I found an article on History.com detailing five things we may not know about Leap Year’s history.  See how much you already knew!

From History.com:

Nearly every four years, we add an extra day to the calendar in the form of February 29, also known as Leap Day. Put simply, these additional 24 hours are built into the calendar to ensure that it stays in line with the Earth’s movement around the sun.

While the modern calendar contains 365 days, the actual time it takes for Earth to orbit its star is slightly longer—roughly 365.2421 days. The difference might seem negligible, but over decades and centuries that missing quarter of a day per year can add up. To ensure consistency with the true astronomical year, it is necessary to periodically add in an extra day to make up the lost time and get the calendar back in synch with the heavens.

Many ancient calendars had entire leap months

Many calendars, including the Hebrew, Chinese and Buddhist calendars, are lunisolar, meaning their dates indicate the position of the moon as well as the position of Earth relative to the sun. Since there is a natural gap of roughly 11 days between a year as measured by lunar cycles and one measured by the Earth’s orbit, such calendars periodically require the addition of extra months, known as intercalary or interstitial months, to keep them on track.

Intercalary months, however, were not necessarily regular. Historians are still unclear as to how the early Romans kept track of their years, mostly because the Romans themselves may not have been entirely sure. It appears that the early Roman calendar consisted of ten months plus an ill-defined winter period, the varying length of which caused the calendar to become unpegged from the solar year.

Eventually, this uncertain stretch of time was replaced by the new months of January and February, but the situation remained complicated. They employed a 23-day intercalary month known as Mercedonius to account for the difference between their year and the solar year, inserting it not between months but within the month of February for reasons that may have been related to lunar cycles.

To make matters even more confusing, the decision of when to hold Mercedonius often fell to the consuls, who used their ability to shorten or extend the year to their own political ends. As a result, by the time of Julius Caesar, the Roman year and the solar year were thoroughly out of sync.

Julius Caesar introduced Leap Day, with help from the Egyptians…

The Mercedonius-when-we-feel-like-it system apparently irked Caesar, the general-turned-consul-turned-dictator of Rome who drastically altered the course of European history. In addition to conquering Gaul and transforming Rome from a republic into an empire, Caesar re-ordered the Roman calendar, giving us the blueprint off of which much of the world still operates to this day.

During his time in Egypt, Caesar became convinced of the superiority of the Egyptian solar calendar, which featured 365 days and an occasional intercalary month which was inserted when astronomers observed the correct conditions in the stars. Caesar and the philosopher Sosigenes of Alexandria made one important modification: instead of relying on the stars, they would simply add a day to every fourth year. In keeping with the Roman tradition of messing with the length of February, that day would fall in the second month of the year—thus Leap Day was born. Caesar added two extra-long months to the year 46 B.C.E. to make up for missed intercalations, and the Julian Calendar took effect on January 1st, 45 B.C.E.

…but their math was a little off

By the 16th century, scholars had noticed that time was still slipping—Caesar’s calculation that a year lasted 365.25 days was close, but still overestimated the solar year by 11 minutes. This was a problem for the Catholic Church, as the date of Easter had drifted away from its traditional place, the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox, by roughly ten days. Pope Gregory XIII commissioned a modified calendar, one which kept Leap Day but accounted for the inaccuracy by eliminating it on centurial years not divisible by 400 (1700, 1800, and 1900 were not leap years, but 2000 was). The introduction of the Gregorian Calendar marked the last change to the Western calendar as we know it today.

Experts note that the Gregorian calculation of a solar year—365.2425 days—is still not perfect, and thus another correction will be necessary. Thankfully, the Gregorian calendar is only off by about one day every 3,030 years, so mankind has some time before this becomes a problem.

Leap Day is often associated with marriage, proposals and flipping gender roles

Curiously, many Leap Day customs have revolved around romance and marriage. Tradition holds that in 5th-century Ireland, St. Bridget lamented to St. Patrick that women were not allowed to propose marriage to men. So legend has it that St. Patrick designated the only day that does not occur annually, February 29, as a day on which women would be allowed to propose to men. In some places, Leap Day thus became known as Bachelor’s Day.

This tradition hopped the Irish Sea to Scotland and England, where the British added a twist—if a man rejected a woman’s proposal, he owed her a debt of several pairs of fine gloves, perhaps to hide the fact that she did not have an engagement ring. In Greek tradition, however, it is considered bad luck to marry on Leap Day, and statistics suggest that Greek couples continue to take this superstition seriously.

People born on Leap Day are called ‘Leaplings’

There are only about 5 million people in the whole world who were born on February 29, with the odds of being born on Leap Day standing at about 1-in-1,461. Several famous people—including actress and singer Dinah Shore (born 1916), motivational speaker Tony Robbins (born 1960) and hip-hop artist Ja Rule (born 1976)—are leaplings. Leaplings technically only get to celebrate their birthdays once every four years, but they do get to be part of an elite group.

SOURCE: HISTORY.COM STEPHEN WOOD

I went looking for some interesting facts about our first President on what I thought was his birthday.  According to this article in MENTAL FLOSS, I got it wrong.  Read on for more interesting facts about George Washington.

