We're getting there! Onward and upward!
39. "This Spud's For Europe," 1537.
I never knew that potatoes had been around since 8000 BC, or that Spanish explorer Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada brought them into the Western world in 1537. They took a century or two to really catch on, but they became a staple crop in Ireland during the 19th Century. That is, until the Great Potato Famine hit in 1845, sparking a mass emigration out of Ireland and into America. (102)
38. "Marx meets Engels," 1844.
The writings of Charles Dickens--A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, and many others--tell of the deplorable conditions in post-Industrial Revolution-era Britain. Around this time, a young Karl Marx befriended political theorist Friedrich Engels, and, four years later, they published The Communist Manifesto.
Cliffs Notes version: The story of history is the story of cycles of class struggle. "The bourgeoisie had superseded the nobility and called the proletariat into existence. Since capitalists exploited workers with ever-increasing ferocity, proletarians would one day realize they had 'nothing to lose but their chains' and overthrow the bourgeoisie." Then the proletariat would take up the means of production, eliminate social classes, and hopefully create a safer, saner world for everyone. Alas, despite Marx's best intentions, "oppression and want persisted; within a few decades most of those [communist] regimes were ousted from power and Marxism was relegated mainly to academic debate." (105)
37. "Fixing an Image," 1826.
From an attic window at a home in Burgundy, Joseph-Nicéphore Niépce took the world's first photograph. Though early pictures are called "daguerreotypes," Louis Daguerre was the promoter with whom Niépce partnered. (Nothing wrong with one name overshadowing the other--"Niépcetype" just doesn't have the same ring to it.)
Niépce called his early photograph a "heliograph," and his primitive apparatus required an all-day exposure, but it was a remarkable first step. "[His] invention has allowed us to fix our own images of faraway places and familiar faces--and share them with friends, strangers, and future generations." (106)
36. "E=mc²," 1905.
From 1904 to 1905, physicist Albert Einstein had published groundbreaking papers covering topics such as "the special theory of relativity, the quantum theory of light and more [sic]." His paper for September 1905 proved to be The One, and it had serious implications for the world.
Einstein imagined that the speed of an object could alter its size and its mass, and, "if the energy of motion could change mass...mass itself could become energy."
Energy equals mass times the speed of light, squared.
His theory would be put to the ultimate test four years later, with the Manhattan Project and the completion of the atomic bomb. "Einstein, a lifelong pacifist, deplored the destructive use of his ideas and regretted encouraging President Franklin D. Roosevelt to push development of nuclear weapons." Never mind, of course, that Einstein really didn't want the Nazis to develop them first. (108)
35. "To Be, or Not," 1605.
The History of King John. The Tragedy of Richard III. The Merry Wives of Windsor. Those are but three of the many plays written by William Shakespeare, whose works are still being adapted and dramatized to this very day. His masterpiece, though, has to be The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. It started as a Danish epic from long, long ago, a fairly simple revenge story, but Shakespeare gave Prince Hamlet depth. Impulsive yet conflicted, Hamlet saw in his uncle a really deplorable king, yet recognized that killing the man would make him no better.
To be or not to be, indeed.
A few of the most memorable actors to have essayed Hamlet's torment: Edwin Booth, 1864; John Barrymore, 1922; Alec Guinness, 1938; Richard Burton, 1964; Kenneth Branagh, 1996; David Tennant, 2009.
34. "The French Revolution," 1789.
"Do you hear the people sing?" Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette certainly did. It was the Age of Reason, you see, and French philosophers such as Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Voltaire, demanded a new society, one which called for ordinary people to have much more of a voice in their own governance, one "based on law and reason rather than royal privilege." Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were, judging by their reputations, more keen to wield the power than to engage in the responsible use of it. I recall a passage from an old history book about Louis XVI: "[He] was more interested in hunting and tinkering with locks than with actually ruling the country." (And by "tinkering with locks," the textbook meant "sexing.")
In the end, their heads joined seventeen thousand others, many of whom were revolutionaries from losing factions.
"The ideas of socialism and nationalism were among the insurrection's exports, as were its egalitarian legal system and its Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. Even its tricolor flag became a model--hoisted, in various hues and configurations, by new republics throughout the world." (110)
33. "One Small Step for Man," 1969.
In 1869, Jules Verne wrote the novel From the Earth to the Moon. One century later, after many successes and false starts, American astronauts set foot upon its surface.
The Space Race began when the Soviet Union launched their satellite, Sputnik I, on October 4, 1957. When John F. Kennedy took the presidency a few years later, he vowed that America would get a man on the moon within the decade.
The story of the Space Race has been dramatized in movies such as The Right Stuff, Apollo 13, and, most recently, First Man, the tale of Neil Armstrong's career and the moment he stepped on the moon.
