Americas
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Fight against “Yellow Jack”
In the early 19th century, the scourge of Yellow Fever was prevalent in the southern United States. It had originally come over from Africa with the slave trade. They called it “Yellow Jack” and it was relentless. The death toll was huge as outbreaks happened in the south and people fled north. Trains full of people trying to escape sickness were met at stations by armed men and forced to move on. These were called “shotgun quarantines”. No one knew how it spread. They burned bonfires to disrupt “miasmas” that they thought caused sickness. Patients were quarantined and doctors believed contact with sick people and anything contaminated with their…
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The Straw Hat Riots of 1922
People take their clothes very seriously. Ask any teenager trying to decide what to wear in the morning. We devote magazines to what to wear and more importantly what not wear. We make jokes about the fashion police. However, those involved in the Straw Hat Riots of 1922 took it to extremes. There was a strict tradition among men at the end of the 19th century and into the beginning of the 20th century about what was appropriate for the various seasons. Because of the lack of air conditioning and central heating, men’s wear changed over to lighter fabrics in the summer and heavier fabrics in the winter. Seersucker suits…
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Edith Wilson and the Secret Presidency
Woodrow Wilson was tired. He had been negotiating the Treaty of Versailles, planning for the League of Nations, campaigning for the US inclusion into said League of Nations and planned a speaking tour of the United States in support of this effort. He had suffered from a terrible bout with influenza in April 1919, and had not allowed himself the opportunity to rest. By September of the same year, Wilson was noticeably thinner and paler and his asthma was growing worse. He also complained of terrible headaches. Instead of taking the rest that he obviously needed, Wilson pushed on. On the evening of September 25, 1919, Wilson collapsed after speaking…
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A German Texas- Mainzer Adelsverein
When most people think of Texas they think of wide open spaces, cowboys and oil rigs. They do not think of oompah bands. However, that is what you will find in the German Belt of Texas. This is an area of towns founded by the The Mainzer Adelsverein at Beibrich am Rhein or Adelsverein for short. This was a society set up to fund the immigration of Germans to Texas to start a New Germany. Wait, Germans in Texas? How does this work? Germany in the 19th century was divided into more than thirty independent kingdoms, principalities, and free cities. Adding to this chaos was the birth of the industrial…
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Skull and Bones
This mysterious secret society was founded in 1832 after a dispute among Yale debating societies Linonia, Brothers in Unity, and the Calliopean Society over that season’s Phi Beta Kappa awards. William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft co-founded “the Order of the Scull and Bones”. The Russell Trust Association, incorporated in 1856 and named after the Bones co-founder manages their assets. Their members go by the nickname “Bonesmen”. Many famous and powerful people have been known to be in the society. Skull and Bones selects new members among students every spring as part of Yale University’s “Tap Day”, and has done so since 1879. Since the society’s inclusion of women in…
