Life Before Earth Day and the Environmental Movement

Cleveland Cuyahoga River burning in 1969
Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River ‘burning’ in November 1952

In June 1969, Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River was so polluted with industrial waste runoff it literally caught fire yet again. America’s Potomac, Chicago, Delaware and Hudson rivers all stunk to high heaven with millions of gallons of industrial waste deposited in them every single day. Most cities dumped their sewage directly into nearby rivers, with little or no treatment. Boston and Baltimore harbors were noxious dead zones. The environmental movement changed all that.

Massive floating fish kills were a common sight in US and EU harbors.

Heavy choking smog from smokestacks and tailpipes was blocking the sun and sickening citizens in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City and London. Lake Erie’s oxygen content was so low it sustained precious little fish. Leaded paints and auto exhausts were at high enough levels they could cause birth defects. Industrial cities like St. Louis and Newark, with scores of belching smoke stacks, stank to the point of causing nausea and skin rashes in children.

This is not some dystopian, future landscape here. Baby boomers remember it was all very real.  Whether in the air, water or earth, we could not escape the fact we were slowly destroying the very countries we lived in. By 1970, there were few pollution deniers left [including in the U.S. Congress], as the evidence was visible, widespread and undeniable world-wide.

Ecology had become a legitimate science and a topic of daily dinner table discussions.

The burgeoning environmental movement reminded people that our air, water and land resources were finite. In the late1960s, the northeast industrial states of the U.S. were more worried about losing industries, tax dollars and union jobs than about preventing widespread pollution. It was clear the U.S. needed a Federal environmental policy to protect its population.

Republican President Richard Nixon was at first reluctant to create a federal agency that set and enforced environmental laws. He had bigger fish to fry at the time, like the ongoing War in Vietnam. But by 1970, the Vietnam War was no longer dominating headlines. Concerns about pollution became a new priority for the White House. With backlash coming from all directions, the message of outrage and concern from the American people was getting through to even Nixon.

The first Earth Day took place in April 1970 with support of both Republican and Democratic Senators.

In the end, Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) not because he himself shared those concerns, but the public and Congress obviously did. “It is literally now or never,” he said in his 1970 State of the Union address.  He signed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which began a federal role in environmental protection by creating a new agency – the U.S. EPA. It’s hard to imagine such overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress for environmental protection in today’s world of climate change denial, but it happened in 1970.  

There are countless ways the world has changed, thanks to the environmental movement.

The U.S. CLEAN AIR ACT of 1970 gave EPA the authority to regulate air pollutants like lead. Americans were dying every year from heart disease linked to lead poisoning and children were growing up with lower IQs. The levels of other air toxins like mercury, benzene, and arsenic have also been dramatically reduced.

The U.S. CLEAN WATER ACT of 1972 gave EPA the authority to set national regulations over municipal and industrial waste waters AND enforce them at the state level, while also providing the funds to do so.

The Pesticide Control ACT of 1972 gave EPA authority to regulate pesticides. Before it banned the use of DDT, the insecticide was the most popular agricultural pesticide in the US. People had little notion of its dangers.

The Resource Conservation & Recovery Act of 1976 required landfills to be lined and water leaching through them collected. Up through the 1960s, industries disposed of hazardous waste like ordinary trash— in unlined landfills or in open dumps on factory land, where runoff from rusting barrels contaminated city drinking waters.

The Acid Rain Program reduced emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide in the air, which were raising the acidity levels of our lakes and killing fish populations. The Asbestos Program provides resources on how to manage asbestos fibers used in fire proofing, which when inhaled causes a brutal form of lung cancer called asbestosis.

U.S. EPA Superfund Site Warning sign during the environmental movement
U.S. EPA Superfund Site Warning sign during the environmental movement

The U.S. Congress enacted the SUPERFUND ACT of 1980 to clean up our greatest mistakes and the legacy of hazardous waste sites like Love Canal, NY and Times Beach, MO recovering clean up costs from the original polluters. Superfund sites exist in almost every US state. One in six Americans lives near a cleaned up Superfund Site! The world followed suit and the European Environment Agency was formed by the European Union in 1994.

One might hope that in the decades since, the U.S. EPA and European EEA have done their job, pollution is completely under control, America and the world in general is clean and safe again. Time to deregulate the states and trust their industries? It will save corporations billions on pollution control measures and create more well-paying jobs. Right?  Corporations certainly give millions in campaign donations to like-minded politicians.

Historians often say that human beings in general do not learn from their mistakes, and are therefore doomed to repeat them. One simply has to look at our present day and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or the Global Climate Change to realize we still have a long way to go. Government deregulation of polluting corporations, with profits placed above people, is a slippery slope that America and the world has already fallen down once before. To quote former U.S. President Ronald Reagan: “Trust but verify.”

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.
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10 Examples of Being on the Wrong Side of History

Depiction of a Flat Earth - wrong side of history example
Depiction of a Flat Earth – classic wrong side of history example

Here are 10 cases of Ideas or Theories that were once widely believed to be the truth. But today, are most definitely on the Wrong Side of History – some are moral, some technological, and some philosophical. Through today’s modern lens, some of these will appear ridiculous or even repugnant. Yet at the time, in their day, they were deemed FACT and perfectly correct and acceptable. Some of them may even give you a rather unsettling sense of déjà vu.

