Curio Cabinet / Person, Place, or Thing

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
 

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 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.
 

Over 30 years of beautiful days in the neighborhood.

Hi there, neighbor! When Fred Rogers first encountered "people throwing pies at one another" on television, he thought it was a terrible form of entertainment. In response, he dedicated his life to offering quality educational television to children young and old.
 

Born on March 20, 1928, in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Rogers took an early interest in music, theology, and puppetry as a child. After graduating with a bachelor's in Music Composition, he took a job at NBC's music department in 1951. Unsatisfied with the vacuous nature of commercial television, he left NBC and began developing children's programming at WQED, Pittsburg's public television network. There, he worked as the puppeteer of fictional characters who would later make it into the "Neighborhood of Make-Believe" segment of his own show. Rogers also swapped out of his work shoes for sneakers—to be able to move around the set more quietly.
 

In the following years, Rogers continued his studies at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and took courses on Child Development and Child Care at the University of Pittsburgh's graduate studies program. Early versions of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood made it onto Canadian public television, where Rogers was encouraged to emerge from behind the puppets and become a star. When the show premiered nationwide in the U.S. on February 19, 1968, kids found a gentle father figure who chatted with them about the day's theme, then took them to visit important friends. His trolley whisked the show away to the puppet-filled "Make-Believe" land.
 

In spite of his gentle mannerisms, Rogers often took on heavy subjects. He wrote and co-wrote entire episodes dedicated to supporting children through difficult issues, like dealing with new siblings, divorce, and death. Together with Sesame Street, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood ushered in a new era of entertainment, one where early childhood development studies were coupled with playful songs, games, and characters who captured children's imaginations.
 

Fred Rogers' advocacy didn't end when he took off his mother's hand-knitted sweaters and the lights went down. He testified in front of Congress in support of public television funding in 1969, and a 1998 Esquire profile revealed his graceful nature and lifelong correspondence with fans. It was as if him asking "Won't you be my neighbor?" at the top of his show wasn't so much a question, but an invitation to be awed by the kindness he brought into the homes and lives of his viewers.

 

Image credit & copyright: PBS
 

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 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 small-town banker's passion project grows into a national sensation.

Mother Nature and a Wisconsin banker certainly made a good team. After years of crafting furniture in his free time, John Krubsack tackled his most ambitious project: growing a chair out of live trees. It took several years and more than two dozen saplings, but eventually Krubsack's magnum opus was completed, becoming popular around the country and inspiring future generations of treeshapers. (Who knew that was a job title?)
 
Though Krubsack spent his days counting money, his real passion was the outdoors. Born 160 years ago this year, Krubsack often searched riverbanks for large pieces of wood to fuse together into chairs, tables, and benches. But he wasn't satisfied. "Dammit, one of these days I am going to grow a piece of furniture that will be better and stronger than any human hands can build," he told a friend.
 
Krubsack kept his word, though his human hands were plenty involved. In the early 1900s, he planted seeds for 32 boxelders, a type of maple trees. Krubsack began shaping their growth in 1908, when the trees were about six feet tall. For the next seven years, he trimmed, tied, and grafted the delicate trees so they formed each component of a single chair. When some trees grew faster than others, he snipped their stems so the slowpokes might catch up. For centuries, Native Americans had made musical instruments out of boxelders; now Krubsack was showing the species' pliability and durability made it a great material even before being chopped down. By 1914, each joint had become solid. The chair was ready to be harvested.
 
The Chair That Grew debuted at the 1915 World Fair in San Francisco and also made the rounds of major furniture trade shows. It was featured in Robert Ripley's "Believe It Or Not!" column, and an interview with Krubsack explaining how he shaped the tree played in movie theaters around the country. Several buyers offered up to $5,000 for the chair (around $120,000 in today's money). But Krubsack couldn't put a price tag on his labor of love; he gave the chair to his son, who kept it in the family tree. Today, tree shaping (or arborsculpture) is a thriving industry in the U.S., Germany, Thailand, and Australia. We can only imagine how proud Papa Krubsack would be.
 

