Vila Wolf's Dyslexic Folklorist Ranting

Mary Fields, the first African-American woman employed as a mail carrier in the United States, 1895

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Head made of walrus ivory

Alaska, United States. Old Bering Sea culture. 2nd to 4th century AD

The Met

Walrus Ivory Harpoon Head

Old Bering Sea culture, St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, 2nd–3rd century AD

H. 1 x W. 3 7/8 in. (2.5 x 9.8 cm)

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ancient Cliff Dwellings

Cliff dwellings have existed in many different parts of the world. In many cases, basic homes could be made simply by utilizing the existing walls and roofs of caves. Rock could be tunneled into rather than having to be carved out in great quantities for use as building materials.

The cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde (picture 1) are part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site and are considered among the best preserved and most important sites of their kind in North America. They were inhabited by Ancestral Pueblo peoples, built between 1190 and 1300 CE. The structures and villages range from a 200 chamber Cliff Palace to single room storage spaces.

The origins of China’s Guyaju cave dwellings (picture 6) are shrouded in mystery, as there are no records of the people who created them. However, they are thought to be over 1,000 years old and may have been the work of the Xiyi people, of whom little is known. The dwellings are the biggest ruins of their kind ever discovered in China and feature 170 caves with more than 350 chambers. Relics such as stone bedding, air vents and rainwater collection devices have been found, as well as caves that housed horses.

July 13, 1863: The New York City draft riots begin.

The United States employed a national conscription system for the first time during the American Civil War via the Enrollment Act of 1863, which established a quota of troops from each congressional district. Commutation was possible - if a draftee could afford to pay $300. Already relations between the diverse groups populating New York City at the time were tense because of job competition, but particularly between poor white laborers and black workers. Now there was the fact that the affluent could pay their way out of the army, and the fact that many fresh, friendless immigrants had been wrangled by political machines into becoming citizens and voting without realizing that this made them eligible to be drafted (whereas black non-citizens were not). Anger over the draft and problems surrounding it and the war as a whole erupted in a four-day riot that ended with over a hundred dead.

Many of the rioters were Irish workers who competed with black workers for the same low wage jobs and, with the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation in early 1863, feared further competition as freed slaves headed north, searching for work. Because of these deep-rooted concerns, anger initially directed at the government and conscription soon found a new target/scapegoat: the city’s free black population. On the first day of rioting, the Colored Orphan Asylum was looted and then burned to the ground; black homes and businesses were destroyed, along with buildings affiliated with Republicans and abolitionists. Interracial couples were also attacked, and over a hundred people were killed by furious mobs - one black man was attacked by several hundred people at once, then strung up high and set on fire. At this time, few soldiers were stationed in New York, having been sent south to repel invading Confederate forces. State militias were eventually called in to quell the violence, and it was quelled, but property damage reached several million dollars, and African-Americans fled the city or relocated out of their mixed race neighborhoods. 

James Van Der Zee’s photographic chronicle of the Harlem Renaissance and African-American life in Harlem during the 1920s/30s (source)

June 24, 1948: The Berlin blockade begins.

The Berlin blockade was an early crisis of the Cold War that began when the Soviet Union, one of the four nations responsible for administering Germany in the years following World War II, severed communications and halted traffic in and out of the German capital of Berlin. The imposition of this blockade followed several key events that heightened tensions between the Soviet Union and the western Allies — in 1947, the British and American occupation zones united to form the Bizone, intended to strengthen economic development; in April of 1948, the United States issued the Marshall Plan, which was rejected by the Soviet Union and, under Soviet pressure, by its satellite states; in early June, the U.S., Great Britain, and France initiated currency reform in their zones and introduced a common currency throughout western Germany, while the Soviet Union introduced its own in its zone.

While Berlin was entirely within the eastern zone, the city itself was also divided into different zones of control between the western Allies and the Soviet Union; throughout the Cold War it remained a focal point of conflict, for, as Vyacheslav Molotov noted, “what happens to Berlin, happens to Germany; what happens to Germany, happens to Europe”. 

On June 24, the Soviet Union launched the Berlin blockade by cutting off rail and road transportations between Berlin and the Allied zones. Food supplies were also cut off to the non-Soviet zones of Berlin, which contained a total population of approximately 2.5 million people. Shortly afterward, a joint British-American effort to airlift supplies into Berlin began, countering the Soviet blockade for eleven months until it was finally lifted in May of 1949, although the airlift did not officially end until September. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent airlifting approximately 2.3 million tons of necessary supplies (coal made up a majority of the tonnage) to the people of Berlin over that period of fifteen months. 

“The Witch’s House” in its original location on Washington Boulevard in Culver City, 1920. Built as an office building for the Willat Studio, the structure was moved to Beverly Hills in the 1930’s. It is now a private residence.

Abraham Lincoln is well known for his actions as President, but he was active in politics long before then.

In 1847, he protested President Polk’s handling of the Mexican-American from the House of Representatives. Before the war had been declared, Americans and Mexicans had clashed in contested territory north of the Rio Grande. Polk stated that blood had been spilled on American soil, and therefore, war was required. Lincoln issued the “Spot Resolutions”, demanding to know on what spot American blood was spilled to prove whose soil it had been spilled on. 

Sounds a bit petty, but due to the contested nature of the territory, this was a pretty legit question, and as Polk was using it as a main reason for war to grab that territory…well, you get the picture.

