Almanac chapter 18: History

                                     Chapter 18

                                      HISTORY

              The  population of the whole world in the year 5,000 B.C. was
         about five million.  Now there are more people just  in  New  York
         City.

              There  is  a  marble arch in Libya that was built in the year
         164.  It is still standing, but it has been  covered  with  modern
         cement and made into a grocery store.

              Eyeglasses  were worn in China five hundred years before they
         were worn in Europe or America.

              Christopher Columbus spent less money coming to the New World
         than it costs the average American to buy a new car today.

              America was named after Amerigo Vespucci,  who  a  map  maker
         mistakenly  thought  was  Christopher  Columbus, the discoverer of
         North America. Vespucci discovered South America.

              Served  at  the first Thanksgiving meal in 1621 were lobster,
         roasted  pigeon,  eel,  stuffed  cod,  turkeys,  pumpkins,   sweet
         potatoes,  popcorn  and  cranberry  sauce.   There  were 92 native
         Americans at this breakfast.

              Evidently the Pilgrims had a unique gadget that was  used  in
         church  to keep members of the congregation awake. It was a wooden
         ball on a string that was used to bop people on the head who  were
         drifting off during the seven-hour-long sermons.

              In  1637,  one  out of every four shops in New York City were
         taverns.

              Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), the famous astronomer, spent  so
         much  time  looking  at  the  sun with his telescope, that he went
         blind for the last four years he lived.

              On December 5, 1664, a ship sank off the coast of Wales.  The
         only  survivor was a man named Hugh Williams. On December 5, 1785,
         another ship sank. One man survived,  another  Hugh  Williams.  On
         December  5,  1860,  yet  another  ship  went  down  with only one
         survivor - you guessed it - his name was Hugh Williams.

              Casimir Polemus of France survived three shipwrecks. In  each
         case, he was the only survivor.

              Frank  Tower  was a shipworker who was on the Titanic when it
         sank, the Empress of Ireland when it sank, and the Lusitania  when
         it sank. He escaped all three times.

              Until 1687 clocks had no minute hand, just an hour hand.

              Sir  Isaac  Newton (1642-1727) was an alchemist for 30 years.
         He invented the ridges  found  on  quarters  and  dimes  to  deter
         counterfeiting while heading the English mint. Some people used to
         shave  off  the edges of coins to make a valuable pile of precious
         metal which they could then melt down and sell. The  coins  looked
         about  the  same.  With  ridges  a  shaved coin would be easier to
         notice.

              The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 were the result of the  pranks
         of  a  bunch  of  teenage  girls.  Some people of the town started
         saying that the  girls  might  be  "bewitched."  When  the  adults
         seriously wanted to know who had bewitched them, these girls named
         about 150 random residents of the community.  Twenty-two "witches"
         were killed, mostly by hanging.

              Philadelphia used to be the biggest city in America.

              Because  the  Americans  felt  unqualified  to cast a bell so
         large, the Liberty  Bell  was  made  in  England  and  shipped  to
         America. It arrived in 1752. It cracked the very first time it was
         rung.  This  was  the only bell made by the Whitechapel Foundry of
         London that ever cracked in the 400 years  they  had  been  making
         them.   The  colonists  melted  it  down  and  tried to re-cast it
         themselves, but it did not sound good when finished.   They  tried
         again,  and  then  it  worked fine for 83 years until 1835 when it
         cracked again.  They used it for 11 more years,  but  finally  the
         crack  was growing too big to ignore. It was supposed to be melted
         down and poured into a mold to make a new bell twice as  big,  but
         the  man  hired  for  the  job  refused  to  do it.  He said "Your
         children and my children will some day come to value it, so let it
         stand."
              To those who have been to Philadelphia and seen  the  Liberty
         Bell,  it  seems  huge. But it is far from the largest bell in the
         world.  In Russia is a great bell that is so big  that  24  people
         are  needed  to  ring it.  It was originally cast in the sixteenth
         century.  It fell off its support and was  recast  in  1654.   Its
         support  broke  again  in  1706,  and  it was recast again.  It is
         taller than three people, and as big in diameter  as  a  car.   It
         weighs 443,732 pounds, about the same as 4,000 people.

