Curio Cabinet / Daily Curio

The rush is on! On this day in 1848, President James K. Polk confirmed the discovery of gold in California during a State of the Union address, setting off the California Gold Rush in earnest. Immediately after the U.S. acquired California following the end of the Mexican–American War in 1848, a carpenter named James Wilson Marshall discovered gold on the property of Swiss immigrant John Sutter while building a water-powered sawmill. The two men tried to keep the discovery a secret, but to no avail. Just months later, a storekeeper named Sam Brannan paraded around the streets of San Francisco with a vial of gold flakes, leading others to come to California. Around three quarters of all the men in San Francisco left to find their fortunes in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, along with immigrants from Hawaii, Mexico, South America and China, who arrived by sea after word of the gold spread. Before 1848, California was relatively sparsely-populated for its size. Along with 150,000 Native Americans, there were less than 10,000 people of Spanish or Mexican descent and even fewer Americans, but by the end of 1849, there were over 100,000 non-natives scouring the landscape for gold. From the East Coast of the U.S. came the largest mass-migration in the country’s history, and it was during this time that San Francisco became a major metropolis, becoming a center for trade. By the peak of the gold rush, $2 billion worth of gold had been extracted from California, but in the following decades, the newly-minted state pivoted to agriculture as its main industry, as it remains today. Not all that glitters is gold, and by the time the vast majority of hopeful migrants arrived, nearly all the surface gold was gone. In addition, disease brought by the mass migration wiped out most of the Native Americans in the area, along with Anglo-Americans who violently enforced claims on gold-rich territories. Those who arrived too late for the easy pickings ended up working for large mining operations, and many people who were not prepared for the harsh demands of the mines or prospecting for gold in the wilderness died of disease or injuries. Like they say, when everyone else is digging for gold, it’s best to be the one selling shovels.
 
[Image description: A photo of prospectors standing around a stream in 1850-1852.] Credit & copyright: George H. Johnson, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

We’ve come a long way, but there’s still a way to go. Today is World AIDS Day, first observed in 1988. It's a day to mourn those who have been lost to AIDS, spread awareness about how the disease actually works, and reduce the stigma against those living with it. Over the past few decades, much of the world has great social and scientific strides in how it perceives and treats those with HIV and AIDS. Not so long ago, an HIV diagnosis was considered a figurative and literal death sentence. In the 1980s, as AIDS became an enormous public health crisis, the illness was strongly associated with gay and bisexual men as well as intravenous drug users—populations that already faced widespread discrimination. AIDS was highly stigmatized, to the point that even those who were infected through blood transfusions or other medical treatments were sometimes shunned. That included Ryan White, a 13-year-old hemophiliac from Indiana who made national headlines after facing discrimination at school for his HIV positive status. As a young social activist, White helped change people’s prejudices about HIV and AIDS. Unfortunately, he only lived for five years after his diagnosis, and others with HIV didn’t usually fare much better, at the time. Today, though, around 38 million people are living with HIV, and their health outlooks are far different than they would have been in the 1980s. In fact, with proper medication, most people with HIV can live long, healthy lives with little risk of spreading the virus. There are even medications that help prevent disease in uninfected people who are at higher risk of infection. New drug therapies are so effective that a handful of HIV-positive people have even been declared free of HIV, although no official cure exists yet. That doesn’t change the fact that millions of people around the world still suffer due to lack of accessible treatments and from discrimination. About 1.8 million of those who have HIV worldwide are children under the age of 15, and only about 67 percent of those who are aware of their status are being treated. 1.7 million people are infected with HIV every year, although the number of people dying from AIDS has been falling steadily since 2004. There’s no doubt that World AIDS Day is still a day worth commemorating, as it continues to raise awareness about the nature of the virus and reduce the social stigma against those who have it. Just look how much has changed already!

