Curio Cabinet

It's Flashback Friday! As the summer heat continues, enjoy these curios all about weather. 
It was one of the fiercest hurricanes to ever strike the U.S.—and over 400 World War I veterans were caught in its path.

It turned out to be a perfect storm in the worst sort of way. In September 1935, at the height of hurricane season, few realized that a deadly hurricane was building off the coast of the Florida Keys. When the hurricane hit land, it created 20-foot waves, blew the clothes off of people's backs, and smashed a veterans' camp to smithereens.  

It was the Great Depression, and jobless World War I veterans were demanding help from Washington. To give the men work and to provide some much-needed infrastructure in the Florida Keys, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent approximately 400 veterans to the area to build roads and bridges. Flimsy shelters were hastily constructed near the beach to house the veterans, who were paid $30 a month plus room and board.  

In late August of 1935, a storm began developing east of the Bahamas; but it was weak at first and didn't seem to pose a threat. This was before the days of weather satellites, so tracking hurricanes was an extremely inexact science. Few realized that the storm was gathering strength until it hit the Florida Keys as a Category Five hurricane—the highest rating on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale.  

The administrators of the work camp had an emergency plan in place: in case of a hurricane, they would send for a train in Miami to evacuate the veterans. But as the hurricane was building, administrators held off ordering the train because the Weather Bureau predicted the storm was heading for Cuba. By the time administrators realized the predictions were wrong, it was too late. Precious time was lost as workers assembled the train; when it finally headed for the work camp, it was slammed by winds of 160 miles per hour and gusts up to 200 miles per hour. Train cars were tossed into the air, and only the engine was heavy enough to stay on the tracks.  

Meanwhile, the veterans at the work camp had little protection as the storm plowed through their camp. As shelters were blown apart, flying lumber speared and buried many of the men. Others were hit by raining coconuts; still others were swept away by the sea. When the storm retreated, an estimated 259 of the veterans had lost their lives.  

Many blamed camp administrators for the victims' fate, including the writer Ernest Hemingway, who wrote an article for New Masses titled, "Who Murdered the Vets?" published just a few weeks after the storm. Hemingway ended his angry piece with the question, "Who left you there? And what's the punishment for manslaughter now?" But a government investigation determined the deaths were "an act of God"—and no one was ever charged. A monument to the veterans, the Florida Keys Memorial (known locally as the "Hurricane Memorial"), was constructed to honor the victims, and ceremonies are held at the site every year on Labor Day and Memorial Day.  

Below: the relief train sent to rescue the veterans was derailed by the hurricane.
 

Image credit & copyright: Florida Keys--Public Libraries, Wikimedia Commons, image cropped for size
 

Henry David Thoreau: transcendentalist philosopher, writer, and rugged individualist. Well, maybe not that last one, but he never claimed to be. Walden; or, Life in the Woods was published on this day in 1854, and the tale of Thoreau’s time spent in a woodland cabin still resonates with readers today. Yet as popular as the book is, a mischaracterization of Thoreau seems to have stuck around: namely, the idea that he was a hermit roughing it out in the wilderness on his own. The fact is, Thoreau wasn’t really a loner, and that he didn’t even try to hide it. Walden Pond wasn’t geographically isolated, being located near Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau even mentions that he made regular trips into town on foot. The property was owned by his mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, and when Thoreau finally left Walden Pond after just two years, it was at Emerson’s invitation to stay with his family while he went to Europe.
 
While at Walden, Thoreau wrote about how his mother brought him food and helped with his laundry, and how he would often entertain visitors at his cabin. So why does the myth of Thoreau as a loner persist? It’s hard to say. It could be that the title of the book gave people the impression that the author was deep in a forest, cut off from civilization. Alternatively, it could be that philosophers like Thoreau are portrayed as misunderstood geniuses rejected by society. While that’s a romantic notion, the truth is that Thoreau was always very well-integrated with society at large. We’ve written before about how he ran his family’s pencil-manufacturing business, taking it over entirely after his father’s death. And while he never married or had any children, he had many friends who held him in high esteem, leading his funeral to be a crowded affair. Thoreau’s most controversial ideas actually revolved around his condemnation of slavery, but abolitionists were growing in number in the 1800s, and being in the North, he was by no means alone in his beliefs. Ultimately, Thoreau’s mythologized portrayal might have more to do with what his readers wanted him to be, rather than what he was. Or maybe a lot of college students never got around to doing the assigned reading, and wrote their essays based purely on Walden’s title.

 
[Image description: Henry David Thoreau] Credit & copyright:
B. D. Maxham, National Portrait Gallery, Wikimedia Commons, Image cropped for size, Public Domain

You might need a COVID booster shot soon, but at least no one is trying to convince you to eat human flesh to maintain your health. In Medieval and Renaissance Europe, you likely wouldn’t have been so lucky. For centuries, the mummified remains of ancient Egyptians and other cadavers were a preferred cure-all. People with aches and pains could venture to the apothecary for some ground up skull. For frequent headaches, physicians would sometimes prescribe a course of mumia, a medicine made from ground up mummies. But some ailments were thought to require something a little fresher. If a patient were suspected of having a blood disease weakening their body, they might be given fresh human blood, sometimes straight from the donor.
 
