Category: history

The forgotten witch burnings of Chicago

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A backyard witch and other Halloween decorations adorn the yard at the Liebernman house on North Maplewood Avenue in Chicago in 1960. (Jack Mulcahy/Chicago Tribune)
A backyard witch and other Halloween decorations adorn the yard at the Liebernman house on North Maplewood Avenue in Chicago in 1960. (Jack Mulcahy/Chicago Tribune)

Ask an old-timer to recount the Chicago Halloweens of their youth, and they’ll likely describe all the familiar trappings: jack-o’-lanterns, bobbing for apples, candy and costumes for the younger children and mischief and alcohol and perhaps a bonfire or two for the older ones. But they may or may not also mention another peculiar tradition, one that you certainly wouldn’t expect to find in an urban environment like the Windy City and are not likely to see anywhere else, for that matter: witch burnings. Just as strange as the tradition itself is the fact that it is now almost entirely forgotten.

As a 2018 investigative retrospective in the Chicago Tribune reports:

Details are spotty, photos are tough to come by, but in many neighborhoods and suburbs around Chicago, from the early 1930s until the late 1980s (and later in some places), Halloween wasn’t Halloween without a witch burning. And yet today it’s a tradition so forgotten that local historians, folklorists and urban history professors were alternately repulsed and dumbfounded to learn it happened. Julia Sniderman Bachrach, former historian for the Chicago Park District, said: “Burning witches in Chicago parks? OK, now I’m thrown for a loop.”

No real witches were burned, of course — rather, people set fire to witch effigies, often made of papier-mache and stuffed straw, painted Wicked-Witch-of-the-West green. In some cases, the effigies themselves weren’t actually burned and instead were saved for reuse year after year (makeshift coffins, purportedly containing the witches, were incinerated instead). These witch burnings often served as the climax of a Halloween evening.

In Chicago, witch burnings centered on the south side; they could also be found in suburbs such as Schaumberg, Lisle, and Berwyn. The tradition appears to be unknown outside of the Chicagoland area, at least within the context of 20th century American Halloween celebrations. Some analogs (and, perhaps, precursors) persist overseas. For instance, Prague’s “Witches Night,” or Pálení carodejnic, burns witch effigies annually on April 30 to mark the end of winter. Similarly, November 5 sees Guy Fawkes effigies burnt across England to commemorate the failure of the Gunpowder Plot.

Chicago’s tradition began to decline in the 1980s. The Chicago Tribune suggests that around this time, activist Wiccan and pagan groups started to protest the practice. Willowbrook, for instance — a Chicago suburb — discontinued its Halloween witch burnings following testimony from members of a witches association at its village board meeting. (Others point out that the decline may relate to the racial turnover of neighborhoods: “I’m trying to find a polite way to put this — I would be surprised if burning witches would have gone over too well in those black communities.”) While some parts of the Chicago area saw witch burnings continue into the late 1990s, you would be hard pressed to find one anywhere today.

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The mystery of the Wanggongchang Explosion

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Ancient Chinese figures regard a small gunpowder explosion.
Ancient Chinese figures regard a small gunpowder explosion.

In the spring of 1626, during the reign of the Tianqi Emperor — the last ruler of the Ming dynasty — a catastrophic explosion devastated Beijing. As many as 20,000 people were reportedly killed, and entire square miles of the city were completely obliterated. Yet despite the large scale of destruction, and the generally meticulous recordkeeping of the imperial court, the cause and nature of the explosion are still subject to fevered speculation. Some even suggest that it never actually occurred at all.

