Hi, Gang!
The world is a fairly complicated place, so it is sometimes
pretty difficult to pick out truth from fiction. Of course,
there are times when the truth is obvious from the beginning.
There was the story last week about Darva Conger, the woman who
got married on the now infamous TV game show, "Who Wants to Marry
a Multi-Millionaire." Taking advantage of her fifteen minutes of
fame, she appears this month on the cover of Playboy magazine
wearing a wedding gown. She is featured inside, too, but not
wearing the gown. Or anything else. Speaking in a CBS interview
last week, Ms. Conger admitted that she had done the whole thing
just for the money.
See, I told you some truths were easier than others. And
any of you who think she married that rich guy out of love at
first sight AND posed naked in Playboy because of her strong
belief in naturalism needs some serious education in cynicism.
Go read the collected works of H. L. Mencken before continuing
with any more of this week's SUNFUN.
Now, for the rest of you, let's get on with this
introduction. My foreign friends are often amazed at how
seriously we Americans take our history. Of course, the history
of many countries goes back a couple of millennia further than
ours, which accounts for history trailing off into myth and
legend. Our history is all in the books, so it must be true,
right?
Well, not quite. It turns out that a good bit of what
people believe about U.S. history is nonsense, because much of it
was arrived at through the common historical practice called
"making it up." Not only that, but all sorts of people with all
sorts of agendas have taken only the historical bits and pieces
that fit what they are trying to prove and left out the rest. In
this process of de-boning the real story, it is easy to lose
track of the real people involved.
George Washington was a great leader, and never greater in
that he refused to become a dictator after winning the
revolution, even though everyone wanted him to. Turning down
that unlimited power was a great thing to do. But he was a human
being, too, and just as complex as the rest of us. When he
wasn't busy being the "Father of his Country," Old George loved
to dance and flirt with the ladies, could cuss like a sailor and
had a notoriously bad temper, and wrote his friends humorous,
off-color letters about the mating habits of his farm animals.
In losing sight of the humanness of truly great people, we miss
the fact that they were just as flawed as we are. And that we,
too, can do great things, without waiting to perfect ourselves
first.
Thanks this week to our nearly perfect friends and
supporters from all over, especially: Nnamdi Elleh, Jerry Taff,
Michele R. Kiss, Chuck Maray, Helen Yee, Kiyomi Kanazawa, Yasmin
& Meredith Leischer, Brian Siegl, Jack Gervais, Larry Sakar and
the TMER&THS crowd, Carol Becwar, Bruce Gonzo, Tim McChain, Mike
Tully, Kerry Miller, Anna Macareno, Keiko Amakawa, Joshua Brink,
Beth Butler and Mary Crow. Thanks to all and hope that you have
a Happy 4th of July, and make some history of your own.
Have A Great Week,
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IT STARTED WITH COLUMBUS...
------------------------
In nearly every history textbook, there is a picture of
Christopher Columbus, the guy who discovered America. Except
that none of the portraits show the same face. It turns out that
every single one of those pictures is a fake. Columbus died
without having his portrait painted, so nobody knows for sure
what he looked like. It gets worse. He wasn't even named
Christopher Columbus. An Italian living in Spain, he had taken a
Spanish name, so the folks around Queen Isabella's court called
him Cristobal Colon.
And no educated person in that time believed that the Earth
was flat. The ancient Greeks had figured out that the Earth was
round a couple of thousand years before - they even had a
reasonably good estimate of the size, and that was the problem.
Columbus had convinced himself that the Greek estimate was too
high, calculating for himself that the globe was smaller so it
should be possible to sail straight across the ocean to Asia.
The folks in Spain mostly thought Chris was nuts, since they knew
that ships of the time didn't have the range to cross that much
open ocean. It would be like trying to drive your Chevy from
Chicago to Mexico City on one tank of gas with only two Twinkies
and a Diet Coke for provisions. If Columbus hadn't accidentally
bumped into America, he would never have been heard from again.
Not that the Indians would have minded that much, as things
turned out.
And, on top of everything else, poor old Chris didn't even
get to name the place he'd discovered. That went instead to
another Italian guy, Amerigo Vespucci. Amerigo wrote a popular
and boastful book about his adventures in the new world five
years after Columbus. A map maker, wrongly believing the claims,
attached Amerigo's name to the new world, and the name stuck. So
America was even named by mistake.
- [Expanded from SUNFUN #84 -
EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG!
(04/05/98) ]
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WAS THAT FEAST OR FAST?
----------------------
Every year around Thanksgiving, we see those pictures of the
first Thanksgiving feast; a group of solemn-looking Pilgrims
around the table with log cabins in the background.
