Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into History
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Here’s what Owens had to say when he was interviewed on the matter a few years later, “When I passed the Chancellor, he arose, waved his hand at me, and I waved back at him.”
It wasn’t until 1939 that a British monarch, George VI, visited either Canada or the U.S.
THE UNFORGIVABLE SNUB
The real snub came on Jesse’s return to the United States. His own president, Franklin Roosevelt, refused a face-to-face meeting with him and did not congratulate him in any way, by letter or phone call, on his outstanding accomplishment. It’s also interesting to note that, back in Hitler’s Germany, Jesse could sit wherever he wanted to on a bus.
P.S. THE U.S. RELAY SCANDAL
Sports announcer Marty Glickman was at the Games that year—as a participant. He was, by all accounts, the fastest man on the U.S. relay team. The day before the big event, 18-year-old Marty and the other runners were called in for a team meeting. Their coach, Dean Cromwell, had an announcement: Marty wouldn’t be running; his replacement was wonderboy Jesse Owens.
Glickman’s fellow athlete Sam Stoller was also bumped, in favor of Ralph Metcalfe. No reason was given for the unprecedented substitution. But everyone understood. Glickman and Stoller were Jewish. The U.S. Olympic Committee was afraid a loss to a couple of Jewish guys would compound the damage that Jesse and the other black athletes had already caused to Germany’s Aryan image of itself.
Jesse Owens protested, “I’ve won the three gold medals I set out to win. I’ve had it. I’m tired. Let Marty and Sam run. They deserve it.” Owens was informed that he would do as he was told. And so the relay event was run without Glickman and Stoller. The U.S. team won by nearly 14 meters.
BITTER VICTORY
But no one on the U.S. team was celebrating. In the 100-year history of the modern Olympic Games no other fit American athlete has been pulled from an event. And until the day he died, Marty Glickman had a bitter taste in his mouth—a bitterness caused, not by Adolf Hitler or Germany, but by his own American Olympic Committee.
Themistocles was asked whether he would rather be Achilles or Homer, to which he responded, “Which would you rather be—a conqueror in the Olympic games, or the crier that proclaims who are conquerors?”—Plutarch
There were actually two Saint Valentines, both of whom were martyred in Rome.
IT’S A GAS
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Using a little ingenuity and a lot of hot air, 18th-century inventors really got off the ground.
In the 18th century inventors began to attach something heavy to a large amount of something lighter than normal air—hot air for example. Hot air balloons might have been invented as far back as 1709, by a Brazilian priest and inventor named Bartolomeu Lourenço de Gusmão. But it was closer to the end of that century before human beings began to fly, or at least to float through the air. In 1782, brothers Joseph and Étienne Montgolfier experimented with hot-air balloons in France. By 1783, they were ready to send up passengers—a rooster, a duck, and a sheep! Everything went well, except for a minor injury to the rooster when the sheep kicked it. Next, the Montgolfier brothers sent up a man in a balloon that was tethered—attached to a line that remained firmly anchored on the ground.
Then in November 1783, Jean Francois Piulatre de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlandes went aloft, cut their balloon loose, and sailed over Paris at about 3,000 feet. Burning wool and straw to maintain a supply of hot air, they traveled for about 25 minutes and covered 5.5 miles. Delighted Parisians went into a frenzy over balloons. In fact, balloon mania spread quickly and, all over Europe, people stitched up balloons and flew into the air.
WHAT’S THE USE?
In December 1783, inventor J. A. C. Charles flew a gas-filled balloon for two hours, covering 27 miles. The aging American philosopher-statesman (and inventor) Benjamin Franklin was in Paris at the time and called the flight “a most beautiful spectacle.” Not everybody understood what all the fuss was about. Someone asked Franklin what those floating things could possibly be used for. Franklin replied, “What use is a newborn baby?” But a use was soon found, in 1793 the first airmail letter was sent from London to Paris by balloon—the letter was addressed to B. Franklin.
Another American patriot, President Abraham Lincoln, got interested in balloons on June 17, 1861, when he received a telegraph message from high up in the air. A balloon enthusiast named Thaddeus Lowe had taken several representatives of the American Telegraph Company up over Washington, D.C., in a tethered balloon. They ran a wire down the tether and sent the first air-to-land telegram. It was forwarded to Lincoln.
Henry VIII is credited with writing the song “Greensleeves.”
HIGH SPYS
That night Lowe’s balloon was tethered on the White House lawn while Lincoln asked about military possibilities. During the war, Lowe gave valuable information to Union troops. Tethered balloons provided a high platform from which to spy on the enemy. As a psychological benefit, the balloons looked scary as they lurked above the battle zone. After trying unsuccessfully to shoot down Union balloons, the Confederacy decided they needed some of their own. They gave war that graceful Southern touch with silk balloon bags. This gave rise to the tale that Southern belles had donated their best dresses to the air-war effort.
GOT GAS?
