Category: History Blog

Around two-thirds of the way through the 1962 James Bond film Dr. No, the eponymous villain gives 007 a tour of his hideout. During the tour, Bond does an obvious double-take at one of Dr. No’s paintings:

For those of us born well after the film’s release, the double-take is confusing. Why is Bond interested in this painting? Why does he have such a startled reaction to it?

The scene was an inside joke for people of the era, especially British viewers. And that’s because it references one of the strangest art heists in history.

The man in the painting is Arthur Wellesley. Born on April 29, 1769 to an aristocratic English family in Ireland, Wellesley attended several top-notch schools. But the death of his father and the subsequent exhaustion of his estate required Wellesley to seek work. So, on March 7, 1787 he was accepted into the British Army as an ensign in the 73rd Regiment of Foot. After namedropping and schmoozing the right people, Wellesley was promoted to lieutenant. He was then sent to India and promoted to major general after victories at Srirangapatna and Mysore, and in the Second Anglo-Maratha War. Thereafter, he returned to England, where his services were soon needed against France in the Peninsular War, which culminated in his famous victory over Napoleon at Waterloo. Wellesley became a national hero, and a grateful George III named him “Duke of Wellington”, which is how you probably know him.

The likeness was created by famed Spanish painter Francisco Goya. Unlike many artists, Goya was popular and well-regarded in his own day. He is known for being both the last of the “Old Masters” and the first “modern” painter, in much the same way that Beethoven is considered the last great composer of the “Classical period” but also the first of the “Romantic period”.

Continue reading “The Strangest Theft”

When the Romans came to Great Britain, they built a bunch of forts called castra, which was Anglicized to chester. So, English cities whose names end in -chester, -caster and -cester were once Roman settlements, places like Manchester, Cirencester and Worcester.

When the Anglo-Saxons arrived in England, they divided the land into shires, which is why so many English place names end in -shire.

Finally, the Normans invaded England in 1066, and they subdivided the land into counties, from which we get the title of “Count”.

Of course, English settlers to North America brought the county system with them. And thus, every state in America is subdivided into counties, except for Louisiana (which is divided into parishes based on an old Spanish system) and Alaska (which is divided into boroughs).

Texas, being one of the largest states in the Union, has the most counties with 254. But Georgia, inexplicably, has the second-most with 159. Texas is huge, so one can easily understand the need for so many subdivisions. But why does Georgia need so many counties?

The short answer is that it doesn’t. But how the largest state east of the Mississippi River came to have 159 counties is pretty interesting. It involves philanthropy, corruption, war, genocide, urban legends and Progressivism.

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Georgia’s history begins with an English politician named James Oglethorpe. Born on December 22, 1696 in Surrey, Oglethorpe attended Corpus Christi College at Oxford before leaving early to become aide-de-camp to Prince Eugene of Savoy during the Austro-Turkish War of 1716-1718. Afterwards, he returned to England, where he was elected to Parliament.

There Oglethorpe took an interest in the state of London’s prisons. What he found shocked him, but he became especially distressed at the plight of debtors. As hard as it might be to believe, people who owed debts were often thrown in prison back then. Oglethorpe understood how the threat of prison worked as a motivator for people to pay their debts, but he also knew that bad debts often happened to good people. It was manifestly unfair, he thought, that a hardworking, yet down-on-his-luck family man should be locked up with murderers and thieves.

This gave Oglethorpe an idea, the idea of a colony in North America where “worthy debtors” would be given farmland to grow silk or indigo. The colony’s trustees would then take the crops and sell them, paying down the colonist’s debt. Eventually, the debtor would be debt-free, and would have a productive farm to show for it.

Continue reading “Georgia: Why so many counties?”

The English language comes from England, an island nation off the coast of Europe. For almost 200 years, England was the world’s premiere maritime power. Consequently, hundreds of nautical phrases have made their way into the language.

Sometimes the nautical origin of such phrases is obvious. A “shot across the bow” originally meant a warning shot fired towards another ship. It lives on today in the media any time two Goliaths go at it, such as “Google fires shot across the bow at Microsoft in lawsuit” or “Celtics fire shot across the Heat’s bow in game 1 of playoffs”.

Sometimes, though, the naval origin of phrases is somewhat less obvious. At some point in your life, you’ve probably been told to “pipe down”. This comes from an order given by a captain to a boatswain (or bosun). The boatswain usually carried a whistle-like device called a pipe or call (picture here) that was used to convey orders throughout the ship. At the end of a typical day, the captain would call “pipe down”, which was a signal to dismiss everyone not on watch. It’s the naval equivalent of the army’s “lights out”, meaning “shut up and go to sleep”.