              In Thomas Jefferson's  first  draft  of  the  Declaration  of
         Independence,  he  included  a  proposal to put an end to slavery.
         Other politicians forced him to delete that portion in  the  final
         draft.

              John  Hancock's  signature on the Declaration Of Independence
         was very large, causing the modern term "put  your  John  Hancock"
         which  means  to  sign something. His signature on other documents
         was rather large too, but he had a particular reason  for  writing
         big  on  the  Declaration.   Signing the Declaration was an act of
         considerable bravery, because it would be  seen  by  the  King  of
         England  as  high  treason.  He  wanted  King  George III, who was
         far-sighted, to be able to see his signature clearly.

              Paul Revere never made the ride for which he  is  so  famous.
         Soon after he started he was asked to turn around and go home by a
         British soldier. Paul Revere had 16 children.

              Dimes were originally pronounced "deems."

              Early American coins were engraved with this motto:
                             "Mind Your Own Business."

              Only one out of twenty Americans lived it cities in 1790.

              One of the United States used to be called Franklin. The name
         was changed in 1796 to Tennessee.

              George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson all played
         marbles.  In that era the game of marbles  was  fashionable  among
         adults.

              English  lawyers and judges used to wear powder-covered wigs.
         More important men tended to wear bigger wigs.  This is where  the
         expression bigwig came from.

              During  the  War  of  1812  Samuel Wilson, a butcher in Troy,
         N.Y., shipped pork to the U.S.   soldiers  in  kegs  stamped  U.S.
         People called him Uncle Sam.
              Samuel  Wilson did not look like the man we think of as Uncle
         Sam.  The man who posed for the original paintings of "Uncle  Sam"
         was  really Dan Rice, a professional clown who owned a pet pig and
         worked for what later became the Barnum and  Bailey  Circus,  then
         went  on  to  found  his  own  circus.   He  ran  for the American
         presidency as a Republican and lost.

              The man who started the California gold rush, James Marshall,
         after  a  first  small  strike, was able to find no other gold for
         himself, and died a penniless alcoholic.

              The  modern  President  of the United States is surrounded by
         Secret Service agents and the reporters and photographers  of  the
         press  wherever  he  goes.   The White House is full of guards and
         electronic equipment.  The man does  not  lead  anything  like  an
         ordinary life.
              In Abraham Lincoln's time, the situation was different. There
         were  no  secret service employees.  Reporters, souvenir- hunters,
         even unemployed folks looking for work could come into  the  White
         House  and speak with the President. Lincoln's pet goats grazed on
         the White House lawn and were invited inside occasionally.

              Plastic was first made in the year 1868.

              The  term  Gadget came from Gaget, one of the partners in the
         company that built the statue of Liberty.  He sold  miniatures  of
         the statue to the public who mispronounced his name when referring
         to the little statues. The year was 1884.

              Although there were some women  employed  in  each  of  these
         trades a hundred years ago, they were less than one in a million:
                                       total   total   one out   one out
         occupation                     men    women of workers  of women
         ====================          ======= ===== ========== ==========
         Lumbermen                     65,829   28       2,351   2,250,000
         Quarrymen                     37,628   30       1,254   2,100,000
         Wood choppers                 33,665   32       1,052   1,968,750
         Architects                    8,048    22         366   2,863,636
         Building engineers            139,718  47       2,973   1,340,425
         Livery-stable keepers         26,719   48         557   1,312,500
         Locomotive engineers/firemen  79,459    4      19,864  15,750,000
         Sailors                       55,875   29       1,927   2,172,413
         Blacksmiths                   205,256  59       3,479   1,067,796
         Coopers (barrel makers)       47,435   54         878   1,166,666
         Masons (brick & stone)        158,874  42        3782   1,500,000
         Ship and boat builders        22,929    3        7643   2,100,000
         Steam boiler makers           21,272    6        3545  10,500,000

              There were 205,256 men working as blacksmiths in 1890, and 59
         women.   Less  than  one  in a million women were blacksmiths. The
         percentage of women who are blacksmiths is nearly the same  today.
         But  now  the  reason  is  because there are so few blacksmiths in
         general.