The earliest account of the event appears in an official gazette (dibao) from the summer of 1626, reprinted later under the title “Official Report on a Heavenly Incident” (see Feng 2020):

When the sky was bright and clear, there was a sound like a roar from the northeast to the southwest corner of the capital, and the ashes rose and the houses were uprooted. In a moment there was a great earthquake, and the sky and the earth collapsed, and it was dark as night. From Shunchengmen in the east to Jinbu in the north, three to four miles in length, the surrounding area was destroyed, affecting tens of thousands of homes and people. The area around Wang Gong’s factory is completely devastated, with pieces of corpses everywhere, a suffocating smell filling the air, and rubble falling from the sky, confusing the vision. It is difficult to describe this heartbreaking sight. The roar of the explosion was heard from Hexiwu in the south, in Tongzhou in the east, in Miyun, and Changping in the north.1

Feng (2020, p. 74) notes two ways that this report differs from “conventional” gazettes:

The first is that it includes no reference to imperial edicts or court memorials; instead, it features copious entries describing how people, including the emperor and officials, suffered from the catastrophic explosion. Second, the text delineates an extensive array of abnormal and uncanny scenes that occurred in multiple locations across Beijing, conveying an atmosphere of panic in the capital. These elaborate narratives of “strangeness” stand in sharp contrast to the typically terse accounts of disasters in other gazettes.

Setting aside these reports, the simplest explanation for the explosion is not so strange at all: an accidental ignition of stores at the Imperial Gunpowder Workshop (Wanggongchang). Indeed, the Wanggongchang Armory, which produced nearly two tons of gunpowder per week2, was located near the epicenter of the blast. Yet while this account might seem to accord with the principle of Occam’s Razor, some argue that the details don’t add up. In particular, analysis suggests that the destruction described in contemporary records would have required explosive force equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT, orders of magnitude more than even the largest plausible stockpiles of black powder could produce.3 Others contend that specific elements of the official narrative (a “roaring rumble” from the northeast, a bright streak of light, mushroom-shaped clouds) are inconsistent with a gunpowder explosion.

Alternative explanations abound. A 1986 conference in Beijing

explored all the possible causes of the incident from a spontaneous explosion of black powder to a natural gas leak, and the more far-fetched theories of meteorites, hidden volcanoes, and an underground nuclear discharge. The conference participants ultimately concluded that an earthquake resulted in a release of gasses at the site which ignited a massive explosion and firestorm which destroyed the area.

Other more “outlandish” theories, Jeremiah Jenne notes, “have implicated supernatural forces and even an interplanetary nuclear strike on Beijing.”

The reality may be far more mundane than any of the above. Feng (2020) argues that historical accounts of the explosion immediately sought to “politicize” it. In fact, the Tianqi Emperor was not a popular figure. He was, as Jenne recounts, “an odd young man, more comfortable in a carpenter’s shop than reading documents. […] Power devolved to his mother and the eunuchs, in particular, the infamous Wei Zhongxian, one of the most corrupt officials in Chinese history.” Along these lines, Feng suggests that “the ‘Official Report’ emphasizes the strangeness of the explosion in a manner that subtly aims to provoke the audience’s suspicion of the eunuch faction.” Perhaps the real story, then, is one of exaggeration for political effect — an industrial explosion embellished and distorted to tar a distrusted group.

 

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“Jap Herron,” the novel Mark Twain allegedly posthumously authored via Ouija board

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Jap Herron
In 1917, two spiritual mediums published a book they claimed had been dictated by Mark Twain’s ghost via ouija board.

Mark Twain, beloved humorist and the “father of American literature,” died in 1910. Ordinarily, you’d expect this would mean the end of his writing career (especially since this time, reports of his death had not been exaggerated). He was so dedicated to his craft, however, that his work apparently continued even from beyond the grave — at least, according to two spiritual mediums who claimed contact with Twain’s departed soul.

Emily Grant Hutchings and Lola V. Hays profess to have begun receiving messages from Mark Twain via Ouija board at a St. Louis seance in 1915. Over the next two years, Twain’s spirit would allegedly dictate an entire novel to the duo from the great beyond. The book, titled Jap Herron: A Novel Written From the Ouija Board, was published in 1917.

