History Oddities 3

 

Inca Empire.  The Inca Empire was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America, stretching 770,000 square miles with a population of as many as 37 million people.  It lasted from 1438 to 1533.  They created a highway and road system in Peru with over 25,000 miles of roads.  The Incas were the first to cultivate the potato in the region.  The Inca had no writing system.  They used knotted strings for record keeping.  The Inca lacked wheeled vehicles.  They lacked the knowledge of iron and steel.  The Inca Empire functioned without money or without markets.  When the Spanish killed the Inca emperor, Atahualpa, the Spanish crowned Atahualpa’s younger brother, Manco, as their puppet emperor.  The Incas fought the Spanish until 1572, when its last city, Vilcabamba, was captured.    [source: Jarus, “The Inca Empire,” Live Science, Nov 5, 2018]

 

Iwo Jima.  The Battle of Iwo Jima was an epic military campaign between 70,000 U.S. Marines and 21,000 troops of the Imperial Army of Japan in early 1945.  The island is located 750 miles off the coast of Japan and had three airfields.  The American forces invaded the island on February 19, 1945, and the battle lasted for five weeks.  20,800 Japanese out of 21,000 were killed.  7,000 Marines were killed and 20,000 were wounded.  Four days into the fighting, U.S. Marines captured Mount Suribachi, famously raising an American flag at the summit. Some Japanese troops did not surrender until 1949.  In the end, neither the U.S. Army nor the U.S. Navy was able to use Iwo Jima as a staging area during World War II.  [source: “Iwo Jima,” history.com, Oct 29, 2009]

 

Holocaust.  Among the aspects of German National Socialist ideology was its view that Aryans (white Caucasians) were racially superior and that other groups, most especially the Jews, were inferior. The practical consequence of this belief was the Holocaust – the deliberate attempt to annihilate the Jewish population of Europe, which resulted in the murder of some six million Jews by 1945.  Holocaust is a word of Greek origin meaning “sacrifice by fire.” As German troops swept in to the USSR, the SS shot or gassed (in mobile vans) as many Jews as they could find. In Kiev, 33,771 Jews were marched out to the Babi Yar ravine and shot in September 1941.  In January 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Gestapo, summoned senior bureaucrats to a villa at Lake Wannsee in Berlin to ensure their support for a “Final Solution” to the Jewish question. Jews would be transported to camps in eastern Europe, to be worked to death or killed on the spot by mass gassing in sealed chambers.  The bodies were to be burned in huge crematoria staffed by Jews themselves.  Trainloads of Jews arrived at the death camps.  Only when the Soviet Red Army advanced westward in 1944–45 did the camps cease work. Even then the suffering was not over.  375,000 died in “Death Marches,” during which they were herded, starving and freezing, deeper west into Germany. After the war the Allies tried 22 leading Nazis at Nuremberg in 1945–46 for the atrocities. Twelve were sentenced to death and six to long periods of imprisonment. Of the European Jews who had suffered the Holocaust, only around 300,000 survived, and many of these would not return to their homeland, choosing to immigrate to the new Jewish state of Israel.  6 million Jews and 5 million others died in the Holocaust.  More than 1 million of those perished were children.  Two out of every three European Jews were killed.  [source: “Introduction to the Holocaust,” Holocaust Encyclopedia, March 12, 2018]

 

Independence Day.  The 4^th of July is not the real Independence Day.  It is actually July 2.  That was the day in 1776 when the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia actually voted to approve a resolution of independence.  John Adams thought July 2 would be marked as a national holiday for generations to come.  After voting on independence on July 2, a document had to be written to explain the move to the public.  A committee of 5 took wrote a draft and it took 2 days for the Congress to agree on all the edits.  July 4 was the day that Congress approved the Declaration of Independence document.  It wasn’t until July 8, 1776, that the printed Declaration of Independence was read for the first time in public.  Most of the signers didn’t sign it until August 2, 1776.  Independence Day, July 4, did not become a federal holiday until 1941.  [source: “History of the Fourth of July,” history.com, Dec 16, 2009]

 

