as well. He said, “I never went to bed for an entire month.”
A portrait of James Monroe (1758-1831), the fifth President of the United States made during his Presidency. He served from 1817 – 1825. Image by Bettman/CORBIS
As if to add one more coal to his head, a group of northeastern elites from the Federalist Party had come very close to forcing a secession by several states—right in the middle of a war against a foreign enemy.
And then, a quiet change. Sunlight, almost instantaneously. A peace treaty was negotiated in Belgium; General Andrew Jackson defeated a major British invasion at New Orleans, and just like that–-right around Christmas—Madison and the United States—had survived. The ensuing decade was called . . . the era of good feelings.
Era of Good Feelings
Jump ahead with me for 127 years…
My story does not take place at Christmas this time, but in the summer of an equally dark period, 1942, when America had been rocked by defeat after defeat in the Pacific by the Japanese. America’s Christmas in 1941 had been one of the bleakest in memory. People were still in shock over the attack at Pearl Harbor, over the fall of plucky Wake Island, and over the steady drumbeat of losses of General MacArthur’s men in the Philippines.
The key to everything was the Japanese navy, and the key to the navy was its strike force of four large aircraft carriers. At the time, the United States could only put to sea three, one of which, the Yorktown, was so badly damaged from a previous battle that it was being repaired while at sea in a frenzy of engineering and construction genius of 1400 men working around the clock.
Yorktown Below-Decks
Through superior codebreaking, the Americans, for once, knew where the Japanese would be—right off Midway Island—and when they would be there. But the Pacific Ocean is a big place. Being “in the vicinity” still can put you off by over a thousand miles. America’s carriers knew roughly where the Japanese fleet was—but not exactly. When the enemy finally showed up, the Americans sent over 100 aircraft from Midway Island. All these attackers failed to land a single bomb on a single enemy ship. But the force kept moving, and now the American carriers, themselves moving to intercept them, had to locate this fleet.
Armed with evidence of roughly where the Japanese were and generally in which direction they were moving, the American carriers launched nearly every ship-killing torpedo plane they could in the general direction of the enemy. The planes arrived haphazardly, completely out of normal practices for attacking ships. One by one, then several at a time, the American torpedo planes were shot down—more than 50 of them fell into the sea! Only three made it back to their carriers. Not one had scored a single hit.
The Battle of Midway in 1942 was one of the most important naval battles and a turning point in the Second World War
This was indeed desperation. America was down to about thirty dive bombers against a fleet of 100 ships and at least 100 fighter planes. And the dive bombers had not been given clear coordinates as to where the carriers were. They were searching, like almost everyone else. They were low on fuel. No sign.
Then the smallest of changes…
At the outset of the battle, a single American submarine, the Nautilus, had found the Japanese fleet. It patiently worked its way inside the protective screen to fire three torpedoes at one carrier. Only one hit. It was a dud. Nautilus had utterly failed. Or had it?
USS Nautilus
A Japanese destroyer was on the Nautilus in minutes, forcing her under. The Nautilus ran. The destroyer followed. Hours later, the Japanese destroyer, convinced it had chased off the sub, turned and headed back for its main fleet and the carriers.
In the skies above, the desperate dive bombers, nearly at their maximum range of fuel, having failed to find the carriers all day, saw a single Japanese ship. A destroyer. This was unusual. It would normally be with a fleet. Was that where it was heading? Out of options, they followed. Soon, the horizon was dotted with Japanese warships and the four big carriers. And all the Japanese fighter planes? They were either out of gas or off chasing the hapless torpedo planes, men who had sacrificed themselves for this miraculous opportunity.
It was literally over in five minutes. Coming out of nowhere, American dive bombers so thoroughly damaged three of the carriers that the Japanese themselves had to finish them off, and the next day, a return visit sank the fourth. The War in the Pacific had been won—oh, it would demand an enormous amount of blood and treasure over more than three years to force Japan to surrender, but after Midway, they simply couldn’t win.
All because of a failed mission and a little change of a lone destroyer following the Nautilus.
I think about that submarine a lot. It failed spectacularly. Just like those courageous torpedo bombers who gave their lives, apparently for no reason. And yet. It was the Nautilis that enabled the dive bombers to find the carriers. It was the torpedo planes that pulled away the protection. It was nerdy, unseen codebreakers that had learned where the Japanese would be.
We may have had a difficult election, but no one knows what the ramifications of it will be. None of us know if we are the Nautilus, performing a task that appears to have failed, only to lay a brick in a massive foundation of victory. None of us know if we are with Mr. Madison, barely ahead of the barbarian hordes in August or walking back into glory at Christmas. But we know this. As John Adams says, we have seen worse times, and such times produce a winnowing.
