Lineage

If the last 50,000 years of man’s existence were divided into lifetimes of approximately sixty-two years each, there have been about 800 such lifetimes. Of these 800, at least 650 were spent in caves. Only during the last seventy lifetimes has it been possible to communicate effectively from one lifetime to another — as writing made it possible to do. Only during the last six lifetimes did masses of men ever see a printed word. Only during the last four has it been possible to measure time with any precision. Only in the last two has anyone anywhere used an electric motor. And the overwhelming majority of all the material goods we use in daily life today have been developed within the present, the 800th, lifetime.

— Alvin Toffler, Future Shock, 1970

| History

Gunner

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gunner_(dog).jpg

After the first Japanese air raid on Darwin in February 1942, Australian aircraftman Percy Westcott heard whimpering under the ruins of a mess hut and discovered a stray six-month-old Kelpie with a broken leg.

Westcott had the leg set and the two became friends. About a week later, “Gunner” revealed a special talent. As the RAAF personnel went about their normal routines at the airfield, the dog began to show signs of agitation, whining and jumping, and a few minutes later a group of Japanese aircraft appeared over Darwin, bombing and strafing the city. This happened again two days later, and successively throughout the weeks that followed.

It turned out that Gunner could hear approaching Japanese aircraft up to 20 minutes before they arrived, long before warning sirens sounded and before the planes had been detected by radar. He could even distinguish Japanese from Allied engines. He proved so reliable that the squadron’s commanding officer allowed Westcott to sound a portable air raid siren when Gunner alerted him to approaching attackers.

The dog became an inseparable member of the squadron, sleeping under Westcott’s bunk, showering with the men, sitting with them on outdoor movie nights, and even flying with them as they practiced takeoffs and landings. When Westcott was posted to Melbourne 18 months later, he left Gunner with a local merchant. What ultimately became of him is unknown.

| History · Oddities

Summary Advice

Full text of a memo from Winston Churchill to his War Cabinet, Aug. 9, 1940:

To do our work, we all have to read a mass of papers. Nearly all of them are far too long. This wastes time, while energy has to be spent in looking for the essential points.

I ask my colleagues and their staffs to see to it that their Reports are shorter.

(i) The aim should be Reports which set out the main points in a series of short, crisp paragraphs.

(ii) If a Report relies on detailed analysis of some complicated factors, or on statistics, these should be set out in an Appendix.

(iii) Often the occasion is best met by submitting not a full-dress Report, but an Aide-memoire consisting of headings only, which can be expanded orally if needed.

(iv) Let us have an end of such phrases as these: ‘It is also of importance to bear in mind the following considerations …’, or ‘Consideration should be given to the possibility of carrying into effect …’. Most of these woolly phrases are mere padding, which can be left out altogether, or replaced by a single word. Let us not shrink from using the short expressive phrase, even if it is conversational.

Reports drawn up on the lines I propose may at first seem rough as compared with the flat surface of officialese jargon. But the saving in time will be great, while the discipline of setting out the real points concisely will prove an aid to clearer thinking.

W.S.C.

He followed this up in November 1951:

BREVITY

Official papers are too long and too diffuse. In 1940 I called for brevity. Evidently I must do so again. I ask my colleagues to read what I wrote then (it is reproduced overleaf) and to make my wishes known to their staffs.

I also invite attention to the Foreign Secretary’s recent despatch to Heads of Missions about the length of telegrams.

W.S.C.

| History · Language

Morton’s Fork

John Morton, Lord Chancellor under Henry VII, used a universal argument to demand gifts for the royal treasury:

  • If a man lived well, he was obviously rich.
  • If a man lived modestly, he obviously had savings.