Jamestown Colony.  On May 14, 1607, a group of 104 members (men and boys, no women) of a joint adventure called the Virginia Company founded the first permanent English settlement in North America on the banks of the James River of modern-day Virginia.  The colony was immediately plagued by disease, famine, and violent encounters with the native Indians.  More than 1/3 of the colonists died within a few months.  The Virginia Company landed on one of the worst areas in Virginia.  It was a swampy land with no source of fresh water, mostly toxic water with high levels of salt and varying degrees of arsenic.  The colonists also arrived in Jamestown during one of the driest periods in 770 years, as well as one of the coldest on record.  By January 1608, only 38 of the 104 settlers were still alive.  Between January 1608 and August 1609, 470 new settlers arrived at Jamestown.  Back in England, board members of the Virginia Company voted to advertise for women to immigrate to Jamestown and marry the colonists.  They were given free transportation, a plot of land, a dowry of clothing and furnishings, and they got to choose their husbands.  These women became America’s first mail-order brides. In 1698, the central statehouse in Jamestown burned down.  Williamsburg replaced it as the colonial capital in 1699.  While settlers continued to live and maintain farms there, Jamestown was all but abandoned,   [source: “Jamestown Colony,” history.com, July 30, 2019]

 

Jessop.  Violet Jessop (1887-1971) has been referred to as the “Queen of sinking ships” and “Miss Unsinkable.”  In 1911, she was on board the RMS Olympic as a ship stewardess when it collided with the British warship HMS Hawke.  In 1912, she was a stewardess and survived the sinking of the RMS Titanic (she was aboard lifeboat 16).  In 1916, she was a British Red Cross nurse and survived the sinking of HMHS Britannic (she had to jump out the lifeboat as it was nearly sucked under the ship’s propellers).  [source: Kaplan, “The iceberg cometh,” Newsweek, Nov 25, 1996]

 

Julian of Norwich.  Julia (or Juliana) of Norwich (1343-1416) wrote the earliest surviving book in the English language written by a woman.   It was called Revelations of Divine Love.  It is a medieval book of Christian mystical devotions.  She wrote an account of 16 visions she received in 1373 while seriously ill.  The manuscript comes in 2 versions.  The first version (the short text) was written shortly after her visions.  The second manuscript (the long text) was written 20 years later.  She lived in a cell attached to St. Julian’s Church (one of 63 churches in the city) in Norwich, England, isolated from the rest of the world.  During her lifetime, the city suffered from the effects of the Black Death (killing half the population), the Peasants’ Revolt, and the suppression of the Lollards (many burnt at the stake).  Her Long Text manuscript wasn’t published until 1670.  In 1901, her work emerged from obscurity when it was transcribed and published with notes.  [source: Coleman, “Julian of Norwich,” America Magazine, March 17, 2014]

 

Kant.  Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a German philosopher in the Age of Enlightenment.  He was baptized with the first name of Emanuel, but later changed his first name to Immanuel after learning Hebrew.  When his father died in 1746, Kant was left with no income.  He became a private tutor of the wealthy for 7 years before beginning an academic career at the university.  He became a librarian of the Prussian Royal Library in 1766.  He was later offered a job as professor of poetry, but he turned it down.  Later in 1770, he became full professor of philosophy in Königsberg University.  After receiving his doctorate, Kant had to work for 15 years to receive tenure among a faculty that was unreceptive to his ideas.  For most of his life, Kant never traveled more than 70 miles from the city of Königsberg, Prussia (since 1946 the city of Kaliningrad, Russia).  During Kant’s time, Königsberg became the capital of the province of East Prussia.  It had over 60,000 inhabitants, making it the second most populace German city of the time.  Kant’s philosophy was that space, time, and causation were mere sensibilities.  He also believed that reason was also the source of morality.  He believed that human understanding was limited and one could never attain knowledge about God or the soul.  Kant never married and he was so disciplined that neighbors could set their clocks by his daily walks.  He was one of the first persons to teach geography as its own subject.  In his last years, he became embittered due to his loss of memory.  A museum dedicated to Kant with many Kant artifacts was destroyed during World War II.  [source: “Immanuel Kant,” biography.com, April 16, 2019]

 

Kepler.  Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was a German astronomer and mathematician.  He married twice and had more than 10 children.  His mother, Katharana, was accused and tried for witchcraft.  Katharina’s aunt was burned at the stake for sorcery.  Johannes Kepler helped defend his mother, who spent 14 months in prison.  Kepler was kicked out of Austria for failing to convert to Roman Catholicism.  He then moved to Prague and worked with Tycho Brahe.  Kepler coined the word “satellite.”  [source: Redd, “Johannes Kepler Biography,” space.com, Nov 20, 2017]

 

