April 15 - Titanic and the Unsinkable

I think I would be the worst historical blogger if I forgot to blog about the R.M.S. Titanic today. This morning at 2 a.m. marked the 100 anniversary of the disaster, and besides the movie coming back to theatres in 3D, there have been a plethora of articles already written on the subject this year to get people ready for the event.

I feel most people know about the Titanic, the mistakes that led to the sinking and loss of life. So instead, I’m going to bring the event back to one person who happened to survive the Titanic, a person with local Denver ties.

I am talking about the iconic Mrs. Margaret (Maggie) Brown.

I took two hours today to make the trip to see the Molly Brown House museum. Her old house has been restored to the way it looked during the time Margaret was living there. Because I am me, and I love history, my friends and I went on the Titanic tour, a tour that incorporated Margaret’s life in Denver in with the story of Titanic. It was absolutely fantastic, and it was a wonderful way to spend a Sunday. It also accomplished exactly what I wanted: it forced me to think about Titanic.

Margaret Brown was born in 1867 to Irish immigrants in Missouri, and was not born wealthy. When she was a teenager, she moved to Leadville, Colorado, and it was here she met her future husband James Joseph Brown. Nicknamed J.J. he was a self-educated, and after a brief courtship they married. Margaret was 19 and J.J. was 32. Margaret always said she would marry for money, but she married J.J. for love.

The Browns were married in 1886 and had two children. It wasn’t until later when J.J. was able to use his engineering skills to a benefit. He was responsible for finding the ore in the Liggle Jonny Mine, and was awarded 12,500 shares of stock.

The family relocated to Denver where they were able to buy a new house, which is now the Molly Brown House Museum. It was one of the first in Denver to have electricity, central heating and water through the house. Unfortunately, Margaret and J.J.’s marriage did not withstand time, and the couple was separated shortly after they moved. Margaret and J.J. had two children, Lawrence Palmer Brown and Catherine Ellen Brown.

Margaret took her new wealth and used it to try and benefit society. She was fluent in Russian, Italian, Spanish and French, and traveled through Europe.

Margaret was traveling in Egypt before she broke from her party to return to France. It was there that she heard her son’s child was ill. She booked immediate passage on the Titanic, and boarded the ship with two crates filled with Egyptian artifacts she planned to give to the Denver Museum.

In Egypt, Margaret heard from a fortuneteller that she would have a mishap at sea. While she took the warning with a grain of salt, it is amazing to realize how right the psychic was. It was not so much her actions while aboard the ship that made Margaret iconic with the Titanic, but rather her actions after. Because Margaret was schooled in so many languages, she went immediately to the surviving women from steerage to help translate for them. Margaret was responsible for helping change laws on ships, including the necessity to have enough lifeboats for every passenger, and to fill the boats completely. Margaret awarded the crew of the Carpathia special awards for the courage the had during their rescue.

Also worth mentioning is that Margaret helped establish the dumb friends league in Denver and ran for Colorado senate three times.

It was fantastic to visit the museum today, and I thoroughly enjoyed the information I received on Margaret and the Titanic. I was not allowed to take pictures inside, but I did sneak a few at the back of the house.

If you’re especially interested in the Titanic, I did find this great map of the people on the ship.

Enjoy, and as always, happy history!

This is one of the actual medals Margaret presented to the crew of the Carpathia.

This is a replica of the small Egyptian statue she was able to take in her pocket the night the Titanic sank. She later presented this to the Captain Rostron of the Carpathia.

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

March 25, 1911

There are times as a history lover that I am reminded that very few people care about history. And honestly, it’s a bit lonely.

While I doubt all of my history knowledge will be interesting to everyone, I usually only nerd out when I know the information is pertinent to a conversation, or will enlighten the person I am telling the fact to.

Of all my random facts, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire fact is my personal favorite random fact. I told two co-workers about the event recently, and had two totally different reactions: one was interested, the other… seemed to fake interest.

