Today is the anniversary of the discovery of King Tut’s tomb and history.com had a wonderful article detailing just some of the amazing artifacts found in the tomb.

From history.com:

It was one hundred years ago on November 4, 1922, that British archaeologist Howard Carter and an Egyptian team discovered an ancient stairway hidden for more than 3,000 years beneath the sands of Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. Twenty-two days later, Carter descended those stairs, lit a candle, poked it through a hole in a blocked doorway and waited as his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light.

“[D]etails of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold, everywhere the glint of gold,” wrote Carter. “I was struck dumb with amazement.” When Carter’s patron, Lord Carnarvon, anxiously asked if Carter could see anything, the stunned archeologist replied, “Yes, wonderful things.”

Carter and the Egyptian team had found the lost tomb of Tutankhamun, the boy king of Egypt, who was buried in a small and overlooked tomb in 1323 B.C. King Tut may not have been a mighty ruler like Ramesses the Great, whose tomb complex covers more than 8,000 square feet of underground chambers, but unlike Ramesses and other pharaohs, King Tut’s treasures hadn’t been looted or damaged by floods. They were nearly intact.

A century later, the discovery of King Tut’s tomb, which contained more than 5,000 priceless artifacts, remains the greatest archeological find of all time.

“I don’t think there’s anything that can hold a candle to it in terms of outright richness, and in terms of the cultural and archeological information that it contains,” says Tom Mueller, a journalist who wrote a National Geographic article about Carter’s historic discovery and the opening of Cairo’s Grand Egyptian Museum, the new home for King Tut’s treasures.

Most people would recognize the iconic objects from the collection, like King Tut’s solid gold coffin and funerary mask, but even the smallest items—alabaster unguent bowls, King Tut’s walking stick or his sandals—are “works of supreme artistry,” says Mueller, who spent days with museum staff as they restored King Tut’s artifacts for display. “It’s no wonder that these treasures have branded themselves in the international consciousness since 1922.”

Here are nine fascinating artifacts recovered from King Tut’s tomb, from the biggest finds to some hidden treasures.

1 An Iron Dagger

On the surface, this iron-bladed dagger doesn’t look like a spectacular find, but King Tut died several centuries before the start of the Iron Age, when advances in technology allowed for the forging of iron and steel from mineral deposits.

During King Tut’s time, the few iron objects on record were made from metals that literally fell from the heavens in the form of meteorites. “There were theories that the iron dagger was a gift from a foreign king who would have presented it as a ‘gift from the gods,’” says Mueller, “as an omen of something powerful. That really got my attention.” A solid-gold dagger with an ornately decorated sheath was also found in the folds of King Tut’s mummy placed ceremoniously on his right thigh.

2 A Scarf with a Surprise

Inside a small wooden chest made from ebony and cedar, Carter and his team found a gold-plated leopard head, and a gorgeous pair of ceremonial objects known as the pharaoh’s crook and flail, always depicted as held across his chest. But alongside these priceless items was something conspicuously commonplace—a knotted up linen scarf.

When the archeologists untangled the scarf, they found several gold rings inside. But how did they get in there? From other clues, it became clear to Carter that King Tut’s tomb hadn’t remained completely untouched. Thieves must have broken in soon after the tomb was sealed and made off with the smallest and most valuable items they could carry, like gold jewelry. Unlike other pharaonic tombs, which had been fully ransacked over the centuries, King Tut’s tomb “had only been lightly looted,” says Mueller. The scarf packed with gold rings was evidence that the thieves may have even been caught in the act or scared off by guards and left their loot behind. It was hastily packed into a box when the tomb was resealed, not to be opened for another 3,200 years.

3 A Game of Chance and Fate

A senet gaming board from Tutankhamun’s tomb, 14th century BC. Made from wood veneered with ebony and inlaid with ivory. From the collection of the Egyptian National Museum, Cairo, Egypt. Egyptians played board games and one of King Tut’s favorites (judging from the fact that there were four sets in his tomb) was a game called senet. Historians don’t agree on the exact rules of the checkers-like game, but it involved moving your game piece through a series of 30 squares by throwing knucklebones or casting sticks. The Egyptian Book of the Dead, which details the journey of the soul through the afterlife, says that playing senet is a popular pastime for the deceased. Eternal life may even have been at stake. “There’s evidence that it was a game played against the god of death,” says Mueller, “so it’s also a game of fate.”

4 King Tut’s Lost Daughters

One of the reasons why King Tut fell through the cracks of Egyptian history was that his reign was so short (around a decade) and he didn’t leave behind any heirs or offspring. But thanks to Carter’s discovery, we know that King Tut’s wife Ankhesenamun—whom he married at age 12—bore two stillborn daughters who were buried in their father’s tomb.

Inside an unmarked box, Carter’s team found two tiny wooden coffins, each bearing a gilded inner coffin that contained the mummified remains of King Tut’s daughters. The fetuses appeared to be 25 and 37 weeks old and died from unknown causes.

Mueller says that there’s a tendency to paint King Tut’s tomb as macabre, given the fascination with things like King Tut’s curse. “Yes, this is a tomb with several dead people in it,” says Mueller, “but in a way, the Egyptian view of the afterlife—their obsession with it—softens all of that. It becomes death as a work of art. King Tut’s preparation for the afterlife becomes a museum.” Archeologists also found a lock of King Tut’s grandmother’s hair in the tomb, which may have been a family keepsake.

