Curio Cabinet

The lack of presidential pets in the White House over the last four years was pretty unusual. President Joe Biden's inauguration was also a celebration for animal lovers who welcomed his two German Shepherds, Champ and Major, and the presence of pets back in the White House. Major is also the first shelter-adopted dog to live on the grounds, an event marked by his former caretakers at the Delaware Humane Association with an "Indoguration" ceremony and fundraiser on Zoom. The event had over 7,500 virtual attendees, and raised $200,000. The two shepherds have even earned the Twitter hashtag #DOTUS, and have a fan account called The Oval Pawffice to track their activities on social media.
 

So what does the average day for a White House pet look like? The Washington Post recently uncovered the "day-to-day doggie logistics". The pet care responsibilities are generally decided by the First Family with the Executive Residence staff (responsible for all living quarters duties) offering support when required. George H.W. and Barbara Bush were known to take on all of the responsibilities of dog ownership, even bathing their Springer Spaniels Millie and her pup Ranger by themselves. Gerald Ford's pregnant Golden Retriever Liberty was once the cause of a Secret Service emergency when the residence doors were bolted shut and the elevators had been shut down after the president took her out for a 3am potty walk. For more serious issues, veterinarians will make house calls, and the Chief groundskeeper Dale Hanley serves as a volunteer dog trainer. Hanley has worked with Presidential pets for decades, beginning with Richard Nixon's Irish Setter King Timahoe in the 1970s, and he's already been spotted out and about with Champ and Major. The training is welcomed, as most pet interactions are pleasant, but every once and a while a Chocolate Labrador Buddy Clinton can nearly cause a messy catastrophe by running full speed towards a holiday dessert display in the Grand Foyer. Otherwise White House pets are allowed to roam the grounds as they please, often adding levity and fuzzy fun to the serious work performed at the executive branch. Now who's up for a game of fetch on the South Lawn?

 
Credit and copyright: Delaware Humane Association / Pumpkin Petcare, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library / NARA, David Hume Kennerly / Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, White House / Michael Sargent

Below: former Presidents and their furry companions, including President Ronald Reagan with Lucky the sheep dog and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the Rose Garden; President Gerald Ford seated in the Oval Office and offering his golden retriever Liberty some good ear scrichies; and President George H. W. Bush with his Springer Spaniel, Millie, and her five puppies on the White House South Lawn.

Written by: Esther P.

Sometimes mysteries are hidden in plain sight! Australian researchers recently discovered that a mummy, which has been on display at the Chau Chak Wing Museum in Sydney for over 150 years, was extremely unique. The 3,000-year-old mummy, first unearthed in Egypt in the 1850s, is cocooned in a mud shell. Researchers have never seen a mummy prepared this way. Thought to be a woman between the ages of 26-35, analysis shows that the mud was applied to the woman's body after it had been buried for some, and after post-mortem damage was done (possibly by ancient tomb-raiders). Some archaeologists suggest that the mud was applied for appearance's sake, to hide damage. Others believe that the mud shell was added to the body to mimic the resin shells that rich Egyptians were encased in. There could also be a spiritual explanation. Ancient Egyptians believed that their dead journeyed to the realm of Osiris, God of the Underworld. In Egyptian mythology, Osiris's own body was once reassembled, so re-assembling a person's body after it was harmed could be an effort to stay in the god's good graces. Osiris was also associated with fertile soil, so mud may have been perfect for repairing a body to his liking. Adding more mystery is the fact that the mummy has been found to be much older than its ornate coffin, which is inscribed with the name "Meruah". This "body swap" was likely done by artifact dealers in the 19th Century, seeking to sell the mummy for a high price. One can only guess what other secrets and mysteries the "mud mummy" may reveal in years to come!

[Image description: A mud-covered mummy from the front, back, and sides.] Credit & copyright: Chau Chak Wing Museum/Macquarie Medical Imaging/CC BY 4.0
 

Written by: Maria C.

Happy March! Our selections for the Books of the Month follow this Curio.  

