Eventually Galton had to face facts. The government wasn’t going to regulate marriages. But his statistical work in heredity created a branch of science he called “eugenics.” Eugenics continued after Galton’s death and in the 20th century, flowered into a horror that he wouldn’t have recognized.
When Napoleon invaded Portugal, its royal family moved to Brazil, and a branch stayed on.
SNOB SCIENCE SINKS TO NEW DEPTHS
Galton’s idea that superior couples produced superior children was turned on its head in an attempt to purify populations by eliminating “undesirable” elements. Social activists sponsored eugenics progams in the United States. They tried, for example, to sterilize the handicapped and prevent them from reproducing. The Nazis based the Holocaust partly on eugenics theories of racial purity; they simply murdered any person or race that they believed to be inferior. These twists on the original concept of eugenics would have horrified even the elitist Galton.
JUST HANG UP
Oddly enough, though Sir Francis Galton blithely treated human populations as collections of numbers instead of people and laid the foundations for totalitarian eugenics in the 20th century, he also led the way in research on fingerprints. Fingerprints, being absolutely unique, are often seen as the ultimate expression of human individuality. But don’t forgive Sir Francis too quickly, he also pioneered the use of questionnaires to collect statistical information for analysis. We have that darned Galton to thank every time an opinion pollster calls during dinner.
HITLER, A HYPOCRITE?
Despite his own merciless actions, Hitler chose to be a vegetarian. As hypocritical as this sounds, he believed that killing and eating animals was inhumane and cruel. He believed that by respecting the animals’ rights and abstaining from eating meat, he was saving innocent lives. Too bad he didn’t feel that way about humans.
The words “czar” and “kaiser” are both descended from the word “caesar.”
HANDICAP? WHAT HANDICAP?
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A listing of famous people in history who didn’t let their handicaps stand in the way of accomplishment.
Ludwig von Beethoven, 1770–1827
Went completely deaf during his thirties, yet continued to write some of the world’s greatest music.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1806–1861
Incapacitated as a result of a childhood spinal injury and lung ailment. Became a renowned poet, political thinker, and feminist.
Thomas Edison, 1847–1931
Developed hearing problems early in life that became progressively worse as he grew older. Edison was one of the greatest and most productive inventors of his time.
Albert Einstein, 1879–1955
Unable to speak until the age of three, Einstein was thought to be “simple-minded” until it was realized that he learned by visualization rather than by the use of language.
Joan of Arc, 1412–1431
Though she suffered from narcolepsy—an uncontrollable urge to sleep—this visionary French peasant led the French armies to victory over the English at Orleans in 1429.
General Philip Kearney, 1814–1862
A famous American general who lost an arm during the war with Mexico and went on to distinguish himself in the Civil War.
Helen Keller, 1880–1968
Went blind and deaf at 19 months old, but graduated cum laude from Radcliffe in 1904. She mastered five languages and wrote six books.
Dorothea Lange, 1895–1965
Walked with a limp due to a bout with polio at the age of seven. Lange spent her life traveling the world photographing the disenfranchised. She is most famous for her documentary images of American rural life during the Great Depression.
Peter the Great once went undercover to study European shipbuilding.
Lord Horatio Nelson, 1758–1805
Lost an eye and one arm, but went on to become an admiral and the hero of the battle of Trafalgar, where he destroyed the combined French and Spanish fleets.
John Milton, 1608–1674
Became blind at age 43, but went on to create his most famous epic, Paradise Lost. Considered by many to be the greatest English poet after Shakespeare.
Alexander Pope, 1688–1744
A hunchback who was the first English poet to enjoy contemporary fame throughout the European continent and to see translations of his poems into modern as well as ancient languages.
Wiley Post, 1899–1935
Despite the loss of one eye, he became one of the most colorful figures of the early years of U.S. aviation and made the first solo flight around the world in 1933.
John Wesley Powell 1834–1902
After he lost his right arm in the American Civil War, he became a science professor and explorer who developed an interest in preserving native American cultures. In 1879, he founded the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of Ethnology to study and record the traditions of Native Americans.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1882–1945
Lost the use of his legs after contracting polio at age 39, but went on to become the 32nd president of the United States (1933–1945). Roosevelt served longer than any other American president.
Charles Steinmetz, 1865–1923
A hunchback, this German-born American electrical engineer developed a practical method of making calculations of alternating current, thus revolutionizing electrical engineering.
Before Columbus, no Indian had type B blood.
Harriett Tubman, 1820–1913
As a child born into slavery, she was struck on the head by an overseer. The blow fractured her skull and caused episodes of narcolepsy for the rest of her life. She eventually escaped bondage and guided runaway slaves to freedom in the north for more than a decade before the American Civil War.