5 Gold Sandals

In one of the crowded antechambers, Carter found a painted wooden chest that he described as “one of the greatest artistic treasures of the tomb… we found it hard to tear ourselves away from it.” Inside were sequin-lined linens, an alabaster headrest and a very special pair of sandals. These were King Tut’s golden court sandals, ornately decorated footwear that he’s seen wearing in some of the statuettes found in the tomb. Made from wood and overlaid with bark, leather and gold, the eye-catching parts are the soles of the sandals, which depict the nine traditional enemies of Egypt. That wasn’t an accident. “He’d be symbolically walking on their faces all day,” says Mueller.

6 A Small Army of Servants

Thousands of years before King Tut, at the dawn of Egyptian civilization, powerful rulers were buried with their royal servants, who sacrificed their lives to serve their master in the eternities. By the late Middle Kingdom, human servants were replaced by small figurines called ushabti, who were inscribed with a magical spell to forever do the deceased’s bidding in the afterlife. For the average Egyptian burial, one or two ushabti were placed in the deceased’s tomb. In King Tut’s tomb, there were 413 ushabti, a small army of foot-tall figurines made from various materials including faience, a glass-like pottery with striking colors. Some of King Tut’s ushabti held copper tools like yokes, hoes and picks to do manual labor for the pharaoh in the afterlife.

7 King Tut’s Undergarments

Not every treasure in King Tut’s tomb was made of gold. The young pharaoh, who died at 19 after just nine or 10 years on the throne, was also buried with some of his clothing. Among the ancient textiles found in the tomb were 100 sandals, 12 tunics, 28 gloves, 25 head coverings, four socks (with a separate pocket for the big toe, so they could be worn with sandals) and 145 loincloths, triangular-shaped pieces of woven linen that both men and women wore as underwear. “I really like his underwear,” says Mueller. “King Tut was kitted out for the afterlife, right down to the undergarments. They’re quite spectacular, little loincloth-like things. They’re incredible.” King Tut’s undergarments were a step above non-royal underwear. According to textile historians, the weave of an ordinary Egyptian linen loincloth had 37 to 60 threads per inch, but King Tut’s underwear had 200 threads per inch, giving the cloth a silk-like softness.

8 A Dazzling Resting Place for the King’s Organs

The gilded shrine of canopic jars or canopic chest from King Tut’s tomb. This detail shows the goddess Selket. During the mummification process, Egyptian embalmers carefully removed the lungs, liver, intestines and stomach from the body, embalmed the organs, and placed them in vessels called Canopic jars. The final resting place for King Tut’s organs was one of the most exquisite objects in the entire tomb. Carter found Tut’s Canopic jars stored inside an alabaster chest, itself housed within a magnificent wooden funerary shrine covered in gold leaf. “Facing the doorway stood the most beautiful monument that I have ever seen,” wrote Carter, “so lovely that it made one gasp with wonder and admiration.”

What really struck Mueller when he saw the golden shrine in person were the four Egyptian goddesses of death guarding the young pharaoh’s embalmed organs on all sides. The goddesses Isis, Nephthys, Neith and Selket are depicted in naturalistic poses with form-fitting dresses that inspired flapper fashion in the 1920s. “Here are these gorgeous goddesses looking over his innards for all eternity,” says Mueller.

9 The Iconic Golden Mask

For Carter, the greatest prize among the 5,000 objects in the tomb was the mummy of King Tut himself. But to get to the mummy, Carter and his team had to slowly and painstakingly work through a series of nesting shrines and coffins that were never meant to be opened by human hands.

First there were four box-like golden shrines, each slightly smaller than the last. Inside the last shrine was the heavy stone sarcophagus. Once the stone lid was removed, it revealed the first of three coffins. The first coffin, as well the second one nested inside of it, were wooden coffins overlaid with gold foil and designed to look like the god Osiris lying in repose. The third and final coffin was a jaw-dropper: a solid gold casket weighing 296 pounds also depicting Osiris with the ceremonial crook and flail across his chest.

With trembling hands, Carter opened the golden coffin and found himself face to face with the iconic funerary mask of Tutankhamun. The 22-pound, solid-gold mask rested directly on the head and shoulders of King Tut’s mummy, and portrayed the handsome young king as Osiris, complete with the pharaonic false beard. “The golden mask of King Tut is probably the best-known and most widely recognized archeological treasure ever,” says Mueller. King Tut’s mummy, when carefully removed and unwrapped, contained 143 different amulets, bracelets, necklaces and other priceless artifacts among its ancient bandages. 

SOURCE: HISTORY.COM

From All That’s Interesting:

9 The White House

Perhaps the most haunted house in America is also its most famous. The White House in Washington, D.C., is allegedly home to several ghosts. Completed in 1800, the White House has been home to every president since John Adams. And his successors have admitted to feeling a ghostly presence in the executive mansion.

“The damned place is haunted sure as shootin’,” President Harry S Truman wrote to his wife in 1946, after hearing knocking on doors and footsteps in empty rooms. “Secret Service said not even a watchman was up here at that hour.”

