The Benefits of Extremism

In these modern times, there is a grave misunderstanding circulating among reasonable people: the quaint belief that moderation, compromise, and balanced thought hold intrinsic value.  We are far past the time when we should have dispensed with such outdated notions.  Extremism in political beliefs, I propose, is not merely advantageous—it is the pinnacle of human intellectual and social evolution.

Never let logic, reason, common sense, or even reasonable doubt come between you and your cherished core beliefs—particularly those positions that you were born into such as religion or political party.   Take pride in the fact that you have always voted for the same political party, secure in the knowledge that despite the constant shifting of political party platforms or that politicians from both parties have been sentenced to jail, never once was the opposing candidate the correct choice.  Your tribe/clan/gang’s party has always been better than the other political party, chiefly because it has you as a member.  Ignore the troublesome fact that when a political party no longer has to earn your vote, you no longer have a vote. 

First, let's discuss simplicity.  Life is inherently complex and stressful.  Holding moderate, balanced beliefs necessitates tedious contemplation, constant reading, exhausting discussions, and—worst of all—the willingness to admit you might be wrong.  Conversely, adopting an extreme political belief system instantly removes these cumbersome burdens. Why grapple with nuance and complexity when you can, instead, rely on unshakable certainty?  Indeed, life is much simpler when your worldview consists entirely of absolutes.

Imagine the hours saved at social gatherings.  Without the needless clutter of nuance, you can effortlessly categorize all of your friends and closest family members as either staunch allies or irredeemable enemies.  Conversations become quicker, gatherings become shorter, and your social circle becomes refreshingly predictable.  Who wants relationships complicated by empathy and understanding when you can be safely ensconced in a political echo chamber? Certainly not the busy extremist!

Next, there's the benefit of clarity. Holding extreme beliefs provides unparalleled clarity of purpose.  There's never a moment of indecision, as your path forward is always crystal clear:  whatever your chosen ideological doctrine mandates.  When confronted with an unfamiliar or uncomfortable situation, there's no need for analysis or deliberation.  Simply consult your ideological handbook (real or imagined) and move confidently forward, armed with moral superiority and absolute assurance.

Economically, extremism offers surprising financial benefits.  Consider the cost savings associated with adopting one-dimensional (Or, these days, monochromatic: Red or Blue…or, maybe…Green?) ideologies.  No longer do you need to subscribe to multiple news outlets or waste money on diverse educational resources.  Your consumption of information can comfortably shrink to just one consistently reliable source that endlessly echoes your existing beliefs perfectly.  Think of the reduced expenses on books, magazines, and subscribing to multiple television channels.  One pamphlet or perhaps a single, trusted Facebook group, is all you need to stay blissfully informed.

Let's not forget the physical and psychological health advantages of extremist thinking.  Moderation and open-mindedness lead to incessant stress and anxiety—and trust me, stress leads to a heart attack.   The moderates endlessly worry about fairness, moral consistency, and the feelings of others—such exhausting burdens. By embracing extreme views, you can free yourself from the anxiety of moral ambiguity, releasing a torrent of delightful endorphins as you confidently judge the entirety of humanity from your lofty ideological perch.  Nothing is as intensely satisfying as virtue signaling for the one true cause.

Extremism also enhances community cohesion.  Shared hatred or disdain for those who hold opposing views provides a powerful bonding experience.  Social interactions become effortlessly streamlined as you quickly identify those who share your inflexible viewpoints, fostering friendships bound by mutual intolerance.  The stronger your shared opposition to "the other," the closer your bonds become.  After all, nothing builds camaraderie quite like collective disdain.  Depending on your choice of the one real truth, you automatically have a favorite television news show, a preselected set of enemies, and already decided-upon candidates to vote for in all future elections.  You even have a pre-approved set of epithets to call those with different opinions.  Fascist, looney lefty, Nazi, Socialist—these are just a few of the ample stock of ready-to-use insults for every occasion.  Remember, every policy of your opponent is wrong and must be resisted, even if it seems to be working.

Moreover, adopting extreme political beliefs vastly simplifies your digital life.  Algorithms across all social media platforms are explicitly designed to reward extreme positions with increased visibility.  Moderates languish unseen, while you, the extremist, will find your digital profile skyrocketing, earning you likes, shares, and retweets from an ever-growing circle of similarly morally gifted individuals.  Why toil in online obscurity when you could be a viral sensation, heroically leading the charge against nuance and reason?

Consider, too, the wonderful world of fashion that extremism unlocks.  No longer will you be subjected to the agony of deciding between shades of gray.  Your attire can now boldly proclaim your ideological allegiance with unambiguous clarity.  T-shirts, hats, badges, and banners emblazoned with catchy slogans replace bland, politically neutral attire.  Such decisive fashion statements allow you to effortlessly signal your moral and intellectual superiority in public spaces.  (After all, anyone with a belief system too long to fit on a bumper sticker is obviously a degenerate.)

Finally, let us acknowledge the existential reassurance extremism provides.  Doubt is a draining and often painful experience.  Why grapple with existential dread when an extreme ideology promises clear, unequivocal answers to all of life's deepest questions?  Certainty is bliss, and extremism offers ample supplies.  Indeed, there's profound comfort in knowing exactly whom to blame for all societal ills.  Whether your chosen scapegoat is an opposing political party, a social group, or perhaps even an abstract concept like globalization, extremism provides the simple solace of having an easily identifiable villain.

In conclusion, the benefits of extreme political beliefs are manifold.  They liberate you from burdensome thought, simplify your social and digital interactions, provide economic efficiencies, enhance your personal sense of identity, and create unbreakable bonds based on mutual disdain.  Truly, moderation is an overrated, exhausting, and ultimately futile pursuit.  Embrace extremism and enjoy the blissful simplicity it provides—you'll never have to think critically again.

Most importantly, you already know that everything above is true since I was obviously talking about the nuts in the other political party.  So, embrace the farthest reaches of the political spectrum.  Remember, the only thing found in the middle of the road is roadkill. 

A Wogdon Affair

Britbox is rerunning the old Lovejoy series, and I’m hooked.  If you have never watched the show—and I recommend that you do—the series is about an antiques dealer in England who possesses a special gift, he is a “divvy” a person who somehow just knows when he is standing next to a fake work of art.  I admit to being addicted to the series, despite its being more than thirty years old.

After eight seasons, the show went off the air—primarily because the public wanted grittier mystery shows, tougher protagonists, and stories with more violence and edgier dialogue.  There was no place left on the air for a show where an intelligent light-hearted hero broke the fourth wall to discuss art history.

Good movies and good television shows frequently get their start from good books and Lovejoy is no exception.  The Lovejoy series, penned by Jonathan Gash (the pseudonym of John Grant), is comprised of 24 novels, published between 1977 and 2008.  In real life Grant was a British Army doctor, who opened a private practice after he retired from the military.  Perhaps the real mystery is not a story told in one of the author’s books, but where he learned so much about antiques.