Inventors kept working on balloons. Heated air could get a balloon up, but the air cooled when the fuel ran out—and the balloon came down wherever it happened to be. Keeping a fire going in the air was complicated and dangerous. Instead of warmed air, hydrogen gas—the lightest of the elements—worked well, though it was very flammable. Hydrogen was produced when a metal was dissolved in an acid. Sometimes other gases were used, such as the coal gas used for lighting in some towns.
FOR THE BIRDS
Unfortunately balloons still couldn’t be steered. They could be made to go up by dropping ballast and down by letting out gas, but they had no controls for side-to-side motion or for speed. Off its tether, a balloon was at the mercy of the winds, and the “pilot” was just a passenger, which could quickly become an unhealthy situation. Inventors worked on devices to get the craft to go where the pilot wanted. They tried adding oars, sails, wings, parachutes, even propellers, but nothing worked. Someone suggested harnessing a team of vultures, but that didn’t seem like a good idea. With limited success, the French tried a steam engine, human muscle power, and a small electric motor. In the late 1880s, Gottlieb Daimler’s new lightweight gasoline engine changed everything. By the beginning of World War I, balloons were using motors, propellers and rudders, and venturing farther than ever before.
Cincinnati was named for a Roman dictator who quit the job after 16 days.
CORTÉS AND THE FEATHERED SERPENT
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The highly aggressive Hernan Cortés owes a huge debt to an ancient Aztec god. Either that, or he was an Aztec god.
THE FEATHERED SERPENT
In what is now Mexico, the Feathered Serpent god was widely worshipped from about 300 A.D. The Aztecs called him by the virtually unpronounceable “Quetzalcoatl.” He was the god of self-sacrifice, wisdom, science, and the father of the human race. A pretty important deity, we’d say. He had a dark side, too, which makes what happened in this story not surprising, especially if you’re an Aztec.
THE MAKING OF A LEGEND
The ancient stories about him said that he had light skin, red hair, and light eyes. According to legend, he was a kind and thoughtful ruler who forbade the ritual sacrifice of living things, human or animal. But he had to leave his people. Why? The stories differ: he either left in disgrace, or was forced out. But one thing the stories agree on is that Quetzalcoatl promised to return someday to reclaim his throne and help his people again.
A thousand years later, a fair-skinned man with red hair and light eyes landed in the Aztec world—coincidentally on their calendar day of Quetzalcoatl’s birth. His name was Hernan Cortés, a young Spanish nobleman-turned-explorer. With him, he had 11 ships, about 600 men, and 16 horses
. Plenty enough paraphernalia to impress anybody at the time.
OF KINGS AND SLAVES
Montezuma—you remember him—was the Aztecs’ head honcho. He was sure that the Feathered Serpent had returned, just as the ancient prophecy had said. Montezuma greeted Cortés as a god. Cortés thought this was a pretty nice greeting and entered the Aztec capital peacefully.
Cortés had been given a slave in Tabasco. The Spanish called her Doña Marina (in fact, she’d been a princess before she became a slave), and she acted as Cortés’s handy-dandy interpreter, aide, and sometimes chief negotiator. She was also the mother of his son, who is thought of as the first Mexican. Her real name was Malinche; an inconvenient stepchild in her aristocratic family, she had been secretly sold to the Mayans. The Aztecs Cortés dealt with saw her as a traitor, and she is still seen that way in Mexico even though her negotiating skills probably saved Aztec lives.
Although she couldn’t vote, feminist Victoria Woodhull ran for U.S. president in 1872.
THEY CAN’T ALL BE GOLDEN
The amazing Tenochtitlan stood on an island in an artificial lake, with causeways connecting it to the other shore. The population was then more than 150,000 (some estimate 300,000) and the city was laid out on a grid that covered almost five sqare miles. At the center were temples, schools, priests’ quarters, courts for ball games, sculptures, and Montezuma’s palace. Luxury items included chocolate, gemstones, jaguar skins, and gold. Lots of gold.
It was either the chocolate or the gold, but Cortés was impressed enough to show his true hand: he took Montezuma hostage. This, unsurprisingly, led to a war. Cortés lost no time making use of potential advantages. For example, the ruling Aztec empire had serious internal problems, including a lot of unwilling subjects who resented being forced to pay tribute. Some volunteered to join Cortés right away. By the end, 200,000 of them fought on his side.
ADVANTAGE, CONQUISTADORS
The Spaniards had some other important things in their favor. Although they didn’t have many horses, the animals were new and frightening to the Aztecs. Cortés and his men also had European weapons such as crossbows, muskets, and steel swords. Even disease turned out to be an advantage for the Spaniards. During the years of battle, smallpox, measles, and other European diseases devastated the native population. The Aztecs, diminished by disease as well as warfare, were ultimately defeated.
SO?
Was Cortés the human personification of the dark side of the Feathered Serpent? If so, the ancient prophecy about the return of Quetzalcoatl, in fact, led to the destruction of the Aztec empire. Pretty creepy.
Because of harsh terrain and a lack of pack animals, no Native American nation used the wheel.
BEST HIDEOUSLY INBRED ROYAL FAMILY: THE HAPSBURGS
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And here you thought inbreeding was just a low-rent sort of activity. In fact, it’s the sport of kings.
