The Martini is Born

The Martini is said to have originated in San Francisco just after the gold rush. It was invented by bartender Professor Jerry Thomas at the bar of the old Occidental Hotel in San Francisco. Thomas made the drink for a gold miner who was on his way to the town of Martinez, some forty miles to the east.

The citizens of Martinez deny this account. They say that around 1870 a miner from San Francisco stopped at a local saloon tended by one Julio Richelieu. The miner plunked a small sack of gold nuggets before the bartender, asked for a bottle of liquor, and as a bonus received an unusual drink in a small glass with an olive dropped into it. “What is it’, asked the miner. “That”, replied Richelieu, “is a Martinez cocktail”
Link to: What Sherlock Holmes Drank


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Historic Earthquakes: Washington D.C.

On March 9, 1828, an earthquake, centered in southwestern Virginia, attracted the attention of President John Quincy Adams as it rattled windows in Washington. President Adams reported the tremor felt like the heaving of a ship at sea. In March 1918, an earthquake emanating from the Shenandoah Valley broke windows in Washington and rippled over Northern Virginia. The tremor caused a terrifying noise and was commented upon by President Wilson at the White House. A White House staffer called a newspaper office to learn the cause of the terrifying noise.

Since 1977, Virginia has experienced some two hundred earthquakes, most of them small.Virginia is considered to be at moderate risk, with a ten to twenty percent chance of experiencing a 4.75 Richter scale quake. Quakes over 4.5 on the Richter scale topple buildings. Virginias’ most severe earthquake (5.8 on the Richter scale) occurred on May 31, 1897 in Pearisburg, the county seat of Giles County, in southwest Virginia. Closer to home, small earthquakes have startled local citizens. On September 29, 1997 a 2.5 Richter scale earthquake struck Manassas. One local resident reported he was "shaken, not stirred" after hearing what sounded like an unusually large sonic boom. On May 6, 2008 a so called “micro-earthquake” (magnitude 1.8) struck Annandale. Approximately one thousand micro-earthquakes occur everyday throughout the world and are only noticed if they hit high population density areas where they are most often noticed by people living in high rise buildings.



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Environmental Disasters: The Dust Bowl

The recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is not the first time that America has faced an environmental catastrophe of historic proportions. In the 1930s, Washington had to pay close attention to the disaster, however, because it arrived, literally, on Washington’s doorstep.

The most peculiar natural phenomena ever to hit Washington D.C. was a gigantic dust storm blowing in from the Great Plains. Years of environmental mismanagement on the Great Plains set the stage for a natural calamity. In 1931, a drought hit the Great Plains. Crops died and because the ground cover keeping the soil in place was gone, the naturally windy area began whipping up dust. Dust storms became problematic and continued to grow in intensity. In 1934 an enormous storm drove 350 tons of silt across the Great Plains as far as the East Coast. Ships three hundred miles off shore in the Atlantic reported collecting dust on their decks. In April 1935, a dust storm arrived in Washington from the Great Plains. A dusty gloom spread over the region and blotted out the sun. Meanwhile, in downtown Washington, conservationist Hugh Hammond Bennett was testifying before Congress about the need for soil conservation. Bennett explained, (pointing to the darkened skies over Washington) "This, gentlemen, is what I have been talking about." Congress passed the Soil Conservation Act the same year.



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A Nuclear Attack on Boston (Circa 1962)

Link to: Nuclear War 1962 (Alternate History)


In 1962 the New England Journal of Medicine published a paper describing the impact of a nuclear strike (20 megatons) on the Boston Metropolitan area.

Within 1/1000th of a second, a fireball envelops downtown Boston and reaches out for two miles in every direction from ground zero. Temperatures reach 20 million degrees Fahrenheit. People, buildings, cars, tress, everything within a two mile radius are vaporized. Winds in excess of 650 miles per hour roar outward to a distance of four miles, ripping apart and leveling everything. Ten miles from ground zero, the heat of the blast melts glass and sheet metal, and the 200 mile per hour winds flatten every house and business. The only things still standing are reinforced concrete buildings which are heavily damaged.

Sixteen miles from the center, the heat from the blast ignites houses, paper, clothes, leaves, gasoline, and heating fuel, starting hundreds of thousands of fires. The winds, still 100 miles per hour at this distance merge these fires into a giant firestorm thirty miles across that engulfs eight hundred square miles. The death rate is nearly one hundred percent. Thirty miles from ground zero the heat of the blast causes third degree burns on exposed skin. Even forty miles from the blast, anyone looking up at the sudden flash of light in the sky is instantly blinded. Ninety percent of the population would have been dead within one month of the attack.