Here’s a partial list of some other nautical phrases you might use every day without even knowing it. But before we begin, allow me to say that I know that ropes are called “lines” on ships. I’ve called them “ropes” in this post because it might be confusing to non-nautical types. So don’t email me about it, OK? 🙂

“All hands on deck” – This was an order for everyone on the ship to assemble on deck, perhaps for a Sunday church service, or to convey news to the crew. Its nautical origin should seem obvious, except that in the past few years it’s been shortened to just “all hands” by jargon-loving businesspeople. A company might hold an “all hands” meeting, which requires all employees to attend, for example.

“Press into service” – This originally concerned impressement, the practice of drafting sailors into the Royal Navy against their will. In wartime, the navy would create “press gangs” that would go to ports and round up any spare merchant sailors and force them to serve on Royal Navy ships (with compensation, of course). Contrary to popular belief, press gangs didn’t go around impressing just anyone. An inexperienced person, like a farmer or clergyman, was useless on a ship, and was very rarely (if ever) pressed into service. The term is still used today for anyone who is coerced into taking a job they don’t really want to do, as in “with Edward’s abdication, George was pressed into service as King George VI”.

“First rate” – During the age of sail, Royal Navy ships were rated based on the number of cannon they carried. A small ship carrying 20 guns or fewer was “sixth rate”, 48 guns or fewer was “fifth rate”, 60 guns or fewer was “fourth rate”, 89 guns or fewer was “third rate”, 98 guns or fewer was “second rate”… and 100 guns or more was “first rate” Serving on a such a ship was prestigious and the ships themselves were the best in the navy, so in time “first rate” came to mean something top of the line.

“Knowing the ropes” – If you’ve ever seen an old-fashioned sailing ship, you know they have miles and miles of ropes on them. One of the first things a young sailor would have to learn is which rope did what. Thus, an experienced sailor would “know his ropes”, a term expanded today to anyone knowledgeable about a certain thing, even if ropes aren’t involved.

Continue reading “What the Navy gave English”

A sinecure is a cushy, do-nothing job, often given as a reward to political supporters, or to public figures as a “retirement job”. Before there were speaking tours and book deals, most American presidents took sinecures as heads of universities or charities after leaving office, for example.

It’s probably no surprise that England was (and still is) the undisputed heavyweight champion of sinecures. Centuries of rival factions vying for the Crown led to the creation of hundreds of patronage jobs for supporters. Although most of these sinecures have been eliminated, a few – such as the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and the Constable of the Tower of London – still exist.

Few sinecures were as sought after as the post of Warden of the Royal Mint. The job only required a few public appearances a year, and the actual day-to-day job could be sublet to almost anyone. Most importantly, the job paid well: around £415 a year in the late 1600s. This was a lot of money at the time. A typical “gentleman” only made around £280/year, a high-ranking bishop would make £72/year, and a military officer could take home around £60/year. Considering that a common seaman made £20/year and a laborer made a mere £15/year, the Warden’s salary was an enormous sum of money for most.

But if the Crown thought they were they were getting a man who would just show up and collect a paycheck when Sir Isaac Newton was appointed to the job, they had another thing coming.

Continue reading “Detective and Genius”

In this History Blog post, I raged about people who misspell “Gwinnett”, the name of a county in metro Atlanta. It’s named after Button Gwinnett, one of Georgia’s signers of the Declaration of Independence.

In the article, I mentioned that Gwinnett’s signature is one of the most valuable and sought-after in the whole world. This is because there’s a group of autograph collectors who try to collect signatures from all the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Gwinnett’s signature is very rare, because he was practically unknown before the American Revolution and died in a duel only ten months after signing the Declaration.

Well, it looks like another copy of his signature has been found. According to the linked article, St Peter’s Church in Wolverhampton has discovered his signature in its parish register, from when Gwinnett married a local girl named Ann Bourne in 1757. Five years later, Gwinnett and wife would emigrate to the colonies, first to Charleston and later to a plantation on St. Catherine’s Island, Georgia.

The document, which has since been secretly moved to a bank for safe keeping, is expected to fetch over £500,000 ($795,550) at auction, a huge windfall for St Peter’s.

And, just to show you what a small world it really is, the current mayor of Wolverhampton, Malcolm Gwinnett, is descended from Button Gwinnett.

On December 1, 1948 the body of a man was found on Somerton Beach in Adelaide, Australia.

He was a white male in his early 40s. He was clean-cut and wore a white dress shirt, a red and blue striped tie and brown pants. Strangely, he also wore a brown knit pullover and a European-style overcoat, even though December is summertime in Australia, and the previous day had been quite hot, the previous evening very warm. Even stranger, all the tags had been removed from his clothing (most clothing tags of the day bore the name of the store where they were purchased and not a global designer brand; this was sometimes useful for identifying bodies). None of the items found on the body – a pack of Juicy Fruit gum, an American-made steel comb, a box of matches, and a pack of Army Club cigarettes (which actually contained Kensitas brand cigarettes) – assisted in identifying the body.