The Sixties were ten years fraught with turmoil: the assassinations of JFK and of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; the tension of the Cold War and the moments where it seemed like the war would heat up; the horrors of the Vietnam War and the ever-growing antiwar movement taking hold; the riots at the 1968 Democratic Party Convention...
For all of that and more, it's said that the moon landings unified the nation and redeemed the entire decade.
32. "The First Picture Show," 1895.
"In the beginning there was nonfiction ("I was chased by a pterodactyl...") and fiction ("...and killed it in one blow")." That opening line made me laugh so hard I spat out my coffee upon reading it.
Storytelling! That's been the one constant running throughout humanity's long lifespan upon this little blue orb. First there were cave drawings; then there were stories passed down through the generations; then there was the written word; then theater, poetry, and prose. This state of affairs remained about the same for centuries.
Then in 1889, George Eastman invented roll film--those little canisters you used to take to Walgreen's in the days before the digital camera--which brought photography to the masses. Suddenly, a possibility opened up: What if this film could convey movement?
Thomas Edison took advantage of this with his Kinetoscope. You put a nickel in the slot of a large machine, looked through the lens, turned a crank handle, and watched a movie about a minute long. Then, in 1895, the Lumiere brothers projected their movie, The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, to 33 people in a café. The small audience is said to have panicked at the sight of the train moving toward the screen, because they had seen nothing like this before in their lives!
"The nature of film, as opposed to, say, theater, means that the same images are banked in the consciousness of generations past, future, and worldwide...After seeing Jurassic Park, kids from Beverly Hills to Bombay could suffer the same nightmare that they, too, were being chased by a pterodactyl." (114)
31. "Interpretation of Dreams," 1900.
Sigmund Freud's book, The Interpretation of Dreams, posited that our dreams could reveal our unconscious--our desires, fears, and such. "He saw the human psyche as a battleground for the primitive, aggressive, sexually driven beast [the id] and the socialized adult self within us [the ego]...Through a 'talking cure,' a patient could be analyzed, gaining insight into and control over his unconscious impulses." (117)
30. "The Transistor Age Begins," 1947.
Anyone remember how old science-fiction comic books and movies used to portray computers as behemoths that took up an entire room? Before 1947, computers had to be that big, because they needed bulky vacuum tubes that took up space and power.
Then, some scientists working at New Jersey's Bell Labs constructed a prototype transistor, which, like the vacuum tubes before it, directed the transmission of electricity, but in a much more compact way. Eventually it moved into consumer goods--hearing aids, telephones, and transistor radios.
From the transistor came the integrated circuit, which debuted in the 50s. From integrated circuits came circuit and processor microchips. Thanks to the transistor, I can simply pick up my netbook and write these articles whenever and wherever I want. Imagine if things hadn't progressed past the days of the old ENIAC computer! I'd have to set up a print magazine!
Wednesday, November 7, 2018
Monday, September 3, 2018
The Life Millennium, Part 6
After a long, much-needed break, I'm just about ready to bring The Life Millennium back for its second half. Ready?
49. "The Circulation of Blood, 1628."
The secrets of the human circulatory system were one of the "great mysteries" for centuries. Aristotle hypothesized, incorrectly, that blood came from the liver. Most simply left it at that for a long time--little inconveniences like plagues and wars got in the way of scientific progress. Then, in the 16th Century, things started to calm down a little, and curious scholars could go about their discoveries. They learned about amazing new things such as veins, arteries, and the heart itself, and they documented their findings even if it meant going against accepted doctrine.
Most notable among these pioneers was William Harvey, who in 1628 published his magnum opus, An Anatomical Study of the Motion of the Heart and of the Blood in Animals. Twenty years in the making, his book "demonstrated for the first time that the heart controls circulation...His description of how blood flows away from the heart in arteries, then back through veins--still valid nearly 400 years later--remains one of the most significant medical discoveries of the millennium" (91).
48. "Yes, we Can--1812."
A few years ago, I picked up a copy of Sun Tzu's The Art of War, just for the hell of it. Within it, he suggested as one of his strategies that an army should make full use of a defeated enemy's rations, and therefore not need to worry about carrying its own food. "Ah, but," said I, "now that you've written it, what's to stop your enemies from poisoning whatever rations they may leave behind as bait?" The slender volume may have suggested "carry an antidote," but one should think about things like that well ahead of time. Besides, is it possible to have an antidote for every possible poison?
The more practical solution: An army must carry its own rations. This raises another problem: Food eventually spoils. The primary solution to that, one which Revolutionary War-era troops used (and Civil War-era troops may have used), was to carry food that doesn't spoil. Late 18th Century-era soldiers were therefore stuck with salt-pork and "hardtack," a dense biscuit that attracted weevils and threatened to break a soldier's teeth off with every bite.
There had to be something better, and Napoleon issued a bounty to anyone who could find a way.