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If the Nazis had Tactical Nuclear Weapons on D-Day

General Pliyev, the Soviet commander in Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 had twelve Luna Missiles in his arsenal. Each Luna had a range of 3l miles and a two-kiloton nuclear payload. Any tank or armored personnel carrier within 500 yards of the blast of one of these weapons would have been immediately destroyed. Un- protected soldiers 1,000 yards from the blast site would have died immediately. Those un-fortunate enough to survive the explosion and the winds would have suffered a painful death by radiation poisoning within two weeks. Had Luna Missiles been available to the Germans in World War II, the Nazis would have obliterated all five D-Day beachheads in 1944 with no more than ten of these weapons.




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American Nuclear Strategy (Circa 1960)

In the early 1960s both the size of nuclear stockpiles and available delivery systems, made decision makers think in terms of a “winnable” nuclear war. Nuclear war would have been horrible but survivable. It was not until the 1980s that “advances” in technology made the destruction of the entire human race one of the certainties of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union.



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Baby Born During Battle of First Manassas

Link to: CIVIL WAR CIVILIAN LIFE: MANASSAS,VIRGINIA 


The Lewis family of “Portici” found themselves at the center of the First Battle Manassas. Confederate officers notified the Lewis family that a battle was imminent and that their house would be exposed to fire. They evacuated, taking everything they could with them, but left valuable and heavy furniture behind. The furniture was stored in a small room in an angle of the house, and the room securely nailed shut. The only shot that struck the house during the battle struck this room and destroyed all of the furniture. Furniture was a trifling matter however. Fannie Lewis was in her ninth month of pregnancy and went into labor as they began to evacuate the house. Servants found a nearby ravine and dug a small earthen hollow into the bank. They covered this with greens. It was here that Fannie Lewis delivered her first baby, John Beauregard Lewis.

CIVIL WAR CIVILIAN LIFE: MANASSAS,VIRGINIA 

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The British at Mount Vernon

Link to: Who Were the Slaves of the Founding Fathers?

In April, 1781 the British warship H.M.S. Savage anchored off George Washington’s plantation, Mount Vernon. The British raiders took seventeen of Washington’s slaves from the Mount Vernon plantation. Lund Washington, a cousin who was watching over the plantation during the General’s absence, went on board the Savage, took refreshments to the British officers, and tried to negotiate the return of the slaves. He failed. A week later Lafayette wrote General Washington criticizing Lund’s actions, “This being done by the gentleman who, in some measure, represents you at your house will certainly have a bad effect, and contrasts with spirited answers from some neighbors, that had their houses burnt accordingly.” The General sent the unfortunate Lund a stinging letter rebuking him for “ …communing with a parcel of plundering Scoundrels….”

How Martha Washington Lived:

18th Century Customs

Gifts for Dogs

Spanish Explorers in Virginia

Most people think that the English were the first Europeans to explore what is now Virginia, founding Jamestown in 1607. There is evidence, however, that the Spanish beat the English to Virginia by several decades.

An attempt at colonization was made in 1570, when Governor Pedro Menendez of Florida, authorized an expedition. At the time, it was believed that the Chesapeake Bay was the long sought short passage to China. Jesuit missionaries convinced the Governor to send their small unarmed expedition to the area as a forerunner to future colonization. On September 10, 1570, a small band of Jesuits headed by Father Segura, vice provincial of the Jesuits settled near a place the Native Americans called Axacan. The nearest surviving Indian word that suggests the name, is "Occoquan”. One historical school places the unfolding drama in a village located on the Occoquan River in Northern Virginia.

The Jesuits were convinced that they could gain the trust of the natives and willingly convert thousands to Christianity for one simple reason; they were accompanied by a prince of that country who had converted to Christianity in Spain itself.

Hidden History of Northern Virginia

Read about the Rebel blockade of the Potomac River, the imprisonment of German POWs at super-secret Fort Hunt during World War II and the building of the Pentagon on the same site and in the same configuration as Civil War, era Fort Runyon. Meet Annandale's "bunny man," who inspired one of the country's wildest and scariest urban legends; learn about the slaves in Alexandria's notorious slave pens; and witness suffragists being dragged from the White House lawn and imprisoned in the Occoquan workhouse. 

Gifts for Dogs

American Werewolves?

                                                                        

What are the explanations for werewolves? Hypertrichosis is a scientific explanation.

Hypertrichosis (also known as “wolfitis”) is a rare medical condition which results in the growth of abnormal amounts of hair all over the body. A number of people suffering from hypertrichosis became famous sideshow freaks working for American impresario P.T. Barnum. Fedor Jeftichew (picture #1), born in St. Petersburg, Russia, signed on with P.T. Barnum at the age of sixteen in 1884. Barnum made a point of pointing out how much Jeftichew resembled a dog and he was known as “Jo-Jo the Dog Faced Boy”. Jeftichew barked and growled for gawking crowds to enhance his image as a half man-half beast monster. “Lionel the Lion Faced Man”, was another victim of hypertrichosis who worked for Barnum. “Lionel”, actually named Stephan Bibrowski (picture #2), was born in Poland in 1891 and began appearing in the Barnum and Bailey’s Circus in 1901. Bibrowski’s body was entirely covered by hair except for the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet. Hair hung eight inches from his face and four inches from the rest of his body. In real life, Bibrowski was well educated and spoke five languages.




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Did George Washington have an illegitimate son?

Link to:Who Were the Slaves of the FoundingFathers?

Did George Washington have an illegitimate son? Linda Allen Bryant, a direct descendent of a slave named West Ford (1784?-1863) points to correspondence between George and his brother, John Augustine, to argue that George Washington visited his brother’s plantation in 1784, and that a gap in Washington’s personal diary that year could account for a sexual liaison during this visit. According to an oral tradition passed down in the Ford family, a story first publicized in the 1940s, when confronted by her mistress, Hannah Washington, a pregnant slave named Venus confessed the paternity of her child, "The old General be the father, Mistress."

In all likelihood, the Mount Vernon Ladies Association argues, West Ford was indeed the son of a Washington, but not of George Washington. At the present development stage of DNA science, no direct link to George Washington can be established. The Mount Vernon Ladies Association has pledged its cooperation with testing as DNA science progresses.

PBS video: "George and Venus"

HowMartha Washington Lived: 18th Century Customs 

Neither Martha Washington nor the women of the South’s leading families were marble statues, they had the same strengths and weaknesses, passions and problems, joys and sorrows, as the women of any age.  So just how did they live?

Love, Sex, and Marriage in ColonialAmerica 1607-1800

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What did George Washington Eat?

Link to:

How Martha Washington Lived: 18th CenturyCustoms 

If you went back in time, you would soon discover that things sounded, smelled and tasted differently in the past. Consider food. In colonial Northern Virginia the cycle for meals was totally different from the modern cycle, as were the foods served. At Mount Vernon, at least three meals were served daily. Breakfast was served promptly at 7:00 am; dinner at 3:00 pm; and a light supper was served at 9:00 pm. George Washington once wrote to a friend, “A glass of wine and a bit of mutton are always ready, and such as will be content to partake of them are always welcome.”

Certain foods likely to be found on George Washington’s table included carrot puffs, chicken fricassee, Virginia ham, pickled red cabbage, and onion soup. Even though these foods appear familiar, the seasonings were very different from those used in modern cooking. Colonial cooks liked nutmeg and especially enjoyed a sweet taste. Salt and pepper were not heavily used. Some foods would make the modern diner blanche, rabbits and poultry, for example, were not only prepared with their heads and feet still attached, they were served at dinner that way as well.

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What did they eat in the American Civil War?

Link to:

Civil War Humor 1861-1865

Napoleon was the first to realize the military advantage of being able to scientifically control an army’s food supply. In 1795 he offered a huge cash prize to anyone who could find a way to improve the method of supplying food to the campaigning French army. Nicholas Appert patented a method of hermetically sealing food for future use. This was an important step forward in military logistics. In 1823, Thomas Kensett, an American invented the tin can. Appert’s sealing method and Kensett’s tin can gave the Union army a tremendous logistics advantage by the time of the American Civil War. Northern factories and food processing facilities canned milk, meats, oysters and vegetables by use by the troops. The Confederate army was at a disadvantage, with most of its canned goods coming either through the capture of Union supplies or via blockade runners.

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Hidden History of Northern Virginia

Northern Virginia is Washington, D.C.’s front porch, and while the history of the entire nation has been made in Washington, Northern Virginia has a rich regional history flowing from its connection to the capital. For example, there would be no Washington, D.C., if General George Washington had not lived in nearby Mount Vernon, Virginia.

Included here are the often-overlooked stories of Northern Virginia from colonial to modern times—stories such as the Rebel blockade of the Potomac River, the imprisonment of German POWs at super-secret Fort Hunt during World War II and the building of the Pentagon on the same site and in the same configuration as Civil War–era Fort Runyon. And then there are the people—Alexandria-hometown boy Robert E. Lee, Annandale’s “bunny man” who inspired one of the wildest and scariest urban legend, slaves in Alexandria’s notorious slave pens, suffragists dragged from in front of the White House and imprisoned in the Occoquan Workhouse and many other folks who have left their imprints on the region and the nation.



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Murder in Colonial Virginia

Violence and murder between masters and slaves in colonial Virginia was not a one way street. Blacks sometimes found ways of quietly settling the score with cruel masters. The most common forms of black resistance were arson, poisoning and running away. Poisoning was especially terrifying to slave owners. The closeness of house servants to their masters, for whom they cooked and washed in the very house where the master slept, made the threat of poisoning terrifying. Nor was this fear groundless. The records of colonial Virginia document the trial of 180 slaves tried for poisoning.

In 1737, a case of poisoning in Orange County, Virginia, involved the murder of a master by a slave named Peter. The slave Peter was not only executed for the crime but subsequently, had his head cut off and displayed on a pole at the courthouse building, “to deter others from doing the Like.” Nine years after this, in January 1746, also in Orange County, a female slave named Eve was convicted of attempting to kill her master Peter Mountague by poisoning. Mountague suffered severe illness from August through December 1745 before recovering (and living until at least 1771). Although Montague recovered, Eve was convicted of poisoning him and was sentenced to death. The sentence was medieval. She was condemned to be burnt alive, a sentence carried out shortly after her trial. The case of Eve was considered particularly diabolical because she put the poison in Mountague’s milk. Virtually one hundred percent of the slaves living in central Virginia at the time were from eastern Nigeria, and were genetically predisposed to be lactose intolerant. No slaves would be drinking milk, there could be no unintended victims when milk was poisoned, only slave masters and their kin were in mortal danger. This was a calculated and premeditated attempt at murder stemming from deep hatred.

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Read more about: Murder in Colonial Virginia

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Mormon Polygamy

In 1862, Congress passed a law prohibiting polygamy (plural marriage). This law was aimed directly at the troublesome religious sect that had settled Utah, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons). The Mormons migrated to the Valley of the Great Slat Lake in 1847 to escape religious persecution brought about, in part, by the practice of polygamy.

Although prohibited in the Book of Mormon, the sect's underlying holy book, the idea of polygamy was accepted by the group's founder Joseph Smith and was pronounced by Smith's successor, Brigham Young, as "necessary for salvation." Brigham Young preached that polygamy was divinely sanctioned to enhance the church's population and to eliminate prostitution and adultery. Some women were dubious, coming to regard polygamy simply as a tool to satisfy the lusts of the older, more powerful male members of the sect. One woman wrote, "If Salt Lake City were roofed over, it would be the biggest whorehouse in the world."

Brigham Young practiced what he preached, having some twenty seven wives during his lifetime. Most of Young's wives lived in a New England style structure called the Lion House located in a central block of Salt Lake City. When Young decided upon a bed partner for the night, he made a chalk mark on the selected wife's bedroom door. He fathered fifty six children (the last when he was 69).

Young had an eye for the younger and prettier members of the flock. He used his position of leader to pressure these women into marrying him, "You cannot be saved by anyone else...If you refuse, you will be destroyed, body and soul." Twenty four year old Ann Eliza, Young's 27th wife, initially rejected the 68 year old patriarch's advances. Under heavy pressure from family and friends she finally gave way. In this case, however, Young got more than he bargained for. Ann Eliza nagged incessantly. She complained about inattention, of Young's cheapness and of his cruelty. Finally she fled Salt Lake City and filed for divorce.

The law passed by Congress in 1862, banning polygamy, was fanatically prosecuted. Men and women were fined and imprisoned until the Mormon's finally submitted in 1890 in a manifesto issued by the church's President, " Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriages, which laws have been pronounced constitutional by the court of last resort, I hereby declare my intention to submit to those laws, and to use my influence with the members of the Church over which I preside, to have them do likewise."



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Virginia Moonshine

After the American Revolution, the new federal government faced the problem of paying off the national debt incurred in fighting the war, and of generally paying its ongoing bills. Among other things, a new federal tax was imposed on liquors and spirits. People were not pleased. Several hundred were so angry about the new tax that they openly rebelled, threatening an attack on Pittsburgh. President George Washington personally led an army of thirteen thousand which crushed the so called Whiskey Rebellion.

Resistance to the tax went underground. Farmers, especially in Kentucky, Virginia and the Carolinas could survive a bad year by turning their corn into profitable whiskey. Small stills sprang up and were operated at night by the light of the moon (hence the name “moonshining”). The ongoing battle between moonshiners and federal revenue agents became legendary throughout the South.