I recently tracked down a hardback copy of the first book in the series, the Judas Pair, which is about a matched pair of dueling pistols made by Durs Egg.  (No, that’s not a typo:  his name really was Durs Egg and he was arguably the finest gunsmith of his time.)  For a brief period, dueling pistols were the highest form of art in the realm of gunsmithing.  Finely crafted pairs of pistols were carefully fitted into wooden cases, along with screwdrivers, powder horns, bullet molds, and ramrods.

You didn’t have to use only dueling pistols to fight duels—there are lots of records of duels using an astonishing variety of bizarre weapons.  In 1808, two Frenchmen armed with blunderbusses fought in the sky over Paris until one combatant successfully shot down his opponent’s hot air balloon.  Otto von Bismarck suggested that duelists fight with sausages, one of which was to be laden with poison.  There are recorded duels with every imaginable edged weapon and one rather gruesome one conducted with sledgehammers.  

A friend and I once conducted a duel with roman candles at 20 feet. Although neither of us can remember quite why we fought, we did learn two valuable lessons:  The first is always to drink mescal in moderation and the second is that you really shouldn’t wear a nylon shirt while engaging in such a duel.

Another unconventional duel, equally fueled with alcohol, was Jim Bowie’s bizarre knife fight in the dark in what became known as the “Sandbar Fight.”  Bowie and his opponent were observing a duel with pistols, and when both participants fired and missed their opponents, the spectators joined in with whatever weapons were at hand.  Bowie was shot and repeatedly stabbed in the chest but still managed to kill Major Norris Wright with his knife. (Remember, Bowie survived to die at the Alamo.)

It was because of just such drunken brawls that a group of Irish aristocrats created the Code Duello in 1777.  Duels were to be serious affairs that settled matters of honor, not wild brawls in which spectators joined in the fighting.  First, there were “seconds,” (representatives of each duelist) to mediate disputes before dueling took place and whose job it was to arrange the place and time of the duel (usually in a secluded location to eliminate unwanted participants).  The challenged duelist was given the choice of weapons, and the seconds were charged with insuring that both weapons were strictly equal in all respects.

The favorite weapons were usually pistols, but this was not always the case.  In 1842, James Shields felt humiliated by a humorous letter Abraham Lincoln had written for the local newspaper.  Following the Code Duello, Shield’s second demanded satisfaction from Lincoln.  As the challenged, Lincoln chose broadswords.  The two combatants met on an island in the Mississippi River where Lincoln, nine inches taller than Shields, warmed up by cutting twigs from tree branches that no other man present could reach.   Not surprisingly, both seconds were able to settle the matter with apologies, thus eliminating the need for the duel.

This gave rise to the dueling pistols set: finely crafted weapons that were utterly reliable, and as nearly identical as possible.  These pistols were usually a smaller caliber than were normally used in warfare, since the object was to prove honor—not necessarily to kill.  Nor were the barrels to be rifled, because that would make the guns more accurate and, thus, more likely to kill.  (Some dueling pistols were smooth bore for the last two inches but rifled further down the barrel where it was difficult for the seconds to inspect.  This illegal rifling was referred to as “French rifling” in England.)

Duelists were to face each other after walking apart ten paces each, and at a given signal raise their pistols, aim, and fire at will.  If a pistol misfired or failed to fire because the hammer was not properly cocked, that was considered that opponents shot and he was not allowed to reload.  If either opponent deloped, deliberately firing his weapon into the ground or air, the other duelist was free to either delope or fire at his opponent.  This was assumed to have settled the affair, but if both parties still felt aggrieved, they were free to reload and fire.

The finest dueling pistols were made in England by such notable gunsmiths as Joseph Manton, Durs Egg, and Robert Wogdon.  The latter made so many sets that in England a duel was referred to as a “Wogdon Affair.”   The pistols at right were made by Egg for the Prince of Wales, later King George IV.  Today, they are on exhibit in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Dueling in England was against the law, but rarely resulted in criminal trials.  When it was, juries rarely brought back a guilty verdict.  The last duel in England—at least the last one that was public—was fought between Lieutenant James Seton and Captain Hawkey in 1845 after Hawkey objected to Seton’s unwanted attention to Mrs. Hawkey.  In the first round of shots, Seton missed while Hawkey’s gun was only half-cocked and failed to fire.  The duel could have ended there, but Hawkey insisted on a second round of fire.  Seton missed again but Hawkey shot Seton in the abdomen—a fatal wound.  Hawkey was charged and tried, but the jury never left the jury box, taking only nine seconds to acquit the Captain.

Dueling lingered longer on the continent, and though the practice eventually died out, the idea of dueling never completely left.  At the Athens Olympics in 1908, two different dueling contests were exhibited.  In the first contest, athletes shot (unarmed) mannequins, while the second featured combatants actually shooting at each other but with wax bullets.  While modified dueling never became an Olympic event, the sport did become briefly popular.  The last public contest in the United States was held in Carnegie Hall.  

Reading the news, I sometimes wonder if we got rid of dueling too soon.  Perhaps we should bring it back, but limit participation to lawyers, gang members, and politicians.

Space Age Easter Eggs

Unfortunately, Hogwarts is not real.  But, if you look carefully, there are a few places where real magic has occurred regularly.  Menlo Park, Bell Labs, Cern, Cavendish Labs, The Skunkworks, and one of my favorites, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, regularly produce very real magic.

As the author Arthur C. Clarke famously said, Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic. 

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has an interesting past, dating back to a handful of nerdy students and a friendly professor at Caltech back in the 1930’s, who were known as “the Suicide Squad” for their habit of small explosions (and the occasional fire in their dorm rooms).  These eccentric geniuses were obsessed with rocketry, which was then considered junk science.

Despite the disdain of the rest of the scientists, the Suicide Squad kept trying to perfect a liquid propellant for their rockets, (many of those fuels spontaneously combusted when mixed).  Though no one was seriously hurt, Caltech banished such experiments on campus but provided three remote acres in a place call Arroyo Seco.  Since there was nothing in that dry gully, the Suicide Squad was free to conduct its& research.  Finally free to do whatever they wanted, they thrived.  Eventually, they stopped blowing up the gully—mostly—and the rockets flew—mostly.

When World War II started, the Suicide Boys worked for the US Army, developing Jet-Assisted Takeoff (JATO) and they became a government installation run by Caltech.  When the war ended, they were the scientists who worked with Von Braun to launch V-2 rockets here in New Mexico.  (If you ever get a chance, there is a great museum at the  White Sands Missile Range post, where you can see one of the remaining V-2 rockets.)

After the Russians launched Sputnik, JPL became part of NASA and has been incredibly active ever since.  These are the people who design the rovers that have successfully landed on the moon (and lately, Mars), who built the Voyager spacecraft, and who also built the helicopter that flew on Mars.

Less well-known, JPL’s population is also the people with a sense of humor that put Easter Eggs on their spacecraft.  Let me give you an example:

When the Perseverance rover was landing on Mars, it landed with a multicolor parachute.  A camera on the top of the rover sent back a magnificent photo, but few realized that the pattern in the parachute was actually binary code that spelled out, "DarJPL's motto from a speech by President Theodore Roosevelt, a long with the GPS coordinates of JPL's headquarters in Pasadena, California.  Also aboard the rover was a tiny sliver of a piece of Martian meteorite that had landed on Earth.  The JPL decided that it should be the first object to make a roundtrip journey back to Mars.

