Slowly but surely we're plowing through this, fellow readers!
79. "The Rise of the Welfare State, 1601."
In 1601, Queen Elizabeth I passed the first of England's Poor Laws, which required the government to help the country's poor. That being said, however, it wasn't free money: Anyone who was poor but able-bodied had to go to workhouses. Children took apprenticeships. "Those who did not work were whipped, imprisoned, and, in some cases, put to death. The meager earnings these institutional safety nets provided were not enough to pull people out of despair."
This is where much of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol--in fact, most of his work--comes from, especially Scrooge's "Are there no prisons...no workhouses?" line. I'd never jump to defend Ebenezer Scrooge, but I will explain him: back in 1843, practically everyone outside of landed gentry was but one calamity away from the workhouses, and he, an old man, desperately wanted to avoid the workhouse if he could.
Still, the seed of an idea was there. The Poor Laws indirectly inspired everything from Britain's public housing and National Health Service to our own Social Security Act.
78. "Coffee Brews in Yemen, 1450."
If I had my way, this would be number one on the list. Where would the Millennium Museum be without an endless supply of coffee to fuel its proprietor? ;)
Coffee became popular throughout the Muslim world when mystics realized that it could "keep them alert during nighttime worship. Out of their communal services, coffee drinking evolved as a group activity that carried over to the general Muslim population, which shunned alcohol."
From those evening services developed the first coffeehouses, places where friends could meet on a day off and have a nice little chat over a cup of joe. Artists, writers, and other creative types were a common sight; they used the drink to focus while they worked.
With creative thought also came political thought, which scared the powers-that-be enough to "ban coffee in Mecca in 1511." Outside of Mecca, though, the drink thrived, and it wasn't long before it reached Europe. "By 1700 there were 2,000 cafés in London, one of which, Lloyd's, became the giant insurance brokerage."
77. "Going Up, 1854."
Elevators had already been in use before Elisha Graves Otis introduced his, but Otis got his name in the books by making the overall design safer.
He demonstrated it with showmanship at a New York City fair: Imagine the rough outline of an elevator shaft, several feet high, with a platform at the bottom and a powered drum with heavy rope coiled around it at the top. Mr. Otis stood on this platform and went up, up, up, high above the crowd. At a certain point, he stopped the elevator and slashed the rope. The crowd below expected him to plummet to his death, but instead "the platform fell a few inches, then stopped."
What was so special about his design, anyway? For starters, he included in his design "a spring that set two iron teeth into notches in the guide rails when tension in the rope failed." In other words, he developed safety brakes so that the elevator wouldn't just keep falling.
Today, the name "Otis" is on almost every elevator, but we never take notice of it. The next time you find yourself in an elevator, why not take a close look around? If you see that name, do spare a thought for the engineer who made elevators safer more than a hundred years ago.
76. "The Double Helix, 1953."
In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the molecular structure of DNA.
There is an important distinction here: Before the work of Watson and Crick, a Swiss physician named Friedrich Miescher discovered the chemical called DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and its presence in the center of all living cells.
After Miescher's initial discovery, Martha Chase and Alfred Hershey stated in 1952 that DNA controlled heredity; before their conclusion, heredity was thought to be the work of proteins.
One year later, this first chapter reached its end with Watson and Crick, who "noticed the familiar shapes of the two complementary pairs of basic molecules that make up DNA, requiring two helices to wrap around its core, a revelation that also suggested how DNA might replicate itself."
The work of all of these scientists came to a head when the Human Genome Project began in 1990. The project's mission: "Decipher the three billion chemical 'letters' that form the alphabet of human DNA."
75. "Chartres, 1260."
No tour of France is complete without a visit to the Chartres, the most beautiful cathedral in all of France.
The world had seen so many architectural marvels before the cathedral--the Pyramids of Giza and the buildings of ancient Rome come to mind--but they're technically kind of rudimentary. The Pyramids derive their aura from their ability to withstand time and the elements, and ancient Rome derives its aura from sheer scale, but the cathedral...now that is something different. What I find most interesting in Chartres simply from looking at the picture on page 46 is how many different ideas were used in building it: Corinthian columns; vaulted ceilings; the curved altar at the end of the hall; the stained glass...and how neatly it all comes together. More than that, though, is the incredible size of it all: "The vaults are 116 feet high."
I confess, my interest is more in the logistics of Chartres than the art. To imagine that all of this was achieved with only man-powered, 13th Century equipment...now that really makes me lost for words.
Fun fact: In 2003, when I was a sophomore in high school, the choir would have traveled to France. With international tensions as high as they were, we went to Hawaii instead. (Much better decision, as it turns out: I've heard that France can be gray, rainy, swampy, and miserable in early springtime.)