Josiah Wedgwood, 1730–1795
Suffered an attack of smallpox that eventually required the amputation of his right leg. This English pottery designer and manufacturer developed a scientific approach to pottery making, and his works are considered to be among the finest examples of ceramic art.
Woodrow Wilson, 1856–1924
Dyslexic from early childhood, Wilson served as president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. He also suffered a stroke during his term that left him partially paralyzed on his left side.
FAMOUS PEOPLE WITH EPILEPSY
Agatha Christie
Alexander the Great
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Alfred Nobel
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Aristotle
Blaise Pascal
Charles Dickens
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Edgar Allen Poe
Edward Lear
Gustave Flaubert
Hannibal
Hector Berlioz
Isaac Newton
James Madison
James Joyce
Julius Caesar
Lewis Carrol
Michelangelo
Napoleon Bonaparte
Niccolo Paganini
Pythagoras
Queen Boadicea
Saint Paul the Apostle
Socrates
Truman Capote
Vincent van Gogh
Winston Churchill
Peter Minuit was conned into buying Manhattan from the wrong Indian tribe.
THE INVASION OF AMERICA
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Who was Pancho Villa? Why did he devote himself to killing Americans? And what did the U.S. do about it?
Francisco “Pancho” Villa was the people’s hero of the 1911 Mexican revolution, one of the leaders of the guerilla forces that toppled the 45-year rule of dictator Porfiro Diaz. To the Mexican people, he was a latter-day Robin Hood. And why not? The man was a paragon of virtue: a nonsmoker, nondrinker, and nonwomanizer who commanded the utmost respect from his hardened band of men.
THE FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY?
Mexico swarmed with revolutionaries at the time, but Villa’s heroic activities so impressed his neighbor
Woodrow Wilson that the U.S. president singled him out, dubbing him the “George Washington of the South.” However, within a very short time, little “George” would turn on his big brother—with good reason and deadly results.
BETRAYED BY BIG BROTHER
In October 1915, after being defeated by a competing revolutionary force that had been supplied with U.S. arms, Villa was outraged to learn that the United States had just officially recognized another guerilla fighter, Venustiano Carranza, as the legitimate president of Mexico. Just days later, Carranza’s men, fully equipped with U.S. weapons, ambushed Villa and his men.
THAT DOES IT!
His disillusionment complete, Villa abandoned the struggle for freedom in his own country and decided to start repaying those backstabbing gringos. From now on, he was going to kill as many Americans as he could find. His first opportunity came in January 1916, when he and his men held up a train carrying 16 American mining engineers. The bandits lined up their victims and, one by one, shot them in the back of the head.
Appetite now whetted for more American blood, Villa made plans for a full-scale invasion. Or at least as full-scale as he and his small band of 500 “Villistas” could handle.
After the Battle of Little Bighorn, Chief Sitting Bull tried to get sanctuary in Canada.
FULL-SCALE BUT SCALED DOWN
Two months later, Villa and his men invaded the United States. In New Mexico, they took the unlucky 13th U.S. Cavalry by surprise, getting away with more than a hundred horses and a load of machine guns. On their way back to Mexico, the Villistas attacked the sleepy border town of Columbus, New Mexico. The raiders burned down buildings, looted the bank, raped several women, and left 26 people dead.
THAT DID IT!
The people of the United States were outraged. Men from every state volunteered to help hunt down Villa and his men. An expedition that was to cost some $25 million was soon put together, and a staggering 150,000 troops were mobilized to bring the handful of rebels to justice. President Wilson chose living legend General John “Black Jack” Pershing to lead the mission.
TALK ABOUT OVERKILL
The manhunt gave the U.S. the opportunity to try out two new forms of weaponry: tanks, airplanes, and war machinery so new that a lot of the army’s casualties were caused by faulty operation of their unfamiliar, high-powered weapons. The 1st Aero Squadron joined the search, making it the only American air unit to fly in combat prior to World War I.
The invasion of Mexico in search of the bandits brought the United States and Mexico to the brink of war. But it didn’t result in the capture of Pancho Villa.
UNCLE SAM CRIES UNCLE
Eventually the U.S. gave up on ever finding Villa, and the fever he’d incited died down. He hid out for four years, until he came to a truce with the Mexican government in 1920. On July 20th, 1923, he was driving his car through the town of Parrol, Chihuahua, when three bullets from a high-powered rifle tore through his body. He died soon after. Although Villa’s killers were never brought to justice, it’s believed that the assassination was orchestrated by one of his many political enemies.
