Curio Cabinet / Person, Place, or Thing

Showtime at Harlem's greatest theater.

Among America's historic buildings, few can match the legacy of the Apollo Theater in Harlem. The New York City music hall located at 253 West 125th Street has seen its share of highs and lows. From its astounding talent roster—which included the likes of Duke Ellington and Jackie "Moms" Mabley—to the hard times when its immense history was nearly lost to economic misfortunes, the Apollo has proven it will stand the test of time.
 

The neoclassical theater that became the Apollo was designed by architect George Keister and built in 1913. Far from its famed future, the location operated as a whites-only burlesque theater with producers Jules Hurtig and Harry Seamon running the shows. In 1933, a city-wide ban on burlesque put the two men out of business, and the theater into disrepair. The owner of the building, Sydney Cohen stepped in with business partner Morris Sussman to reopen and reinvigorate the space. On January 26, 1934, the Apollo Theater opened with the show "Jazz a la Carte" and a new format with variety revues and Amateur Night contests. They also appealed to a new audience: Harlem's growing African-American communities of the early 20th century. By 1937, the theater was the nation's largest employer of black workers in the theatre industry. It was also the only in New York City to hire black workers for backstage positions.
 

Where to begin with the legends who took the stage at the Apollo? Jazz singer Sarah Vaughan, rock guitar virtuoso Jimi Hendrix, and the pop-quintet the Jackson 5 all claimed victories as winners of Amateur Nights at the Apollo. Comedians Moms Mabley, Redd Foxx, and Richard Pryor sold-out shows at the venue. Funk legend James Brown's 1962 Live at the Apollo album, recorded at the location, spent 66 weeks on the Billboard charts. The "Queen of Soul," Aretha Franklin, and her not-to-be-missed shows were noted on the marquee with the phrase "She's Home." "The King of Pop," Michael Jackson, performed a free concert at the Apollo in April 2002: the last onstage performance before he passed away. Anybody who was anyone in popular black music of the 20th century—be it jazz, R&B, or hip-hop—paid their respects to the location where black excellence was a nearly nightly display.
 

Several issues with competing venues and studio-recorded music products caused the Apollo to once again shut its doors in 1976. Noting the historical importance of the Apollo to the histories of both Harlem and America, businessman Percy Sutton gathered investors and bought the theater in 1983, before securing its status among the National Register of Historic Places and New York City Landmarks. He also restarted the popular Amateur Nights at the theater—which, beginning in 1987, were nationally televised alongside feature performers as Showtime at the Apollo. The predecessor to musical competition shows like American Idol, Showtime had a prominent audience participation aspect to it: a loud standing ovation could jumpstart a career. If booing became raucous, well, a siren would sound, and an "executioner" would arrive onstage to do a comic routine that both ended and upstaged the previous performance.
 

In 1991, the State of New York purchased the Apollo Theater and established the non-profit Apollo Theater Foundation to manage the venue and preserve its history. The location was recently renovated, and continues to make news, as a young Senator named Barack Obama hosted a fundraiser there in 2007, and R&B singer Bruno Mars recorded Bruno Mars: 24K Magic Live at the Apollo in 2017. If the past 86 years are any indication the Apollo Theater will continue to live up to its motto as a place "where stars are born and legends are made."
 

Below: a video of James Brown performing I Got the Feeling at the famed Apollo Theater; an informal memorial at the Harlem location to celebrate the life of Aretha Franklin.

 

Image credit & copyright: WRTI
 

A physician's secret passion for words.

A picture might be worth a thousand words, but Peter Roget's invention was worth about 15,000 when it was first published over a century and a half ago. Roget's Thesaurus was the first of its kind to act as a cross-reference work for word lovers looking for precision, perfection, or piqued curiosity. With its immense popularity over the past 200 years, it's a wonder that Roget himself actually kept his handbook a secret for many decades of his life.
 

Forget the "strong and silent type." Peter Mark Roget was an effusive polymath and physician. Born on January 18, 1779, Roget rose through the ranks of British society to eventually become the first Fullerian Professor of Physiology at the Royal Institution in London. His endless curiosity and immense knowledge in other aspects of life led him to publish scientific papers. These treatises advocated for water sanitization and a sewage system in London, the development of the film-predecessor animation device called the Phenakistoscope, or offered contributions to the Encyclopedia Britannica. With all of Roget's prestige and intellectual achievements, it might be hard to fathom what biographers identify as a muse for his lexicography pastimes: depression. Roget was said to have suffered from the condition throughout his life, and took up list-making as a coping mechanism by the age of eight. This habit likely fueled the earliest version of Roget's thesaurus, which was said to have been solely for his personal use, and completed in just one year at the age of 26 in 1805.
 

The ensuing nearly 50 years would find Roget adding to his collection, but never publishing it. As he retired in the 1840s, Roget began serious work on his grand list of word references. He gave it the title "thesaurus" from the ancient Greek word for a "treasure storehouse." In a nod to 18th-century zoologist Carl Linnaeus' classification of animal species, Roget gave his work six sections: Abstract Relations, Space, Matter, Intellect, Volition, and Affections. For Roget, his arrangement of words wasn't just meant to find synonymous meanings (although that is a major benefit of his invention). No, replacing words with no finesse for context or meaning wouldn't suffice. Roget himself noted, "it is hardly possible to find two words having in all respect the same meaning, and being therefore interchangeable." Rather, he intended an exploration and discovery of word usages, sparking the imagination in the process. For example, the act of linking the word "state"—meaning "tone, tenor, turn; trim, guise, fashion, light, complexion, style, character"—in all its various nounal, verbal, adjectival, and adverbial forms points back to the delight or comfort Roget found in categorizing these words and being able to draw them up at will through his reference manual.
 

