Curio Cabinet / Person, Place, or Thing

Marilyn Monroe livens up President Kennedy's 45th birthday party.

"It's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring," American actress, model, and singer Marilyn Monroe once said. Her tumultuous career was certainly chock full of wry innuendo, but one romp stands out from the rest. On May 19, 1962, Monroe sang President John F. Kennedy Happy Birthday in front of 15,000 people at New York City's Madison Square Garden. Or as one columnist put it, she made "love to the president in direct view of 40 million Americans."
 

The Kennedy White House had decided to put on the party as a fundraiser to pay off debts incurred from the 1960 election race. Billed as a celebration of Kennedy's 45th birthday, it would include performances from stars like Ella Fitzgerald, Maria Callas, Jack Benny, Peggy Lee, and Monroe. Rumors were already swimming that an affair had taken place between Monroe and JFK (and his brother Bobby, for that matter), and her appearance was sure to draw a crowd.
 

At the time, however, Monroe was struggling to repair her personal and public life. Another victim of her time, the actress was coming off a divorce from Arthur Miller, gallbladder surgery, and a stay at a psychiatric hospital. When she received Kennedy's personal invitation, she was in Hollywood filming scenes for the movie Something's Got to Give. The actress yearned to break out from her role as a sex symbol, but couldn't resist the temptation to vivify Kennedy's birthday. She furiously rehearsed her bawdy, upcoming performance over the next few weeks.
 

Naturally, Monroe arrived late to the fundraiser. The moderator of the event, actor Peter Lawford, took advantage of her absence by playfully introducing her as "the late Marilyn Monroe" over and over, gesturing to an empty spotlight for a few hyucks when he needed them. Lawford was in the midst of monkeying around when Monroe quietly shimmied out from a curtain behind him. At the podium, she shed an ermine overcoat to reveal a flesh-toned gown shimmering with 2,500 hand-stitched crystals: one so tight, it allegedly had to be sewn onto her body. Appalled gasps and ribald whistles rose from the audience, and once the clamor died down, Monroe began to sing Kennedy Happy Birthday.
 

Only, this wasn't your average birthday-wishing. Monroe's rendition was quiet, breathy, and steamy. Lasting all of a minute, it blended into a reworked version of Thanks for the Memory that achingly championed Kennedy's hard work and accomplishments. As Monroe finished, she threw her hands in the air and riled the audience while an enormous cake was brought out. Ever the joker, Kennedy took the podium, saying "I can now retire from politics after having had Happy Birthday sung to me in such a sweet, wholesome way."
 

Though Kennedy and Monroe had only spoken in passing at the fundraiser, speculations abounded that they were tangled in a prolonged affair. In reality, the two would never see each other again. In the following weeks, Monroe's mental health further deteriorated under the weight of objectification and consequent alcoholism. She died of an overdose just months later in August. Kennedy, of course, would be assassinated the following year in Dallas, Texas.
 

Today, the Happy Birthday, Mr. President performance has become something of a legend. The skimpy dress Monroe wore to the fundraiser sold for a whopping $4.8 million in 2016 to museum chain Ripley’s Believe It Or Not—making it the most expensive piece of clothing ever sold through an auction. In regards to the purchase, the CEO of Ripley's said of the dress to the Press Association: "We believe this is the most iconic piece of pop culture that there is."
 

Below: footage of Monroe serenading JFK on his birthday.
 

Image credit & copyright: Snap/Rex/Shutterstock
 

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
 

A star novelist chooses to embrace writer's block.

"Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy… That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." As the author of the enormously successful novel To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Harper Lee enjoyed the respect of literary enthusiasts and the public alike. But little is known of her personal life or why she never followed up Mockingbird with another novel. Luckily, there are clues as to why she closed herself off from the world—with some involving fellow writer Truman Capote.
 

Lee, born April 28, 1926, in Monroeville, Alabama, was never into stereotypically feminine interests like playing with dolls or makeup. She preferred tackle football—emphasis on the "tackle"—and was branded a tomboy. Notably, her father was a lawyer whose political beliefs transitioned from pro-segregation to pro-civil rights in the '50s. Lee also befriended a young Truman Capote, the author of Breakfast at Tiffany's, and fended off his schoolyard bullies.
 

After dropping out of Oxford college in England, Lee landed in New York City, where she reunited with the then-famous Capote and befriended Broadway composer and lyricist Michael Martin Brown. In 1956, Brown and his wife graciously offered to bankroll Lee, who had been struggling to finish her first, semi-autobiographical novel.
 

The original draft for Mockingbird was gloomy. For one, the characters were aged, disillusioned, and complex. Atticus Finch, the novel's moral paragon and stand-in for Lee's actual father, had racist leanings despite his intellectualism and empathy. Lee's editors urged her to simplify the narrative and rewrite Atticus' daughter, Scout, as a child. Lee obliged and the final draft, published in 1960, was an instant success. Critics championed Atticus' unflagging moral compass and the accessibility of Lee's prose. Mockingbird won a Pulitzer Prize the following year and received a film adaptation that earned eight Academy Award nominations.
 