High school is really when I discovered my passion for history. Junior year of high school I learned about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and what it really meant for our country. I remember the day really vividly: My teacher was being critiqued, and so he was a little more rigid than usual. But he had spoken with such passion, and tied together the ideals so beautifully, I felt that at the end of the lecture I really understood this event.

What many probably don’t know is this event was crucial for our country, and the way people approached public safety. It was also a turning point in ideology.

The beginning of the Twentieth Century was termed “The Gilded Age” because while it was the Golden Age for immigration, the country was really not as golden as it seamed from far away. Three prominent mentalities were creating harsh and cruel working conditions for the newly industrialized country:

• Social Darwinism was the idea reflecting Darwin’s theory: survival of the fittest. If someone was weak, they should not be helped, but weeded out of society;

• Popular Calvinism was the religious ideology of the time, focused on the idea of predestination. Every person’s actions were pre destined by a higher being, meaning intervention was useless; and

• Constitutional conservatism was the idea of “liberty of contract” or the 14th Amendment. You work because you choose to work, but must maintain the contract at all costs.

The working class in America felt the full brunt of these ideologies. They lived in poor living conditions, working factory jobs that exploited them in wages, hours and in safety. The worst part of this is because of these ideologies, the elite in America felt that it was the fault of these people that they lived and worked in these conditions. The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire changed all of these mentalities. Basically, the factory housing hundreds of young women caught fire. Keep in mind this was before labor laws regulating working hours, working conditions, or minimum wage.

Women who were unable to escape the building simply jumped from the burning building, dying from the fall.

The inside of the factory after the fire.

Next time you are in a public place, notice the doors open out. It is a small detail people rarely notice, but it is a fire code so that if a fire were to break out, people could easily push the doors open and flood out. In the time of Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, the doors did not open out, the opened into the room, and hundreds of women were flooding against the doors, making it impossible to open the door to escape. Hundreds of women died in this fire, trapped inside the factory. The sheer magnitude of this disaster helped change the way society thought about working conditions, and about the working individuals as well. The Gilded Age gave way to the Progressive Era, dominated by three different ideals:

• Social gospel was the idea of a social response and socialized permeating society. The main idea was to bring Heaven to Earth;

• Reform Darwinism where man does not live in a state of nature, but rather in an artificial nature where natural law does not apply; and

• Legal Pragmatism where it was the idea of promoting the Great American Ideas. Balance principle and value vs. the common god and impact on society.

This is one of those facts that I think a lot of people rarely think of. Changes across other industries slowly began to happen after this point. And every time I notice a door opening in, which does happen in historic buildings, I think of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.

As always, Happy History!

Mithra

I have found that sometimes it is not what you know, but who you know that will get you places in this world. Sherry was in charge of the lab on our site, and she processed everything we found on the site, whether it was a large mortar stone, or a small shurd of pottery. Not only was she fantastic in the lab, and had a wealth of knowledge at her disposal, she is one of the nicest people I have ever had the fortune of knowing.

When we visited Maresha we had the pleasure of having Sherry take us on a tour of the site. Maybe that is what helped add to the appeal of the site, the personal connection I had because I was given a tour by someone who was passionate about the place, who dedicated years to excavating there, who loved learning about it, and who shared that passion with all of us.

In addition to seeing the main part of Maresha, Sherry also took us to visit a place dubbed the Horse Cave. This cave held a special meaning to Sherry, who overlooked the excavations that went on in the cave, and who wrote her graduate thesis about the cave.

Although called the horse cave, Sherry’s argument was it was a place of worship for those who were part of the religion Mithraism, a growing religion at the turn of the century. Mithraism should ring a bell, because I mentioned it in my winter solstice post; I think it was interesting for me to see it pop up there, after touching the surface of the religion when Sherry showed us her cave.