The first edition of Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition was published in 1852. Since then, it has never been out of publication, with Roget's son, Jon, expanding the index for quick reference in 1869. The work has since sold over 40 million copies worldwide. Famous writers like Sylvia Plath and David Foster Wallace swore by Roget's as a trusted companion to their craft, even as esteemed critics lambast its synonym-finding aspects and the popularity it has with people who mainly use it to write or solve crossword puzzles. According to Roget's first edition, those critics might be suffering from a bit of "jealousy, jaundiced eye; envious suspicion," or a "green-eyed monster"!
 

Below: a drawing of Peter Roget.
 

Image credit & copyright: Diane Salerni
 

A closer look at the famously controversial modernist writer

Who publishes their first poem at the age of nine, learns to speak 17 languages, and produces work that changes international law—all while claiming not to care about fame? That would be Irish author James Joyce, who died January 13, 1941. His timeless works, such as Dubliners, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and—most famously—Ulysses, inspired international controversy and even a literary holiday.  

Born to a large family in Dublin, Ireland, in 1882, Joyce showed an early talent for writing and language. At age nine, he published his first poem, "Et Tu Healy?," with the help of his father, who was supposedly so impressed with it that he sent a copy to the Pope. Joyce also taught himself Norwegian so that he could read Henrik Ibsen's plays in their original language. It was the first of many instances in which Joyce would teach himself a foreign language.  

Joyce published his first short story in 1904. His first book, Dubliners, published in 1914, was a collection of short stories about middle-class Irish life. His first novel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, came out two years later, but some found it difficult to understand. Joyce wrote in a modernist (purposefully non-traditional) style, with complex language, neologisms, and a stream-of-consciousness structure. The book did catch the eye of famous poet Ezra Pound, who praised its originality.  

By far Joyce's most famous work was his novel Ulysses, published in 1922. A modern retelling of Homer's Odyssey, it follows a day in the life of a Dubliner named Leopold Bloom, and confronts issues from poverty to Ireland's relationship with Britain. Part of the book's allure is its ability to transform a normal life into a seemingly epic one, thanks to myriad allusions and Joyce's vivid imagery. The date on which the novel takes place, June 16, 1904, is rumored to be the day that Joyce met his real-life wife, Nora Barnacle.  

Ulysses had a difficult road to publication and was banned in several countries for its sexual content. However, the United states became the first English-speaking country to sell the book, in 1933. Ulysses eventually became so beloved that the date on which the novel takes place, June 16, became a literary holiday called Bloomsday (named after the novel's central character, Leopold Bloom).  

Joyce's next book, Finnegan's Wake, was published in 1939 to critical acclaim. This novel contained even more of Joyce's puns and newly-invented words. One such word was 100 letters long, and was meant to mimic the sound of a thunderclap marking the fall of Adam and Eve: "Bababadalgharaghtakamminapronnkonnbronn..." well, you get the picture. Some think it was inspired by Joyce's own lifelong fear of thunder.  

Unfortunately, Joyce suffered from many health problems, most relating to his eyes. He endured many surgeries and spent most of his later life nearly blind. During World War II, Joyce's family was forced to move out of Paris to avoid the Nazi invasion. In 1941, Joyce failed to recover from an intestinal operation and passed away at the age of 59.  

Joyce is still celebrated as one of the greatest writers of all time. He might not have been too keen on the idea of Bloomsday, though, as he didn't like the idea of being memorialized. He even said, once, that creating a statue of someone was "the most efficient and courteous way yet discovered of ensuring a lasting oblivion of the deceased." Little did he know that a statue of himself would one day stand at North Earl Street, in Dublin. Whoops—even the world's greatest linguists don't get to write their own legacies!  

One tower to rule them all.

Ambition can be measured in height when it comes to skyscrapers, and the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, is no exception. The building reaches 2,722 feet high, making it the tallest in the world. In spite of its grandiosity, the Burj Khalifa's stature was nearly dwarfed by complications during its construction.
 

In 2003, at the apex of an economic boom, Dubai leaders decided to transition their economy from being purely oil-based to one that included ambitious architectural industry. This would consist of various civic projects, including the headliner: the prospective tower known at the time as the Burj Dubai ("burj" meaning "tower" in Arabic). Adrian Smith of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill design firm was recruited as a lead designer on the project, with his past portfolio including One World Trade Center in New York City and the Willis Tower in Chicago, Illinois. The tower was given an initial budget of $1.5 billion.
 

The design for the tower included several sources of inspiration, including the Y-shaped tripartite floor plan from the Tower Palace III in Seoul, South Korea, and the rising spire from the Great Mosque of Samarra in Samarra, Iraq. Only, with this tower, the three-pronged base would take the shape of a flower, the Spider Lily (Hymenocallis) of the Americas. Once finished, the burj would be the centerpiece of bustling new downtown Dubai developments, including hotels, parks, a giant artificial lake (the Burj Khalifa Lake, named after the building), and the world famous Dubai Mall. It would be the architectural pride of the city—if it managed to avoid construction pitfalls.
 

