Category: History Blog

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, currently the commander of the International Space Station, has an awesome Twitter feed in which he frequently posts amazing pictures of Earth as seen from the ISS. For example, he recently posted this picture of nighttime London as a memorial to Margaret Thatcher’s passing:

What’s striking about this picture is that you can clearly see the River Thames as it bisects London. What you can’t see in the picture, however, are the 21 other rivers in Greater London that flow into the Thames. And that’s because, in most cases, the rivers are now underground:

Here’s a brief summary of just a few of London’s “lost rivers”:

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The largest, and perhaps most well-known, is the River Fleet. The river begins as two separate steams near Hampstead Heath, an ancient park which first entered the historical record in AD 986 when the gloriously (and accurately) named King Ethelred the Unready gave one of his servants land there. From Hampstead, the streams flow through Kentish Town to Camden Town, where they join. The river then flows underneath King’s Cross, which was previously known as Battle Bridge, because Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus said the Romans fought legendary Iceni ruler Boudica at a bridge over the Fleet there. It then flows down Farringdon Road, and then Farringdon Street, before ending in the Thames underneath Blackfriars Bridge.

For centuries, the Fleet was a regular part of London life. It’s thought that the Romans built the world’s first tidal mill on the Fleet. The Anglo-Saxons, who called it fleot, meaning “tidal inlet”, dug several wells next to the river, from which Londoners got place names like Clerkenwell, Bagnigge Well and St. Bride’s Well. They also used the Fleet for shipping, and two short streets now named Newcastle Close and Old Seacoal Lane were originally wharves.

Sweepings from Butchers Stalls, Dung, Guts and Blood,
Drown’d Puppies, stinking Sprats, all drench’d in Mud,
Dead Cats and Turnip-Tops come tumbling down the Flood.

– Jonathan Swift, on what the Fleet looked like after a heavy rain

But by the 1200s, the river had become so polluted that the area became home to slums and prisons. Sir Christopher Wren advocated widening the river after the Great Fire of London (1666), but instead a man named Robert Hooke turned the river into a canal in the style of Venice in 1680. The upper part of Hooke’s canal was never popular, so in 1736 the area was covered up and a market built over it. The market survived until 1829, by which point it was so decrepit that it was knocked down and modern Farringdon Road was built in its stead. And the lower part of the river – already mostly covered by bridges and buildings – was built over in 1769 as part of the construction of Blackfriars Bridge.

To where Fleet-ditch with disemboguing streams
Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames
The king of dykes! than whom no sluice of mud
with deeper sable blots the silver flood

– Alexander Pope, 1728

The most famous part of the Fleet is probably the street named after it. For centuries, Fleet Street was home to most of London’s newspapers, and although most have since moved away, “Fleet Street” is still synonymous with the British media, in the same way that “Madison Avenue” in synonymous with American advertising.

The current Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, wants to uncover the Fleet as part of a “beautification plan” for the city, although the government agency tasked with the project is unsure it can be done.

Continue reading “London’s Lost Rivers”

In this History Blog post, I talked about Robert Fortune, the Scot who almost single-handedly made tea the national drink of Great Britain.

The problem that needed solving was this: the British were absolutely mad for Chinese tea. However, the Chinese weren’t interested in any of the goods the British wanted to trade for tea. Instead, they demanded payment in silver. Shipping silver halfway around the world to buy tea wasn’t just risky, it also caused inflation at home, too… as Isaac Newton found out. So the East India Company set up a trade triangle in which British goods were shipped to India and traded for opium – which the Chinese loved. The opium was shipped to China, where it was exchanged for tea, which was shipped back to the UK. And everyone was happy.

Well, everyone except the Chinese government. Needless to say, the Chinese were angry that the British (and French and Americans) were shipping tons of addictive drugs into their country. After several diplomatic attempts failed to find a solution, the Chinese decided to go to war against the Westerners. Which seemed like an easy win: the Chinese had an army of 200,000 to go against Britain’s 19,000 troops. And the Chinese were clearly superior to the European barbarians. How could they lose?