Below: examples of modern day arborsculpture influenced by The Chair That Grew.
 

Image credit & copyright: Memory Lag via Imgur and Make Magazine
 

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 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 Seattle suburb hides war secrets.

Don't be fooled by the sunbathing women, orderly roads, and trimmed lawns. Though it had all the trappings of the average suburb, this town was anything but. During World War II, the idyllic space protected thousands of workers busily drilling airplane parts together right underneath it, inside Boeing Plant No. 2.
 
The seed was planted in Washington, D.C., in 1940; Congress had just approved funding for manufacturers to churn out 50,000 new military planes a year, anticipating U.S. involvement in World War II. The Boeing company had provided the military with seaplanes during the First World War; this time around, it was asked to produce 17,000 B-17 fighter planes. Enter Boeing Plant No. 2. Situated on a former shipbuilding site near the Duwamish River, it was nicknamed "The Fortress Factory" and measured eight football fields long. Its sheer size made it the perfect place to set up an airplane-building operation requiring thousands of employees working double shifts. Many were women in their first manufacturing jobs—much like Rosie the Riveter herself.
 
Each B-17 cost about $200,000, the equivalent of a whopping $3.4 million today. As the war raged on, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers came up with creative ideas to prevent the factory from becoming an air strike target. The Army Corps took inspiration from actual suburbs near the plant when designing their fake town, which was built on a grid exactly like that of neighboring communities.
 
Not a single detail was missed. Trees were crafted from chicken wire and feathers, while large wooden slabs were nailed together to look like cars. Houses appeared real from the point of view of an enemy plane scouting the area from above; a closer examination revealed some were shorter than potential homeowners! Though aware of the seriousness of their task, the Army Corps wasn't above humor; signposts appeared at street corners with names like "Burlap Boulevard" and "Synthetic Street."
 
The fake town certainly did its job: the plant survived the war, having produced almost all of the commissioned B-17s, as well as B-29 Superfortress planes—the most technologically advanced American military aircraft at the time. After the war, it produced commercial planes before being demolished in 2010 to make way for ecological restoration to the area. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had some strange ideas—but they sure took flight!
 

Below: further images of Boeing Plant No. 2.
 

Image credit & copyright: Boeing / Seattle Times Archive
 

Women capture the vote—for all the wrong reasons.

Decades before the 19th Amendment passed in 1920, women like Esther Morris, shown above, were serving as judges and voting in the Wyoming territory. Before it even became a state, Wyoming's legislature enacted laws to give women the vote and other rights unheard of in the U.S. in the 1860s. Were they ahead of their time? The answers aren't quite so simple.
 

Wyoming itself was in a precarious place by the late 1860s. The land that became the territory was acquired in parts through the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, the 1846 Oregon Treaty between Britain and the U.S., and the 1848 Mexican Cession following the Mexican-American War. In July of 1868, President Andrew Johnson signed the Organic Act, which took land from Dakota, Idaho, and Utah territories to form Wyoming—a name taken from the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania and the Munsee Indian word for "near the big river flat," or prairie region. To add to the location's identity crisis, the Union Pacific Railroad landed in Cheyenne in 1867. What should have been a celebration of railroad jobs arriving in the region was marked by the scarcity of working bodies—or any bodies, for that matter—nearby. Wyoming had a population problem, and its governing body knew that.
 

As if attracting and keeping settlers in the region wasn't a hard enough task, the Wyoming Territorial legislature wasted no time picking a political fight over the task ahead of them. In 1868 President Grant appointed General John Campbell as governor of the Wyoming territory, hoping to establish Republican favor in the region. But as elections were held in September, Confederate-sympathetic Democrats won all 22 seats of the territorial legislature. In an effort to undermine the Republican governor's efforts at unification, President of the Council William H. Bright introduced the female suffrage bill; it was meant to pit Republicans vs. Democrats and abolitionists vs. suffragists, all while boosting publicity for the state. Despite all the ulterior political motives, the hopes of luring women to head out west were indeed genuine, as men outnumbered women in the region six to one.
 