An autopsy was performed on the man, and there things only got stranger. The pathologist, Sir John Burton Cleland, was convinced that the man had been poisoned, due to the peculiar damage to the man’s internal organs. But no trace of poison was found in the man’s body. Cleland was even able to determine that the man’s last meal had been a pasty, a British pocket pie similar to an empanada. But no poison was found in the pasty, either.

Local media initially thought the the body might be that of a missing local man called E.C. Johnson. But on December 3rd, the very same Mr. Johnson walked in to a police station to identify himself, so that lead went nowhere. The next day, police announced that they had found no match for the man through fingerprint and dental records. The day after that, newspapers reported that police had started looking through military records after a local claimed to have been with the man at a local hotel bar on November 30th, and had allegedly seen the deceased with a military pension card with the same “Solomonson” on it. This also came to nothing.

Continue reading “Australia’s Greatest Mystery”

– Thomas Jefferson was incredibly sloppy in many ways. His clothes were usually out of style, too small, and often threadbare. Instead of sitting properly in a chair, he was known for throwing his legs over one arm and reclining comfortably. His office and study often had massive piles of books and papers lying about in huge stacks. In other ways, though, Jefferson was amazingly meticulous. He recorded the weather and temperature every day of his adult life, and he faithfully recorded every penny he ever spent. His notes were so voluminous that Jefferson even felt the need to create a 650 page index of them! But his most amazing precision was saved for architecture. On his plans for Monticello, his home in Virginia, he specified a measurement of 1.8991666 inches. Even today, with the best computer-guided saws, it’s extremely difficult to cut any piece of wood to a millionth of an inch. Why Jefferson bothered is a mystery to this day.

– Worcestershire sauce was created by accident. Sort of. As the story goes, an English aristocrat returned from overseas with a burning desire to recreate a particular sauce he’d had in India. He approached two noted apothecaries, John Wheeley Lea and William Henry Perrins of Worcester, to see if they could reproduce the sauce. Based on the man’s description, Lea and Perrins mixed malt vinegar, molasses, sugar, salt, anchovies, tamarind extract, onions, garlic, cloves, soy sauce, lemons, pickles, peppers and other ingredients in a barrel. By all accounts, the new sauce was positively awful. However, instead of throwing the foul mixture away, the apothecaries decided to keep it for reasons unknown, and so the barrel was rolled into a basement corner. The barrel was rediscovered a couple of years later, and the men tasted the sauce again on a whim. Aging was the key, as the sauce had turned from awful to delicious.

– The first written record in the English language of someone drinking tea comes from the famous diary of Samuel Pepys. Pepys mentions that he drank tea for the first time on September 25, 1660. Oddly, he doesn’t say anything else about it, including whether or not he enjoyed it. What’s interesting about this whole thing is that Pepys’ comments were mentioned in an 1812 book by Scottish historian David Macpherson called History of the European Commerce with India. The thing is, although Pepys’ diaries were available for viewing at Oxford University at the time, no one ever had before. And the reason for that was because the diaries were written in an obscure form of shorthand that had fallen out of use. Pepys’ diaries were, for all intents and purposes, written in an unknown language. They were not translated into standard English until 1822. How Macpherson managed to find and translate a single line of text out of six volumes of Pepy’s diary is unknown.

– The first music ever broadcast over radio was probably “Ombra mai fù”, an aria from Georg Friedrich Händel’s opera Xerxes. I say “probably” because many people in many places were experimenting with radio at the time. However, the airing of “Ombra mai fù”, on December 24, 1906, is the first musical broadcast we know of for certain.

You can be forgiven for not having heard the name James Chadwick before. No, not the Nobel prize-winning British physicist who discovered the neutron. I’m talking about the one who lived a century earlier. This James Chadwick is an obscure figure in British history. He is barely remembered, if at all, in Britain, and is more or less completely unknown outside his home country. But his life displays a mind-bogglingly interesting series of strange connections that shows just how amazingly connected history can be.

To begin with, his father, Andrew Chadwick, was a good friend of John Wesley, the Church of England reformer who, along with his brother Charles, founded the “Methodist Movement”. This sect, which emphasized open-air evangelical preaching, eventually became the Methodist Church, a Protestant denomination with around 12 million members today. Andrew also started the first Sunday School in the county of Lancashire.

Andrew apparently practiced what he preached when it came to giving his money away to the less fortunate. Unlike other sons of Britain’s rich, James was forced to get a job and provide for his family. So he began his adult life as a teacher. History doesn’t record if James was a good or bad teacher, but he must have done something right, because one of his pupils, John Dalton, is generally credited with discovering the atom and for doing the first major research into color blindness, which was for years called Daltonism in his honor.

James later left teaching to become a journalist, and to that end he spent time in Paris. There he was a roommate of the Anglo-American revolutionary Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense, which popularized the American Revolution, The Crisis, which urged Americans not to abandon hope in the darkest hours of the revolution, and The Rights of Man, a treatise on human rights inspired by the French Revolution.

Continue reading “Connections”