On the heels of Mockingbird's success, Lee agreed to help out her old friend Capote, who was working on his true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966). They traveled to Kansas where they interviewed two murderers, collected notes, and edited drafts together. Lee played an indispensable role in the book's creation. Nevertheless, Capote snubbed her efforts. The two split ways: Capote to New York City where he would eventually breakdown publicly, and Lee to Alabama where she laid low and, in the end, failed to finish her second novel.
 

Before her death on February 19, 2016, Lee received a Presidential Medal of Freedom for the courage, open-mindedness, and empathy she had inspired among generations of Americans. She never published another novel, with the exception of Go Set a Watchman (2015), which was released while she was homed at an assisted living facility and pressured by family and money-hungry publishers. It was the gritty first draft of Mockingbird, and floundered due to its portrayal of an older Atticus as an anti-integrationist.
 

All in all, it would be difficult to attribute Lee's reclusiveness and lack of productivity to any single cause. She admitted in her twilight years that the pressure to follow up Mockingbird had broken her will to write. The magnum opus had long been an unblemished source of virtue—if not a simplified and maudlin representation of her own actual life. Her father, the widely rejected Atticus from Watchmen, had been perfected with advice from editors. Furthermore, Lee had endured Capote's literary betrayal before witnessing him spiral into alcoholism and drug abuse. Ultimately, she was wary of fame and couldn't bear to mar her life's work. Rather than sulk over her typewriter, Lee chose to sit on her hands and fade into legend.
 

Image credit & copyright: Donald Uhrbrock/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
 

A twinning bromance ends in the violent birth of Rome.

Nothing to see here but a lighthearted sibling rivalry. According to ancient Roman tradition, mythological twins Romulus and Remus founded Rome on today's date in 753 B.C.E. as the culmination of an epic family feud started by their twisted great-uncle. Their legend, which originated in the third or fourth century B.C.E., was once taken as fact, and with so many theatrical ups and downs, it's easy to see why the story jibed with the masses. Even if it stretches the truth… just a smidge.
 

The legend of Romulus and Remus begins with their grandfather, King Numitor, who ruled the ancient Latin city of Alba Longa until he was usurped by his brother, Amulius. Amulius forced Numitor's daughter Rhea Silvia to take a sacred vow of chastity, to ensure that none of Numitor's progeny could seek revenge. She was sealed within a convent, but the wily god of war Mars impregnated her.
 

When Amulius caught wind that Rhea had given birth to twins, he ordered their death, and the two babies were left to perish on the shores of the Tiber River. But a generous she-wolf came across the twins and nursed them. Eventually, a shepherd named Faustulus encountered the feral children, too, and raised them as his own. Romulus and Remus matured with no knowledge of their origins, though their godly blood made them just, charismatic leaders in their village community.
 

By this time, King Amulius was loathed by his citizens. When Romulus and Remus involved themselves in a local dispute between rival supporters of Numitor and Amulius, Remus was imprisoned and whisked away to Alba Longa. There, both Numitor and Amulius suspected Remus' true identity. Romulus, meanwhile, gathered a mob of supporters to rescue his brother. During the ensuing quarrel, fiendish uncle Amulius died. Numitor revealed to the twins that he was their grandfather, and was then reinstated as king of Alba Longa.
 

The boys were delighted to have all that nasty business behind them. They set out from Alba Longa to establish a new kingdom. Only, they couldn't agree on a location for it. Romulus argued that Palatine Hill was the perfect site. No way, scoffed Remus; it was definitely Aventine Hill. To settle their dispute, they consulted augury, or the practice of interpreting omens from the flight of birds. When Romulus saw more auspicious birds than Remus, the latter flew into a rage. In an act of anger and mockery, Remus leaped over a meager wall that Romulus had been building on his hill of choice. Fed-up Romulus, in turn, slew Remus for his contempt. So Palatine Hill, it was.
 

After gloating over his senseless act of fratricide, Romulus went on to found Rome. Well, not really. According to modern dating of ancient Roman walls and pottery, some of the artifacts and structures of Rome actually predate the legend of Romulus and Remus by 100 years. Sure, the tale's happenings could have transpired further back in time, but we're not betting on it. After all, who in their right mind would choose to live under the king of a hill, no less one who gutted his brother?
 

Image credit & copyright: Alamy
 

A lexicographer envisions common-sense, streamlined English.

Spelling would be so much easier had we listened to Noah Webster! The American lexicographer laid out a framework to simplify our language in An American Dictionary of the English Language, which he copyrighted on April 14, 1828. Containing some 70,000 words, many previously undefined, Webster's dictionary was the first to distinguish American English from its British forerunner.
 