The truth is, the Pilgrims never held an annual Thanksgiving
feast. But that's alright, they didn't build log cabins, either.
Nor would any day of giving thanks be a feast for those deeply
religious people. They did have days of thanks from time to
time, but they celebrated these by praying and fasting - hardly
the model for the modern turkey and football festival.
The true story of the three-day harvest festival of 1621 is
much more interesting:
"Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent
four men on fowling, that so we might after a special
manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit
of our labors. They four in one day killed as much
fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company
almost a week. At which time, amongst other
recreations, we exercised our arms. Many of the
Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their
greatest King Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for
three days we entertained and feasted, and they went
out and killed five deer, which they brought to the
plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the
captain and others."
So there were Indians, and turkey, and maybe even some kind
of pumpkin. But it was far from an annual affair and was held
only to celebrate the colonist's first successful harvest.
The idea of an annual holiday with turkey, yams and all the
rest didn't really start until around the time of the American
Civil War in the 1860's.
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THE MIDNIGHT RIDE OF SAMUEL PRESCOTT?
------------------------------------
Yes, silversmith Paul Revere did indeed jump on his horse
and ride into the night to warn his fellow patriots that the
British were coming. But almost no one had heard this exciting
story until 1863 when the Longfellow poem was published. Not
only that, but Revere's revered ride to Concord town was a
complete bust, at least the ride that the poem is about.
Revere made separate rides on two different nights at the
start of the American revolution. The first, on April 16, 1775,
was to warn the Americans to move their gunpowder and ammunition
to a safer hiding place. That is the occasion when Revere
arranged to have lanterns hung in the tower of the Old North
Church in Boston, "One if by land and two if by sea" as the poem
has it.
But the lights weren't for Revere. According to his own
account, the lanterns were for others in case Revere couldn't get
through. Also, since the Brits came by both land AND sea, it
makes you wonder just how those tower lights were set up.
On Revere's second ride, the night of April 18th, he never
got to Concord to warn anyone. Paul and his revolutionary pals
Samuel Prescott and William Dawes were on the road from Lexington
to Concord when they ran smack into a British scouting party.
Dawes and Prescott managed to escape, but the British took Revere
prisoner. He eventually talked them into letting him go, but
without his horse, so he missed the battle of Lexington.
Revere wasn't doing it just for the honor of serving his
country, either. He was paid five schillings by the colonists
for his night's work as messenger.
Oh, and he never yelled, "The British are coming!" or
anything like it. Not even in the poem.
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HONESTLY ABE?
------------
Not really. For one thing, Abraham Lincoln hated the name
Abe, and never signed any papers that way, preferring the more
enigmatic A. Lincoln. His wife, Mary, called him 'Father.' And
his friends called him just plain Lincoln.
Nor was he a casual or off-the-cuff speaker. The whole
business about Lincoln writing the Gettysburg address on the back
of an envelope on the train is hooey. Lincoln was a good
speaker, but prepared all of his talks carefully. Copies of
several rough drafts of the Gettysburg Address exist. One, in
Lincoln's own hand, was written on White House stationary more
than a week before Lincoln left for Gettysburg.
Then there's the whole business of the Emancipation
Proclamation, which really didn't free any slaves at all. Since
it applied only to the rebel states of the South, it only applied
to states where Lincoln had no power anyway. Northerners with
slaves were allowed to keep them. The Proclamation was a fine
bit of political maneuvering that turned the Civil War into a
moral campaign against slavery. This had the important effect of
keeping Britain and France from aiding the Southern states.
The most amazing thing about Abraham Lincoln is the crazy
things about him that really are true: he was born in a log
cabin, he did have a good sense of humor and he did grow his
famous beard in response to a fan letter from a 13-year-old girl.
And he was an exceptionally brave and honorable leader at a time
when the country needed one. Those of you who hate lawyers
aren't going to like this, but most of Lincoln's practice was in
corporate law and political lobbying, with the Illinois Central
Railroad as one of his biggest clients. In reality, Lincoln was
successful, ambitious and politically connected. He may have
started poor, but he didn't stay that way. Within a few years of
starting his practice in Springfield, Lincoln was earning between
$1,200 and $1,500 a year - more than the governor of Illinois
earned at the time.
But A. Lincoln, wealthy lawyer and lobbyist doesn't get
votes nearly as well as Honest Abe the Railsplitter, so he had
what today's policy wonks would call an image makeover.
- [Expanded from SUNFUN (#136) - THE
REIGN OF ERROR (03/21/99) ]
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DEPARTMENT OF FLIGHTY IDEAS...