Ouija boards were in vogue at the time, and this wasn’t the first ghost-written work of fiction to grace the literary world; St. Louis writer Pearl Curran (a friend of Hutchings) published several novels that she claimed had been authored by a spirit named Patience Worth. The gimmick was one the public seemed to respond to: the novel sold, and generated sufficient attention to warrant a “review” in The New York Times. An excerpt from the Times:

The ouija board seems to have come to stay as a competitor of the typewriter in the production of fiction. For this is the third novel in the last few months that has claimed the authorship of some dead and gone being who, unwilling to give up human activities, has appeared to find in the ouija board a material means of expression.

[…]

The story itself, a long novelette, is scened in a Missouri town and tells how a lad born to poverty and shiftlessness, by the help of a fine-souled and high-minded man and woman, grew into a noble and useful manhood and helped to regenerate his town. There is evident a rather striking knowledge of the conditions of life and the peculiarities of character in a Missouri town, the dialect is true, and the picture has, in general, many features that will seem familiar to those who know their “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn.” A country paper fills an important place in the tale, and there is constant proof of familiarity with the life and work of the editor of such a sheet. The humor impresses as a feeble attempt at imitation and, while there is now and then a strong sure touch of pathos or a swift and true revelation of human nature, the “sob stuff” that oozes through many of the scenes, and the overdrawn emotions are too much for credulity. If this is the best that “Mark Twain” can do by reaching across the barrier, the army of admirers that his works have won for him will all hope that he will hereafter respect that boundary.

The book caused its share of controversy: Clara Clemens, Twain’s daughter and executor of his literary estate, threatened legal action;  Hutchings, Hays, and their publisher agreed to cease publication and to destroy remaining copies of the work.

Of course, there are some who suggest that Twain didn’t die in 1910 after all.

You can read the full New York Times review here, or check out the text of Jap Herron (which did ultimately survive) itself here.

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The earliest known use of the term “OMG”

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…was not on some obscure Usenet system or bygone bulletin board. It occurred, according to the Smithsonian, in a letter to Winston Churchill dated September 9, 1917 (more than 100 years ago!). The letter, written by British admiral Lord Fisher, includes the now-famous acronym in its final line:

Apparently there are two exclamation points in “omg”!

Other internet acronyms are much more recent coinages. The first documented instance of “LOL,” for example, dates back to a May 1989 issue of an online newsletter (still available here). Said newsletter includes the following guide to “colorful communicating” on the internet:

     OLM  - On Line Message          OTW  - On The Way
     OIC  - Oh I See                 H    - HUH???
     BTW  - By The Way               LOL  - Laughing Out Loud
     ROTF - Rolling On The Floor     RAO  - Rolling All Over
     LMTO - Laughing My Tush Off     BRB  - Be Right Back
     AFK  - Away From Keys           BBL  - Be Back Later
     BAK  - Back At Keys             WLCM - Welcome
     BCNU - Be Seeing You            L8R  - Later
     ODM  - On De Move               OTB  - Off To Bed
     LTNT - Long Time No Type        TTFN - Ta Ta For Now
     RE   - Again (Greetings, as in "re-hi")
     LTNS - Long Time No See
     M/F  - Male or Female (also known as 'MORFING', as in
     "Oh no! I've been morfed!!")

Some of these terms, of course, are still in use, while others never really took off.

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Norway considers giving mountain to Finland as 100th birthday present

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In a lovely gesture that would surely make every Finn’s day, the Norwegian government is considering slightly redrawing its border to give Finland a mountain peak, which would become its highest point. The occasion? The 100th anniversary of Finland’s independence from Russia.

From The Guardian:

The originator of the idea is a retired geophysicist and government surveyor, Bjørn Geirr Harsson, 76, who learned last year that Finland would celebrate the 100th anniversary of its independence from Russia on 6 December 2017 and recalled being puzzled by the location of the border when he flew over Halti in the 1970s.