Webster began his grammatical crusade in the late 1700s: a time when the fate of American English was up in the air. Politicians were debating whether the newly-autonomous States should adopt German to snub Great Britain or to wholly invent an American language. Webster detested both ideas. As a Yale graduate and an editor for Federalist politicians like Alexander Hamilton, he believed that he could bequeath a "perfected" version of English to all Americans.
 

Webster published his Compendious Dictionary of the English Language in 1806, but this modest catalog of 37,000 words was just the beginning. In 1808, the grammarian experienced a divine vision and set out to create his magnum opus. He toiled for 22 years and studied an incredible 26 languages, including Sanskrit and Ancient Greek, in the process. Webster finished An American Dictionary of the English Language at the ripe age of 70. It contained 70,000 words, dwarfing English writer Samuel Johnson's 42,000-word Dictionary of the English Language (1755).
 

Webster's new text ushered in serious reforms. To start, one-sixth of its words were entirely new. These additions included skunk and squash. Moreover, Webster referenced the writings of living Americans like Benjamin Franklin and Washington Irving as linguistic sources. This came in stark contrast to British English, which had long held the inconsistent Early Modern English of William Shakespeare as its highest authority. Webster also dropped the letter U from words like colour and honour, and clipped others like catalogue to catalog. Sadly, his quest to eradicate silent letters, like the B in thumb and the S in island, failed.
 

The dictionary sold 2,500 copies, and its success earned Webster the opportunity to give a lecture to the House of Representatives in 1831. There, he convinced Congress to change the United States' preexisting copyright law, which protected a writer's licensing of their text for just 14 years. The subsequent Copyright Act of 1831 ensured 28 years of copyright protection and the ability to renew for 14 more. Despite this victory, the success of Webster's dictionary was undercut by the exorbitant costs of printing and binding in the early 19th century. He mortgaged his home in New Haven to finance a second edition of the text in 1841.
 

Two years later, Webster died quietly on May 28, 1843, and booksellers George and Charles Merriam purchased the unsold copies of Webster's second edition, as well as rights to publish future editions under the label of Merriam-Webster. Today, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary is in its 11th edition. Published in 2003, this version contains over 225,000 definitions and some 42,000 examples of usage. And yet—nearly 200 years later—that silent B in thumb continues to torment us!
 

Image credit & copyright: FACE
 

A U.S. air force bomber explodes over the coastline of Spain—with four hydrogen bombs in tow.

It's a bird... It's a plane… it's an international relations nightmare! On January 17, 1966, the citizens of Palomares, Spain, looked on in wonderment as wreckage from a Boeing B-52G Stratofortress bomber rained down from the sky. Unbeknownst to the locals, legions of military personnel were bearing down on their quaint seaside town to conduct a massive search that would last until April 7, 1966. Their target? Four missing hydrogen bombs.
 

The Palomares incident began on a normal day; as normal as the Cold War permitted. A B-52 bomber commanded by Captain Charles Wendorf was patrolling the skies near the border of the U.S.S.R. as part of Operation Chrome Dome. The operation, managed by the Air Force's Strategic Air Command, had bombers patrol the skies in constant shifts. That way, if a nuclear war should ever break out, the U.S. would have its bombers primed to strike at the Soviets.
 

In order to patrol around the clock, B-52 crews refueled their planes in midair. Bomber pilots nosed their B-52 underneath a KC-135 Stratotanker, which pumped the bomber full of fuel via a boom, or fueling tube. But on January 17, 1966, something went horribly awry. As Wendorf tried to position his B-52 beneath a tanker, the bomber came in too hot and rammed into the KC-135. Fuel splattered both planes. Wendorf and three of his men managed to eject as an explosion consumed both aircraft, along with seven other air force personnel.
 

Debris from the planes fell upon Palomares, with one witness recalling a "huge ball of fire." Though no civilians were killed in the immediate crash, four Mark 28 thermonuclear weapons, each 70 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, had been ejected from the explosion and dispersed radioactive plutonium particles across the landscape. The U.S. military quickly dubbed these missing bombs "broken arrows," and, with the cooperation of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, flooded the locale with search parties.
 

Miraculously, none of the nukes had detonated. Three were quickly located on land, but the final fourth was missing. Troops wielding Geiger counters, or radiation-detecting instruments, turned over every stone before finally concluding that the weapon must have plunged into the Mediterranean Sea. Soviet figureheads remarked, with glee, that the U.S. was going to be held responsible for the contamination of the entire sea. As Spanish citizens began holding demonstrations, U.S. Ambassador Angier Biddle Duke headed a publicized "swim party" where he splished and splashed in the Mediterranean, telling reporters, "If this is radioactivity, I love it!"
 