As it turned out, they lost. Badly. China’s sense of racial superiority ran headlong into Britain’s modern weapons and tactics. The war lasted 3 years, 5 months, 1 week and 4 days, and China lost 20,000 men to just 69 for British forces. And in almost every battle, the British played the role of the 1995 Chicago Bulls to China’s [insert your area’s worst high school basketball team here]. And so, on August 29, 1842, representatives of the Qing Empire boarded the HMS Cornwallis (ironic?) and signed the Treaty of Nanking. The treaty gave the British five “treaty ports”, in which they would have considerable autonomy. The Chinese also agreed to pay the British $21 million in silver dollars for various reparations on a three-year installment plan, with 5% interest charged for late payments. The Chinese also gave the British the island of Hong Kong, which will be important later.

The Chinese weren’t happy with the Treaty of Nanking. They tried to ignore it whenever possible, or halfheartedly enforce it when compelled to. In 1844, French officials signed the Treaty of Huangpu and American officials signed the Treaty of Wangxia. These treaties gave French and American traders rights similar to those enjoyed by the British, but with one crucial difference: there was a clause in both treaties whereby they could be renegotiated every 12 years. And, because of China’s lack of enthusiasm for enforcing those treaties, the French and Americans fought for more concessions in 1856 when they came up for renewal. And the British decided that they too wanted to renegotiate the Treaty of Nanking, something the Chinese flat-out refused to do.

Continue reading “The Strangest City on Earth”

Samuel Beazley led an interesting life. Born in Westminster in 1786, he wrote his first play at age 12. He later served in the British Army during the Peninsular War, where he had two interesting adventures in particular. At one point, he was knocked unconscious during a skirmish and, thought to be dead, was prepared for burial, only to wake up at the last minute. He also played a role in the rescue of the Duchesse d’Angoulême, daughter of Louis XVI, from approaching French forces led by Napoleon.

Beazley returned to England after the war and wrote over 100 plays, mostly comedies. He also wrote two novels – The Roué (1828) and The Oxonians (1830) – and translated several Italian opera librettos into English. He also designed a spa, a town hall, a couple of hotels, the South-Eastern Railway Company’s London Bridge station and several other stations on their North Kent line. In Warwickshire, he also designed the hilariously named Studley Castle.

But Beazley was mostly known for being Britain’s first “theatre architect”. He designed St James’s Theatre, the Royalty Theatre and the City of London Theatre, led major renovations of the Adelphi Theatre and the Drury Lane Theatre, and designed two theatres each in Dublin, Belgium and India and one in Brazil. He even designed the Lyceum Theatre twice: his original 1816 building burnt down in 1830, so he designed its replacement, which still stands today:

Yet, despite all his good works, Beazley is best remembered today… for a prank.

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Beazley had a friend named Theodore Hook. Born in Charlotte Street, London on September 22, 1788, Hook was the son of James Hook, a composer of popular songs of the period. His elder brother, also named James Hook, became Dean of Worcester Cathedral.

Theodore was something of a musical prodigy: his father often took him to theatres to show him off to other performers, and at sixteen Hook debuted his first work, a comic opera called The Soldier’s Return. He wrote several more works, all of which were commercially popular. He seemed to have a bright future, and his music so charmed the Prince Regent – the future King George IV – that the prince named him accountant-general and treasurer of Mauritius, a gig that paid him a healthy £2,000 a year.

Unfortunately, £12,000 ended up missing from the island’s accounts, and Hook could provide no answer for the discrepancy. So he was arrested and returned to England. While awaiting trial, Hook made money by writing articles for newspapers and magazines. His writings were so popular that he was able to start a newspaper, John Bull, which was yet another success.

However, Hook never did address the missing £12,000. He was arrested again, and this time sent to a “sponging-house”, a kind of halfway house for debtors. Typically, one would be sent to a sponging-house as a last ditch warning to figure out a way to pay off debts. If unsuccessful, the debtor was usually sent to debtor’s prison. Hook was able to use his charm to get out of the house after a couple of years. But the debt hung over him the remainder of his life, and after he died on August 24, 1841 the government seized his estate to settle the debt.