Construction began on the 162-floor building in 2004. Over 12,000 international workers clocking a combined 22 million work hours labored to build each of the tower's tiers, which spiral around a central buttressed core that protrudes as the pinnacle of the structure. Around 11.6 million cubic feet of concrete, 43 tons of steel, 167,000 square feet of embossed stainless steel, and over one million square feet of glass were used during construction. Just 1,325 days after breaking earth, the Burj Khalifa had already become the world's tallest man-made structure.
 

Then, in March 2006, a riot of over 2,000 workers broke out at the construction site when their shuttle busses were delayed. The wages paid to immigrant laborers were paltry, with some earning as little as $4 for a hard day's work. Despite their being shortchanged, the tower far exceeded its original projected budget as reservations for office and residential spaces dried up after the market crash of 2008. With budget constraints looming over the opening, the project received a much needed injection of $10 billion to pay off its debts in December 2009 from the neighboring city of Abu Dhabi and UAE President Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The tower opened on a month later with a new name in honor of the man who saved it: the Burj Khalifa.
 

On January 4, 2010, the Burj Khalifa opened its doors and broke a number of building records. It's both the tallest building in the world and the tallest freestanding structure, and also packs the record for most stories, the highest outdoor observation deck, the highest occupied floor, and, finally, the elevator with the longest and tallest travel distance in the world. It's also relatively green, thanks to a state-of-the-art condensate recovery system and a "sky-sourced" ventilation system that syphons cool air in through its crown. Jeez, talk about an architectural overachiever!
 

Below: a complete view of the Burj Khalifa, from ground to spire.
 

Image credit & copyright: Get Your Guide
 

Welcome to our Top 15 of 2019 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet.
 

A young blind man finds inspiration in a Napoleonic War veteran.

Few have the resiliency to turn a tragedy into a miracle, but Louis Braille did. The French educator and inventor of Braille lost his eyesight as a young boy but invented his unprecedented language at just 15 years old to counteract his disability. Many of his fellow teachers would decry the language of Braille as a parlor trick, but with time, they would come around.
 

Braille, who was born in Coupvray, France, on January 4, 1809, displayed the tendencies of a profoundly curious mind. As a toddler, he frequently explored his father's saddle-making workshop and the many tools therein. It was there that tragedy struck. At just three years old, Braille accidentally gouged his right eye with a cobbler's tool while poking holes through leather. An infection grew and spread to his other eye; by the age of five, Braille was totally blind.
 

Braille's interest in the world around him endured, though, and his parents fought to get him educated. At the age of 10, he enrolled at Valentin Haüy's National Institute for Blind Youth in Paris, the first school of its kind. It was in 1821 that Braille's teacher, Dr. Alexandre François-René Pignier, invited French war veteran Charles Barbier to speak before his class. During the Napoleonic Wars, Barbier had been tasked with creating "night writing": a way for soldiers to communicate silently in the pitch black of night. His script proved too complicated, and was deemed a complete failure by the military; but Braille saw promise in it.
 

He quickly pared down Barbier's system, using paper, a slate, and a stylus to devise text from small punctures. The success of his language came down to simplicity; while "night writing" used 12 raised dots to denote phonetic speech, Braille devised a language that used just two columns of three dots to represent letters and punctuation. A single matrix of dots fit neatly beneath a fingertip and could represent one of 64 symbols. Braille published his system in 1829, which Dr. Pignier quickly championed and implored his students to adopt.
 

Braille's intellectual endeavors garnered him a full professorship at the institute, where he taught geometry, algebra, and history. In his spare time, he applied his exceptionally sensitive ears to music, performing as an accomplished cellist. He also served as organist at the Church of Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs and the Church of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul. But still, his new language remained out of use until after his death at 42 in 1852—largely due to public skepticism that something so miraculous could ever work.
 

It wasn't until 1854 that the blind pupils at the institute overwhelmingly pushed for Braille's language to become mandatory curricula. Naturally, as class after class of blind students were trained in it, the language became accepted and diffused across the world. In 1952, the French Government finally recognized the achievements of Braille. Nowadays, World Braille Day is celebrated annually on his birthday. It just goes to show that sight is not necessary for vision.
 

Image credit & copyright: Popperfoto/Getty Images
 

Welcome to our Top 15 of 2019 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .
 

An intrepid reporter goes undercover to expose a notorious insane asylum.

Strap on your tinfoil hats and arm your notepads—we're plunging into the madhouse with Nellie Bly! The fearless American reporter, born May 5, 1864, redefined the civic responsibilities and potential of journalism. In the span of just two weeks, Bly saved hundreds from inhumane torture and opened the door for reforms in a long-troubled branch of the medical industry. And this was all before she circled the globe in record-breaking time!
 

Bly was born Elizabeth Cochran in Cochrans Mills, Philadelphia. Her journalism career began at 21, when she wrote a response to a misogynistic article published in The Pittsburgh Dispatch. Staffers at the Dispatch were so impressed with the scathing rebuttal that they hired her on. She adopted the pen name Nellie Bly from a song by composer Stephen Foster and took a job covering dictator Porfirio Díaz in Mexico. The experience landed her a gig at Joseph Pulitzer's hard-hitting, investigative newspaper, the New York World.
 

By 23, Bly had become one of the few female reporters in New York City and was itching to make her mark. Her target? The notorious Blackwell's Island Madhouse. Rumors circulated of severe medical mistreatment at the facility, and Bly was determined to dig up the truth. She assumed an alias, tangled and knotted her hair, and took a room at a boarding house where she feigned insanity. After a few days of ranting and raving, the proprietors of the boarding house called the police. Bly was diagnosed with dementia and other illnesses at Bellevue Hospital before she was ferried to Blackwell's Island and committed in the fall of 1887.
 