              During the summer of 1893 Chicago hosted a large fair  called
         the  Columbian  Exhibition.  There  were  approximately 75 million
         Americans then, and one out of every three Americans visited  that
         exhibition.

              The  Sears  catalog and other mail-order outfits affected the
         easy prosperity for the rural general stores. In some places  they
         would  trade  with  the children of the community one movie ticket
         for every Sears or Montgomery Ward catalog they could bring.  Then
         these merchants would have big bonfires to burn all the catalogs.

                            From The Sears Catalog, 1897

                           10 inch skillet..........$.20
                           Men's suit, wool........$4.85
                           Family shoe  repair kit..$.68
                           Men's straw hat......... $.25
                           Women's silk skirt......$2.35
                           Hair curling iron....... $.35
                           pocket watch............ $.98
                           violin................. $2.85
                           Harmonica............... $.08
                           rocking chair.......... $2.00
                           oak rolltop desk...... $17.50
                           "B grade" buggy....... $37.83

              Mr.   Roebuck,  was originally a watchmaker that Sears hired.
         They were opposites, Sears  a  promoter,  Roebuck  a  conservative
         careful  man.   They  got  along  well anyway and became partners.
         After a while Roebuck sold out for $25,000 because he didn't agree
         with  the  frantic  expansion  of  the  company.  He  invented   a
         typewriter  and  invested the proceeds of the typewriter income in
         Florida real estate. He lost everything in the crash of  1929.  He
         showed  up  at the Sears employment office looking for any work at
         all.  He was hired as  a  "celebrity"  to  cut  ribbons  at  grand
         openings, etc.

              At the age of 44 Mr. Sears retired with over $17 million.

              In Switzerland, women were not allowed to vote until 1971. Do
         you know what year women gained the right to vote  in  the  United
         States?

              Women could vote in the United States beginning in 1920.


                                      Slavery

              We  all  know  how  slavery  ended in America.  Here's how it
         happened in  France.   About  1400  years  ago,  a  British  girl,
         Bathilde,  was taken as a slave and sold to French King Clovis II.
         They fell in love and married, making her queen.  After  the  king
         died, she outlawed slavery.

              "SLAVERY AND SERFDOM.  - Some of the wealthy Romans  had
              as  many  as  10,000  slaves. The minimum price fixed by
              the law of Rome was $80, but after great victories  they
              could  sometimes  be  bought  for a few shillings on the
              field of battle.  The day's wages of  a  Roman  gardener
              were  about  sixteen  cents,  and  his value about $300,
              while a blacksmith was valued at about $700, a  cook  at
              $2,000   an  actress  at  $4,000,  and  a  physician  at
              $11,000." - From The Century Book of Facts, 1900

              There were 4,000 slaves in Pennsylvania in the year 1780.

              At  one  time  in America, approximately one out of every six
         people were slaves. At other times the figure dropped to  one  out
         of every eight people.

              As  late  as 1876 there were over a million slaves in Brazil,
         which was 15 percent of all the Brazilian people.

                                   Miscellaneous

              One of the earliest typewriters had a piano keyboard.

              The  Mexican  term  for  Americans, gringos, came from a song
         that cowboys often sang, called "Green Grow the Lilacs."