And we know this. There are always quitters. Those never enter the history books as legends. Rather it is those who took us from the steam engine to the search engine, from the first step on the North Pole to the first footprint on the Moon, from mastering the Mississippi to navigating hyperspace and quantum physics. A handful of thuggish, mouth-breathing, World Economic Forum malcontent minions, backed by all the crypto from Sam Bankman-Fried’s funny-money computers and all the digitally-concocted money in Communist China, do not get the privilege of leading this nation. True genius is beyond them, true patriotism is anathema to them, and true goodness is repellant to them.
This season…
…celebrate what at the time was a seemingly small change that affected a tiny few. Another baby was born in the Middle East. Outside His family—and those who knew the prophecies—no one knew His Name. Yet the little change of His birth overturned the entire world, changed how we mark our calendars and gave hope to billions. One little change named Jesus the Messiah.
This Christmas, America merely awaits the new spirit of change, the spirit that demands not a return to yesterday but a march toward tomorrow. America yearns for both that spirit of good and the spirit of great. That spirit that says mediocrity is no longer acceptable, that decline is unavoidable, or that social decay is inevitable.
Instead, this new spirit of Christmas starts today. It starts here. It starts now. It starts in every heart and hearth, every home and RV, every mansion and apartment. Be a Nautilus. Do your job with courage and conviction, with certainty that even if you fail in what you think was your mission, you have played your part, that the Creator of the universe will play His. Your ripples are noticed. Your faith is rewarded. And your patriotism is appreciated. Celebrate the change of the world.
TURN A BLIND EYE – The phrase “turn a blind eye”—often used to refer to a willful refusal to acknowledge a particular reality—dates back to a legendary chapter in the career of the British naval hero Horatio Nelson. During 1801’s Battle of Copenhagen, Nelson’s ships were pitted against a large Danish-Norwegian fleet. When his more conservative superior officer flagged for him to withdraw, the one-eyed Nelson supposedly brought his telescope to his bad eye and blithely proclaimed, “I really do not see the signal.” He went on to score a decisive victory. Some historians have since dismissed Nelson’s famous quip as merely a battlefield myth, but the phrase “turn a blind eye” persists to this day.
Admiral Horatio Nelson
WHITE ELEPHANT – White elephants were once considered highly sacred creatures in Thailand—the animal even graced the national flag until 1917—but they were also wielded as a subtle form of punishment. According to legend, if an underling or rival angered a Siamese king, the royal might present the unfortunate man with the gift of a white elephant. While ostensibly a reward, the creatures were tremendously expensive to feed and house, and caring for one often drove the recipient into financial ruin. Whether any specific rulers actually bestowed such a passive-aggressive gift is uncertain, but the term has since come to refer to any burdensome possession—pachyderm or otherwise.
CROCODILE TEARS – Modern English speakers use the phrase “crocodile tears” to describe a display of superficial or false sorrow, but the saying actually derives from a medieval belief that crocodiles shed tears of sadness while they killed and consumed their prey. The myth dates back as far as the 14th century and comes from a book called “The Travels of Sir John Mandeville.” Wildly popular upon its release, the tome recounts a brave knight’s adventures during his supposed travels through Asia. Among its many fabrications, the book includes a description of crocodiles that notes, “These serpents sley men, and eate them weeping, and they have no tongue.” While factually inaccurate, Mandeville’s account of weeping reptiles later found its way into the works of Shakespeare, and “crocodile tears” became an idiom as early as the 16th century.
DIEHARD – While it typically refers to someone with a strong dedication to a particular set of beliefs, the term “diehard” originally had a series of much more literal meanings. In its earliest incarnation in the 1700s, the expression described condemned men who struggled the longest when they were executed by hanging. The phrase later became even more popular after 1811’s Battle of Albuera during the Napoleonic Wars. In the midst of the fight, a wounded British officer named William Inglis supposedly urged his unit forward by bellowing “Stand your ground and die hard … make the enemy pay dear for each of us!” Inglis’ 57th Regiment suffered 75 percent casualties during the battle, and went on to earn the nickname “the Die Hards.”
57th Regiment
RESTING ON YOUR LAURELS: The idea of resting on your laurels dates back to leaders and athletic stars of ancient Greece. In Hellenic times, laurel leaves were closely tied to Apollo, the god of music, prophecy and poetry. Apollo was usually depicted with a crown of laurel leaves, and the plant eventually became a symbol of status and achievement. Victorious athletes at the ancient Pythian Games received wreaths made of laurel branches, and the Romans later adopted the practice and presented wreaths to generals who won important battles. Venerable Greeks and Romans, or “laureates,” were thus able to “rest on their laurels” by basking in the glory of past achievements. Only later did the phrase take on a negative connotation, and since the 1800s it has been used for those who are overly satisfied with past triumphs.