 
[Image description: A 1988 protest organized by the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP) to protest for greater access to treatments for AIDS patients.] Credit & copyright: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

Here’s a Christmassy curio! The UK’s only reindeer herd has welcomed three white calves this year, and now they’re going on tour. Spending most of the year in Cairngorms National Park in Scotland, the reindeer have been roaming around in the 10,000-acre park since 1952. Numbering just over 150, the Cairngorm Reindeer Herd lives a worry-free life and the deer are largely tame due to frequent interactions with their human caretakers and sightseers. In fact, some adult males are even trained to pull sleighs for exhibitions, and the herd is brought into a paddock during the winter where visitors can see and interact with the reindeer up close. The addition of three white calves will make for an extra special experience, but the herd is more than just a seasonal petting zoo. Although reindeer once lived in the British wilderness, they were driven to extinction on the island due to hunting and loss of habitat, and the last recorded sighting of a wild reindeer before 1952 occurred 800 years ago. The current herd is descended from reindeer brought over by Mikel Utsi and Dr. Ethel Lindgren, a Swedish couple who thought that the Cairngorms Mountains could be an ideal location for reintroducing reindeer when they first visited the area on their honeymoon. They went on to co-found the Reindeer Company, which continues watching over the herd, and even though reindeer hadn’t been in Britain in centuries, they didn’t have much trouble adapting. The Cairngorms Mountains provide an ideal habitat for the reindeer, who have little to worry about in the way of predators, and are hardy enough to withstand the bitter winters of northern Scotland while they munch away on the relatively sparse vegetation in the area. Best of all, the mountains are one of the few places in the UK where there is snow for most of the year—ideal for reindeer used to the cold climate of Lapland. If Santa’s reindeer tire themselves out this Christmas, maybe they should stop to catch their breath in Scotland.

 
[Image description: A white reindeer grazes in snow.] Credit & copyright: Michelle_Maria, Pixabay

California is literally fighting fire with fire. Native American tribes in The Golden State are starting traditional controlled burns again, bringing back a millennia-old tradition that once kept wildfires in check. California wildfires have been getting worse year after year, leaving millions of people at risk of losing their homes. Part of the problem is climate change, which results in hotter, drier summers that help the fire spread, but another major factor is that in the early 1900s, the state government banned Native American tribes from starting controlled burns. For at least a thousand years, the tribes set the land aflame in part to cultivate certain plants that benefit from fire, but also to clear the dead, dry vegetation that builds up on the ground. The ban on controlled burns wasn’t just about wildfire management. Because the burns were also considered a spiritual tradition, the state’s ban was a tool used to stifle Native American culture. Unfortunately, without the smaller, more predictable fires to keep the build-up of dry vegetation at bay, wildfires started to get worse as the landscape essentially filled up with fuel every year, waiting to be ignited by a lightning strike or a careless camper. Now, armed with drip torches and traditional knowledge, Native Americans are working with the Forest Service to manage wildfires. One of the people helping to reignite the tradition of controlled burns is Ron Goode of the North Fork Mono. Goode told NPR, "When I was a kid, I learned from my mother. But my mother got in trouble when she burned because the fire department didn't want her doing what we're doing today…We don't put fire on the ground and not know how it's going to turn out. That's what makes it cultural burning, because we cultivate." It’s the biggest “we told you so” in California history.

 
[Image description: A black-and-white photo of smoke rising from a burned section of forest.] Credit & copyright: ojkumena, Pixabay

Think last minute Thanksgiving shopping trips are rough? That’s nothing compared to shopping under rationing! There’s been a lot to be thankful for since rationing ended this day in 1945 in the U.S., following the end of World War II. Shortly after the U.S. entered the war, the government started rationing consumer goods with the Emergency Price Control Act to meet the demands of the war effort. Signed into law on January 30, 1942, the act gave the Office of Price Administration (OPA) the authority to enforce a rationing system for everything from tires to groceries. Under the rationing system, each adult, child, and baby was issued a ration book of stamps worth a certain number of points in two color coded categories. Every month, each person would receive 64 red points for meat and dairy and 48 blue points for canned and bottled goods. At the store, shoppers would have to present these stamps along with payment to purchase the goods they needed—and to prevent hoarding, the stamps expired each month. Separate systems were introduced for other goods like tires, gasoline, and even shoes, each with varying degrees of complexity that left Americans frustrated, leading to the development of a black market for coveted items and even counterfeit stamps.
 