---------------------------
The idea that the airplane was invented by two poor,
uneducated bicycle mechanics from Ohio makes a great story. And,
like most really good stories, it stinks as history. While
Wilbur and Orville were not upper crust university types, they
were far from uneducated. The brothers did design and built
bicycles - racing bicycles. Comparing these machines to your
kid's mountain bike is like comparing your father's Buick to a
high-tech Indy race car.
The Wright Brothers bicycle works was prosperous enough to
have a well-equipped machine shop and several assistants. In
many ways, designers of racing bicycles were ideally suited to
invent the airplane; they used exotic (for the time) materials,
designed extremely strong, light-weight machines, and they had an
accurate scientific understanding of physical forces. They seem
to have been the first to realize that an airplane would have to
lean into a turn, just as a bicycle does. That the Wright
Brothers produced the first practical airplane wasn't a fluke,
they were just the first guys who came along with the Wright
stuff.
- [Expanded from SUNFUN (#136) - THE
REIGN OF ERROR (03/21/99) ]
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GOING POST-AL...
-------------
The well-known American magazine 'The Saturday Evening Post'
was famous for its devotion to homespun values and American
virtues. That was the same magazine that featured a weekly cover
by Norman Rockwell for decades. Even though it is no longer
published as a weekly, it still features the proud phrase on its
masthead: "Founded A.D. 1728 by Benjamin Franklin."
That claim that the famous American statesman founded the
Post is simply ridiculous. The earliest ancestor of the Saturday
Evening Post printed its first issue on August 4, 1821. Since
Benjamin Franklin died in 1790, it would be a little tough to see
how he could make anything but a psychic contribution to first
issue of the Post. And, in fact, the editors of the 1821 Post
made no claim that Franklin had anything to do with the
publication.
Not that the story doesn't have a tiny bit of truth to it.
In 1729 (not 1728), Ben Franklin bought a struggling newspaper
called "The Pennsylvania Gazette." Ben's good writing and strong
leadership made the little paper into a great success, so great
that it survived Franklin's death by 25 years, finally going out
of business in 1815. A few years later, printers Charles
Alexander and Samuel Atkinson took over the Gazette's abandoned
printshop as the home for their new magazine, the Saturday
Evening Post. So about all you can say for a connection is that
the first issues of the Saturday Evening Post were printed in the
shop that had once printed Franklin's newspaper.
The Franklin connection didn't show up on the magazine's
masthead until 1899, when editor George Horace Lorimer apparently
decided that the magazine needed some class. Even then, most
people who knew anything about Franklin realized that the claim
was just a boastful advertising ploy to sell a few more
magazines.
Or maybe the Post considered that to be one of their
homespun American values.
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THE MILD, MILD WEST...
-------------------
The frontier was a dangerous and often deadly place, but the
real threat wasn't the Indians or gunslingers, it was disease.
Of the estimated 300,000 deaths that took place on the western
wagon trains in the pioneer era, only 362 were caused by Indian
attack. But death from typhoid doesn't make a very dramatic
movie.
But what about all those shootouts and gun fights that show
up in all those western movies? Turns out that the movies were
far more violent than the real towns ever were. For example, in
the worst year in Dodge City, Kansas - 1878 - there were a total
of five killings. Hardly enough for the first few minutes of a
Clint Eastwood western. And Tombstone, Arizona loves its
reputation as "the town too tough to die" and as the home of the
famous "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral." But their worst year was
exactly the same as Dodge City, with a total of five killings.
So why do we think of the Wild West as a deadly, dangerous
place? Towns like Dodge and Tombstone were early to cash in on
the tourist dollars they could make on their reputations as part
of the "real west." And, dime novels shamelessly exaggerated the
exploits of famous western heroes, sometimes with the westerner's
blessing. Buffalo Bill Cody wrote up many of his own stories, and,
truth is, truth didn't seem to matter much to Cody, as he wrote
to his editor:
"I am sorry to have to lie so outrageously in this
yarn. ...If you think the revolver and Bowie knife are
used too freely, you may cut out a fatal shot or stab
wherever you deem it wise."
Even the Indians were influenced by those stories of the
Old West and their invented ideas. When movie director John Ford
was shooting one of his early westerns, he hired a group of old
Indians as technical advisors. For one scene, he asked if they
could make some smoke signals. Quickly building a fire and
producing a blanket, the old Indians made a nice looking set of
signals for the film. Genuinely interested, Ford asked about the
tradition and how the old Indians had learned to communicate that
way.
"Oh, that," one of the elderly chiefs said. "We saw it in a
movie."
--:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)-----:-)--
© 2000 by Bill Becwar. All Rights Reserved.
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