READ THE RIOT ACT – These days, angry parents might threaten to “read the riot act” to their unruly children. But in 18th-century England, the Riot Act was a very real document, and it was often recited aloud to angry mobs. Instituted in 1715, the Riot Act gave the British government the authority to label any group of more than 12 people a threat to the peace. In these circumstances, a public official would read a small portion of the Riot Act and order the people to “disperse themselves, and peaceably depart to their habitations.” Anyone that remained after one hour was subject to arrest or removal by force. The law was later put to the test in 1819 during the infamous Peterloo Massacre, in which a cavalry unit attacked a large group of protestors after they appeared to ignore a reading of the Riot Act.
1819 Peterloo Massacre
PAINT THE TOWN RED – The phrase “paint the town red” most likely owes its origin to one legendary night of drunkenness. In 1837, the Marquis of Waterford—a known lush and mischief maker—led a group of friends on a night of drinking through the English town of Melton Mowbray. The bender culminated in vandalism after Waterford and his fellow revelers knocked over flowerpots, pulled knockers off of doors and broke the windows of some of the town’s buildings. To top it all off, the mob literally painted a tollgate, the doors of several homes and a swan statue with red paint. The marquis and his pranksters later compensated Melton for the damages, but their drunken escapade is likely the reason that “paint the town red” became shorthand for a wild night out. Still yet another theory suggests the phrase was actually born out of the brothels of the American West, and referred to men behaving as though their whole town were a red-light district.
BY AND LARGE – Many everyday phrases are nautical in origin— “taken aback,” “loose cannon” and “high and dry” all originated at sea—but perhaps the most surprising example is the common saying “by and large.” As far back as the 16th century, the word “large” was used to mean that a ship was sailing with the wind at its back. Meanwhile, the much less desirable “by,” or “full and by,” meant the vessel was traveling into the wind. Thus, for mariners, “by and large” referred to trawling the seas in any and all directions relative to the wind. Today, sailors and landlubbers alike now use the phrase as a synonym for “all things considered” or “for the most part.”
16th Century Spanish Galleon
THE THIRD DEGREE – There are several tales about the origin of “the third degree,” a saying commonly used for long or arduous interrogations. One theory argues the phrase relates to the various degrees of murder in the criminal code; yet another credits it to Thomas F. Byrnes, a 19th-century New York City policeman who used the pun “Third Degree Byrnes” when describing his hardnosed questioning style. In truth, the saying is most likely derived from the Freemasons, a centuries-old fraternal organization whose members undergo rigorous questioning and examinations before becoming “third degree” members, or “master masons.
Thomas F. Byrnes
You will need to enlarge this to see details.
This one doesn’t provide any detail but the overall picture should give you an idea.
SPILL THE BEANS –
One explanation dates back to ancient Greece when people would use beans to vote anonymously. White beans were used for positive votes, and for negative votes, black beans or other dark-colored beans were used. These votes were cast in secret, so if someone knocked over the beans in the jar—whether by accident or intentionally—they “spilled the beans” and revealed the results of the votes prematurely. Eventually, in modern times, the phrase “spill the beans” came to mean “upset a previously stable situation by talking out of turn.”
DIME A DOZEN – After the dime was made in 1796, people started advertising goods for “a dime a dozen.” This meant you were getting a good deal on products, such as a dozen eggs. Over time, the idiom evolved to mean the opposite. Instead of something being a good deal, it became a phrase to describe something that’s not valuable and easily available. The first known use of it in this context is believed to have occurred in 1930. From there, people picked up on the phrase’s new meaning and started using it in that context.
On the National Day of the Horse, horse lovers like ourselves like to consider America’s relationship with horses and our common history. It’s popular knowledge that European colonists brought horses over to America during the 15th and 16th century to be traded with the Native Americans, hence the Thanksgiving association. While this is true, the relationship isn’t as straightforward as that; it’s a complicated one.
A 2012 study found the wild ancestor of the modern domestic horse likely originated around 160,000 years ago in Eurasia. The scientists determined that horses were first domesticated roughly 6,000 years ago somewhere in the Eurasian Steppe. Another study published in 2017 found all modern horses descend from two distinct lines: the Arabian horse and the now-extinct Turkoman horse (which was similar to the Akhal-Teke breed).
Classic Arabian
Turkoman/Akhal-Teke
Horses spread around the world via trade, war, gifting, theft, and more. People began to selectively breed for desirable characteristics to meet their work requirements for the horses, such as speed, strength, and stamina. While people kept track of their horses’ lineage and traits for centuries, studbooks to maintain an official pedigree record didn’t come about until the 1700s. From this arose the multitude of breeds and types of horses we know today.
Just 19 of the Breeds
The Breeds of Livestock resource from Oklahoma State University lists 217 separate breeds of horses from the Abyssinian to the Zhemaichu. Meanwhile, “The Encyclopedia of the Horse” by Elwyn Hartley Edwards lists just over 150 breeds of horses, including many ancient breeds that no longer exist but are the ancestors of many breeds today. A study by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences references 784 horse breeds in the United Nations Food and Agriculture database, but most equine experts recognize approximately 200 horse breeds.