Conditions at Blackwell were far worse than the speculation of rumors. Bly was crammed alongside 1,600 patients into the building, which was built to hold 1,000. Just 16 doctors were on staff and their treatment of the ill was deeply disturbing. They showed little compassion and mutilated patients on a day-to-day basis, exacerbating their illnesses. Patients were drenched in ice-cold water and forced to sit absolutely still for 12 hours at a time. Some staffers even threatened Bly with sexual violence. Perhaps worst of all, many of the patients at Blackwell were not insane to begin with. They were immigrants, women for the most part, who had landed there by virtue of language barriers.
 

A week-and-a-half later, Bly's editors arranged for her release. Her series of articles, Ten Days in a Mad House, were published shortly after. Blackwell had been tipped off and managed to clean up its act, but after the ensuing trial, the institution's malevolent staffers were fired and replaced. Sane patients were released and afforded translators when necessary. Furthermore, Bly's sleuthing resulted in the passing of numerous reforms, including an unprecedented budget increase for mental institutions of nearly $1 million (or $24 million adjusted for inflation).
 

By 1889, 25-year-old Bly was a celebrated heroine—and soon to be a renowned adventurer. One day, after reading Jules Verne's adventure novel Around the World in Eighty Days, she was inspired to attempt the titular feat. Her editor argued that only a man could accomplish it. Bly responded, "Hire a man and I'll start the same day for another newspaper and beat him." She was approved. Bly set out from New York in a westerly direction and managed the trip in a record-breaking 72 days, later publishing her story in a book.
 

Upon her return, Bly was the most famous reporter of her age. She continued to cover stories here and there, like the women's suffrage convention, but married a Brooklyn millionaire and industrialist and preoccupied herself with charity work. Her husband died a few years later, and she took over his business and even patented a few oil manufacturing inventions before her death on January 27, 1922. Today, Bly is revered as a larger-than-life figure, a fashion icon, a feminist dynamo, and a key pioneer in investigative journalism. Simply put, Bly is a legend.
 

Image credit & copyright: Getty Images
 

The rise and fall of Rome's greatest orator.

As rivals like Julius Caesar and Mark Antony vied for despotic control over the Late Roman Republic, one man defended democracy: polymath Marcus Tullius Cicero, who, unlike Caesar, was not born of the ruling class. The statesman and philosopher used his powerful speeches and writings to advocate for the Roman Republic, even as tyrannical forces closed in on him.

 

Born in 106 B.C.E. in Arpinum (now central Italy), Cicero was named "chickpea" in Latin, and likely came from an ancestor who was a farmer. His family was part of the equestrian order, just below the ruling senators and above the common plebeians. It was unusual for an equestrian to rise in the ranks of society, but Cicero was no ordinary person. He extensively read the works of philosophers and traveled to Greece to hone his rhetoric. After marrying into a wealthy family at the age of 27, he rose quickly through the ranks of government, becoming a quaestor (treasurer), praetor (magistrate), and finally the highest political office: consul, in 63 B.C.E. at the age of 43. He was the youngest man of common lineage to ever attain the position.
 

In spite of the respect he commanded among Romans for his writings, wisdom, and unparalleled oration, Cicero's rise to the top was constantly challenged. In the same year he became consul, he uncovered a plot to overthrow the Roman Republic and thwarted an assassination attempt on his life, both devised by Senator Catiline. The anti-Republic First Triumvirate—comprised of Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus—preyed on Cicero when he executed Catiline's co-conspirators without trial. An abuse of power, they called the action: one worthy of death in its own right. Cicero realized that each of the Triumvirate were out to seize as much individualized power over the Republic as they could. He retreated from public life to work on his writings.
 

Political alliances remained tumultuous for the rest of Cicero's life. Rome transitioned from a republic to an empire, and power was consolidated amongst a few power-hungry leaders. Upon hearing of the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C.E., Cicero supported the actions of Brutus and the other assassins, making an enemy of Mark Antony, Caesar's surviving war general. In 43 B.C.E., Cicero delivered some 14 speeches called the Philippics to the Roman senate, in which he decried Antony's tyranny and praised the values of liberty. In a last desperate attempt to thwart Antony, Cicero aligned himself with Caesar's rightful heir and Antony's antagonist, Octavian. In a series of events that would spell Cicero's demise, Octavian and Antony reconciled and joined forces with Lepidus to create the Second Triumvirate. Antony sought revenge against Cicero, and in December of 43 B.C.E., the great Roman orator was caught by centurions leaving his villa at Formiae. His head and hands were cut off and delivered to Mark Antony, where they were later displayed at the Rostra platform in the Roman Forum.
 

While Cicero's political life was met with a bloody end, his legacy and writings have had far more fortunate fates. The rediscovery of his letters in the 14th century by the Italian poet Petrarch is said to have ignited the Renaissance in Europe. When the printing press was invented in 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg, the third book to be printed was Cicero's De Officiis ("On Duties"), a work he wrote in his last year of life on how to live morally. Enlightenment philosophers like John Locke and Voltaire pored over Cicero's teachings on liberty, as did the U.S. Founding Fathers like John Adams, who once said, "As all the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher united than Cicero, his authority should have great weight."

 

Image credit & copyright: Foundation for Economic Education
 

The activist whose arrest sparked the flame of the Civil Rights Movement.