              The $ was originally equipped with not one, but two  vertical
         lines.  Sometimes you still see it used that way. The two vertical
         lines represented a U superimposed over the  S,  which  stand  for
         U.S.,  the  United  States.  The United States is the only country
         that incorporates its own name into its monetary symbol.

              There was an Indian in Wisconsin whose name was Chief Lepod-
         otemaxchoselachogaleokranioleipsanodrimupotrimmatosiphioparaomel-
         iokatakeclummenokichleipkossuphophattoperisteralektruonoptegkeph-
         alokigklopelsiolagoosiraioealetraganopterugon.

              A long time ago in an  English  pub,  someone  told  the  the
         bartender  to mind his P's and Q's. What he was saying was to keep
         out of the customer's  business,  and  mind  his  own,  which  was
         inventorying P's (pints) and Q's (quarts).

              The Dow-Jones average was never higher than 1000 until  1972.
         On November 14, 1972 it broke 1000 with 1003.16.

              The man who invented scissors was Leonardo da Vinci.

                                      Electric

              Pacific  Power  and  Gas,  the  largest  electric  utility in
         America, was founded by George Roe, a guy who had to  collect  the
         collateral on a bad debt: a generator.

              When  the  transatlantic cable was first used, it cost $98.82
         to send ten words.

              In the  first  phone  company,  the  four  operators  had  to
         remember  the names of about 200 customers. When John Smith wanted
         to call Tom Hardin, for instance, the operator knew whose plug  to
         put in whose hole.
              When  two of the four operators became sick with the measles,
         the doctor, who was also  a  part  owner  of  the  phone  company,
         suggested  numbering the customers so that temporary operators who
         didn't know all the customers by name, could work the system. This
         is how phone numbers came to be.

              One old woman related this story:
                   We  didn't used to dial phones. You would crank the
              phone in a code.  Ours  was  two  short  and  two  long.
              Every  neighbor  had  their own code. You dialed a short
              with about a half-turn of the  crank,  and  a  long  was
              about  a  full  turn.   Music  was  such a novelty, that
              sometimes  one  of  the  rare  neighbors   who   had   a
              phonograph  would  dial four longs, which was the signal
              for everyone on the line to pull  down  their  receivers
              and  listen.  They  would  then wind up the Victrola and
              everyone would  listen  in  wonder  to  the  music.   Of
              course,  only one person in every family could listen to
              the receiver at a time, so  everyone  would  take  turns
              holding the thing to their ears, while the others in the
              family gathered around eagerly awaiting their turn.

              Early  in  the  history  of  telephones, there were about 300
         competing phone companies in America.  You  could  call  only  the
         people who did business with the same company as you.

              The  first phone booths were in a building in Connecticut. An
         attendant stood near to take the money.

              At one time, there were more pianos and organs in the US than
         bathtubs. Thomas Edison changed all that  with  the  invention  of
         machinery to record and play back music.

              We  think  of color television as a recent invention, but the
         first time color was shown on a tv screen was in 1929.

              The first commercial television broadcast as we know  it  was
         in London, 1936, to about 100 tv sets.

              The  last  episode of M*A*S*H* on February 28, 1983, was seen
         by 125 million people.


                                   Transportation

              The world's first automobile was made in France, in  1871  by
         Nicolas Joseph Cugnot.  Powered by a two-cylinder steam engine, it
         had a top speed of 2.3 mph. Walking speed is 3 mph.

              In  total,  18  million  Model  T  Fords  were built.  That's
         approximately one for every 8 men, women and children in  America.
         Where are all these Tin Lizzies now?

              Old Tin Lizzie jokes:

                   "What time is it when a Ford passes a Ford?
              Tin past tin."

                   "Why,  the  only  shock  absorbers  in the Model T
             are the passengers."

              Ford Model A cars had only 5,500 parts. A  bicycle  has  over
         1,000  parts, although more than half (typically 512) of these are
         in the chain.  There are over a quarter-million  Model  A's  still
         running.