Either way, he could afford the tax. Francis Bacon wrote, “There is a tradition of a dilemma that Bishop Morton … used to raise up the benevolence to higher rates; and some called it his Fork.”

| History · Society

A Blow to Tourism

Anglican priest Samuel Peters opposed American independence and was forced to flee the colonies as the revolution approached. From London he exacted a sort of revenge by publishing a list of 45 draconian laws that he said prevailed in Connecticut, in an attempt to make the colonies look backward and fanatical. Among the sterner measures:

  • No one to cross a river, but with an authorized ferryman.
  • No one shall run on the Sabbath day, or walk in his garden or elsewhere, except reverently to and from meeting.
  • No one shall travel, cook victuals, make beds, sweep house, cut hair, or shave, on the Sabbath day.
  • No woman shall kiss her child on the Sabbath or fasting day.
  • When it appears that an accused has confederates, and he refuses to discover them, he may be racked.
  • Whoever wears clothes trimmed with gold, silver, or bone lace, above two shillings by the yard, shall be presented by the grand jurors, and the selectmen shall tax the offender at £300 estate.
  • A debtor in prison, swearing he has no estate, shall be let out and sold, to make satisfaction.
  • No one shall read Common-Prayer, keep Christmas or saints-days, make minced pies, dance, play cards, or play on any instrument of music, except the drum, trumpet, and the jaw harp.
  • The selectmen, on finding children ignorant, may take them away from their parents, and put them into better hands, at the expense of their parents.
  • Married persons must live together, or be imprisoned.
  • Every male shall have his hair cut round according to a cap.

The full list is here. Peters’ hoax did have one lasting effect — it popularized the term “blue laws” to describe laws that restrict activity on Sunday.

| History · Hoaxes · Society

Flight From Moscow

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Napoleons_retreat_from_Moscow_by_Adolph_Northen.jpg

Russian chess master Alexander Petrov composed this puzzle to commemorate Napoleon’s defeat in 1812:

petrov chess puzzle

Currently the emperor stands in Moscow, on h7. The goal is to chase him all the way back to Paris and to checkmate him there. The white knights are Cossack cavalry, and the white bishops are Russian partisans. Given these clues, which square represents Paris?

Click for Answer
| History · Puzzles

Things to Come

https://archive.org/details/the-strand/The%20Strand%20v26%201903/page/678/mode/2up

H.G. Wells’ predictions for the “house of the future,” made in 1903:

  • Chimneys will be obsolete, replaced by an electric heater in the center of each apartment. The absence of chimneys will also permit roof gardens.
  • Air will be circulated by an electric fan “and will come in through a proper shaft and filter” communicating with the roof.
  • No longer required for ventilation, windows may take any shape and will be positioned for lighting and for aesthetic effect.
  • Labor-saving appliances will include dustless sweepers, self-making beds, and “neatly-mounted electric cooking things.”
  • Walls and floors will meet in a curve rather than at right angles, to prevent the accumulation of dust.
  • Walls will be soundproof, doors will be framed in metal, artificial stone floors will be clad in linoleum, and all will be fireproof.
  • “In the end our present houses may come to be thought singularly squat, massive, and dark beside these elegant new comers.”

He also thought that single-family homes would become rare in urban areas, replaced with “a wide forest of buildings in which many families may live,” sharing common restaurants, children’s playgrounds, and the like. “The scope for ingenuity and for invention in planning such places is enormous.”

| History · Technology

The Blast Shadow

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human_shadow_on_stone_by_atomic_bombing_on_Hiroshima_-_Sumitomo_Bank,_Hiroshima_branch_-_around_December_1946.png

On the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, a customer was sitting on the steps of Sumitomo Bank in Hiroshima, waiting for the branch to open, when an atomic bomb exploded over the city. The bank was only 260 meters from ground zero, and as the intense heat burned its stone face white, the customer’s body shielded one section of the steps, leaving a “shadow” in that place.

The steps are now preserved in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.

In 1946, the British mission to Hiroshima and Nagasaki noted that the surfaces of asphalt roads “retained the ‘shadows’ of those who had walked there at the instant of the explosion.” It called them “objects of macabre interest and pilgrimage for visitors.”

| Death · History · Technology

Living Memory

An item for Independence Day: In 1937 the New York Times reported that the last living son of a Revolutionary War soldier was still in good health and living in North Calais, Vermont. William Constant Wheeler, then 89, was the son of Comfort Wheeler, who had been 81 when William was born.

Comfort had enlisted in the Continental Army as a teenager. According to the Boston Post, “Wheeler recollected many things he had been told by his father regarding the war of ’75. Many times Constant said his father spoke of meeting George Washington and he admired General Putnam, whose bluff, hearty way he often mentioned.”

William was himself a veteran of the Civil War. According to FindAGrave, he died in 1941 at age 93.

(Thanks, Bevan. Here’s a photo [!] of a man who crossed the Delaware with Washington.)

| History