Category: History Blog

Teenagers these days have almost limitless sources for finding new music: legal services like iTunes or Amazon MP3, illicit services like FrostWire or Bittorrent, social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, music blogs, band websites, YouTube, music videos on demand and music channels from their cable provider, satellite radio… even “old fashioned” technology like MTV. It seems that the original “information superhighway” – terrestrial radio – has been all but forgotten these days.

But back in the 50s and 60s, AM radio was the Internet. Teens relied on their radios to bring them the latest music from faraway places like Liverpool, England or Memphis, Tennessee. Music began to bloom everywhere like wildflowers. Entire genres of music, like soul and R&B, were exposed to mainstream white audiences for the first time. And no single radio station and no single DJ did more to help spread the gospel than XERF and Wolfman Jack.

To understand how XERF and Wolfman Jack changed the world, we unfortunately have to start with science and politics.

Below is a sample of a radio wave:

FM radio works by modulating the frequency of the radio wave (hence, FM = “frequency modulation”). The peaks and troughs of the radio wave get closer together or farther apart, depending on what’s being broadcast. In other words, you could stretch the right and left edges of the above picture (or squeeze them together) to “see” what an FM wave would look like. FM radio waves are short and cannot travel very far, nor can they penetrate tall buildings or mountains. This is why you lose an FM station when you enter a tunnel, for instance.

AM radio, by contrast, works by modulating the amplitude of the radio wave (hence, AM = “amplitude modulation”). With AM, the peaks get higher or lower, depending on what’s being broadcast. So you could take the image above and stretch the top and bottom sides (or squeeze them together) to “see” an AM wave. Unlike FM, AM waves are very long, and can easily pass through buildings or mountains. In fact, AM waves are so long that they can bounce off the earth’s ionosphere at night and travel in all sorts of directions. If you’ve ever listened to a nighttime call-in show on a local talk radio station, you might have heard people calling in from several states over. This is because the radio waves are bouncing off the ionosphere and landing hundreds of miles away. But more on that later.

In the early part of the 20th century, the United States, being an industrial giant, took a commanding “lead” in the number of radio stations it had versus Canada and Mexico. For this reason – as well as the usual American arrogance – when it came time to pass the North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement in 1941, the US had made into law what had already been practiced for two decades: a huge chunk of the available airwaves went to the US. Canada received the lion’s share of the remaining bandwidth, and Mexico received… next to nothing. The Mexican government, miffed at being snubbed by the Yanquis, decided to fight back by allowing their radio stations to broadcast at up to 500,000 watts, although most stations drew the line at 250,000. This was several times the power of any American radio station, which were limited to 50,000 watts by the FCC.

Continue reading “The Border Blasters”

UPDATE: The people have spoken! Look for “The Border Blasters” as the next History Blog entry tomorrow morning!

I hope you guys are enjoying the History Blog! History is one of my favorite subjects, and the History Blog allows me shine a light into some of the forgotten or mysterious events in human history.

I’ve decided to do something different for my next History Blog article: to allow you to vote for which article you’d like to see!

Below are several ideas that I’ve been kicking around. In fact, I’ll probably do History Blog posts on all of them in the coming months. But which one should I do first?

Continue reading “Vote for the next History Blog article!”

Almost every culture on the planet has some form of “monster” in their belief systems. Sometimes these “monsters” are based on actual events that have, over the generations, morphed into something far more spectacular than what actually happened. Sometimes, as in the case of “sea serpents”, they’re based genuine animals that were hitherto unknown to the people who created the stories. Yet other times the “monsters” are purely creatures of fiction, invented as entertainment to pass a long winter’s night, to keep an invading army away, or as morality tales for children.

What most of these “monsters” have in common is that they don’t exist. But in the late 1800s, there was a monster that was very real. And not only is the the story about the monster itself interesting, so too is the tale of how and why it came into existence.

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to The Red Ghost.

