What Would Jimmy Do?

I’ve always heard that the Titanic  was advertised as “unsinkable.” But I ran across an article the other day that indicated that the story of the ship that was billed as unsinkable going down on her maiden voyage isn’t exactly true. 

The White Star Line never advertised that the Titanic — or her sister ship Olympic — were unsinkable. They promoted the ships by claiming that the two ships were the “largest and finest steamers in the world.” Apparently the supposed advertising of the Titanic as unsinkable was the work of a reporter after the Titanic sank. I guess a story like that sold more newspapers…..
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While cleaning out our library, I ran across an interesting little book about Florence Nightingale. Not sure where it came from, but there were only about 10 or 12 pages, so I read through it. Here’s some interesting things that I didn’t know….

Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820 in Florence, Italy — she was named for that city.
In 1854, she led a group of 38 nurses to care for British soldiers wounded in the Crimean War. 
She is best known as the founder of modern nursing. Before Florence came along, the female nurses in British hospitals were mostly Roman Catholic nuns or prostitutes. Florence gets credit for making it a safe and respectable profession for women. 

Her parents opposed her desire to be a nurse, but they made sure she got an education. Florence and her sister were tutored in Italian, Latin, history, Greek, and mathematics. 
Mostly because of her family’s opposition to her career choice, and her inability to make a decision about a long-standing marriage proposal, she suffered a short-lived mental breakdown.

She pioneered the use of graphs for statistical representation. Her work showed, for the first time, that social events could be objectively measured and subjected to mathematical analysis.
Among her hospital innovations were hot water piped to all floors, the installation of dumbwaiters to bring patients’ food, and bells for patients to call nurses. 
The small booklet she wrote, Notes on Nursing, published in 1861, was a multi-million-copy bestseller.

After returning from the Crimean War, Florence was plagued with illness — and post traumatic  stress disorder. She spent most of the rest of her life confined to bed.
Even though her father objected to Florence going into nursing, he never rejected her after she became a nurse. William Nightingale provided an income of 500 pounds a year for her — the equivalent of around $50,000 today.
She was uninterested in her celebrity status and refused photographs and interviews, and never appeared at public functions — even those given in her honor. She was such a recluse, in fact, a lot of people thought she was dead long before her actual time of passing.
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Back in my working days, there was about a two year period that I spent a lot of my time in the San Francisco area. There was a lot I liked about the area and the city itself. One of the attractions that always fascinated me was the cable cars.

While continuing the process of de-cluttering and cleaning out things that have outlived their usefulness, I ran across a pamphlet that I had apparently picked up years ago. The pamphlet gave a brief history of the cable cars and it brought back some fond memories of my time in the “city by the bay.”

Back in 1869, Andrew S. Hallidie watched as four horses struggled to pull a streetcar up one of San Francisco’s steepest hills. About halfway to the top, one of the horses slipped on the wet cobblestones. The driver applied the brakes, but the chain snapped and the car slid backwards down the hill, dragging the poor horses with it. The horses didn’t survive and when Hallidie saw that, he decided to so something about it.

Andrew Hallidie’s father was an inventor that held a number of patents for “wire rope,” the forerunner of wire cable. Andrew had inherited his father’s inventiveness and his sense of adventure brought him from England to California, where he prospected for gold for a few relatively unsuccessful years. He tried blacksmithing, and then turned to building bridges — the suspension kind that used lots of his father’s wire rope.

Hallidie held a patent on the “Hillidie Ropeway,” a steam-powered cable line he’d invented while working in the gold territory. The ropeway, also called a tramway, transported cars full of ore across mountainous areas on a wire rope that had a tensile strength of 160,000 pounds per square inch. At the time of the streetcar accident that killed the horses, Hallidie lived in San Francisco and owned a company that manufactured….. wire rope!

His idea for a cable-operated streetcar started with laying a moving cable in a groove in the street. He attached a grip to the cable — when it grabbed the cable, the car would move forward. When it released, the car would stop. He spent the next couple of years trying to drum up financial backing and the project became known as “Halidie’s folly.” But he finally managed to raise enough money to build an experimental line. 