The suffrage bill passed in a seven-to-four vote in the House and was ultimately approved in December 1869 by a hesitant Governor Campbell. As a result, an unprecedented number of gender-equality firsts occurred within the next year. The city of Laramie become the first location to include women in a public jury in March, Martha Symons Boies was appointed the first female bailiff there, and Louisa Swain cast the first women's vote in a general election in September. Over in Cheyenne, Esther Morris became the first justice of the peace and a figurehead for women's suffrage across the nation.
 

Were there really any good intentions on Bright's, or any of the legislature's parts, in introducing the women's suffrage bill? In 1871, a new session of the Wyoming Territorial legislature did attempt to repeal the bill to no avail. Stories circulated about how the whole thing had been intended as a joke in the first place, yet the bill was treated with all the seriousness of any other item of legislation. The person who may have had the most eloquent explanation of exactly what happened with women's suffrage in Wyoming was none other than Esther Morris' husband William, who stated, "It is a fact that all great reforms take place, not where they are most needed, but in places where opposition is weakest; and then they spread."

 

Below: the text of the Wyoming Territorial legislature's women's suffrage bill.
 

Female Suffrage
Chapter 31
An Act to Grant to the Women of Wyoming Territory the Right of Suffrage, and to Hold Office
Be it enacted by the Council and House of Representatives of the Territory of Wyoming:
Sec. 1. That every woman of the age of twenty-one years, residing in this territory, may at every election to be holden under the laws thereof, cast her vote. And her rights to the elective franchise and to hold office shall be the same under the election laws of the territory, as those of electors.
Sec. 2. This act shall take effect and be in force from and after its passage.
Approved, December 10, 1869.
 
Image credit & copyright: Adam Procter

A president's proclamation paves the way for aggressive foreign policy in Latin America.

For almost two centuries, the United States has asserted itself as the "big brother" of the Western Hemisphere, thanks in part to a bold assertion by President James Monroe. On December 2, 1823, the fifth president stood before Congress and declared that the U.S. would no longer tolerate European aggression in North or South America. This proclamation, known today as the Monroe Doctrine, has drastically influenced the United States' foreign policy ever since.
 

Monroe's announcement came with good reason. In the early 1800s, the Russian czar voiced ambitions of colonizing Alaska, as well as much of the Pacific coast. Even worse, Spain and France sought to undermine freshly independent countries in Central and South America. If America was to strengthen its economic ties and expand its influence, these Latin American countries needed protection.
 

But drawing a line in the sand wasn't America's first option. In 1823, British Foreign Minister George Canning approached the U.S. with a proposition; since Britain also sought to undermine Spain and France's' colonial holds in the Western Hemisphere, why not team up? Most Americans balked at the idea of partnering with the British, who had gone to war with the U.S. just a decade prior and razed the White House to the ground.
 

Instead, Monroe affirmed to Congress that the Americas were no longer subjects for further European colonialism. Moreover, European attempts to colonize independent nations in the Americas would be considered acts of aggression towards the U.S. In return, the U.S. would not meddle in domestic European affairs, nor interfere with any pre-existing European colonies in the West.
 

Ironically, the U.S. lacked an adequate navy to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, and Britain became its unintentional enforcer, using an immense Royal Navy to scare other European kingdoms away from the Americas. But as the United States grew in size and military might, presidents began to liberally interpret the Monroe Doctrine, using it as justification for war and expansion. When President John Tyler used it to warrant his 1842 annexation of Texas, a Venezuelan newspaper said to other Latin American countries, "Beware, brothers, the wolf approaches the lambs."
 

In 1898, President Theodore Roosevelt invoked the Monroe Doctrine in support of the Spanish–American War, which resulted in the liberation of Cuba from a despotic Spain. It was a seemingly noble usage of the doctrine, but the U.S. would later restrict Cuba's autonomy up until the Castro revolution of 1959. The U.S. would also permanently barrack American troops at the Guantanamo Bay naval base, located on the island.
 

