The night of Sunday, October 8, 1871 saw a huge, destructive fire rage through the city of Chicago, Illinois. The Great Chicago Fire started in the barn of one very unfortunate Mrs. Patrick O’Leary on the corner of DeKoven and Twelfth Streets. The fire raged to the northeast, eventually consuming some 2,000 acres and 17,000 buildings of Chicago, killing 300 people and leaving 100,000 people – a third of the city’s population – homeless. [1]
That fire is not the subject of this article, for it was only the second-worst (perhaps even third-worst) fire of that terrible evening in loss of life.

Who’s Heard of Peshtigo, WI?
The greatest fire in terms of loss of life happened that same night in Peshtigo, Wisconsin and surrounding areas. The Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871 resulted in the deaths of between 1,200 and 2,500 people (800 in Peshtigo alone), and is the deadliest fire in U.S. History. [2] Because the fire was mainly rural, it is called a forest fire in many sources. Fires had actually been burning in the Peshtigo area for weeks, but due to extremely hot and windy conditions Sunday night, these merged and grew into a firestorm which engulfed Peshtigo on October 8. The Peshtigo fire scorched about 1.2 million acres of land, and actually jumped Green Bay to burn parts of Door and Kewaunee counties on the Door Peninsula.
The poor people of Peshtigo and neighboring towns did not know the danger they were in until a wall of fire raced towards the town. We get a glimpse of the horror of that night in this newspaper article from October 11th:

From the survivors, we glean the following in reference to the scene at the village and in the farming region commonly known as the “Sugar Bush.” Sunday evening, after church, for about half an hour a death like stillness hung over the doomed town. The smoke from the fires in the region around, was so thick as to be stifling and hung like a funeral pall over everything and all was enveloped in Egyptian darkness. Soon, light puffs of air were felt, the horizon at the south east, south and south west began to be faintly illuminated, a perceptible trembling of the earth was felt, and a distant roar broke the awful silence. People began to fear that some awful calamity was impending, but as yet, no one even dreamed of the danger.
The illumination soon became intensified into a fierce lurid glare, the roar deepened into a howl, as if all the demons from the infernal pit had been let loose, when the advance gusts of wind from the main body of the tornado struck.
Chimneys were blown down, houses were unroofed, the roof of the Wooden Ware Factory was lifted, a large ware house filled with tubs, pails, [kanakans?], keelers and fish kits was nearly demolished, and amid the confusion terror and terrible apprehension of the moment, the firey element in tremendous unrolling billows and masses of sheeted flame, enveloped the [doomed?] village. The frenzy of despair seized on all hearts, strong men bowed like reeds before the firey blast, women and children, like frightened spectres flitting through the awful gloom, were swept like Autumn leaves. Crowds pushed for the bridge, but the bridge, like all else, was receiving its baptism of fire. Hundreds crowded into the river, cattle plunged in with them, and being huddled together in the general confusion of the moment, many who had taken to the water to avoid the flames were drowned. A great many were on the blazing bridge when it fell. The debris from the burning town was hurled over and on the heads of those who were in the water, killing many and maiming others so that they gave up to despair and sank to a watery grave.
In less than an hour from the time the tornado struck the town, the village of Peshtigo was annihilated! [3]

The firestorm that destroyed Peshtigo has been compared to the man-made firestorms of World War II which decimated Dresden and Tokyo. Like those cities, there was nowhere to hide from the advancing wall of flame:

People didn’t just die in Peshtigo. They spontaneously combusted and were cremated by heat that reached 2000 degrees. They succumbed instantly from breathing in poisoned, superheated air. They died of smoke inhalation, were run over by panicked livestock and drowned in the river where they sought refuge. Others were crushed in collapsing buildings, impaled by flying debris and pulverized by all kinds of things dropping out of the sky on top of them. Still others committed suicide rather than face death by fire. There is one known case where a father killed his three daughters and then himself to avoid that fate. [4]

The same hot and windy conditions that fanned the flames of the Chicago and Peshtigo fires also resulted in The Great Michigan Fire, which burned several towns in the thumb of Michigan and may itself have resulted in over 500 deaths, placing Chicago third on the list of fatal fires that night. [5]

Vox’s Take: You should know that a newspaper reporter admitted to making up the story of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow starting the Chicago fire. Even though the story was debunked almost immediately, it has survived all these years – some sources still casually cite the actions of this supposed bovine arsonist as fact.

