Now that I’m laid up with this broken ankle, I thought I should delve into the medical profession for a few items of trivia. Unfortunately, most of my conversations these days are with doctors, nurses, hospitals, and those lovely insurance companies. I should mention that as a young kid I was bullied for almost a year which makes me very aware of people who bully others. I understand that medical folks are only trying to do good, but really their job is all about being gentle bullies and I tend to react badly at times. It makes me a little crazy. I’m sure that somewhere in one of the many medical computer files some well-meaning person has noted next to my name, “A-Hole“. So, sit back and enjoy some medical trivia from a proud, card-carrying A-Hole.
The Egyptian mummy was a standard drug of European pharmacology until the eighteenth century. Despite criticism within the medical profession, doctors prescribed mummy powder as a cure for internal ailments. Portions of many embalmed Egyptian dead were swallowed before science and common sense rendered the practice obsolete.
Sigmund Freud turned down a $10,000.00 fee in 1920 to spend six months in New York treating patients in the morning and lecturing in the afternoon. He calculated that he would return to Vienna poorer than when he left so he declined.
Opium was frequently used as a painkiller by Army doctors during the US Civil War. By the end of the war, according to conservative estimates 100,000 soldiers had become addicted to opium, at a time when the population of the entire country was only 40,000,000.
In the eighteenth century, there were American slaves who were physicians. They treated not only other slaves and free blacks and whites as well, until restricted by law to serving only the black community.
Approximately 3500 men were practicing medicine at the time of the American Revolution. Only about 400 had an actual medical degree. Of the much larger number of women who practiced, even a smaller number had any formal training.
I’m a former vet who proudly served. Since then, I’ve maintained an interest in all things military. As much as all of the new high-tech equipment is interesting, I still lean towards the past history of wars and warfare. It’s always good to know all of the small details of warfare to give you an accurate picture of why wars occurred and what steps had to be taken to end them.
The Spartans used a staff and a coil of paper to keep military messages from being decoded if they fell into the hands of the enemy. Rolled around the staff, the words fit together and made sense. Unrolled, the paper was covered with gibberish. Each general had a carefully guarded staff of precisely the same diameter around which to roll the paper and read the message.
During World War II, the Federal Bureau of investigation secretly established a house of male prostitution in New York’s Greenwich Village. The house staffed multilingual agents for the purpose of extracting import shipping information from foreign sailors. The FBI later claimed it had been a very successful operation.
By the end of World War II, there wasn’t a German spy in Great Britain who was not under British control. All either were cooperating with the British while maintaining their German “alliance” or had been caught and “turned around”.
During World War II, the United States Navy had a world champion chess player, Reuben Fine, calculate on the basis of positional probability where enemy submarines might surface. Dr. Fine said, it worked out all right.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation captured eight German saboteurs shortly after they came ashore from a U-boat off eastern Long Island in 1942. Six were executed and two imprisoned. It turns out that one of those imprisoned, the expedition’s leader, was an anti-Nazi and had tipped off the FBI. He was promised that he be jailed for only six months, but he got instead, a 90-year prison term.
Bismarck tricked the French into the Franco-Prussian War by altering a telegram from the King of Prussia. He struck out the king’s consolatory words, so that the telegram sounded belligerent. The result was what the Iron Chancellor had intended, a French declaration of war, followed by a German victory.
Mata Hari, the Dutch-Javanese dancer who became the most famous spy of World War I, ordered that a suit be especially tailored for her for the occasion of her execution by a French firing squad. She also wore a new pair of white gloves.
Christmas has always been a season of giving from the Salvation Army Santa’s to Soup Kitchens, and the efforts of almost every religious group I can think of. I was curious about the generosity of previous generations but not only for the Christmas Season but generosity in general. So, here are a few samples of it from the past that have been long forgotten.
John D Rockefeller made his first contribution to a philanthropic cause at the age of 16, which was in 1855. By the time he died, 82 years later, the oil magnate had given away $531,326,842.
Ernest Hemingway gave to The Shrine of the Virgin in eastern Cuba, where he lived, Nobel Prize money he had won for the novel The Old Man and the Sea. “You don’t,” he said, “ever have a thing until you give it away.”
When he learned, in 1905, that one of his company’s batteries was defective, Thomas Alva Edison offered to refund all buyers. From his own pocket he returned $1 million.