Nevertheless, the Navy trawled Palomares' coast with an armada of ships and submarines. The U.S. refused to officially admit that it was searching for a missing nuke until the Navy finally located the bomb five miles off the coast, 2,500 feet underwater. Military engineers attempted to hoist the weapon out of the water on March 26, but the cable snapped. Their second attempt succeeded, with the USS Petrel winching the nuke from the water on April 7, 1966.
 

The Palomares incident certainly could've ended much, much worse, but it still resulted in tragedy. Some 650 acres of Palomares countryside was blanketed in radiation, and the U.S. had to extract 1,400 tons of contaminated soil. Despite the effort, radiation testings in 1990 showed that the area remains irradiated. In 2015, the U.S. and Spain, represented by Secretary of State John Kerry and Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo, reached an agreement for the United States to conduct another cleanup operation, which is still in the works. As the Air Force's Strategic Air Command would say: it's all radioactive water under the bridge, right?
 

Image credit & copyright: Keystone-France/Getty Images
 

A French mercenary experiences a revolutionary dream.

"I think, therefore I am." Many have encountered these groundbreaking words, courtesy of French polymath René Descartes. Credited as the father of modern philosophy, Descartes wore many hats and redefined how we interrogate our world and visualize mathematics. Which is all rather impressive for a man who considered himself too cool for school.
 

Born on March 31, 1596, in La Haye en Touraine, France, young Descartes exuded tremendous intellectual promise. He came from a family of lawyers, who insisted that he, too, become an attorney. They enrolled Descartes in the prestigious Jesuit College of Henry IV in La Flèche, but he was more interested in the natural world than the law. In 1616, he obtained a law degree that he would never use.
 

Instead, he resolved to broaden his knowledge; though, he was of the opinion that one learned more from experience than attending school. So, at 22 years old, Descartes joined the Dutch States Army as a mercenary. The organization promised extensive travel, as well as plenty of math and physics. But his time as a soldier was short. On November 10, 1618, Descartes was traveling through the warring states of Germany when he experienced a profound dream. When he awoke, he was determined to revolutionize Western philosophy.
 

His main point of disagreement with 17-century philosophers was their faith in senses. Senses, Descartes argued, are often unreliable—as is the case with hallucinations and phantom limb sensations. In his Discourse on the Method (1637), Descartes contended that a true rational thinker doubts everything except for their cognition. We can doubt sights and sounds, but, according to Descartes, we can't doubt the fact that we think: i.e., "I think, therefore I am."
 

The Discourse on the Method also contained early concepts for his Cartesian coordinate system: a staple of modern primary education. Prior to the development of this system, geometrists painstakingly crafted shapes with a compass and ruler. Descartes eased the task by transposing algebraic equations to grids with two axes. He also stressed the importance of double-checking one's work and breaking up math problems into easy-to-follow subsections.
 

The luminary developed other theories throughout his career, covering the Big Bang, vacuums, and biology—an impressive amount of study for a man who slept 12 hours a night and woke at lunchtime. A serious sleep disorder was likely to blame, for tragedy struck when Descartes took a job in Stockholm, Sweden, tutoring Queen Christina. She was an ardent morning person and forced Descartes to wake at the crack of dawn. His immune system weakened as he failed to cope with the sleep disturbances; and on February 11, 1650, Descartes died at just 53.
 

Today, opinions of Descartes differ dramatically. Brainiacs and teachers will tell you to heed his words carefully. Most high schoolers produce the opposite response, groaning at any mention of his name and cursing him for forging so much of their curriculum—a fact Descartes may have found ironic enough to laugh at. Maybe great minds think—and therefore are—alike?
 

Women flex their labor power.

Just a few days ago, the United Nations celebrated International Women's Day and the many achievements and contributions made by the "fairer sex." The history of the day actually dates back 110 years to the Uprising of the 20,000 strike by New York's shirtwaist (blouse) industry workers. Their courage and solidarity were marred by violent pushback from local authorities, and a society that was not ready for their radical ideas of equality.
 

In the early 20th century, New York was considered a major hub of the clothing industry, boasting over 600 shops at the time. The shirtwaist industry employed 50-300 workers in each factory, many of them women. However, these women faced as many gender-related hurdles in the workplace as they did outside of it; the head pattern makers and cutters were often men who taught female "learners" how to do their jobs. Compared to their male counterparts, who took home weekly $15-25 paychecks and all the seniority roles, women received $3-6 a week. They worked 13-hour days in poor conditions where exit doors were locked to prevent workers from "interrupting" production by taking breaks or using the restroom. Women were also subject to sexual harassment and were even told by their labor advocates, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), that their roles were as mothers, and their workplace efforts negligible.
 