To date, several former White House inhabitants have made their presence known. The ghost of a little boy so frightened members of President William Howard Taft’s administration that the president forbade anyone of speaking of it — or they’d get fired.

Some have claimed to see Abigail Adams, John Adams’s wife, in the East Room, where she once hung out clothes to dry. Contemporary staff report smelling lavender and wet laundry.

And others have reported seeing presidents lingering around the White House long after their administration (and lives) had ended. Mary Todd Lincoln claimed to hear Andrew Jackson stomping around. Others say they’ve seen Thomas Jefferson playing the violin and William Henry Harrison — the first president to die while in office — in the attic.

One of the most commonly seen ghosts in the White House is Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated in 1865. First, Lady Grace Coolidge claimed she saw him staring out a window in his former office, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill says he saw Lincoln sitting by the fire.

“They say Lincoln always comes back whenever he feels the country is in need or in peril,” said Jared Broach, who once offered White House ghost tours.

Broach claims he is sure that the White House is haunted. “If I said [otherwise], I’d be calling about eight different presidents liars,” he explained.

Certainly, the White House has some of the most alleged hauntings in the United States. But is it the most haunted house in America? More haunted than Myrtle Plantation? Or the Villisca Axe Murder House?

There’s only one way to find out. Gather your wits and visit some real haunted houses across the United States. Maybe some of the country’s most active ghosts will make themselves known.

SOURCE: ALLTHATSINTERESTING.COM

Bye bye

In honor of the day, I found an article on HISTORY.COM detailing 10 things we may not know about Columbus.

From HISTORY.COM:

1 Columbus didn’t set out to prove the earth was round.

Forget those myths perpetuated by everyone from Washington Irving to Bugs Bunny. There was no need for Christopher Columbus to debunk the flat-earthers—the ancient Greeks had already done so. As early as the sixth century B.C., the Greek mathematician Pythagoras surmised the world was round, and two centuries later Aristotle backed him up with astronomical observations. By 1492, most educated people knew the planet was not shaped like a pancake.

2 Columbus was likely not the first European to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

That distinction is generally given to the Norse Viking Leif Eriksson, who is believed to have landed in present-day Newfoundland around 1000 A.D., almost five centuries before Columbus set sail. Some historians even claim that Ireland’s Saint Brendan or other Celtic people crossed the Atlantic before Eriksson. While the United States commemorates Columbus—even though he never set foot on the North American mainland—with parades and a federal holiday, Leif Eriksson Day on October 9 receives little fanfare.

3 Three countries refused to back Columbus’ voyage.

For nearly a decade, Columbus lobbied European monarchies to bankroll his quest to discover a western sea route to Asia. In Portugal, England and France, the response was the same: no. The experts told Columbus his calculations were wrong and that the voyage would take much longer than he thought. Royal advisors in Spain raised similar concerns to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Turns out the naysayers were right. Columbus dramatically underestimated the earth’s circumference and the size of the oceans. Luckily for him, he ran into the uncharted Americas.

4 Nina and Pinta were not the actual names of two of Columbus’ three ships.

In 15th-century Spain, ships were traditionally named after saints. Salty sailors, however, bestowed less-than-sacred nicknames upon their vessels. Mariners dubbed one of the three ships on Columbus’s 1492 voyage the Pinta, Spanish for “the painted one” or “prostitute.” The Santa Clara, meanwhile, was nicknamed the Nina in honor of its owner, Juan Nino. Although the Santa Maria is called by its official name, its nickname was La Gallega, after the province of Galicia in which it was built.

5 The Santa Maria wrecked on Columbus’ historic voyage.

On Christmas Eve of 1492, a cabin boy ran Columbus’s flagship into a coral reef on the northern coast of Hispaniola, near present-day Cap Haitien, Haiti. Its crew spent a very un-merry Christmas salvaging the Santa Maria’s cargo. Columbus returned to Spain aboard the Nina, but he had to leave nearly 40 crew members behind to start the first European settlement in the Americas—La Navidad. When Columbus returned to the settlement in the fall of 1493, none of the crew were found alive.

6 Columbus made four voyages to the New World.

Although best known for his historic 1492 expedition, Columbus returned to the Americas three more times in the following decade. His voyages took him to the Caribbean islands, South America and Central America.

7 Columbus returned to Spain in chains in 1500.

Columbus’s governance of Hispaniola could be brutal and tyrannical. Colonists complained to the monarchy about mismanagement, and a royal commissioner dispatched to Hispaniola arrested Columbus in August 1500 and brought him back to Spain in chains. Although Columbus was stripped of his governorship, King Ferdinand not only granted the explorer his freedom but subsidized a fourth voyage.

8 A lunar eclipse may have saved Columbus.

In February 1504, a desperate Columbus was stranded in Jamaica, abandoned by half his crew and denied food by the islanders. The heavens that he relied on for navigation, however, would guide him safely once again. Knowing from his almanac that a lunar eclipse was coming on February 29, 1504, Columbus warned the islanders that his god was upset with their refusal of food and that the moon would “rise inflamed with wrath” as an expression of divine displeasure. On the appointed night, the eclipse darkened the moon and turned it red, and the terrified islanders offered provisions and beseeched Columbus to ask his god for mercy.