In 1795, a French brewer named Nicolas Appert hit upon the solution: He sealed and heated food in airtight jars. Fourteen years later, his factory shifted from brewing to canning. Not long after that, a company in London called Donkin, Hall, and Gamble replaced the breakable glass jars with more durable tin cans, and thus was modern canning born.
47. "Striking Oil, 1859."
Millions and millions of years ago, back when the Earth was practically brand new, the dinosaurs were at the top of the heap. Then, a gigantic meteor crashed into the planet. Its impact kicked up enough dust to block out the sun, and the dinosaurs and their young eventually died off. As the eons went by, their bodies sank into the ground. The decaying flesh combined with soggy leaves and rocks and minerals, and the liquefied remains turned into coal and crude petroleum.
The stuff slept underground for millennia, while our ancestors claimed the world above. Civilizations rose and fell, and fledgling empires needed fuel. Certainly, a lucky few people managed to "strike oil" here and there, but they never got more than a trickle at a time. That changed in 1859, when a former railroad conductor named Edwin Drake led a few entrepreneurs out to Titusville, Pennsylvania, and got some oil out of a small well.
Oddly enough, Drake and his friends were after kerosene, not the oil itself. But they set in motion an enormous engine, and, by the time the Civil War ended, oil derricks had sprouted up across the country as countless people tried to cash in. When the bubble burst, as all bubbles do, one man remained: John D. Rockefeller. He bought up his competitors for a song, and merged them all into Standard Oil.
46. "Water Purification, 1829."
Up until 1829, when the Chelsea Waterworks installed a huge "slow-sand" filter on the River Thames, most Londoners had to drink filthy water. Cholera, typhoid fever, and other illnesses ran rampant. Even after 1829, most of the water went unfiltered. "Finally, in 1854, physician John Snow, though he didn't know that bacteria were carried in water, traced an outbreak of cholera to a pump near a sewer."
45. "Red Star Over Russia, 1917."
In order to understand what happened in 1917, we must first go back to 1848 for context.
First, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto, which detailed class-struggles throughout history and called for a "classless state."
Second, most of Europe's working poor had had enough with the horrifying conditions in which they lived. Artisans found themselves unable to compete with industrialization (the things they made could be made faster and cheaper with machinery), which meant they brought less money home. Harvest failures meant that they could not eat.
January 1848 saw the first of the revolutions take place in Sicily, which split into two kingdoms for sixteen months--Poland supported one; the Kingdom of Spain supported the other. Though this revolution ultimately failed, it started a "domino effect" throughout the rest of the continent.
The second, and perhaps most well-known of the revolutions, occurred in France in February and June of 1848. These ended when Louis Napoleon took the throne.
Revolutions within Europe and Europe-controlled areas sprung up, but were ultimately put down.
Russia and several other areas remained fairly stable at the time--there were a few mini-revolutions here and there, but they went nowhere until 1917. World War I, "the war to end all wars," finally did Russia in with a series of famines and disastrous military ventures.
The incompetent Czar Nicholas II held the throne until rebels deposed him in February 1917, but the new, socialist government, led by Aleksandr Kerensky, didn't get Russia out of the war.
In October, the Bolsheviks--led by Vladimir Lenin--overthrew Kerensky's government and established the Communist Party in 1920.
"The Soviet Union (as the new nation was known) modernized with terrific speed. They masses got free education and medical care. But the price was staggering: millions dead in economic experiments and purges; a gulag full of political prisoners; a culture shackled by totalitarian ideology. The country's rivalry with the U.S. dominated global politics, triggered wars and threatened nuclear Armageddon. It ended in 1989, when the Soviet bloc collapsed--done in, as Marx had predicted capitalism would be, by its own 'internal contradictions'" (94).
44. "Small World, 1674."
It started out as most inventions do: very small. In fact, it was nothing more than a small disc of clear glass, specially ground until it could make other small things appear larger than they were.
A Dutch linen merchant named Antonie van Leeuwenhoek had heard that he could create such an apparatus, and he successfully put it to the test. It worked, and he built ever more powerful lenses.
In 1674, he examined a drop of lake water with his lens. Within the drop, he saw what he called "animal-cules" (we call them "protozoa" nowadays), and with that, he hit upon the field of microbiology. "Leeuwenhoek's work unlocked doors for Pasteur, Fliming, Darwin, and others. Today, microscopes which can magnify to the millionth power are essential not only to medicine but to fields as diverse as criminology, metallurgy, and archaeology--all because of a curious shopkeeper."
43. "The Well-Tempered Scale, 1722."
Composer Johann Sebastian Bach, who is best-known for Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, composed and published The Well-Tempered Clavier at thirty-seven. This selection of 24 pieces could be played in all of the scales--12 major, 12 minor. In this way, musicians could explore keyboard instruments to their fullest potential, and create a much more diverse range of sounds than they could before Bach's work.
Though he originally wrote it for the clavichord, Bach's work was later adapted for the piano. "The stage was set for the pyrotechnics of Chopin and Liszt, for the crashing fortissimos and feather-soft pianissimos of Tchaikovsky--and for millions of humbler recitals" (97).