From there, the U.S. would invade the Dominican Republic in 1965 to forestall a "communist dictatorship." In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan referred to the Monroe Doctrine and affected the outcomes of revolutions in El Salvador and Nicaragua. By the time George Bush intervened in Panama in 1989, Reagan had set a precedent; Washington could respond to and remove any Latin American government it deemed unsuitable—with or without invoking the Monroe Doctrine. North and South America's big brother had become their big bully.
 

Image credit & copyright: Courtesy the Library of Congress
 

A pragmatic engineer overcame gender bias to drastically improve train travel.

We can all thank Olive Wetzel Dennis for footrests and reclining, stain-resistant chairs. One of the earliest women to complete a civil engineering degree, Dennis's tenure at B&O Railroad left a lasting impression on the train travel experience for the average American. Dennis made introductions that were later mimicked by other railroads and, eventually, buses and airplanes. And she did all this while being one of the few female engineers in the industry.

 
Born on November 20, 1885, and raised in Baltimore, Dennis showed an early penchant for mechanics and locomotion; when her father gave her a woodworking set at age 10, she used it to make a model streetcar for her brother. It included folding seats, moving stairs, and poles in the center much like the actual streetcars that careened through her hometown of Baltimore. When presented with dolls, Dennis often chose to build furniture and houses for them, rather than playing with them outright.
 
Those traits would come in handy in the 1920s, when Dennis joined Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Just a year into her tenure, the head of the railroad announced a new initiative: making trains somewhat livable rather than the simply functional spaces they had been previously. The first person charged with the task was Dennis, who had already proven herself by successfully designing bridges and laying out railroad lines. "I was told to get ideas that would make women want to travel on our line," Dennis later said of her surprise appointment.
 
Dennis threw herself into the role with gusto. Her hours spent traveling up and down the mid-Atlantic yielded some genius ideas. She created larger dressing rooms for female passengers, as well as ceiling lights that could be brightened or dimmed. Upholstery throughout the B&O trains was made stain-resistant. She even designed — and later patented — special ventilators to help prevent train cars from getting stuffy.
But it wasn't always easy getting the respect she merited. Once, when Dennis asked for a pass to go aboard a competitor's train, it was made out to "Oliver Dennis." When she asked them to correct it to "Miss Olive Dennis," they sent it back to her as "Miss Olive Dennis, daughter of Engineer Oliver Dennis." The incident came as no surprise to Dennis; as she'd walked across the stage to receiver her master's degree from Cornell in 1920, one of her classmates had called out: "What the heck can a woman do in engineering?"
 
Despite these challenges, Dennis soldiered on; she stayed with B&O Railroad into the 1950s, retiring just a few years before her death in 1957. Profiled by her hometown paper later in her life, she had a few pithy words to sum up her career and the challenges she faced: "There is no reason that a woman can't be an engineer simply because no other woman has ever been one."
 

Below: another image of Dennis at work; a china set Dennis designed for B&O Railroad's centenary; a train that Dennis worked on.

Image credit & copyright: B&O Railroad Museum
 

Gone and anonymous, but not forgotten.

Every Veteran's Day, the U.S. President ceremoniously lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. As war monuments go, the tomb's simplistic design belies its significant part in remembrance ceremonies for those who died serving our country.
 

The first Tomb of the Unknown Soldier wasn't an American affair; instead, the tradition began across the Atlantic. World War I's staggering death toll of (at least) nine million soldiers devastated the Allied Forces. While on duty, the Reverend David Railton came across a makeshift grave with the title "An Unknown British Soldier" written in pencil on a cross; this became his inspiration for requesting a ceremonial burial for an unidentified soldier at London's Westminster Abbey. After the war, the French Parliament also debated whether to bury an "ignored soldier" at the Panthéon in Paris, though eventually settled on the Arc de Triomphe as the location. Both the U.K. and France first conducted services for their nameless soldiers on November 11, 1920—the day traditionally celebrated as Armistice Day, and the anniversary of the end of World War I in 1918.
 