At the same time as these women were experiencing workplace discrimination, striking was becoming an effective local method of combating robber-baron tactics of the meat industry and housing industries. On November 22, 1909, the ILGWU convened to discuss a strike of their own. After sitting through two hours of speeches, a 23-year old worker named Clara Lemlich spoke up in Yiddish (the majority of strikers were Jewish women) declaring "I have no further patience for talk as I am one of those who feels and suffers from the things pictured. I move that we go on a general strike… now!" The crowd cheered her on, and the next morning, 15,000 workers took to the streets; by night, the numbers grew to 20,000. Lasting 14 weeks in total, the strike was comprised of both female and male workers. At its height, over 723 arrests were made in one month, with Lemlich being arrested 17 times and receiving six broken ribs as a result of her activism. Shop and factory owners were turned on their heads, scrambling to negotiate with unions.
 

By February of 1910, a "Protocol of Peace" was reached between the National Women's Trade Union League of America (NWTUL) and factory owners to improve wages and working conditions. The ILGWU and other unions also began to take the leadership of women seriously, ending more conservative trends. Almost a year later, women's labor organizing would be spurred even further when the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire caused the death of 146 garment workers—an event that is often remembered alongside the "Uprising of the 20,000" as pivotal in establishing safer working conditions in the U.S. While the Socialist Party of America designated February 28th to be the first National Women's Day in 1909 in honor of the strikes, the Uprising also inspired European counterparts to establish an International Women's Day in 1910. The celebration is a time to remember the sacrifices that women, like those in the Uprising, have made—and all the work still needed to achieve the dream of gender equality in the workplace and beyond.

 

Below: an image of the labor organizer Clara Lemlich.
 

Image credit & copyright: Library of Congress
 

A man's vision of a wholesome society quickly turns unconstitutional.

Obscene! Lewd! Amoral! United States Postal Inspector and politician Anthony Comstock bristled as he walked the streets of 19th-century America. A self-styled "weeder in God's garden," he took it upon himself to keep Americans supremely chaste, convincing Congress to pass his infamous Comstock Laws on March 3, 1873. The statutes, now deemed unconstitutional, prohibited the mailing of contraceptives, abortifacients, and any—ahem—dirty objects.
 

The story begins with Comstock: a righteous man. Some might say, too righteous. Born in the countryside of New Canaan, Connecticut, Comstock grew up deeply religious and detested everything from alcohol use to "the birds and the bees." During his service as a Union officer in the Civil War, he openly objected to his fellow soldiers' cussing; upon his demobilization, Comstock moved to New York City in the 1860s to work at the Young Men's Christian Association.
 

But when he arrived at the Big Apple, Comstock was appalled. Throngs of prostitutes prowled every corner, their lustful ankles exposed below the hem for all to see (or so he believed). Grumbling and scowling, the most honorable veteran also stooped to find pornography littering the streets, only to scamper away shielding his scalded eyes. And to top off the cesspool of sin, Comstock learned New Yorkers were practicing safe sex with early prophylactics—and using ingestible abortives to save parenthood until they were ready for it. Foul—most foul!
 

The zealous moralist launched a crusade against sin by forming the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice in 1873. The proselytical institution brought Comstock publicity with its visions of infernal damnation, and convinced Congress to pass the Comstock laws before hiring on Comstock as United States Postal Inspector. As snail mail inquisitor, he saw that anyone attempting to ship obscenities, contraceptives, abortifacients, or other indecencies would "be fined not more than five thousand dollars, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both."
 

These initial statutes lead to a string of others at the state and district levels, including a much stricter ban on the possession, purveyance, and usage of obscene items in the District of Columbia. This drew the ire of feminists Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman, and as Comstock busied himself with shutting down the despicable Louisiana Lottery and destroying troves of books—the "feeders of brothels"—his enemies formulated a strategy to derail his crusade. Namely, pointing out there was no underlying definition, framework, or test to show what qualified as "obscene."
 

In 1916, a year after Comstock died, authorities arrested Sanger for opening the first official birth control clinic in America. Thanks to her nuanced defense, the ensuing case resulted in the 1918 Crane decision, which made therapeutic "birth control" advice legal—though not abortion. More political maneuvering by Sanger later resulted in the 1936 U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision, United States v. One Package, which allowed doctors to ship contraceptives across state lines. Eventually, all vestiges of Comstock's laws faded, particularly with the landmark decision in Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion in 1973.
 

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court relies on the "Miller test" to determine what is obscene. Created in the wake of Miller v. California (1973), the test considers any subject that lacks "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value" and "taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interests" as an obscenity unprotected by the First Amendment. Which means book burning and bans on essential feminine products are all unconstitutional. Sorry Comstock, but it turns out proper Americans value their freedom most of all.
 

Remember the famous stationary.

Few historical documents inspire as much American patriotism as the Travis Letter and its infamous "Victory or Death" closing valediction—even though the letter wasn't even technically written in the U.S. At the time Commander William B. Travis wrote the letter, dated February 24, 1836, the Texas-secessionists seemed much less concerned with patriotism than posturing with military strength.
 

