“The Siege of Belgrade”

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Battle_of_Nandorfehervar.jpg

An Austrian army, awfully arrayed,
Boldly by battery beseiged Belgrade;
Cossack commanders cannonading come,
Dealing destruction’s devastating doom;
Every endeavour engineers essay
For fame, for fortune, forming furious fray;
Gaunt gunners grapple, giving gashes good;
Heaves high his head heroic hardihood;
Ibraham, Islam, Ismail, imps in ill,
Jostle John, Jarovlitz, Joe, Jack, Jill,
Kick kindling Kutosoff, kings’ kinsmen kill;
Labor low levels loftiest, longest lines;
Men marched ‘mid moles, ‘mid mounds, ‘mid murd’rous mines.
Now nightfall’s near, now needful nature nods,
Opposed, opposing, overcoming odds.
Poor peasants, partly purchased, partly pressed,
Quite quaking, Quarter! quarter! quickly quest.
Reason returns, recalls redundant rage,
Saves sinking soldiers, softens seigniors sage.
Truce, Turkey, truce! Truce, treach’rous Tartar train!
Unwise, unjust, unmerciful Ukraine!
Vanish, vile vengeance! Vanish, victory vain!
Wisdom wails war — wails warring words. What were
Xerxes, Xantippe, Ximenes, Xavier?
Yet Yassey’s youth, ye yield your youthful yest,
Zealously, zanies, zealously, zeal’s zest.

— William T. Dobson, Literary Frivolities, Fancies, Follies and Frolics, 1880

| History · Language

Turning the Corner

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Down_and_out_on_New_York_pier.gif

Excerpts from the Harvard Economic Society’s Weekly Letter, 1929-1930:

  • Nov. 16, 1929: “[A] severe depression like that of 1920-21 is outside the range of probability.”
  • Jan. 18, 1930: “With the underlying conditions sound, we believe that the recession in general business will be checked shortly and that improvement will set in during the spring months.”
  • May 17, 1930: “General prices are now at bottom and will shortly improve.”
  • Aug. 30, 1930: “Since our monetary and credit structure is not only sound but unusually strong … there is every prospect that the recovery which we have been expecting will not be long delayed.”
  • Sept. 20, 1930: “[R]ecovery will soon be evident.”
  • Nov. 15, 1930: “[T]he outlook is for the end of the decline in business during the early part of 1931, and steady … revival for the remainder of the year.”

In 1931, strapped by the depression, the Letter ceased publication.

| History

Disqualified

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wendell_Willkie_presidential_campaign_poster_1940_crop.jpg

From Clark Kinnaird’s Encyclopedia of Puzzles and Pastimes, 1946:

Though a great American, Wendell Willkie nevertheless lacked one of the four necessary requirements for becoming President of the United States. One must be at least 35, a native-born American, and a resident of the U.S.A. for at least 14 years. Name the fourth requirement which Willkie also lacked?

Click for Answer
| History · Puzzles

Going Ashore

In February 1820, Connecticut sealer John Davis sailed south past Hoseason Island in the Southern Ocean and spied a peninsula there. He wrote in his log:

Commences with open Cloudy Weather and Light winds a standing for a Large Body of Land in that Direction SE at 10 A.M. close in with it our Boat and Sent her on Shore to look for Seal at 11 A.M. the Boat returned but found no sign of Seal at noon our Latitude was 64°01’ South. Stood up a Large Bay, the Land high and covered intirely with snow. … I think this Southern Land to be a Continent.

He is believed to be the first man to set foot on Antarctica.

| History

Pith and Vinegar

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stevenson_and_Korean_officials_at_USAF_base_in_Korea,_March_1953.jpg

At a Houston Baptist convention on the campaign trail, Adlai Stevenson was told, “Governor Stevenson, we want to make it clear you are here as a courtesy, because Dr. Norman Vincent Peale has instructed us to vote for your opponent.”