Pretty much no one cared at the time, besides Democrats who mocked him and fellow Whigs who told him to back off the issue. You see it a lot in the history books now that he’s one of our more revered presidents. 

The Ancient Ones:  Oldest Living Organisms on Earth

The trees of the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, in the White Mountains near Bishop, California, are the oldest living recorded organisms on Earth. Many of the trees are over 2,000 years old, with the “Methuselah” tree dated at more than 4,773 years old. It was previously thought that this was the oldest tree in the world, but was superceded by the discovery of another bristlecone pine in the same area with an age of 5,063 years, giving it a germination date of 3051 BC.

These trees were young and growing at the time stone axes were being used in Europe, the Great Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) was being built, and cuneiform clay tablets were being used in northern Syria.

source 1, 2, 3

Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. 

5-cent US postal currency, by United States Postal Service, 1862

Five-cent US Postal Currency, first issue, featuring Thomas Jefferson. Gold, silver and copper coins were horded at the start of the Civil War and postages stamps became a popular form of currency; however the adhesive back was a serious impediment. On July 17, 1862, Congress authorized printing of Postal Currency notes in the denominations of 5, 10, 25 and 50 cents. These notes could be redeemed for postage stamps or for a US bank note in the amount of five dollars or more. The Postal Currency was succeeded by Fractional Currency in 1863.

Red Cloud’s War was an armed conflict between the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Northern Arapaho and the United States in Wyoming and Montana territories from 1866 to 1868.

The war was fought over control of the Powder River Country in north-central Wyoming. In 1863, European Americans had blazed the Bozeman Trail through the heart of the traditional territory of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota. It was the shortest and easiest route from Fort Laramie and the Oregon Trail to the Montana gold fields. From 1864 to 1866, the trail was traversed by about 3,500 miners, emigrant settlers and others. The emigrants competed with the Indians for the diminishing resources near the trail.

The United States named the war after Red Cloud, a prominent Oglala Lakota chief who led his followers in opposition to the presence of the U.S. military in the area. He was allied with the Cheyenne and Arapaho. With peace achieved under the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868, the Indians were victorious. They gained legal control of the Powder River country, although their victory would only endure for 8 years until the Great Sioux War of 1876.

Red Cloud’s War consisted mostly of constant small-scale Indian raids and attacks on the soldiers and civilians at the three forts in the Powder River country, wearing down those garrisons. The largest action of the war, the Fetterman Fight, was the worst military defeat suffered by the U.S. on the Great Plains until the Battle of the Little Bighorn ten years later.

December 17, 1944: Internment of Japanese-Americans Comes to an End.

On December 17th, 1944 the United States under the direction of U.S. Major General Henry C. Pratt issued Public Proclamation No. 21 stating that on January 2nd, 1945 all Japanese-Americans “evacuees” from the West Coast could return back to their homes.

The internment of Japanese-Americans began exactly ten weeks after the Empire of Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which gave authorization for the removal of any or all people from military areas. As a result the military defined the entire West Coast, home to a majority of Japanese-Americans as military area. Within a couple of months over 110,000 Japanese-Americans were relocated to internment camps built by the US military scattered all over the nation. For the next two years Japanese-Americans would live under dire living conditions and at times abuse from their military guards.

Throughout World War II ten people were found to be spies for the Empire of Japan, not one of them was of Japanese ancestry. Forty-four year would pass until Ronald Reagan and the United States made an official apology to the surviving Japanese-Americans who were relocated, and were given $20,000 tax-free.

US returns 4,000 archaeological relics to Mexico

September 6, 1901: Leon Czolgosz fatally shoots President William McKinley.

Less than half a year after being sworn into office for the second time, William McKinley travelled to Buffalo, New York, for the Pan-American World’s Fair Exposition. It was there, at the Temple of Music concert hall, that an anarchist named Leon Czolgosz shot the President twice with a concealed revolver as he greeted the public. Before he could shoot a third time, men standing in line nearby and McKinley’s security struck Czolgosz and began to beat him (McKinley, himself unable to stand, ordered the beating stopped). 

One of the bullets did not penetrate McKinley’s skin; instead, it fell out of his coat, and the President, upon seeing it, remarked “I believe that is a bullet.” For several days after the shooting, McKinley seemed to be making a recovery, but this was short-lived. Around a week later, the developing gangrene in his stomach began taking effect, and the President died on the morning of September 14. When Theodore Roosevelt arrived in Buffalo later that day, he was sworn in almost immediately at a makeshift inauguration site. 

Leon Czolgosz was sentenced unanimously to death in late September and executed in October. His last words were reportedly: “I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people – the good working people…I am not sorry for my crime”.

A 20th century artistic rendering of the July 11, 1804 duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton by J. Mund.

The Burr–Hamilton duel was a duel between two prominent American politicians, the former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and sitting Vice President Aaron Burr, on July 11, 1804. At Weehawken in New Jersey, Burr shot and fatally wounded Hamilton. Hamilton was carried to the home of William Bayard on the Manhattan shore, where he died at 2:00 p.m. the next day.

Many historians have considered the causes of the duel to be flimsy and have thus either characterized Hamilton as “suicidal”, Burr as “malicious and murderous,” or both.

Thomas Fleming offers the theory that Burr, in response to the slanderous attacks against his character published during the 1804 gubernatorial campaign, may have been attempting to recover his “honor” by challenging Hamilton, whom he considered the only “gentleman” among his detractors.

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