An old thread, now revived, on SMH.
This thread fits in well with this blog, and is almost the theme of it. But, in general, how much do we really know of the routine of any one era? News tends to feature the rare, unusual, uncommon, or noteworthy, not the ordinary. But news in some ways tends to be what ends up being recorded as history.
The story of German horse use during World War Two is a good example. In popular histories, it tends to be reported that the German army of WWII was a mechanized, modern army. That's partially true, but to a much greater extent it was a hiking and horse using army. By war's end, it was the least mechanized army fighting in Europe.
Why is that not often noted? Well, the German propaganda machine would have had no interest in noting that, and every interest in emphasizing mechanization. Allied reports, for their part, would have emphasized the terrifying and dramatic. So, our view is not entirely accurate from the common sources.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Social and Cultural History and Film
I just posted a thread on this topic on SMH.
Repeating the topic here, I was wondering anyone who happens to stop in here might think in terms of what movies are particularly accurate in depicting any one historical setting.
I'm not restricting this to military films at all, as I noted on SMH, but films in general. And I'm not restricting this to a film about anyone era. Just what films do we here think did a particularly good job in this context?
Repeating the topic here, I was wondering anyone who happens to stop in here might think in terms of what movies are particularly accurate in depicting any one historical setting.
I'm not restricting this to military films at all, as I noted on SMH, but films in general. And I'm not restricting this to a film about anyone era. Just what films do we here think did a particularly good job in this context?
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
Remembering what places were like
An interesting edition of the Casper Star Tribune's history column appeared this week, under the title "Routines Disrupted".
The following caught my attention, showing what the town was like early in the 20th Century. It's easy to imagine everything being slower paced and more relaxed, and easy to forget the atmosphere that actually prevailed at the time:
Because the city authorities stopped them from selling liquor and insisted that there must be no more piano thumping in their houses, the landladies of the bawdy houses of Casper held an indignation meeting one day last week and decided to suspend business entirely, and accordingly all the inmates of the three places on David street were discharged on the first of the month and Saturday morning fifteen of them left town on the east-bound train, it is hoped to return no more.“These people got the notion in their head that they could do just as they pleased so long as they remained in the restricted district, and high carnival was held nearly every night for awhile, and it was seldom that a big fight was not pulled off by some of them two or three times a week. They caused the authorities so much trouble that it kept one man on watch nearly every night to quell the disturbance. But after tolerating it until it could be tolerated no longer, the order was given out to cut out the booze and the music, and this made the madams mad and they have closed up their houses, and threaten to ‘kill the town.’ ...
“[I]f the places are ever opened up again, which they undoubtedly will be before the end of this week if they are permitted to do so, the people should, and no doubt will, insist that the places be conducted along lines that will not disturb the decent people of the town.”
Monday, March 28, 2011
Tuesday, March 28, 1911. The Lost Patrol
The Royal North West Mounted Police laid to rest Inspector Francis J. Fitzgerald, Constables Richard O. Taylor and George F. Kinney, and their guide, Special Constable Sam Carter, who had become lost and perished in the annual 620 mile trip from Fort McPherson to Dawson City.
They had passed away in January.
The long range patrol was discontinued in 1922.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reported:
Thirty-five or 40 Boer farmers who settled some years ago in Mexico and who want to escape the unsettled and troubled conditions in that country, will bring their families with them to New Mexico and found a colony at Los Alamos, San Miguel County.
Last edition:
Monday, March 27, 1911. Habeas Corpus suspended in Mexico.
Labels: 1910s, 1911, Cartoons, Florida, Florida (Fort Lauderdale), Mexican Revolution, Mexico, The Press
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Monday, March 27, 1911. Habeas Corpus suspended in Mexico.
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, incorporated.
Editorial cartoon from The San Diego Sun, March 27, 1911, following President Porfirio Diaz’ suspension of the right of habeas corpus in Mexico.
Last edition:Saturday, March 26, 2011
Sunday, March 26, 1911. Soldiers in search of a war.
FILIBUSTER BAND IN JAIL.; Caught Near the Border Equipped for Service in Mexico.
Last edition:
Friday, March 25, 2011
Saturday, March 25, 1911. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factor Fire.
146 garment workers—123 women and girls and 23 men, out of a workforce of 500, died in Manhattan's horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Most of the victims were Italian or Jews immigrants 14 to 23 years old. 62 of the victims jumped to their deaths.
The fabric fire in the fireproof building broke out five minutes before end of shift. The doors to the stairwells and exits were locked to prevent unauthorized breaks and to reduce theft
Oh, but don't worry. . . today's oligarchs have your vest interest at heart. . .
Last edition:
Monday, March 20, 1911. Stolypin resigns, and then is back.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Food and diet
It's really easy to romanticize the past, including the kitchen table of the past, but a recent Freakanomics podcast I listened to suggests that some caution should be involved in that. That's no surprise really, but it is something that we rarely consider.