Although horses hadn’t been roaming the American plains in the years leading up to their European introduction, horses have a much longer relationship with America than previously thought.
Paleontology
Think millions of years, coinciding in time periods with the mighty wooly mammoth. Around 10,000 years ago, some of these wild horses crossed over the Bering land bridge that connected early America and Asia. The earliest bridles for horses were found in Eastern Europe dating back to 4000 BC, showing that the Europeans started to domesticate the wild horses around this time, using them for hunting, carrying packs and working the fields. The ancient wild horses that stayed in America became extinct but their ancestors were introduced back to the American land via the European colonists many years later.
Pleistocene Era Horse
Columbus’ second voyage was the starting point for the re-introduction, bringing Iberian horses to modern-day Mexico. Some of the Iberian horses escaped European control and became wild horses, relatives of the mustangs in the Western United States today. The first breeds of horses that were brought over were smaller, due to size constraints for the smaller ships of the time, but as time went on, larger horses such as draft horses were also imported.
Navajo Bridle
After Columbus’ re-introduction, horses spread across the continent and many Native American societies developed their cultures around them. This is where problems emerge, because although they were once native to America thousands of years ago, horses are still technically a recently introduced species to the American plains. Wild horses have few predators and a perfect habitat, so they quickly grew to become a symbol of the West. However, their populations grew too quickly, and they began to compete with farmers for the natural resources that the land held.
The Bureau of Land Management currently protects the wild herds, but they have to manage the population via sterilization techniques and round-ups, a dramatic controversy for animal rights activists.
Wild mare with foal and yearling
BLM Round-Up
The horses we see today are all examples of selective breeding via humans over the years (with the exception of the pure desert-bred Arabian) but they’re also a shared part of our mixed Native and European histories. Horses allowed humans to travel farther and faster, instrumentally help out armies during battles, and develop the country through labor-intensive agriculture.
There are currently around 9.2 million horses in the country, consisting of many breeds such as American Quarter Horses, Paints, Appaloosas, Missouri Fox Trotters, and rarer breeds such as the Shire, Lippizan, Gotland, Caspian and Colonial Spanish Mustangs.
Classic Quarter Horse
Classic Paint
Classic Appaloosa
Missouri Foxtrotter
Dappled Bay Shire
Classic Lippizanner
Gotland
Caspian
Oscar (above) is one of four horses who starred in Disney’s Hidalgo, the epic adventure movie based on the true story of Frank T. Hopkins and his Spanish mustang stallion, Hidalgo. Oscar is APHA registered as Impressively Better, born in 1991.
Most of the breeds in “The Encyclopedia of the Horse” are horses with existing registries that can trace bloodlines to ensure purity. In general, the number of horse breed registries is increasing as equine lovers recognize the need to compile data about rare and endangered breeds and types of horses.
Personally, I believe they knew the attack was coming but the Military Industrial Complex and the warmongers in our government wanted to get into the war. So they allowed it to happen. Of course, there is no proof of that but…..there’s not much proof for a LOT of things!!!
National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, also referred to as Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day or Pearl Harbor Day, is observed annually in the United States on December 7, to remember and honor the 2,403 Americans who were killed in the Japanese surprise attack in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, which led to the United States declaring war on Japan the next day, thus entering World War II.
On Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service attacked the neutral United States at Naval Station Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii, killing 2,403 Americans and injuring 1,178 others. The attack sank four U.S. Navy battleships and damaged four others. It also damaged three cruisers, three destroyers, and one mine layer. Aircraft losses were 188 destroyed and 159 damaged.
Canada declared war on Japan within hours of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the first Western nation to do so. On December 8, the United States declared war on Japan and entered World War II on the side of the Allies. In a speech to Congress, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called the bombing of Pearl Harbor “a date which will live in infamy.”
There are a number of Naval memorials around the US in honor of those who died at Pearl Harbor. The most well known and highly publized is the USS Arizona.
USS ARIZONA
The USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor is a marble memorial over the sunken battleship USS Arizona, which was dedicated on May 30, 1962 (“Memorial Day”), in honor of the 1,177 crew members who were killed. The memorial remembers all military personnel who were killed in the Pearl Harbor attack. Note: This site is open to the public with boat tours to the memorial provided by the US Navy from the visitors center.
Pearl Harbor Memorial
USS OKLAHOMA
In the first ten minutes of the battle, eight torpedoes hit the USS Oklahoma, and she began to capsize. A ninth torpedo would hit her as she sunk in the mud. 14 Marines, and 415 sailors would give their lives. 32 men were cut out through the hull while the others were beneath the waterline. Banging could be heard for over 3 days and then there was silence.
