This Day in History: February 9, 1895

On this day in history, 1895, the first volleyball game, originally called “Mintonette” (referencing its similarity to badminton), was played in Holyoke Massachusetts at a YMCA.  The inventor of the game was the YMCA athletic director there, William G. Morgan.

Morgan had become intrigued by the recently invented game of basketball, which had been invented about four years before around nine miles from Holyoke in Springfield Massachusetts.  Basketball was invented there by Dr. James Naismith, a physical education teacher at the YMCA International Training School, which is today known as Springfield College (read more about the origin of basketball here).  The purpose of basketball was originally to create an entertaining game for young athletes that they could play indoors and would be a relatively safe game to play, in terms of making sure they didn’t get injured.  Basically, the YMCA was looking for a game that would keep athletes in shape and un-injured during the cold winter months when they couldn’t play outside.

The problem with basketball, as William Morgan saw it, was that it was extremely physically demanding to constantly run up and down the court, something older, non-athlete adults, such as businessmen, weren’t in good enough shape to do.  As such, he set out to create a game with similar goals as basketball (can be played indoors, not a terribly rough game, and would require some athletic skill and ability), but for people who weren’t in as good of shape, such as a group of middle-aged businessmen who were members at his YMCA.

He then borrowed ideas from a few different sports, such as tennis, handball, baseball, and badminton to make volleyball.  He also used the inside bladder of a basketball as the first volleyball. In the original rules:

• The net would be 6 ft., 6 inches (basically he wanted it just a bit taller than most of the men who would be playing it)
• It would have a court that was 25 ft. x 50 ft., so it could easily be played indoors at various YMCAs
• It would have two teams of any number of players, so that it could accommodate differing sized groups.
• Each match consisted of nine innings.
• Each team could serve three times per inning (three outs).
• There was no limit to the number of times each team could contact a ball before volleying it back to the other team.
• Each server was allowed two tries to get the ball over the net.
• A point would be awarded to the other team if the ball hit the net (except in the case of a faulty first serve); if the ball failed to be served back to the other side before hitting the ground; or if the ball was hit outside of the court by the team that had just returned it over the net.

Mintonette was first played at his YMCA and the rules were tweaked over the course of a little under a year until 1896 when Morgan wrote down the “final” rules and submitted them for review at a YMCA Physical Director’s Conference.  At that same conference at the International YMCA Training School, the first exhibition game was played between different YMCA groups.  One of the spectators of this exhibition match, Dr. Alfred T. Halstead suggested to Morgan that a better name for the sport than Mintonette would be “Volley Ball” (originally two words until 1952, when it was officially changed to one word) as obviously the game primarily consisted of volleying a ball back and forth.  Morgan liked the new name and so re-named the sport as such.

Volleyball quickly spread in popularity throughout the U.S., Canada, and the Philippines, among others, and was soon spread throughout Europe largely thanks to troops from North America playing it during WWI (16,000 volleyballs were donated to the troops, which needless to say made it a very popular game among them).  Today volleyball is one of the most popular team sports in the world and is still growing, though obviously professionally speaking, it’s still not as popular as sports such as Association Football, Baseball, Basketball, American Football, or the like.  However, the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB) claims that it is currently the world’s most played team sport, though I should think the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) might argue that point in favor of Association Football.

Bonus Factoids:

• Morgan was actually recruited to play American Football at the YMCA Training School by Dr. James Naismith, the inventor of basketball.  Once Morgan graduated from the school, he decided to work at the Holyoke YMCA as the athletic director, where he ultimately invented volleyball.
• Morgan only stayed at the YMCA a few years after he invented volleyball, leaving to work at General Electric and pursue other business ventures later in life.
• After volleyball began to catch on throughout the U.S., the Spalding Company set about designing the first volleyball (as opposed to just using the bladder of a basketball) and began selling it in either 1897 or 1900 (there is some dispute over which it was).  In either case, 1897 was the same year the rules for volleyball began being included in the Handbook of the Athletic League of YMCAs of North America.
• Players in the Philippines are credited as being the inventors of the set and spike strategy in 1916, which quickly became popular throughout the world.
• The rule only allowing three hits per side before a ball must be returned wasn’t established until 1920.
• Volleyball was originally demonstrated in the 1924 Olympics in Paris, but not played as an official sport.  It was finally added as an official sport in 1964.  Beach volleyball wasn’t added to the Olympics until 1996, just nine years after being endorsed as an official version of volleyball by FIVB.
• Another interesting variation on volleyball, which is significantly more physically demanding, is Hooverball.  In Hooverball, named in homage to President Herbert Hoover, the ball is a 6 pound medicine ball.  As you might imagine, one is allowed to catch the ball in Hooverball, before returning it by throwing it, rather than hitting it.  It was named after President Hoover as it was popularized by him; he frequently played it at the behest of his personal physician who thought it would be good for his health.  A team receives a point if the other team isn’t able to catch a ball, or can’t successfully throw it back over the net.  There is no passing in the sport and no moving when you hold the ball, though allowances are made if you have to run to catch the ball and can’t stop right away.
• Another interesting variation on volleyball is Footvolley, which is played such that you are only allowed to use your legs or feet to handle the ball.
• Volleyball has an amazing number of terms associated with it.  Some of the more entertaining include:
  • Shank: whenever a player wildly passes a ball such that it is unplayable by any of their teammates.
  • Chicken Wing: when someone is forced to bend their arm in a shape of a chicken wing to hit the ball.  This often happens when the ball is hit right at a defender who isn’t expecting it.
  • Dinosaur-Dig:  references the Tyrannosaurus Rex style arm position players sometimes get when a defender tries to block a ball, but it falls down between themselves and the net.
  • Dump: a surprise return by one team who has the setter unexpectedly return the ball, rather than setting it for the hitter.
  • Flipper: when a player hits the ball with one fully outstretched arm.
  • Kong: a one handed block.
  • Pancake: when a player only just manages to get to a ball and has to put their hands flat, palm down, on the ground so that the ball hits the back of their hands, instead of the floor.
  • Camel toe: when the ball hits the knuckles.
• The award given to best collegiate male and female volleyball players in a given year is named in William Morgan’s honor: The Morgan Trophy.

Sources and Further Reading:

• William G. Morgan
• History of Volleyball
• William G. Morgan
• Volleyball
• The History of Volleyball
• Mintonette
• Volleyball Jargon
• Historical Timeline of Volleyball
• Hooverball
• History of Volleyball
• Image Source

Morris “Moe” Berg was originally recruited to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the predecessor to the CIA, in August of 1943 when he was 41 years old and had been retired from baseball for about four years.  At the time of his recruitment, he had been working for the Office of Internal-American Affairs, stationed primarily in South America, with his job being to monitor the physical fitness levels of U.S. troops there.  The OSS recruited him primarily for his ability to fluently speak multiple languages with little to no accent.    Among the languages he spoke were: German, Italian, French, Spanish, Japanese, Greek, Russian, Hebrew, Sanskrit, and Latin, among others.

At first, Berg served primarily as an operations officer, but was soon recruited into the Secret Intelligence division of the OSS.  In this position, Berg was often parachuted behind enemy lines to fulfill his various missions, such as evaluating which resistant groups were most effective and providing them aid through the OSS.  For instance, he was once dropped into occupied Norway where he established contact with Norwegian guerrilla fighters.  While there, he helped them destroy a German facility that was attempting to build an atomic bomb.  He was also sent to the Soviet Union on a few intelligence gathering missions.

Another interesting mission, which was his last with the OSS, Project Larson, was one where he was trained in nuclear physics in order that he could pose as a Swiss physicist.  During this mission, he was tasked with trying to convince various top European physicists and engineers to move to the United States, as well as try to buddy up to them in order to gather information.  Principle among his information gathering goals was to learn everything he could about certain key German physicists, such as Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and Werner Heisenberg, the head of Germany’s atomic-bomb project.  The U.S. particularly wanted information on how far along Germany was in the development of a nuclear weapon.

Nearing the end of this mission in 1944, he was sent to a lecture given by Heisenberg in Switzerland.  At this lecture, he was to determine from it if Germany was close to being able to create a nuclear bomb.  If after Heisenberg’s lecture, Berg felt the Germans were close, he had instructions to murder Heisenberg and if he wasn’t able to escape after the assassination, to take a cyanide pill to avoid being interrogated.  Lucky for Heisenberg (and possibly for Berg), he didn’t think the Germans were close and so didn’t attempt to kill him.  Although, one would think most would come up with that assessment if the price of concluding they were close was then to have to murder someone and possibly commit suicide after.  Berg continued traveling around Europe gathering information for another four months before returning to the U.S. and resigning from the OSS.