42. "The Laws of Heredity, 1866."
Anyone remember Punnett squares from biology classes? Simple pen-and-paper calculators to determine genetic inheritance, these were the invention of geneticist Reginald Punnett, but he could not have gotten anywhere without the earlier work of 19th Century monk Gregor Mendel, who crossbred pea plants in his garden. Sadly, his monastic inclinations far exceeded his scientific passion, and he abandoned his work after he became an abbot, but not before publishing his findings. His work came back into vogue early on in the 20th Century, just as agriculture started to take on a much more scientific approach. For instance, it was discovered that a really strong, healthy plant could come from crossing a pair of weaker seeds, and the result could potentially outperform "purer" plants. (Side note: The original Little Shop of Horrors from 1960 ran with this to outlandish effect: Seymour achieved the malevolent Audrey Jr. by crossbreeding a bloodwort and a Venus flytrap!)
Mendel's work reached its peak when agronomist Norman Borlaug sparked off the Green Revolution of the 1960s by introducing "dwarf wheat"--a shorter, higher-yielding variety of wheat--to India and Pakistan, then in the middle of a terrible famine. (98)
41. "The Telegraph Goes On Line, 1844."
In 1844, four little words forever changed how people communicate: "What hath God wrought!" This was the message sent out by telegraph inventor Samuel Morse, on America's first telegraph line, which spanned from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore, Maryland.
My book states that Morse's telegraph wasn't the first: An earlier system, the product of British inventors William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone, debuted first, but Morse's was by far the most user-friendly. Cooke and Wheatstone's telegraph relied upon the manipulation of metal needles to spell out words; Morse's was the more familiar dot-dot-dash contrivance. His other invention, Morse code, soon became the standard, but it would evolve and improve over the decades. (100)
40. "Women's Rights, 1848."
49. "The Circulation of Blood, 1628."
The secrets of the human circulatory system were one of the "great mysteries" for centuries. Aristotle hypothesized, incorrectly, that blood came from the liver. Most simply left it at that for a long time--little inconveniences like plagues and wars got in the way of scientific progress. Then, in the 16th Century, things started to calm down a little, and curious scholars could go about their discoveries. They learned about amazing new things such as veins, arteries, and the heart itself, and they documented their findings even if it meant going against accepted doctrine.
Most notable among these pioneers was William Harvey, who in 1628 published his magnum opus, An Anatomical Study of the Motion of the Heart and of the Blood in Animals. Twenty years in the making, his book "demonstrated for the first time that the heart controls circulation...His description of how blood flows away from the heart in arteries, then back through veins--still valid nearly 400 years later--remains one of the most significant medical discoveries of the millennium" (91).
48. "Yes, we Can--1812."
A few years ago, I picked up a copy of Sun Tzu's The Art of War, just for the hell of it. Within it, he suggested as one of his strategies that an army should make full use of a defeated enemy's rations, and therefore not need to worry about carrying its own food. "Ah, but," said I, "now that you've written it, what's to stop your enemies from poisoning whatever rations they may leave behind as bait?" The slender volume may have suggested "carry an antidote," but one should think about things like that well ahead of time. Besides, is it possible to have an antidote for every possible poison?
The more practical solution: An army must carry its own rations. This raises another problem: Food eventually spoils. The primary solution to that, one which Revolutionary War-era troops used (and Civil War-era troops may have used), was to carry food that doesn't spoil. Late 18th Century-era soldiers were therefore stuck with salt-pork and "hardtack," a dense biscuit that attracted weevils and threatened to break a soldier's teeth off with every bite.
There had to be something better, and Napoleon issued a bounty to anyone who could find a way.
In 1795, a French brewer named Nicolas Appert hit upon the solution: He sealed and heated food in airtight jars. Fourteen years later, his factory shifted from brewing to canning. Not long after that, a company in London called Donkin, Hall, and Gamble replaced the breakable glass jars with more durable tin cans, and thus was modern canning born.
47. "Striking Oil, 1859."
Millions and millions of years ago, back when the Earth was practically brand new, the dinosaurs were at the top of the heap. Then, a gigantic meteor crashed into the planet. Its impact kicked up enough dust to block out the sun, and the dinosaurs and their young eventually died off. As the eons went by, their bodies sank into the ground. The decaying flesh combined with soggy leaves and rocks and minerals, and the liquefied remains turned into coal and crude petroleum.
The stuff slept underground for millennia, while our ancestors claimed the world above. Civilizations rose and fell, and fledgling empires needed fuel. Certainly, a lucky few people managed to "strike oil" here and there, but they never got more than a trickle at a time. That changed in 1859, when a former railroad conductor named Edwin Drake led a few entrepreneurs out to Titusville, Pennsylvania, and got some oil out of a small well.