About $330 million was donated by Andrew Carnegie to libraries, research projects, and world peace endeavors.
Gerrit Smith, a trader of Dutch descent, made available 120,000 acres of Adirondack wilderness to runaway slaves – a noble experiment with the help of his son, who was a professional reformer active in the Underground Railroad.
To help raise funds for the starving poor of Berlin, Albert Einstein in 1930 sold his autograph for three dollars for a signature and autographed photographs for five dollars each.
In his will, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, the Polish patriot who fought in Washington’s army in the American Revolution, specified that the US land tracts he had received should be sold and the money from the sales be used to purchase the freedom of black slaves.
From his own pocket, Superintendent of Finance, Robert Morris, met the American army’s demobilization pay in 1783. He was later thrown into the debtor’s prison, financially ruined in land speculation.
The Swiss philanthropist Henri Dunant devoted so much of his money and his energy to the establishment of the Red Cross that his textile business failed, and he became penniless. He was a cowinner of the first Nobel Peace Prize, in 1901, and left all of the prize money to charities, not to his family.
After reading all of these examples it just proves to me that generosity has always been around but in many cases, never acknowledged. It’s nice to know there’s a certain percentage of the population willing to make pesonal sacrifices to help others. That’s a Christmas wish if there ever was one.
I continue to be fascinated by history. American history is my favorite especially reading stories of the Founding Fathers. I’ve gathered together a few interesting historical facts that are not commonly known about them.
Not until 1826 were fireworks used to celebrate the Fourth of July. Coincidentally, it was the very day that two of the founding fathers died, but their demise did not interfere with the national celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It took four days for the news of John Adams death to reach Washington and two days for the capital to learn of Thomas Jefferson’s death.
British ships in the English Channel fired a salute of 21 guns when word reached them that the countries erstwhile great adversary, President George Washington, had died in the States.
Thomas Jefferson chose not to attend ceremonies marking the death of George Washington in 1799, nor did he write a note of condolence to Washington’s widow. This enmity stemmed from the last year of Washington’s second term as the United States President, when he suspected Jefferson of being responsible for scurrilous attacks in the press on him. Jefferson denied responsibility and Washington accepted his word, but there was a chill between them thereafter.
Ben Franklin wanted the turkey, not the eagle, to be the United States national symbol. He considered the eagle “a bird of bad moral character” because it lives “by sharping and robbing”.
Thomas Jefferson was a smuggler of sorts. He went into northern Italy, in 1787, to see the machines used there for cleaning rice seed and was able to filch and bring back to the United States samples of rice that he gave to planters in Georgia and South Carolina. He also picked up information about the olive tree.
A former US vice president, Aaron Burr, was charged with treason for trying, it was said, to separate the western lands from the United States and establish his own rule in the early 1800s. He was acquitted, but his image remained tarnished.
George Washington seldom slept more than three or four consecutive hours in any day during the Revolutionary War.
Signing a memorial to Congress for the abolition of slavery was the last public act of Benjamin Franklin.
I have to admit that after reading the many and varied facts about the founding fathers I appreciate them even more. A group of colonists, some with education but many without, had the will and fortitude to fight for what they believed and to create this country. I wish I had the power of time travel so I can go back to the 1700’s and bring all of those gentlemen to the present day. I’m fairly certain they wouldn’t be at all happy.
I thought I would supply all of my female readers with a few interesting historical facts from the early days of women’s rights. These women were the steppingstones that your gender walked on to get where it’s at today. Enjoy the history lesson.
To prove that girls could master such subjects as mathematics and philosophy without detracting from their health or charm, Emma Hart Willard founded the Troy (NY) Female Seminary, in 1821.
Not until 1932 was a woman elected to the Senate. She was Hatty Caraway, Arkansas Democrat. The first appointed woman senator was Rebecca Felton, a Georgia Democrat, in 1922.
No woman held a Presidential cabinet position until 1933, when Francis Perkins became Secretary of Labor and she served a dozen years. Before her appointment in Washington, Ms. Perkins was an industrial commissioner for New York State.
Mercy Otis Warren ( 1728 – 1814), at a time when women rarely played any part in public life, she became a propagandist for the US revolutionary cause, a confidant of John Adams, and an admired ally of most of the Massachusetts rebel leaders. She was a pioneer feminist who argued that women’s alleged weaknesses were due simply to inferior education.