In 1821 the First Mexican Empire declared independence from Spain and made efforts to bolster its population in the Texas territory (then called Coahuila y Tejas). American empresarios, or contracted settlers, were granted land contracts to give out to good citizens; U.S. immigration to the region swelled, quickly increasing the population from 500 to 30,000. Efforts like the Law of April 6, 1830, were made to regulate migration and the slave trade but didn't stop people like William B. Travis, who—in an effort to escape his mounting debt in South Carolina—ignored the legality of his move to Texas in 1831.

 
Travis was initially denied a land contract as he established his law practice in Anahuac, Texas; he eventually caught up with Texian-secessionists and established a militia to oppose anti-immigration laws and Mexican rule. In a series of clashes called the "Anahuac Disturbances," Travis gained folk hero status among local Americans. His favor with Texians didn't last for long, though: in 1835, Travis led a group of 25 men to successfully capture Mexican soldiers lead by Captain Antonio Tenorio. The attack came during a time of high-tension with Mexican officials, who were arresting Texian leaders they suspected of insurrection. As a result of acting without community support, Travis was forced to apologize for his military efforts.
 

By February 23, 1836, the President of Mexico, General Antonio López de Santa Anna, marched to Béxar County in Texas, aiming to end the insurgency once and for all. Travis and fellow commander James Bowie escaped to the old Alamo, hunkering down with about 100 troops to Santa Anna's 2,100. It was there where Travis' flair for the dramatic found its purpose in his famous letter. "I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch," he wrote, "If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country." Travis' call to American arms was especially curious because, unbeknownst to him, "his" country was technically not the United States but the Republic of Texas—which had declared independence from Mexico on March 2nd while he was holed up at the Alamo. Also, the clearly outmanned Travis had had a perfectly viable opportunity to surrender to Santa Anna just days before the end of the siege and his eventual death on March 6th.
 

The Travis Letter did nothing to prevent the fall of the Alamo to Mexican forces. But it made it to San Felipe, where copies were made, and word got out to local—then national—newspapers by early March. At the Battle of San Jacinto, fought less than two months later, Texians forces prevailed over the Mexican army with cries of "Remember the Alamo!" On July 8, 2014, the original Travis Letter returned to the Alamo—now in the United States that Travis once implored—after leaving 178 years ago.
 

Below: pages from the Travis Letter.
 

Image credit & copyright: The Alamo
 

The inventor of the printing press revolutionizes the world, but flounders financially.

Business is business—until a bishop enters the picture. Take it from German craftsman, inventor, and publisher Johannes Gutenberg, who launched the Printing Revolution around 1450 with his invention of the mechanical printing press. The device greatly reduced the cost of books, spread literacy throughout Europe, and helped incite the Renaissance, Reformation, and the Age of Enlightenment. And yet, it bankrupted him.
 

Little is known of Gutenberg's early life, other than he was born around 1395 in Mainz, Germany, where he apprenticed as a goldsmith until a peasant uprising forced him to resettle in modern-day Strasbourg, France. There, he immersed himself in movable type: a printing system invented by Chinese artisan Bi Sheng around 1041, which consisted of character-embossed ink blocks that could be assembled and reassembled to form different texts.
 

By 1448, Mainz's political climate had cooled down, and Gutenberg returned to his birthplace to open a print shop. Publicly, he busied himself with various gold- and blacksmithing projects. In secret, he toiled on a grand project: building a mechanical printing press. To fund its creation, he secured 800 gulden—estimated to be worth $150,000 today—from early venture capitalist Johann Fust. With the loan, Gutenberg purchased equipment that Fust held as collateral.
 

Three years passed, and while Gutenberg's machine was developing smoothly, he had failed to pay off any of the loan's interest. In desperation, he received another loan of 800 gulden from Fust. By now, Gutenberg was receiving commissions for 200-some Latin Bibles, but his machine, still a secret, lacked the modifications necessary to mass-produce the books. The inventor, growing nervous, used his press to print simpler wares, like calendars, propaganda, and religious indulgences, to finance himself until his Bibles could be produced and sold.
 

However, just as these Bibles started rolling off the presses in 1454, Fust sued Gutenberg for the money he owed—plus interest. Gutenberg tried reasoning with Fust as cash flow from his Bibles poured in, but the financier's patience had run dry. Fust forced Gutenberg to default on his loans and repossessed the inventor's publishing business, Bibles, and printing materials. Gutenberg, as passionate as ever about his invention, likely continued working underneath Fust.
 