In photos, she looks like a normal, middle-aged woman. Yet, her face is iconic, her strength legendary. She is Rosa Parks, the woman who started the American Civil Rights Movement with one brave act on a Montgomery bus, on today's date in 1955. But the act of courage wasn't preplanned—in fact, a personal vendetta may have had a hand.
 

Racial prejudice was familiar to Parks from a young age. Born in 1913, she was raised in Pine Level, Alabama, by her mother and maternal grandparents, both of whom were former slaves. As a child, Parks once watched her grandfather stand guard as Klu Klux Klan members marched down the street. At Parks's childhood school, white students rode the bus while black students were forced to walk.
 

Before she could earn her high school diploma, Parks had to drop out and get a job in Montgomery to support her family. At age 19, she married Raymond Parks, an NAACP member and civil rights advocate who supported her while she went back to attain her diploma. Parks joined him in the Montgomery NAACP in 1943, becoming the chapter's youth leader and secretary. She also worked as a seamstress at a Montgomery Department store.
 

On December 1, 1955, Parks boarded a bus on the way home from work. At the time, Jim Crow laws made racial segregation legal. White passengers boarded and sat at the front of the bus, and black passengers did both at the back. If the white section became full, black passengers had to give up their seats to white passengers. The driver that day was James Blake, who in 1943 had forced Parks to re-enter through his bus' back door after paying, only to drive off when she obeyed. She had managed to avoid him for 10 years.
 

When the white section of the bus became full that day, Blake demanded that four black passengers give up their seats. Three complied, but 42-year-old Rosa Parks refused. When Blake asked, "Why don't you stand up?" Parks answered, "I don't think I should have to stand up." He called the police, and Parks was arrested. In her 1992 autobiography, Parks stated that she was too tired to give up her seat that day—not physically, but mentally. "The only tired I was, was tired of giving in," she wrote.
 

By the time Parks was released from jail that evening, the Montgomery NAACP was planning a bus boycott. It began on December 5, the day of Parks' trial. Black community leaders formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) and elected Martin Luther King Jr. as minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. King became one of the boycott's most important leaders.
 

The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted a whopping 381 days, and Parks was arrested again in February of 1956 alongside 100 fellow protestors. White supremacists retaliated by burning black churches and bombing the homes of Martin Luther King Jr. and Montgomery NAACP President E.D. Nixon. Eventually, a legal suit against Jim Crow laws, filed by Parks's lawyer, made it to the district court. The laws were ruled unconstitutional—a decision the U.S. Supreme Court upheld. The boycott ended on December 20, 1956, when the city stopped segregating their buses.
 

Parks and her husband, now targets for violence, moved to Detroit. She worked as a secretary in the office of U.S. Representative John Conyer and served on the Planned Parenthood Federation of America's board. After publishing her autobiography in 1992 and memoir in 1995, Parks received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996, and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1997. These are the highest awards given by the U.S. executive and legislative branches. Hardship continued to strike Parks late in life, however: she was robbed and assaulted at her apartment in 1994. Fortunately, the founder of Little Caesar's pizza, Mike Ilitch, got in touch with her network upon hearing the news, and secretly paid her rent at a more secure location for the rest of her life.
 

Even after she passed away in 2005, at the age of 92, Parks was honored as an American hero. She was the first woman to lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, in Washington, D.C. Today, Rosa Parks is referred to as "the mother of the civil rights movement." Her life serves as a reminder that the bravery of a single person can change the world.
 

Below: Rosa Parks speaks about her arrest and the Civil Rights Movement.
 

Image credit & copyright: AP Photo
 

The complicated history of the first Thanksgiving guests.

For some, Thanksgiving is a time to gather with family and indulge in turkey and pumpkin pie. For the remnants of the Wampanoag tribes of New England, the holiday has been renamed the National Day of Mourning, after what it has caused them. Today we're taking a look at the very first Thanksgiving of 1621, the mistreatment of the Wampanoag by British colonists, and the lasting effects of trauma on Indigenous peoples in order to have a more comprehensive view of American history.
 

The Wampanoag name means "People of the Dawn," and long before the first British fishermen landed in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, the confederacy of tribes celebrated autumn harvests with Thanksgiving-like feasts. Their tribes were matrilineal, with women handling agricultural duties and wielding great socio-economic power, while men hunted game, held political roles, and fought in wars. It's estimated that some 100,000 people lived among 69 villages in the 1610s, through contact with European traders and their diseases diminished the numbers to 40,000. Some were also abducted and sold into slavery, like Tisquantum, the Pawtuxet Indian who became Squanto.
 

Tisquantum was sold into slavery in Spain in 1614, and returned to North America on an expedition in 1619, only to find out his tribe at Plymouth had been wiped out by a European disease. When the Mayflower landed at Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in 1620, Squanto was literally a lifesaver for the starved, cold, and dying Pilgrims. He showed them how to use fish as fertilizer for corn, and how to grow gourds that would climb the corn stalks. He became an emissary and Wampanoag interpreter for the English.
 

By many accounts, the first Thanksgiving meal in 1621 was a respite from the various turmoils afflicting both the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag. Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Colony invited Massasoit, the Grand Sachem (leader of the tribes), to the feast. Massasoit brought 90 warriors with foods like venison, lobster, fish, oysters, corn, and squash—very much staples of New England seafood dining, but hardly what Americans might recognize as Thanksgiving food today. Together, they feasted for three days.
 