Six years later, after turning down two offers to coach for the White Sox and Red Sox (the latter team which he had already once helped coach for two years), Berg attempted to join the CIA, particularly wanting to be sent to Israel, as he was Jewish, but his request was denied.  However, a year later the CIA did hire him, wanting him to reestablish contact with various acquaintances of his in Europe in order to gather information for the U.S. on the Soviet Union, particularly on their nuclear program.  Berg accepted this mission, but supposedly ultimately did nothing but take the $10,000 offered, providing no information to the CIA and he was subsequently let go after two years.

Previous to becoming an agent for the OSS, it is thought by some of his biographers that Berg may have already been involved in spying for the U.S., though he always denied this.  For instance, while still a baseball player, he was invited to join with Major League Baseball All Stars, such as Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, to travel to Japan (Berg’s second such trip to Japan, the first of which he stayed behind after the other players left and spent a couple months traveling around Japan, China, Siam, India, Egypt and Berlin, among other countries).  What makes his selection for this second trip to Japan even more curious is that Berg was a mediocre player and all the rest invited were All-Stars.

Further, while in Japan this second time, Berg bluffed his way into the tallest building in Tokyo, a hospital, and managed to sneak onto the roof.  He had a motion picture camera hidden with him and he managed to get shots of all of Tokyo, which were later given to the U.S. government.  Particularly, these shots were later used by the U.S. when planning bombing raids on Tokyo during WWII.  Once again, after the other players left to return to the U.S., he stayed behind and this time traveled to the Philippines, Korea, and Moscow.  He also conspicuously traveled around a lot to other countries in the off-seasons, such as spending one off-season in Paris as an academic student, instead of working on his hitting, as he was supposed to be doing.  All this has given rise to rumors that he had been actively spying for the U.S. long before he retired, though, again, he always denied this claim and there is very little direct evidence other than taking film of Tokyo, which he may have just been doing on his own. Further, Berg later stated he only offered the footage he had taken of Tokyo to the U.S. after he was hired on with the OSS and they had not previously known about it.  So it is probable he simple just liked to travel and really wasn’t spying for the United States before being hired by the OSS.

Bonus Factoids:

• There were other famous individuals among the other 24,000 or so members of the OSS, these include: Chef Julia Child (read more about this here); Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg; Pulitzer Prize winner, historian, and special assistant to President Kennedy Arthur Schlesinger Jr.; actor Sterling Hayden, who, among other things, was in The Godfather;  John Hemmingway, son of Ernest Hemingway; Quentin and Kermit Roosevelt, sons of President Theodore Roosevelt; and journalist and one time co-host of CNN’s crossfire, Thomas Braden, among others.
• The OSS is also responsible for the first SCUBA maritime unit in the world.  Physician Christian J. Lambertsen developed the first self contained underwater breathing apparatus and demonstrated it to the U.S. Navy, but they passed on it.  He then demonstrated it to the OSS, who then hired Lambertsen to help develop the maritime unit.
• Berg’s academic prowess didn’t stop with languages (he had a degree in modern languages from Princeton, where he graduated magna cum laude) and physics, he also earned a law degree at Columbia Law School while he was a baseball player and passed the bar, though never practiced law.  He also occasionally appeared on the quiz show, Information, Please! primarily there as a language  and history expert. Further, for the last two decades of his life, he spent his time doing little else but studying various subjects, living first at his brothers and then later at his sisters when his brother had him evicted.
• Berg was eventually offered the Presidential Medal of Freedom, but declined it, because he was forbidden to talk about what he had done to earn the award in the first place. It was later awarded to him after his death, with his sister accepting it on his behalf.
• Berg began his baseball career as a utility player, known to be great defensively, but a pretty awful hitter.  By chance, he was eventually moved to catcher while with the White Sox, after all three White Sox catchers were injured in the span of a few days and he volunteered to catch and proved good at it.  This move allowed him to continue playing for much longer than most who were as poor a hitter as he was.  The one notable thing he managed to do while playing baseball was go 117 games without making an error, ending the streak on July 25, 1932; this was a record at the time.
• Berg’s baseball card is currently on display at the CIA headquarters.  He also was voted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, despite having been a fairly poor baseball player throughout his 15 year career.
• Berg once was sought out by a very young Ted Williams and asked for advice on what made great hitters great, particularly wanting information on Ruth and Gehrig.  Part of Berg’s reply was:  “Gehrig would wait and wait and wait until he hit the pitch almost out of the catcher’s glove. As to Ruth, he had no weaknesses, he had a good eye and laid off pitches out of the strike zone. Ted, you most resemble a hitter like Shoeless Joe Jackson. But you are better than all of them. When it comes to wrists you have the best.”
• According to a nurse present at his death in 1972, Berg’s last words were “How did the Mets do today?”

Sources and Further Reading:

• The Catcher was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg, by Nicholas Dawidoff
• Julia Child was once a Top Secret Researcher for the OSS
• Moe Berg
• Moe Berg, Catcher and Spy
• Atomic Spies: Moe Berg
• Moe Berg
• Morris Berg
• The Spy Who Loved Baseball
• Information Please
• Werner Heisenberg
• Image Source

Anvil shape has evolved greatly since the earliest anvil-like objects.  These primitive objects used for anvils were typically made of stone, often just a slab of rock. The first metal anvils were made of bronze, then wrought iron, and, finally, steel, which is the material of choice today for anvils, though cast iron is also used in low-end anvils (cast iron is quite brittle for this particular use and absorbs more of the hammer blow’s energy than steel does, so it is not preferred).

Over the centuries, the common shape of the anvil has evolved from a simple slab to the shape most of us associate with an anvil today, namely the “London Pattern”, which became common in the 1800s.  While the length and overall size of the various elements can vary from anvil to anvil, the key features of the “standard” design are typically a horn, a step, a face, a hardy hole, and a pritchel hole.  The primary use of these various elements is as follows:

• The horn is the “front” end of the anvil which is curved.  This allows the smith to hammer different curves into the piece they are working on, with the precise curve depending on how and what part of the horn they hold the piece on while they hammer it.   Some anvils also come with multiple horns, of differing shapes and sizes.
• The step is the flat area next to the horn, just below the face.  This is often used as the cutting area, using the edge of the step to “cut” a piece while hammering it. However, frequent use of the step for this purpose can also damage it, so the use of tools attached to the anvil for cutting is often preferred for non-hobbyists.
• The face is the main large flat slab where most of the hammering takes place.  It also contains the hardy hole and the pritchel hole.  Unlike the step, it often features slightly rounded edges so that the edges don’t cut into the metal being pounded on the face.
• The hardy hole is a square hole through the anvil that allows you to secure various tools in the anvil.  These tools can include chisels, various swages (used for shaping or marking the metal, generally a block of metal with a recess for forcing the metal into the shape of the recess), bickerns (smaller, specialized versions of the horn), etc.  The hardy hole can also be used directly for an aid in bending or in hole punching.
• The pritchel hole is a round hole meant as an aid in punching holes through the metal you’re working on, but obviously the hardy hole can be used for this as well as mentioned. The pritchel hole can also be used for holding tools.  So, basically, the pritchel hole is a round version of the hardy hole.

On a related not, if you’ve ever watched a smith work, you’ve probably noticed many of them will strike whatever they’re working on a few times, then follow it up by lightly tapping the anvil’s step or face a couple times.  You may have heard that they do this to cool the hammer down by having it come in contact with the anvil, but this is the opposite of what they’d want to do.  Warm hammers and warm anvils are actually what they want, because it keeps the hot metal they’re working with from cooling down as quickly, so it requires less heating while shaping, which saves time.  Further, the very brief contact between the hammer and the anvil isn’t going to transfer very much heat, even if the anvil is quite cold.

In reality, they are not actually tapping the anvil for any real purpose other than to simply either rest their arm while they quickly examine the results of the last few strikes or to simply keep their rhythm while they examine the piece. In the former case, resting the hammer on the anvil next to the piece is simply a convenient place to rest it.  With it in this position, it is a shorter distance to bring the hammer back up to the appropriate striking position, over say, letting one’s hammer and arm rest at one’s side while the piece is examined. In the latter case, some just find it nice to continue their hammering rhythm while they examine what they’re working on, rather than stopping completely.  They only tap the anvil, rather than strike it, both to save energy and because you should never pound an anvil directly with the hammer as it can cause slight deformations to form which would then be transferred to whatever you’re working on in the future.