Gutenberg had failed as an entrepreneur, but his printing press rapidly reshaped European civilizations. For centuries, scribes painstakingly copied books by hand for wealthy patrons; thanks to Gutenberg, middle-class citizens could now purchase cheaper, machine-pressed texts at a greater frequency. Early capitalists pounced on this open market, establishing hundreds of mechanical publishing companies across Europe. Naturally, the literacy rate ballooned in subsequent generations, which aided the spread of intellectual and democratic thinking.
 

As for Gutenberg and Fust, karma came for them both in the end. In 1462, Archbishop Adolph II sacked Mainz in a political dispute, along with Fust's publishing business. Fust more than likely died amidst the bloodshed, but Gutenberg lucked out. The Archbishop appointed the aging inventor as a gentleman of the court in 1465: a title that carried a cushy salary and blueblood privileges—on the condition he would print free books, of course!
 

Image credit & copyright: Odyssey
 

The world in a bright yellow box.

It wouldn't be a stretch to say National Geographic has changed the way people think about travel and exploration. The ground-breaking magazine has been an innovator in sharing scientific discoveries far and wide, as well as revolutionizing nature and wildlife photography. So it may come as a surprise that many of its original founders were science hobbyists who simply wanted to share their fandom with others.
 

In the early days of 1888, Washington D.C.'s most prestigious intellectuals received an exclusive invitation to "a meeting to be held in the Assembly Hall of the Cosmos Club, on Friday evening, January 13, at 8 o'clock p.m." The letter was signed by a handful of scientists and historians, including oceanographer Henry Mitchell and Gardiner G. Hubbard, the first president of Bell Telephone Company and co-founder of the journal Science. The curious few who attended found themselves among the company of men who wished to establish a new organization called the National Geographic Society. The group's intended purpose was to promote world exploration and "increase and diffuse geographic knowledge" through grants and a published periodical of findings—"... so that we may all know more of the world upon which we live," according to Hubbard. At the end of the meeting, 33 men agreed to form the Society with Hubbard elected President, a moment immortalized in the above painting which hangs in National Geographic's Hubbard Hall.
 

October of that same year saw the publication of the orange-covered Vol. 1 No. 1 of The National Geographic Magazine. Among its 98 pages were six articles written by the Society members on dry subjects like "The Survey and Map of Massachusetts," and "The Great Storm of March 11-14, 1888." The magazine's early circulation reached about 200 members and featured no photography among its pages. It wasn't until the second President of the Society, Alexander Graham Bell, assigned his nephew Gilbert H. Grosvenor as the first full-time employee of the organization in 1899 that the future of National Geographic began to come into focus.
 

Grosvenor is often called "the father of photojournalism" with good reason. As the Editor-in-Chief for National Geographic starting in 1904, Grosvenor began to fill issues with 11-page spreads of Lhasa, a mountain-ringed Buddhist city in Tibet, and wildlife photography by George Shiras III. A few members of the Society resigned in disgust, claiming Grosvenor had turned the respectable publication into a "picture book"; others commended him for bringing a fresh angle to the magazine.
 

Regardless of other Society members' opinions, Grosvenor spearheaded the goal of a shared appreciation for exploration and was elected President of The National Geographic Society in 1920. Nat Geo's readership rose into the millions under his watch, adopting its iconic yellow-boxed cover. The Society also funded richly-photographed expeditions of places like Machu Pichu and the first flight over the Antarctic. With a special April 1916 issue of Nat Geo, which highlighted the majestic beauty of the Sierra Nevada, Grosvenor all but ensured the Organic Act—which he co-drafted—would finally find congressional support and establish the National Park Services.
 

These days, the Society continues to advocate for environmental causes and awards celebrated scientists with the Hubbard Medal, named for the society's first president. Its publication is also a platform for amateur wildlife photographers to showcase their work. For the last 130 years and counting, no other organization has brought to life the vast biodiversity of our world quite like the National Geographic Society has.
 

Below: more images from National Geographic's storied history, including a portrait of President and Editor-in-Chief Gilbert H. Grosvenor, the cover of the April 1916 issue which made it into the hands of every congressman voting for the Organic Act, and George Shiras III's innovative nighttime flash photography.
 

Image credit & copyright: National Geographic
 

Over 60 Americans find themselves at the mercy of Iran's militant Ayatollah Khomeini.

The final straw is often something (relatively) trivial. President Jimmy Carter learned this cutting lesson on January 20, 1981: the day the Iran hostage crisis finally concluded. The 444-day ordeal, in which 66 Americans were abducted from Iran's American embassy by revolutionary Islamists, resulted in Carter losing the 1980 election. Caused by a seemingly innocuous humanitarian decision, it resolved just hours after his successor President Ronald Reagan was sworn into office.
 

But the roots of the conflict lie in the Western corporations that had long controlled Iran's petroleum reserves, rather than Carter. In 1951, Iran elected a European-educated nationalist named Mohammad Mossadegh as its prime minister. Mossadegh planned to nationalize his homeland's oil industry, but the C.I.A. and the British intelligence service quickly deposed and replaced him with the pro-Western Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.
 