In addition to rationing, the government also promoted the practice of canning at home through the USDA Extension Services, who sent out demonstrators to rural communities and created canning centers to teach people how to preserve excess food. Along with the canning initiatives, the government encouraged those who had enough land to grow their own food in “victory gardens” instead of relying solely on ration stamps. To promote canning and gardening, posters and literature portrayed them as patriotic acts, holding up these domestic activities as integral parts of the war effort. While the conclusion of World War II in 1945 led to the end of the rationing program that same year, sugar would continue to be rationed until 1947, and consumers still faced shortages on certain products from time to time. Funnily enough, among the few goods that were never rationed during the war were cigarettes and whiskey. Now that would have been a losing battle.

 
[Image description: A 1943 poster explaining how to use a ration book.] Credit & copyright: Office of Price Administration, Online Archive of California, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

There’s uncharted territory, then there’s unchartered territory. The Mayflower Compact was a document signed aboard its namesake ship on this day in 1620, in what came to be a landmark moment in American democracy. As the Mayflower and its 102 passengers neared the New World, tensions arose between the two main groups of passengers. There were the Pilgrims, a group of separatists seeking freedom from the Church of England, and British commoners that the Pilgrims called “Strangers.” The Pilgrims had signed a contract with the Virginia Company, which was chartered by King James I, giving them permission to create new settlements in Virginia. Through the Virginia Company, the Pilgrims obtained funding from stockholders in London who would be repaid with profits earned by their colony. But the Mayflower was blown off course by winds that pushed them northward, leading them toward New England. Outside of the Virginia Company’s territory, the Pilgrims’ contract was no longer valid. Wherever they landed, they would be on their own. The Strangers, who actually made up the majority of the passengers aboard the ship, saw this as an opportunity to live in the New World free of regulations, with an “every man for himself” philosophy. Fearing a mutiny and hoping to maintain an orderly society once they made landing, the Pilgrims drafted what would come to be known as the Mayflower Compact. Signed by 41 men on the ship, the compact was an agreement among the signatories to stay loyal to the king, live by Christian ideals, and create a government for the new colony through elections. The compact was signed off of the coast of Cape Cod, and the passengers of the Mayflower would come to settle down in Plymouth. Although they faced a brutal winter as soon as they hit the shore, the compact allowed the new colony to effectively self-govern. As new colonists arrived and created towns of their own in the area, they were given the right to have an elected representative attend a General Court established by the Plymouth colony. This was an early iteration of representative government in North America, one that would leave a lasting impact on the culture and politics of the colonies. You could say it was revolutionary.

 
[Image description: A group of people aboard the Mayflower gathered around a table for the signing of the Mayflower Compact.] Credit & copyright:
Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

Here’s a man of letters and principles. Portuguese novelist, poet, and Nobel laureate José Saramago was born on this day in 1922. Saramago came from an impoverished family, which he described as “landless peasants.” Searching for better opportunities for their children, Saramago’s parents moved their family to the city of Lisbon when he was a child. There, he would attend a technical school to become a mechanic, but he only stayed in that line of work for a brief two years before entering civil service. He wrote on and off throughout the following years, but he wouldn’t begin to pursue writing steadily until he was in his 50s, when he became unemployed due to his associations with the Portuguese Communist Party following a period of political turmoil in the country. Some of his most well known works include A Jangada de Pedra (“The Stone Raft”), and O Evangelho Segundo Jesus Cristo (“The Gospel According to Jesus Christ”). Always an outspoken atheist and politically active on and off the page, Saramago’s works earned him controversy throughout his career in Portugal. In 1992, when the Portuguese government blocked his novel O evangelho segundo Jesus Cristo from consideration for a literary prize due to pressure from the Roman Catholic Church, he went into self-imposed exile to the Canary Islands for the rest of his life. But Saramago’s most renowned work is the novel Ensaio sobre a cegueira, known by the English title Blindness. It tells the story of an epidemic of blindness spreading throughout an unnamed city, detailing the breakdown of social order as the characters struggle to survive. Despite the continuing animosity from the Vatican, which opposed his consideration for the Nobel Prize in Literature, The Swedish Academy selected Saramago for the honor in 1998, a first for any Portuguese-language writer. Among his works, they cited Blindness as one of the chief motivating factors, describing the author as one “who with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality.” Blindness was adapted into film in 2008, but a few of Saramago’s other works have been made into operas. Lofty heights to reach from such humble beginnings.

 
[Image description: A statue of José Saramago reading to a child in Conil de la Frontera, Spain] Credit & copyright: Pedro M. Martínez Corada, Wikimedia Commons, image cropped for size.