USS Oklahoma Hit
In 1943, the Oklahoma was righted and salvaged. Unlike most of the other battleships that were recovered following Pearl Harbor, the Oklahoma was too damaged to return to duty. Her wreck was eventually stripped of her remaining armament and superstructure before being sold for scrap in 1946. The hull sank in a storm in 1947, while being towed from Oahu, Hawaii, to a breakers yard in San Francisco Bay.
USS Oklahoma Memorial at Pearl Harbor
USS UTAH
The USS Utah Memorial, is in remembrance of a former battleship that had been converted to a target ship in 1931 (thus, at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack carried the designation of AG-16), that was sunk in the attack on December 7, 1941. A memorial to honor the crew including the 58 who died aboard USS Utah was dedicated on the northwest shore of Ford Island, near the ship’s wreck, in 1972. The ship, along with USS Arizona, was added to the National Register of Historic Places and declared a National Historic Landmark in 1989.
Ford Island
USS Utah Sinking
USS BOWFIN
The USS Bowfin Submarine Museum and Park is in remembrance of an American submarine that sank 44 ships in World War II. This site is adjacent to the USS Arizona Memorial Visitors Center.
The submarine is owned and operated by the Pacific Fleet Submarine Memorial Association, and is now part of the USS Bowfin Submarine Museum and Park in Pearl Harbor, on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Visitors can tour the submarine with an audio narration of life in the vessel during World War II. The park’s museum features exhibits and artifacts about submarines and the history of the United States Submarine Service, including detailed models, weapon systems, photographs, paintings, battle flags, recruiting posters, and a memorial honoring the 52 American submarines and the more than 3,500 submariners lost during World War II.
The museum’s other exhibits include a torpedo and a 40-mm quad gun, along with Poseidon C-3 and regulus I missiles. The park is located within walking distance of the visitor center for the USS Arizona Memorial and it is across the Harbor from the Battleship Missouri Memorial.
USS MISSOURI
While operating with the carriers on 11 April, the USS Missouri came under attack from a kamikaze that struck the side of the vessel below the main deck. The impact shattered the aircraft, throwing gasoline on the deck that rapidly ignited, but it was quickly suppressed by her crew. The attack caused superficial damage and the battleship remained on station.
Top left of center you can see the Kamikaze
Two crewmen were wounded on 17 April when another kamikaze clipped the stern crane and crashed in the ship’s wake. Missouri left Task Force 58 on 5 May to return to Ulithi; in the course of her operations off Okinawa, she claimed five aircraft shot down and another probable kill, along with partial credit for another six aircraft destroyed.
On 21 August, Missouri sent a contingent of 200 officers and men to Iowa, which was to debark a landing party in Tokyo to begin the process of demilitarizing Japan. Two days later, Murray was informed that Missouri would host the surrender ceremony, with the date scheduled for 31 August. The ship’s crew immediately began preparations for the event, including cleaning and painting the vessel. Missouribegan the approach to Tokyo Bay on 27 August, guided by the Japanese destroyer Hatsuzakura. That night, the ships stopped at Kamakura, where a courier brought the flag that Commodore Matthew Perry had flown during his expedition to open Japan in 1853; the flag was to be displayed during the surrender ceremony. The flotilla then entered Tokyo Bay on 29 August, and Missouri was anchored close to where Perry had anchored his own vessels some ninety-two years earlier. Poor weather delayed the ceremony until 2 September.
Japanese foreign affairs minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signs the Japanese Instrument of Surrender aboard the USS Missouri as General Richard K. Sutherland watches, 2 September 1945
Allied sailors and officers watch General of the Army Douglas MacArthur sign documents during the surrender ceremony aboard Missouri on 2 September 1945. The unconditional surrender of the Japanese to the Allies officially ended the Second World War.
In 1990, leading up to the 50th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Congress established the Pearl Harbor Commemorative Medal. This is also known as the Pearl Harbor Survivor’s medal and was awarded to anyone who was in the U.S. Armed Forces who was present in Hawaii on December 7, 1941 and participated in combat operations that day against the attack. The medal was also awarded to civilians who were killed or injured in the attack. A few years later, Congress amended the law to allow any person who was present in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, and was involved in combat operations against Japanese military forces attacking Hawaii, to receive the award. In both instances, there was a limited time period to apply for the award, and it is no longer issued.
Pearl Harbor Survivor Medal
The battleships West Virginia and Tennessee burning after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941.
Oil burns on the waters of Pearl Harbor, near the naval air station, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
The battleship USS Arizona belches smoke as it topples over into the sea during a Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
No country has a closer association with the language of Olde Englande than the USA. From the days of the first Puritan settlers to recent cross-Atlantic tweetings, the two countries have shared in the development of English.
Many words and phrases used in the USA have retained their Elizabethan English meanings and pronunciations that have long disappeared in England itself. There are many American phrases which are used in the USA but haven’t been adopted anywhere else. Example of this are:
BLUE PLATE SPECIAL: Webster’s Dictionary defines ‘blue plate’ as a restaurant dinner plate divided into compartments for serving several kinds of food as a single order and a main course (as of meat and vegetable) served as a single menu item.