As you probably know, the United States and Mexico fought a war between 1846 to 1848. As a result of America’s victory, the US was given undisputed control of Texas, as well as the entire states of California, Nevada and Utah, in addition to most of Arizona and parts of Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico. Although American settlers quickly rushed to certain parts of these new lands, much of the land would remain sparsely populated – except by Native Americans – for almost 30 years.

By the 1880s, though, much of what would one day become Arizona had been converted into ranches or farmland. That didn’t mean that everything was peaceful, however. The iconic Apache warlord Geronimo still terrorized the area, and it wasn’t uncommon for a rancher to wake up and find his livestock stolen, his fences destroyed or his neighbors killed or maimed by Geronimo and his men.

It was because of the threat of Geronimo that two women were left alone in their house on Eagle Creek in southwest Arizona one morning in 1883. Geronimo had been active in the area the past few nights, so the men of the family left early that morning to check on their sheep.

Continue reading “The Legend of Fantasia Colorado”

When the Roman Empire collapsed in AD 476, Europe was shattered into thousands of tiny kingdoms. Over time, these tiny kingdoms grew, either by merging through marriage or by conquest. And thus, by the 10th century, the feudal system was in place all over the continent.

Under this system, a lord (or king) had absolute control over a span of territory that ranged in size from a few square miles to several hundred square miles. Underneath the lord were the clergy and knights, who protected the lord both spiritually and physically. Underneath them came the merchants. Underneath the merchants were skilled laborers, like blacksmiths and coopers. And underneath the skilled laborers were the unskilled laborers, or serfs, who farmed the lord’s land.

It might initially seem that the feudal system was a one-way hierarchy. After all, the serfs could not move (or even travel, in most cases) without their lord’s permission. They grew crops on the lord’s land, and were required to give him a large portion of their harvest to pay rent. But the feudal system had a paternal side, too. The lord was expected to treat the serfs fairly, and to use his knights to protect them from invading armies or bandits.

In time, these small societies grew in size, as one small kingdom was conquered and absorbed into another, or as marriage created associations between such kingdoms. Eventually, these small kingdoms would grow into the modern countries of England and France (and eventually Germany and Italy, although those two countries wouldn’t be fully formed until the 19th century).

Here’s the interesting thing, though: from around AD 900 until the American Civil War, most armies were based on that feudal system. Instead of a “national army” made up of “English” soldiers, most armies were made up of thousands of individual regiments formed by dukes, earls, and other forms of nobility. As soon as a king knew that an invasion was coming, he’d put out a call to his aristocracy, who would organize their own knights and take them wherever the king wanted them. Although the soldiers were certainly loyal to their king, they generally only took orders from their local lord.

Although this system would break down over time (especially by the time of Napoleon, the founder of the first “modern army”), traces of it nevertheless persisted until the US Civil War, when Irish immigrants were allowed to create their own regiments for the Union army. So instead of “Lord Fluffernutter’s Essex Cavalry” you had “O’Connor’s 96th Irish Infantry”. So… slightly different, yet the same.

Here’s what’s really interesting, though. There is still one such “feudal army” in Europe: the Atholl Highlanders.

Continue reading “The Last Personal Army”

Most Americans are familiar with the story of the “Pied Piper of Hamelin”, a fairy tale included in thousands of children’s storybooks. For those of you that have never heard the tale, or, if you’re a bit rusty on the details, the story goes like this:

In 1284, the town of Hamelin, Germany had a massive rat infestation. A stranger appeared in town, offering to get rid of the rats for a fee. The townsfolk agreed, and the man whipped out a pipe (the musical kind) and started playing a tune. The rats all heard the music and started following the piper, who then walked into the Weser River, causing all the rats to drown. For some reason, the townspeople then refused to “pay the piper” as it were, and the man vowed to get his revenge on the people of Hamelin. He came back a few weeks later and, when all the townsfolk were in church, the man piped a tune and lured 130 of the town’s children to a nearby cave, where they were never heard from again.