By Arthur Holland Michel | Feb 22, 2019

You know that George Washington was the first president of the United States. Is that where your knowledge of this fascinating guy’s life and history ends? Here are 25 George Washington facts that may be new to you.

George Washington didn’t have a middle name.

With a name like George Washington, you don’t really need one.

George Washington’s birthday was not February 22, 1732.

Washington was actually born on February 11, 1731, but when the colonies switched to the Gregorian calendar from the Julian calendar, his birthday was moved 11 days. Since his birthday fell before the old date for New Year’s Day, but after the new date for New Year’s Day, his birth year was changed to 1732.

George Washington’s hair was all real.

It looks white because he powdered it.

George Washington was made an honorary citizen of France.

The quintessential American received this honor in 1792.

For a time, George Washington was a non-president commander-in-chief (but he didn’t do much).

In 1798, when fears were growing of a French invasion, Washington was named (by John Adams) commander-in-chief of the U.S. military, even though he wasn’t president anymore. Apparently, this was a strategy to help recruiting, as Washington’s name was very well-known. He only served in an advisory capacity, since he was pretty old by that point. But he felt he should have been a bit more involved. According to this letter, he was frustrated that even though he was the commander-in-chief, nobody really told him much about what was going on with the military.

No one will ever rank higher than him in the U.S. military.

In 1976 Washington was posthumously awarded the highest rank in the U.S. military—ever.

According to Air Force Magazine:

When Washington died, he was a lieutenant general. But as the centuries passed, this three-star rank did not seem commensurate with what he had accomplished. After all, Washington did more than defeat the British in battle. Along the way he established the framework for how American soldiers should organize themselves, how they should behave, and how they should relate to civilian leaders. Almost every big decision he made set a precedent. He was the father of the U.S. military as well as the U.S. itself.

So, a law was passed to make Washington the highest-ranking U.S. officer of all time: General of the Armies of the United States. Nobody will ever outrank him.

George Washington made a pretty hefty salary …

According to the Christian Science Monitor, in 1789, Washington’s presidential salary was 2 percent of the total U.S. budget.

… but he still had cash-flow problems.

Washington actually had to borrow money to attend his own first inauguration.

He was one of the sickliest presidents in history.

Throughout his life, Washington suffered from a laundry list of ailments: diphtheria, tuberculosis, smallpox, dysentery, malaria, quinsy (tonsillitis), carbuncle, pneumonia, and epiglottitis—to name a few.

He may or may not have died as a result of medical malpractice.

On the day he died—December 14, 1799—Washington was treated with four rounds of bloodletting, which removed 5 pints of blood from his body. It seems that it proved to be too much. In 1999, The New York Times wrote:

“On Washington’s fateful day, Albin Rawlins, one of his overseers and a bloodletter, was summoned. Washington bared his arm. The overseer had brought his lancet and made an incision. Washington said, ”Don’t be afraid.” That day, Rawlins drew 12 ounces of blood, then 18 ounces, another 18 ounces and a final 32 ounces into a porcelain bleeding bowl. After the fourth bloodletting, the patient improved slightly and was able to swallow. By about 10 p.m., his condition deteriorated, but he was still rational enough to whisper burial instructions to Col. Tobias Lear, his secretary. At 10:20 p.m., Dr. James Craik, 69, an Edinburgh-trained physician who had served with Washington in the French and Indian Wars, closed Washington’s eyes. Another Edinburgh-trained physician, Dr. Gustavus Richard Brown, 52, was also present. The third physician, Dr. Elisha Cullen Dick, 37, who had been appointed coroner the previous year, stopped the clock in Washington’s bedroom at that moment.”

George Washington might have been infertile.

Washington had no children of his own. In 2007, John K. Amory of the University of Washington School of Medicine proposed that Washington was infertile. Armory goes through a number of possible reasons for Washington’s infertility, including an infection caused by his tuberculosis:

“Classic studies of soldiers with tuberculous pleurisy during World War II demonstrated that two-thirds developed chronic organ tuberculosis within five years of their initial infection. Infection of the epididymis or testes is seen in 20 percent of these individuals and frequently results in infertility.”

Washington’s body was almost buried in the Capitol.

Washington requested that he be buried at Mount Vernon, and his family upheld his request, despite repeated pleas by Congress. They wanted to put his body underneath a marble statue in the Capitol.

He was not very religious.

As Edward Lengel, writer of the George Washington biography Inventing George Washington, told NPR in 2011, “He was a very moral man. He was a very virtuous man, and he watched carefully everything he did. But he certainly doesn’t fit into our conception of a Christian evangelical or somebody who read his Bible every day and lived by a particular Christian theology. We can say he was not an atheist on the one hand, but on the other hand, he was not a devout Christian.”

But what about the story of him kneeling in the snow at Valley Forge to pray? According to Lengel, “That’s a story that was made up by [early Washington biographer] Parson Weems.”