On January 29, 1919 the Eighteenth Amendment to the Untied States Constitution was ratified and one year later on January 17, 1920, in accordance with the provisions of the implementing law, America went dry. Moonshiners were delighted to find that prohibition furnished a large market for their product. It was colorless, it looked like water, and it was often one hundred proof. High school boys, flaunting the law, went out into the woods, met moonshiners, and then brought a pint of moonshine to the school dance. More staid citizens were able to get a prescription from the family doctor for a bottle of liquor. Local drug stores stocked pints of scotch and bourbon for medicinal use.

By 1932 most in the country were ready to repeal Prohibition. The promised benefits, such as the elimination of crime, never emerged. In fact things got worse as the growth of organized criminal gangs produced just the opposite result. In the 1932 presidential election, Franklin Roosevelt promised to end Prohibition. Prohibition was overturned at the national level by the 21st amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As America became more urbanized moonshining largely died out, but is still even now practiced in remoter rural areas.


 
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Is Washington Burning? (The War of 1812)

Link to: History's Ten Worst Generals

America was rushed into war. “War Hawks” in Congress hungry to conquer Canada while England was pre-occupied with war against Napoleon, whipped up patriotic passions and plunged the country into a war it wasn’t ready to fight. On August 6, 1814, a British fleet consisting of nearly fifty vessels sailed into the Chesapeake.

The main British army landed at Benedict, Maryland. British forces routed American troops at the Battle of Bladensburg on August 24, 1814 and marched into Washington City. The British commander reported to London, “I reached [Washington] at 8 o’clock that night. Judging it of consequences to complete the destruction of the public buildings with the least possible delay, so that the army might retire without loss of time, the following buildings were set fire to and consumed: the capitol, including the Senate house and House of representation, the Arsenal, the Dock-Yard, Treasury, War office, President’s Palace, Rope-Walk, and the great bridge across the Potomac: In the dock-yard a frigate nearly ready to be launched, and a sloop of war, were consumed.” The glow from the burning city could be seen forty miles away in Baltimore.




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Terrorism in the Civil War (New York City 1864)

The threat of terrorism is nothing new in American history. In 1864 the 814,000 people of New York City faced a terrorist threat by Confederate agents angered over the Union army’s ravaging of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. The plot was formulated by Robert Martin, a Confederate officer who had once served under the famous Confederate raider John Hunt Morgan. Martin, with six others, planned to set fire to large hotels on Election Day, November 8, 1864, while Southern sympathizers would simultaneously begin an uprising similar to the Draft Riots of 1863 among the large teeming immigrant population living in poverty around the slum of Five Points. The Draft Riots of July 1863 shut the city down for three days as rioters burned, looted and killed. Union troops marched straight from the battlefield of Gettysburg to put down the riot. Some 118 people died.

Missing their target date by two weeks, the terrorists struck on November 25, 1864, planning to set New York ablaze with an incendiary mixture of sulfur, naphtha, and quicklime that bursts into flame when exposed to air. Over a dozen buildings were set on fire in a four hour period. The incendiary mixture did not perform as predicted and all of the fires were quickly extinguished.

New Yorkers were outraged by the attack. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper called it “The most diabolical attempt at arson and murder of which there is any record in the history of our country.” The New York Times called the plot “one of the most fiendish and inhuman acts known to modern times.”

None of the Southern agents were ever apprehended.


Link to: Secrets of American History



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Cuban Woman and Confederate Soldier (Women in the Civil War)

Link to:

The Confederate Woman: Soldier and Spy

Civil War re-enactors have been challenged by some women in recent years to allow them to “join the ranks”. If re-enactors today find this problematic, how must men have reacted in the Civil War? But life and history are both complex.

Cuban-born Loreta Velasquez, disguised as a man, enlisted in the Confederate army as Lieutenant Harry T. Buford in 1860. According to military records, under the name Harry T. Buford, she raised a company of volunteers from Arkansas and fought in the battles of 1st Manassas, Ball’s Bluff, and Fort Donelson. In 1862 her disguise was discovered and she was discharged from the army. Velasquez then enlisted with the 21st Louisiana Infantry regiment and went on to fight at Shiloh. Velasquez's disguise was discovered yet again and she was once again discharged. The resourceful Velasquez then became a spy for the Confederacy, often posing as a man.

After the war the now widowed Velasquez moved to Nevada, where she authored a book, "The Woman in Battle", a non-stop thriller patterned after the tales about famous gunfighters. She was married and widowed three more time before her death in 1897 at the age of fifty five (?) .

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