On August 2, 1873, Hallidie and some of his engineers gathered for the first trial run — at 4 a.m. He chose the very early hour to minimize his embarrassment if it didn’t work. The driver, known as a grip man, climbed onto the car, but when he looked down and saw the bottom of the hill far below, he stepped down and said, “I have a wife and kids at home,” and walked away.
No one else volunteered, so Hallidie climbed into the car and took hold of the levers that operated the grip. The car glided smoothly down the hill and when it reached the bottom, he turned the car around and made it back up the hill — all without mishap.

Later that day, it seemed like the whole town turned out for the first public run. And even before waiting to see if it worked, 90 fearless San Franciscans climbed into the car that was built to hold 26 passengers. Many of them took the first official ride perched on the roof and hanging off the side of “Halidie’s folly.” For many, many years, San Franciscans rode the cable cars to and from work and shopping.  Today it’s one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world. And — it has the distinction of being an official National Historic Landmark.
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I was in China in 1972. Since the revolution in 1949, China was led by Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. When I arrived, the country had been “closed” for more than 20 years. During my time there, I became friends with a couple of “old” Chinese workers that remembered what it was like before Chairman Mao cane into power — and they had lots of stories, some of which were about Chairman Mao. One of my favorites is about the Chinese Steel Industry……
(Disclaimer: I have to admit this is one of my favorite stories very much because of the gentleman that told it to me and the way in which he told it.)

In the mid 1950s Mao Tse-Tung realized that he was the leader of a backward country. He was aware that Britain, America, France and the Soviet Union were all ahead of China in steel production — a long way ahead. He knew that if China was to become a modern country, it needed to start producing as much steel as possible. Back in the 1950s Chinese people didn’t know much about science or technology, and that included Chairman Mao. So he consulted his advisers, and one of them came up with a brilliant idea. It was proposed that they would build small blast furnaces in every village — then the peasants could convert their iron plows and sickles into high-quality steel that could be used to build bridges, factories and warships. Mao was told that within 15 years, steel production would equal that of the United States. 

Well, of course, the peasants didn’t know much about science and technology either, but they did what they were told. Soon every village square had a tall, conical “blast furnace.” Tons of fuel was used to melt good tools into useless black lumps of slag. 

According to my friend, Chairman Mao spent most of his time at his luxury villa, reading and lounging by his swimming pool. But every so often, he would travel by his special train to inspect the progress of the steel production at one of the provincial villages. No one wanted to tell him that his great plan wasn’t working, so they sent another train ahead, loaded with imported steel girders. They’d stack the girders up in the village square before Mao arrived and tell all the villagers to pose proudly beside the pile. Mao was very please with the progress his country was making. He’d take a quick look around, congratulate everyone on how well it was going, and get back on his train.

But when harvest time came around, all the tools had been melted down and the best the Chinese could do after spending so much time on steel production duty was to try pulling plants up with their hands. Most of the crops rotted in the fields and caused a famine that lasted until 1960 and killed an estimated 30 million people. 

Mao eventually realized there was no steel — and — no food or agricultural tools either. It’s interesting that Chairman Mao called China’s entry into the steel business the “Great Leap Forward.”
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Don’t know if everyone has realized it yet, but today is a special day. 
Six months from today is Christmas — so I guess the countdown has begun and I imagine the stores will begin decorating in the next few days.
And — today is also Dave and Chassie’s birthday.
Happy Birthday to two great kids!!!
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Dr. Anthony Fauci recently wrote a book (On Call) describing, in part, his time fighting COVID. I remember all the controversy surrounding the development of the vaccines. I wonder how Edward Jenner would have handled that situation….

Smallpox was mentioned by the Chinese as far back as the twelfth century B.C. and by the eighteenth century A.D. it was still one of the world’s most dreaded diseases — it left scars, and its victims could be left blind or even die. 

In the 1770s, in England, the only people who would care for smallpox patents were those who’d survived the disease and couldn’t catch it again. A surgeon’s apprentice, Edward Jenner, found out that a woman that was nursing one of his patents was also his milkmaid. She told him that even though she’d never had smallpox, she was immune to it because she’d had cowpox. Cowpox affected cows and sheep — it also made people sick, but it was a mild disease compared to smallpox. Jenner told the surgeon he worked for about the woman, but the surgeon told him not to listen to worthless old wives’ tales.