While he would attend church, Washington wouldn’t take communion. According to biographer Barry Schwartz, Washington’s “practice of Christianity was limited and superficial, because he was not himself a Christian. In the enlightened tradition of his day, he was a devout Deist—just as many of the clergymen who knew him suspected.”

He never chopped down that cherry tree.

Parson Weems, who wrote a myth-filled biography of Washington shortly after he died, made up the cherry tree story. The Mount Vernon Digital Encyclopedia identifies that book, The Life of Washington, as ” the point of origin for many long-held myths about Washington.”

He was an inveterate letter-writer.

We don’t have an exact number, but the best estimates seem to put the number of letters he penned somewhere between 18,000 and 20,000. If you wrote one letter a day, it would take you between 50 and 55 years to write that many.

Before becoming the father of the nation, he was a master surveyor.

Washington spent the early part of his career as a professional surveyor. One of the earliest maps he created was of his half-brother Lawrence Washington’s turnip garden. Over the course of his life, Washington created some 199 land surveys. Washington took this skill with him into his role as a military leader.

Before fighting the British, he fought for the British.

At the age of 21, Washington was sent to lead a British colonial force against the French in Ohio. He lost, and this helped spark the Seven Years War in North America.

He was a dog lover.

Washington kept and bred many hunting hounds. He is known as the “Father of the American Foxhound,” and kept more than 30 of the dogs. According to his journals, three of the hounds’ names were Drunkard, Tipler, and Tipsy.

He lost more battles than he won.

According to Joseph J. Ellis’s His Excellency: George Washington, our first president “lost more battles than any victorious general in modern history.”

He was lucky, but his coat wasn’t.

In the Braddock disaster of 1755, Washington’s troops were caught in the crossfire between British and Native American soldiers. Two horses were shot from under Washington, and his coat was pierced by four musket balls, none of which hit his actual body.

He didn’t have wooden teeth.

He did, however, have teeth problems. When he attended his first inauguration, he only had one tooth left in his head. Throughout the rest of his life, he had different sets of dentures. They were made of a variety of materials, including ivory, brass, horse teeth, and, yes, even human teeth, possibly from slaves.

George Washington is the only president to actually go into battle while serving as president.

But only if you don’t count Bill Pullman in Independence Day. According to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, “On September 19, 1794, George Washington became the only sitting U.S. president to personally lead troops in the field when he led the militia on a nearly month-long march west over the Allegheny Mountains to the town of Bedford.”

He fell in love with his best friend’s wife.

According to Joseph Ellis’s His Excellency, several letters show that before he married Martha, Washington was in love with Sally Fairfax, who was the wife of George William Fairfax.

In 1758, Washington wrote to Sally his famous “Votary to Love” letter:

“‘Tis true I profess myself a votary to Love. I acknowledge that a Lady is in the case; and, further, I confess that this lady is known to you. Yes, Madam, as well as she is to one who is too sensible of her Charms to deny the Power whose influence he feels and must ever submit to … You have drawn me, my dear Madam, or rather I have drawn myself, into an honest confession of a Simple Fact. Misconstrue not my meaning, ’tis obvious; doubt it not or expose it. The world has no business to know the object of my love, declared in this manner to you, when I want to conceal it. One thing above all things, in this World I wish to know, and only one person of your acquaintance can solve me that or guess my meaning—but adieu to this till happier times, if ever I shall see them.”

George Washington was widely criticized in the press in the later years of his presidency.

He was accused of having an overly monarchical style and was criticized for his declaration of neutrality in overseas conflicts. Thomas Jefferson was among the most critical of Washington in the press, and John Adams recalled that after the Jay Treaty, the presidential mansion “was surrounded by innumerable multitudes, from day-to-day buzzing, demanding war against England, cursing Washington.”

He owned a whiskey distillery.

He installed it at Mount Vernon in 1798 and it was profitable. According to Julian Niemcewicz, a Polish visitor to the estate, it distilled 12,000 gallons a year. In 1799, Washington wrote to his nephew: “Two hundred gallons of Whiskey will be ready this day for your call, and the sooner it is taken the better, as the demand for this article (in these parts) is brisk.”

SOURCE: MENTAL FLOSS

By Arthur Holland Michel | Feb 22, 2019

Rasputin: mystic, mad man, or none of the above? You decide with a fascinating look at his life and fabled death.

Most people have heard of Anastasia, the daughter of Czar Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna who, according to a trove of rumors, survived her family’s extrajudicial murder in July 1918. Though the rumors were later disproved, general fascination with Anastasia and the tragic story of Imperial Russia’s final sovereign family has garnered extensive attention, and even an animated movie, Anastasia, that was released in 1997. Though the movie wasn’t historically accurate, Rasputin, the minion-dispatching menace did exist. According to many eyewitness testimonies, the “man who wouldn’t die” was just as intriguing as the royal family itself.

The Early Years Of Rasputin’s Life

Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was born in Siberia, Russia in 1869. From an early age, villagers noticed something different about the young boy, and many claimed he had supernatural powers. As a teenager, Rasputin went to Verkhoture Monastery in Russia hoping to become a monk. He never completed the program, however, and instead married at age 19 to Praskovia Fyodorovna, with whom he had three children.