One early citation of the phrase is in this advert for the Young Women’s Christian Association, printed in the Illinois newspaper The Decatur Daily Review, September 1924. However, it is believed that the term blue plate special first appeared on menus of the Fred Harvey chain of restaurants in 1892. These were located at stations along the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. The blue plate special was designed to allow passengers to grab a quick bite to eat when the train stopped.
LEAD-PIPE CINCH: The ‘cinch’ that this expression derives from is the Spanish/Mexican word for a horse’s saddle-girth – cincha. The word is recorded in English, as ‘synch’ and later ‘cinch’ in various Canadian and US sources from the 1860s onward. From the 1880s the use was extended into a verb form and things which were tightly secured were said to be ‘cinched’ – for example, this piece from The Manitoba Daily Free Press, December 1882: “The next movement was to throw the bull, and then cinch a lasso and rope tightly around his body.”
The word cinch was also used in the USA as the name of sturdy fixing brackets, which were secure and unlikely to come loose.
The figurative use of cinch, meaning to tie-up or make certain, in non-animal contexts began around the same time. The usage was often in contexts where the rich and powerful used their status to form monopolies or indulge in insider trading in order to cheat the general public. An example of this comes from the Illinois newspaper The Morning Review, December 1889: “The briber and bribed would sit down to a game of poker and a lead-pipe cinch was nothing to the sure thing the legislators had.”
The common usage of ‘cinch’ now, that is, to mean ‘easy’ rather than ‘secure’, comes from this ‘easy money’ association. In October of 1891, The Daily Morning Republican, listed a number of ‘cinch’ superlatives to describe a punter’s certainty that his horse Firenzo would win the next day:
“The track will be heavy tomorrow, and I’ve got a copper riveted, lead pipe, copyrighted, air tight cinch. Firenzo in the mud – she swims in it.”
EIGHTY-SIXED: The term is American and originated in the restaurant trade. Both meanings loosely refer to something that was previously okay becoming not okay. The earliest known example of the expression in print is found in the journal of the American Dialect Society -American Speech, 1936: “Eighty-six, item on the menu not on hand.”
The actual origin is uncertain but is often suggested to be one of these: (1) Chumley’s Bar and restaurant at 86 Bedford Street in Greenwich Village NYC; (2) a reference to article 86 of the New York state liquor code which defines when bar patrons should be refused service; and (3) from Delmonico’s Restaurant in New York City. Item number 86 on their menu, their house steak, was often unavailable during the restaurant’s early years.
PRESTO CHANGO: Presto chango is a variant of the earlier exclamation ‘hey presto,’ which is used primarily in the USA. Before either expression was coined, conjurers and other stage performers simply said ‘presto!’ to draw attention to the culmination of a trick.
Presto is an Italian word meaning ‘quickly’ and it was used in England with that sense from the 13th century. “Hey Presto” began being used in England in the 18th century. The English writer Henry Fielding used it in 1732 in his farce The Lottery.
We go forward to the 19th century and ‘presto chango’ began being used in the USA. It took various spellings – ‘presto change’, ‘presto changeo’ and ‘presto chango’. ‘Presto! change’ is recorded in England in 1824 and it soon migrated to the USA and became ‘presto chango.’ One early US example can be found at the Pensacola Gazette & West Florida Advertiser April, 1824: “A tailor cannot drop his bodkin, a brick mason his trowel, or a grocer his cent per cent on coffee and candles; and become my Lord Coke or Hale by a presto change” Another was in the Ohio newspaper The Huron Reflector, February 1844: “Hey! presto! chango! as the juggler says – Kitty Grimes was not to be married to James Duncan after all.” Although ‘presto change’ was first used in the UK, the ‘presto chango‘ form can be said to be American – in fact, few people outside the USA would know what it meant.
Considering the debacle of an election we just experienced, I thought the following words were appropriate!!!!
CHEAT: Under medieval law a title to real estate could lapse in many ways. Property affected by such a lapse was called an “escheat” and became forfeit to the king. These cases were so numerous that some rulers employed escheators to look after their interests. Usually working on a commission basis, these fellows seized property at every opportunity. If they didn’t violate laws, they certainly trifled with justice. Because of the questionable practices of these royal agents, it became customary to call any dishonest person a cheat.”
Cheater Leader in the House
CON MAN: Hard times following the Civil War forced criminals to resort to all sorts of tricks to gain relatively small amounts of money. One of the most common was the sale of fraudulent mining stock. Investors were reluctant to advance funds without examining property, so swindlers adopted the practice of asking a victim to make a small deposit “just as a gesture of confidence.” The full amount was to be paid only after a trip to the West on the part of the purchaser.