Unfortunately, the Shah was a brutal, impetuous man. He tortured and murdered thousands until the Iranian people overthrew him in the '70s and elected radical Islamic cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as their new leader. The Shah, sick with cancer, was permanently exiled and left for dead. But on October 22, 1979, President Jimmy Carter extended the olive branch, admitting the former despot into the U.S. for medical treatment. Naturally, Iranians were bristling.
 

Soon after the Shah reached New York, pro-Ayatollah students stormed the U.S. embassy in Iran's capital of Tehran, seizing 66 hostages. The Ayatollah lauded the student's aggression and sought to exploit the publicity and exercise his new leadership on cable TV. Days later, he had his followers released 13 hostages—all of them women and African Americans—who Khomeini claimed were already victims of "the oppression of American society." Meanwhile, the American public demanded Carter take action.
 

The president quickly cut diplomatic ties with Iran, and talks of sanctions arose. As the hostages were blindfolded, paraded around, and generally denied the right to change clothes, Carter set in motion Operation Eagle Claw. An elite rescue team was meant to extract the remaining hostages, but the mission royally backfired. A fearsome sandstorm caused technical malfunctions; a helicopter collided with a transport plane upon takeoff, resulting in the deaths of eight American servicemen.
 

Ronald Reagan, who was running against Carter in the 1980 presidential election, pointed the finger of blame at his opponent. Either way, he had it made; Carter was so mired in damage control, he shirked his campaign duties and lost the race in a landslide. To really rub salt in Carter's wound, the Ayatollah released the remaining hostages just hours after Reagan's inaugural address. Politicians—they can be as petty as middle schoolers!
 

Image credit & copyright: Express / Getty Images
 

The black gold rush.

If one location can be said to have brought the U.S. into the 20th century, it's Spindletop Hill. In less than two years, the Texan locale brought about the Age of Oil and managed to fuel not just the engines of the future, but the dreams of prospectors looking to strike it rich in the American West.
 

Spindletop Hill and its neighboring town, Beaumont, were part of the agriculture and lumber industries in the 1800s when interest grew significantly in the location's natural oil and gas reserves. It's said that nearby Native tribes knew about petroleum in the land for centuries; in the 1500s, Spanish conquerors caulked their ships with oil from Sabine Pass near the Gulf of Mexico.
 

After the Civil War, Confederate commander Dick Dowling attempted to drill a well in nearby Sour Lake to no avail. The next serious attempt to find oil was by amateur geologist Patillo Higgins, who convinced himself there was "black gold" to be had at the salt dome formation on Spindletop. (Salt domes are made of sedentary salt forced upward from the ground, sometimes trapping oil or gas.) Higgins formed the Gladys City Oil, Gas, and Manufacturing Company in 1892; after three failed drilling attempts at Spindletop, he left the company a few years later.
 

With momentum and investor money still behind him, Higgins made a lease agreement with Captain Anthony Lucas, a Croatian-American oil explorer and engineer. Lucas made more attempts at plunging into Spindletop Hill, though even more impasses would hinder his work: at 200 feet, a layer of sand impaired drilling; at 900 feet, the new and very expensive hydraulic drill collapsed. But at 1,210 feet, Lucas finally struck black gold. On the morning of January 10, 1901, a stream of crude oil erupted out of the ground and shot over 200 feet into the air. The eruption lasted nine days until it was contained, but the effects of the "Lucas Gusher" would last for over a century.
 

The oil rush hit Beaumont hard. In just a year, the population swelled from 8,000 to 60,000. About 285 wells were operating on Spindletop, with over 600 oil companies established in the area, many of which would evolve into contemporary companies like Texaco (The Texas Company), Humble (Exxon), and Sun Oil. In a land grab anecdote that puts contemporary housing price spikes to shame, a man whose Beaumont land had been worth $150 the previous year sold his lot for $20,000, which was sold again not 15 minutes later for $50,000. Because of the great wealth and losses incurred—not to mention the prevalence of con artists—the location quickly earned the nickname "Swindletop Hill." In total, an estimated $235 million was invested in oil between 1901 and 1902, and Spindletop made the U.S. a leading producer of oil in the industrialized world.
 

In 1902, Spindletop produced over 17 million barrels of oil; by 1904, that number had dropped to 10,000. A second boom happened in 1925, though with far higher prices for land, which prevented the normal rush of wealth-seekers and con artists. The salt dome eventually subsided and mining of sulfur and brine took over. But the importance of Spindletop's oil production forever changed the landscape of eastern Texas, and the oil-fueled 20th century.
 

Below: a photograph of Spindletop's eruption and a portrait of Anthony F. Lucas.
 

Image credit & copyright: Texas Energy Museum
 

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, who died on January 6, 1852, 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