Within two short years following his 1906 arrival in Saint Petersburg, Rasputin was introduced to Czar Nicholas and his wife, both desperately seeking a cure for their son, Alexei, the heir to the throne. Historians now know that Alexei was a hemophiliac, though at the time the royal family chalked his health problems up to a weak constitution. Rasputin successfully “cured” Alexei, gaining the trust of Alexandra in the process. While some claim that Rasputin hypnotized the boy, others say it was dark magic, and still others wonder if the “mad monk” had any healing powers to begin with.

For the next five years or so, Rasputin held a large influence over Alexei’s treatment, however, Rasputin’s presence in the palace and his time spent with Alexandra prompted a number of harsh critiques on the royal family’s credibility. Rasputin’s lewd, unruly behavior and his insistence that he was the czarina’s adviser proved a bone of contention between the royal family and Russian constituents. Alexandra often defended Rasputin from the many advisers and officers who sought his removal from the royal palace as she claimed that he was the only one who could save her son.

World War I, prompting Nicholas to head to war and leave Alexandra in charge of domestic affairs. During this time, many sought to remove Rasputin from the family’s presence. They called him a witchdoctor, and thought he was using black magic to poison Alexandra’s mind. In reality, though, Rasputin had little influence in political matters.

Attempts On Rasputin’s Life

Reportedly, Rasputin’s first assassination attempt occurred in 1914, when the prostitute Khioniya Guseva stabbed him in the gut with a dagger in what was thought to be a mortal wound. Eyewitnesses claim that as Rasputin’s entrails fell from his stomach Guseva shouted, “I’ve killed the antichrist.” Though Rasputin survived the attack, his demeanor changed permanently.

In 1916, the country’s distaste for Rasputin hit an all-time high, and a group of conspirators including Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich and Prince Felix Yusupov set out to kill him. Using Yusupov’s wife to lure Rasputin to their home, the conspirators fed Rasputin wine and cakes laced with cyanide. Though it was reportedly enough poison to kill five men, Rasputin was unaffected.

Unperturbed, the conspirators continued their attack by beating him repeatedly, then shooting him in the back and causing him to fall to the floor. Yet Rasputin, much like an antibiotic-resistant pathogen, still wasn’t dead. According to some, Rasputin jumped up violently, only to be shot several more times. The men then wrapped the body in a sheet or carpet and tossed him into the Neva River.

Rasputin’s body was pulled from the water three days later. Though autopsy reports differ, most attest that he was still alive when thrown into the water and that from the positioning of his body, he had tried to break free before either drowning or dying from hypothermia. The exact cause of death has been debated for decades.

Intriguingly, before Rasputin died, he told the Czar, “If I am killed by common men, you and your children will rule Russia for centuries to come; if I am killed by one of your stock, you and your family will be killed by the Russian people!”

Regardless of your thoughts regarding Rasputin’s alleged mysticism, his harsh words came true less than two years later, when the entire family was brought to a basement and murdered.

SOURCE: Allthatsinteresting

Kiri Picone

On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York explodes in midair over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew members aboard, as well as 11 Lockerbie residents on the ground. A bomb hidden inside an audio cassette player detonated in the cargo area when the plane was at an altitude of 31,000 feet. The disaster, which became the subject of Britain’s largest criminal investigation, was believed to be an attack against the United States. One hundred eighty-nine of the victims were American.

Islamic terrorists were accused of planting the bomb on the plane while it was at the airport in Frankfurt, Germany. Authorities suspected the attack was in retaliation for either the 1986 U.S. air strikes against Libya, in which leader Muammar al-Qaddafi’s young daughter was killed along with dozens of other people, or a 1988 incident, in which the U.S. mistakenly shot down an Iran Air commercial flight over the Persian Gulf, killing 290 people.

Sixteen days before the explosion over Lockerbie, the U.S. embassy in Helsinki, Finland, received a call warning that a bomb would be placed on a Pan Am flight out of Frankfurt. There is controversy over how seriously the U.S. took the threat and whether travelers should have been alerted, but officials later said that the connection between the call and the bomb was coincidental.

In 1991, following a joint investigation by the British authorities and the F.B.I., Libyan intelligence agents Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah were indicted for murder; however, Libya refused to hand over the suspects to the U.S. Finally, in 1999, in an effort to ease United Nations sanctions against his country, Qaddafi agreed to turn over the two men to Scotland for trial in the Netherlands using Scottish law and prosecutors. In early 2001, al-Megrahi was convicted and sentenced to life in prison and Fhimah was acquitted. Over the U.S. government’s objections, Al-Megrahi was freed and returned to Libya in August 2009 after doctors determined that he had only months to live. In December 2020, reports surfaced that the U.S. Justice Department would unseal criminal charges against another suspect in the bombing, Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud. 