9 Even in death, Columbus continued to cross the Atlantic.

Following his death in 1506, Columbus was buried in Valladolid, Spain, and then moved to Seville. At the request of his daughter-in-law, the bodies of Columbus and his son Diego were shipped across the Atlantic to Hispaniola and interred in a Santo Domingo cathedral. When the French captured the island in 1795, the Spanish dug up remains thought to be those of the explorer and moved them to Cuba before returning them to Seville after the Spanish-American War in 1898. 

However, a box with human remains and the explorer’s name was discovered inside the Santo Domingo cathedral in 1877. Did the Spaniards exhume the wrong body? DNA testing in 2006 found evidence that at least some of the remains in Seville are those of Columbus. The Dominican Republic has refused to let the other remains be tested. It could be possible that, aptly, pieces of Columbus are both in the New World and the Old World.

10 Heirs of Columbus and the Spanish monarchy were in litigation until 1790.

After the death of Columbus, his heirs waged a lengthy legal battle with the Spanish crown, claiming that the monarchy short-changed them on money and profits due the explorer. Most of the Columbian lawsuits were settled by 1536, but the legal proceedings nearly dragged on until the 300th anniversary of Columbus’ famous voyage.

SOURCE: HISTORY.COM; CHRISTOPHER KLEIN

On October 10, 1985, the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro reaches a dramatic climax when U.S. Navy F-14 fighters intercept an Egyptian airliner attempting to fly the Palestinian hijackers to freedom and force the jet to land at a NATO base in Sigonella, Sicily. American and Italian troops surrounded the plane, and the terrorists were taken into Italian custody.

On October 7, four heavily armed Palestinian terrorists hijacked the Achille Lauro in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt. Some 320 crewmembers and 80 passengers were taken hostage. Hundreds of other passengers had disembarked the cruise ship earlier that day to visit Cairo and tour the Egyptian pyramids. Identifying themselves as members of the Palestine Liberation Front—a Palestinian splinter group—the gunmen demanded the release of 50 Palestinian militants imprisoned in Israel. If their demands were not met, they threatened to blow up the ship and kill the 11 Americans on board. The next morning, they also threatened to kill the British passengers.

How the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Began

The Achille Lauro traveled to the Syrian port of Tartus, where the terrorists demanded negotiations on October 8. Syria refused to permit the ship to anchor in its waters, which prompted more threats from the hijackers. That afternoon, they shot and killed Leon Klinghoffer, a 69-year-old Jewish-American who was confined to a wheelchair as the result of a stroke. His body was then pushed overboard in the wheelchair.

Yasir Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) condemned the hijacking, and PLO officials joined with Egyptian authorities in attempting to resolve the crisis. On the recommendation of the negotiators, the cruise ship traveled to Port Said. On October 9, the hijackers surrendered to Egyptian authorities and freed the hostages in exchange for a pledge of safe passage to an undisclosed destination.

The next day–October 10–the four hijackers boarded an EgyptAir Boeing 737 airliner, along with Mohammed Abbas, a member of the Palestine Liberation Front who had participated in the negotiations; a PLO official; and several Egyptians. The 737 took off from Cairo at 4:15 p.m. EST and headed for Tunisia. President Ronald Reagan gave his final order approving the plan to intercept the aircraft, and at 5:30 p.m. EST, F-14 Tomcat fighters located the airliner 80 miles south of Crete. Without announcing themselves, the F-14s trailed the airliner as it sought and was denied permission to land at Tunis. After a request to land at the Athens airport was likewise refused, the F-14s turned on their lights and flew wing-to-wing with the airliner. The aircraft was ordered to land at a NATO air base in Sicily, and the pilot complied, touching down at 6:45 p.m. The hijackers were arrested soon after. Abbas and the other Palestinian were released, prompting criticism from the United States, which wanted to investigate their possible involvement in the hijacking.

On July 10, 1986, an Italian court later convicted three of the terrorists and sentenced them to prison terms ranging from 15 to 30 years. Three others, including Mohammed Abbas, were convicted in absentia for masterminding the hijacking and sentenced to life in prison. They received harsher penalties because, unlike the hijackers, who the court found were acting for “patriotic motives,” Abbas and the others conceived the hijacking as a “selfish political act” designed “to weaken the leadership of Yasir Arafat.” The fourth hijacker was a minor who was tried and convicted separately.

SOURCE: HISTORY.COM

Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the first African-American on October 2, 1967 and I wanted to look at his life, and I found this article at Mental Floss.

From Mental Floss:

Before he became the first African-American justice on the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall was already a powerful civil rights pioneer: He argued 32 cases in front of the Supreme Court in his work as a lawyer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the ’40s and ’50s. He won 29 of those cases, including landmark decisions about school segregation and voting rights. And although his name is synonymous with the civil rights battles of the 1950s, Marshall was also at the forefront of debates about police brutality, women’s rights, and the death penalty.

Over 50 years after his historic appointment to the nation’s highest court, Marshall is remembered both for his trailblazing work and for his big personality. (Justice Marshall was a devoted fan of Days of Our Lives and as solicitor general was known to “drink bourbon and tell stories full of lies” with President Lyndon Johnson.) Here are a few things to know about this civil rights hero and legal pioneer, who was born on this day 110 years ago.