King Tut.  Tutankhamen (1341 BC to 1323 BC), known as King Tut, was the 12^th pharaoh of the 18^th Egyptian dynasty, in power around 1332 BC to 1323 BC.   His tomb was discovered intact in 1922, with his mask and mummy in his original sarcophagus.  He died at age 19.  Scans of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamen showed that he was embalmed without his heart or his chest wall.  He may have suffered a horrific injury prior to his death.  One of the most likely causes of his wound would have been a bite from a hippopotamus.  Other sources say that he died from a gangrene infection from a broken leg.  A 2010 study of his DNA showed that he had malaria.  [source: “King Tut,” biography.com, Sep 5, 2019]

 

Lafayette.  Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier (1757-1834) , otherwise known as the Marquis de La Fayette, or simply Lafayette, was a French aristocrat and military officer who fought in the American Revolution.  He was only 19 years old and without combat experience when he arrived in America in 1777.  He sailed on a ship with a hold of cannons for the Continental Army.  He spoke little English, but convinced the Continental Army to commission him a major general without pay.  In his first battle, he was shot in the leg.  He organized a successful retreat and spent 2 months recuperating.  After that, he was given command over his own division for the first time.  He then sailed back to France to get more French support.  In 1780, he returned to American and was given senior positions in the Continental Army.  He forced the British to surrender in the last major battle of the Revolutionary War.  After the War, he returned to France where he was obligated to protect the royal family.  He was forced to flee France in 1792, but was captured by Austrian forces and did not return to France until 1799.  He named his children Georges Washington de Lafayette and Maria Antoinette Virginie.   [source: Klein, “10 Things You May Not Know About Marquis de Lafayette,” history.com, Oct 20, 2015]

 

Lake Trasimene.  The Battle of Lake Trasimene on June 24, 217 BC, was a major battle in the Second Punic War.  In terms of the number of men involved, it was the largest ambush in military history.  The Roman general Flaminius was moving south to assume a defensive position closer to Rome to defend any attack by Hannibal.  Moving faster than the Romans, Hannibal’s force passed Flaminius and maneuvered to cut him off from Rome.  Passing along the northern shore of Lake Trasimene, Hannibal learned that the Romans were on the march.  Assessing the terrain, he made plans for a massive ambush along the lake’s shore.  Hannibal had 55,000 soldiers and the Roman army under Flaminius had over 30,000 men.  Hannibal ordered his men to light campfires on the hills above the lake, at a considerable distance, so as to convince the Romans that his forces were further away than they actually were.  With the entire Roman force on the narrow plain north of Lake Trasimene, Hannibal ordered his men to emerge from their hiding positions and attack.  In less than 4 hours, the Roman army was wiped out.  About 1,500 of Hannibal’s men were killed.  For the Roman army, 15,000 were killed and 15,000 more were captured.  Hannibal sold all the captured Roman men into slavery.  Hannibal successfully planned and executed the greatest ambush in history.  [source: Hickman, “Punic Wars: Battle of lake Trasimene,” thoughtco.com, March 17, 2017]

 

Lee.  After the Civil War, Robert E. Lee was against Civil War monuments during Reconstruction.   He said that monuments to civil conflict perpetuated civil conflict.  In 1869, when he was invited to help commemorate the Battle of Gettysburg, he declined the invite.  He said, “I think it wiser, moreover, not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feeling engendered.   Lee’s family home was seized after the war and turned into Arlington National Cemetery.  Lee supported a system of free public schools for blacks but opposed allowing blacks to vote.  Lee became president of Washington College (no Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia.  Lee was never pardoned from war crimes, nor was his citizenship restored under President Johnson.  When he died in 1870, there was no suitable coffin for him in Lexington.  Coffins were ordered from Richmond, Virginia, but floods washed the caskets down the Maury River.  Two neighborhood boys found one of the coffins that had been swept ashore.  They used that coffin to bury Grant, but the coffin was too short for Grant.  He was buried without shoes to fit his body in the casket.  He is buried underneath Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University.  [source: “Robert E. Lee,” history.com, Dec 10, 2019]

 