In 2003, Libya accepted responsibility for the bombing, but didn’t express remorse. The U.N. and U.S. lifted sanctions against Libya and Libya agreed to pay each victim’s family approximately $8 million in restitution. In 2004, Libya’s prime minister said that the deal was the “price for peace,” implying that his country only took responsibility to get the sanctions lifted, a statement that infuriated the victims’ families. Pan Am Airlines, which went bankrupt three years after the bombing, sued Libya and later received a $30 million settlement.

In December 2022, the U.S. Justice Department announced Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud was arrested by the FBI for his suspected role in the bombing. 

SOURCE: HISTORY.COM

Located on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, Pearl Harbor is best known as the site of the Japanese military strike that propelled the United States into World War II. But Pearl Harbor’s contributions to history didn’t begin—or end—on what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called “a date which will live in infamy,” December 7, 1941. From epic rock concerts to astronaut visits, the storied lagoon has seen quite a lot. Here are 10 things you might not know about it.

Pearl Harbor’s Hawaiian name is Wai Momi.

Unfortunately, overharvesting, pollution, and human-induced sediment changes decimated the harbor’s native oyster population by the end of the 19th century. But in February 2019, the U.S. Navy announced that it was teaming up with the University of Hawaiʻi’s Pacific Aquaculture and Coastal Resources Center and O’ahu Waterkeeper to reintroduce two native bivalve species: The Hawaiian oyster and the black-lip pearl oyster. Since they filter out pollutants, their presence may help clear the water in the Pearl Harbor area.

A shark goddess was said to live in Pearl Harbor.

According to Hawaiian legend, Kaʻahupahau was a former human who had transformed into a shark. It was said that she lived with her brother (or son) in the caves beneath Pearl Harbor. Together, the pair defended the scenic lagoon and the Indigenous people who fished there. In 1902, the entrance channel was artificially widened so large American ships could pass through. (Hawaii wouldn’t become a state until 1959, but it was annexed in 1898.) Locals became concerned that the project would upset Kaʻahupahau. When a newly finished dock collapsed in 1913, it was said to be the irate deity’s work. Others speculated that damage to the harbor caused Kaʻahupahau to leave—and she took the oysters with her.

Pearl Harbor’s resident naval station was established in 1908.

In 1887, 11 years before Hawaii’s annexation, the United States was given the exclusive right to set up a naval base in Pearl Harbor. But the federal government didn’t formally establish one there until 1908. Decades later, in 1940, that naval station became the main base of operations for what would soon become the U.S. Pacific Fleet, where it was intended to curb Japanese expansionism. The fleet’s relocation to Oahu set the stage for the devastating surprise attack.

The December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor came in two waves.

Before the assault on Pearl Harbor, Japan stationed six of its Imperial Navy’s aircraft carriers, which carried 414 planes in total, at a pre-chosen locale 230 miles north of Oahu. The ships maintained radio silence to keep their movements a secret. On December 7, 1941, at 6 a.m., the first wave of Japanese planes took to the air, and just before 8 a.m., they began an all-out assault on the Hawaiian base. Caught unaware, the American forces were pummeled by bombs and torpedoes.

A second wave arrived on the scene at about 8:50 a.m. Unlike its predecessor, this one didn’t include any torpedo planes and it inflicted less damage. Still, by the time Japan’s second wave pilots returned to their carriers at 9:55 a.m., the U.S. had lost 188 airplanes while 159 more sustained damages. Some 21 American ships were sunk or damaged. And then there was the human cost: 2403 Americans died in the attack, and an estimated 1178 others were injured.

Thirty-eight sets of brothers were on the doomed USS Arizona.

Nearly all the American vessels that were hit during the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack were later repaired, but the USS Arizona wasn’t so lucky. The 608-foot Pennsylvania-class battleship went under after an ammunition magazine exploded. Some 1177 marines and sailors perished aboard the Arizona. Altogether, there were 38 sets of brothers, representing a total of 79 men, on the battleship at the time. Within that group, 63 individual men were killed.

Pearl Harbor was rocked by mysterious explosions in 1944.

On May 21, 1944, a tank landing ship (or Landing Ship, Tank) in the lagoon’s West Loch suddenly burst into flame. Next came a string of explosions that killed 163 people, damaged more than 20 buildings, and took out a grand total of six LSTs. The disaster’s cause has never been verified, but it has been theorized that someone may have accidentally set the whole thing off by dropping an explosive mortar shell.

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida visited Pearl Harbor in 1951.

By all accounts, the visit was a muted affair. Yoshida was returning from a diplomatic visit to San Francisco when he opted to spend a little time in Hawaii. On September 12, 1951, the prime minister briefly met up with Arthur Radford, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, at Pearl Harbor. Three other Japanese prime ministers have since visited the lagoon. Ichiro Hatoyama dropped by in 1956; Nobusuke Kishi made the trip in 1957; and Shinzo Abe gave a speech there (with Barack Obama by his side) in 2016.

Elvis Presley helped raise money for the USS Arizona memorial fund.