Con-Man in the Senate
A swindler would take the money advanced and decamp. This type of trick became known as the “confidence game” because it worked only if the victim had confidence in the proposal. Anyone who practiced confidence games came to be called a con man. This title was applied to many types of swindlers and is now used to describe a shrewd thief who finds suckers [voters] by means of the Internet or e-mail.
FEET OF CLAY: Nebuchadnezzar II was the Babylonian king who captured Jerusalem in 587 BD, destroyed the city, and took the Hebrew people into captivity, ending the Judean kingdom. The book of Daniel tells how the young Hebrew captive explained one of the king’s strange dreams. Nebuchadnezzar had seen a giant image with a golden head, silver arms and breast, brass thighs, and iron legs. Every part was metal except the feet, which were compounded partly of iron and partly of potter’s clay.
Daniel said that his feet made the metal figure vulnerable, meaning that Babylon would be broken into pieces. Impressed by this dramatic story, English readers of the Bible seized upon the weak spot of the strange figure as a symbol of weakness in general. Today, any noted person with a vulnerable point is still said to have feet of clay.
Feet of Clay Crenshaw
KANGAROO COURT: When the English explorer Capt. James Cook returned from Australia in 1771, he was branded a liar. People disbelieved his reports of a strange animal that hopped about on two legs and stood as high as a man, which he reported the natives called a “kangaroo.” Many who heard his accounts doubted their truth and there was great joking about kangaroos.
When a few specimens were brought to Europe, they created a sensation. Anything marvelous or unusual was likely to be termed “kangaroo.” For example, an 1835 issue of the Gentleman’s Magazine described an eccentric horseman as holding his reins with “kangaroo attitude.” Settlers in the New World used the word to stand for any type of irregular gathering. During Reconstruction following the Civil War, a “kangaroo convention” held in Virginia made national headlines.
Criminals who adopted the odd word applied it to a “court” held by inmates of prisons. In such a proceeding, old-timers charged newcomers with such offenses as breaking into jail or being lousy and trying to scratch. Influenced by the prominence of irregular political gatherings, any extra-legal sham hearing came to be known as a kangaroo court.
SMARMY: “Smarmy,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, dates back to 1909 as an adjectival form of the word “smarm” or “smalm” which had been around for 100 years. Originally just a verb for smoothing, especially of hair, its meaning gradually moved to include the implication of a real smoothie. If you describe someone as smarmy, you dislike them because they are unpleasantly polite and flattering, usually because they want you to like them or to do something for them.
You place the dome in your hand, turn it over and beautifully, magically the item inside is engulfed in a swirling slow-motion blizzard. Everyone can relate to them – evoking a childhood memory or nostalgia of a simpler time. The first mention of a snow globe featured a man with an umbrella displayed at the Paris Exposition of 1878. It was later suggested that the globes were created to commemorate the Tower’s inauguration.
This extremely rare LouisVuitton Eiffel Tower dome made of luggage is a whimsical example that sold for $995 in 2017.
A few years later, a Viennese man Edwin Perzy developed the same idea when researching a way to improve operating room light..He used a glass globe filled with water, hoping to create a magnifying lens by increasing refraction. To enhance the reflected light, Perzy put ground glass in the water. When it quickly sank, he tried semolina which floated slowly to the bottom of the globe. It did nothing to improve the light quality, but the snowfall inspired him to make his first snow globe: he carved a small house and inserted it into the globe.
Edwin Perzy
Facsimile of Perzy’s first globe used in Citizen Kane
Mass production began in the US during the 1920s. Joseph Garaja of Pittsburgh was granted a patent in 1927, which altered how snow globes were made. His method needed the spheres to be assembled underwater, removing any trapped air. This ingenious method made it possible for the industry to go into mass production, which drastically lowered the prices of globes.
However, by the early 1960s, glass snow globes had been overtaken by plastic Hong Kong-made globes. It was soon discovered that the water in their spheres was filthy, obtained directly from their port. As a result, a Hong Kong snow globe producer got into significant trouble and was temporarily barred from entering the United States.
The “snow” in snow globes has a fascinating backstory as well. Snow was previously created in glass domes using tiny porcelain, bone chips, or ground rice. Camphor/wax, as well as meerschaum, was also used to make these snowflakes. Today, most “snow” is tiny particles or shards of white plastic. Also, the liquid hasn’t always been water; at one point, light oil was used. In addition, glycol (antifreeze) was added to help with the problem of freezing during winter shipping.
The snow globe fell out of favor in the 1970’s when it epitomized kitsch –but have evolved into something more sophisticated, intricate and valued among designers and collectors. Novelty gift manufacturers have upgraded the designs and components making them unique gift items often including beautifully modelled landscapes.
Some incorporate lights, music and motors eliminating the need for shaking. Many high-end department stores introduce a custom design every year to commemorate the Christmas season.