Then there was the calibration target on the 2018 Insider rover.  A calibration target helps the rover’s camera adjust for color and adjust for distortion.  JPL followed NASA’s instructions, and carefully hid in the border the Braille code for “JPL.”  A few years later on a different rover, they glued a 1909 Lincoln Penny onto the calibration target.  This was JPL’s way of referencing the habit of geologists placing a coin next to rocks before taking photographs of their samples.

My favorite JPL Easter Egg has to be the wheels of the Curiosity rover that landed on Mars.  On previous rovers, JPL had noticed that it was difficult to determine just how far a rover had moved as it traveled because the rover’s wheels sometimes slipped on the loose dusty surface of Mars.  The instruments could accurately measure how many revolutions the wheels had turned, but not how far the rover had actually traveled.

JPL quickly came up with a solution.  The metal wheels of Curiosity would have the letters ”JPL” stamped on them so on each revolution of the wheels, the letters would be stamped into the Martian dust.  Then the camera could take a photo of the tracks, in a sense creating a visual odometer.  Scientists on earth could compare the travel distance recorded on the instruments to the travel distance shown in the tracks.

NASA loved the low-tech solution for coming up with accurate travel measurements, but was a little wary of all the photos from Mars advertising JPL.  Those photos were going to be seen by the whole world.  Reading the correspondence between the two agencies concerning this, you get the idea that if the wheels had spelled out “NASA”, there wouldn’t have been a problem. 

In the end, JPL agreed to just put a distinctive pattern of squares and rectangles on the tires, something that would show up well on the photos.  NASA agreed.

Shortly before launch, NASA finally realized that the “square and rectangle holes” were actually dots and dashes that in Morse code spelled out “JPL.”  By then it was too late to change the tires.  As I write this, the Curiosity rover is still working, years after its projected lifespan, and is still leaving its secret message on the surface of Mars.

The Siege of Sidney Street

Let’s start with Houndsditch, the where everything started:  Houndsditch, as the name literally indicates, started as a combination drainage and defensive ditch dug just outside the walls of Londinium.  The ditch was first built by the Romans, filled in, and then dug a second time by the Danes.  There are two competing theories of the origin of the name.  The first says that the ditch was used as a garbage dump and depository for dead dogs.

The competing theory is more interesting:  King Cnut (more commonly known as King Canute), had the English traitor Eadric Streona executed as part of the Christmas festivities of 1017.  The exact details are a little sketchy, but Streona apparently was strangled on Christmas morning, his body was dragged through the streets of London by his heels, then it was burnt, beheaded, and tossed into Houndsditch.  The story says that not even the hungry wild dogs living outside the city wall would eat the remains.  Apparently, the wild dogs weren’t fond of traitor tartare.

As Londinium grew, the area outside of the walls was incorporated and the area of the filled-in ditch became a street in the East End of London.  By the start of the 20th century, though, there were a few prominent buildings on Houndsditch.  The area was relatively poor and was a center for Eastern European immigrants, particularly Russian emigres forced to leave their homes due to Tsarist pogroms.  

Part of the population was an organized group of exiled Latvian anarchists.  If your brain did not immediately start screaming “OXYMORON,” you need to read that sentence again.  Not only is the whole idea of anarchists setting up a hierarchical organization ludicrous, but once they are chased out of their home country, they immigrate to a country kind enough to accept them as refugees, only to repay that kindness by fomenting a violent revolution.  These are the type of jackasses that will slip a snake into your pocket and then ask to borrow a match.

Touching off a revolution is expensive, so the Latvian anarchists—not believing in capitalism—financed their activities with theft.  At 119 Houndsditch there was a jewelry shop that, rumor said, kept between £30,000 and £20,000 worth of jewelry in its safe.  The anarchists rented a pair of shops behind the jewelry store and used pneumatic power tools to batter down the common wall between the shops to gain entry into the jewelry store.  

On the night of December 16, 1910, a neighbor thought the loud noises were unusual and alerted a policeman.  When three officers armed only with truncheons knocked on the door of the shop where the noise was coming from, the would-be thieves shot and killed the officers and fled.  George Gardstein—the reputed leader—was wounded during the struggle and later died of his wounds.  While Gardstein was wrestling with a police officer, one of the gang members had attempted to shoot the policeman but had hit Gardstein.  

The brutal killing of three unarmed policemen became known as the Houndsditch Murders and outraged the public and galvanized the police.  A morgue photo of Goldstein (right) was published in the local papers along with a plea to the public to help locate the remainder of the gang.  Within weeks, most of the Latvian gang had been arrested by the investigating officers, who had now been temporarily issued revolvers.

In early January 1911, an informant tipped off the police that the last two gang members, including Gardstein, were hiding at 100 Sidney Street, about a mile and a half distant from the jewelry store.  The police carefully removed the neighbors from the building.  The standing orders for the police were that they could not open fire until they were fired upon, so the police threw stones through the window of the apartment to wake up the two mean, Svaars and Sokoloff.  The two men appeared at the broken window and immediately began firing at the police assembled below.

It was immediately apparent that the two men were much better armed than the police.  The anarchists had the latest automatic Mausers, while the police were armed with revolvers that were only effective at short range.  Scotland Yard phoned the Home Secretary and formally asked for military assistance, an act that required the approval of the Home Secretary.

Within an hour, twenty-one volunteers from the Scots Guard departed from the Tower of London and took position at each end of the street and in the buildings across the street.  Firing continued with neither side actually hitting anybody.  (According to the historian and author Andrew Wareham, the Scots Guard were not noted for accurate firepower at the time, but were famed for their magnificent uniforms.  They were truly impressive at the funeral of Edward VII, just five months later.)

Two hours later, just shortly before noon, the Home Secretary arrived, Winston Churchill.  There is still a great debate about whether he took direct command or just observed.  It should be noted that about an hour later, both a Maxim machine gun and horse artillery arrived, something that would also have required the approval of Churchill.  Before the more powerful weapons could be used, however, the standoff ended.

An hour after Churchill arrived, smoke was seen coming from the building.  For over an hour, the building burned but the two men inside never came out.  When it was apparent that the two anarchists were dead, the fire brigade was finally allowed to extinguish the flames and extract the two bodies.  In the aftermath, all of the captured anarchists were acquitted for lack of evidence and Winston Churchill was widely criticized for seeking publicity and posing for cameras during the standoff.

Do your remember Peter the Painter?  His real name was never discovered, nor was he ever captured.  A century later, two towers of apartment buildings were built on the site of the siege.  One of the towers is named “Peter House” and the other is called “Painter House”, despite the strenuous objections of the Metropolitan Police Federation.

Zimmerit

Shortly before the launch of the USS New Mexico, a modern fast attack, nuclear submarine, the Captain and First Officer made a goodwill tour of New Mexico.  As part of the tour, they came to my class on the History of Naval Warfare at Enema U.  It was a great talk and, in hindsight, I realize that I probably did not thank the US Navy enough.