In 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized the building of a USS Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor. Three years later, the king of rock ‘n roll put on a benefit concert to raise money for the project. Presley sang “Hound Dog,” “Heartbreak Hotel,” and 13 other classic songs before a roaring crowd of around 5000 fans in Pearl Harbor’s Bloch Arena. The big event raked in over $64,000 and created public interest in the memorial—which was officially dedicated in 1962.

After returning to Earth, the Apollo 11 crew made a pit stop in Pearl Harbor.

Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and Michael Collins splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24, 1969. Due to concerns about lunar diseases, the astronauts were confined to a quarantine trailer—which was ferried to Pearl Harbor aboard the USS Hornet. The contraption was later transported to Houston, Texas, with all three space travelers still inside.

The naval base at Pearl Harbor merged with another military property in 2010.

Prior to 2010, Pearl Harbor’s resident naval base and the neighboring Hickam Air Force Base were two separate properties. But that year, they were combined into the Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. According to its website, the base “provides services comparable to a large city to a population of active duty from all services, guard, reserve, family members and retirees.”

A version of this story originally ran in 2019; it has been updated for 2021.

SOURCE: MENTAL FLOSS

Marie Antoinette was born November 2, 1755.  This article from Mental Floss details 10 interesting facts you may not have known about her.

Born Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna, Archduchess of Austria, the woman known as Marie Antoinette became Queen of France and Navarre on May 10, 1774. Her marriage to Louis-Auguste was designed to create peace between Austria and France after the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756 and the onset of the Seven Years’ War. She survived shifting political sands of palace intrigue and upheaval between European countries but couldn’t survive the revolution boiling over in her own adopted nation. Here are 10 facts about a woman we love to make up myths about.

Marie Antoinette was only 14 years old when she married the future Louis XVI.

Marie Antoinette became a queen as a pawn, a child bride at 14 paired with a 15-year-old Dauphin to seal the union between two countries that had previously been at odds. The marriage took place by proxy on April 19, 1770 in Vienna, with Marie Antoinette’s brother standing in for the groom; a ceremonial wedding occurred May 16 at the Palace of Versailles.

Marie Antoinette wanted to ride horses but rode donkeys instead.

Looking to connect with her hunting enthusiast husband, Marie Antoinette sought to learn horseback riding, but was told (particularly by her escort to France, the Count of Mercy-Argenteau) that it was far too dangerous. Fortunately, riding donkeys was deemed acceptable, so the court sought calm, pleasant donkeys for Marie Antoinette to ride. She grew so enamored of her donkey-accompanied treks into the woods that she would host processions into the forest as often as three times a week with onlookers gathered for the spectacle.

Marie Antoinette gave generously to others.

The flattened historical view of Marie Antoinette as a puff-headed monster who loathed the poor obscures her generally kind, giving nature. She founded a home for unwed mothers, visited and gave food to poor families, and, during the 1787 famine, sold off the royal flatware to buy grain for those in need. Her generosity wasn’t solely institutional, either. One story shows her jumping quickly to the aid of a vintner who was hit by her carriage, paying for his medical care, and supporting the family until he was able to work again.

Marie Antoinette’s spending wasn’t the main cause of the French Revolution

It’s easy to see Marie Antoinette and all of Louis XVI’s court as profoundly out of touch with the people of 18th century France because they continued a lavish tradition of royalty in the face of crushing debt and rampant squalor. However, the idea that Marie Antoinette’s expensive whims were to blame for the country’s economic woes is a myth.

When the couple ascended to the throne, the country was already in deep trouble financially, and Louis XVI’s monetary policies failed while he sent massive amounts to support the American Revolution. Propaganda of the time that was typically aimed at kingly mistresses was aimed at Marie Antoinette (since Louis XVI had no mistresses), and populist presses depicted her as being even more extravagant than she was.

Marie Antoinette never said “let them eat cake.”

Anti-royal propaganda of the era was so effective that we still believe it to this day, including the idea that Marie Antoinette’s response to the plight of the French not being able to afford bread was “Let them eat cake.” The next time a friend brings that up at a party (happens all the time, right?) you can bet all the money in your pocket that it’s not true. Or, at least, that there’s no record of her having ever said it. On the other hand, stories of oblivious royals suggesting richer pastries when bread’s not available date back to the 16th century, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau told a similar story about “a great princess” in Confessions, but it’s doubtful he was referring to the then-teenaged Marie Antionette.

Marie Antoinette had a peasant farmyard built at Versailles.

Marie Antoinette can’t escape all accusations of extravagance, though. Like other royals, she had expensive tastes, but her construction of a replica of a peasant farmyard where she and her friends could dress up like shepherdesses and play at being poor farmhands was beyond the pale. Built in 1783, Le Petit Hameau (“The Little Hamlet”) looked like a real farm except the farmhouse interior’s opulence was fit for a Queen.

Marie Antoinette loved children.