The newspaper article quoted above conveyed better than I could the horrific situations these people experienced.

 

 

 

 

 

Sources:
[1] What (or Who) Caused the Great Chicago Fire?, SMITHSONIAN.COM
[2] List of disasters in the United States by death toll, wikipedia.org
[3] The Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871, Deana C. Hipke. The Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871.
[4] Peshtigo Fire, Peshtigo, WI, exploringoffthebeatenpath.com
[5] The Great Midwest Wildfires of 1871, National Weather Service
[6] Catherine O’Leary, wikipedia.org

Let’s face it: Americans are prudes. I first learned this when traveling overseas, and found that people from other countries are not freaked out about exposed skin the way Americans are. For example, in South Africa, people did not need changing tents on the beach, they simply changed into their swimsuits. And no-one cared. The little kids ran and played on the beach naked. And no-one cared. In America, people would be scandalized. It wasn’t always that way, but it seems Victorian sensibilities have been stuck in our society for quite a while, at least among the more conservative elements. Refer to this amusing bit of prudery.
And this one.
Racy Lady Liberty
But what about the topless lady I speak of? Why, none other than Lady Liberty! One of the most famous paintings depicting Liberty comes out of the French July Revolution of 1830, one of many struggles for liberty in France. This is Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People. In this painting Liberty, in the person of Marianne, is gallantly waving the French Tricolors, leading the Parisians in their quest for freedom and democracy. Why the exposed breasts? Some historians attribute this to the Romantic style of the painting with classical references – in the classics women are very often unclothed. Another reason is that Marianne is an allegorical figure, an idea rather than a real person, and the rules regarding exposed flesh were different for mythical figures. [1]
When the French sculpture Frederic Auguste Bartholdi was commissioned to create the Statue of Liberty as part of an 1876 celebration of the 100th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence, he created Liberty in more modest garb, perhaps to accommodate American tastes? (Actually, due to funding and other delays, the statue was a bit late for the 1876 centennial of the Declaration of Independence: it was not finished until 1886.) [2]

The “Dirty” Quarter
Here’s a famous incident involving American squeamishness over nudity: in 1916, the U.S. Mint debuted a new quarter featuring a Standing Liberty. On the new quarter, Liberty is shown in the classical style with one breast exposed. According to some sources, public outcry immediately ensued, and the Mint was forced to quickly redesign the new “obscene” quarter. [3] Perhaps making a veiled statement about the hub-bub, the sculptor, Hermon Atkins MacNeil, corrected the situation by depicted Liberty wearing a chain-mail vest covering the offending torso up to her neck, rather than simply rearranging her gown. You should know there is an alternate version to the story. [4] Some historians don’t accept the “public outcry” explanation. You see, in 1916 America was very concerned about defense and was about to reluctantly enter World War I. In this atmosphere Liberty was depicted in a defensive posture (note that she’s holding a shield). The Mint may have belatedly decided it was inconsistent for Liberty to be so vulnerable in her dress and should be better protected. To me, the addition of the chain-mail vest is the inconsistency, since the shield, depicting defense, is on the left side of the figure, while Liberty’s right side, where she’s holding an olive branch, represents peace. Also, if the officials at the Mint thought there was a design inconsistency, why would that have not been fixed before going into production? An ironic side-note is that, due to the quick design change, the “breast-exposed” quarter became an immediate collector’s item.

The Rest of the World
Other countries are not so worried about Liberty’s modesty. Note these coins from Mexico and Chile depicting a winged Libertad. No worries here about using the classical form. See also this French coin with Liberty (the figure on the left holding a Liberty Cap on a pole) next to Hercules and Justice.

Sources:
[1] Romanticism in France Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, smarthistory.org
[2] History of The Statue of Liberty, statueofliberty.org
[3] The Bare-Breasted Liberty Quarter – 1916 & 1917 Standing Liberty Type, by Susan Headley, About.com/coins
[4] Standing Liberty Quarter, StandingLibertyQuarter.org

I remember distinctly my first polio vaccine. Now usually it would be very unusual for me to remember getting a vaccination, but this was a special case. One day, about 1963 I’m thinking, my entire grade school class was taken to Gove Middle School in Denver, where sugar cubes containing a drop of the new oral polio vaccine were being given en masse to school children. This was because the much-anticipated polio vaccine was finally available in quantity, and a major health risk for children could now be effectively fought. It’s hard to imagine now, but in the first half of the 20th Century polio was one of the most feared diseases and the annual polio outbreaks were a common and dangerous occurrence.
Pre-Vaccination
Polio (also known as poliomyelitis or infantile paralysis) is a highly contagious viral disease which has dogged the human race throughout its history. Polio was first described in 1789 by English physician Michael Underwood as a debility of the lower extremities in children. [1] Polio outbreaks were first reported in the United States in 1843. Polio did not, however, reach epidemic proportions until the industrial revolution and the concentration of people in cities. This was due to the normal transmission method of polio: people drinking contaminated water or eating contaminated food. In medical terms this is the fecal-oral route of disease transmission. (Eewww!) Cities were notoriously dirty in the early industrial age, with inadequate waste water disposal systems.
With the rise of the cities the number, scope and intensity of outbreaks gradually increased. In addition, increasingly older people were becoming sick with polio. For over a hundred years, the annual summer and fall outbreaks increased, until the U.S. reached a peak of polio cases in 1952. In that year, the U.S. incurred some 58,000 reported cases, with 3,145 deaths and 21,269 cases of paralytic polio. The real number of cases may actually have been much higher, since modern research indicates that only about 1% of polio cases result in paralysis. [2] The number of new cases began to drop after 1952 with improvements in sanitation and with municipalities banning public swimming venues upon news of an outbreak starting.
My mother-in-law Betty and her brother Jimmy were both inflicted with polio as children. Nana remembers being treated with Sister Kenny’s controversial treatment. [3] Sister Kenny developed her treatment of hot compresses and passive exercise from practical experience, and despite her success the technique was not accepted by many in the medical establishment of the day. Betty and Jimmy were spared the paralysis and pretty fully recovered, though Betty has one leg ½ an inch shorter than the other and Jimmy suffered from post-polio syndrome in his later years. My brother Marty remembers going over to one of his friend’s houses, whose polio-infected mother was not so lucky and was confined to an iron lung in the living room. The iron lung was necessary because the paralysis had affected the muscles of her chest, making breathing impossible without assistance.
The March of Dimes
The March of Dimes, originally known as the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, was founded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on January 3, 1938 in response to the increasingly severe polio outbreaks. [4] Roosevelt, himself diagnosed with polio, was unable to move his legs, a fact (though not secret) that was carefully de-emphasized throughout his political career. After Roosevelt’s death, the nation wanted to commemorate Roosevelt in many ways, including coinage. The U.S. Mint concluded that the dime was the obvious choice for honoring FDR. Interestingly, modern medical scholars think that Roosevelt may actually have had Guillain-Barré syndrome rather than polio.
Modern Times
The World Health Organization reports that the polio vaccine has been enormously successful in combating the spread of polio throughout the world, except in three countries: Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan. What’s going on there? Well, sadly there are many people in these countries who won’t get vaccinated, either because of rumors that the vaccine is harmful or because of pressure from Muslim extremists, who view the Polio Global Eradication Initiative as a Western conspiracy. In fact, on several occasions polio vaccination workers have been murdered [5] by these misdirected individuals.
Vox’s Take: There’s no good reason why polio could not join smallpox on the tragically short list of infectious diseases to be completely eradicated by medicine. [6] However, it cannot be eliminated until everyone cooperates, including the religious zealots.

Sources:
[1] Polio History, EMedTV
[2] Poliomyelitis, Wikipedia
[3] Sister Kenny: Confronting the Conventional in Polio Treatment, by Miki Fairley, Orthotics & Prosthetics.com
[4] January3, 1938: Franklin Roosevelt founds March of Dimes, This Day in History, History.com
[5] Gunmen Kill Nigerian Polio Vaccine Workers in Echo of Pakistan Attacks, By Donald G. McNeil Jr., The New York Times
[6] Pages in category “Eradicated diseases”, Wikipedia

You are all familiar, I’m sure, with the image of the horse-mounted Cavalry from movie Westerns. Care to guess in which war the last United States horse-mounted cavalry charge took place?

o Civil War (1861-1865)

o Spanish-American War (1898)

o World War I (1914-1919)

o World War II (1939-1945)

The answer may surprise you: it was during World War II. It happened January 16, 1942 near the village of Morong on the Bataan Peninsula, during the Japanese invasion of the Philippines, when the U.S. Army’s 26th Cavalry surprised a Japanese infantry unit and scattered them. [1] A nice painting commemorating the charge can be viewed here. But didn’t they have tanks and jeeps and half-tracks in World War II? Sure they did, but while the Army began the process of mechanization during World War I, this process was not complete even at the start of World War II. There was still a little room for an old-fashioned cavalry charge. The U.S. example, by the way, is not the last in history. As with a lot of historical trivia, there’s a lively debate over when the last cavalry charge in the world actually took place.

The traditional mission of the cavalry was as a specialized scouting and quick assault force. Military commanders used the cavalry to find the enemy’s forces, screen the enemy from finding their own forces, and strike the enemy at focused points in a battle. This is not to be confused with the use of horses as a means of military transportation. Dragoons, or mounted infantry, use horses to get to the scene, but any fighting is done while dismounted. As the photo shows, there are some pretty recent examples of the military use of horses – such as U.S. Special Forces during Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan in 2006. Sometimes the terrain just isn’t suited to mechanized vehicles, as anyone who has hiked in the Rockies can attest.

Sources:

[1] The Last Mounted Cavalry Charge: Luzon 1942, The CBS Interactive Business Network
[2] Cavalry, Wikipedia

I took this shot of a steam locomotive on my recent visit to South Park City, a re-creation of an early Colorado mining town. This locomotive, painted to represent an engine of the Denver, South Park and Pacific Railroad (D.S.P.&P.R.R.), is a survivor of the era of the “Narrow Guage” railroads. In Colorado we hear about narrow guage all the time, but for those of you not familiar with narrow guage, this refers to the distance between the rails of a railroad track. Standard guage is 4 foot, eight and 1/2 inches between the rails’ inside edges, where the width of a narrow guage track might be 3 foot or less. The narrower guage allowed the train to make sharper turns, necessary in the mountains where digging railroad grades was enormously expensive. The depot’s large red tank in the background held water to fill the steam locomotive’s boiler; and the black car immediately behind the engine held wood or coal for keeping the engine’s fire box fed.

Take a close look at the clock in the photo (click on the picture for a larger image). This clock was hanging in the Train Depot at South Park City, a re-creation of an early Colorado mining town. Of course you know it’s a clock, but what’s that outer ring of numbers? The number “one” is at the very top and progresses to “thirty-one”. Can you guess what those numbers represent? Click here to see.

This item was found in the General Store at South Park City, a re-creation of an early Colorado mining town. Can you guess what it is? Click on the picture to see.

I used to see these quite often in public buildings when I was little – not so much anymore. I noticed this example when touring South Park City, a re-creation of an early Colorado mining town. It was hanging on the wall of the saloon. Can you guess what it is? Click on the picture to see.

Good Friday – the Friday before Easter, has not been so good for the residents (human and otherwise) around Prince William Sound, Alaska. Two disasters, 25 years apart, continue to leave their mark on the area.

The first, which occurred on Friday, March 27, 1964, was the Good Friday Earthquake, also called the Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964. At 9.2 on the moment magnitude scale, this was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in North America, and the second-most powerful in the world. I remember watching a documentary on this earthquake many years ago (sorry, I can’t remember the name), where a man was describing the scene during the 4 to 5 minutes of shaking: “You think of the ground as being solid. I looked out, and saw the ground rolling like the waves of the ocean.” A woman tearfully described seeing a fissure in the ground open up, her son fall in, and then the ground close up again. However, the earthquake had a very low fatality rate due to the sparsely populated area where it occurred, and the fact that most buildings in the shaking zone were made of wood. Most of the 131 deaths actually resulted from the ensuing tsunami, which killed people in Alaska, Oregon and California. [1] One of the highest fatality areas was the dock area of the port of Valdez, where a section of land 4000 feet by 600 feet slid into the ocean. [2] The ground was permanently raised in some areas by as much as 30 feet, and lowered in other areas by eight feet.
The town of Portage on the Turnagain Arm was lowered to below sea level, and so had to be permanently abandoned. The village of Chenega was destroyed by the tsunami and 23 of the 68 inhabitants killed. The downtown area of Anchorage experienced heavy damage. Seeing the second story of some buildings at street level makes it a wonder to me that more people weren’t killed. The effects of the earthquake were felt worldwide: “Seiches, a sort of sloshing of water back and forth in a small body of water like a boat harbor or swimming pool, were observed as far away as Louisiana where a number of fishing boats were sunk. Oscillations in the height of water in wells were reported from as far away as South Africa.” [1] An asphalt storage plant near Valdez was destroyed, spilling an unknown quantity of asphalt into Prince William Sound. With the area inundated with relief efforts pertaining to the earthquake and tsunami, no particular clean-up effort was attempted for this spill. Today, remains of the asphalt spill are mixed with remains of another spill [3], which brings us to the second Good Friday disaster.
On March 24, 1989, the supertanker Exxon Valdez was navigating Prince William Sound (outside of normal shipping lanes to avoid ice) when it struck Bligh Reef and spilled 11 million of its’ 53 million gallons of toxic, unrefined crude oil into the sound and fouling 1,100 miles of coastline. [4] This spill was particularly egregious because it happened in a wild and beautiful setting and because of the culpability of the captain, third mate and Exxon itself in causing a completely avoidable disaster. In the aftermath of the spill, Exxon did not take the high road, dragging its’ feet in the cleanup and contending and delaying any payout for punitive damages, claiming they were not appropriate in an “accident”. More than 20 years later, the effects of the spill are still being felt in the area, with some wildlife species still not having recovered. [5]
Vox’s Take: Sadly, the infamous Exxon Valdez Spill is dwarfed by the Deepwater Horizon Spill of 2010, which spewed an estimated 218 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. [6] Given the Exxon example, and the ability of huge corporations with their teams of lawyers to avoid accountability for their misdeeds, its seems unlikely that British Petroleum (BP) will end up paying for more than a small fraction of the damages.

Sources:

[1] The Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964, Alaska Earthquake Information Center
[2] The Great Alaskan Earthquake & Tsunamis of 1964, by Thomas J. Sokolowski, West Coast & Alaska Tsunami Warning Center, Palmer Alaska
[3] The Good Friday Catastrophes in Prince William Sound, Alaska, U.S. Geological Survey Energy Resource Surveys Program
[4] Exxon Valdez oil spill, The Encyclopedia of Earth
[5] A Report on the 20th Anniversary of the Good Friday Spill from the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council (EVOSTC), Information About Alaska
[6] Deepwater Horizon oil spill, The Encyclopedia of Earth

Have you ever heard of the Rocky Mountain Locust (Melanoplus spretus)? Mid-western farmers in the 19th Century sure knew of it. Every 7 to 12 years, this normally benign grasshopper entered a gregarious (swarming) phase and became a locust, and what swarms they made! The largest recorded concentration of animals ever, according to The Guinness Book of Records, was a swarm of Rocky Mountain Locusts. [1]