Oddly enough, Drake and his friends were after kerosene, not the oil itself. But they set in motion an enormous engine, and, by the time the Civil War ended, oil derricks had sprouted up across the country as countless people tried to cash in. When the bubble burst, as all bubbles do, one man remained: John D. Rockefeller. He bought up his competitors for a song, and merged them all into Standard Oil.
46. "Water Purification, 1829."
Up until 1829, when the Chelsea Waterworks installed a huge "slow-sand" filter on the River Thames, most Londoners had to drink filthy water. Cholera, typhoid fever, and other illnesses ran rampant. Even after 1829, most of the water went unfiltered. "Finally, in 1854, physician John Snow, though he didn't know that bacteria were carried in water, traced an outbreak of cholera to a pump near a sewer."
45. "Red Star Over Russia, 1917."
In order to understand what happened in 1917, we must first go back to 1848 for context.
First, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto, which detailed class-struggles throughout history and called for a "classless state."
Second, most of Europe's working poor had had enough with the horrifying conditions in which they lived. Artisans found themselves unable to compete with industrialization (the things they made could be made faster and cheaper with machinery), which meant they brought less money home. Harvest failures meant that they could not eat.
January 1848 saw the first of the revolutions take place in Sicily, which split into two kingdoms for sixteen months--Poland supported one; the Kingdom of Spain supported the other. Though this revolution ultimately failed, it started a "domino effect" throughout the rest of the continent.
The second, and perhaps most well-known of the revolutions, occurred in France in February and June of 1848. These ended when Louis Napoleon took the throne.
Revolutions within Europe and Europe-controlled areas sprung up, but were ultimately put down.
Russia and several other areas remained fairly stable at the time--there were a few mini-revolutions here and there, but they went nowhere until 1917. World War I, "the war to end all wars," finally did Russia in with a series of famines and disastrous military ventures.
The incompetent Czar Nicholas II held the throne until rebels deposed him in February 1917, but the new, socialist government, led by Aleksandr Kerensky, didn't get Russia out of the war.
In October, the Bolsheviks--led by Vladimir Lenin--overthrew Kerensky's government and established the Communist Party in 1920.
"The Soviet Union (as the new nation was known) modernized with terrific speed. They masses got free education and medical care. But the price was staggering: millions dead in economic experiments and purges; a gulag full of political prisoners; a culture shackled by totalitarian ideology. The country's rivalry with the U.S. dominated global politics, triggered wars and threatened nuclear Armageddon. It ended in 1989, when the Soviet bloc collapsed--done in, as Marx had predicted capitalism would be, by its own 'internal contradictions'" (94).
44. "Small World, 1674."
It started out as most inventions do: very small. In fact, it was nothing more than a small disc of clear glass, specially ground until it could make other small things appear larger than they were.
A Dutch linen merchant named Antonie van Leeuwenhoek had heard that he could create such an apparatus, and he successfully put it to the test. It worked, and he built ever more powerful lenses.
In 1674, he examined a drop of lake water with his lens. Within the drop, he saw what he called "animal-cules" (we call them "protozoa" nowadays), and with that, he hit upon the field of microbiology. "Leeuwenhoek's work unlocked doors for Pasteur, Fliming, Darwin, and others. Today, microscopes which can magnify to the millionth power are essential not only to medicine but to fields as diverse as criminology, metallurgy, and archaeology--all because of a curious shopkeeper."
43. "The Well-Tempered Scale, 1722."
Composer Johann Sebastian Bach, who is best-known for Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, composed and published The Well-Tempered Clavier at thirty-seven. This selection of 24 pieces could be played in all of the scales--12 major, 12 minor. In this way, musicians could explore keyboard instruments to their fullest potential, and create a much more diverse range of sounds than they could before Bach's work.
Though he originally wrote it for the clavichord, Bach's work was later adapted for the piano. "The stage was set for the pyrotechnics of Chopin and Liszt, for the crashing fortissimos and feather-soft pianissimos of Tchaikovsky--and for millions of humbler recitals" (97).
42. "The Laws of Heredity, 1866."
Anyone remember Punnett squares from biology classes? Simple pen-and-paper calculators to determine genetic inheritance, these were the invention of geneticist Reginald Punnett, but he could not have gotten anywhere without the earlier work of 19th Century monk Gregor Mendel, who crossbred pea plants in his garden. Sadly, his monastic inclinations far exceeded his scientific passion, and he abandoned his work after he became an abbot, but not before publishing his findings. His work came back into vogue early on in the 20th Century, just as agriculture started to take on a much more scientific approach. For instance, it was discovered that a really strong, healthy plant could come from crossing a pair of weaker seeds, and the result could potentially outperform "purer" plants. (Side note: The original Little Shop of Horrors from 1960 ran with this to outlandish effect: Seymour achieved the malevolent Audrey Jr. by crossbreeding a bloodwort and a Venus flytrap!)