The France tour would no doubt have had us singing the Hallelujah Chorus in Chartres. Instead, we sang it in the no less spectacular King Kamehameha Cathedral. I think that my biggest regret to this day is that I didn't quite appreciate it at the time. Then again, in my defense, 1) I didn't quite have the frame of mind to appreciate it, and 2) I don't think I was even in a position to appreciate it. At the time, it was "just a job to do:" Show as much respect as you can, perform the piece as well as you can, pose for pictures, and move on to the next thing on the itinerary.
I think that's why I maintain the Museum: Not only is it my attempt at charting and chronicling a mostly-forgotten period in recent history; it's also a way for me to forgive myself.
Anyway...
74. "El Libertador, 1819."
In 1799, a Venezuelan lad named Simon Bolivar went to Europe, perhaps to find himself, or just to broaden his horizons a bit. Remember that this was the era of the French and American revolutions, and also of the Age of Enlightenment, for this is very significant.
The time he spent in Europe gave him a mission: Overthrow the Spanish, who had ruled Venezuela--and much of South America--for three centuries. Bolivar went home again, and in 1810, he waged his war.
Bolivar liberated Argentina in 1816; Colombia in 1819; Venezuela in 1821; Brazil in 1822; and Peru in 1824, and, though he never got to see the fully-united South America he dreamed of (but not for lack of trying: He mostly succeeded, but Venezuela split from the unified nation in 1829 after a civil war), he set the template for Latin America's philosophy of freedom.
73. "Fashion Comes Forward, c.1350."
In the bleak, bleak days before 1350, "attire was a matter of national costume, consisting of creatively draped, baglike garments."
Soldiers coming home from the Crusades brought with them, among other treasures, garments that fastened with buttons, which opened the door for men's and women's fashion. Also, "the rise of mercantile capitalism allowed a new moneyed class to dress like nobility." My reading of that phrase makes me think, "Their clothes could look like those worn by nobility, but had to be made of lesser-quality materials." I read in a book about Elizabethan times that middle-class women who wanted to emulate Elizabeth I's beauty, but could not afford the high-quality makeup, instead used a less-expensive but more dangerous lead-based makeup, which eventually ended up killing them!
From then on, fashion advanced and changed at a frightening speed. The 1960 version of The Time Machine perfectly and humorously illustrates this with a department-store mannequin's clothes and styles being changed in triple-time. (While we're on the subject of time-travel, there's a school of thought within Doctor Who fandom: The Doctor mostly takes young women with him on his travels because women's fashion changes much more rapidly than men's fashion, and this is how he keeps track of where and when he's been, since trying to keep any other kind of timeline is meaningless.)
72. "Workers' Rights, 1838."
As history and current events remind us, employees and their employers have been very uneasy allies for a very long time (more "uneasy" than "allies"), and workers have fought tooth and nail for their rights--the eight-hour workday; an end to child labor; the minimum wage; the right to form and be in unions--for as long.
The first modern union, well after the craftsman's guilds in the Middle Ages (interesting side-note, by the by: The Freemasons started out as a stoneworkers' guild), was the London Working Men's Association, formed in 1838. As you might guess, the British Parliament initially vetoed its People's Charter, a condition of which was "voting rights for unlanded workers." Fortunately, Parliament eventually came around and passed several of its ideas.
People who fell under the Charter were called Chartists, and over time many of them came to America, including Samuel Gompers, who founded the American Federation of Labor.
71. "Angkor Wat, c.1150."
Angkor Wat, located in Cambodia, is a temple dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu, and it's "the largest religious monument in the world." However, its marvel lies in the details of its construction: The book describes it as "a seamless edifice with stones weighing as much as 8,000 pounds apiece," and that it was "built without the use of bricks and mortar; it is held together by weight and friction."
Also, its towers are gigantic sculptures that depict Hindu and Khmer histories and legends...and all of this, from carving to construction, was done by hand, well before the Chartres cathedral. The centuries have not been kind at all to it, but the accumulated wear and tear lends it an almost alien mystique.
70. "Silent Spring, 1962."
Here's another event that really should have a more important place on the list.
Long ago, in the 40s and 50s, there was a pesticide called DDT. It worked very, very well, and Americans fell head over heels for it. It actually worked a little too well: People used it when they went outside to play and do their thing; at the end of the day, they washed it off. The chemicals got into the water supply, where fish ended up eating it, and then birds such as bald eagles got it into their systems when they ate the fish. Fish and birds alike suffered damage--in many cases, if it didn't kill the fish and birds outright, then it certainly hurt their offspring.
Then, a marine biologist named Rachel Carson discovered DDT's terrible effects. Horrified, she undertook considerable research and wrote Silent Spring, which arrived on bookshelves in 1962.
"Every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death."
Without her book, America's environmental movement might never have come to fruition, and without that, we would not have Earth Day, the Clean Air and Water Acts, or the Environmental Protection Agency, and DDT would likely still be in widespread use.