That got me thinking about what the religion actually involved. It was limited to men, and during the Roman rule it spread to, first to the men in the army, than to others in the Roman Empire.

As previously stated, Mithraism derives from the Persian religion Zoroastrianism. (I honestly have no idea how Zoroastrianism works, but one of my professors compared it to Lord of the Rings, with good and evil influences... take that description as you will.) Mithraism is a religion dedicated to Mithra, God of light and wisdom for Romans, and contracts and oaths for Persians. The slaying of a bull is also central to Mithra.

Mithraism rapidly spread through the Roman Empire during the Second Century C.E. About 400 different sites have been found across the empire, extending from Turkey to Britain, most concentrated in Rome.

The religion is one of contracts and loyalty between men. There were no known women followers, and the religion was immensely popular. Members met in small caves for worship. While not all were caves, these temples were dug into the earth, and lacked exterior decoration. A communal meal was important to the religion, with all caves finding evidence of large dining quarters. There was an initiation into seven successive levels of the religion, some including ablutions (baptism), purifications and ceremonial passwords. A simulated death and resurrection was probably part of the ceremony. The levels were:


Raven (Murcury)
Nymphus (Venus)
Soldier (Mars)
Lion (Jupiter)
Persian (Moon)
Heliodromus (Sun)
Father (Saturn)

There are several similarities between Mithraism and Christianity, one being the celebration of Christmas on December 25. The idea of resurrection is also central to Mithraism.

Having Sherry there to give background on the site really made it one of my favorites to visit. Even now, thinking back to the site I still think fondly of that day, and having Sherry as our tour guide.

My camera died (shock!) so thanks to Kendra Day for the photos. Not as good as I would have liked, but you can see a bit of this temple and some of the structures there.

Leap Year

Every four years we have an extra day in February. The reason, scientifically, is because the earth takes longer than 365 days to go around the sun- 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds to be exact.

Historically it was the Egyptians who were the first to figure out the solar year and the man made calendar didn’t always match up. Therefore, an extra day was added to compensate for the extra time.

The Romans were the first to designate February 29 as leap day. The first leap day was celebrated in 40 B.C.E. thanks to Mr. Julius Caesar.

Some other interesting leap year historical facts:

In 1288 Scotland established this day as one when a woman could propose to a man!

In 1940 Hattie McDaniel became the first black person to win an Oscar for her performance in Gone with the Wind. A random fact about McDaniel is she lived for a time in Fort Collins, Colorado! Her house still stands today.

In 1952 the first pedestrian regulation signs were installed in New York City.

Happy Leap Day everyone! Enjoy the day, since it won’t come back around until 2016!

Maresha

A Cave

When we went to visit Maresha I had the distinct pleasure of having Sherry Whetstone act as tour guide. Sherry worked in our lab, and dealt with all the filing and logging of our finds at the tel. She basically ran the office.

The nice thing about our group at the dig was how wonderfully nice they all were, and how interested in sharing information they knew about their specialties. Sherry was no exception, and she had some great experiences working at Tel Dan and helping excavate Maresha.

Maresha was a city built by the Idumeans around the time of the Babylonian exile, and existed until after the Helenistic period. The Idumeans were descendants of the Edomites, who moved into Israel during the Babylonian exile. Maresha itself was no more than a 10-minute drive from my dig site, and was clearly seen from both Gath and Lakish.

The Idumeans had similarities to the Jews, including evidence of mikvah, and similar prayers. There have also been differences; a tomb was found at the site dating from the Hellenistic period.

Maresha was one of my favorite places to visit. I don’t think I expected that. The site itself is not flashy; as with most sites it was destroyed, so there really isn’t much left above ground of the city that once existed at the location.

So then why was it so enjoyable? Many who had been there before mentioned caves below ground, and at first I was under whelmed with the idea. But these caves are unlike any caves I had seen before, or could have imagined.