Stevenson said, “Speaking as a Christian, I find the Apostle Paul appealing and the Apostle Peale appalling.”

| History

“The Goddess in the Car”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dorothy_Levitt_Frontspiece_to_The_Woman_and_the_Car.jpg

Dorothy Levitt started as a secretary at the Napier Car Company, but when the publicity-minded boss offered her a chance to race for him, she revealed a soul of pure fire:

  • In 1903 she became the first woman driver to win an automobile race.
  • Also in 1903 she also won Britain’s first international powerboat race, at a cool 19.53 mph.
  • In 1905 she drove from London to Liverpool and back, establishing a women’s distance record (205 miles in 11 hours).
  • In 1906 she broke the ladies’ land speed record, becoming “the fastest girl on earth” at 90.88 mph.
  • In 1909 she started flight training in France.

The “chauffeuse” also wrote a newspaper column and in 1909 published The Woman in the Car, “a guide for women motorists” with “simple and understandable instructions and hints” (including “If you are driving alone a dog is great company” and “It might be advisable to carry a small revolver.”)

Unfortunately, the Western Field reported in 1904, “She is also famous as being the first motorist to obtain substantial damages, amounting to thirty-five pounds sterling, or $175, from the owner of a horse-drawn vehicle which collided with her car.” But she made her own repairs.

| History

Scene

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NIXONSonbeach.jpg

In 1954, at his wife’s urging, vice president Richard Nixon wrote on a slip of paper:

“I promise to Patricia Ryan Nixon that I will not again seek public office.”

He dated the note, folded it, and put it in his wallet.

Six years later he ran for president.

| History

Little Women

Douglas MacArthur’s mother dressed him in skirts, blouses, and bows and kept his hair in curls until he was 8 years old. Franklin Roosevelt wore shoulder-length blond curls and short skirts, “as he liked to kick and feel free to move about.”

Rainer Maria Rilke’s mother, who had lost a daughter the year before he was born, baptized her son René Maria, dressed him as a girl, and arranged his hair in curls until he was 5.

“I had to wear beautiful long dresses,” he recalled later, “and until I started school I went about like a little girl. I think my mother played with me as though I were a big doll.”

| History · Literature

To Whom It May Concern

Visiting France in 1777, Benjamin Franklin received hundreds of inquiries from ardent Frenchmen seeking to join the American army. Finally he penned a “model of a letter of recommendation of a person you are unacquainted with”:

Sir.–The bearer of this, who is going to America, presses me to give him a letter of recommendation, though I know nothing of him, not even his name. This may seem extraordinary, but I assure you it is not uncommon here. Sometimes, indeed, one unknown person brings another equally unknown to recommend him; and sometimes they recommend one another! As to this gentleman, I must refer you to himself for his character and merits, with which he is certainly better acquainted than I can possibly be; I recommend him however to those civilities which every stranger, of whom one knows no harm, has a right to, and I request you will do him all the good offices and show him all the favour that, on acquaintance, you shall find him to deserve. I have the honour to be, &c.

See Backhanded Letters of Reference.

| History · Society

Reunited

http://books.google.com/books?id=jgQTAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false

The son of William Henry Harrison, John Scott Harrison, served two terms in Congress but spent the rest of his life quietly on his farm in Ohio. At his interment there in 1878 it was discovered that an adjoining grave had recently been robbed, so Harrison’s son and nephew traveled to Cincinnati to seek the missing body.

They visited several medical schools but found nothing, and were about to give up when they noticed a tautened rope leading into chute in the dissecting room of the Ohio Medical College. On turning the windlass they brought up a naked body and discovered to their horror that it was Harrison himself, his body stolen somehow from a guarded brick vault less than 24 hours after his burial.

By a curious further coincidence, Harrison’s son Benjamin himself eventually grew up to be president, making John Scott Harrison the only man in history to be both son and father of a U.S. president. But no one knows who stole his body, how, or how it came to be suspended in that dissecting room.

| Death · History