In our minds, the table of the past was always the place where home cooked meals were served, with fresh food of all kinds. But this really wasn't so. For one thing, refrigeration was not really terribly advanced until the 1930s or so. Prior to that, a lot of people had an "ice box". My father still referred to the refrigerator at the "ice box" in the 1970s, not really switching over to "refrigerator" until the 80s. An ice box isn't anywhere as efficient as a refrigerator.
People compensated for that by buying food every day, but that couldn't really take care of the entire problem. Fresh food simply isn't available every day, everywhere. Frozen food wasn't really fully available year around. Canned food was, in the 20th Century of course, but it wasn't always as good as the canned food we have now. Salted and pickled food made up for part of the problem.
And food variety was necessarily much more restricted. It isn't as if you could expect to buy oranges everywhere easily prior to relatively efficient transportation. Something like a Kiwi fruit would have been unheard of. Even when I was a kid fish came from the river or from a box in the freezer section of the grocery store. In the early 20th Century here fish would have been from the river, and that's about it.
Food related diseases, such as rickets and goiter, that are attributable to a simple dietary deficiencies. Vitamin D is now put in milk to address rickets, but when most people bought milk in glass bottles that was from a local creamery, this wasn't true. Iodine is now in salt, but it wasn't always.
In looking at images from the past, a full farm larder is easy to imagine. But that isn't always the way things were.
An interesting look at an aspect of this, in military terms, is on this Society of the Military Horse thread.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Monday, March 20, 1911. Stolypin resigns, and then is back.
Pyotr Stolypin resigned as Prime Minister of Russia but was back in office by the end of the week at the urging of Czar Nicholas II who was worried about China and who had problems with his proposed successor, Vladimir Kokovtsov.
Last edition:
Thursday, March 16, 1911. A bombing in Juarez.
Labels: 1910s, 1911, Mexican Army, Mexican War, Mexico, Mexico (Juarez), Nevada, Nevada (Las Vegas), Terrorism
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Thursday, March 16, 1911. A bombing in Juarez.
A bomb made of nitroglycerine was set off near the barracks of Mexican federal troops in Juarez, but without effect.
Las Vegas become an incorporated Nevada municipality.
Last edition:
Wednesday, March 15, 1911. .45 ACP Trials.
Labels: 1910s, 1911, Army, boats and ships, Disaster, fishing, Great Lakes, John Browning, Lake Erie, The Practice of Law, Weapons, Weather
Monday, March 14, 2011
Wednesday, March 15, 1911. .45 ACP Trials.
Final trials began to determine whether the John Browning designed Colt Special Army Model 1910 or the Elbert Searle designed Savage Model 1907 would become the first automatic pistol to be adopted by the U.S. Army. Both were chambered in .45 ACP, a Colt designed cartridge.
The Colt Special Army Model 1910 is familiar to history as the M1911. The Savage, less so.
The Colt would go on, of course, to be adopted and is the greatest military handgun of all time. Still superior, in the minds of many (including the author), to any handgun that came after it.
As a minor note on that, I recently went through security in at a Wyoming court and the Sheriffs Deputy manning it was armed with a high end 1911. I asked him about it. He'd been in the Army, and rejected all the 9mms that came after the M1911.
He's not the only one.
The Silver Spray was caught in a snowstorm on Lake Erie, foundered, and its fishing crew froze to death in the lake.
Last edition:
Tuesday, March 14, 1911. Worries in El Paso.
Tuesday, March 14, 1911. Worries in El Paso.
El Paso was jittery, although not without good reason.
Early in the Progressive Era, California adopted initiatives and referendums.
I'm not hugely keen on them myself.
The Japanese Antarctic Expedition reached its limit at Coulman Island.
Last edition:
Monday, March 13, 1911. The Supreme Court upheld corporate income tax as constitutional.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Monday, March 13, 1911. The Supreme Court upheld corporate income tax as constitutional.
The Supreme Court upheld corporate income tax as constitutional.
Last edition:
Sunday, March 12, 1911. Federals prevail at Agua Prieta.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
The distance of things, and self segregation
Sometimes its helpful to actually know what I'm writing about (d'oh!).
In the post The Distance of Things I commented on how remarkably close in proximity Mother of God, Holy Ghost, and the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception are, and were not, in terms of transportation in earlier times.
Well, they are close now, to be sure, but Mother of God Church was not a Catholic Church until about 1949, so my analysis there fell sort of flat. Of course, Holy Ghost and the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception have always been Catholic Church's, so my analysis still made sense there.
Be that as it may, another church also provides an interesting example of changing times, that being Holy Rosary. Holy Rosary is probably no more than five miles, maybe less, from the Cathedral, but it's north of I70, and it would be hard for people in the neighborhood to get to the Cathedral even now, so I can understand why it is there. Having said that, what surprised me is that, in reading the parish history, how ethnic it originally was.