At the end of his talk, the boat’s Captain asked if there were any questions.  My class was a little shy, so I primed the pump by asking what the top speed of the sub was expected to be.  The Captain smiled and said, “A little under 35 knots.”

I expected that answer since, according to the US Navy, every large ship currently commissioned goes “A little under 35 knots.”  Supposedly, even modern American destroyers are slower than their counterparts in World War II.  The true top speeds of American warships are absolutely classified and only the US Navy and every one of our enemies know the truth.   

I smiled back and asked the question that I was really curious about.  “Will the USS New Mexico be covered with anything special?”

Once again, the boat’s Captain smiled and replied, “Just anti-fouling paint.”

We both knew he couldn’t say more.  I have no idea exactly what subs are really covered with, but it is a hell of a lot more than anti-fouling paint.  There are some kind of noise deadening rubber tiles that make the sub harder to detect by both radar and sonar, but exactly what they are made of is classified.  

Classified coatings for military use are not exactly new.  In 1917, during World War I, the British Royal Navy introduced “dazzle” camouflage, using complex, high-contrast patterns to confuse enemy targeting.  Since there was no real evidence that it worked, it was tried briefly by both Great Britain and the United States in World War II.  To this day, there is no clear consensus on whether the strange paint job really worked, though there is some anecdotal testimony that torpedoes missed the dazzle ships because submarine captains couldn’t stop laughing.  (I wonder if it has been tried on cars to confuse traffic cops?)

In the 1970’s the US started covering military vehicles with something called CARC (Chemical Agent Resistant Coating) that supposedly made vehicles exposed to chemical agents easier to clean.  And we all have heard about the modern coatings that make aircraft harder to see on radar.  There is, however, an earlier special coating for tanks that you have probably never heard of: Zimmerit.

During World War II, Germany was concerned that the Allies might target their armored vehicles with magnetic bombs.  Remember the scene in Saving Private Ryan when Tom Hanks destroys a Tiger tank with a “sticky bomb”?  (Well, technically the tank was a Russian T-34 with wood and paper mâché added to make it look like a Tiger tank, but let’s not be picky!)

According to the movie, a sticky bomb was a plain GI sock crammed full of explosives with a simple fuse, with the sock then covered in axle grease.  An incredibly brave soldier would light the fuse, run up to the enemy tank, slap the improvised mine against the steel side of the vehicle, then run away before the bomb blew up.  There was, of course, no such bomb used in World War II.  The British had developed a No. 74 Sticky Bomb, but it was nitroglycerine in a glass container that could adhere to the side of an enemy vehicle with adhesives.  The weapon was ineffective and far better results could be achieved with other anti-tank weapons like the American bazooka or the British PIAT.

There was a magnetic mine used during World War II, the Hafthohlladung (or as it was more commonly called, the Panzerknacker or “Tank Breaker”).  Developed in 1942, this was a shaped charge that was attached to three strong horseshoe magnets.  A soldier could place one against the side of an enemy tank, pull the firing pin, then run like hell before the 4.5 second fuse detonated the bomb.  Needless to say, this was a difficult getaway to accomplish.

Pondering this led to the Germans worrying about magnetic explosives being placed against the sides of their tanks.  Their response was the development of zimmerit—a thick plastic-like foam mixed with sawdust that was applied in inch-thick ridges to the sides of their tanks, hardened with a blowtorch and left to dry.  The foam material was mixed with a yellowish-brown ochre, making the tanks look like they had been covered with thick cooked waffles.

The idea was that the thick zimmerit coating would prevent the magnetic bombs to be close enough to the tank for the magnets to work, so they would simply fall off the side of the vehicle.  The process of applying the zimmerit at the factory took several days, and despite the desperate need of more tanks at the front line, Germany continued to apply the protective foam on its armored vehicles from December 1943 to September 1944.

You would think that the reason that the Germans stopped using zimmerit was because they finally noticed that Germany was the only country using magnetic mines against tanks.  Or maybe it was that Germany realized that, since the Allies had developed projectile anti-tank weapons, the likelihood of someone attempting to physically place a mine onto a tank (outside of Hollywood) was highly unlikely.  Those are both good possible explanations, but neither is the reason the Germans stopped using zimmerit.

Germany was afraid that the new Allied projectile weapons (like the American bazooka) might set fire to the zimmerit…So, they stopped using it.

British tests after the war discovered that it was all but impossible to ignite zimmerit!  

Tsondoku

Tsondoku is the Japanese term for the quirk of buying books and letting them literally pile up unread.  If this were a deadly disease, I would have passed away about a decade before I was born.

It’s a blend of two words: tsumu (積む, "to pile up") and doku (読, "to read"), cleverly combining the act of stacking books with the intent to read them.  The term doesn’t carry a strict judgment—it’s more a playful acknowledgment of a common behavior among bibliophiles.

I have no idea how many books are in our house, but there must be thousands and thousands of them—far too many to count, and while the vast majority have been read, there is a healthy stack of books that I want to read, and that I intend to read, and that I just have not yet gotten around to actually reading…And that stack is growing.

I don’t consider that growing pile of unread books as anything bad—in fact, I view it as a sort of savings account.  I’m currently reading a book about WWI naval skirmishes in the Mediterranean and then, when I finish it tonight, I’ll be able to select a new book from a wide selection of available tomes.  I have no idea what I will read next, but I’m sure it will be a good choice.   (I’m leaning towards that book on the works of Edward Hopper.)

The proper way of thinking about Tsondoku is that having your treasure trove of unread books is the same as living in a five-star restaurant that has an extensive menu.  The selection is part of the enjoyment.

This is all a very long introduction to what I really want to talk about—the books I will never have a chance to read.  The books that have been lost.

There is no chance, for example, that I will ever get to read Hemingway’s first novel that was based on his experiences as an ambulance driver in Italy during World War I.  Hemingway was working as a journalist in Switzerland and asked his wife to bring him his collection of unpublished short stories, his notes, and the manuscript of his unpublished novel.  While traveling by train, she stepped off the train momentarily to buy a bottle of water.  When she returned, the suitcase containing Hemingway’s writings had been stolen.  

His wife wept the entire eight-hour journey to Switzerland, dreading having to tell her husband of the loss.  At first, Hemingway laughed at the story, assuring her it didn’t matter, because he always made carbon copies of his work.  He stopped laughing when she informed him that the carbons were also packed into the suitcase.

Perhaps this is a good place to briefly mention that I’m still upset at the loss of the library at Alexandria.  Among the countless treasures lost was Aristotle’s Second volume of Poetics—the book on comedy that is the center point of Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose.  

There are a lot of books that have been lost for centuries that might still surprise you.  Did you know that there was a second volume of Beowulf?  The story you know comes from a single, singed volume that survived the 1731 fire at the Cotton Library in Westminster.  While the first volume was damaged, the other volumes were destroyed.  There were other copies in English libraries, but they were destroyed in Viking raids.  If there is a remaining copy, it has yet to surface.

Did you know that at least one of Shakespeare’s plays is missing?  Cardenio is a lost play attributed to William Shakespeare and his collaborator John Fletcher.  It was performed in 1613 by the King’s Men, Shakespeare’s theater company, but no known copy of the original text survives.

The play was reportedly based on an episode from Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote, specifically the story of Cardenio, a nobleman driven to madness by betrayal and heartbreak.  In Cervantes' tale, Cardenio loves Luscinda, but his friend Don Fernando deceives him and marries her.  Cardenio flees to the mountains, where Don Quixote later encounters him.

There have been several attempts over the years to recreate the play, but there is so little documentation about the original script that the task is considered hopeless.  It is likely that the last surviving copy of the play was lost when the Globe Theater burned in 1613.  (The photo at left is AI generated, since none of the thoughtless residents of London remembered to pull out their cellphones to document this historic loss.)

T. E. Lawrence, more popularly known as Lawrence of Arabia, lost the 250,000 word original manuscript of his Seven Pillars of Wisdom when he left his bag in the refreshment room of the Reading Station.  When he returned, his bag had been stolen.  Although he rewrote the book, the lost draft was rawer, longer, and possibly more candid about his wartime exploits and his psyche—potentially a truer epic than the polished rewrite.  (There is a moral to this—Never travel by train if you have a manuscript.)

Jacques Futrelle, an American author known for his clever, puzzle-like mysteries, perished along with 1500 other people in the sinking of the Titanic.  In his stories, the main character, Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen—nicknamed "The Thinking Machine,"—used pure logic to solve seemingly impossible crimes.  Futrelle had gained significant popularity with stories like The Problem of Cell 13, and he was carrying new, unpublished manuscripts on his ill-fated journey aboard the Titanic in April, 1912.

To finish, let me tell you about the lost book I think about most often.  As a teenager, I loved the books by Donald Hamilton.  I read a half dozen Matt Helm novels in a week, then discovered his westerns, The Big Country and Texas Fever.  I was hooked.  Great literature they were not, but I really liked the way he told a story.

Donald Hamilton left behind an unpublished manuscript for one final Matt Helm novel, tentatively titled The Dominators, when he passed away in 2006. Hamilton had completed the manuscript years earlier but was unable to secure a publishing deal, partly due to declining interest in the series after the Cold War era and to shifting trends in the spy genre.

After his death, the rights to his work—including those to the unpublished novel—became entangled in estate issues. There have been occasional discussions about publishing The Dominators, but no agreement has been reached between Hamilton's estate and publishers.  There have been some suggestions that the manuscript needs some editing.

If his family reads this, I’ll finish editing that manuscript for free*.

*Editors’ note:  You, edit? Really?

Kim’s Ancestor?

Throughout history, there have been people, usually women, who have been famous for being famous.  Singularly lacking in personal accomplishments or achievements, their sole talent seems to be their ability to use looks to garner publicity to their own benefit, the public constantly wanting to know more about them.  An example would be just about anyone named Kardashian.

A few of the celebrities either married well or picked the right grandparents in order to inherit riches, but never actually seem to have used these advantages to build anything on their own (Think of Paris Hilton, Princess Diana, Nicole Richey, or Zsa Zsa Gabor).   In a generation or two, they are usually forgotten by everyone save for a few weird blogging historians.

I’ve written about a few of them.  There was Prinzessin zu Salm-Salm, who was a beautiful woman and a circus bareback rider, who then married a prince, traveled the world, met the crowned heads of Europe, and received an honorary rank of Captain in the Union Army from President Lincoln.  After her husband passed away….she was promptly forgotten. 

Then there was Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, the beautiful socialite who captivated the highest circles of Paris society…At least until John Singer Sargent painted her portrait—the one in which one shoulder strap of her gown was down, possibly indicating that she was either just taking her gown off or had just put it back on.  No one remembers her name anymore, but her likeness, the Portrait of Madame X, is on prominent display in the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art.  

A month ago, while writing about the curious history of lead white paint, I ran across another example of someone whom society simply could not hear enough about for a brief period, who then simply vanished.  She was famous for her beauty, then died because of it.

Maria Gunning was born in England, in 1732, and was one of six children of Irish aristocrats who lacked enough money to maintain an aristocratic lifestyle.  After the family returned to Ireland, Maria and her younger sister, Elizabeth, were encouraged by their mother to seek work as actresses in the Dublin theaters.  Being an actress was far from a respectable occupation at the time, since actresses were paid so little that they frequently supplemented their wages by being courtesans for the theater patrons.  At the time, this would have been a scandal equivalent to releasing a sex tape today.

When a prominent ball was held at Dublin Castle, the two sisters borrowed the costumes of Lady Macbeth and Juliet from the theatre, so they could attend the affair suitably dressed.  Effectively, this was their coming out party and they so impressed the members of high society that they were suddenly famous.  Lavished with gifts from the rich, the sisters returned to England and lived in high style, with both being presented at court to King George II.

Maria, who was notoriously tactless (which is a very polite way of saying that, while the young woman was beautiful, she was brainless) was asked by the King if there was anything she would like to see while in London.  She replied that she would like to see the pomp and grandeur of a royal funeral.  Luckily, the only person in the kingdom whose death would have provided the desired spectacle thought the answer hilarious.  

Within a year, both of the sisters had married well: Elizabeth snagged a duke and Maria married the 6th Earl of Coventry, to become the Countess of Coventry.  The new Countess remained socially very active: she was seen at all the most fashionable events and was rumored to have had an affair with the Duke of Grafton.  During her carefully orchestrated public walks through Hyde Park, the Countess was mobbed by the public, requiring a bodyguard to accompany her.  

Maria was a pale beauty who enhanced her looks by the liberal application of Venetian Ceruse makeup.   This makeup both whitened the skin and caused a pink glow that suggested both health and youth.  When a modern laboratory recently recreated the cosmetic using traditional materials, the women working in the laboratory all agreed that the cosmetic improved the appearance of the test subject.  Since Venetian Ceruse is made from lead carbonate, it’s a deadly poison, but, luckily—for humans, anyway—the test subject was a pig.  (You’re right now undoubtedly thinking of a joke about lipstick on a pig.)

The fashions at the time required women to wear low-cut gowns that revealed a lot of cleavage.  Since Maria did not want to show an obvious line where the makeup ended, she applied the cosmetic liberally.  Unfortunately, one of the side effects of the inevitable lead poisoning was skin blemishes and lesions, but these were easily covered with even more Venetian Ceruse.

Maria’s husband, the Earl of Coventry, did not like the makeup and frequently requested his wife to stop using it, but she refused.  In one infamous episode, the Earl chased her through a dinner party, attempting to wipe the makeup off her face with his handkerchief.  Shortly after this, the Earl began an infamous affair with the courtesan, Kitty Fisher, who was another young beauty who was famous for being famous.

Maria, now the Countess, had a public feud with Kitty Fisher.  When the two bumped into each other at a park, the Countess asked Kitty for the name of her dressmaker.  Kitty replied that the Countess would have to ask the Earl, since he had given her the dress.

Unfortunately, The Countess was becoming increasingly sick; her once alabaster skin was now deeply blemished, requiring ever more cosmetics to hide the condition.  Maria Coventry, the Countess of Coventry, died from lead poisoning at the age of 27.  She might have had some satisfaction that her rival, Kitty Fisher—who had also begun using liberal amounts of Venetian Ceruse—also died from lead poisoning just a few years later, at the age of 26.

Today, some historians question whether either woman actually died from lead poisoning, suggesting that a more likely cause of death might have been tuberculosis.  Since one of the side effects of lead poisoning is a diminished immune system, it probably doesn’t matter who is correct.

D.O.G.E.

Back in the sixties, there was a monthly contest at Lackland AFB, with a cash prize for anyone suggesting a helpful new way to improve base efficiency.  An enterprising airman won the contest two months in a row.  His first win was for suggesting that two existing forms be replaced with one new form.  The next month, the same airman won again, for suggesting eliminating the new form.  I don’t know where that airman is today, but he should be the patron saint of a controversial newly-minted government department.  

Government agencies and compost piles have a lot in common:  Besides having a high level of horse shit, both can benefit from periodic stirring up.  Rarely, however, does either benefit from having a hand grenade tossed into the mix.

Obviously, I’m thinking about the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Elon Musk, that has energized both the left and the right to run in circles and yell a lot.  Since Elon has yet to gore my ox, I alternately find this either appalling or hysterically funny.  No doubt I will become incredibly outraged as soon as Musk takes his fiscal chainsaw to one of the few federal entities that I care about (Like the Air and Space Museum, the Library of Congress, or the National Archives—Keep your hands off those, Elon!).

The chief complaint about Musk (besides his enormous wealth) seems to be that he is unelected.  I would point out that the agencies that are under review are chock full of unelected bureaucrats, who have been formulating regulations for decades.  Depending on which flavor of newspaper you read, the actions of D.O.G.E. are described as either draconian or brilliant.

While we are discussing unelected government employees, remind me again just how many primaries Kamala Harris won?  

The Constitution, Article II, Section I, allows the President to run the Executive Branch of the government, "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America."  If President Trump wants to delegate that authority to someone else, he has the right to do it.

As I write this, D.O.G.E. seems to be shutting down the Department of Education but is obviously doing it wrong.  The correct method would be to weld the doors shut during one of the three or four daily working hours and then fumigate the building.  Since the Department claims that only a quarter of its staff works remotely, the fumigation would eliminate the majority of the rats.  Perhaps a bounty could be placed on the escapees.  (My experiences working at Enema U may have slightly influenced my opinions about the Department of Education.)

President Carter created the Department of Education (DofE) back in 1978, separating it from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) which changed its name to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).  It should be noted that within a few decades, the new HHS had as many employees as the old HEW plus all the new employees at the DofE.  This type of growth, splitting, and regrowth is typical of all government agencies, malignant cancer cells, and university committees.

This is where I suppose that I should list all the reasons why the Department of Education should be closed.  Centralized control is inefficient, local control is more responsive to a diverse population, state control would foster experimentation while being more adaptable to local conditions, and it would eliminate administrative duplication, and so forth and so on.  There is the uneasy alliance between the Department of Education and the National Education Alliance.  I could talk about the needless paperwork that I—and every other teacher in the country—had to fill out to satisfy the hair brained whim of some nameless bureaucrat in Washington.  There are a lot of reasons to close the Department, but most of them don’t really matter.

The real reason the Department of Education should be closed is that it simply has not worked.  Despite a cast of thousands, an annual budget of hundreds of billions of dollars, and endless studies—by every conceivable measure, education in the United States has grown steadily worse since the institution of the Department of Education.

The US spends as much or more per student (in some communities, much more) than every other developed nation.  We rank roughly in the middle of industrialized countries when it comes to teacher pay.  Our schools are modern, air-conditioned, well-lit, and clean, and they are equipped with the latest in technology.   For more than four decades they have been overseen by a Federal agency whose budget has gone up annually by more than the rate of inflation.  Yet, despite all of this—or perhaps because of it—student test scores are abysmal compared with the rest of the world.   Clearly, it is time to try something else.  Damn near anything else!

Maybe letting 50 different states try 50 different ideas will work.  Maybe creating a new and different Department of Education along a different model will work.  Perhaps we should just copy what some other country is doing.  I don’t know the correct answer to the problem of education, but one thing is certain:  neither does the current Department of Education.

While there is no doubt that President Trump is the constitutionally designated head of the Executive Branch, there is still some doubt whether he can close a department or lay off all the workers within a department without congressional approval—that will have to be decided in federal court and will probably take years.  

In the meantime, when Musk gets tired of D.O.G.E., I wonder if he would consider doing the same sort of job at Enema U?  I think it would be possible to cut the university budget by at least 20% with the changes going unnoticed by most of the faculty and any of the students.

The Uluburun Shipwreck

Frequent readers—and judging by my hate mail there are more than a few of you—know that I’m fascinated by shipwrecks.  The only individual topic that has appeared more frequently than Napoleon in the past seventeen years’ worth of blogs is the Titanic.  However, my favorite shipwreck (and the one that I have learned the most from), is the Steamboat Arabia.

The Arabia was a side-wheeler riverboat that sank rapidly in the Missouri River in 1856, after her bottom was ripped out by a tree stump.  Despite the rapid sinking, the only casualty was a mule that had been hitched to some sawmill equipment and was forgotten.  Within hours, the entire wreck sank in the mud, making salvage operations at that time impossible.

In 1987, Bob Hawley and his sons located the wreck in a field, now forty-five feet below the soil surface and half a mile from the river.  After being snubbed by numerous historical and archaeological groups, the Hawley family recovered the material themselves and, in the process, became the world’s experts in recovering and conserving this type of material.  When the Arabia sank she was carrying an incredible amount of cargo, including the entire starting inventory of a hardware store.

Due to the ground being perpetually near freezing, the material recovered is still in amazing shape.  Pickles in glass jars were still edible and the bottles of champagne were still drinkable.  For historians, this was like a time machine, that offered a view back at the material culture of the mid-nineteenth century.  The photo below is just a small fraction of what is on display in the museum, and the last I heard, the Hawley’s were still opening and conserving more contents from the ship.

I was a guest of the US Army at Fort Leavenworth—not the prison but the college, at which I was taking a two-week graduate course in military history.  With plenty of time on my hands, I started checking out the excellent   local history museums, of which Kansas City has more than her share.  I had never heard of the Arabia but visited anyway.  For the next week and a half, I spent every available free moment in the museum, taking notes and asking questions.  The recovered goods I saw changed the way I thought about what was then the frontier of America—including the kinds goods available and how quickly new merchandise reached the edges of settlement.

I’ll give two quick examples.  I had always heard that shoes for sale about the time of the Civil War came in only one pattern, and that left and right shoes were identical, not anatomically  specific.  There were thousands of shoes on the Arabia and nearly all of them came in pairs, with the right shoe the mirror of the left.  And I had been led to believe that wooden matches—also known as shack matches or Aggie flashlights—did not come into common use until the 1880’s.  The Arabia carried thousands of them.

While I am still grateful to the US Army for its generosity in letting me attend the prestigious school, to be honest, I learned far more at the Steamboat Arabia Museum than I did in the classroom.  If you travel or live anywhere near Kansas City, I highly recommend visiting it.

Which brings me to the Uluburun Wreck, which is the oldest shipwreck in the world.  The name comes from the site of the wreck, just off the coast of present-day Turkey, since we don’t know the name of the ship (or if she even had one).  The ship comes from the Bronze Age, in roughly the fourteenth century BC, when ships were not commonly named.  Nor are we certain where the ship came from or where it was heading, though it was probably going from somewhere near Cyprus to somewhere in Greece, along the Aegean.

The fifty-foot ship probably sank about 1320 BCE—give or take a couple of decades:  the exact date is a little fuzzy.  Radiocarbon dating and dendrochronology (dating by examining tree rings) overlap a little, but among the treasures found was a likeness of Nefertiti, so, the three dating methods together give us a pretty good idea.  Nor are we really certain exactly what the ship looked like, since 3000 years of seawater have played havoc with the ship’s timbers.

The wreck was discovered by sponge divers who reported the discovery of “metal biscuits with ears” on the sea floor.  These were copper “oxhide” ingots weighing about 60 pounds each.  To make them easier to carry, the copper was formed into rectangles with a protruding handle at each corner.  This report led to a recovery team making over 22,000 dives from 1984 to 1994.

What is important in the wreck—just as with the Arabia—is the nature of the  cargo that has been recovered.  The wreck’s cargo reveals an astonishing array of artifacts that reflects the extensive maritime trade networks of the Eastern Mediterranean.  Among the finds are raw materials such as copper and tin ingots (essential for bronze production), as well as luxury items including glass ingots, ivory, and precious gemstones.  The assortment also contains a variety of finished goods like pottery, tools, and weapons, which highlights the ship’s role in both commercial exchange and cultural interaction among ancient civilizations.

In addition to the utilitarian cargo, the shipwreck also has yielded culturally significant items that provide insight into the artistic and ceremonial practices of the time.  Artifacts of Mycenaean, Canaanite, and Egyptian origin were found aboard, including scarabs, ceremonial vessels, and intricately designed jewelry.  Some of the items had come from as far away as China, down the Silk Road.  These objects not only underscore the diverse origins of the ship’s cargo but also illustrate the interconnected nature of Bronze Age economies and societies.  Overall, the Uluburun shipwreck serves as a remarkable underwater time capsule, shedding light on the complexity and reach of ancient trade and the cultural exchanges that helped shape the ancient world (and our modern world, too).

The remarkable array of artistic objects in the Uluburun shipwreck has fascinated artists by the remarkable array of artistic objects.  Viewing the wreck’s contents is akin to an artist’s going shopping in a Bronze Age art supply store.  The ship contained 175 glass ingots of cobalt blue, turquoise, and lavender, along with ostrich eggshells, ivory of both elephant and hippopotamus, glass beads, and jars filled with resin for making turpentine.  The cargo also included intricately designed jewelry, finely crafted ceremonial vessels, and ornamental scarabs—each a testament to the sophisticated artistry of ancient cultures.  

These items, with their delicate engravings, elegant forms, and vibrant use of materials, showcased a blend of styles from Mycenaean, Canaanite, Egyptian, and other Mediterranean cultures.  This diversity not only highlighted the technical prowess of ancient artisans but also provided a tangible record of cross-cultural artistic exchange, making the wreck an invaluable source of inspiration and study for modern artists and historians alike.

I would really like to see the museum in Bodrun, Turkey that houses all the recovered artifacts.  If I argued a good enough case for it, do you suppose the Army would like to pick up the tab for a really great museum trip?

Gilded Manure

While I eagerly await the season three of Gilded Age, I recently rewatched the first two seasons.  I like the show, but I have a few picky little reservations.

First, I should admit that I am a big fan of Christine Baranski and would probably watch a lengthy miniseries that consisted of nothing but her snarky reading of the phone book.  And, I enjoy period dramas, if only to watch for the historical inaccuracies. 

I’m also a big fan of Gilded Age literature.  Who doesn’t enjoy reading Henry James, Bret Harte, Ambrose Bierce, Frank Norris or Henry Adams?  Even the name for the period comes from a novel cowritten by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, though neither would live long enough to learn that historians used the title of the book for the name of the period of significant economic growth, industrialization, and social disparity in the United States from the 1870s to about 1900, that was characterized by ostentatious wealth for some and stark poverty for many.

Perhaps the biggest mistake is the television show have as its central theme the conflict between the old Mayflower settlers of New England and the New Money people who derived their wealth from the new industries.  There are actually two mistakes there:  first the true “Old New Yorkers” were Dutch, not English.  The Rockefellers, Stuyvesants, Van Rensselaers, and Schuylers and other families of Dutch origin (who were collectively known as the Knickerbockers) were the real power in New York high society.  The other mistake is the belief that the Old New Yorkers tried desperately to exclude the New Money people.  The high society of the Gilded Age loved ostentation and extravagant consumption far more than they cared who was picking up the check.

There are a few historical inaccuracies scattered around the show.  For many, the chief attraction to the show are the extravagant ball gowns of the ladies, but we have to overlook the fact that those gowns would not have had zippers—a device still a generation away.  Instead, gowns used intricate closures, often secured with small buttons, hooks and eyes, or lacings, all in such an inaccessible location that every woman had to have a ladies’ maid just to get dressed.  And that is not even counting the 30-40 additional buttons found on ladies’ formal ankle-length boots.

Not once in the show is a single elevated train visible, though these were already in use by 1882-–the time period represented in the show.  Though the show features a few horse-drawn streetcars, and plenty of horse-drawn cabs and carriages, the streets are far from the busy hectic traffic already common in New York.   The photo at left shows a New York street from 1890. 

There are other inaccuracies.  The show downplays racial tensions in the North, depicts none of the desperate poverty and dense overcrowding of the city’s poorer neighborhoods, and ignores the appalling lack of even basic sanitation for the majority of the city’s inhabitants.  I can forgive all this, since, if the show were truly accurate, no one would watch it.  If you want to know what the city was really like at the time, get hold of a copy of Jacob Riis’s excellent 1890 book, How the Other Half Lives.  

There is one historical inaccuracy that every historian who watches the show immediately comments on:  Why is there no horse manure on the streets?

The show takes place primarily in two houses that are located on opposite sides of street at the corner of 61st Street and 5th Avenue, very close to Central Park.  (This was the actual site of the Elbridge T. Gerry Mansion, built during the Gilded Age, but demolished in 1920.)  Several times during each episode, major characters cross the street, easily dodging the few horses and wagons proceeding down the pristine, dirt-paved street.

The reality, however, is that while most of the better neighborhoods in New York had just been connected to a sewage system in the 1880’s, there no drains in the dirt streets in even the best neighborhoods.  What did exist on those streets were thousands and thousands of work horses.  On any given day, there were an estimated 175,000 horses pulling wagons, cabs, and carriages through the crowded (and all too frequently, too narrow) streets.  