Bonus Factoids:

• Humans aren’t the only animals on Earth that use objects as anvils.  For instance, Chimpanzees often use sticks or rocks as hammers and logs or rocks as anvils in order to crack open nuts.
• Anvil firing (the practice of launching an anvil in the air with gunpowder) was once traditional in various places in the world, particularly in the Southern United States.  Typically, one anvil is placed upside down with its concave base then filled with gunpowder.  Another anvil is then placed on top of that anvil right-side up, so their bases match and with a fuse coming out of the inner concave area filled with gun powder.  Depending on the quality of gunpowder, the amount used, and the weight of the anvil, when the gunpowder ignites, the anvil will be shot into the air to various heights.  This somewhat dangerous practice was often used in substitute for fireworks at certain celebratory events.  It was also once traditionally used on St. Clement’s Day (Pope Clement I is the patron saint of blacksmiths and metalworkers).
• While blacksmith is a familiar term, you may not have heard of a farrier, mentioned above.  A farrier is basically a hoof care specialist that, among other things, is typically skilled at making horse shoes.  At one time, most blacksmith’s were also skilled farriers and vice-verse.  However, today this is usually not the case with modern farriers leaning more towards just being horse hoof care specialists and modern blacksmiths, while able to make horseshoes, usually are not skilled at also caring for horse hooves.
• The name “farrier” comes from the Middle French word “ferrier”, meaning “blacksmith”.  This Middle French word in turn derives from the Latin “ferrum”, meaning “iron”.
• The name “Blacksmith” simply references the fact that they are smiths (deriving from the word “smite”, meaning “to hit”) that work on “black” metal, with the metals typically turning black from a layer of oxides after being heated.  Obviously the oxide layer is generally later ground off.
• Anvils were once commonly made of wrought iron, rather than steel.  Wrought iron is just iron with a very low carbon content (lower than steel or cast iron).  It was once considered pure iron, but by today’s purification standards this is no longer the case.
• Steel is simply iron that has a small amount of carbon added, usually .2%-2.1% (other materials such as manganese, chromium, tungsten, etc. can also be used). The net effect of adding carbon or the like is that the iron is significantly hardened.
• When enough carbon is added (around 2.1%-4%) to the iron, rather than steel, you get cast iron, which is derived from pig iron.  Cast iron is much harder than steel, but the price for this is that it is much more brittle and less ductile.  The name “cast iron” comes from the fact that it has a relatively low melting point and is easy to cast.
• Pig iron is simply the result of taking iron ore and smelting it with some sort of carbon fuel, such as charcoal or coke.  The name comes from the fact that the branching structure of the molds for pig iron ingots coming off a main line has the appearance of piglets suckling on a sow (an “ingot” just means a shape suitable later processing or transportation, such as a traditional gold bar type shape).
• While not up to modern standards, the earliest known steel making was done over 4000 years ago in present day Turkey.  Steel pieces have also been found in East Africa from over 3400 years ago.  The Chinese are known to have begun quenching their steel as recently as about 2000 years ago.
• Iron is the most common element by mass overall of any on Earth, though it is only the fourth most common element in the crust of the Earth.
• Iron is formed from decayed nickel-56.  This nickel is produced in stars and is subsequently spread about via stars large enough to go supernova doing so, with it being the last element produced in those stars before they go supernova.

Sources and Further Reading:

• How to Use an Anvil
• Is There a Reason Anvils are Shaped the Way They Are?
• Why Do Blacksmiths Rest  the Hammer on the Anvil Between Strikes?
• How Iron and Steel Work
• Anvil
• Farrier
• Blacksmith
• Steel
• Cast Iron
• Iron
• Wrought Iron
• Pig Iron
• Anvil Firing
• Image Source
• Image Source 2

This Day in History: February 8, 1983

On this day in history, 1983, Mickey Mantle was threatened by the commissioner of baseball, Bowie Kuhn, that if he didn’t stop working for the Claridge Casino in Atlantic City, he’d be put on baseball’s permanently ineligible list, which meant he’d be banned from any Major or Minor League Baseball related activities including coaching, scouting, etc. at any level.  This is the same list Pete Rose got himself on for gambling while with the Reds.

At the time, Mantle was primarily working as an official representative of the casino, occasionally working as a greeter and at various charity events put on by the casino, such as autograph signings and golfing events.  Mantle needed the money and thought it was ridiculous that he couldn’t work for a casino, despite Kuhn’s assertions that a casino was “no place for a baseball hero and Hall of Famer”, so Mantle ignored his warnings.  Kuhn subsequently followed through on his threat and placed Mantle on the permanently ineligible list.  Along with Mantle, Willie Mays was also placed on that list at the same time and for the same reason.  He too was working as a greeter and special assistant at a casino.

Obviously in both of these cases, neither stayed on that “permanently” ineligible list very long. When Kuhn was replaced by Peter Ueberroth in late 1984, Mantle and Mays were reinstated and allowed to participate in MLB activities again starting in 1985.

Bonus Factoids:

• Mickey Mantle was named after Hall of Fame catcher Mickey Cochrane as Mantle’s father thought “Mickey” was Cochrane’s first name.  In fact, his name was Gordon.
• George Steinbrenner was also once placed on the permanently ineligible list.  His banning came in 1990 under Commissioner Fay Vincent.  Steinbrenner had hired a private investigator to try to find information that could be used to discredit Dave Winfield, who is now in the Hall of Fame.   Steinbrenner was reinstated by Bud Selig in 1993 and allowed to continue running the Yankees.  In the interim while he was banned, his son ran the organization.
• The only woman to ever have her name on the permanently ineligible list was Marge Schott.  Schott owned the Cincinnati Reds at the time of her banning in 1996.  Unlike others who’d gotten themselves on the list due to gambling, drugs, and the like, Schott got herself on the list primarily for racism. Among other things, Schott made a variety of derogatory comments about black people, Jews, Asians, gay people, etc. and was subsequently banned by Commissioner Bud Selig.  She was reinstated two years later and continued running the Reds until 1999.
• Ueberroth’s time as commissioner of baseball was initially quite successful, such as record increases in attendance and turning around the financial situation of many of the clubs (when he took office, 80% of the teams in the MLB were losing money and when he left, all were profitable, if only just for some of them).  However, his stint as commissioner didn’t last long as he was forced to step down just under five years after taking office when it was discovered that he had encouraged and facilitated collusion amongst team owners.  This became quite apparent in 1985-1987 when suddenly no position player could get a contract for more than three years and no pitcher could get a contract for more than two years, as agreed to in secret by the owners.  Further, nearly all free agents during that time could only manage to get offers from the current team they were playing for, with only a few exceptions where their current team didn’t want them.  This shunning included stars such as Kirk Gibson who no other team would talk to. Obviously, it quickly became apparent that the owners were colluding and they were subsequently sued by the MLB Player’s Association and Ueberroth stepped down as commissioner.  Further, the owners were forced to pay around $280 million worth of fines.
• Due to an injury in college, Mantle almost didn’t have the chance to play professional baseball.  During a football game, Mantle was kicked hard in the shin, which, aside from being really painful, resulted in the leg becoming severally infected and doctors initially thought they were going to have to amputate it.
• Mantle stated in his autobiography that his father forced him to marry the woman who ultimately became Mickey’s wife, Merlyn Johnson.  While the two remained married until Mantle’s death, they separated fifteen years before and Mantle was known to have had numerous affairs.  He even was audacious enough to bring one of his mistresses with him, along with his wife, to his Hall of Fame induction.
• Mantle also had a major alcohol problem through most of his life, as did pretty much everyone else in his immediate family.  After having to have a liver transplant in 1995, Mantle stated to the press: “This is a role model. Don’t be like me.”  Soon after that, he died of cancer.

Sources and Further Reading:

• A Hero All His Life, by the Mantle family
• Mickey Mantle
• Mickey Mantle
• Mickey Mantle Stats
• Willie Mays
• Peter Ueberroth
• List of People Banned from Major League Baseball
• Baseball Collusion
• Image Source

House Committee on Un-American Activities

Today I found out the Cincinnati Reds were once renamed the “Redlegs” due to the second “Red Scare”.

The Cincinnati Reds name was originally inspired by a previously existing team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, which was the first fully professional baseball team.  This former team had ten men on salary for eight months to play baseball for the Red Stockings.  It was organized by Harry Wright, who also played center field for the team and managed the defensive positioning, which was something that typically wasn’t done at that time.  The Cincinnati Red Stockings were wildly successful early on, going 57-1 (wins-tie) in their first season while touring the United States.  They followed this up by winning 24 straight games the next season before losing 8-7 in 11 innings to the Brooklyn Atlantics, which resulted in their attendance declining substantially and the team ultimately being disbanded, even though they only lost 6 games throughout that season.

In any event, the present day Cincinnati Reds’ name was inspired by the Cincinnati Red Stockings, even though they have no real connection with the Red Stockings other than being from the same town and initially naming themselves the same thing (the Cincinnati Red Stockings).  However, when this latter organization moved from the American Association to the National League, they shortened the name to just “Reds”.