The swarm was observed by Dr. Albert Child of the U.S. Signal Corps in 1875, remembered by midwest farmers as the Year of the Locust. From timing the swarm as it passed overhead for five days, and telegraphing associates in other towns, Dr. Child estimated the size of the swarm as 1,800 miles long and at least 110 miles wide: 198,000 square miles containing 3.5 trillion grasshoppers! [2] Swarms of locusts, though not usually this size, descended on farming communities from Texas to Minnesota like a Biblical plague, eating every green thing in sight. When the plants were gone, the hungry insects ate leather, cotton and wool (still on the sheep). Housewives vainly placed blankets over their gardens. The pests ate the blankets, then the gardens.

Brief extracts from contemporary accounts will suggest the nature of the locust plague: “They came like a driving snow in winter, filling the air, covering the earth, the buildings, the shocks of grain and everything.” “Their alighting sounded like a continuous hailstorm. The noise was like suppressed distant thunder or a train in motion.” “They were four to six inches deep on the ground and continued to alight for hours. Their weight broke off large tree limbs.” “By dark there wasn’t a stalk of field corn over a foot high. Onions were eaten down to the very roots. They gnawed the handles of farm tools and the harness on horses or hanging in the barn, the bark of trees, clothing and curtains of homes and dead animals — including dead locusts.” [3]

A swarm of locusts devastates the family farm in Laura Ingalls Wilder‘s book On the Banks of Plum Creek. After this biological tsunami passed through, the crops were devastated and the settlers faced starvation, forcing the Federal and state governments to supply the stricken pioneers with food, clothing and seed for replanting crops.

Persons in the East have often smiled incredulously at our statements that the locusts often impeded the trains on the western railroads. Yet such was by no means an infrequent occurrence in 1874 and 1875-the insects pawing over the track or basking thereon so numerously that the oil from their crushed bodies reduced the traction so as to actually stop the train, especially on an up-grade. – Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture For The Year 1877. Washington, DC 1878. [7]

So why don’t you hear about these critters now? Because, in the space of 27 years, the Rocky Mountain Locust population went from an estimated 15 trillion to… zero. Nada. Extinct. The last known pair was collected in 1902, and is now at the Smithsonian Institution. The species was declared extinct in the 1950’s. How can such a thing happen? Just as “being smart is no guarantee against being dead wrong” – Carl Sagan, it turns out that large numbers are no guarantee against a spectacular decline.

During the settlement period of the midwest, farmers tried many contraptions to try to eradicate the grasshoppers. It was like trying to empty the ocean with a teacup. However, the species had an Achilles heel, and that was: like Monarch Butterflies, after the swarming phase the population naturally declined and retreated to its breeding grounds. In the case of the Rocky Mountain Locust this was the fertile mountain river valleys. The whole population of these grasshoppers in this phase of their life cycle could fit into a 20-mile diameter circle. [2] It just so happened that the farmers who were so chastised by the locust were plowing up these same river valleys, and in the process, inadvertently decimating the locust’s breeding grounds. Farm records from the late 19th Century tell of plowing up egg sacs by the thousands during the spring planting. And so the grasshoppers died. It is one of the few agricultural “pest” species to have been eradicated, and it was done by accident.
Vox’s Take: Accidental demise or not, the story of the Rocky Mountain Locust is a cautionary tale we should heed. Life on this third rock from the Sun can be more fragile than is commonly supposed.

Sources:

[1] Rocky Mountain Locust, Wikipedia
[2] Six-Legged Teachers: Lessons from Locusts and Beetles, by Jeffrey A. Lockwood, WyoFile
[3] A Plague of Locusts, by Gerry Rising, August 1, 2004 issue of The Buffalo Sunday News
[4] Albert’s swarm, Wikipedia
[5] Looking Back at the Days of the Locust, By Carol Kaesuk Yoon, April 23, 2002 issue of The New York Times
[6] The death of the Super Hopper, by Jeffrey Lockwood, High Country News
[7] When The Skies Turned To Black: The Locust Plaque of 1875, Hearthstone Legacy Publications