Like any folktale, there are several versions of the story. In many versions, only two of the town’s children survive – a crippled boy who couldn’t keep up with the others, and a deaf child who never heard the piper’s tune. In other versions of the story, the children are led to the Weser and drowned just like the rats. In still other versions, the piper takes the children to a cave and holds them hostage until the town either a) pays him the fee he was promised; or b) gives him a huge amount of gold as ransom.

But what you probably don’t know about the Pied Piper story is that most historians believe that it’s based on actual events!

Around the year 1300, the citizens of Hamelin installed a stained glass window in their local church depicting a piper leading the town’s children away (the “rat infestation” wasn’t added to the story until the 1560s). At the time, stained glass windows in churches were often dedicated to local tragedies; more “whimsical” use of stained glass (such as in the Shakespeare Memorial in London’s Southwark Cathedral) would come much later. Sadly, although there are several contemporary written accounts of the window, we don’t know what it actually looked like, as it was destroyed in 1660. Additionally, surviving town records indicate that there was, in fact, some such “tragedy” in the town in June of 1284.

Continue reading “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”

The court of Queen Elizabeth I was a dour place, filled with sycophants decked out in the drab black cloaks fashionable at the time. But then Walter Raleigh showed up, dressed like a peacock in garish colors in a dizzying array of expensive fabrics like silks and damasks. Raleigh certainly dressed to impress – in 1584, he reported the theft of three clothing items worth almost £115 – which was more than enough money to run an entire household (including servants) for an entire year!

But Raleigh came to court with more than just nice clothes. He was intelligent, witty, and just plain charming. It was Walter Raleigh, for example, who allegedly laid one of his expensive cloaks over a mud puddle so that Elizabeth wouldn’t dirty her royal feet. He could play music, write poetry, flirt and talk about almost any issue in his West Country accent, which Elizabeth found perfectly adorable.

She quickly began lavishing gifts on Raleigh, from titles and royal appointments to estates and monopolies. It was the monopolies on wine licenses (granted by Elizabeth in 1583) and the export of wool (1585) that gave Raleigh immense wealth that he used to buy more of his beloved expensive clothes, to spare no expense in redecorating and refurbishing the estates that Elizabeth had given him, and to fund an entourage of 30 servants (each of whom needed their own set of fancy clothes, too!). Raleigh quickly rose from a virtual nobody to become one of the richest men in England, and he used his wealth in ways and quantities that shocked and staggered his contemporaries. Raleigh, indeed, threw money around in ways that would make even the gaudiest hip-hop mogul of today hang his head in disgust.

But Raleigh was more than just flash. He had a dream… a dream of an English colony in the wilderness of America. In 1584, Raleigh sent his first colony to Virginia (which then comprised a section of what would later become North Carolina). The colonists landed at Roanoke Island in present-day Dare County, North Carolina. The colonists would suffer greatly due to lack of food (mainly caused by poor selection of colonists) and troubled relations with local Indian tribes. The expedition ended in failure in 1586.

Raleigh found himself unable to fund a second trip on his own, so a joint-stock company was created. When enough investors had been lined up, Raleigh launched a second expedition in 1587. This group of colonists were supposed to stop by Roanoke Island and pick up a few soldiers left to guard the settlement after the first expedition left. They were then to settle somewhere north on Chesapeake Bay. However, Simon Fernandez, the captain of the colony’s main ship, the Susan Constant, unceremoniously dumped the colonists on Roanoke Island on July 22, 1587, as he wanted to get to the Caribbean as quickly as possible to loot Spanish treasure ships.

Although Raleigh and company promised the colonists a steady stream of supply ships, it wasn’t to be. By the time John White (a friend of Raleigh’s and overall commander of the expedition) arrived back in England from Roanoke, it was too late in the year to return to Virginia. Then the Spanish Armada sailed towards England, and every ocean-worthy ship was commandeered for the defense of the realm. White managed to get a special dispensation from the Queen to allow two small ships to sail to Roanoke in 1588, but the captains of these ships were greedy and tried to capture Spanish ships while in transit; instead, they were captured and the venture was a total loss.

Continue reading “The Lost Tribe”