All your royal families of Europe have participated in a program of inbreeding so unwise that it would disgust Jerry Springer’s booker. They paid for it, of course (how many royal families are left any more?), but not before polluting their bloodlines to an intolerable degree. Any little girl who dreams of marrying a handsome prince on a white steed is advised to marry the horse instead. The horse probably has better DNA.
THE ROYAL TREATMENT
You’d think that the royal families of Europe would have figured out that marrying your cousin was not the way to go. At the very least, when you’d go to a royal function and everyone was married to a relative, you’d clue in that something was amiss. But royalty are different from you and me, and not just because all their children were still drooling well into the teenage years. Royalty wasn’t just about kings and queens, it was about families and dynasties—single families ruling multiple countries. Or in the case of the Hapsburgs, most of the continent. You can’t let just anyone marry into that sort of thing. There had to be standards, genetically haphazard as they might be.
ENTER THE HAPSBURGS
The Hapsburgs, based in Austria, carried this caution to the extreme, even for the royal families of Europe. Take the case of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. (You may remember him as the nominal cause of World War I, when the poor fellow was assassinated in Sarajevo by a Serbian nationalist. What, you don’t? Ah, the glories of our educational system.)
Before joining Canada, Newfoundland was technically an independent country.
THE DUKE AND THE DUCHESS
Long before his assassination, Franz fell in love with Sophie von Chotkova und Wognin, who was a duchess of Hohenburg. For most men, linking up with a duchess of Hohenburg would probably be a step up in the grand scheme of things, certainly something to brag about at the family reunion at the municipal park. (“You married a doctor? How nice. I married nobility. Look, here come our dukelings now.”)
WHAT HE DID FOR LOVE
Franz’s family, on the other hand, was horrified. Franz was an heir to the Austrian-Hungarian empire! He couldn’t marry any shameless duchess who just happened to bat her hereditary lands at him! It was a scandal! Franz eventually married Sophie, but he was made to renounce all claims of rank for their offspring (i.e., no little emperors for Franz and Sophie). As a final insult, Sophie, the hussy, was not allowed to ride in the same car as her husband during affairs of state.
In retrospect, this may not have been such a bad idea; Sophie was in the same car as Franz in Sarajevo (presumably not a state function) and she got assassinated right along with him. But at the time, it probably just came across as mean.
TOMORROW, THE WORLD
No, in the grand scheme of things, the Hapsburgs figured it was better to marry a Hapsburg when you could (and one of those degenerate French or Italian Bourbons if you couldn’t). On a territorial level, this worked like a charm; at the height of the Hapsburg influence, the family ruled the Holy Roman Empire and the Iberian Peninsula (that’s Portugal and Spain), and had good and serious claims on a large portion of what is now France.
THE SECRET OF THEIR SUCCESS
The family had initially achieved much of this, interestingly enough, by marrying people who were not blood relatives; after a particularly profitable spate of marriages arranged by the family in the late 15th century, it was said of the Hapsburgs, Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube (“Let others wage wars: you, fortunate Austria, marry”). Once lands were assimilated, of course, it was first cousins all the way.
Until the Civil War, Lincoln wanted to contain slavery, not abolish it.
THOSE LIPS, THOSE. . . EARS?
In the short run, the interbreeding caused some noticeable but essentially minor physical distinctions: the famed “Hapsburg lip,” in which a full lower lip jutted out in front of a somewhat less lavish upper lip. This distinction was on a par with other royal families, who had (and have) their own physical distinctions. The Bourbons, for one, had a distinctive nose (it was huge), while today, the English House of Windsor (i.e., the royal family) is known for its Dumbo-like ears. Proof that there were worse things than to have uneven lips.
MARRIED, CARRIED TO EXTREMES
Here’s the thing, though. It’s one thing to marry your cousin. Not the smartest thing you can do, but so long as you move to another state and don’t talk much about your family, you can get away with it. But if you marry a cousin, who was him- or herself the product of cousins, who were themselves products of cousins, and so on and so forth—and you’re all in the same family—well, you don’t have to be a geneticist to see what’s coming. Alas for the Hapsburgs, what was coming was Charles II, king of Spain from 1665 through 1700.
THE END OF THE LINE
With Charles, the question was not what was wrong with him, but what wasn’t wrong. To begin with, thanks to all that cousin cuddling, the Hapsburg lip stopped being a distinctive facial characteristic and became a jaw deformity so profound that Chuck couldn’t chew his own food. This might depress a person of normal intelligence, but alas! Charles was also mentally disabled. Anyway,
it wasn’t the most depressing deformity Charles had; let’s just say that generations of inbreeding kept Charles from breeding new generations. It was bad enough to have a sick freak ruling Spain; it was even worse that there were no more sick freaks coming.
GOODBYE, CHARLIE
For lack of a better idea, Charles willed his possessions to a relative. Unfortunately, it was a relative who was also a Bourbon. Enter the War of Spanish Succession, at the end of which Spain would lose most of its European holdings (such as the Netherlands), and the Hapsburgs would begin their long decline, which would end with the first World War and a final dismemberment of the family’s territorial holdings.