1 HE WASN’T ALWAYS THURGOOD.

Thoroughgood Marshall was born in Maryland in 1908. Young Thoroughgood would eventually change his name to Thurgood. He once admitted, “By the time I reached the second grade, I got tired of spelling all that out and had shortened it to Thurgood.”

2 HE LEARNED ABOUT LAW FROM HIS FATHER.

As a child in Baltimore, Marshall developed an interest in the law when his father William, a country club steward, took him to observe legal arguments at local courts. Thurgood and his father then had lengthy discussions around the dinner table during which Thurgood’s father fought every statement his son made. Justice Marshall said of his father in 1965, “He never told me to be a lawyer, but he turned me into one.”

3 AS A YOUNG LAWYER, MARSHALL FOUGHT FOR AFRICAN-AMERICAN TEACHERS TO BE PAID FAIRLY.

During his time at Lincoln University (where he graduated with honors in 1930), Marshall’s family struggled to afford the tuition. His mother, Norma, who worked as a teacher, pleaded each term with the university’s registrar to accept late payments, whenever she could scrape together enough money to pay the cost of attendance.

Marshall tackled equal pay for African-American teachers after he graduated from Howard University’s law school in 1933. Six years later, Marshall won a big victory for teachers like his mother, when a federal court struck down pay discrimination against African-American teachers in Maryland. Marshall went on to fight for teacher pay equality in 10 states across the South. And many of his most well-known legal battles were fought against discrimination in public education, like Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

4 HE WORKED A NIGHT JOB AT A BALTIMORE HEALTH CLINIC DURING SOME OF THE BIGGEST LEGAL BATTLES OF HIS EARLY CAREER.

Marshall fought to make ends meet as a young lawyer. In 1934, he took a second job at a clinic that treated sexually transmitted diseases. Marshall worked at the clinic even as he prepared for the landmark case to integrate the University of Maryland. When he moved to New York in 1936, Marshall did not officially quit his night job—he merely requested a 6-month leave of absence from the clinic, according to biographer Larry S. Gibson. But Marshall never returned to his night job. By 1940, he had become the Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

5 MARSHALL RISKED HIS LIFE WHILE FIGHTING CIVIL RIGHTS BATTLES.

While working for the NAACP in 1946, Marshall traveled to Columbia, Tennessee to defend a group of African-American men. Marshall and his colleagues feared for their safety after the trial and tried to leave town fast. But, according to biographer Wil Haygood, they were ambushed by locals on the road to Nashville. Marshall was arrested on false charges, placed in a sheriff’s car, and driven quickly off the main road. His colleagues—who were told to keep driving to Nashville—followed the car, which then returned to the main road. Marshall said that he would have been lynched if not for the arrival of his colleagues.

6 HE WAS BOTH AN INFORMANT AND A SUBJECT OF AN FBI INVESTIGATION DURING THE RED SCARE.

In the 1950s, Marshall tipped off the FBI about communist attempts to infiltrate the NAACP. But he was also the subject of FBI investigation, under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover. According to FBI files, critics tried to connect Marshall to communism through his membership in the National Lawyers Guild, a group that was called “the legal bulwark of the Communist Party” by the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee. Later, after he was nominated to the Supreme Court, Marshall’s opponents tried again to tie him to communism, but the FBI couldn’t find any communist ties.

7 AFTER A ROCKY START, PRESIDENT KENNEDY APPOINTED MARSHALL TO HIS FIRST JUDICIAL ROLE.

President John F. Kennedy sent his brother Bobby to meet with Marshall about civil rights in 1961. But Marshall did not hit it off with the Kennedys and felt his experience on the topic was being discounted. According to Marshall, Bobby “spent all his time telling us what we should do.” Still, a few months later, Kennedy nominated Marshall to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals. It took a year for the Senate to confirm his nomination, over the objection of several southern Senators.

8 PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON NOMINATED MARSHALL TO THE SUPREME COURT IN 1967, AFTER HE CREATIVELY ENGINEERED AN OPENING ON THE COURT.

In 1967, President Johnson wanted to put Marshall on the Supreme Court—but there wasn’t a vacancy, so Johnson decided to do a little political maneuvering. According to the most common version of what happened, Johnson appointed Justice Tom Clark’s son, Ramsey, as the Attorney General, which made the elder Clark—who feared a conflict of interest—retire on June 12, 1967. Johnson officially nominated Marshall as his replacement the next day.

9 MARSHALL HAD TO UNDERGO AN INTENSE SENATE CONFIRMATION HEARING BEFORE TAKING HIS SEAT ON THE SUPREME COURT.

Marshall was sworn in to the Supreme Court on October 2, 1967. But before he took the oath of office, he had to survive a grueling wait, as several senators from southern states worked to derail his nomination. For four days in July 1967, those senators questioned Marshall about his legal philosophy and imposed a quiz about political history, reminiscent of a Jim Crow-era literacy test. Marshall was subjected to more hours of questioning than any Supreme Court nominee before him. Finally, on August 30, the Senate voted to send him to the Supreme Court.

10. HIS LEGACY IS STILL DEBATED.

Marshall had a perfect record of supporting affirmative action and opposing capital punishment during his tenure on the Supreme Court. But he grew frustrated with the Court in the 1980s and announced his retirement in 1991. Then, in 2010, President Barack Obama nominated one of Marshall’s former clerks to the Supreme Court. During Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearing, senators questioned her connection to Marshall and criticized his record. But Kagan speaks fondly about Marshall: “This was a man who created opportunities for so many people in this country and improved their lives. I would call him a hero. I would call him the greatest lawyer of the twentieth century.”