But Jenner started to keep track of what happened to people who’d recovered from cowpox and were later exposed to smallpox. Turns out that the milkmaid was right. Edward Jenner eventually published a pamphlet stating that inoculations with cowpox would save people from dying of smallpox. After years of ridicule, his idea was accepted. Jenner is now known as the inventor of vaccinations. Smallpox has pretty much been wiped out, and countless lives have been saved with vaccinations — a word that’s derived from the Latin word “vacua.” It means “cow.”
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According to legend, when an elephant senses its impending death, it leaves its herd and travels to a barren, bone-filled wasteland.
So do dying elephants actually separate themselves from their herd to meet their maker among the bones of their predecessors? Explorers have spent centuries searching for these so-called “elephant graveyards.” but none have ever been found.

Elephants are unique in a lot of ways. One of those ways is that, unlike most mammals, elephants have a special relationship with their dead. Researchers have found that elephants show noticeable emotion — from actual crying to profound agitation — when they encounter the remains of other elephants, particularly the skulls and tusks. They treat the bones with unusual tenderness and will cradle and carry them for long periods of time and over great distances. When they come across the bones of other animals, they show no interest whatsoever. Not only can elephants distinguish the bones of other elephants from those of other animals like rhinoceroses or buffalo, but it appears they can recognize the bones of elephants they were once familiar with. 

Probably the biggest argument against an elephant burial ground can be found in the way elephants treat their elders. An elephant wouldn’t want to separate itself from the comfort and protection of its herd during illness nor would a herd allow that behavior. Elephants give great respect to older member of their herd, turning to them as guiding leaders. They usually refuse to leave sick or dying older elephants alone, even if it means risking their own health and safety.

So where did the idea of an elephant graveyard start? It may have started as a way to explain the occasional discovery of large groupings of elephant carcasses. These have been found near water sources, where older and sickly elephants live in close proximity. And when an entire herd is wiped out by drought, or disease, the bones are often found all together at the herd’s watering hole.
There are a number of other explanations for large collections of elephant bones — pits of quicksand or bogs can trap a number of elephants and poachers have been known to slay entire herds of elephants for their ivory, leaving the carcasses behind. 

One of the more interesting theories for mass elephant corpses comes from East Africa — the elephant deaths are thought to be the work of the mazuku, the Swahili word for “evil wind.”  Scientists have found vents in the earth’s crust that emit carbon monoxide and other toxic gases. The poisonous  air released from these vents is forceful enough to blow out a candle’s flame, and the remains of small animals and birds are frequently found nearby, but these vents aren’t powerful enough to kill groups of elephants — but, tales of the mazuku continue. 

Today, the elephant graveyard isn’t any longer considered a destination for elephants — it’s more of a figure of speech that refers to a repository of useless or outdated items.
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A day or two ago, the topic was Hitler — and you often hear the “Third Reich” associated with his rise to power. It was the official Nazi designation for the regime in Germany from January 1933 to May 1945.
Why the Third Reich? Reich is German for “empire.” The Holy Roman Empire, which united much of present-day Germany and Italy was the First Reich and lasted from 800 to 1806. The Second Reich, the German Empire, lasted from 1871 to 1918. Hitler’s Third Reich was supposed to last 1,000 years, but it lasted only 12…..
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The Point Lookout Lighthouse is located in St. Mary’s County, Maryland — it’s situated where the Potomac River meets the Chesapeake Bay. It was built in 1830.

Point Lookout Lighthouse has been called America’s most haunted lighthouse — maybe because it was built on what later became the largest camp for Confederate prisoners of war. The camp was built in marshy surroundings and had tent housing in close quarters, all a dangerous combination. Smallpox, scurvy and dysentery ran rampant. The camp held more than 50,000 soldiers and between 3.000 and 8,000 died there. 

Park rangers and visitors to the lighthouse report hearing snoring and footsteps, of having a sense of being watched, and feeling the floors shake and the air move as crowds of invisible beings pass by. A photograph of a former caretaker shows the misty figure of a young soldier leaning against the wall behind her. And a bedroom reportedly smelled like rotting flesh at night until the odor was publicly attributed to the spirits of the war prisoners. 