Man made and ranging in size, the caves acted more as basements than caves. The city sits on chalky limestone, so the basements were carved into the ground and were used for storage of as a site where the occupants could engage in trade. We saw a cave with an olive press, and another where pigeons lived. It was simply fascinating.

It is hard to tell, but this is the pigeon basement, and it is actually quite large, in depth and in size. All the cubbies are where the pigeons lived.

This is one of my favorite pictures from the trip. The olive press.
Dating from a later period was a Hellenistic burial chamber, and even later were the Bell Caves, a quarry carved out by prisoners for the chalky stone.
The Bell Caves

Simply spectacular

I don’t think I expected to like Maresha as much as I did. The fascinating difference of this site, coupled with Sherry as a tour guide made the experience enjoyable and memorable.

Sherry explaining how she stumbled upon this particular cave. The light behind her is how they initially entered.

The first day we got to Israel I wanted to pull out my camera and begin taking photos. Well, my camera broke, so I fortunately used my fathers spare on loan through the trip. It had some fantastic zoom, but really had other weird quirks that made it more of a hassle that a pleasure. One was how often the battery died, as has been the case before. Thank you to Kendra Dye for the photos of the Bell caves, and parts of the burial chamber.

A cistern, complete with stairs along the side so the citizens could easily get to their water.

These are the chisel marks along the wall from those who initially carved the cistern.

The Hellenistic burial chamber. These are not the original images; the site was originally on the land of a sheik. When he heard of the finding, he went and had the original destroyed to keep it in accordance with Islam's teachings. Thankfully someone had made detailed drawings of the images, so they were able to be recreated.

2011 in Review-Drink up!

At midnight, people around the world will celebrate the changing of the New Year from 2011 to 2012. And at the infamous hour, there is no drink quite like Champagne to help celebrate.

I read an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about Champagne, and it touched a bit on the history. The drink is specific to a region in France; for this reason, Champagne from other areas are not considered “true” Champagne. In essence it is just a sparkling, carbonated wine.

Dom Perignon, a Monk, is said to have invented the drink in the mid 17th Century. In the beginning the drink was red, but today champagne is traditionally white.

A Year in Review Last year I started a tradition by selecting some newsworthy events I thought would be historical. 2011 has certainly been a colorful year; continuing the tradition, here are some events I believe have made history in 2011.

January 2011- Present- The Arab Spring- Beginning in Tunisia, and spreading through the region via social media, people in the Middle East began rebelling against oppressive dictators and protesting for change. Some important dates:
Jan. 14- Ben Ali flees Tunesia
Jan. 23- Protests in Yemen
Jan. 25- Mass protests against Mubarik begin in Egypt
Jan 28- Protestors gather and demand change in Jordan
Feb. 11- Mubarik resigns
Feb. 16- Protest erupt in Libya
Feb. 25- “Day of Rage” in which many protest across the region
March 19- Syrians begin to protest
Oct. 20- Gaddafi killed

March 11, 2011- The Japanese earthquake- At roughly 2:46 p.m. a terrible earthquake struck the northern part of Japan. Aftershock caused a deadly tsunami, destroying parts of the country, and killing thousands. The event left chaos and destruction in its wake, but unlike many naturally disasters the people of Japan banded together, helping those affected rebuild their lives.

April 29, 2011- The Royal Wedding- Women state side celebrated the union of Prince William and Kate Middleton, getting up as early as 2 a.m. to watch the ceremony live. Personally, I slept and watched reruns.

Mat 1, 2011- Osama Bin Laden is killed by U.S. military personnel, almost ten years after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

October 5, 2011- Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple, dies from cancer. Since his death, the man has been controversial, but regardless his ideas and marketing strategies have changed the face of technology.

October 20, 2011- Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi is killed. The brutal footage of his death was leaked online.

December 19, 2011- Kim Jung Il, dictator of North Korea dies.

December 2011- The End of the Iraq War. Troops are in the process of being withdrawn from the country, ending a way started ten years ago.