SOURCE: Mental Floss: Amy Moreland

Filly brought this story to my attention and I thought it would make an interesting open. 

From historicmsyteries.com:

A star, decorated with flawless Brazilian diamonds, and with an emerald trefoil and ruby cross set against blue enamel. A diamond badge, and five gold jewel-encrusted collars. These were the stunning pieces that made up the Irish Crown Jewels, and on July 6, 1907, the gems were discovered to be missing.

Most of the 394 jewels came from Queen Charlotte, wife of George III and Queen of Great Britain (and later the United Kingdom) from 1761 until 1818. Their value, for the stones alone, has been estimated at many millions of dollars, but for the history they encompass they are priceless.

And nobody knows where they are. 

The Heist

The timing of the theft was particularly significant: the jewels were taken just before the visit of King Edward VII of the United Kingdom in the summer of 1907. As part of this occasion, the jewels were supposed to be used to swear in Lord Castletown as a new knight of the Order of St Patrick.

Just four years earlier, in 1903, security around the jewels had been beefed up. The Ulster King of Arms office in Dublin Castle, who had responsibility for the jewels, had moved from the Bermingham Tower to the Bedford or Clock Tower.

The jewels were moved to a new safe, which would be kept in the newly built strongroom set up specifically for that purpose. But the new safe was too enormous to fit through the entryway to the strongroom, so the Ulster King of Arms, Sir Arthur Vicars, had it housed in his library instead.

Vicars and his employees owned seven latch keys to the Office of Arms’s entrance, as well as two keys to the safe containing the jewels. With so many locks protecting the safe and the priceless artifacts within, they were considered completely safe from theft.

However, one should never discount the human element in such security measures, and here we have our first suspect: Vicars himself. Somehow, he had access to the jewels and could retrieve them on his own, a clear vulnerability in the system.

Furthermore, during the long night hours spent on duty guarding the jewels, Vicars was known to drink. On one occasion, he awoke from a drunken stupor to discover he was wearing the jewels around his neck.

Was this the actions of a drunkard who didn’t take his job seriously? Had someone placed the jewels around his neck while he was passed out to mock him, as a cruel joke at his expense exposing his incompetence?

Or could this be a trial run for the theft itself?

Who Stole the Irish Crown Jewels?

One of the key problems with solving this almost inconceivable crime is that it is not known when exactly the jewels were taken. There was no system in place to regularly inspect the jewels, and they were kept locked in the safe out of sight. It was only with the imminent arrival of Edward VII that the jewels, somewhat embarrassingly, were found to be missing.

The jewels had last been seen in the safe on 11 June 1907, and so were stolen at some point between then and 6 July when, four days before the King’s arrival, their theft was noticed. The King still came to Ireland, but Lord Castleton, without the jewels, was not invested as a knight.

Francis Shackleton, the brother of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton and Vicars’s second-in-command, was the leading suspect. Shackleton, despite his renown, was in financial trouble, and furthermore had the opportunity to obtain the key and duplicate it.

At the time of the theft, Shackleton was found to be out of the country. But this did not completely exonerate him, as the lack of forcible entry has led to speculation that it must have been an inside job.

Another hypothesis holds that Shackleton planned the heist and had his associate Captain Richard Howard Gorges carry it out. Both men were homosexual at a time when this was illegal, and the theory was that Gorges had given Vicars whiskey until he had fallen asleep.

The King and Viceroy of Ireland would have been keen to avoid a scandal, given that following this line of inquiry would have exposed the pair as homosexual. Given the friends and associations of Shackleton at the highest levels of society. Shackleton was exonerated, possibly to suppress this information.

If Not Shackleton, Who?

The Dublin Metropolitan Police conducted a police inquiry, distributing posters depicting and describing the lost diamonds. On the 12th of July, Scotland Yard Detective Chief Inspector John Kane arrived from the United Kingdom to assist.

His report, which was never made public, is alleged to have identified the perpetrator but was suppressed by the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). Vicars declined to resign from his job, and also refused to appear before the commission investigating the theft.

Instead, Vicars called for a public Royal Commission with the power to summon witnesses and publicly accused Shackleton of the theft. Shackleton refused to participate.

As mentioned above, the commission found Shackleton not guilty, and also concluded that Vicars had not exercised adequate vigilance or proper care as the custodian of the regalia. Vicars was then forced to resign, as were all of the others who worked under him.

Other suspects were suggested. One immediate rumor was that the gems had been taken by political activists affiliated with the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Pat O’Brien, Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom accused “loyal and patriotic Unionist criminals” of having committed the crime.

Some tabloids claimed that Lord Haddo, son of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, was involved in the robbery. Augustine Birrell, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, declared in the Commons that Haddo had been in Great Britain when the crime occurred and that the speculation was baseless.

Laurence Ginnell claimed in 1912 and 1913 that the police investigation had established the identity of the thief, that his report had been suppressed to avoid scandal. He also claimed that the jewels could be easily retrieved, however in fact they never were.