Post-World War II, American babies born prematurely were given excessively high concentrations of oxygen in incubators. This unknowingly caused a blindness epidemic. Because babies' eyes rapidly develop in the last 12 weeks of pregnancy, babies born prematurely may not have fully formed retinas. Too much oxygen can inhibit eye development and lead to retrolental fibroplasia, abnormal and fragile blood vessels growing throughout the retina. Renamed retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), retrolental fibroplasia can cause scarring and retinal detachment, leaving babies visually impaired or blind. Between the 1940s and 1950s, an estimated 10,000 babies lost their vision due to ROP.
 

The blindness epidemic led to an influx of visually impaired students in the public school system. Schools for the blind, like the Perkins School in Massachusetts, sought ways to serve this population by modernizing assistive technology. 70 years ago, they consulted with David Abraham, a British carpenter and machinist, to reinvent the braillewriter, a mechanical machine for writing braille.
 

Whereas the modern typewriter was invented in 1868, the first modern braillewriter was not invented until 1892. The original design had six keys, one for each of the dots in a braille cell. In Braille, each braille letter or cell is made up of six numbered dots (i.e. dot 1, dot 2, dot 3, etc.). Unique combinations of dots represent different letters and numbers. The idea for the writing system came from the Napoleonic army—Charles Barbier, an artillery officer, invented an embossed note-taking system that allowed militia to read notes without needing to strike a match and potentially alert the enemy to their location. Louis Braille spent years standardizing this system. When the Perkins school commissioned Abraham to redesign the braillewriter, they had several goals. They wanted to design a machine that was lightweight, easy to transport, durable, and quieter. Abraham's design may look deceptively simple, but it revolutionized braille writing. Today, the reading and writing system has numerous variants, many of which the Perkins Brailler can accommodate.

 
[Image description: The Perkins Brailler, a blue-green colored machine with six black keys, a space key, and a line space key, as well as two side knobs for advancing paper.] Copyright by the Perkins School for the Blind.
 

Below, the Braille alphabet, and a demonstration of how the Perkins Brailler works.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas...unless you become internationally renowned magicians! Such was the case with famed entertainers Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn—the original Tiger Kings. Although Roy Horn passed away last year due to COVID-19, and Fischbacher died from pancreatic cancer just 8 months later, the duo's legacy is destined to endure. Together, they shared a career powerful enough to spawn its own T.V. show, and a personal relationship strong enough to endure a life-altering tragedy.
 

Siegfried and Roy were both born in Germany during World War II. They met in 1960 aboard the TS Bremen, a cruise ship where 17-year-old Siegfried worked as a performing magician and where 13-year-old Roy worked as a waiter. One night, Siegfried asked Roy to join him onstage as an audience volunteer. The young men quickly bonded over their love of exotic animals and their unhappy childhoods. Siegfried, the son of a homemaker and veteran, had grown up feeling distant from other children, and used his love of magic to cope. Roy, whose father had died in the war and whose mother had worked factory jobs to make ends meet, felt similarly lonely. Siegfried was overjoyed to learn that Roy had direct access to exotic animals, since his mother's friend was the founder of the Bremen Zoo. Together, they planned a magic act centered around animals. They were soon fired from the TS Bremen, however, for bringing a cheetah onto the ship.
 

For the next five years, Siegfried and Roy toured Europe's night club circuit to great success. In 1967, talent scout Tony Azzie offered them a job performing in Las Vegas, where they soon went from sharing billing with other performers to being a headlining act. In 1981, producer Ken Feld started the Beyond Belief show at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino. The show's name was a reference to the magic Seigfriend and Roy performed and also to the unbelievable relationship they seemed to share with their performing animals. By 1988, Seigfriend and Roy had rocketed to fame, become U.S. citizens, and bought a 100-acre estate in Las Vegas, where they raised lions and tigers. Though some animal rights groups criticized them for exploiting big cats, and for putting themselves in danger by performing with them, Siegfried and Roy maintained that their bond with the animals kept them safe. "Sleeping with lions and tigers means you don't need many pillows," Roy famously said, in one interview. "Their bellies are just as comfortable."
 

The grandiose and risky nature of Siegfried and Roy's act had a profound impact on Las Vegas entertainment, as other acts procured more elaborate costumes and sets to keep up. Like other celebrities, Siegfried and Roy lived under constant press scrutiny, and were hounded over the nature of their personal relationship. Although it is still assumed that the two were romantically involved, they never talked openly about their sexuality. Seigfriend and Roy's devotion to one another became all the more clear, however, after a career-ending tragedy in the early 2000s.
 