Harsson wrote to the ministry of foreign affairs in July 2015, pointing out that the gesture would cost Norway a “barely noticeable” 0.015 sq km of its national territory and make Finland very happy.

Public reaction has been overwhelmingly positive in both Norway and Finland, with the only objection so far coming from the indigenous Sami community, whose reindeer roam freely across the border and who argue that the land should belong to neither country.

If only all nations could learn such magnanimity.

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Why are there so many medieval paintings of people battling large snails?

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I never knew that giant snails featured so prominently in medieval paintings, but now that I do, this is the first question on my mind. They do, it turns out.  According to Sarah J. Biggs of the British Library, “images of armed knights fighting snails are common” in 13th and 14th century illuminated manuscripts, “especially in marginalia.”  Check out a sampling below:

View post on imgur.com

One theory about the snails, Biggs goes on, is that they represent the Resurrection; others suggest they are a symbol of the Lombards, a group “vilified in the early middle ages for treasonous behaviour”;  still others have described the ‘knight v snail’ motif as “a representation of the struggles of the poor against an oppressive aristocracy, a straightforward statement of the snail’s troublesome reputation as a garden pest, a commentary on social climbers, or even as a saucy symbol of female sexuality.”

As /r/AskHistorians puts it, in other words, there are “as many explanations as there are scholars”; fundamentally, we just really don’t know. Redditor /u/TheAlaskan relates another plausible account:

“I’m partial to the explanation of Medievalist Lisa Spangenberg, who suggests that the snail is ‘a reminder of the inevitability of death.’
To understand that reference, you have to refer to Psalm 58 (Wycliffe translation) . We’re looking here at verses 7-8:
7 They shall come to nought, as water running away; he bent his bow, till they be made sick. (They shall come to nothing, like water running forth; and when they go to bend their bows, they shall be made feeble, or weak.)
8 As wax that floateth away, they shall be taken away; fire fell above, and they saw not the sun. (Like a snail that melteth away into slime, they shall be taken away; like a dead-born child, they shall not see the sun.)
Like the snail, even the best-armored knight will melt away.”

Fascinating and bizarre stuff.

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Underwater Mormon ghost town uncovered by Nevada drought

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Formerly submerged under 60 feet of water, the ongoing drought in the western United States has left the ghost town of St. Thomas, Nevada, once again exposed to the air.

From the Huffington Post:

Lest anyone forget, the drought in California and across the Southwest is still raging on. And one of the places where its effects can be observed most clearly is Nevada’s Lake Mead.

The nation’s largest reservoir has hit a series of troubling milestones over the past year, sinking to a record low in late June. Now, in the latest benchmark for the new Lake Mead, a town that flooded shortly after the completion of the Hoover Dam in 1938 has literally risen from the depths.

The ghost town — once called St. Thomas, Nevada — was founded as a Mormon settlement in 1865 and had six bustling businesses by 1918, according to Weather.com. But for nearly a century, it’s been uninhabited and uninhabitable, existing mostly as an underwater curiosity.

You can see more pictures here.

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Mysterious shipwreck discovered 1 mile deep off the coast of North Carolina

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Mysterious is an appropriate term for the vast reaches of Earth’s global ocean: after all, we now have a fuller knowledge of the surface of Pluto, a full 4.67 billion miles away, than we do of the bottoms of our own terrestrial seas. It should really come as no surprise that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 still hasn’t been found.

Researchers have found something interesting off the coast of North Carolina, though: the remains of a centuries-old shipwreck of unknown origin, likely dating to the time of the American revolution or the early eighteenth century.  From the Washington Post:

The Marine scientists didn’t set out to find a shipwreck. But when they deployed their underwater equipment off the North Carolina coast, there it was, lying nearly a mile beneath the surface: a ship carrying an iron chain, red bricks and glass bottles.