Mendel's work reached its peak when agronomist Norman Borlaug sparked off the Green Revolution of the 1960s by introducing "dwarf wheat"--a shorter, higher-yielding variety of wheat--to India and Pakistan, then in the middle of a terrible famine. (98)
41. "The Telegraph Goes On Line, 1844."
In 1844, four little words forever changed how people communicate: "What hath God wrought!" This was the message sent out by telegraph inventor Samuel Morse, on America's first telegraph line, which spanned from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore, Maryland.
My book states that Morse's telegraph wasn't the first: An earlier system, the product of British inventors William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone, debuted first, but Morse's was by far the most user-friendly. Cooke and Wheatstone's telegraph relied upon the manipulation of metal needles to spell out words; Morse's was the more familiar dot-dot-dash contrivance. His other invention, Morse code, soon became the standard, but it would evolve and improve over the decades. (100)
40. "Women's Rights, 1848."
In 1848, the first Women's Rights Convention met in Seneca Falls, New York. Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments; the convention and the declaration can today be seen as the opening salvo of the feminist movement. It wasn't the first such declaration, but it was the most effective: "The 12 resolutions adopted there provided an agenda broad enough to terrify many. Its defenders were pelted with rotten fruit, insulted by the press, ignored....It took until 1920 for American women to win the right to vote."
I remember in history lessons that, if women started to espouse feminist ideals, their husbands would send them to sanitariums (insane asylums) and keep them there until they recanted. I remember a documentary of the imprisonment of feminists and the resulting hunger strike. The memories are hazy and fragmented, but the dreadful, horrifying nature of the conditions therein stuck with me for many years...
I remember in history lessons that, if women started to espouse feminist ideals, their husbands would send them to sanitariums (insane asylums) and keep them there until they recanted. I remember a documentary of the imprisonment of feminists and the resulting hunger strike. The memories are hazy and fragmented, but the dreadful, horrifying nature of the conditions therein stuck with me for many years...
Wednesday, July 11, 2018
McDonald's Disney World Millennium Cups
We're almost finished with summer. Most families are trying to get their vacations out of the way so that they can prepare for the next school season to begin. Most families head to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida for their vacations. I remember the mid-to-late 90s, when WDW had the heaviest television advertising with their "Remember the Magic" ad campaign.
While I can't offer my readers trips to Walt Disney World, I can provide a taste of "The Happiest Place on Earth," with these four cups sold by McDonald's to commemorate Disney's millennium advertising campaign.
There's a little bit of personal history with these premiums: Back when I started the blog in 2012, the EPCOT cup was one of the first things I posted. In my part of town (the Evergreen Park/Oak Lawn area), this one was the most common, and the other three were significantly harder to find.
It's interesting that only Walt Disney World celebrated the millennium in any significant way; one would have expected Disneyland to follow suit. Perhaps Disneyland was reserving the celebration for the then-upcoming California Adventure theme park? Whatever the case, WDW celebrated the year 2000 in a big way, with promotions and merchandise everywhere (possibly enough to warrant a blog in and of itself!) and, best of all, a gigantic replica of the wizard's cap worn by Mickey Mouse in The Sorcerer's Apprentice sitting right next to EPCOT's Spaceship Earth attraction.
...And, of course, McDonald's offered these four gorgeous French-glass cups, one for each of Walt Disney World's theme parks: the Magic Kingdom; EPCOT; the Disney/MGM Hollywood Studio; and, most recently at the time, Animal Kingdom.
These vessels are beautifully designed. I break them up into three parts (I'll tell you why "three" in a moment):
- Mickey illustration
- Park image
- Park summary
The main side depicts Mickey, first in Sorcerer's Apprentice garb; then in a "director's" outfit with red beret, shirt, and shoes, and blue pants. In his hands he holds first a magic wand; then a director's bullhorn ("AC-TION!") Behind him on the one hand, there's a blue background to highlight the magic streaking of the wand; on the other hand, there's an old-fashioned film camera and a clapboard.
To the right of the cups, there's a symbolic "image" of the park depicted. EPCOT's is Spaceship Earth, with Mickey ears and surrounded by fireworks; Disney Studios' is the water tower with Mickey ears and starbursts around it.
Opposite the "park" images, EPCOT's cup has a depiction of the World Showcase, with the Eiffel Tower, what appears to be the very top of a Japanese pagoda, and the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Disney Studios' cup features the Hollywood and Vine street signs, an electric guitar whose neck seems to be made of rubber, and the Hollywood Hotel, site of the Studios' signature attraction, Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, which I believe is being retrofitted into a Guardians of the Galaxy ride.
Next we have the Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom, then WDW's newest attraction. It opened in...I believe it was 1998.
On the one hand; we have Classic Mickey, dancing against a background of Mickey logos and fireworks; on the other hand, Mickey is wearing an old-fashioned safari outfit, complete with pith helmet and binoculars.
