Marriage on the Frontier

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

Letter from a California resident to an officer of Bodie, a gold-rush boom town, circa 1881:

Kind and Respected Cir:

I see in the paper that a man named John Sipes was attacted and et up by a bare whose kubs he was trying to get when the she bare came up and stopt him by eating him in the mountains near your town.

What I want to know is did it kill him ded or was he only partly et up and is he from this plaice and all about the bare. I don’t know but he is a distant husband of mine. My first husband was of the name and I supposed he was killed in the war, but the name of the man the bare et being the same I thought it might be him after all and I ought to know if he wasn’t killed either in the war or by the bare, for I have been married twise since and there ought to be divorse papers got out by him or me if the bare did not eat him up. If it is him you will know by him having six toes on his left foot.

He also had a spreadagle tattooed on his front chest and a anker on his right arm which you will know him by if the bare did not eat up these sines of it being him.

Find out all yu kin about him without him knowing what it is for, that is if the bare did not eat him all up. If it did I don’t see as you kin do anything and you needn’t to trouble. Please ancer back.

She added a postscript: “Was the bare killed?”

| History

Always Hire a Good Real Estate Agent

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paricutin.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

Dioniso Pulido must have angered the gods.

On Feb. 20, 1943, the Mexican farmer watched a volcanic fissure open in the middle of his cornfield. Within 24 hours the cone was 50 meters high; within a week it was twice that. By August his whole town was buried in lava and ash.

The new volcano, called Paricutin, eventually grew to be 10,000 feet high, and it didn’t go quiet until 1952.

And the gods got their due. No one died in the eruption — but three people were killed by associated lightning strikes.

| Oddities

Twice Around Noah’s Ark

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Swiftcheetah.jpg

A race among all the world’s creatures would show some surprising results. Top speeds:

  • Tortoise: 0.23 mph
  • Sea trout: 15 mph
  • Dragonfly: 18 mph
  • Human sprinter: 22 mph
  • African elephant: 25 mph
  • Cat: 30 mph
  • Racehorse: 43 mph
  • Ostrich: 45 mph
  • Bluefin tuna: 46 mph
  • Racing pigeon: 53 mph
  • Pronghorn: 55 mph
  • Cheetah: 62 mph
  • Mallard: 65 mph
  • Sailfish: 68 mph

The winner would be the peregrine falcon, which has been clocked in level flight at 217 mph.

| Trivia

Frankly, My Dear …

To find the actress to play Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind, MGM shot 149,000 feet of black-and-white test film and another 13,000 feet of color with 60 actresses, none of whom got the part.

Vivien Leigh eventually got it, but MGM also considered Katharine Hepburn, Norma Shearer, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, Susan Hayward, Carole Lombard, Paulette Goddard, Irene Dunne, Merle Oberon, Ida Lupino, Joan Fontaine, Loretta Young, Miriam Hopkins, Jean Arthur, Tallulah Bankhead, Joan Bennett, Frances Dee, and Lucille Ball.

| Entertainment

Some Things Never Change

Letter from Jeannette Linn to Santa Claus, Dec. 21, 1899:

Dear Santa, I thought I would drop you a few lines and tell you a few things what I want. Well, I want a pair of skates, because I think by the time Christmas comes it will be frozen up. And for another thing, I want a pair of leggings so that it will keep my feet warm and I want them so that they will come up above my shoe-tops, and I want a little slate like those that have pictures of cats and rabbits and dogs on and like those that are almost like a slate, and if it don’t cost too much I would like a large doll, so large that it would look about four years old. I will tell you where to find it. If you look in the basement of the Arcade on the place where the dolls are, you will see a large doll with real long curly hair and it is jointed and it is as pretty as I am. And I don’t think I want much, but dear Santa, I know that I want more than you can afford to give, for there are more little boys and girls and they want something too. But I would like to have so much a nice tricycle that would cost three dollars and that is too much, I think, to pay for anything, but that is really the price of it because I saw the price on it and it said $3.00 as plain as this letter is written and I think it is written pretty plain.

She finished: “Well Santa, I must close because it is getting late and I think if I don’t close you will not bring me anything. I have got as much as I can think of.”

| History