The Mystery Still Unsolved

The lack of a clear solution to the mystery has invited much speculation down the years. According to a 2002 book, the jewels were stolen as part of a Unionist scheme to disgrace the Liberal government and then restored to the Royal Family in secret.

Another theory put forward by the Genealogical Office of the Republic of Ireland was that the jewels were never removed from the Clock Tower, but merely hidden. Donal Begley, the Chief Herald of Ireland, supervised the dismantling of walls and floorboards during repair work to the Clock Tower in 1983, in case the jewels would be discovered, but they were not.

There have also been a lot of false alarms over the years. James Weldon, a jeweler, received a letter containing unusually detailed information on their movements, recognized the person who delivered it as Shackleton.

He received another letter twenty years later, which he brought to the attention of W T Cosgrave, first President of the executive of the Irish Free State. However, the diamonds were never found,

And to this day, their location is unknown. What happened to them, and where they are now, remain a mystery. However, there is still hope that one day, the diamonds will be recovered for Ireland.

 SOURCE: HISTORICMYSTERIES.COM: BIPIN DIMRI

I found this trivia article on HISTORY.COM.

1 True or False? Francis Scott wrote his verses intending them to be a song not a poem.

2 Was Key a prisoner on the English ship Tonnant when he wrote the ballad?

3 How many men were required to hoist the flag flying over Fort McHenry?

4 What was the original name of The Star-Spangled Banner?

5 In what year did the Star-Spangled Banner become our national anthem?

6 How many versus are in the Star-Spangled Banner?

7 Did Key support the war?

8 What was Key’s occupation?

9 Was Key a slave owner?

10 Was Key tone deaf?

Want to see how you did?

ANSWERS:

1 True

 “The Star Spangled-Banner” was not a poem set to a melody years later. Although Key was an amateur poet and not a songwriter, when he composed his verses, he intended them to accompany a popular song of the day. “We know he had the tune in mind because the rhyme and meter exactly fit it,” says Marc Leepson, author of the Key biography What So Proudly We Hailed. The first broadside of the verses, printed just days after the battle, noted that the words should be sung to the melody of “To Anacreon in Heaven.” Key was quite familiar with the tune, having used it to accompany an 1805 poem, which included a reference to a “star-spangled flag,” he had written to honor Barbary War naval heroes Stephen Decatur and Charles Stewart.  Although Key composed the patriotic lyrics amid a burst of anti-British euphoria, “To Anacreon in Heaven” was ironically an English song composed in 1775 that served as the theme song of the upper-crust Anacreontic Society of London and a popular pub staple.

2 No

In his capacity as a Washington, D.C., lawyer, Key had been dispatched by President James Madison on a mission to Baltimore to negotiate for the release of Dr. William Beanes, a prominent surgeon captured at the Battle of Bladensburg.  Accompanied by John Stuart Skinner, a fellow lawyer working for the State Department, Key set sail on an American sloop in Baltimore Harbor, and on September 7 the pair boarded the British ship Tonnant, where they dined and secured the prisoner’s release under one condition—they could not go ashore until after the British attacked Baltimore. Accompanied by British guards on September 10, Key returned to the American sloop from which he witnessed the bombardment behind the 50-ship British fleet.

3 11 men
In addition to a thunderstorm of bombs, a torrent of rain fell on Fort McHenry throughout the night of the Battle of Baltimore. The fort’s 30-by-42-foot garrison flag was so massive that it required 11 men to hoist when dry, and if waterlogged, the woolen banner could have weighed upwards of 500 pounds and snapped the flagpole. So as the rain poured down, a smaller storm flag that measured 17-by-25 feet flew in its place. “In the morning, they most likely took down the rain-soaked storm flag and hoisted the bigger one,” Leepson says, “and that’s the flag Key saw in the morning.”

4 When Key scrawled his lyrics on the back of a letter he pulled from his pocket on the morning of September 14, he did not give them any title. Within a week, Key’s verses were printed on broadsides and in Baltimore newspapers under the title “Defense of Fort M’Henry.” In November, a Baltimore music store printed the patriotic song with sheet music for the first time under the more lyrical title “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

5 During the Civil War, “The Star-Spangled Banner” was an anthem for Union troops, and the song increased in popularity in the ensuing decades, which led to President Woodrow Wilson signing an executive order in 1916 designating it as “the national anthem of the United States” for all military ceremonies. On March 3, 1931, after 40 previous attempts failed, a measure passed Congress and was signed into law that formally designated “The Star-Spangled Banner” as the national anthem of the United States.

6 4 verses

The version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” traditionally sung on patriotic occasions and at sporting events is only the song’s first verse. All four verses conclude with the same line: “O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.” (In 1861, poet Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a fifth verse to support the Union cause in the Civil War and denounce “the traitor that dares to defile the flag of her stars.”)

7 No. Ironically, the man who created one of the lasting patriotic legacies of the War of 1812 adamantly opposed the conflict at its outset. Key referred to the war as “abominable” and “a lump of wickedness.” However, his opposition to the war softened after the British began to raid nearby Chesapeake Bay communities in 1813 and 1814, and he briefly served in a Georgetown wartime militia.