Word of France and Britain's ceremonies reached U.S. shores, and on March 4th the next year, Congress approved the burial of an unidentified soldier at the Memorial Amphitheater in Arlington National Cemetery. But how to ensure the inaugural soldier would really remain unknown years after WWI? The U.S. turned to France once again, requesting four caskets of anonymous American soldiers be exhumed from their overseas gravesites and lined up at city hall in Chalons-sur-Marne, France. On October 24, 1921, U.S. Army Seargent Edward F. Younger randomly chose the third from the left by laying a spray of white roses atop the casket. The first person to be buried at the American Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was transported home aboard the USS Olympia, with the remaining three returned to Meuse Argonne Cemetery.
 

The unknown soldier arrived in Washington, D.C., and was on display for the public at the Capitol Rotunda, with an estimated 100,000 visitors coming to pay their respects. The casket then traveled to its final destination; on November 11, 1921, President Warren G. Harding officiated the induction ceremonies at Memorial Amphitheater in Arlington. Since the initial ceremonies, an unidentified soldier from every major U.S. war has received the U.S. Medal of Honor and burials under marble slabs at the Tomb of the Unknowns—with the exception of a Vietnam vet, who was identified in 1998 through DNA testing as Lt. Michael Joseph Blassie, and reinterred at Jefferson Barracks in Missouri.

 

In 1926, architect Lorimer Rich and sculptor Thomas Hudson Jones won a competition to place a monument above the tomb. With the aid of the Piccirilli Brothers—who famously worked on the Lincoln statue at the Lincoln Memorial—work was completed in 1931. The rectangular cube featured north and south panels with three wreaths each, representing the six major battles WWI soldiers faced in France. The east panel features three Greek figures representing Peace, Victory, and Valor. On the western panel lies the inscription "Here rests in honored glory an American Soldier known but to God." Their names may be lost to us, but their deeds certainly are not.
 

Below: the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France, the British tomb in Westminster Abbey, and a view of the three Greek virtues and wreaths at Arlington.
 

Image credit & copyright: Today I Found Out, Find a Grave, American Society of Landscape Architects, Dena Kennett
 

From its unlikely origins, Australia's first hospital weathered several storms.

Taking care of thousands of convicts is no small order. Starting in the late 1700s, the British government sent 162,000 convicts to penal colonies in Australia. Making up most of the region's settler population, the emigrants were largely convicted on petty crimes like stealing and brawling. Forced to serve their sentence by doing manual labor, they also struggled with illness like scurvy, smallpox, or dysentery. And until this hospital came along, they were receiving their treatment in makeshift tents set up near Sydney's busy streets.
 

But an unlikely solution wasn't far off. In the early 1800s, the region's newly-appointed governor schemed up a deal to finance the first proper hospital in the land down under—a legendary complex that would house thousands of sickly convicts as well as two other governmental institutions, and in the ensuing decades, bear witness to Australian history.
 

It wouldn't have happened without booze. Rebuffed by the British government when he asked for funding, Governor Lachlan Macquarie struck a deal with three businessmen this week in 1810: build the hospital in exchange for reduced import taxes on 60,000 gallons of rum as well as free convict labor to build the hospital. The agreement effectively gave the businessmen a monopoly on rum imported into Australia's rapidly growing market.
 

But the businessmen had to nurse their fair share of headaches related to the project. Construction of the hospital's three standalone wings lasted six years; one even had to be rebuilt after it collapsed. When noted architect Francis Greenway was brought in, he noticed dry rot, problems with structural beams, and weak foundations. It "must soon fall into ruin," he said. Despite these issues, the buildings stood on their own for a few decades; the main building was torn down in the 1880s to make way for a renovation. One wing hid several faults for decades, only discovered during restoration in the 1980s.
 

When the hospital first opened its doors in 1816, Australia's convicts were ready to leave the streetside makeshift tents where they had previously been treated. (Though, their stays would be far from pleasant; because bloodletting was used to treat many ailments, the hospital earned the nickname "Sydney Slaughter House.") By the 1850s, the hospital's two smaller wings were being used as a Royal Mint and as the home of the state legislature of New South Wales. Who knew rum could pave the way for something like this?
 

Image credit & copyright: J. Bar