This name stuck until 1953 when the association of the term “Reds” with communism caused the Reds to change their name to the “Redlegs” in order to avoid the social stigma.  Further, for a four year stretch from 1956-1960, the name “Reds” was removed from the team’s logo and no longer appeared on the team’s uniforms.  Despite the continued use of the changed logo, the name “Cincinnati Reds” was restored after the 1958 season.

If you’re wondering where the term “Redlegs” came from, this was once a derogatory term used to refer to a specific group of poor white people living on various islands in the Caribbean (generally originally from Ireland and Scotland).  They were also commonly known as “white slaves”.  Some were in fact actual white slaves, having been taken by press gangs and transported to Barbados to be sold.  Others were simply indentured servants, agreeing to work more or less as slaves for a time in exchange for transportation.  It’s estimated around 50,000 of these Redlegs were transported from Ireland alone during the mid-17th century.

So, apparently, the Reds preferred to associate themselves with slavery, rather than communism.  Although, this is marginally fitting given the reserve clause that was in place at the time, which forbid a player from being able to play for any team but the one who owned the rights to him when his last contract expired, unless he was released or traded.  This resulted in teams getting to set salaries nearly as low as they pleased and to completely control the careers of their baseball players. The only real negotiating tactic the players had at their disposal was to refuse to play baseball at all, which resulted in them not getting paid anything when they didn’t play and obviously wasn’t a good tactic for players who weren’t stars.

Bonus Factoids:

• After the Cincinnati Red Stockings were disbanded as a professional club, Harry Wright was hired by Ivers Whitney Adams to organize a new professional club in Boston with the first professional league.  In 1871, he put together the Boston Red Stockings, bringing over three of the members of the former Cincinnati Red Stockings.
• The Boston Red Stockings eventually became the Boston Braves, which are now the Atlanta Braves.  The Boston Red Sox were not established until much later in 1901.
• Frank Robinson was the Rookie of the Year for the National League, in the first year the Reds were called the Redlegs (1953).
• The Second Red Scare also saw Hollywood blacklist certain writers, directors, and actors that were associated with communism.  The first such blacklist by Hollywood was put in place on November 25, 1947 after a group of Hollywood writers and directors were held in contempt of Congress, “The Hollywood Ten”: Alvah Bessie (writer), Herbert Biberman (writer/director), Lester Cole (writer), Edward Dmytryk (director), Ring Lardner Jr. (writer), John Howard Lawson (writer), Albert Maltz (writer), Samuel Ornitz (writer), Adrian Scott (producer/writer), and Dalton Trumbo (writer).  What they did to earn this charge was refuse to testify to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which is possibly one of the most hypocritical of all U.S. government committees to date.  Rather than refuse to testify, perhaps all those asked to testify should have just held up large mirrors to reflect the committee’s faces back at them in order to help them find “Un-American Activity.”
• One such blacklisted individual, Lionel Stander, did this verbally when he was asked to testify, throwing it back in the committee’s faces: “I know of a group of fanatics who are desperately trying to undermine the Constitution of the United States by depriving artists and others of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness without due process of law…. I can tell names and cite instances and I am one of the first victims of it…. These people are engaged in a conspiracy outside all the legal processes to undermine the very fundamental American concepts upon which our entire system of democracy exists.”
• All total there were forty three that were asked to testify at the time the “Hollywood Ten” refused to do so.  Most were willing to testify, but there were 19 that had refused to give any evidence to the Committee with 10 of the 19 being called.  These ten refused to answer such questions as: “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?”
• Following this charge, executive members of 48 movie companies met at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York and wrote up the “Waldorf Statement”, that, among other things, stated: “We will forthwith discharge or suspend without compensation those in our employ, and we will not re-employ any of the 10 until such time as he is acquitted or has purged himself of contempt and declares under oath that he is not a Communist… On the broader issue of alleged subversive and disloyal elements in Hollywood, our members are likewise prepared to take positive action… We will not knowingly employ a Communist or a member of any party or group which advocates the overthrow of the government of the United States by force or by any illegal or unconstitutional methods.”
• All members of the Hollywood Ten ended up being given one year prison sentences for contempt of Congress when the Supreme Court refused to hear their case.  One of the ten, Edward Dmytryk, ultimately decided to give names and as a result, his prison sentence was shortened and he was removed from the blacklist.
• Ultimately the witch hunt continued after the Hollywood Ten and numerous other movie industry employees were blacklisted, including 84 of the 204 that signed a brief supporting the Hollywood Ten.  Actor Larry Park was one of those blacklisted after he stated to the committee: “Don’t present me with the choice of either being in contempt of this committee and going to jail or forcing me to really crawl through the mud to be an informer. For what purpose? I don’t think it is a choice at all. I don’t think this is really sportsmanlike. I don’t think this is American. I don’t think this is American justice.”  He did ultimately testify, but was added to the blacklist anyways.  Further, anyone who used the Fifth Amendment to get out of naming names also was added to the blacklist.
• In the late 1950s, several people previously blacklisted began finding work in various places in Hollywood, such as Norman Lloyd in 1957, hired by Alfred Hitchcock.  The major blow to the blacklist supporters came when Dalton Trumbo, one of the members of the original Hollywood Ten, was shown to be one of the writers of the movie Exodus.  He was also announced to be one of the writers of Spartacus.
• The owner of RKO Pictures supposedly decided to get out of the movie business largely as a result of the Red Scare and the witch hunt it produced in Hollywood.  What makes this notable is that this allowed Howard Hughes to get into the film industry when he purchased RKO Pictures.  This subsequently resulted in Hughes playing a critical role in ending the Hollywood studio system that had been in place for a few decades.
• The First Red Scare occurred in the U.S. from 1919-1920 and was centered around socialist radicalism.  The Second Red Scare ran for a decade around 1947-1957, give or take a few years.  This was centered around communists supposedly infiltrating the U.S. and subtly manipulating national opinion and policy.

Sources and Further Reading:

• Red Scare: Memories of the American Inquisition, by Griffin Fariello
• Odd Man Out: A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten, by Edward Dmytryk
• Cincinnati Reds
• Cincinnati Redlegs’ Roster
• Cincinnati Redlegs
• Redlegs
• The First Professional Baseball Team
• Odd Man Out, A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten
• Hollywood Blacklist
• Red Scare
• The Studio System
• Lionel Stander
• Remnants of an Indentured People
• Image Source

This Day in History: February 4, 2004

On this day in history, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg launched a site called TheFacebook, that eventually became just “Facebook” after the company acquired the domain rights to facebook.com for $200,000 in 2005.  The site was originally inspired by a project done by one of Mark Zuckerberg’s high school friends, Adam D’Angelo.  D’Angelo had developed a simple social networking site called Buddy Zoo at Caltech that was fairly popular in its short run until D’Angelo shut it down.  The popularity of this early social site and the implications of such a service on a large scale was frequently discussed by Zuckerberg and his friends, but they didn’t do anything about creating such a service initially.

This all changed when Zuckerberg was reading an article in The Harvard Crimson that mentioned a website he’d created and gotten in a lot of trouble for (FaceMash), including almost being expelled from Harvard.  FaceMash was a site that was more or less a Harvard-centric knock-off to Hot or Not.  The reason Harvard Administration had a problem with the site was that in order to get it going, Zuckerberg had hacked into Harvard’s student ID picture database in order to get pictures of students at the school in the nine different school dorm houses.  He then posted the pictures on his site, separated by dormitory and pitted pictures of people against one another, showing two pictures at a time with people choosing who’s hotter of the two shown.

Over 22,000 votes were submitted on FaceMash before it was shut down after just four hours due to people getting offended from having their pictures posted without their consent to be rated.   Once the administration got wind of it, they charged Mark with various things such as copyright infringement, violating people’s privacy, and the like.  All the charges were eventually dropped and he was allowed to continue attending Harvard.

In any event, The Harvard Crimson article specifically mentioned:

The potential benefits of a comprehensive, campus-wide online facebook are plenty…  Thanks to a little bit of ingenuity and lot of illicit hacking, a Harvard sophomore was able to obtain a great majority of the campus’ photos and compile them on one navigable site. This was an invasion of privacy, and HASCS must insure that its facebook is secure. But it is clear that the technology needed to create a centralized website is readily available; the benefits are many.

When Zuckerberg read this, a light bulb went off in his head and he thought, “I think it’s kind of silly that it would take the University a couple of years to get around to it. I can do it better than they can, and I can do it in a week.”  And, in fact, that’s exactly what he did, finishing the initial version in about a week.  Granted, during that week he reportedly did almost nothing else, including not sleeping much, nor socializing at all.  However, after the week, it was done.  This was lucky for him that he finished so quickly because just a few months later he stated in The Harvard Crimson,”If I hadn’t launched it that day, I was about to just can it and go on to the next thing I was about to do.”