At a time when the education of girls in most prominent families which concentrated on needlework, music, dancing, and languages, Aaron Burr insisted that his daughter, Theodosia, learn serious subjects rather than ornamental ones “to convince the world what neither sex appears to believe – that women have souls!”
For founding a birth-control clinic, in 1917, Margaret Sanger was jailed for a month in a workhouse.
I thought today might be a good time to address the “gouging” that’s been going on with food prices. I thought the oil industry was the champion gouger of all times but once again I was mistaken. I should have known that once it started with gas prices it would eventually spread to damn near everything else. Blame it on inflation or President Biden or on the many business men who seized on an opportunity to put it to the American public once again.
Yesterday I had the misfortune of doing the food shopping for the week. It will be a cold day in hell when I pay $5.50 for a dozen medium sized chicken eggs. I won’t list all of the things that pissed me off but trust me, there were dozens. With that thought in mind I’d like to time travel back to the “good old days” to do some comparison shopping. Welcome to the late 1940’s.
The average salary for a full time employee was $2900.00 and the minimum wage was a whopping $.40 an hour. I’m sure we’d all like to see prices like this again.
Bread (lb) $.14
Bacon (lb) $.77
Butter (lb) $.87
Eggs (1 dozen) $.72
Milk (gal) $.44
Potatoes (10 lb) $.57
Coffee (1 lb) $.51
Sugar (5 lbs) $.47
Gasoline (gal) $.26
Movie Tickets $.36
Postage Stamps $.03
Car $1250.00
Single Family Home $7700.00
Who is to blame? It’s a long list heavily populated by hundreds of politicians and thousands of loyal American businesses and corporations. As always, the regular guy gets stuck paying for their errors in judgement and sheer stupidity. Hooray for love of country and patriotism (sarcasm off).
I’ve been trying desperately not to bring politics onto this blog. Years ago, I created a political blog and after months and months of writing discovered that the American public isn’t interested in truth but only in perception. After the fiasco of Bill Clinton and his minions including the lovely but deadly Hillary Clinton, I didn’t think it could get any worse. I was wrong, really wrong. Hence the election twice of Barack Obama who was a phony if there ever was one, and his wife who remains to this day a borderline communist. Don’t get me wrong, George Bush was no prize either.
I was a supporter of Donald Trump only because he was the only candidate that had a chance of keeping Hillary out of the presidency. I celebrated a little when he won the election, but I did so with many reservations. I have to admit that he did a great number of really good things, but they were all overshadowed by his persistent need to have his ego stroked. If nobody else would stroke it, he did it himself, hence the hundreds of texts on the internet.
The hatred for the man appears to have no bounds both from the Left and the Right. Politics in this country is difficult on a good day and he’s making it impossible to have even one good day. There are more important things to be addressing than his continual whining and idiotic lawsuits. Give us all a break.
This comes from a somewhat conservative person who wished you well when you ran and regretted it ever since. It is my solemn wish that you would stop talking to media, stay off the internet, fire your attorneys, and go back to building golf courses, casinos and whatever else you need to make more and more money. You say you love this country so do the right thing. Support the next Republican candidate of your choice and fade away like Douglas McArthur. You’ve praised him in the past, follow his lead.
“I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.”
As I was looking through some old boxes and albums recently, I time traveled back to the days of my youth. Trust me it was a long, long, long time ago – circa 1946. So, in celebration of my recent birthday I put together this quick summary of the year I was born.
It was peace time in American after World War II but that didn’t slow the politicians down too much. President Truman seized the mines after employees rejected government-negotiated contracts and costly strikes hit General Motors, Ford, General Electric, along with meatpackers, musicians, longshoremen, railroad workers, coffin makers, and in Washington, DC, taxi drivers.
The Army and Navy were granted permission to manufacture atomic weapons.
On May 2, in San Francisco, Marines landed on Alcatraz to battle armed convicts in an attempted jailbreak.
Pacific tidal wave kills 205 in Hawaii.
On July 1 the United States detonated a bomb, the Bikini Helena, beneath the Pacific at the bikini atoll.
In France, the Cannes Film Festival was held for the first time, after its debut was rudely delayed by Hitler’s invasion of Poland.
Admiral Byrd led an expedition to the south pole.