8 Lawyer. Although Key loathed politics, he was a prominent figure in Washington, D.C. “He was an important player in the early republic,” Leepson says. “He was a very successful and influential lawyer at the highest levels in Washington.” Key ran a thriving law practice, served as a trusted advisor in Andrew Jackson’s “Kitchen Cabinet” and was appointed a United States Attorney in 1833. He prosecuted hundreds of cases, including that of Richard Lawrence for the attempted assassination of Jackson, and argued over 100 cases before the United States Supreme Court.

9 Yes. While he advocated for some enslaved people seeking freedom, Key too owned slaves. He hailed from a large slave-owning family and often helped slave owners recapture their escaped slaves. Despite this, Key opposed slave trafficking and became one of the founders of the American Colonization Society, which shipped thousands of free Black people to Africa to establish a homeland there.

10 Most likely. Key was much more adept in his legal day job than he was as an amateur poet. Most of the odes he composed were never meant to be seen beyond family and friends, and none came remotely close to realizing the popular fame of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” In addition to being a middling poet, Key also had a hard time carrying a tune. “Key’s family said he was not musical,” Leepson says, “which means he likely was tone deaf.”

SOURCE: HISTORY.COM

On August 5, 1861, President Lincoln imposes the first federal income tax by signing the Revenue Act. Strapped for cash with which to pursue the Civil War, Lincoln and Congress agreed to impose a 3 percent tax on annual incomes over $800.

As early as March 1861, Lincoln had begun to take stock of the federal government’s ability to wage war against the South. He sent letters to cabinet members Edward Bates, Gideon Welles and Salmon Chase requesting their opinions as to whether or not the president had the constitutional authority to “collect [such] duties.” According to documents housed and interpreted by the Library of Congress, Lincoln was particularly concerned about maintaining federal authority over collecting revenue from ports along the southeastern seaboard, which he worried, might fall under the control of the Confederacy.

The Revenue Act’s language was broadly written to define income as gain “derived from any kind of property, or from any professional trade, employment, or vocation carried on in the United States or elsewhere or from any source whatever.” According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the comparable minimum taxable income in 2003, after adjustments for inflation, would have been approximately $16,000.

Congress repealed Lincoln’s tax law in 1871, but in 1909 passed the 16th Amendment, which set in place the federal income-tax system used today. Congress ratified the 16th Amendment in 1913.

SOURCE: HISTORY.COM

This day in history, July 30, 1975, was the last day Jimmy Hoffa was seen.  This article from the Detroit Free Press details the story:

Detroit Free Press:

Jimmy Hoffa, the well-known labor union leader, went missing 45 years ago – on July 30, 1975 in Bloomfield Hills – the mystery behind what happened continues to captivate the public.

Here’s what you need to know about who he was, his disappearance, and new revelations in his case.

Who was Jimmy Hoffa?

Born James Riddle Hoffa on Feb. 14, 1914 in Brazil, Indiana, Hoffa rose to his well-known status in his twenties with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, of which he later became president. The group was a labor union that represented a mix of professional and blue-collar workers in the private and public sector.

During his tenure, he was convicted of several crimes, including jury tampering, attempted bribery, conspiracy and mail and wire fraud. On July 30, 1975, Hoffa was at a restaurant in Bloomingfield Township. Hoffa called his wife, Josephine, from a pay phone to say that he’d been stood up at a lunch meeting with two mobsters. He was never seen again.

Theories behind his disappearance 

Based on his final moments in a call to his wife, many believe Hoffa was killed by the mafia. One major theory that was previously presented to a grand jury was that the Mafia killed Hoffa to prevent him from disclosing mob infiltration of the Teamsters, including its tapping into the union’s pension fund to finance its rackets. 

Hoffa had resigned the Teamsters presidency after going to prison. In 1965, a federal jury in Chattanooga, Tenn., convicted Hoffa of conspiring to accept illegal payments from a trucking company and later of trying to funnel a $10,000 bribe to the son of one of the jurors.

Martin Scorsese made an Oscar-nominated film about Hoffa

The film, ‘The Irishman,” directed by Martin Scorsese, was released on Netflix in 2019. The film starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci follows Frank Sheeran (De Niro) and his journey to becoming involved in organized crime and working for Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino). The film was nominated for 10 Academy Awards. 

Although the film was a major hit, many have concerns about the accuracy of the film and the portrayal of Hoffa.

Metro Detroit search sites for Hoffa

There are several locations in metro Detroit that people believe could be tied to Hoffa’s disappearance. A few include a north Corktown location where Hoffa had a Teamster 299 site, which is where he began his rise to power in the 1930s. There is also a field in Waterford Township that was searched two months after Hoffa’s disappearance but nothing was found. 

In 2004, police took forensic evidence from his home in Oakland County where blood was found on the floorboards but couldn’t be matched to Hoffa. 

New revelations in his disappearance 

In November, a Hoffa expert, Dan Moldea who wrote ‘”The Hoffa Wars,” said that he believes Hoffa’s body could be at a former New Jersey landfill known as “Brother Moscato’s Dump.” The FBI told the Detroit Free Press back in November that they would be willing to look into this tip if the appropriate evidence guides them that way.

“Absolutely — if we had credible evidence that leads to a location,” said FBI spokeswoman Mara Schneider. “The case has been going on for so long, and there’s so much interest in finding Mr. Hoffa. We would very much like to be able to solve this.”

SOURCE: DETRIOT FREE PRESS; Emma-Dale

July 30, 2020