Continue reading “The Berners Street Hoax”

From the History Blog’s “Well, the Legend is Real” Department:

Laurentius – known to history as Lawrence of Rome – was born in 225 AD, and served as a deacon of the Catholic Church under Pope Sixtus II. Sixtus and Lawrence lived in Rome during the reign of Valerian the Elder, who ruled from 253 to 260. And if there was one thing Valerian couldn’t stand, it was Christians. In 258, Valerian went on a rampage, ordering the executions of as many deacons, priests and bishops as he could get his hands on. Sixtus was beheaded on August 6, and Lawrence was scheduled to die on August 10.

But, according to legend, Lawrence wasn’t beheaded or crucified. So the story goes, he was taken to the area of what is now the church at San Lorenzo in Panisperna and burned on a gridiron. And supposedly, as he sat roasting over the fire, his last words were “turn me over … I’m done on this side”… which is why St. Lawrence is the patron saint of both comedians and chefs. He’s also the patron saint of related culinary professions, such as brewers, butchers, confectioners, cutlers, restaurateurs and vintners. Because of his work with preserving early church documents he’s also the patron saint of archivists and librarians. He did a lot for the poor, especially children, so he’s also the patron saint of paupers and school children. For reasons I’m not really clear on, he’s also the patron saint of armorers, glaziers, laundry workers, tanners and the diocese of Amarillo, Texas.

Although it’s kind of an amusing story – who even knew that comedians had a patron saint? – evidence for or against it is kind of murky. The first written account of the story comes from the book Liber Peristephanon, written by the Roman Christian poet Aurelius Prudentius Clemens. But Prudentius was born in Tarraconensis (northern Spain) in 348, ninety years after Lawrence had been martyred.

One theory – from the fabulously named Father Pio Franchi de ‘Cavalieri – says that the whole thing boils down to a transcription error. At the time, Christian authors and record keepers would note the death of a martyr with the phrase passus est, meaning “he suffered”. Maybe someone somewhere accidentally wrote it down as assus est (“he was roasted”), and someone else made up a story to fit the text. I mean, can’t you just imagine a modern day DMV worker typing  “Lawrence of Rome” into his computer? “Look lady, it says here he was ROASTED, okay? Unless you got paperwork from the Department of Health that says otherwise, he’s ROASTED to the State of New York, OK?”

It’s thought that Constantine built a small chapel on the site in Lawrence’s honor, and there is an actual gridiron – said to be from the martyrdom, naturally – under the altar at the Church of St Lawrence at Lucina. However, the gridiron was given to the church by Pope Paschal II, who reigned as pope from August 13, 1099 until his death on January 21, 1118. I’m not going to research where the gridiron allegedly was for 800 years before ending up at the church, but you can draw your own conclusions. Incidentally, Paschal II was the first pope to appoint a bishop to North America, and he did it 400 years before Columbus sailed to the New World: Erik Gnupsson (in his native tongue, Eiríkr Gnúpsson, but also known under the Latinized name Henricus) was appointed Bishop of Greenland and Vinland, the latter of which many historians think was Newfoundland.

Whether or not Lawrence died joking about being “ready to turn”, the real joke ended up being on Valerian. Two years after he’d ordered the death of Lawrence, Sixtus and the others, Valerian found himself at the Battle of Edessa against an army of Persians led by Shapur I.

