Author: Betz

Categories
19th Century

The U.S. Capitol

Have a drink with: You. Just have a drink.
2021’s off to a start, huh?

Talk about: What wine goes with an attempted coup?

U.S. Capitol after burning by the British, 1814
U.S. Capitol after burning by the British, 1814 (Library of Congress)

Yesterday’s breach of the United States Capitol by a shaggy horde of insurrectionists egged on by the President of the United States was a historical anomaly of the worst kind: the first intrusion into the Capitol by an unwelcome force since the British invasion of Washington during the War of 1812. In the late summer of 1814, British forces tore through the District and laid waste to government buildings, including a fiery effort against the still-incomplete Capitol building.

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Categories
19th Century

The Greely Expedition

Have a drink with: The Greely Expedition
Survivor: Climate Research Edition

Ask them about: Eating your shoes

Worlds Fair Diorama (LoC)

Hey folks! If you think you’ve got it bad having to stay home for Thanksgiving, well, at least you’re not marooned in the Arctic having to eat your shoes for dinner. My piece on the ill-fated Greely Arctic expedition – and how the Barnum Museum ended up with one of its odd, furry relics – is up at Atlas Obscura today. Click on over to read on.

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Categories
19th Century 20th Century

Democracy!

Raise a glass to: Democracy
Vote! Vote! Vote!

Look. A lot of people are saying a lot of things about Election Day. The results may take too long. Is absentee balloting trustworthy? And what the hell is up with the Electoral College? It is all very stressful. But these questions are not new, and there are some historical precedents we can lean our tired selves on:

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Categories
19th Century

Historic Influencer Wildfires

Have a drink with: Mark Twain & Henry David Thoreau
Bring water, though.

Ask them about: grilling tips

One of the current West Coast wildfires made news recently when investigation revealed it had been started by smoke bombs at a California gender reveal party. The accident (not the first of its kind, following a similar fire in 2017) has drawn harsh criticism, including from the blogger who invented the party trend – but this is not the first time fame-seekers have tried to duck responsibility for errant wildfire.

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Categories
19th Century 20th Century

Postal Inspectors

Have a drink with: Postal Inspectors
Don’t mess with the postal service.

Ask them about: Snow, rain, gloom of night, Tommy guns

When former Trump adviser Steve Bannon was arrested recently on charges of defrauding donors to an online fundraising campaign known as “We Build the Wall,” it was by agents of the United States Postal Inspection Service. This may seem surprising to many of us, who typically think of the postal service as consisting of affable, hardworking people who look unusually good in shorts and the occasional pith helmet, but for most of American history, the Post Office has been home to the nation’s most powerful federal law enforcement.

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Categories
17th Century 18th Century 19th Century

Mountebanks & Toad Eaters

Have a drink with: Your Local Mountebank
Healthcare! Fireworks! Toads!

Ask him about: What ails you

We’re all getting a lot of weird healthcare advice lately, and I admit that it’s hard to stomach the idea that our country, which vanquished polio and smallpox with scientific elbow grease, is entertaining the medical expertise of a presidential toady who thinks endometriosis happens when you have a demon boyfriend. But history has long tolerated – and even encouraged – the side hustle of non-traditional medical practitioners, and we continue to use some of their lingo even today.

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Categories
20th Century Uncategorized

The Anti-Mask League

Have a drink with: The 1919 Anti-Mask League
NO BARS, okay? NO.

Ask them about: Coughing in large groups

Since COVID-19 became a public health emergency in March, different cities and states have responded with protective measures, many of them including a recommendation or a requirement to wear a mask when in proximity to other people. These mandates have drawn protest from opponents, many of whom feel that masks are unnecessary, ineffective or a violation of individual rights. We can take a lesson from the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919, during which relaxed mask requirements may well have contributed to a resurgence of the virus in the San Francisco area after an initially successful lockdown period.

During the 1918-1919 flu, many Americans were big fans of masks – Red Cross workers made sure they were making and distributing tons, the Levi Strauss company went from making jeans to mask production, and as Atlas Obscura has pointed out, some people even masked their pets. But the flu roared back after an initial lull in illness, and a portion of Bay Area residents were not at all eager to mask back up. In language that could well have come from modern news reports, anti-maskers complained about masks being useless, about “political doctors,” and about “an infringement of our personal liberty.” In January 1919, a crowd of more than four thousand people gathered at a local rink to protest the passage of the city’s mask ordinance.

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Categories
19th Century

The Flour Riots

The Flour Rioters of 1837
Bread, meat, rent and fuel

Ask them about: sourdough starter?

In the pandemic months of 2020, one of the most initially surprising facts of life was the desolation of the supermarket baking aisle, with flour in desperately short supply as we all stress-baked our way through isolation. It isn’t the first time flour availability has been top-line American news, either. New Yorkers were obsessed with rising prices and short supply of flour in 1837, too – and that time, it led to a very contentious, very powdery riot.

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Categories
18th Century 19th Century 20th Century

Black Historians

Have a drink with: Black Historians

Ask them about: Maybe just listen.

Here’s something I found while I was researching this week. It’s a column from a September 1863 issue of Scientific American:


Part of the process of researching a subject is looking at all the adjacent issues that you encounter along the way, building a sense of daily consciousness and public culture in a given era. And I was still shocked – and absolutely should not have been – at the clinical distance with which the authors talk about black soldiers in the Civil War, and the suggestion that even the Union army thought of black men as such commodities that they’d rather send them in than risk white soldiers dying of malaria.

So it’s time to sit in that discomfort, and recommend that we all do more to understand America’s history of inequality. There are a lot of titles here, and this is just a small selection. I’m not going to link them – you can choose where you’d like to purchase (but bookshop.org and indiebound.org are cool because they help you support your favorite local bookstores).

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Categories
18th Century 19th Century

Don’t Drink Disinfectants.

Have a drink of: ANYTHING BUT BLEACH.
Disinfectants are not medicine.

Ask about: No. Don’t. Just DON’T.

I can’t believe I have to say this, much less marshal the historical evidence to prove it, but, please: don’t drink bleach. Don’t inhale bleach. Don’t inject bleach. DON’T USE BLEACH TO DO ANYTHING BUT CLEAN UP AROUND THE HOUSE.

For more on the dark history of what has happened every time people have tried to do this in the past (and, oh yes, they most certainly have) – click through to my essay at Medium.

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