Leonardo da Vinci.  Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was known as the “Renaissance man” responsible for painting The Mona Lisa and The Last Supper.  Besides being a master painter, he was an architect, engineer, sculptor, with interest in botany, geology, and anatomy.  What’s odd is that Leonardo never went to school and was self-taught in all his subjects.   If he had been born a legitimate son, he would have followed his father’s footsteps to be a notary and sent off to a Latin school.  Although a good painter, he was a commercial failure.  When he established his own workshop in 1477, he only received 3 commissions.  He never finished two of them and never started the third one.  Within a few years, he shuttered his workshop to work elsewhere.  Leonardo conceived hundreds of inventions in his drawings (airplanes, helicopters, parachutes, tanks, rifles, etc), but there is no evidence any of them were built.  None of Leonardo’s writings were published in his lifetime.  Leonardo was almost executed in Florence when he and several of his male companions were arrested for sodomy, a crime punishable by death.  However, his case was dismissed when no witnesses came forward.  It is odd that da Vinci returned to Milan in 1506 to work with the very French rulers who took over the city and forced him to leave.  He did little painting in Milan and dedicated his time to scientific studies. [source: “Leonardo da Vinci,” biography.com, April 21, 2019]

 

Lewis.  Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) was an American explorer, best known as the leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.  At age 27, Lewis became personal secretary to President Thomas Jefferson.  Lewis met William Clark (1770-1838) after being court-martialed by the Army.  Lewis was court-martialed for allegedly challenging a lieutenant to a duel while drunk.  He was found not guilty, but transferred to a different company to avoid any future incidents.  His new company commander was William Clark.  He died of gunshot wounds in either a murder from a robbery or a suicide, in October 1809.   [source: “Lewis and Clark,” history.com, Jan 31, 2020]

 

Lewis & Clark  Expedition.   The Lewis and Clark expedition was sent out by President Jefferson to cross the continent of America. They were to make scientific discoveries and contact the Native Americans. Because they were to be gone for so long it was necessary to train them in medicine so that they could treat illness and injury. Benjamin Rush, famous doctor and founding father, was a key advisor. He was a keen advocate of purgatives and laxatives. To clear out the bowels of the expedition he provided them with his own invention, Bilious Pills. These contained a large amount of mercury. They were so effective as laxative that the expedition termed them Thunder Clappers. The problem with mercury is that it remains in the environment for a very long time. When the expedition used the pills they left such large amounts of mercury in the ground that later archaeologists have been able to identify the path of the expedition by the levels of the metal still remaining from the Thunder Clapper purges.  [source: “Archaeology by Diarrhea,” listverse.com, Feb. 24, 2020]

 

Lincoln, Robert.  Robert Todd Lincoln (1843-1926) was coincidentally either present or nearby when three presidential assassinations occurred.  He was not present at Ford's Theatre when his father, Abraham Lincoln, was assassinated but he was at the White House nearby, and rushed to be with his parents. The president was moved to the Petersen House after the shooting, where Robert attended his father's deathbed in April 1865.   Robert Todd Lincoln was an eyewitness when Charles J. Guiteau shot President James A. Garfield in the back at the Sixth Street Train Station in Washington, D.C., on July 2, 1881. Lincoln was serving as Garfield's Secretary of War at the time.  He was at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York when President William McKinley was shot in the chest and abdomen by Leon Czolgosz.  He was just outside the Temple of Music when the shooting actually occurred.  Also of interest, in 1863, Edwin Booth, the brother of John Wilkes Booth, saved Robert Todd Lincoln from being run over by a train car.  [source: Ibrahim, “Did John Wilkes Booth’s Brother Save the Life of Abraham Lincoln’s Son?,” Snopes, Dec 24, 2022]

 

Luther.  Martin Luther (1483-1546) was the most influential figure of the Reformation.   On October 31, 1517, he supposedly posted his 95 Theses (written in Latin) against papal indulgences on the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany.  There is little foundation that Luther nailed anything to any door and some scholars say that Luther was not in Wittenberg at the time.  The publication of the 95 Theses in several locations in Germany sparked the Protestant Reformation.  The Catholic Church branded him a heretic and outlaw.  In 1522, still under the threat of arrest, he returned to Wittenberg to organize a new church, Lutheranism.  He was involved in the scandal of the century, when he, an ex-monk, married an ex-nun.  They had 6 children.  Luther named his wife his sole inheritor, something so unusual that judges ruled it illegal after Luther’s death.  Martin Luther believed in executing all adulterers, witches (including gypsies, Turks, and Jews), frigid wives, and prostitutes.   He demanded that all witches be burned at the stake.  He called for the burning of all synagogues and death to all Jews.  [source: Acocella, “How Martin Luther Changed the World,” The New Yorker, Oct 30, 2017]