From there, it took just one month for half of the school’s students to sign up to TheFacebook.  Shortly thereafter, it was expanded to include other universities, initially focusing on Ivy League schools, but then expanding to the majority of colleges in North America.  Just six months after it was launched, TheFacebook was officially incorporated and Zuckerberg and co. moved to Palo Alto, California where they received funding from people like Sean Parker (already a wealthy young entrepreneur who, among other things, also helped found Napster) and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.  Shortly before this happened, Zuckerberg stated, “My goal is to not have a job… Making cool things is just something I love doing, and not having someone tell me what to do or a timeframe in which to do it is the luxury I am looking for in my life…  I assume eventually I’ll make something that is profitable.”

Since then, Facebook has been growing at an astounding rate both in revenue and number of users.  In 2006, just two years after its launch, Facebook earned $52 million.  The next year, they earned $150 million; then $280 million in 2008; $775 million in 2009; 2 billion in 2010; and, finally, $4.27 billion in 2011.  The user growth rate has been equally remarkable, growing to 100 million users in late 2008.  From there, the user base skyrocketed, gaining an average of around 100 million users every 160 days up to today, where they are rapidly approaching 1 billion users with their last reported tally on December of 2011 being 845 million members with 483 million daily active people.  They also reported well over one trillion page views per month in late 2011.  I guess Zuckerberg can check off from his To-Do list the goal to not ever have to get a job.

Bonus Factoids:

• Facebook was not Mark Zuckerberg’s first “big thing” he helped create.  In fact, he nearly made his first million while still in High School.  At this time, he and Adam D’Angelo decided for a school project to make a program that would monitor what a person likes to listen to, then create playlists for that person, given a variety of factors.  Specifically: “It learned your listening patterns by figuring out how much you like each song at a given point and time, and which songs you tend to listen to around each other.”  The application they made was in the form of a plugin to WinAmp that was then freely available online.  It was eventually featured on Slashdot and soon Zuckerberg and D’Angelo began getting offers from various companies including Microsoft, AOL, and WinAmp for their program for as high as $2 million, even without negotiating.  They initially didn’t want to sell it, but once they left for college changed their minds, but at this point it was too late and the companies were no longer interested in their program.
• This WinAmp plugin was not only significant because it almost made Zuckerberg a millionaire right out of High School, but also because he had originally not intended to study computer science in college, with his interest being more towards a classics program at Harvard.  After helping to write this application, he changed his thinking and decided to include studying computer science.
• If his hacking into Harvard’s ID database and stealing pictures then putting them on a Harvard-centric public site seems to you to have been an incredibly idiotic thing to do (given he was guaranteed to get caught), it should be noted that he was apparently slightly drunk when he thought up the idea and began implementing it: “I need to think of something to occupy my mind. Easy enough—now I just need an idea… I’m a little intoxicated, not gonna lie. So what if it’s not even 10 pm and it’s a Tuesday night? What? The Kirkland [dorm] facebook is open on my desktop and some of these people have pretty horrendous facebook pics. I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of farm animals and have people vote on which is more attractive…  Yea, it’s on. I’m not exactly sure how the farm animals are going to fit into this whole thing (you can’t really ever be sure with farm animals…), but I like the idea of comparing two people together… Let the hacking begin.”  He later stated he never intended it to go public when he first shared it with a few friends; he was just wanting their feedback so he could improve on it.  At the time, he well knew the controversy that would ensue if it became popular in its initial state.  However, it did become instantly popular and he was forced to shut it down before he could get around some of the privacy problems and copyright concerns.
• Another early social themed site Zuckerberg made was called CourseMatch, which he made about a year before FaceMash. CourseMatch was intended to allow students to easily find out what classes their friends were taking at Harvard.
• Zuckerberg didn’t just get in trouble for FaceMash at Harvard, but also for something he did in the early days of TheFacebook.  Specifically, he examined failed login logs for TheFacebook and then took the incorrect passwords and attempted to login to the user’s official Harvard email accounts, which he was successful on at least twice.
• The first “major” program Zuckerberg ever wrote as a child was a knock-off version of Risk, based in Ancient Rome with Julius Caesar as the opponent.
• As mentioned, Sean Parker helped get Facebook its initial funding and was named company president in the summer of 2004.  He currently owns about a 4% stake in the company, compared to Zuckerberg’s 24%.  In any event, as a teenager, Parker’s main hobby was hacking into various people’s systems.  One particularly fateful night, he hacked into a Fortune 500 company’s network only to have his dad unplug his computer before he could logout and cover his tracks.  He was soon tracked down by the F.B.I., but because of his young age wasn’t sentenced, other than having to do some community service.
• Sean Parker chose not to go to college because at the time when he graduated High School, through a variety of projects he’d started while in school, he was already making over $80,000 per year.  Many of the projects he not only made money on, but also received high school credit for a “foreign language”, convincing the school to count programming languages as a foreign language and allowing him to do independent study in that area.
• Parker became involved with Napster thanks to a long time friendship with Shawn Fanning.  The two met online when Parker was 15 and Fanning was 14.  About five years later, they launched Napster together in 1999, with Parker providing much of the initial funding.  His next major project came out just three years later, Plaxo, which was a social networking service that allows people to update their contact information everywhere at once, such as the ability to integrate with Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla’s Thunderbird, Blackberry, etc.  Plaxo grew to around 20 million users when it sold to Comcast in 2008.   Parker has since help found a variety of other companies and today his net worth is estimated to be a little over $2 billion.  He’s currently just 33 years old.
• Parker learned of Facebook through one of his roommate’s girlfriends in 2004.  He became intrigued by it and contacted Zuckerberg and subsequently unofficially advised him on developing the site until finally offering to facilitate acquiring funding for Facebook in the summer of 2004, getting funding from such as people as PayPal’s co-founder, Peter Thiel.  As Zuckerberg said, “Sean was pivotal in helping Facebook transform from a college project into a real company.”
• Parker has since been portrayed on the movie The Social Network as extremely cocky and quite a jerk.  However, according to Chamath Palihapitiya, the former chief growth coordinator at Facebook, nothing could be further from the truth: “Parker is really the exact opposite of his portrayal in the film.”
• In the film The Social Network, Parker was played by Justin Timberlake, who, interestingly enough, just recently purchased MySpace for $35 million in 2010, partnering with Specific Media LLC in the purchase.  This is potentially a steal of a deal as even as recent as August of 2011, MySpace received 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors alone and currently is still around the 150th most popular site in the world.  However, the steady decline of traffic the last few years, the expensive nature of maintaining it in its current corporate form, as well as the loss of the hype surrounding the company, which Facebook is currently benefiting from in their valuation and MySpace originally benefited from when they sold for over a half a billion in 2005, obviously played a huge role in suppressing the recent sale price, which was a full $70 million less than the originally projected value.
• As mentioned, Peter Thiel, was one of the other initial investors in Facebook.  He also co-founded PayPal with Max Levchin, and Elon Musk (if you don’t know who this is, go here right now and read about him; one of the more amazing entrepreneurs on the planet). Before becoming an entrepreneur Thiel was a chess master (officially, Thiel was one of the highest ranked under-21 players in the United States when he competed as a youth).
• Interestingly, Thiel was a philosophy major at Stanford.  He bucked the trend of philosophy majors who go on to simply think deep thoughts about not having a job and instead started helping found companies.  Today, his net worth is officially $1.5 billion, but in fact his Facebook stock alone is estimate to be worth around $1.7 billion, once they go public, which is expected to happen soon.  Companies Thiel has been involved in include: LinkedIn, Friendster, Yelp, and PayPal, among many others.  Not bad for a chess master/philosophy major who is only 45 years old.
• Shawn Fanning, arguably the main person behind Napster, originally got his start in the professional programming world thanks to his uncle, John Fanning, who hired him to work in the summers for John Fanning’s internet company, Chess.net.  Sean also worked their during Christmas break.  During the first Christmas break while he was at College, he and his uncle John completed the initial version of Napster and launched it early the next year with some financial backing from Sean Parker, as stated above.  Eventually, after significant legal trouble, they attempted to sell Napster to Bertelsmann for $85 million, but the sale was blocked by a U.S. judge and instead they had to liquidate their assets with Roxio acquiring the company in an auction.  Next, Best Buy in 2008 purchased Napster for $121 million and now Napster is owned by Rhapsody when Napster and Rhapsody merged, with Best Buy receiving a stake in Rhapsody as compensation.
• Fanning’s most successful venture since Napster was a company called Rupture which was a social tool for gamers.  It sold about four years ago for $15 million to Electronic Arts.