To the right of the cups, we have first Cinderella's Castle for the Magic Kingdom; and the Tree of Life for Animal Kingdom. The "Mickey Ears" are not quite as well-integrated here as they were on the EPCOT and Disney Studios cups, but one could argue that the Magic Kingdom's iteration makes the tableau resemble the "segmented castle" logo which debuted in the mid-1980s; on Animal Kingdom, it looks a little bit like a sunset (or sunrise).
Magic Kingdom's cup features Dumbo in the foreground, with the Space Mountain building in the background and the Mad Hatter's tea-cups just behind the airborne pachyderm. Animal Kingdom's cup depicts a safari bus trekking along a boardwalk with giraffes behind it and what appears to be a Godzilla head just in front of the bus in the lower right-hand corner.
Now, the fourth side:
All cups share two things in common: First, the 2000 logo, which features a "Hidden Mickey" within the three zeroes. On top of Mickey's head, two figures hold hands and wave streamers in the air. I had another example of this logo earlier in the Museum's history.
Finally, the inside:
After you've finished your drink, you are treated to the Golden Arches, surrounded by the legend, "Walt Disney World---Celebration---2000---Walt Disney World."
These lovely cups serve as a time capsule in a more bittersweet way. French-cut glassware fell out of vogue at the turn of the 21st Century. McDonald's offered them for many properties, including the live action Flintstones movie; Batman Forever (after Batman Returns, McDonald's didn't want to take a chance on Happy Meal toys!); and the WDW Millennium. The only other property I know of past 2000 was Shrek Forever After, whose cups became controversial after high levels of cadmium were discovered in their chemical makeup. The only non-McDonald's promotion was Burger King's collection of goblets from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. These had removable bases made of soft rubber, and hidden LEDs in the bases made the cups light up.
I think the French-cut glass crystal trend finally died because the cups were fragile as heck. My old Flintstones ones all broke after a few years of service, and the only Batman ones to survive were Robin and Two-Face--the handle on Riddler's cup broke shortly after I got it, and Batman's broke a few years later. As for the Lord of the Rings ones...forget it! Those broke after about six months.
Sunday, July 1, 2018
Bottom Line Year Book 2000: Millennium Edition
So...Bottom Line Publishing. As far as I can gather from the website, they've been in business for the better part of forty years, selling various kinds of practical self-help guides (home improvement; natural cures and remedies; etc.) through a subscription service. I daresay, the Internet has probably made most of that obsolete, but they still sell books through the online store.
The Year Book series is an end-of-year compendium featuring condensed snippets of Bottom Line's advice from January to December of each year. It's sort of a "Greatest Hits" guidebook, if you will.
This is the so-called "Millennium Edition." "So-called" because, even though it proudly proclaims its special status on the front cover, it cuts right to the typical contents of any other Bottom Line Yearbook. In this case, Chapter One is "Healthy Living." It's full of advice on herbal supplements; when to take your pills; and, most presciently, the "On-Line Medical Information Trap." Long story short, "Review all on-line medical information with a qualified professional before taking action."
Other chapters include advice on traveling; financial and insurance tips and tricks; and ways to navigate the ever-increasing costs of education.
I could do a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the whole book, but this is The Millennium Museum, not the Bottom Line Year Book Museum. Besides, I've already determined that this is going to be one of the "B" entries in which I bring up a finding and give a little bit of background on it.
One can probably pick up a copy of any of these pretty cheaply on eBay or at a thrift store or flea market. The contents of most of them should remain the same year by year with minimal additions or alterations.
Tuesday, May 22, 2018
"Last post: February 5th"?! Dear, oh, dear...
I really need to get back on the ball with the Museum. A lot's been going on, and I've found myself putting the Museum on the back burner. There are a lot of incomplete drafts that need to be done, and I have part of the Millennium episode "Loin Like a Hunting Flame" as a Word draft on my netbook; I just have to find it.
Ugh.
Ugh.
Monday, February 5, 2018
eBay and the Dangers of Millennium Collecting
I've been taking a long-overdue gander at anything from the year 2000 that eBay has to offer. I've tried "Year 2000" and "New Millennium 2000" as keywords.
My search is turning up a lot of just plain ephemera. There are a lot of ties; a lot of pins; a lot of T-shirts...It's bearing so much fruit that I really have to watch myself and think about the Museum's purpose: to present a more complete picture of the phenomenon that was the changeover of 1999 to 2000, and also to document anything from that time which I just happen to come across. Wittering on about collector's pins isn't going to accomplish that. Besides, if I were to try to document every single thing marketed and sold at that time, I would soon reach a point of treading well-worn ground.
Also, as we reach the twentieth anniversary of the celebrations, things are getting more and more expensive. I really hate to use pictures from eBay unless I really have to, because I'd rather have whatever I'm looking at and take my own pictures.