Despite not consummating their marriage until seven years in, Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI eventually had four children: Marie Thérèse in 1778, the Dauphin Louis Joseph in 1781, Louis Charles in 1785, and Sophie in 1786. Sophie died before her first birthday, and Louis Joseph died at age 7 (probably from tuberculosis), but Marie Antoinette also adopted several children. They included the daughter of a maid who died, and the three children of an usher following his death. When some loyalists attempted to rescue her from the Revolutionary forces, she responded that she “could not have any pleasure in the world” if she abandoned her children.

Marie Antoinette could have been rescued from execution.

After Louis XVI was executed, Marie Antoinette—then called Widow Capet and prisoner 280—was imprisoned in the Conciergerie. Her friend Alexandre Gonsse de Rougeville visited her wearing two carnations, one of which concealed a note promising her bribe money to help her escape. He dropped it while in her cell and either it was picked up by the guards, or Marie Antoinette read it and scribbled an affirmative response that was then read by the guards. On the night of the attempted escape, the guards were bribed and Marie Antoinette was brought down to meet her rescuers, but one of the guards foiled their plan despite already having pocketed the bribe.

Marie Antoinette apologized to her executioner.

For someone who lived such an extraordinary, lavish life, Marie Antoinette’s final words were profoundly humble. On her way to the guillotine, the very instrument of death that was used to kill her husband 10 months prior, she accidentally stepped on the executioner’s foot and said, “Pardon me, sir. I meant not to do it.”

Marie Antoinette was buried in an unmarked grave, but didn’t stay there.

After her execution at 12:15 p.m. on October 16, 1793, Marie Antoinette’s body was dropped into a mass grave in the Madeleine cemetery, which was closed the following year because it had reached capacity. During the Bourbon Restoration following the fall of Napoleon, Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI’s bodies were exhumed on January 18, 1815, and given a royal burial at the Basilica of St. Denis just a few days later. Their remains are still there, but the Expiatory Chapel dedicated to them was designed in 1816 on the site at the Madeleine cemetery where they’d previously been unceremoniously interred.

SOURCE: MENTAL FLOSS

8 Things You Didn’t Know About the Donner Party

The specter of cannibalism overshadows many other fascinating facts about the emigrants.

In May 1846, the last wagon train of the season left Independence, Missouri for the Mexican territory of Alta California. Led by two men from Springfield, Illinois—farmer George Donner and furniture manufacturer James F. Reed—the Donner Party followed the well-established California Trail as far as the Little Sandy River in Wyoming. It’s there that they made the fateful decision to take a new, more direct route over the Wasatch Mountains and across the Great Salt Lake Desert. The determination was made despite the warnings from accomplished mountain man James Clyman.

The Donner Party followed a path set out for them by adventurer and guidebook author Lansford Hastings. The Hastings Cutoff was meant to save time by shortening the journey more than 300 miles. Instead, the rugged terrain, lack of natural water sources, and extreme weather conditions proved disastrous for the pioneers. The Donner Party was delayed by three weeks, all while much of their cattle was stolen or killed in raids by Paiute Indians. It wasn’t until early November that they finally began to climb the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Despite multiple setbacks and mistakes, the group arrived at Sutter’s Fort, only 90 miles from their final destination. If they’d made it over the pass and out of the mountains, the Donner Party might have been lost in the pages of history. They would have just been one of the hundreds of wagon trains in the first wave of westward migration. Instead, an early snowfall trapped 81 men, women, and children in makeshift tents and cabins at Truckee Lake and in the Alder Creek Valley some seven miles east.

Conditions took a grim and immediate turn. Once they ate the few remaining oxen and horses, the snowbound travelers relied on mice, tree bark, pine cones, and strips of leather for food. They also boiled ox hides to make a foul smelling, glue-like substance.

In mid-December, a group of 15 people that would later be known as the “Forlorn Hope” left the Truckee Lake camp to find help. Weak with hunger and carrying few provisions, they were caught in the open by a blizzard. They wandered lost and confused in the mountains for more than a month. Eight members of the troop died, but two men and five women eventually made it to a small farming community on the Bear River.

It took four rescue attempts to bring the last surviving member of the Donner Party to safety in April 1847. Unfortunately, nearly half of the emigrants had perished during one of the most brutal winters on record. Many of those who lived admitted that some members of the party had to resort to eating the dead, and the gruesome specter of cannibalism has hung over the episode ever since. But this morbid detail has obscured some of the most intriguing facts about this remarkable chapter in American history.

 Abraham Lincoln was almost a member of the Donner Party.

As a young lawyer in Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln often helped his friend James F. Reed in business matters. The two had been messmates during the Blackhawk War, and Lincoln counseled Reed through bankruptcy proceedings shortly before the latter left for California. According to one historian, Lincoln considered joining the Donner Party, but his wife Mary Todd was strongly opposed to the idea. American history might look very different if the future president and his family had made the ill-fated voyage. 

An intercepted letter may have sealed the Donner Party’s fate.

Most historians agree that the Donner Party’s fatal mistake was taking the Hastings Cutoff. It put them almost a month behind schedule and severely depleted their resources before the critical last stage of their journey. But the emigrants might have returned to the main trail if they’d received a letter left for them at the southwestern Wyoming trading post of mountain man Jim Bridger.