According to most accounts, the battle was something of a stalemate, so Valerian decided to meet with Shapur to work out some kind of truce. But Shapur decided to seize Valerian instead, which caused the entire Roman army to surrender. What happened next depends on who you read. Persian and secular authors say that Valerian was taken to a city called Bishapur and lived out the rest of his life in relative comfort. Edward Gibbon, the English author and historian whose six volume The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was published between 1776 and 1788, tells it a bit differently:

We are told that Valerian, in chains, but invested with the Imperial purple, was exposed to the multitude, a constant spectacle of fallen greatness; and that whenever the Persian monarch mounted on horseback, he placed his foot on the neck of a Roman emperor. Notwithstanding all the remonstrances of his allies, who repeatedly advised him to remember the vicissitudes of fortune, to dread the returning power of Rome, and to make his illustrious captive the pledge of peace, not the object of insult, Sapor still remained inflexible. When Valerian sunk under the weight of shame and grief, his skin, stuffed with straw, and formed into the likeness of a human figure, was preserved for ages in the most celebrated temple of Persia; a more real monument of triumph, than the fancied trophies of brass and marble so often erected by Roman vanity.

Other accounts say that Valerian was killed after being made to swallow molten gold, or by being flayed alive. The source for most of these tales, it should be noted, was a Roman Christian author named Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius (“Lactantius” for short), who just might have had an ax to grind against Valerian for martyring Sixtus, Lawrence and the others. But Lactantius would go on to become an advisor to Constantine I, and Valerian would remain the only Roman Emperor in history to be captured and held as a prisoner of war.

“Kiwi” became THE nickname for New Zealanders and the national symbol of the country thanks to… Kiwi shoe polish.

At the start of the 20th century, there were several nicknames and symbols for New Zealanders, none of them dominant. Among others, symbols included the moa (another bird), the silver fern (the symbol of many New Zealand sports teams, including the famous All Blacks rugby team), the kiwi bird and the Southern Cross constellation, which is still on the New Zealand flag:

In 1906 an Australian named William Ramsay developed the shoe polish, which he named after his New Zealander wife, Annie Elizabeth Meek. There were other shoe polishes on the market, but Ramsay’s was one of the first to emphasize making shoes and boots shine, in addition to restoring their color and water-resistance.

Ramsay loaded several cases of the polish onto a cart and traveled to farms handing out free tins to farmers for their work boots. Kiwi rapidly became the best-selling shoe polish brand in Australia. But Kiwi’s big break came in World War I, when the British and American armies started distributing the polish to soldiers. Millions of men became familiar with not just the product, but the “Kiwi” name, too. Soon, everyone was calling New Zealanders “Kiwis”.

Today Kiwi shoe polish is sold in 180 countries and holds 53% of the worldwide market for shoe polish. But even more than that, it’s the only product to give a nation’s citizens their nickname!

If you’re not from North Carolina, you might not have heard the name Richard Reynolds before. But if you’ve ever smoked a cigarette, you’ve probably seen the words “R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company” on the side of the pack. And there’s a lot about the Reynolds story that’s interesting.

Richard Joshua Reynolds was born on July 20, 1850 in Patrick County, Virginia. I don’t know how wealthy the Reynolds family was, but they were prosperous enough to own several slaves and send their son to nearby Emory and Henry College in 1868. Reynolds returned to the family farm after graduating, but Richard, always restless and ambitious, sold his share of the family farm back to his father and struck out on his own.

One of the fundamental problems with his family’s farm was that it was nowhere near a railroad depot. So tobacco had to be put on horse-drawn carts and sent far away for sale. Richard knew he’d get better prices at a better location, so he set out for the nearest town that did have a depot: Winston, North Carolina. So the story goes, Reynolds rode in to town on horseback, reading a copy of The New York Times and dreaming of one day building a golf course somewhere in the area.

If you know anything about North Carolina, you probably know how huge tobacco was for most of the state’s history. And even though there were already fifteen other tobacco companies in Winston, Reynolds managed to sell 150,000 pounds of tobacco in his first year. Reynolds was a savvy businessman, always open to new ideas. One of these ideas – adding saccharin to chewing tobacco – made his products insanely popular. By the 1890s, the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company was selling millions of pounds of tobacco a year.

But Reynolds’ most famous – or infamous – invention came in 1912. Before this, almost everyone who smoked cigarettes rolled their own. The idea of buying pre-rolled, packaged cigarettes was just… weird to most people. Reynolds tinkered: tinkered with machinery that could make cigarettes by the millions, and tinkered with several tobacco blends to create the one with the best flavor. The result was Camel cigarettes, the first pre-packaged cigarette brand in the United States. Sales were slow for the first few weeks, but Reynolds cut the price to near cost and ended up selling 425 million packs of cigarettes that year. Not bad for a product that didn’t even exist a year before!