Those artifacts suggest the ship could date to the Revolutionary War or the early 19th century. […]

“Lying more than a mile down in near-freezing temperatures, the site is undisturbed and well preserved,” Bruce Terrell, chief archaeologist of NOAA’s Marine Heritage Program, said in a statement. “Careful archaeological study in the future could definitely tell us more.”

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Ancient Mayan cities discovered hidden deep in Mexican jungle

Richard
It doesn’t take long for an unattended lawn to return to pasture, or for ivy to creep up and over the face of a brick building. But the jungle is another force of nature entirely, more than capable of swallowing whole entire cities, perhaps never to divulge them again. Two such cities, lost centuries ago, were recently rediscovered in the Yucatan:
A monster mouth doorway, ruined pyramid temples and palace remains emerged from the Mexican jungle as archaeologists unearthed two ancient Mayan cities.
 
Found in the southeastern part of the Mexican state of Campeche, in the heart of the Yucatan peninsula, the cities were hidden in thick vegetation and hardly accessible.
 

“In the jungle you can be as little as 600 feet from a large site and do not even suspect it might be there; small mounds are all over the place, but they give you no idea about where an urban center might be,” said expedition leader Ivan Sprajc, of the Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU). 

 

 Read more… here!

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In 1906, the Bronx zoo exhibited an African man alongside monkeys.

Richard

A truly disgusting episode from our country’s depressingly racist past:

[…] the zookeepers 
Ota Benga, at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair,...

Ota Benga, at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, showing his sharpened teeth. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

convinced Benga [one of the Congolese tribe of Mbuti pygmies] to play with the orangutan in its cage. Benga obliged. Crowds gathered to watch the two monkeying around. The keepers gave Benga his bow and arrow; he shot targets, squirrels, the occasional rat. Bones were scattered about the cage to add a whiff of cannibalism. The keepers goaded Benga to occasionally charge the bars of his enclosure, baring his sharp teeth. Children screamed. Adults were at turns horrified and titillated. “Is that a man?” a visitor asked. A circus owner offered to throw a party for Benga, a French spinster offered to purchase him, and a black manicurist offered to paint his nails. Hornaday posted a sign outside of the cage, displaying Benga’s height, weight, and how he was acquired. “Exhibited each afternoon during September,” it concluded.

One hundred years later, I like to think we’ve come a long way. You can read the full article at the New York Magazine.

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The greatest “order pizza to a stranger’s house” prank in history

Richard

… Occurred nearly 200 years ago, in London. From Wikipedia:

The Berners Street Hoax was perpetrated by Theodore Hook in the City of Westminster, London, in 1810.

On 27 November, at five o’clock in the morning, a sweep arrived to
sweep the chimneys of 54 Berners Street, the home of Mrs Tottenham. The
maid who answered the door informed him that no sweep had been
requested, and that his services were not required, and the disappointed
tradesman went on his way. A few moments later another sweep presented
himself at the door, then another, and another, 12 in all. After the
last of the sweeps had been sent away, a fleet of carts carrying large
deliveries of coal began to arrive, followed by a series of cakemakers
delivering large wedding cakes, then doctors, lawyers, vicars and
priests summoned to minister to someone in the house they had been told
was dying. Fishmongers, shoemakers, and over a dozen pianos were among
the next to appear, along with “six stout men bearing an organ”.
Dignitaries, including the Governor of the Bank of England, the Duke of York, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Mayor of the City of London
also arrived. The narrow streets soon became severely congested with
disgruntled tradesmen and onlookers. Deliveries and visits continued
until the early evening, bringing a large part of London to a
standstill.[1]

Hook had bet his friend Samuel Beazley
that he could transform any house in London into the most talked-about
address in a week. To achieve his goal he had sent out 4,000 letters
purporting to be Mrs Tottenham, requesting deliveries, visitors, and
assistance. Hook had stationed himself in the house directly opposite
54 Berners Street, and he and his friend had spent an amusing day
watching the chaos unfold.[1]

You really can’t top that.

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