The letter was written by journalist Edwin Bryant and addressed to James F. Reed. It warned that the Hastings Cutoff was too rough for the Donner Party’s wagons. But as the trading post stood to profit enormously if the new route proved popular, Reed never received the letter. Both Reed and Bryant later suspected that Bridger had concealed it in order to improve his business prospects.

At least four people were deliberately killed during the trip.

One: Tensions were running high well before the Donner Party was trapped. Around the time they rejoined the California Trail near modern-day Elko, Nevada, a fight broke out between two teamsters over tangled wagons. When James F. Reed intervened, he was whipped for his efforts. He pulled a knife in self-defense, killing his attacker, John Snyder.

Two: Shortly afterwards, a German immigrant named Karl Wolfinger stopped to cache one of his wagons and never rejoined the wagon train. Two men who went with him claimed that he had been killed by Paiute raiders. Months later, as one of the men was starving to death, he confessed to murdering Wolfinger for his gold.

Three and Four: In December 1846, the members of the Forlorn Hope were forced to resort to cannibalism to survive their brutal ordeal. First, they consumed the flesh of five emigrants who had died from starvation and exposure. However, the group had joined with two Miwok men who had refused to eat the dead party members. Still starving, the Forlorn Hope group shot and killed the two outsiders before eating their bodies.

Five: In April 1847, Lewis Keseberg was the last survivor to be rescued. In his cabin he had pistols, jewelry, and gold belonging to George Donner. He also had a pot of human flesh.

Keseberg claimed that George’s wife, Tamsen, had given him the valuables for safekeeping shortly before she died. However, his rescuers accused him of murder and nearly lynched him. For the rest of his life, a cloud of suspicion hung over Keseberg. Rumors circulated that he preferred human flesh to beef, and that he had once claimed that Tamsen Donner’s liver was the “sweetest morsel” he’d ever tasted.

The Mexican-American War delayed rescue efforts for the Donner Party.

After James Reed killed a man in self-defense, he was banished from the wagon train. Forced to leave his wife and four children behind, he rode ahead on horseback. He made it down the western slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in late October and organized a party to bring food and supplies to the emigrants. Unfortunately, he was turned back by deep snow.

At this point, most of the able-bodied men in Alta California were caught up in the Mexican-American War. Reed traveled to San Jose to try to raise another rescue party, but volunteers were hard to find. Beyond that, communication lines were down and roads throughout the region were blocked. It wasn’t until February 1847 that he was able to round up enough men and provisions to head back into the mountains. 

Most of the snowbound emigrants were children.

One of the saddest facts of the Donner Party’s story is that more than half of the 81 people trapped in the camps were younger than 18 years old. Six of them were infants. Mothers, fathers, and older siblings were forced to make terrible choices to protect their youngest family members.

In the most famous case, Margaret Reed made the agonizing decision to leave behind two of her four children when they proved too weak to make it down the mountain with the first rescue team. Eight-year-old Patty said, “Well, mother, if you never see me again, do the best you can.”

Thankfully, the second relief effort, led by Patty’s father James Reed, arrived shortly thereafter. All four Reed children were lucky enough to survive. The doll that Patty brought with her to California is currently on display at the Emigrant Trail Museum at Donner Memorial State Park in Truckee.

One determined savior went through a grueling process to rescue children.

John Stark was a stout and sturdy settler from California who went along with the third relief party in the March of 1847. Accompanied by two other rescuers, he found a small group of emigrants who had been left behind in the mountains by the last relief effort. Two of these emigrants were adults, while the other nine had been children.

While his fellow rescuers each grabbed a single child, Stark wasn’t going to leave anyone behind again. As the children were too weak to walk, Stark would haul up two children in his arms and trek a few yards before returning for the next pair. He traveled back and forth again and again under the weight of multiple children and his already heavy provisions. He did this heroic and exhausting task until he led the group all the way back to safety.

There were far more male casualties than female in the Donner Party.

Of the 35 members of the Donner Party who perished in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, 25 were male and 10 were female. The discrepancy can be attributed to numerous factors. First of all, women generally have higher levels of stored body fat and lower metabolism rates. The men were also in a weakened physical condition after performing backbreaking labor during the trek along the Hastings Cutoff.

It should also be noted that the mothers and wives of the Donner Party fought ferociously to protect their families. In one particular act of incredible sacrifice, George Donner’s wife Tamsen sent her children off with rescuers while she refused to leave her dying husband’s side.

Nearly all of the solo travelers perished.

The Donner Party was made up of 12 families and 21 individuals. Only six of the solo travelers—many of whom worked for the families—are known to have survived the frozen pass. Two families escaped the adventure fully unscathed, while the other 10 lost a combined 23 loved ones. Although that number is much higher, only 25% of the members who were a part of a family on the trail were lost, while over 70% of those on their own were killed by cold, starvation, or violence.

SOURCE: history

By Dave Adams | Updated Feb 11, 2020 | Published Jan 17, 2019