On October 3, 2003, just as a T.V. show based on their act, Father of the Pride, was beginning production, Siegfried and Roy's show at the Mirage Theatre went horribly wrong. When Roy held a microphone to the mouth of a seven-year-old white tiger named Montecore, the cat bit him on the arm. When Roy fell onto his back, the tiger attacked, biting Roy's neck and dragging him offstage. By the time rescuers reached him, Roy had suffered severe injuries, including a severed spine and major blood loss, which triggered a stroke (although Roy would later insist that he'd had a stroke beforehand, and Montecore had tried to get him to safety by dragging him offstage).
 

Roy survived his injuries and Father of the Pride went on to air from 2004 to 2005. However the attack ended Siegfried and Roy's career, other than a farewell performance, in 2010. Roy did not regain the ability to walk until 2005, and his speaking ability was greatly impacted. Siegfried was his caregiver until his condition improved. "He helps me every day to do my exercises," Roy said, in one interview. "Siegfried told me once, 'The one who is a hero is the one who can hang on just one minute longer.'" Although their career ended far less happily than they'd hoped, there's no doubt that Siegfried and Roy's impact on Las Vegas will be felt for years to come. Their 60-year relationship will also be remembered as one of the strongest in history between two famous performers.

 
[Image description: Wearing sequined jackets, entertainers Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn pose with a white lion.] Credit & copyright: Carol M. Highsmith/Library of Congress

 
Written by: Maria C.

Last week, Texas experienced unprecedented power outages amid Winter Storm Uri. This wasn't the first time the system, managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), dealt with freeze-related failure. In 2011, during Super XLV, generators failed, leading to rolling blackouts. Turns out many of those generators had similarly failed in 1989. To understand why these generators failing led to mass blackouts requires some background on how the United States gets energy to consumers. In the contiguous United States, there are three electrical power grids: the Western Interconnection, the Eastern Interconnection, and ERCOT. Formally established in 1970, ERCOT is a nonprofit organization overseen by the Public Utility Commission of Texas, the Texas Legislature, and an unelected board (one third of whom lived outside of Texas before resigning yesterday). ERCOT covers most, but not all of Texas—parts of the panhandle, like El Paso, and East Texas, receive utilities from nearby states.
 

Because Texas is "off the grid," that is not connected to the other 47 mainland states, it cannot borrow energy in times of crisis. This design was intentional. During World War II, there was a substantial need for power along the Gulf Coast. Separate utilities in North and Central Texas combined forces to send excess energy to the region. For Texas, this interconnection also offered another opportunity—to evade federal oversight. Several years earlier, in 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Federal Power Act to regulate interstate energy commerce. Texas utilities vowed to keep all power created within the state, avoiding federal regulation. Even today, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission cannot interfere in the state's energy operations or wholesale electricity sales. This system has always been a point of pride for free-market advocates. In the late 1990s, Texas went a step further in deregulating utilities. The legislature broke up existing utility companies into power generating, transmission and distribution, and consumer-serving companies. Supporters have argued this decision benefited companies and consumers. However, Texas must now reckon with the devastating outcomes of a system that allowed companies to self-regulate. By ignoring recommendations to winterize infrastructure, Texas energy companies prioritized profits over people. Some even cashed in from the surge in demand as people died of hypothermia, burned their possessions to stay warm, and faced food and water shortages. Meanwhile other companies are facing financial ruin.
 

And in case you're wondering clean energy is not to blame for the crisis. Texas only gets 1% of its energy from solar power, 11% from nuclear power, and 17% from wind power. (It turns out wind turbines thrive in cold places...even Antarctica.) The rest of the state's energy comes from natural gas and coal.
 
[Image description: The three large electric interconnections that span the United States, large parts of Canada, and a small part of Mexico. A very modest amount of power flows among these three regions over direct current cables so that the 60 Hz power is not synchronized among the regions. Hydro Québec, which is not shown, provides power to many states in the northeastern United States.] Credit & copyright: U.S. Department of Energy, 2016.