Sources and Further Reading:

• The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That is Connecting the World, by David Kirkpatrick
• Facebook Newsroom
• A Brief History of Facebook
• College Launches Official Facebook
• Put Online a Happy Face
• Mark E. Zuckerberg, The Whiz Behind TheFacebook
• Face Off
• Hot Or Not?  Website Briefly Judges Looks
• FaceMash Creator Survives Ad Board
• Hundreds Register for New Facebook Site
• Facebook
• History of Facebook
• Sean Parker
• Napster
• John Fanning
• Shawn Fanning
• Web Communities with Over 100 million users
• MySpace
• Peter Thiel
• Image Source

The glow from a firefly comes from the lower part of their abdomen. This “lantern” portion has an evolutionary gift in the form of bioluminescence. The light produced by a small layer of cells called photocytes is reflected off several layers of reflective cells and emits a greenish-yellow glow.

Specifically, inside the light producing cells within the firefly is an organelle called a peroxizome. The chemical party that lies within it is what creates the light. Magnesium and ATP combine with an enzyme known as luciferase and the protein luciferin. This combination creates a very excited molecule. When oxygen is introduced into the mix, the molecule goes from “excited” back to a steady state. Think of having to pee extremely badly. You begin to tap dance like Micheal Flatley on crack! Once relieved, you return to a “steady state”. In the case of a photocytes chemical reaction, this energy release is in the form of a photon of light.

The mechanism that turns on and off this light show is still the topic of some debate. The prevailing theory revolves around the firefly’s ability to control oxygen within photocytes. Mitochondria (the organelle that controls ATP production) require large amounts of oxygen. When the firefly decides to light up the sky, it signals “trigger cells” around their air tubes to produce large amounts of nitric oxide. When the mitochondria inside the photocytes become soaked with nitric oxide, it results in extra oxygen available within the cell. It is thought this extra oxygen availability kicks off the chain reaction that produces light.

The process involved in stopping the luminous chemical reaction within photocytes has also yet to be proven. Researchers have found that white light can reverse the effects of nitric oxide on a key respiratory enzyme found in mitochondria. Because of this, it is thought that the “off” button on a firefly could be light itself.

The reason for this evolutionarily driven light show is mating. Fireflies, like most animals that procreate sexually, need to find a way to attract potential suitors. In the case of the firefly, this attraction is accomplished with flashes of visible light.  When a hot-to-trot male is ready to put on his Barry White and begin patrolling a specific area for females, he will start his flash-dance in the hopes of being seen by a willing lady. The females usually sit in wait, and once an attractive male happens by that gets her fire going, so to speak, she will signal back. The male also prepares a “nuptial gift” in the form of sperm wrapped in a high protein package, which he then gives to her and the mating ritual of this bright beetle is soon accomplished.

Bonus Factoids:

• Not all fireflies use their light to attract potential sexual partners. A type of firefly known as “Photuris” will mimic the light patterns of another type, “Photinus”, to attract the males of that genus class. Once the love-struck male approaches, instead of a booty-call, the Photuris female will seize him and then eat him!
• Some firefly species will use blood as a means to ward off predators. The process is called “reflex bleeding”. This blood is toxic to some predators and numerous studies have shown that these predators learn very quickly to stay away from fireflies. These same studies show that these predators will also stay away from perfectly palatable insects if those insects are painted with glowing substances that mimic firefly larva. The femme fatale Photuris firefly is not able to make the toxic chemical. They are however able to gain this poison by eating firefly’s with it. Once ingested, she is able to pass it on to her eggs and larvae.
• The light from a firefly is usually in the range of 561-570nm on the light spectrum. This is high green-low yellow for those not in the know.
• Fireflies are not “flies”, they are beetles. True “flies” have only one pair of wings, beetles and other insects commonly referred to as flies, like dragonfly or scorpionfly, have 2 sets of wings or four wings altogether. For ease of understanding, when the term “fly” is hyphenated following the common name for the insect, or fly follows the common name, it is, most likely, a true “fly” and has only 2 wings.
• Most species of firefly are able to use luminescence as adults, but all known firefly larvae and eggs are able to achieve this feat. There are also related beetles that have bioluminescent abilities. Click beetles and Phenogodid beetles are two.
• In the United States, fireflies that glow are not usually seen west of Kansas. The reason for this phenomenon isn’t known, but studies have shown only rare, isolated sightings of luminous fireflies in the western states.
• If you live east of Kansas and want to attract fireflies to your house there are some tips to follow. Cut down on lawn chemicals; Allow low overhanging trees, tall grass and other vegetation. This will provide adult fireflies with a place to rest and remain cool during the day. Reduce any artificial lighting around your property, which could interfere with the firefly’s signal and make it harder for most species to locate a mate.
• There are currently over 2000 known species of firefly around the world.

References:

• The Study Of Fireflies
• Understanding Fireflys
• Synchronized Fireflys
• Female Fireflies 
• Firefly Facts
• Secret Formula For Firefly Glow
• Image Source

“Scot free”, also sometimes written “scotfree”, “scot-free” or, incorrectly, as “Scott free” actually pre-dates the Dred Scott Supreme Court ruling in 1857 by a very large margin (having been around since at least the 11th century). Another common misconception is that the phrase has some association with the Scottish.  In fact, “scot”, in this case, is from the Old Norse word “skot” meaning something to the effect of “payment” or “contribution”.  In English, “scot” initially just meant “tax”.

The phrase scot free was first used in reference to municipal tax levies.  Each person in a town would be obligated to pay a share of the scot (tax), which was called their “lot”.  In some areas, you also were not allowed to vote unless you paid your lot of the scot.  Those who didn’t pay, such as the poor or those wealthy individuals that could get out of it, were then “scot free”.

Thus, initially, the term more or less just implied you got out of paying your taxes.  It quickly spread to being used whenever someone got out of paying anything they should have, monetarily speaking.  Today, it is also used in reference to non-monetary forms of payment, such as someone who commits a crime, but then gets off “scot free”, without being punished in any way for their crime.

The Dred Scott v. Sandford case has since given rise to the false etymology that it had something to do with this Supreme Court ruling on whether Dred Scot and his family should be free or not.  For those not familiar, Dred Scott was a slave, born in Virginia somewhere between 1795-1799 who ultimately played a large role in accelerating the start of the U.S. Civil War and indirectly helped popularize the Republican Party.

Scott originally was owned by the Peter Blow family but was sold to Dr. John Emerson who moved around a lot due to being a doctor in the U.S. army.  During this time, Dred Scott found himself living briefly in Illinois (a free state) and the Wisconsin Territory (in present day Minnesota) where slavery was outlawed.

As such, at around 47-51 years old, even though he was at the time living in a non-free territory, he petitioned for his freedom on the grounds that when he was in those free territories, he should then have been automatically free, both by state laws and by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.  He filed suit initially on April 6th, 1846 with the courts to have himself and his wife and two daughters freed.  Why he waited so long to do so isn’t known.  It is speculated that he didn’t know of the law at the time, so didn’t bring the matter up while living in those free regions.

This first suit was dismissed due to insufficient evidence, but the court allowed Scott to re-file.  During the second trial, the jury ruled in the Scott family’s favor and proclaimed them free due to the fact that Dr. Emerson had illegally held him as a slave while Scott lived in free regions.  However, this decision was appealed and the Missouri State Supreme Court ruled against the Scotts in 1852.  This was particularly significant because it overturned the firmly established “once free, always free” precedent, with Scott and his family having been free during the interim of the jury’s ruling and the State Supreme Court’s ruling.

After another failed suit, the case was brought before the U.S. Supreme Court: Dred Scott v. Sandford (note: the court misspelled Sanford as Sandford).  They ruled against him 7-2, stating that as he was of African descent, he had no rights as a citizen of the U.S. and, thus, could not file suit against anyone in a U.S. court.  This was contrary to common practice in free states where many allowed freed slaves to become citizens.  As such, because the Supreme Court is the highest court in the land, it effectively nullified those people’s citizenship.  Their ruling also overturned the Missouri Compromise as unconstitutional because it would allow slave owners to be deprived of their property (slaves) without any sort of due process (if the slave owners traveled through or moved to a territory where slavery was outlawed), which violated the Fifth Amendment.

Needless to say, the Supreme Court’s ruling outraged abolitionists who had recently formed the Republican Party three years before in 1854 with one of their primary goals being to stop the spread of slavery. The ruling became hotly debated throughout the country, polarizing many individuals on the issue of slavery and ultimately bolstering the new Republican Party’s numbers, helping to eventually get Abraham Lincoln elected as President in 1860 as the first Republican U.S. President.

After the ruling, the Scotts were given back to the Blow family, who had originally owned them. The Blows subsequently granted them their freedom in 1857.  Unfortunately, Dred Scott didn’t get to enjoy this too long as he died of tuberculosis a year later, but at least his family was free and his court case was pivotal in accelerating the process that would ultimately lead to the freedom of all slaves in the United States.