The peace did not last. As part of the Pequot War, on May 27, 1637, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony, Bradford, designated a "day of Thanksgiving" after the colony took part in the previous day's massacre at Pequot Fort, near the Mystic River. About 700 Pequot of the Wampanoag nation—mostly women, children, elderly, and the infirm—were killed when the fort was set aflame, with survivors sold as slaves in the West Indies. Tensions persisted even as Puritan missionaries established "praying towns" in 1650 for Wampanoag survivors to convert and culturally assimilate to Christianity. In 1675, King Philip's War broke out between New England tribes and colonists, decimating Wampanoag numbers to only 400. It's no wonder that under these democidal conditions, in 1970, Wampanoag leader Wamsutta (aka Frank James) was disinvited to the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrim's arrival when event planners learned of the content of his speech: Wamsutta planned to condemn the Pilgrims' initial grave-robbing, kidnapping, and enslavement of the Wampanoag, among other atrocities committed against the tribal nation.

 

In response to the controversial snubbing, Wamsutta and the United American Indians of New England traveled to Cole's Hill in Massachusetts to hold the National Day of Mourning on the same day as Thanksgiving (or the last Thursday in November, an official holiday declared by President Lincoln in October 1863). The event features a march through the Plymouth district and speeches from Native American speakers. Their efforts are meant to educate people about the Wampanoag's history and the atrocities of colonization rarely covered in-depth in U.S. history books. Lending them an ear is the least one can do during the holiday season, as we work towards honesty, equitable historical representation, and humanitarian communion for all.

 

Image credit & copyright: Voa News
 

A look at one of the U.S.A.'s most controversial presidents.

When a government official must publicly declare that they aren't a criminal, it's usually a bad sign. But Richard Milhous Nixon, the 37th President of the United States, did just that on November 17, 1973, during a now-infamous speech. The address came on the heels of a government wiretapping scandal which had cemented Nixon's place as an extremely controversial President. On August 9, 1974, Nixon became the first and only U.S. President to ever resign from office, leaving behind a strange governmental legacy.
 

Born January 9, 1913, Nixon started making waves early in his career. In 1946, after some time in the navy, he won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives at the age of 33. But it was during the "Red Scare" of the late 1940s and early 1950s, in which everyone from government officials to Hollywood actors were accused of being communists, that Nixon truly made a name for himself. He became known as a fervent anti-communist when he sat on the rather dystopian-sounding (and later disgraced) "House Un-American Activities Committee" and aggressively questioned former State Department official Alger Hiss, who was accused of being a communist spy.
 

Nixon gained a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1950. In 1952, he won the nomination to run as Vice President to Dwight D. Eisenhower, but soon the New York Post reported that Nixon was improperly using political contributions, which he kept in a secret "slush fund." In response, Nixon gave a now-famous address—the "Checkers" speech—in which he insisted that the only political gift he had ever received was his daughter's cocker spaniel, Checkers. Nixon was allowed to run with Eisenhower, and became Vice President later that year.
 

Nixon first ran for President himself in 1960, but lost to Democratic opponent John F. Kennedy. He didn't launch another Presidential campaign until 1968. His biggest campaign promise was to end the Vietnam War and the draft, which were hugely unpopular. This helped propel him to a narrow victory. During his first term, Nixon focused on easing tensions with China and Russia. Ending the Vietnam War proved difficult for a number of logistical reasons, and a treaty wasn't signed until 1973, during Nixon's second term. It was around this time that the scandal for which Nixon is best remembered came to light, thanks to a secret informant.
 

According to the source, Nixon's administration had burglarized and wiretapped the Democratic Party National Headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., during his re-election campaign. Government investigations revealed that the five men connected with the burglary had been hired by the Republican Party's Committee to Re-elect the President, and that Nixon had tried to hide his involvement by paying the burglars hush money. He was even caught on tape discussing how to block the FBI's investigation.
 

In 1973, at the height of national outrage over the Watergate scandal, Nixon gave his now-infamous speech, saying "...people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook. I have earned everything I have got." The majority of the U.S. government didn't agree, however. By 1974, it became obvious that Nixon would be removed from office. He resigned from the Presidency on August 9, 1974.
 

When Gerald Ford assumed the Presidency in Nixon's place, he pardoned Nixon of all crimes he had committed while in office. Nixon largely remained out of the public eye for the remainder of his life. He passed away from complications from a stroke in 1994. No one can deny that the legacy "Tricky Dick" left behind isn't unique...though surely not in the way he had hoped for!
 

Below: footage of Nixon's "I am not a crook" speech.
 

Image credit & copyright: Anonymous/AP
 

It takes a village to raise a witch hunt.

It's all fun and superstition until someone gets hurt—then it's mass hysteria. That could have been the motto of the 1692 Salem witch trials which, however monumental or shameful, were an indicator that many things had gone terribly awry in the colonial Massachusetts village. Contentiousness, greed, fear, and judicial prejudices led to nothing but double, double, toil and trouble for the accused.
 

Many recountings of the Salem witch trials begin in 1692, with the first accusations of witchcraft. But Salem's sordid history dates further back. Prior to the trials, Salem encompassed several towns and villages in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, though the earliest trials were located in Salem Village, which is now part of modern-day Danvers. Disputes between the inhabitants of Salem Village and its neighbors were known far and wide, with many describing the people of the area as quarrelsome.
 

Land rights were a major source of contention among the inhabitants, as was a wave of xenophobia exacerbated by the influx of refugees from King William's War. In 1672, Salem Village voted on hiring a minister to sort out these and other issues. But their first two quit over low wages, while the third left after Salem's church refused to ordain him. The final choice, Samuel Parris, inflamed disputes when he delayed his acceptance in 1689 by conducting his own draconian searches for "iniquitous behavior," publicly shaming well-liked church members for their minor errors.
 