Snow globes have become an increasingly popular collectible for both antique and novelty globes. Actor, Corbin Bernsen may be the most prolific collector with about 8,000 – he began collecting snow globes in the ‘80’s. “There’s something that happens to a collector, this internal voice that says, ‘I want to have one of each that is in existence,’” Bernsen says.
Corbin Bernsen
Originally the globes were made of glass and the figures inside were made of porcelain, bone, metals, minerals, rubber or wax. The snow or “flitter” as it’s called, could have been ground rice, wax, soap, sand, bone fragments, meerschaum, metal flakes or sawdust. Producers tried everything. The base was either round or square and may have been of stone, marble, ceramic or wood. Some are quite bizarre!!!
“Snow domes are not only fascinating to look at, to hold, to play with, they are folk art,” says collector Nancy McMichael, author of Snowdomes (Abbeville Press). “They are a bridge back to an idealized past we think existed but is actually in our head. It is something we carry with us.”
Two hundred years after George Washington issued the first presidential proclamation of a day of public thanksgiving, President George H.W. Bush stepped before reporters, 30 schoolchildren and one antsy 50-pound turkey in the White House Rose Garden on November 17, 1989. The public presentation of a plump gobbler to the chief executive in the lead-up to Thanksgiving had been a time-honored photo op since the 1940s, but Bush would add a new presidential tradition of his own. After noting that the turkey appeared “understandably nervous,” Bush added: “Let me assure you, and this fine tom turkey, that he will not end up on anyone’s dinner table, not this guy. He’s granted a presidential pardon as of right now.”
Decades later, the presidential turkey pardon remains an annual Thanksgiving ritual. However, while Bush formalized the fowl tradition, he may not have been the first president to issue a stay of execution to a turkey. A story is told that while Abraham Lincoln occupied the White House, his young son Tad grew so close to a turkey destined for Christmas dinner that he named him Jack and led him around on a leash like a pet. Listening to Tad’s pleas to spare the turkey from his culinary fate, the Great Emancipator granted a reprieve and freed the bird.
A decade later during the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant, Rhode Island poultry dealer Horace Vose began to send plump turkeys to the White House for Thanksgiving dinners. Although a staunch Republican, Vose was non-partisan when it came to turkeys. He sent birds to presidents of both parties until his death in 1913. Beginning in 1946, a pair of poultry industry groups—the National Turkey Federation and the Poultry and Egg National Board—assumed the duties of presenting presidents with turkeys for the holidays. That year, the groups delivered a 42-pound Texas tom to President Harry Truman for Christmas.
While Truman began the ritual of appearing with the gift turkeys in staged photo ops, he is erroneously credited with starting the presidential pardon tradition. The misinformation is so prevalent that the Truman Library has issued a statement on its web site that its staff “has found no documents, speeches, newspaper clippings, photographs, or other contemporary records in our holdings which refer to Truman pardoning a turkey that he received as a gift in 1947, or at any other time during his Presidency.”
In fact, not only did the turkeys given to Truman and some of his successors fail to receive clemency, they suffered a much different fate by ending up on the presidential dinner table. In 1948 Truman told reporters that the turkeys given to him “would come in handy” for the 25 people expected for dinner at his Independence, Missouri, home that Christmas. Ten days before Thanksgiving in 1953, National Turkey Federation president Roscoe Hill presented a live 39-pound turkey to President Dwight Eisenhower, who hoped Hill would kill, freeze and return the gobbler to the White House “in plenty of time because I hope to spend Thanksgiving with my youngsters and I want to take him along.”
A president finally took pity on a gifted bird in 1963 when John F. Kennedy spared the life of a mammoth 55-pound white turkey wearing a sign around its neck—clearly not of its own volition—that read “Good Eating, Mr. President!” “We’ll just let this one grow,” Kennedy said with a grin. “It’s our Thanksgiving present to him.” As the president left the Rose Garden on November 19, 1963, the turkey prepared for its return to a California farm while Kennedy finalized preparations for his fateful trip to Dallas three days later.
Although newspapers in 1963 reported that “Merciful President Pardons Turkey,” the first president to actually use the word “pardon” at the National Thanksgiving Turkey Presentation may have been Ronald Reagan, albeit as a quip. During the throes of the Iran-Contra scandal in 1987, Reagan sidestepped reporters’ questions about whether he planned to pardon any of his aides accused of wrongdoing. When then asked about the fate of the 55-pound turkey he was just given, Reagan joked, “I’ll pardon him.”
Although the National Thanksgiving Turkey and its alternate (sent in case the primary turkey can’t fulfill its duties—mainly, staying alive to make it to the presentation ceremony) now receive stays of execution, their remaining days do not last too long. The skeletons and organs of turkeys bred for consumption are incapable of supporting extreme weights, and most of the reprieved turkeys die prematurely within the following year.
Sew Colorful 