Bonus Factoids:

• One of the earliest known references to the phrase “scot free” comes from the Charter of 1066: “Scotfre and gauelfre, on schire and on hundrede.”  Basically: “Scot free and tribute, divide lots by subdivisions within a county” (“hundrede” here refers to a subdivision of a shire or county)
• The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dred Scott case technically still stands to this day (having never been directly overruled by the Supreme Court since then).  However, the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments have effectively done the work of overruling the court’s decision in the Dred Scott case.  The Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery and the Fourteenth Amendment, among other things, provides a citizenship clause which allowed people of African descent (and others) to become citizens of the United States.
• Many historians think that Dred Scott’s name was not originally “Dred”, but, rather, “Sam”.  He had an older brother named “Dred” that died, at which point Sam chose to take his brother’s name.
• Dred Scott’s wife, Harriet, was owned by Major Lawrence Taliaferro and was just a teenager when Dred married her (even though he was nearing his 40s at the time).  Scott asked permission to marry Harriet, which was granted, and Taliaferro further agreed to transfer ownership of Harriet to Dr. Emerson so Dred and Harriet could live together.
• The Dred Scott ruling by the Supreme Court was only the second instance of the Supreme Court declaring that an Act of Congress was unconstitutional.  The first was around 50 years before in the case of Marbury v. Madison.
• While it wasn’t the cause, the Dred Scott ruling did help to trigger the Panic of 1857, due to economists being worried over whether the free states and territories would now be slave states and if that would result in anarchy within those regions.
• After its formation in 1854, the Republican Party quickly grew to dominate the Northern States, seeing its first party member to become president in 1860, Abraham Lincoln (not a bad turn-around, taking only 6 years from the party’s inception).  One of their earliest campaign slogans was “free soil, free silver, free men, Frémont”, which was a slogan used during John C. Fremont’s failed bid for the presidency in 1856.  Interestingly, during this time in the South, the Republican Party was branded as a radical group that wanted to break up the nation via a civil war.
• The Republican Party being strongly supported by various groups of Christians goes all the way back to its origins where among its strongest initial supporters were the Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, and Quakers, who almost universally supported the party from its inception.  Interestingly, despite the overall strong support from the various Christian groups, the Roman Catholic church almost exclusively rejected the Republican Party in its early days, generally supporting the Democratic party instead.

Sources and Further Reading:

• Tudor Phrases and Sayings, by Gary Martin
• History of the Dred Scott Case
• World Wide Words: Scot Free
• The Revised Dred Scott Collection
• Dred Scott vs Sandford
• Dred Scott
• Scot Free
• Etymology of Scot Free
• Scot-free
• Etymology Shot
• Panic of 1857
• Scot
• Northwest Ordinance
• Fifth Amendment
• The Republican Party
• History of the United States Republican Party
• Image Source

This Day in History: February 1, 1709

On this day in history, 1709, Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk was finally rescued from a deserted island he inhabited for over four years.  The island he found himself on was Más a Tierra, the largest island of the Juan Fernández group of islands, around 400 miles west of South America.  Today the island has been re-named to “Robinson Crusoe”.  One of the other islands in that group, around 100 miles west of Robinson Crusoe island, has also been renamed Alejandro Selkirk.

Selkirk, who was serving as a Master Navigator at the time, arrived at the island in October of 1704 aboard a barely sea-worthy vessel, the Cinque Ports, that had been damaged in previous battles with the Spanish and was infested with worms that were eating away at the hull.  The captain had decided to stop at the island to re-stock their supply of fresh water and food stores.  Due to the failing state of their ship, Selkirk refused to get back aboard and tried to convince the others that they should stay and wait for another ship to come along.  Everyone else refused to stay and Selkirk found himself on the island alone.

This may sound like a foolish thing to do, but better stranded on a well stocked island with plenty of fresh water and food sources than on a ship that may sink at any moment in the middle of the ocean.  In fact, this is exactly what happened to the vessel, with most of the remaining 41 members of the crew (they originally had 90 when they first set sail) aboard dying when the Cinque Ports sunk of the coast of Peru shortly thereafter.  Only eight of the crew survived, including the captain.  They managed to swim to a nearby island from where the ship sank, but were subsequently taken captive by Spaniards and were imprisoned where “the Spaniards put them in a close dungeon and used them very barbarously.”  Only the captain made it away from there alive, eventually managing to return to Britain.

Initially, Selkirk thought a ship would pass fairly quickly that he could hitch a ride on.  This obviously didn’t happen.  The supplies he had on hand included a musket, gunpowder, a knife, a Bible, bedding, a few tools, and tobacco.  Lucky for him though, the island provided his necessities, with plenty of fresh water, goats, seals, shellfish, wild turnips, cabbage, etc.  However, the island was also infested with rats.  This became a problem for him when he’d try to sleep, with the rats gnawing at his clothing, bedding, and feet.  He soon found a solution to this problem, as the island also had a large population of cats.  He domesticated many of the cats, providing them regular supplies of food, and the cats took to hanging out around his campsite and sleeping near him, which kept the rats at bay while he slept.

Throughout his time on the island, he lived fairly comfortably.  Initially, he hunted goats using his gun, but when gunpowder ran out, he took to chasing the goats.  All total, he estimated he’d killed about five hundred goats during his time there to use for food and other purposes.  He also began systematically partially maiming young goats so that when they grew older, they wouldn’t be able to run as fast.  His father having been a shoe maker and tanner also helped him out significantly as he knew how to make clothing and the like from the goat skins, which was useful once his own clothing wore out.

While on the island, his life was only threatened twice.  The first time was when he was chasing a goat and subsequently fell off of a cliff.  While he was injured, his injuries may have been even worse except that he managed to land on the goat, who was probably killed on impact. Selkirk himself was knocked unconscious by the fall and did not wake for almost an entire day and according to his account was near senseless for another two days. The second time his life was in danger was when Spanish ships arrived.  He initially thought he might be rescued, but upon realizing the people aboard were Spanish, he fled as they shot at him.  The Spanish chased him throughout the island, but eventually gave up the hunt.  During this time, he hid himself near the top of a very thickly leaved tree for two days.  At one point, he reported a couple of the Spanish sailors, not knowing he was there, peed at the base of the tree.

Finally, on February 1, 1709, two ships, which included famed explorer William Dampier and was led by Woodes Rogers, anchored near the island and Selkirk revealed himself to the crews via a signal fire.  Several of the crew were suffering from scurvy and Selkirk set about supplying them with needed food.  He got so good in the graces of the captain that he was made first mate before they set off, and was given one of the two ships to captain during the remainder of the voyage. A book was subsequently written by Captain Woodes Rogers’, which included the tale of Selkirk: Rogers’ A Cruising Voyage Round the World: First to the South-Sea, thence to the East-Indies, and Homewards by the Cape of Good Hope.  Selkirk himself was also interviewed several times about his adventure and gained a certain amount of notoriety for it throughout England.

Bonus Factoids:

• The original title of the book now known as Robinson Crusoe was actually: The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un‐inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver’d by Pirates.
• Another fascinating castaway was a French noblewoman Marguerite de La Rocque de Roberval.  She was accused of having an affair with someone aboard the ship she was on (she was a guest of her relative, the newly made Lieutenant General of New France).  The individual she had an affair with was depicted as a low birth individual, but this is thought to have been a lie to protect the man’s aristocratic family from shame.  His name was never given.  In any event, Marguerite was left on the “Isle of Demons” in the Gulf of St. Lawrence near present day Quebec in 1542.  With her was the young man she was supposedly having an affair with and a maid servant (there are conflicting accounts on whether she was left on the island with her servant and her lover jumped off the ship and swam to shore to join her or whether he was left on the island and she voluntarily chose to join him). Whatever the case, both the man and servant died on the island, along with a baby that Marguerite had while their (the baby dying of malnourishment).  Marguerite, on the other hand, managed to live through the ordeal, which lasted a few years.  She was eventually rescued by a fisherman and managed to return to France where she became a school teacher.  Her story became famous throughout France and was included in Queen Marguerite of Navarre’s work: Heptaméron.
• Interestingly, William Dampier had also captained one of the ships on the original expedition Selkirk was involved in that got him stranded in the first place.  On that expedition, Dampier was captaining the St. George, and Selkirk was serving aboard the Cinque Ports.  The two ships parted ways when the Cinque Ports put in on the island Selkirk was ultimately stranded on.  Dampier was instrumental in initially getting the crew in 1709 to trust Selkirk.
• It has also been proposed that Robinson Crusoe may have also been partially inspired by Henry Pitman, who was once a surgeon to the Duke of Monmouth, but ultimately became a castaway.  Pitman wrote a book about his adventures in a Caribbean penal colony, where he took part in the Monmouth Rebellion.  Afterwards during his escape, he was shipwrecked on a deserted island.  The connection between Defoe and Pitman was that Defoe’s publisher’s father, J. Taylor, published Pitman’s book.  Further, Pitman lived above the publishing house in London and it is thought Defoe may have known him and been familiar with his story.
• Selkirk initially began his life at sea due to having a bit of trouble with the authorities as a young man.  Rather than appear at a trial for “undecent carriage” (basically indecent behavior), he fled, becoming a privateer (basically a legal pirate, that was allowed to attack and rob any ship or person that was an enemy of the UK).
• Daniel Defoe was originally named Daniel Foe, but later changed his name, adding the “De”, because it was more aristocratic.
• When Selkirk finally returned to Scotland, he brought with him his earnings as a privateer which amounted to £800, which was a very large sum at the time (around 10-15 years worth of wages by the average earnings of a typical low-class worker like his father, a tanner).  He eventually went back to a life at sea and died in the Royal Navy of a fever off the coast of Africa.
• Selkirk wasn’t the first to be stranded on what is now known as Robinson Crusoe Island (then called Más a Tierra).  Another man, named simply Will, was left there after his fellow sailors spotted an enemy ship approaching the island.  When they saw it, they all fled back to their ship and sailed away, leaving Will behind as he had not noticed them fleeing until most were back on the boat and he was foraging deep inland.  He was stranded there in 1681 and rescued in 1684.
• Leendert Hasenbosch was a famous castaway who didn’t survive.  He was left on Ascension Island, which is around halfway between Africa and South America, in 1725.  He was caught committing the act of sodomy during a stop over in Cape Town and his punishment was to be left on the island until he could find away off via a passing ship or died.  They left him with a tent, a survival kit, prayer books, seeds, a musical instrument, writing material, clothing, and four weeks worth of water, as they thought there was no fresh water on the island, though it was fairly large.  Hasenbosch searched the island and found no water, but managed to live for six months, drinking the blood of the animals and drinking his own urine.  He finally died, presumably from dehydration.  Interestingly, there actually are two sources of fresh water on the island, which were previously discovered (in 1701) by other castaways (this time of a ship wreck).  One of the sources was significant enough to supply those 60 men with sufficient fresh water after their ship wreck for two full months before they were rescued.  It was a stream found high up in the interior of the island.   Why Hasenbosch’s story was so famous was that he kept a diary that was found about six months after he died by passing British sailors.  This diary was subsequently published in Britain under such titles as “Sodomy Punish’d” and “An Authentick Relaton”.  The original diary has been lost and only a few known facts remain about what was in it, such as him continually searching for water and firewood, as well as his remorse for committing sodomy.  It is also known that he indicate he frequently thought he saw old friends and also demons while on the island, presumably from being in such a dehydrated state.  This level of constant dehydration also may be why he never ventured up to the high elevation parts of the island where there was in fact the one strong stream of fresh water.  Accounts of his diary have survived, but they differ from one another, having been embellished in the telling, so hard facts about his time there are difficult to ascertain.
• The first known European to become a castaway on an Island in the Pacific Ocean was Gonzalo de Vigo.  He was a sailor in Magellan’s fleet, who chose to leave the fleet in Guam in March of 1521.  He was found five years later by the Loaisa Expedition.
• Today, the island of Robinson Crusoe has an official population of 859 people (525 men and 334 women), with the primary industry being lobster trading, as well as a few hundred people a year coming for tourism purposes, such as scuba diving near the wreckage of the German SMS Dresden.

Sources and Further Reading:

• A Dutch Castaway on Ascension Island, by Alex Ritsema
• Selkirk’s Island: The True and Strange Adventures of the Real Robinson Crusoe byDiana Souhami
• Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe
• Two Extraordinary Travelers
• The Mystery of Alexander Selkirk Solved
• The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk
• Alexander Selkirk
• Robinson Crusoe
• Daniel DeFoe
• Robinson Crusoe Island
• Castaway
• Marguerite de La Rocque
• Leendert Hassenbosch
• Image Source

Porcupines mate in a very bizarre way. They first begin their ludicrous lovemaking with some nose rubbing. If the female accepts the nose rubbing and, after the initial nose rubbing test, the female is still keen on the male, the male will then stand on its hind legs and the female allows him to urinate all over her body (kinky).  This isn’t done in a normal bladder expelling fashion, though. In this case, the urine is ejaculated at high pressure, rather than relying on internal bladder pressure.

Should this golden shower not be up to the female’s standards (she doesn’t like the pheromones), she will shake off the urine and find herself another mate. Should the rain from the main vein be acceptable, she will expose her non-quilled underbelly and allow the male to copulate for 2-5 minutes. If all is successful, approximately 112-210 days later (depending on the species) a little porcupine baby is born.

This mating ritual is not only strange, but also is infrequent. Female porcupines are receptive to sexual advances for only about 8-12 hours per year, much like my ex-wife.  This mating typically occurs in late summer or early fall.  They do however take full advantage of that time. Females will mate several times with the male of their choice until he becomes sexually exhausted.

Interestingly, unlike many female animals that are frequently raped (such as with ducks where an estimated 1 in 3 mating acts is rape), the female porcupine cannot be raped.  All she has to do to deter a potential rapist is to swipe his mating-ready exposed sensitive region with her tail, problem solved.  So male porcupines are completely at the mercy of the female when it comes to mating.  They also tend to have a tough time of it just to get to mate, generally having to chase off other male porcupines to win the right to mate with the female.  This process often results in them getting stuck with quills during the fighting, even if they win.

Bonus Factoids:

• Porcupines are the third largest rodent on earth. They range from 25-36 inches long and weigh between 12-35 pounds. Only the beaver and capybara are larger in the rodent kingdom.
• Porcupines are in constant need of salt and will stop at nothing to get at it. They are considered pests primarily for this very reason, gnawing on and destroying anything that has salt on or in it. This includes even small amounts of salt, like anything that salty human hands have touched, such as the handles of tools, discarded garbage, or food wrappers. The most common item destroyed by these rodents is plywood. The curing compound used in plywood production is sodium nitrate. The porcupine sniffs this out and will chew relentlessly at any wooden wall, floor, roof, or structure made from it.
• Baby porcupines are born with their eyes open and very well developed. Their quills are soft directly after birth (which I’m sure the mother appreciates) but will harden within about an hour. They are dependent on their mother’s milk for about 8 weeks and then begin to eat normally. They can expect a life span of about 20 years.
• The warning and defensive method of a porcupine is a threefold system. They will first begin to shake their quills in a visible pattern and send out an unpleasant odor. If you still won’t back off, they will begin to stamp their feet and will also growl and clack their teeth. Should you ignore these first two signs, the porcupine will then turn its back to you and charge at you backwards. Should they make contact, the quills are your Darwin-Award for inattention to warning signs.
• A common misconception is that porcupines can “throw” their quills.  In fact, this is not an ability they possess (luckily).
• Evolution has developed an ingenious method for the release of quills. There is a thick loop of connective tissue that surrounds the follicle and attaches it to the skin. When relaxed, this tissue is soft and only loosely holds the quill in place. When attacked by a predator, a porcupine becomes stressed and the muscles around the connective tissue tighten and cause the quills to become erect. Once erect, the quills can deeply penetrate the skin and the tightened muscles make it easier to detach the quill. Specifically, research has shown that the tightened muscles make it 40% easier to detach the quill then if the connective tissue was loose.
• Porcupine quills are just specialized hairs ranging from ½ inch to 4 inches thick. These hairs are coated with a thick layer of keratin (similar to fingernails) with several small layers of barbs at the tip. This will allow the barb to penetrate deeper once embedded. There are about 30,000 of them on any one porcupine. They occupy every part of the body except the face, inner parts of the limbs and the stomach. The longest quills are on the butt, and the smallest are on the cheeks.
• Porcupine quills are a good luck charm in many parts of Africa and the hollow portions have been used as musical rattles or containers for gold dust. Don’t think all parts of Africa are in love with this strange rodent though. In 2005, there was such an infestation that the Kenyan people pleaded with the government to control the problem. Local farmers stated they had several years of unusable crops due to porcupines, and local graveyards complained of numerous graves that were burrowed into and used as dens for the creatures. Ever the innovative people, some Kenyans saw this opportunity to make lemonade from lemons and created a new delicacy with the vermin.
• The best way to remove a porcupine quill is to take a pair of common household pliers and pull the quill directly out. Be careful not to break off any part of it, but if you do, don’t worry, quill tips are coated with antibiotic fatty acids that help in healing. And don’t worry that the porcupine will be left defenseless by releasing too many quills. They grow back within a month or two.

References:

• Porcupines
• The North American Porcupine
• How Porcupines Mate
• Porcupines Raise Thorny Questions In Kenya
• The Needy Porcupine
• Porcupine Wildlife
• 30 Strangest Animal Mating Habits
• How do Porcupines Mate
• Image Source