As it turned out, the paranoid apple didn't fall far from the tree in the Parris family. Samuel Parris' high suspicions of devilry eventually crept into the imaginations of his daughter and niece. In February of 1692, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams began experiencing hysterical fits and complained of being pinched and pricked with pins. Puritanical beliefs at the time claimed women were more susceptible to the influence of the Devil than men were, and soon other girls in the village came down with inexplicable ailments. One in particular, the 12-year-old Ann Putnam, Jr., was part of a village-wide dispute between the Putnams and Porters. Taking the wrong side in an argument concerning the families often resulted in fisticuffs with either party.
 

Soon, there were real consequences to Salem Village's hostilities. The first three victims of the "possessed" girls' accusations were some of the locale's most vulnerable inhabitants: Sarah Good was a homeless beggar, Sarah Osborne was an elderly and impoverished woman, and Tituba was an indigenous Kalina slave owned by the Parris family. Their forced confessions led to the establishment of a Special Court to hear and judge the appeals of other suspected witches. The first person charged by the court was Bridget Bishop, an older woman considered promiscuous by her neighbors. She was also the first person hanged at the execution site later known as Gallows Hill. Over the next year, the accusations mounted. They got so out of hand that Governor William Phipps ended up dissolving many of the Special Court's powers to accept spectral evidence and mete out punishments—but only after his own wife was accused of witchcraft. The prisoners were subsequently released, too.
 

In total, some 200 individuals were accused during the Salem witch trials, with 19 hanged at Gallows Hill. It took over 250 years for Massachusetts to formally apologize for the events of 1692, though the town continues to experience a mixed legacy with its witchy history. On the 300th anniversary of the trials in 1992, a memorial park was dedicated with speeches by Elie Wiesel and Arthur Miller, author of The Crucible, comparing Salem's history to McCarthyism. Each Halloween also sees the annual "Festival of the Dead" as a giant party and tourist attraction located in Salem. However Salem is remembered, there's no denying it continues to cast a spell on those who visit the place.

 

This Hollywood icon is still known as "The First Lady of the American Screen."

She had those Bette Davis Eyes. Iconic "Old Hollywood" actress Bette Davis, who passed away today in 1989, was one of the most accomplished movie stars of all time. She was a trailblazer who redefined the big screen heroine, clashed with Hollywood execs, and led a career that spanned six decades, earning awards and titles that were usually out of reach for women.
 

Born Ruth Elizabeth Davis on April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts, Davis wanted to be a dancer as a child, but later turned to acting in her late teens, a few years after her father abandoned her family to poverty. Davis' acting ambitions swelled when she attended Cushing Academy, and later John Murray Anderson's Dramatic School, where she became his star pupil. In 1929, at the age of 21, she made her Broadway debut in the play Broken Dishes.
 

Her first movie role was two years later, in Universal's Way Back Home. But it was her work with Warner Brothers, particularly her role as Mildred Rogers in 1934's Of Human Bondage, that made her a household name. Mildred Rogers is a complex character, both lovable and cruel. Davis's successful portrayal of the role gave her the confidence to demand more challenging and provocative roles in future films. It earned Davis a fair number of write-in votes for that year's Best Actress Oscar, too.
 

After receiving her first Oscar in 1936, for the drama Dangerous, Davis found herself in somewhat of a feud with Warner Brothers. The studio suspended her without pay when she turned down a role that she felt overqualified for. When she attempted to go to England to make more movies, Warner Brothers pointed out that she was not permitted to, since she was still under contract with them. To Davis' disappointment, all legal attempts to get out of her contract failed.
 

But going toe-to-toe with a major movie studio wasn't nearly enough to keep Davis down. After winning another Oscar in 1939, she famously received Oscar nominations the following five years in a row, a record she still shares with actress Greer Garson. She also became the highest-paid woman in the U.S. in 1942. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, she continued to star in a variety of films, always pushing for roles outside the usual "romantic" lead. Her acting style was tense and passionate, well-suited to complicated characters. Davis' portrayal of such roles helped show the world's movie-going audience a new kind of heroine—one who was not necessarily friendly, nor reliant on men.

 

Davis continued breaking barriers for the remainder of her life, acting in over 100 films. In 1977, she became the first woman to receive the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award. Soon after, she became the first female President of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Even after Davis's death in 1989, she remained an icon. In 1996, Entertainment Weekly named her the 10th most iconic movie star of all time. How's that for a timeless legacy?
 

Image credit & copyright: CMG Worldwide/Bette Davis
 

An epic celebration goes horribly wrong.

Up, up, and away! At least, that's what was expected of the 1.5 million balloons released on September 27, 1986, in Cleveland, Ohio. Balloonfest, as it was called, was supposed to rally a city suffering from the withdrawals of post-industrialization. Only, what happened next wasn't just a major clean-up of city-wide debris, but an unmitigated party-turned-disaster with deadly consequences.
 

Prior to Balloonfest, the once bustling city of Cleveland had been cast under the shadow of a decades-long slump. In June of 1969, the Cuyahoga River caught on fire due to the oil and debris deposited from the city's polluting factories. As industry moved out of the city in the '70s, Cleveland officials desperately sought ways of revitalizing the "once-great" location. In 1985, inspiration of sorts struck: Disneyland's 30th Anniversary celebrations in Anaheim, California, saw a record release of one million balloons at the park. Soon after, the community organization United Way of Cleveland undertook plans to outdo the "Happiest Place on Earth" with a fundraiser event that would come to be known as Balloonfest '86.
 