The church, built in 1918, originally served a principally South Slavs population. Another Catholic Church existed within just a few blocks, but it was principally Polish in population. Prior to the construction of Holy Rosary, the South Slavs attended that church, but they wanted one of their own. That's probably understandable given language differences between the various parishioners. Of interest, a Russian Orthodox Church was and is located very nearby.
What all this shows is that there was a rich population of Eastern Europeans in this section of Denver early in the 20th Century. They all lived in the same area, but they also maintained certain distinctions between themselves. Overall, that's not surprising, but the degree to which the distinctions were maintained perhaps is.
Sunday, March 12, 1911. Federals prevail at Agua Prieta.
Mexican Federal forces prevailed at Agua Prieta, the border town that would figure prominently in the Mexican Revolution.
This contest was one of several in the war, and apparently wasn't given a name.
Part of Mt. Vesuvius' crater collapsed following a severe earthquake.
Last edition:
Saturday, March 11, 1911. "¡Abajo las Haciendas y Vivan los Pueblos!"
Labels: 1910s, 1911, Agrarianism, Art, Bicycles, Disease, Maderistas, Medicine, Mexican Revolution, Mexico, Women
Friday, March 11, 2011
Saturday, March 11, 1911. "¡Abajo las Haciendas y Vivan los Pueblos!"
Revolutionaries took the police office in Villa de Ayala, gathered the people and Torres Burgos read to the crowd the Plan of San Luis Potosí. At which occasion Otilio E. Montaño yelled "¡Abajo las Haciendas y Vivan los Pueblos!"
Dr. Simon Flexner announced at a meeting of the Rockefeller Institute the discovery of the cause of infantile paralysis, also known as poliomyelitis or polio.
It was a Saturday.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Friday, March 10, 1911. Zapata joins the revolution.
Emiliano Zapata gathered seventy men in Morelos as the start of his revolutionary army.
Kansas became the first state in the union to subject securities and investment brokers to state regulation.
T/he greatest snow fall in U.S. history concluded in Tamarack, Californian. 451 inches.
Last edition:
Tuesday, March 7, 1911. Taft deploys troops to the border.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Tuesday, March 7, 1911. Taft deploys troops to the border.
Today In Wyoming's History: March 7: 1911 The U.S. deploys 20,000 troops to the Mexican border due to the Mexican Revolution.
An elk farm, which is illegal in Wyoming, was being established in Colorado. It's just such an entity that's responsible for Chronic Wasting Disease.
Expanding on that at 11:00 a.m. the Department of War issued a statement that "a large number of troops" was being moved to points in Texas and southern California, and that the Department of the Navy had ordered 15 ships from the Atlantic Fleet to the Texas coast, including four armored cruisers. 2,000 Marines were ordered to assemble at Guantanamo Bay.
The Army had been secretly dispatched the prior day. The Army commitment was 1/4 of the total Army.
The event was somewhat camouflaged as it its real purpose.
An elk farm, which is illegal in Wyoming, was being established in Colorado. It's just such an entity that's responsible for Chronic Wasting Disease.
Last edition:
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Monday, March 6, 1911. Madero defeated at Casas Grandes.
Madero's forces unsuccessfully attacked government troops at Casas Grandes, Chihuahua.
Madero blamed his scouts for his defeat, and had them hung.
Samuel J. Battle was sworn in as the first black officer of the New York Police Department.
Last edition:
Saturday, March 4, 1911. A refuge for elk.
Labels: 1910s, 1911, Art, Blog Mirror, National Elk Refuge, Poland, Russia, Texas, Wyoming, Wyoming (Teton County)
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011
Saturday, March 4, 1911. A refuge for elk.
Today In Wyoming's History: March 4: 1911 The U.S. Congress appropriated $20,000 "to be made available immediately for feeding and protecting the elk in Jackson Hole and vicinity, and for removing some of them to stock other localities." Attribution: On This Day.
Sen. J. W. Bailey of Texas resigned. Later that day the Texas State Senate asked him to reconsider, as did the Governor, and he withdrew his resignation and served out his term, under questionable legality.
The Duma voted down a proposal for limited self government in Poland.
It was a Saturday.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Friday, March 3, 1911. Infant Air Force, new Dental Corps, testing the M1911.
Congress appropriated $125,000 for the Signal Corps to purchase aircraft.
The U.S. Army Dental Corps was established.
The U.S. Army began a "torture test" of the John Browning designed Colt M1911 pistol.
Jean Harlow (Harlean Harlow Carpenter) was born. Always of fragile health, she died when she was only 26 years old.
Last edition:
Saturday, February 25, 1911. Battle of Casas Grandes and Kelley Creek.
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