Some of the more famous ghost encounters include…..
In December of 1977, ranger Gerald Sword was sitting in the lighthouse’s kitchen on a stormy night when a man’s face appeared at the back door. The man was young, with a floppy cap and a long coat, and peered into the bright room. Given the awful weather, Sword opened the door to let him in, but the young man floated backward until he vanished completely. After a bit of research, Sword believed he had been face-to-face with Joseph Haney, a young officer whose body had washed ashore after the steamboat he was on sank during a similar storm in 1878.

One of Point Lookout’s most frequent visitors is the apparition of a woman dressed in a long blue skirt and a white blouse who appears at the top of the stairs. She is believed to be Ann Davis, the wife of the first lighthouse keeper. Although her husband died shortly after he took the post, Ann remained as the keeper for the next 30 years, and according to inspection reports, was known for clean and well-kept grounds. Caretakers claim to hear her sighing heavily.

One former caretaker reported waking in the middle of the night to see a ring of lights dancing above her head. She smelled smoke and raced downstairs to find a space heater on fire. She believes that the lights were trying to protect her and the lighthouse from being consumed by flames.

Point Lookout’s reputation drew the attention of Hans Holzer, Ph.D. — a renowned parapsychologist, who tried to capture evidence of ghostly activity at the lighthouse. Holger and his team claimed to have recorded 24 different voices in all, both male and female, talking, laughing, and singing. Among their recordings, the group heard male voices saying “fire if they get too close,” “going home,” and more than a few obscenities.

The lighthouse was decommissioned in 1966, after 135 years of service. In 2002, the state of Maryland purchased it, and it is now open for tours and paranormal investigations. The lighthouse still has a steady stream of visitors — a lot of them are still alive…..
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There’s been lots of comparisons between Donald trump and Adolf Hitler. Most of the comparisons that I’ve read, compare Hitler when he was leader of the Nazi movement and Trump during his presidency. 

But they certainly didn’t start out with anywhere close to the same lifestyle….
When Hitler was young, his parents wanted him to go into the Austrian civil service like his father — but young Adolf had other ideas. He wanted to be a great artist, and he went off to Vienna to make his fortune. 

He applied twice to the Academy of Art, but they wouldn’t accept him as a student. He liked drawing buildings, so they advised him to try the school of architecture instead. But — he hadn’t graduated from high school, and so he was refused entry to the school of architecture, too. The money from home ran out, and Hitler was on the street. In his autobiography, Mein Kampf (“my struggle”) he described his time in Vienna as a period of study — that wasn’t true. 

Hitler did some house painting and other odd jobs occasionally, but most of the time he was flat broke. He stayed in a hostel for homeless men, and while he was there he developed his skill at public speaking.

At the hostel, he met an older “tramp” who found out that Hitler knew how to draw pictures of buildings and encouraged him to paint postcards of Viennese street scenes, which the older man would then take out and sell. They shared the profits from this “business venture.” The two set up their workspace in the hostel’s large dayroom but not a lot of work got done because Hitler could never resist an audience. The old man kept trying to persuade him to sit down and concentrate on the postcards, but Hitler kept jumping up to make passionate speeches against the Jews. His audience was the other bums or tramps who were sleeping off their hangover or sitting waiting for their free meals — but they would cheer him on as he worked himself up into incoherent ecstasies of nationalism. As time went on, he became a kind of bum celebrity.

Hitler moved to Munich just before the outbreak of World War I. There his life changed forever when he joined the German army and reached the rank of corporal and won an Iron Cross. 
His success as a leader of the Nazi movement in later life relied mainly on the unique and passionate style of public speaking he had developed during those years in Vienna. 
Charlie Chaplin always maintained that Hitler’s trademark mustache was copied from Chaplin’s “Little Tramp” character, and that Hitler adopted it to make himself more popular with the masses.
Adolf Hitler learned, more than any other political leader, how to get through to the people who lived on the bottom rungs of society — and that’s where he found his first, and best. supporters. 
So some similarities may exist between Trump and Hitler, but Trump hasn’t bragged about being a bum….. yet.
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