Not to be too indelicate, but the horses were neither trained to use a litter box nor were they wearing diapers—and they produced approximately four million pounds of horse manure every single day of the week.  Add to this a daily dose of 40,000 gallons of horse urine and the occasional rain, the contributions of an estimated 100,000 dogs… those muddy streets rarely dried out. And what wasn’t collected on any given day received a fresh layer the next day. When the streets did occasionally dry out, the drying manure turned to a thick dust that choked pedestrians, coated buildings, and infiltrated every home and business.

All of this made the streets—more accurately shown at left—all but impassable for pedestrians without the services of street-crossing sweepers. These sweepers were impoverished beggars who used a broom to clear a path across the muddy, manure-covered, (and otherwise filthy) streets in exchange for a small tip, usually a penny or two.  I doubt the television show will ever include them, however).

The city employed over two thousand people just to keep the streets clean, but this was  clearly inadequate.  

Seven or eight garbage scows carried the accumulated debris to Dead Horse Bay on Barren Island every day.  (As the name indicates, mixed into the garbage and offal the island received was an average of 36 dead horses every day.)

The sanitation workers could not clear the streets fast enough, so the collected manure was scraped and shoveled onto any available vacant lot, sometimes reaching heights of 40 to 60 feet before the city could arrange to cart it all off to Barren Island.  It probably won’t surprise you to learn that Barren Island eventually turned into a peninsula where the strangest things still occasionally wash ashore.

I won’t even attempt to describe the stench exuding from all of this!  Nor can I say much about the incredible number of flying insects that would descend upon (and FROM) a sixty-foot-high mountain of fresh manure.  These fly infestations were directly responsible for the deadly outbreaks of typhoid and “infant diarrheal diseases” that occurred frequently in the city.

I enjoy the Gilded Age.  I like reading the literature from Age.  And I’m damn glad I don’t live in that age.

White Lead Paint

I want to talk about lead paint, but since I’m not an artist but a historian, I have to start the story at the beginning.  The very beginning.

About 400,000 years ago, man learned how to create fire.  Early man had been using fire for about a million years but was forced to use naturally occurring fire.  Whether the first method of creating fire was by striking flint against pyrite to produce a spark or by using a “fire plow” (think of Tom Hanks in Castaway, where one piece of wood is rubbed against another to create friction and heat) is uncertain, but man had begun the long process of mastering fire.

About 40,000 years ago, some human learned to cover the leftover coals of a fire with dirt, keeping them to use the next day to start a new fire.  While removing the dirt, he noticed that some of the coals had turned a dark black and when these coals were ignited, the fire they produced was noticeably hotter than a wood fire.  The discovery of charcoal—how to make it and the realization that it burned both hotter and more efficiently—opened the way to the discovery of metallurgy.  

Some metals—like gold, copper, and silver—occur in nature in their metallic forms.  Finding these would have been an early introduction to metals.  Early humans would have noticed changes in some stones when those had been heated in campfires or in kilns to produce pottery.  For instance, copper nuggets might have been accidentally smelted from ores when naturally occurring copper minerals were exposed to fire.  By 5000 years ago, copper ore was being smelted to produce native copper.  This was the start of the Chalcolithic or Copper Age, a period that is usually skipped over in history classes because within a few years, these neolithic scientists had discovered that adding tin to copper produced bronze—a metal that is harder and more useful than copper.  

By now, you can imagine that early man got busy testing every strange looking rock he could find—which is probably how lead was discovered in Mesopotamia about 3500 years ago.  Lead was an extremely useful metal, too.  Though it takes about 1000°C to smelt the lead out of the ore, once its out, lead itself melts at 327.5°C and is wonderfully malleable.  The Egyptians made an amazing array of dishes and tools from the metal.

About 400 BC, the Egyptians noticed that lead that was exposed to vinegar and horse manure developed a white powder on its surface.  This powder could be mixed with water.  The white powder could also be mixed with honey and egg white and then used in cosmetics and paints.

The Romans loved using lead.  Besides the usual tools and dishes, they created lead pipes to bring water into their cities.  (The Latin word for lead, "plumbum," is where we get the term "plumbing.").  Lead was used for coinage, utensils, statues, roofing—hell, the Romans even created standardized bullets, called glandes, for their slings.  The Romans also had lots of horses and, since vinegar was a byproduct of winemaking, they were able to produce even more of that useful white powder.  Suspended over a fire of burning horse manure, the Romans heated a vat of boiling vinegar with a bar of lead suspended over it.  The white corrosion that formed on the lead bar could be scraped off, ground into a powder, and used in everything from paints to medicines.

Note.  Yes, this was all very toxic and deadly.  And the Romans actually knew this, but the convenience of using the lead outweighed the health concerns.   If this sounds like our society and a host of things we use and consume despite the fact that we know they aren’t good for us, well… Hail Caesar!

Now, let’s move forward to the 14th century, in which the Dutch improved on the Roman method.  In a process called the Dutch Stack lead process, a series of vinegar pots—each with a lead bar suspended over it—was buried under a pile of horse manure.  (Curiously, no other form of manure works.). The fumes from the vinegar corrode the lead, creating a layer of lead acetate, which reacts with the fumes from the carbolic acid from the horse manure to form lead carbonate.  The lead carbonate forms in layers, which can be scraped off and collected.

An artist, who until paint was commercially available in tubes in the nineteenth century, had to be an amateur chemist, would put the “white lead” on a flat stone and grind it into a fine powder, that would then be mixed with either egg and water to form a tempera paint, or with linseed oil or walnut oil to make an oil paint.  The artist had to go through this process every few days since the paint would not keep.

This lead white (also known as white flake or cremnitz) was a very good white paint.  It was highly valued by artists for centuries due to its exceptional qualities:  high opacity, (allowing for effective coverage with fewer layers) and a slow drying time (which was beneficial for blending and wet-on-wet techniques), a smooth, buttery texture (that facilitates easy application and impasto), and its flexibility that reduced the risk of cracking).  Lead white also provided a brilliant, pure white color, that was lightfast, ensuring the longevity of artworks.  It was also versatile for mixing with other pigments without altering their hues significantly and was often used for underpainting. 

Leonardo da Vinci used white lead mixed with walnut oil as an undercoat for both the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper.  The layers of thick paint on The Starry Night by Van Gogh include white lead.  Paintings by Hieronymus Bosch, Vermeer, Botticelli, and Jan Van Eyck all contain white lead paint.

In the nineteenth century, artificial dyes made from coal tar replaced a lot of the pigments that had been used for centuries.  Toxic paints quickly disappeared, one by one, as good artificial pigments were created in the laboratory.

Besides being used in art, leaded paints were widely available for house paints.  The thick opacity meant that fewer coats were needed and the lead content made the paints waterproof and durable.  Ships, houses, barns and commercial buildings were routinely painted with lead-based paints.  As realization grew of the dangers of the toxicity of lead, there was a movement to ban the paints, which happened in the 1970’s.

It surprises people to learn that lead paint for artists is still available, and is still widely used by artists, for the benefits it has that are listed above.  Artists’ lead-based oil paint is a little more expensive and it comes with a lot of warning labels about toxicity, but it is still the best white oil paint on the market.