It is amazing to think it is the end of another year. 2011 has held many personal ups and downs for me, but overall I think I can look back and think fondly on the year. I do know 2012 holds promise of greatness, and promise of my history reported.

Thank you all for reading, and wishing you a Happy New Year!

Winter Solstice

Synchronization: in history, a term used to describe when religious practices are recycled in newer religions, making adoption of the newer religion easier to adopt.

You are probably wondering why I begin my blog with a vocabulary lesson, especially considering my track record with spelling (yes, I am fully aware). But keep this idea in the back of your mind as you read on; I’ll come back it at the end.

Solstice comes from two Latin words: sol (sun) and sistere (to stand), meaning the sun has reached the northernmost ecliptic, and appears to stand still.

For centuries, and across cultures, the winter solstice has been celebrated. In my Medieval England class I learned a bit about the winter solstice, and how Christianity adopted the holiday. But I was curious about the history of the festival.

The winter solstice is rooted in many ancient religions. Almost every one of them celebrated this important day as a seasonal milestone. Because this is the shortest day of the year, many saw this day as a day of fertility; the days only do get longer after this pint. Another way to think about the festival is that if the sun has been diminishing, it would make sense to appease the Gods so they will bring the sunlight back.

In Scandonavia, the festival was called Yule. The Druids began the tradition of the Yule log; it was lit to banish evil spirits, defeat darkness and bring good luck for the coming year. The logs would be lit for twelve days, before another ceremony was held to extinguish the fire. Sprigs of holly and ivy were brought into the home to celebrate the solstice. Both plants are evergreens, so they signify the eternal nature of the sun.

The Chinese people gave this holiday a great importance, saying it was as important as the Spring Festival. During the Zhou Dynasty it was known as the New Year. During the Tang and Song Dynasties it was on the winter solstice that heaven and ancestor worship was performed.

In the Persian and Egyptian cultures the start of the solar year was marked to celebrate the victory of light over darkness; thus it would make sense to celebrate during this time of year when the sun once again come to prominence. The Persians adopted their festival of Daygan from the Babylonians. The celebration, called Shab-e yalda, included feasts, fires being burnt all night and a temporary subversion of order where masters and servants would switch roles. This would allow chaos to reign for one day before order was restored and succeed at the end of the festival.

The ancient Romans celebrated Saturnalia, which was one of the most important celebrations on their calendar. While it was originally a one-day celebration, it grew to last from three to seven days. People celebrated with drinking gift-giving, bonfires, candles and role reversals for slaves and masters; yes, this practice was adopted from the Persian practice.

Also important to Persian celebration of the winter solstice was Mithra, the Sun God. The winter solstice was his birthday.

So now back to my vocabulary lesson at the beginning of this blog. The similarities in how different cultures celebrated the winter solstice would suggest that cultures took traditions and repurposed them for their own holidays.

Now, winter solstice falls pretty close to Christmas doesn’t it? Think this is a coincidence?

It is not.

Around the time that Christianity began to spread, Mithraism (the worship of Mithra) has spread from Persia into the west. The religion was popular among the Roman army, and some scholars would even argue that Mithraism was a rival religion to Christianity. Around 4 C.E. miscalculations in leap years etc placed the birthday of Mithra at December 25.

Christians took a pagan holiday, already in practice, and repurposed it to make it easier for people to practice Christianity. Prior to 4 C.E. Christ’s birth was celebrated around January 6; the popularity of Mithra made the church rethink the holiday, and change the date to December 25.

Accepting a new religion is much easier when the holiday adopts old traditions. This is exactly what the Christian Church did with Christmas. If you truly read the Bible, you’ll see that it was actually summer when the birth story takes place, not winter.

Tonight is a snowy night in Colorado, perfect for ushering in the winter solstice. I hope everyone has a bright holiday season, regardless of the holiday you celebrate, or the traditions you keep. And remember, as always, Happy History!