Little-known history

Here's a thread to share bizarre or funny or fascinating tidbits from history.
--- merged: Apr 3, 2014 at 10:32 PM ---
I have been reading about Abraham Davenport and the "Dark Day."

On May 19, 1780, the skies of the Northeastern U.S. became almost completely dark, as if the sun had been blotted out. In southern New England, where the skies were darkest, there was widespread alarm. Many thought this was the end of the world.

There's also a song about it: "Candles in Hartford".

 

This one is a little better known -- the Boston Molasses Disaster.


The Boston Public Library has posted many documentary photos.

 

I know about that one @street pattern because I know about this one:

 

Published 1976.

 

I don't know if this counts but Agustina Aragon seems like a great bit of history and I had never heard of her.

 

I subscribe to the "Stuff You Missed in History Class" podcast. A recent podcast was on the Peralta Grant and the Baron of Arizona


The Peralta Grant and the Baron of Arizona from Stuff You Missed in History Class on podbay: open podcasting
In the 1880s, James Reavis launched one of the most ambitions fraud schemes of all time when he claimed a huge part of the Arizona Territory as his own. He forged and planted evidence to back up his claim and came to be called the Baron of Arizona.

 

The execution by hanging of Mary, a circus elephant, in Erwin, Tennessee (1916).



Mary (elephant) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

On September 11, 1916, a hotel worker named Red Eldridge was hired as an assistant elephant trainer by the circus. He was killed by Mary in Kingsport, Tennessee, on the evening of September 12. Eldridge led the elephant parade, although he was not qualified. There have been several accounts of his death. One, recounted by W.H. Coleman who claimed to be a witness, is that he prodded her behind the ear with a hook after she reached down to nibble on a watermelon rind. She went into a rage, snatched Eldridge with her trunk, threw him against a drink stand and stepped on his head, crushing it. A contemporary newspaper account, from the Johnson City Staff, said that Mary "collided its trunk vice-like [sic] about [Eldridge's] body, lifted him 10 feet in the air, then dashed him with fury to the ground... and with the full force of her biestly [sic] fury is said to have sunk her giant tusks entirely through his body. The animal then trampled the dying form of Eldridge as if seeking a murderous triumph, then with a sudden... swing of her massive foot hurled his body into the crowd." (It should be kept in mind that female Asian elephants are tuskless.)

The details of the aftermath are confused in a maze of sensationalist newspaper stories and folklore. Most accounts indicate that she calmed down afterward and didn't charge the onlookers, who began chanting, "Kill the elephant!" Within minutes, local blacksmith Hench Cox tried to kill Mary, firing five rounds with little effect. Meanwhile, the leaders of several nearby towns threatened not to allow the circus to visit if Mary was included. The circus owner, Charlie Sparks, reluctantly decided that the only way to quickly resolve the potentially ruinous situation was to kill the elephant in public. On the following day, a foggy and rainy September 13, 1916, she was transported by rail to Erwin, Tennessee, where a crowd of over 2,500 people (including most of the town's children) assembled in the Clinchfield Railroad yard.

The elephant was hanged by the neck from a railcar-mounted industrial crane. The first attempt resulted in a snapped chain, causing Mary to fall and break her hip as dozens of children fled in terror. The severely wounded elephant died during a second attempt and was buried beside the tracks. A veterinarian examined Mary after the hanging and determined that she had a severely infected tooth in the precise spot where Red Eldridge had prodded her. Although the authenticity of a widely distributed (and heavily retouched) photo of her death was disputed years later by Argosy magazine, other photographs taken during the incident confirm its provenance.

 

Makes you wonder....

 

It just makes me sad.

 

Ignorance is not bliss, it's mean.

 

I was never a fan of circuses featuring animals, or most zoos for that matter. My dislike of both, especially circuses, increased greatly after I learned about the intelligence of elephants and their family structures.

 

This breaks my heart in a very violent way.

 

If the past is a foreign country, it is a shockingly violent one. It is easy to forget how dangerous life used to be, how deeply brutality was once woven into the fabric of daily existence.
-Stephen Pinker

I guess I should sig-quote that.

 

This was the last thing I wanted to see today.

 

I apologize for posting it. At the time, through dispassionate eyes, it seemed merely bizarre and inhumane. The closer you look, though, the more awful and brutal it gets.

 

There are times when we really need to be reminded of things like this.
It's too easy to romanticize the 'good old days' and not remember things like this, which I'm sorry, are not unusual occurances.
So while yes, it made me sad and angry, I'm glad it you posted it.

 

What @redravin said.

 

Another forgotten disaster, this time from Prague, Czechoslovakia, in October 1928.

(I found this while doing research on U.S. Consul General Arthur C. Frost, who is mentioned in the article below.)

The dramatic details:
(1) A newly-built seven-story commercial building suddenly collapses into ruins, killing probably 100 workers and passersby.
(2) The architect committed suicide on the spot.
(3) The Chief Inspector of Police, on his way to the incident, was run over and killed by a fire engine.

Construction was dangerous in those days, but death and destruction on this scale was enough to make international news.

 

I've been reading about actress Mercedes McCambridge (1916-2004).

She has a filmography a mile long, but probably her most famous role was as the voice of the Devil in The Exorcist.

She said this about herself:

She was an alcoholic, was married twice, and had one son. Her son, John Markle, had the kind of tumultuous Hollywood upbringing you'd expect.

But he was a smart kid, and grew up to be a securities trader, working in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Trouble was, he was also an embezzler. He set up an account in his mother's name (he forged her signature). He'd assign winning trades to her account, losing trades to the house account. He had a wife and two daughters, but apparently he spent a lot of the stolen money on drugs and prostitutes.

Eventually, in the fall of 1987, he was caught by his employers.

He tried to work out a deal with the company to pay restitution and have the matter hushed up. But it would have required his mother to agree, and she wouldn't. Meanwhile, as the investigation turned up more details, the company upped its demand.

So he methodically prepared for his own death. He verified that his life insurance would pay even in case of suicide. He voided his will, and wrote a new one which didn't provide for his wife Christine and daughters Amy and Suzanne. Over several days, he wrote a bitter and sarcastic 12-page letter to his mother, enumerating grievances against her, going back to his own conception.

If it were fiction, the details would be almost too lurid. There was a terrific storm with thunder and lightning. The family had watched Nightmare on Elm Street. The father put on a Halloween mask (later found spattered with blood) and shot his wife and daughters in their beds. Then, he called his lawyer. Then, he put two handguns to either side of his head and shot himself both ways simultaneously.

And here, from Google Street View, is the house where this happened, looking almost Addams-Family-esque, silhouetted against the sky: