Category: History Blog

The town of Beit She’arim, in Galilee, has an important place in Jewish history. Founded during the reign of King Herod in the first century BC, Beit She’arim was a prosperous market town that became the de facto capital of Israel in AD 70, after the destruction of the Second Temple forced the Sanhedrin (the Jewish legislature and supreme council) to evacuate to Beit She’arim. The town was destroyed by fire during a rebellion in AD 352, and although it was resurrected by the Byzantines and later the Arabs, the town never regained its luster. In fact, it was a sleepy Arab village named Sheikh Bureik when it was purchased by the Jewish National Fund in the 1920s.

Beit She’arim was also the site of a large and important cemetery. Historically, the most desirable burial place for Jews was the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. But once Jews were barred from the area in AD 135, Beit She’arim became the main alternate burial place. Jews from as far away as Tyre and Palmyra were buried there, as was Rabbi Judah HaNasi, the second century AD Jewish leader who codified Jewish oral tradition into the Mishnah, which itself became the basis for the Talmud. Needless to say, HaNasi is a really important guy in Jewish history.

Because of all this, archaeologists had studied the area around Beit She’arim as far back as the 1880s. By the 1950s, the area around the cemetery had been excavated so well that it was decided to build a museum on the site. And so, in 1956, a bulldozer was brought in to flatten a small, archaeologically insignificant cave. But shortly after the bulldozer went to work, it hit a gigantic item that it couldn’t move. The item – which was 6½’ x 11′ and 18″ thick – weighed 9 tons and was, strangely enough, perfectly level on top.

Continue reading “The Mystery Slab”

This is a United States $1,000 silver certificate from 1891:

The woman on the left of the note might seem unremarkable, little different from any of the other allegorical depictions of “Liberty” or “Columbia” often seen on American currency at the time. I can assure you, however, that this woman is different.

To ask who she is is to scratch the seedy underbelly of America’s Gilded Age.

*     *     *

Her name was Josie Mansfield. She was born either in Boston in 1842 or California in 1853; coin collecting sites mention the former, while original sources state the latter. One way or another, she became an actress and showgirl in San Francisco in her teens.

Like a lot of actresses at the time, Josie had trouble making ends meet. Many less famous actresses resorted to prostitution to earn extra cash, but Josie was different. Her stunning good looks and bubbly personality led to her becoming a “courtesan” for San Francisco’s elite. She eventually married fellow actor James Lawler, and within months she convinced him to move from San Francisco to New York.

Continue reading “Who’s That Girl?”

A few days ago, I stumbled across Suicide Blonde. It’s a blog that mostly features photographs, generally of pretty women, but also arty and\or kitschy pictures, too. I subscribed to their RSS feed, and got this in my inbox yesterday:

It’s a painting called The Execution of Lady Jane Grey by Paul Delaroche, and it made me think of the gigantic mess that Henry VIII left in his wake.

Henry VIII came to the throne with plans. Plans to reinvent the Royal Navy. Plans to take power away from the nobles and give it to the King and Parliament. Plans to introduce progressive and efficient taxation. Plans to unify England and Wales. Plans to be a patron of the arts and architecture. It’s somewhat ironic that Henry’s main plan, the thing he thought about almost constantly – securing the future of the Tudor dynasty – nearly failed so horribly.

Henry died on January 28, 1547, leaving firm plans that his son Edward, from his third marriage to Jane Seymour, should be king. There was just one problem: Edward was only nine years old when his father died, so a Regency Council was created to rule in his stead until he reached adulthood. Thus, Edward was crowned King Edward VI of England on February 20 1547, and his Regency Council was led by by his uncle, Edward Seymour.

Continue reading “The Nine Days’ Queen”

Legend has it that Cambyses II – son of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian Empire – sent a massive army to Egypt in 525BC. Also according to legend, the army was swallowed up by a sandstorm and never seen again.

The legend was first documented by Greek historian Herodotus, and most archaeologists dismissed it as fantasy. Others, convinced that the story was based in fact, searched for the army’s remains over the centuries (past searchers included Count László Almásy, the historical figure upon which the novel The English Patient was based).

But it seems that Angelo and Alfredo Castiglioni, a pair of Italian twins, just might have found it. The two have found hundreds of skeletons, dozens of water pitcher fragments, several bronze daggers, and several arrow tips near the legendary Oasis of Siwa. The men found the items near a rock formation 114 feet long a 6 feet high – the perfect shelter from a sandstorm and the only such rock over a wide area.

You can read more about it at the Daily Mail’s site here. I recommend it – it’s a worthy read!

James Cook was born to a family of Yorkshire farmers on November 7, 1728. It’s odd then, that Cook would go on to join the Royal Navy and become one of the best explorers and navigators in British history.

Cook had only five years of schooling, where he was seen as a decent, but not remarkable, student. When he was 16, Cook became a “shop boy” at a grocer and fabric shop in the seaside town of Staithes. In this, Cook was a complete failure, and in less than two years he had moved on to the nearby port town of Whitby. There he met Quaker brothers John and Henry Walker, who were in the business of shipping coal along the English coast. Cook apprenticed with them, and found that he loved it. Where he had once been indifferent in school, he now quickly absorbed all the algebra, geometry, astronomy and other skills needed to one day command his own ship.

In 1755, Cook volunteered for the Royal Navy as the Seven Years’ War began. He quickly rose up the ranks, especially once his skills as a mapmaker became known. Cook, serving in North America in the war, made some of the first contemporary charts of Canadian waters, maps that allowed General James Wolfe to launch several successful raids during the conflict.

After the war, the Royal Society hired him to sail to Tahiti in 1766 to observe the transit of Venus across the Sun (two other adventurers were sent to other spots on the globe; it was hoped that by triangulation they would be able to accurately measure the distance to the Sun). Once this was complete, Cook opened a packet of “secret orders” he had been given back in England: he was to locate the terra australis incognita (“unknown southern land”) once and for all, and claim it in the name of Great Britain. That Cook did, reaching a bay so teeming with wildlife that he named it “Botany Bay”. Thus, on that day in 1770, modern Australia was born.

Continue reading “Fear and Loathing in the Pacific”

150 years ago today, Joshua Abraham Norton – one of history’s greatest oddballs – declared himself “Emperor of the United States”. He would also later also declare himself “Protector of Mexico”.

Born in London around 1819, Norton spent most of his childhood in South Africa. In 1849 he moved to San Francisco, where he inherited $40,000 from his father’s estate (just over $1 million in 2008 dollars). Norton turned the $40,000 into $250,000 ($6.4 million) by way of real estate investments… but then disaster struck.

Facing a severe famine, China banned all exports of rice, which caused the price of rice to jump from 4¢ a pound to 36¢ a pound in San Francisco. Smelling a fortune, Norton found out that a ship named Glyde, traveling from Peru, had 200,000 pounds of rice on board. He bought her cargo, sight unseen, for $25,000. Unfortunately, shortly thereafter several other ships from Peru also loaded with rice arrived in San Francisco, causing the “rice bubble” to collapse. Norton spent years fighting against his cargo contract in the courts, and finally lost when the Supreme Court of California ruled against him. Financially ruined, Norton declared bankruptcy in 1858 and left San Francisco.

No one knows for sure exactly where Norton was for the next year, but on September 17, 1859, Norton returned to the city and wrote a letter which was sent to all the leading newspapers in the city:

At the peremptory request and desire of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and now for the last 9 years and 10 months past of S. F., Cal., declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these U. S.; and in virtue of the authority thereby in me vested, do hereby order and direct the representatives of the different States of the Union to assemble in Musical Hall, of this city, on the 1st day of Feb. next, then and there to make such alterations in the existing laws of the Union as may ameliorate the evils under which the country is laboring, and thereby cause confidence to exist, both at home and abroad, in our stability and integrity.

NORTON I, Emperor of the United States

The editor of the San Francisco Bulletin was amused by the letter, and printed it in his paper… and thus, a local legend was born. The citizens of San Francisco indulged him, and “Emperor Norton” spent his days roaming around the streets of his “kingdom” (or, as Norton would say, “inspecting the public works”) in an elaborate uniform given to him by Army officers at the Presidio.

Continue reading “Hail Emperor Norton!”

There’s an old saying that I’ve referenced many times on this site: “the sun never sets on the British Empire”. And, at the turn of the 20th century, it was literally true. Britain’s empire was so vast that the sun was indeed always shining on some piece of land controlled by the British.

But there’s another saying from the film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels that’s equally true: “the entire British Empire was built on cups of tea”. And indeed, at the height of the British Empire, one could find Englishmen in cities from Sydney to Calcutta to Johannesburg to London to Kingston to Toronto, all sipping cups of tea as they went about their daily business. And for that, Englishmen could thank a man named Robert Fortune.

It all started in the late 17th century, when the English upper class developed a mania for all things Chinese. Porcelain, silks, lacquered furniture and, above all, tea were so highly coveted by the English gentry that they were snapped up, regardless of price, as quickly as they could be unloaded from ships in London’s dockyards.

But, like so many things in history, there was a problem: the Chinese weren’t interested in any of the goods the English wanted to trade for tea. The Chinese looked down their noses at England’s main export – wool cloth – and aside from a tiny trade in clocks, watches and scientific instruments, the English were stuck paying the Chinese cash for their tea. And the problem with this is that there were only so many silver coins in England, and shipping them halfway around the world to buy tea wasn’t only dangerous and foolhardy, it also caused inflation at home, as the currency supply continually shrank as the demand for tea increased.

But if the Chinese didn’t care for England’s trade goods, they were mad for opium, a product readily available in England’s newest colony, India. So the directors of the East India Company created a “trade triangle”, where English goods were shipped to India and sold, and the proceeds from that sale were used to buy opium, which was then shipped to China where it was exchanged for tea, which was then shipped back to England.

Continue reading “AMAZING LIVES: Robert Fortune”

It was 40 years ago today that man landed on the moon Ted Kennedy drove his car off Dyke Bridge and crashed into Poucha Pond on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts. Campaign worker Mary Jo Kopechne drowned in the crash, and Kennedy ruined his chances in the 1972 presidential election by his evasive answers to questions about the incident.

God bless, Mary Jo!

I’ve been to Virginia several times, and in my travels I’ve visited many of the homes of our Founding Fathers. Washington’s Mount Vernon, Jefferson’s Monticello, and James Monroe’s Ash Lawn have all been lovingly restored to their original grandeur… so much so that the original inhabitants could walk through the front door today and not notice much of difference between their homes now and 200 years ago. Sadly, the same can’t be said for Montpelier, the home of James Madison, our fourth president and writer of much of the United States Constitution.

James Madison married Dolley Todd in September 15, 1794. Dolley was born Dolley Payne on May 20, 1768 and married a Philadelphia lawyer named John Todd, Jr. on January 7, 1790. The couple had two children, John Payne Todd (born 1792) and William Temple Todd (born 1793). Tragedy struck the family that same year, when an epidemic of yellow fever devastated Philadelphia. The entire Todd family was stricken with the disease, and although Dolley and John Payne survived, her husband, her youngest child, and her in-laws did not.

Continue reading “A Different Destination”