One of the people who made Camels such a success was Richard S. Reynolds, Sr., nephew of Richard Joshua Reynolds. He’d dropped out of the University of Virginia in 1903 to go to work for his uncle, and much of the research and development of Camels was done by him. When the product appeared to be a complete success he, like his uncle, felt the need to strike out on his own. So, only a few months after Camels hit the market, Reynolds, Sr. left the company.

Continue reading “Cigarettes and Candy”

With Election Day upon us, I thought you guys might enjoy this short little story from the History Blog!

When Louisiana was admitted to the Union in 1812, Congress passed a law giving her “all islands within three leagues of her coast”. However, when Mississippi was admitted to the Union five years later, Congress gave that state “all islands within six leagues of her shore”. There was some overlap, and both states claimed several islands just off the coast. But it wasn’t the islands themselves that were important: it was the oyster beds underneath the water that really caused the controversy: both states wanted the lucrative fishing grounds for themselves.

The matter wouldn’t be decided until 1906, when the Supreme Court ruled in Louisiana vs. Mississippi. However, a few years earlier, in November 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt came to the area to try and settle the matter personally without having to get the courts involved.

Roosevelt had been born a sickly, asthmatic child in an era when many people thought “effeminate society” caused such diseases, and not things like pathogens and genetic defects. Roosevelt was so sickly, in fact, that he was homeschooled, as his parents were afraid he wasn’t healthy enough to go to school. He was an excellent student, especially in geography, history and biology, and would become a fluent speaker of French and German. The young Roosevelt was always fascinated with animals, and even took up taxidermy after seeing the body of a seal at a local fish market.

Roosevelt eventually “grew out” of his disease, because he was able to become one of the manliest men of all time:

• He became an avid boxer.
• He rode and jumped horses, breaking his ribs several times.
• When his wife and mother tragically died on the same day (for unrelated reasons), Roosevelt moved to North Dakota to become a cattle rancher. And, while there, a man named Mike Finnegan and two of his gang stole a boat Roosevelt had moored on the Little Missouri River. Roosevelt chased them through the icy Dakota Badlands for two weeks until he caught the gang and brought them to justice.
• Roosevelt later formed his own cavalry regiment called the “Rough Riders”, and he led a horseless charge up San Juan Hill in Cuba during the Spanish-American War.
• On a hunting trip in 1901, a cougar attacked Roosevelt’s beloved hunting dogs. Roosevelt fought the cougar with a knife and killed it.
• On October 14, 1912, while campaigning for his third term as president for the newly-formed “Bull Moose” party, Roosevelt was shot by a crazed saloonkeeper named John Schrank, who claimed that the ghost of William McKinley had come to him in a dream with orders to shoot Roosevelt. The bullet, which hit Roosevelt in the gut, had been slowed by a steel eyeglass case and the copy of his campaign speech he kept in his pockets. Because of his knowledge of biology and taxidermy, Roosevelt knew that he wasn’t badly injured, so instead of going to the hospital he gave his entire 50-page, 90-minute speech as planned, blood seeping into his shirt the whole time.
• Perhaps my favorite Roosevelt story is that, when he was president, cavalrymen recruits from the army wrote him, complaining about having to ride 25 miles a day on horseback as part of their training. Roosevelt, then 51 years-old, rode 100 miles on horseback in a single day, just to shut them up.

Yes, Theodore Roosevelt was a badass. So when, on that diplomatic trip to Mississippi, the governor of the state, Andrew H. Longino, invited him on brief hunting trip to town of Smedes, Roosevelt happily accepted.

Continue reading “The Fad That Wasn’t”

I was looking at sample ballots for the upcoming general election today, and was reminded of something I’ve wondered about for a decade now: why are “townships” listed on ballots in North Carolina elections? Aren’t townships a Yankee thing?