After six months of intensive planning, the fateful day arrived in September. At Terminal Tower, 2,500 volunteers gathered at a city block-sized structure canopied in netting to capture the helium-filled balloons. Local TV stars Big Chuck and Lil' John came out to interview awe-filled attendees, of whom one brought balloons to contribute which were tied to her watch (both her watch and the balloons floated away soon after). The festive mood was only hampered by the knowledge that an impending storm was building. Once the winds ramped up and rains followed, the initial goal of blowing up two million balloons was abandoned, with a still impressive 1.5 million released around 1:50 pm.
 

What the United Way of Cleveland and no one else predicted was that rather than float away far and wide, the balloons would be caught in the storm and thrown back to the ground. Millions of balloons littered the streets of Cleveland, causing a runway shutdown at Burke Lakefront Airport. Vehicular accidents occurred as a result of drivers trying to avoid the opaque bubbles. In possibly the worst turn of events, two men went missing on Lake Erie and Coast Guard rescue efforts had to be shut down, as no survivors could be spotted among the brightly-colored rubbish. Three days later, the dead fishermen washed ashore.
 

For all the intended goodwill, Balloonfest '86 is remembered less for its Guinness World Record than for its environmental disaster. United Way of Cleveland was sued by the widows of the fishermen and others, adding to the already estimated $500,000 to put on the day's events. Weeks later, some of the balloons landed north in Ontario, Canada, where lakeside beaches were littered with thousands of deflated balloons. The bags were said to have been biodegradable, but unfortunately not forgettable. Balloonfest '86 seems like one of those instances where too much of a good thing proved to be worse than anyone could have predicted!

 

Below: more images of the Cleveland skyline polluted with balloons, and a short documentary by Nathan Truesdell entitled Balloonfest.
 

Image credit & copyright: The Atlantic, Thom Sheridan
 

The progenitor of the comic book.

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird, it's a plane—it's a history of the man behind the first comic books! Before the caped crusaders and domino masks, the comic book was the invention of one not-so-mild-mannered publisher: Maxwell Gaines. But before we don our flamboyant gloves and utility boots, it's worth noting Gaines wasn't as into superheroes and villains as we would think.
 

Born Max Ginzberg on September 22, 1894, Gaines was known for his short temper and leg injury he sustained as a child. He worked as a teacher and haberdasher before landing his fated job as a salesperson at Eastern Color Printing in Waterbury, Connecticut. In 1933, during the Great Depression, Gaines came up with an idea to reprint the company's Sunday comic strips in half-tabloid format. These small pamphlets, designed by Gaines and sold at newsstands for just ten cents apiece, featured the four-color model and saddle-stitched spines that would become forever indicative of comic books.
 

Gaines' reprint publication, titled Funnies on Parade, consisted of newspaper comic strips featuring the get-rich-quick schemes of Bud Fisher's Mutt and Jeff and the adventures of Percy Crosby's fifth-grader Skippy. For the first time, audiences could clip coupons and mail those in with five cents to receive their own copy of Funnies, rather than pick it up at newsstands. The effort was so well received, Gaines went on to create the monthly publication Famous Funnies, which ran from 1934 to 1955 and is considered the first modern American comic book.
 

Bolstered by the sale of Funnies, Gaines began to look for an outlet to publish original material which he could own the rights to. In 1938, he received funding from National Allied Publications and Detective Comics CEO Harry Donenfeld, with one major stipulation: Jack Liebowitz, co-owner of National, would help establish the new All-American Publications to keep an eye on Gaines. The first monthly issue of All-American Comics was an anthology feature with multiple stories, including the debut of Sheldon Mayer's Scribbly Jibbet, the cartoonist. Gaines' publications went on to see the birth of a number of heroes during the Golden Age of Comics, like Superman and the Guardian of the Universe, Green Lantern, who appeared in All-American Comics issue #16. The high-speed superhero The Flash appeared in his very own series in 1940, and Themyscira-born heroine Wonder Woman made a splash in the bi-monthly All Star Comics issue #8 in 1941, later becoming a founding member of the Justice Society (later the Justice League) of America.
 

By 1944, years of spats between Gaines and Donenfeld caused the former to sell all of his shares of All-American to the latter. Donenfeld then folded All-American and National Allied publications into one company, Detective Comics, which later became known by its ubiquitous title, DC Comics. In that same year, Gaines founded Educational Comics as an alternative to superhero comics, which he thought would go out of style. EC published biblical stories and more light-hearted talking animal stories.
 

Just three short years later, in 1947, Maxwell Gaines passed away after a motorboat accident at Lake Placid, New York. His son, William Gaines—who by all accounts, Maxwell was incredibly cruel to—inherited EC Comics and become a legend in his own right by establishing the satirical Mad Magazine in 1952. Though Maxwell Gaines may not have a reputation as flashy as Stan Lee's, Robert Kirkman's, or Todd McFarlane's these days, his influence is felt everywhere: from the yellow, blue, red, and black dots of pre-computerized comic printing, to the biggest, most explosive action sequences in the latest comic-turned-Hollywood blockbuster.
 

Below: two of All American Comics' original publications, including two of the brand's original characters, the Green Lantern and Wonder Woman.
 

Image credit & copyright: Medium, Period Comics, DC Database