One would think that eating human flesh would be taboo in Europe, so how did consuming mummies catch on? Medicinal cannibalism was popular throughout Europe largely due to the belief that “like cures like.” If something was wrong with a person’s body, Europeans believed that the vital essence of another body could cure it. The practice goes as far back as the time of ancient Rome, when it was believed that the blood of a slain gladiator contained his essence, and could heal or revitalize those who consumed it. There were skeptics, of course, but the practice was popular enough and mummies in high enough demand that entire industries were formed to create mummy forgeries. These fake mummies were usually made from the bodies of executed convicts, while the executions themselves were a reliable source of fresh blood for those who lacked money to purchase medicine. In fact, the last case of a witness attempting to gather blood from a recent execution occurred in Germany in 1908. Medicinal cannibalism largely fell out of fashion around the 18th century, but the use of human remains lingered in the fringes of medicine and beyond for a while after. We’ll just stick to ibuprofen, thanks!

 
[Image description: A brown ovular box with the inscription "MUMIÆ" and inventory number 218. From the pharmacists collection of Museums für Hamburgische Geschichte in Germany. ] Credit & copyright: Christoph Braun, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

This summer, don’t hit the rapids without your jacket! For such a simple device, the life jacket or personal floatation device (PFD) has an impressive record of saving lives. Yet, when one tries to pinpoint an exact inventor, patent, or even invention-date for life jackets, the waters get a bit murky. That’s partly because humans have been using floatation devices for as long as we’ve relied on water—in other words, since before recorded history. The first PFD’s weren’t jackets, but rather inflated animal skins or bladders that fishermen held onto while wading in streams, lakes, or the ocean. Such devices were used by many cultures all over the world. In coastal European countries like Norway, fishermen would sometimes tie blocks of buoyant wood or cork to their arms while working.
 
The beginnings of the modern life jacket date back to the early 19th century. In 1802, Abraham Bosquet, of the British Royal Navy, wrote a letter to his superiors suggesting that ships be outfitted with canvas jackets filled with cork shavings. A life jacket made from cork was even made available for sale to the general public in 1804, in the popular British periodical The Sporting Magazine. A company called Bather’s soon began producing a popular model of life jacket known as the “Companion” made from cork sheets. But the need for life jackets didn’t become widely apparent until the 1850s, when metal boats began replacing their wooden predecessors. After all, when metal ships sank, their wreckage didn’t provide much floating debris for sailors to cling to until help arrived.
 
Even though life jackets existed before his time, many people credit the invention of the modern life jacket, which fits over the head and is strapped around the chest, to Vice Admiral John Ross Ward of the Royal Navy. When he was just a Captain, Ward served as the Inspector of Lifeboats at the UK’s Royal National Lifeboat Institution. Knowing how dangerous it was for rescue crews to work from lifeboats in choppy seas, Ward created a life vest in 1854 with a shape we would recognize today, though it was made from cork.
 
By the early 1900s, kapok, a lightweight fiber made from the fruit of the kapok tree, had replaced cork as the go-to material for life jackets. Soft jackets filled with kapok were more comfortable than cork and easier to put on. As naval battles broke out in World War I, militaries sought to improve their life jackets’ designs. Realizing the importance of life jackets to war-time success, many militaries continued making improvements even after the war ended, in 1918. In 1928, another supposed life jacket inventor took center stage: American merchant and fishing enthusiast Peter Markus. Markus knew that most fishermen refused to wear cork or even kapok life jackets because of how bulky they were. So, he decided to work with a naturally buoyant substance that had no bulk at all—air. In 1928, Markus patented his first design for an inflatable life jacket. It was made from rubberized cloth and could be inflated via two cords attached to cartridges of carbon dioxide. When the cords were pulled, the vest inflated within moments, making it particularly useful in emergency situations. The jackets were also easy to store when deflated. When World War II broke out in 1939, the Royal Air Force and the U.S. Air Force distributed Markus’s life jackets to servicemen. Among soldiers, the jackets earned the raunchy nickname “Mae West” because they supposedly mimicked the Hollywood actress’s curves when inflated.
 
Inflatable life jackets are still used today, most notably on commercial airplanes in case of emergency, but most modern life jackets use plastic foam to float. Thermoplastic Polyurethane is one of the most common foams used today, and is usually covered by a vest made from nylon or polyester. Life jackets are usually bright orange or yellow, allowing them to be spotted from long distances, and many even include strips of reflective material for night time use. Their only drawback? Modern foam jackets definitely won’t help you look like Mae West.

 
[Image description: Yellow-and-orange life jackets hang from hooks at a beach, with people in the background.] Credit & copyright: distelAPPArath, Pixabay