I think I'm going to finish up what I've got before I start looking for new things.
My search is turning up a lot of just plain ephemera. There are a lot of ties; a lot of pins; a lot of T-shirts...It's bearing so much fruit that I really have to watch myself and think about the Museum's purpose: to present a more complete picture of the phenomenon that was the changeover of 1999 to 2000, and also to document anything from that time which I just happen to come across. Wittering on about collector's pins isn't going to accomplish that. Besides, if I were to try to document every single thing marketed and sold at that time, I would soon reach a point of treading well-worn ground.
Also, as we reach the twentieth anniversary of the celebrations, things are getting more and more expensive. I really hate to use pictures from eBay unless I really have to, because I'd rather have whatever I'm looking at and take my own pictures.
I think I'm going to finish up what I've got before I start looking for new things.
Sunday, February 4, 2018
A Celebration of "Peanuts"
This Sunday is Super Bowl Sunday, and this year, 2018, marks the 25th Anniversary of the Peanuts cartoon, You're in the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown! It was a direct-to-video release, exclusively through Shell gas stations.
Charming though it was, I only bring it up to segue into our main topic: the Peanuts franchise.
The brainchild of cartoonist Charles M. Schulz, Peanuts is a comic strip that needs no introduction. It began as a series of black-and-white dailies in 1950; the color, Sunday version began in 1952. It originally featured the childhood exploits of its protagonist, Charlie Brown, and his friends, and later expanded its scope to feature his dog, Snoopy. Its characters and images found prime real estate in our popular culture: Linus and his security blanket, Snoopy's long-standing feud with the Red Baron, Lucy beckoning for Charlie Brown to kick a football only to yank it away at the last second...
It stands the test of time by forgoing the usual puckish antics featured in newspaper strips of the time: Schulz's juvenile characters were unusually emotional and insightful. Who hasn't at some point echoed Charlie Brown's catchphrase of "Rats! I can't stand it!"
The franchise really hit the big time with the TV premiere of A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965. Since then, there have been feature films, such as A Boy Named Charlie Brown and, most recently, 2015's The Peanuts Movie; Vince Guaraldi's jazz composition "Linus and Lucy;" cartoon shows such as The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show; a 1967 musical, You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown; countless made-for-TV and direct-to-video specials; and enough merchandise to fill two or three warehouses.
...Including this Millennium-themed kid's meal from Wendy's! (Video courtesy Rusty's Toy Reviews.)
These toys perfectly capture the "celebration" aspect of the decade's end.
Sadly, the year 2000 was also the end of an era: On February 12th of that very year, Charles M. Schulz passed away. The final original Sunday edition of his strip went out the day after.
Every day and every Sunday thereafter, his strip would live on in reprints from the 1960s to the 1990s, in no particular order, but there would be no new Peanuts strips. Accordingly, this final strip plunges from the usual bittersweet sentiments into downright melancholy. A series of the strip's most iconic moments surrounds Schulz's message to his fans like wistful memories from long, long ago. Snoopy looks on, reminiscing about the past, and perhaps wondering what the future may hold.
"Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy...how can I ever forget them..."
We never will. May they all endure into the fourth and even the fifth millennium.
Charming though it was, I only bring it up to segue into our main topic: the Peanuts franchise.
The brainchild of cartoonist Charles M. Schulz, Peanuts is a comic strip that needs no introduction. It began as a series of black-and-white dailies in 1950; the color, Sunday version began in 1952. It originally featured the childhood exploits of its protagonist, Charlie Brown, and his friends, and later expanded its scope to feature his dog, Snoopy. Its characters and images found prime real estate in our popular culture: Linus and his security blanket, Snoopy's long-standing feud with the Red Baron, Lucy beckoning for Charlie Brown to kick a football only to yank it away at the last second...
It stands the test of time by forgoing the usual puckish antics featured in newspaper strips of the time: Schulz's juvenile characters were unusually emotional and insightful. Who hasn't at some point echoed Charlie Brown's catchphrase of "Rats! I can't stand it!"
The franchise really hit the big time with the TV premiere of A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965. Since then, there have been feature films, such as A Boy Named Charlie Brown and, most recently, 2015's The Peanuts Movie; Vince Guaraldi's jazz composition "Linus and Lucy;" cartoon shows such as The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show; a 1967 musical, You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown; countless made-for-TV and direct-to-video specials; and enough merchandise to fill two or three warehouses.
...Including this Millennium-themed kid's meal from Wendy's! (Video courtesy Rusty's Toy Reviews.)
These toys perfectly capture the "celebration" aspect of the decade's end.
Sadly, the year 2000 was also the end of an era: On February 12th of that very year, Charles M. Schulz passed away. The final original Sunday edition of his strip went out the day after.
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| Originally hosted on wizardofbaum.blogspot.com |
"Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy...how can I ever forget them..."
We never will. May they all endure into the fourth and even the fifth millennium.
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