They are indeed. According to Wikipedia, the following states use some form of the “township” government: Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont and Wisconsin. You’ve probably noticed the complete absence of any Southern states on that list. So how did they end up in North Carolina, and what are they used for?

After the American Civil War, the former Confederate states were compelled by Congress to write new state constitutions. In some cases, states simply dusted off their pre-Civil War constitutions, made a few changes here and there (especially incorporating previous amendments into the new documents), and ratified it thusly.

Things were different in North Carolina. The post-Civil War legislature was dominated by Republicans, including many members from the north (a.k.a carpetbaggers). And the township system was not only what they were familiar with, it also reduced the political power of “good old boy” local governments put in place by the antebellum aristocracy. So it was win-win for them. The Republican legislature therefore adopted the township system into the North Carolina Constitution of 1868. In it, each county was divided into multiple townships, and each township had two justices of the peace, a clerk, a three-member school board and at least one constable. Each member of the township government served a two-year term, and the overall system was almost identical to the township systems of Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Whigs and former Confederates in North Carolina were, unsurprisingly, livid about the new system. They opposed it so much, in fact, that they put aside their differences to form the Conservative Party, which, in 1877, took control of the legislature. And one of their first acts was to abolish the township system. They passed constitutional amendments that removed taxation power from the township governments, abolished the position of township clerk, and changed the justice of the peace from an elected to an appointed position. County governments began to take control of local governance, although township school boards would remain in place for several more years.

So… if townships no longer have any power, why do they still exist? They are used as convenient subdivisions for counties. County taxes are based on which township you live in. Voting precincts and polling places are determined by township. Fire department districts are divided up by township. And, 144 years later, the boundaries of most school boards are still determined by township. But the main reason townships still exist is real estate: land deeds were once categorized strictly by township. This is optional today, although many old buildings, like churches and old farmhouses, might still have only the township on the deed. Land surveys are also conducted by township, a process also used by Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi.

Counties are free to add, change or rename townships. As you can see, Gaston County has retained traditional township names: Cherryville Township, Dallas Township, Riverbend Township, Crowders Mountain Township, Gastonia Township, and the South Point Township. Mecklenburg County, to the east, just over the Catawba River, has simply numbered their townships, so folks in Huntersville can enjoy living in “Township 15”.

In 1948, a 24 year-old man named Glen Bell opened a hot dog stand in the sleepy town of San Bernardino, California. Business at Bell’s Drive-In was pretty good, so good that in 1952 he sold the stand and built a new, more perfect one based on his experience running the first.

As fate would have it, in 1940 two brothers named Dick and Mac McDonald took over their father’s barbecue joint in Monrovia, California. It had been known as “The Airdrome” because it was located by the airport, but the brothers moved the entire building to San Bernardino, where they renamed it “McDonald’s Famous Barbeque”. In 1948, the brothers sat down and figured out that their most popular items were burgers, fries and shakes. So they shut the place down for a while and streamlined the entire operation around only those items. They reopened the restaurant as “McDonald’s” on December 12, 1948.

The brothers’ new restaurant was incredibly popular, so Bell tinkered with his menu to differentiate his place from McDonald’s. Bell loved Mexican food, and tacos seemed like a natural fit. He tweaked his chili recipe into a taco meat recipe, and tacos were soon the best-selling item on the menu. Bell eventually ditched the dogs and burgers and started a small chain called Taco Tias. He took on a business partner, and when he and the partner clashed over expanding to Los Angeles, Bell sold out and started a new chain called El Tacos. Bell again feuded with his new partners, and in 1962 he sold his share of El Tacos and started a new chain of his own: Taco Bell.

But that isn’t the most amazing thing about Glen Bell. Sure, he probably did more than any single person to make tacos and burritos popular in the United States. And sure, he started one of the largest fast food chains in America, giving his shareholders untold wealth and many a teenager a summer job.

But did you know he was related to Sherlock Holmes, too?

Continue reading “Elementary”