Joan of Arc was actually captured by the French, not the English.
NURSE NIGHTINGALE
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Ten things you probably didn’t know about Florence Nightingale.
1. Florence Nightingale didn’t invent nursing. The female nurses in British hospitals at the time were mostly Roman Catholic nuns or prostitutes. She made it a safe and respectable profession for women.
2. It’s true that her father opposed her desire to be a nurse, but he made sure she got an education. Florence and her sister were tutored in Italian, Latin, history, Greek, and mathematics.
3. By 1849, because of her family’s opposition to her career and her indecision over a long-standing marriage proposal, Florence suffered a short-lived mental breakdown.
4. Far from rejecting his daughter after she became a nurse, William Nightingale provided an income of 500 pounds a year for her, the equivalent of around $50,000 today.
5. She pioneered the use of graphs for statistical representation. Her work showed, for the first time, that social events could be objectively measured and subjected to mathematical analysis.
6. Among her innovations were hot water piped to all floors, the installation of dumbwaiters to bring patients’ food, and bells for the patients to call nurses.
7. After returning from the Crimean War in 1857, Florence was plagued with illness—and posttraumatic stress disorder. She spent most of the rest of her life confined to bed.
8. The small booklet she wrote, Notes on Nursing, published in 1861, was a multi-million-copy bestseller.
9. She was a consultant to the Union Army and later helped prepare the medical team for the Union in the U.S. Civil War.
10. She was uninterested in her celebrity status. She refused photographs and interviews, and never appeared at public functions, even those given in her honor. Many people, in fact, thought she was dead long before the actual time of her passing.
Operating out of Sri Lanka, Julia Child worked for a U.S. spy agency during World War II.
HISTORY’S HIT MAKERS
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Sex, booze, and symphonies.
What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “rock and roll musician?” For most of us it’s probably wild hair, illegal substances, and groupies. Now, think classical composer. . . okay, wake up; quit that snoring! Behind all that high art and timeless music were some wild and crazy dudes.
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685–1750)
BACH BASICS
Bach spent most of his life not far from his birthplace in not-so-fashionable Thuringia, Germany. This gave him time to compose hundreds of musical works and to have 20 children—nine of whom survived. The town of Eisenach in Thuringia is famous as his birthplace. Tourists flock to a house where Bach probably wasn’t born, but which was made into a museum anyway. Fortunately for music lovers, Johann’s family made melodies instead of sausage. Johann entered the family business early and became one of the greatest composers of all time.
BACH’S ORGAN
Bach had a thing about organs. Yes, including the one you’re probably snickering about. At 18, he was a church organist in Arnstadt, where they say he was obsessed with playing the organ. There’s a famous story that Bach took four weeks off so he could walk to Lubeck to hear organ music. It’s less well known that he stayed away for three months, and his employers suspected that he was making a different type of organ music.
BACH’S OTHER ORGAN
Because Bach wrote most of his music for the church, history often portrays him as holier-than-thou. Actually, church officials caught the young musician sneaking off during the sermons; they discovered that he was fooling around with a maid. This maid was probably Bach’s second cousin, Maria Barbara, who later became his wife. After Maria’s death, the 36-year-old Bach married a 20-year-old soprano named Anna Magdalena. She adored her husband and bore him 13 children.
More words in English begin with the letter “S” than any other letter.
BUSINESSMAN BACH
Since a lot of the classical composers were ready to starve for their art, it’s refreshing to learn that Bach went after as much money as possible. He turned down one prestigious musical post when his less-prestigious employers in Weimar agreed to double his salary.
In 1717, he began working for Prince Kothen in Leipzig. The prince played a number of instruments, but his mother refused to listen to all that royal noise, so Bach invited the prince to play at his house. . . then charged him rent! Bach also picked up extra cash playing at funerals.
Not that Bach had it easy. His aristocratic employers often treated the great composer like a servant. At Weimar, when Bach tried to get work with a rival of his employer, Duke Wilhelm Ernst, the duke threw him in prison for a month.
THE BRANDENBURG CONCERTOS
The Brandenburg Concertos were dedicated to Christian Ludwig, the margrave (govern
or) of Brandenburg because Bach wanted the margrave to hire him as a composer and conductor at his court. Bach’s music was too complex for the musicians that played at the margrave’s castle, so Bach wasn’t hired, and Christian Ludwig never had the concertos performed. The sheet music was put away, forgotten, and later sold for pennies. It wasn’t until the 19th century that the concertos were rediscovered. They’ve remained consistently popular, unlike the forgotten margrave.
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into History Page 45