              People  often wonder how Hitler, with all his crazy ideas and
         rough manner could become so popular a leader.  A  great  deal  of
         Hitler's  appeal  to the masses was that he decided to control the
         automobile industry and promised them Volkswagens, cars that every
         family could afford at a time when there  was  only  one  car  for
         every  211  people in Germany. (In America at that time, there was
         one car for every 5.7 people.)

              Hitler and Eva Braun did not get married until the day before
         their suicide.

              German Count  Von  der  Wense  was  asked  by  the  Nazis  to
         surrender  his  land  for  the  government Volkswagen plant.  They
         offered payment, however. He took the money and bought other land,
         but that land was conquered by Russia. Finally, after the war,  he
         ended  up  with  the  job of official tour guide of the Volkswagen
         facilities, on the very land he used to own.

              After World War II, Henry Ford  was  offered  the  Volkswagen
         factory  for  free  by  the  English government, then in charge of
         Germany's industries.  They were looking  for  someone  who  could
         operate  the  plant,  thereby  creating  hundreds of jobs.  Ernest
         Breech, Ford's chairman of the board looked  the  plant  over  and
         said,  "Mr.  Ford, I don't think what we are being offered here is
         worth a damn!"

              He was right in a way. At that time the factory had  not  yet
         ever  produced  more  than  a  few hand-crafted prototypes and the
         workers could only make cars when it wasn't raining, because large
         areas of the roof were missing.

              As some of you  may  know,  Ferdinand  Porsche  designed  the
         Volkswagen,  and  he  considered  it his greatest achievement.  He
         rated this car more important than his winning race  cars  because
         this  was a car every family could afford. It was a masterpiece of
         economical engineering for its time, as is evidenced by  the  fact
         that the basic design survived for over 30 years.

              Ferdinand  Porsche  went  to  trade school to be trained as a
         factory foreman. He got the lowest grades in his class.

              One of Henry Ford's famous quotes came from  this  Volkswagen
         thing.    When   Ferdinand   Porsche  showed  him  the  plans  for
         Volkswagens, and Ford was asked about his concern of  competition,
         he  said, "If anyone can build a car better or cheaper than I can,
         that serves me right."

              As of 1965, Volkswagen was producing a car every  8  seconds,
         and Ford could have owned the company.

              Most  people think the Wright Brothers were first to fly. The
         first real flight happened in France on October 9, 1890 by Clement
         Ader in a steam powered airplane.  The altitude  was  only  a  few
         inches. The Wright Brothers.  knew about and studied this flight.

              Lindbergh was the sixty-seventh man to make a non-stop flight
         over the Atlantic Ocean. He was, however, the first to do it solo.

              1914 marked the beginning of the first passenger airline. The
         St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line started with two flights per day
         on a plane with one passenger seat.

              I  found  a  132-year-old advertisement for a book similar to
         the almanac you are now reading:

              "FIFTY  THOUSAND  CURES of drowsiness dejection, dolour,
              dulness,  depression,  ennui,  ill-humor,   indigestion,
              (mental,)  from  political or other dry reading, loss of
              temper,  low  spirits,  melancholy,  moroseness,  mental
              anxiety,  (as for instance on a railway journey,) sulks,
              stupefaction, (by a  debate  in  Congress.)  sleepiness,
              spleen,   general   used   upishness,   and  many  other
              complaints have already been affected by the use of that
              celebrated article prepared by the old  lady  herself  -
              Mrs. PARTINGTON'S CARPET BAG OF FUN - with 150 laughable
              designs,  and  1,000  of the funniest stories, &c., ever
              published. It is sold by everybody  and  bought  by  the
              rest. The infant may take it as well as the adult, as it
              is  warranted  free  from  all  impurity,  and  contains
              nothing hurtful to the weakest mental stomach. Price  50
              cents.   GARRETT,  DICK & FITZGERALD.  Also, for sale by
              all Booksellers."