Penicillin was synthesized for the first time by a United States chemist Vincent Du Vignea.
The three top billboard stars were Perry Como, Dinah Shore, and Frankie Carle.
In baseball, it was the American League over the National League, 12 to 0, in the annual All-Star game.
In pro football, the Chicago Bears bagged the National Football League title for a record sixth time.
The movie It’s a Wonderful Life debuted.
The top box office celebrity was Bing Crosby.
Consumers in New York reported eating horse meat as America’s meat and poultry supplies hit an all-time low. While poultry prices reached a dollar a pound, ceiling prices on choice cuts of horse were $.17-$.21 per pound.
On a shopping spree Cashmere and wool mufflers cost $6.50. 16mm movie projectors were $56.75. A party dress cost $14.95. A set of hickory skis came in at $9.95. A fancy Stetson felt hat could set you back a whopping $6.00.
And last and most importantly: I was born on August 8 (Baby Boomers Rule!).
I’m normally not one to celebrate holidays on this blog but I think celebrating the 4th of July is important. So let me climb up on my “soap box” for a few minutes. I’m a former vet who enlisted in the army in the 60’s and served two and a half years overseas. It changed my life forever, for the better I might add. Independence Day is celebrated as the day we forced our independence on the Brits. Without servicemen that would never would have happened. I celebrate this day by honoring the men and women who served this country in the past and the men and women of the future.
For the last 4 days I’ve been watching a Netflix special called Dateline World War II. The program is 80 short episodes chronicling the war from the 1930’s to the final day with the surrender of Japan. This documentary is a collection of films taken by photographers from both the Allies and the Axis countries. It’s impossible to spend this many hours and see the murderous, hateful, destruction and loss of life without being affected. Numerous times while I was bingeing the series I had to stop and to take a time out. I made it through the 80 episodes in 5 days and have an even greater appreciation of this country than before.
For those generations like mine that came into existence because of World War II (the baby boomers), it’s a reminder of what our parents and their generation went through to ensure our independence. I come from a proud family that had a grandfather seriously injured in France during WW I, my father and uncle serving on destroyer escorts fighting U-Boats to get supplies to England in WW II, and I’m the third generation.
I would hope some of our generation and members of the generations that followed would take the time to watch this documentary. It’s hard to know where your country’s headed unless you have some idea of where it’s been.
ENJOY YOUR INDEPENDENCE – WE’VE PAID A HEAVY PRICE TO KEEP IT
I always enjoy looking back at my life and learning things I either never knew or have forgotten. Recently I obtained some literature from the year 1940. That’s a long time ago and I can appreciate that since I was born only six years later. Let’s see what 1940 had to offer its citizens.
Local dime stores were the place to be as a child. Candy and soda pop were the favorites.
Newspaper headline from January: OSKAR SHINDLER BEGINS PROVIDING REFUGE FOR KRAKOW JEWS
Jack Nicklaus was born on January 21st.
Formal dancing, accompanied by the sounds of the big bands of the day, was a great way to conclude a celebrative event.
The Philadelphia Story and Fantasia were the top box office hits. One of Disney’s first animated hits, Pinocchio, was released as a feature-length film.
Tom Brokaw, Ted Koppel, and Fran Tarkington were all born in February.
The use of telephones was in its infancy. Party lines were shared lines and kept everyone in the loop, as those online could quietly listen to any conversations at hand.
Winston Churchill became the Prime Minister of Great Britain.
On May 15, 1940, the first nylon stockings went on sale.
The state of New York hosted the World’s Fair at Flushing Meadows.
On November 7, 1940, the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapsed into the water. The only casualty was a dog sadly left in the car as its owner fled.
FDR was president, the population of the United States was at 132 million, and the average salary for a full-time employee was $1200 a year. The minimum wage was $.30 an hour.
The first McDonald’s restaurant opened on May 15, 1940, in San Bernardino California.
On January 31, 1940, Ida M. Fuller became the first American citizen to receive a Social Security check.
Bread was $.08 a loaf, bacon $.27 a pound, eggs $.33 a dozen, milk $.26 a gallon, coffee $.21 a pound, gasoline $.11 a gallon, a movie ticket was $.24, postage stamps were $ $.03’s, average cars costs $990, and the cost for a single-family home on average was $2938.
everyuselessthing.com 