1) Women’s Suffrage

To quote some prominent male politicians at the turn of 1900’s: “Women will only vote as their husbands tell them too. Giving the vote to radical women will risk the common good and offers absolutely no benefit! More women voting than men will place the Government under petticoat rule.” These arguments sound crazy when heard today, but the Women’s Suffrage movement in the United States lasted 71 long years, from the New York Seneca Convention in 1848, all the way to the passage of the U.S. Constitution’s 19th Amendment in 1919 – finally giving women the right to vote same as men. Names like Elizabeth Stanton, Lucrecia Mott, and Susan B. Anthony are legendary suffragettes. All that was only 100 years ago, by the way.

2) Slavery

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney ruled in 1858 that American slaves were “so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his own benefit.” The American slaves were emancipated by President Abraham Lincoln during the U.S. Civil War in 1862. They were later freed by the U.S. Constitution’s 13th Amendment; given citizenship in the 14th; and the right to vote in the 15th Amendment. Nevertheless, racial discrimination and rampant segregation continued for another hundred years. This is, until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And not just in the U.S. South, with its so-called Jim Crow Laws, but in fact discrimination and segregation around the entire world.

3) Evolution

Here’s a quote by William Jennings Bryan from the famous Scopes “Monkey” trial of 1925. ‘Evolution is only a fanciful theory, that cannot be proven by science.’ It was once against the law for teachers to talk about evolution in the classroom. Naturalist Charles Darwin published his famous book On the Origin of Species in 1859. We have centuries of carbon-dated fossil remains as evidence of multiple dinosaur species and Neanderthals. Yet despite those facts, we still have some ‘Creationists’ promoting a pro-Genesis / anti-Science stance to this day, demanding equal time in public school curriculums and history books. Distrust of new scientific discoveries is not uncommon throughout our history. One need only look at astronomy – the church imprisoning Galileo for stating the Earth revolved around the sun, or medicine and today’s anti-mask/anti-vaccine movement.

4) Communism

Following the publication of his famous manifesto, German Karl Marx proclaimed in 1848, “Religion is the opium of the masses. Communism may be summed up in a single sentence: Abolition of private property.” Everything was eventually owned and planned by the totalitarian Communist Party. Religion and human rights were often brutally suppressed. Throughout recent history, whether lead by Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, Nikita Khrushchev, or Mikhail Gorbachev, the failure and ultimate collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the once mighty Soviet Union (USSR) in 1991 proves otherwise. Enough said on the past. Today’s modern Communist nations, like China, Cuba and Vietnam, are more free market capitalists than Marxist. And they are slowly becoming more ‘democratic’ with each passing decade and new generation of young people.

5) Internal combustion engine

“Why you’re crazy if you think that fool contraption will ever displace a good horse.” That was a common refrain heard in the late 1800’s when German Karl Benz invented the new motor wagon. Horseless buggies were indeed a curious, noisy, smelly and expensive novelty. That is until American Henry Ford invented the automotive assembly line and the cheap, ubiquitous Model T car in 1913. He was able to mass produce cars that the average family could now afford, not just the wealthy. Coal steam engines in trains, ships, factories and power plants slowly faded away to diesel engines. Drugstores first began selling gasoline in cans, then stand alone gas stations appeared like mushrooms on the landscape, and the rest, as they say, is history. Think electric vehicles are the future? ‘Why you’re crazy if you think that fool contraption will ever replace a good …’

6) Man-powered flight

‘If God had meant man to fly, he’d have given him wings.’ That unattributed quote was often repeated in the late 1800’s when man first seriously attempted man-powered flight. But it did not originate from the time of the Wright Brothers and Kitty Hawk. It came rather as the challenge that the brilliant inventor and artist Leonardo de Vinci received from his benefactors during the Italian Renaissance in 1485. Leonardo went on to design numerous successful gliders and unsuccessful flying machines. His sketches and models inspired two brothers who owned a bicycle shop in Ohio to build an airplane in 1903 and fly it on a beach in North Carolina. It’s since inspired others famous aviators, from Amelia Earhart and Howard Hughes to Sir Richard Branson and Elon Musk. Try to imagine a world today without frequent and inexpensive global airline travel.

7) Flat Earth

The idea of a spherical planet goes back as far as the Greek philosopher Aristotle. This was long before the Nordic Vikings and Cristobal Columbus sailed the Earth’s oceans to prove it true. Yet despite thousands of images from the Apollo Moon Missions to the current International Space Station, we still have the Flat Earth Society, started in 1956 by Samuel Shelton, a member of the British Royal Geographical Society. Seemingly rational people believe in such outlandish conspiracy theories for a variety of reasons, usually to explain random events with some sinister plot, or for a sense of social belonging to a like-minded group of people who think they alone know the secret truth. Just think of JFK’s assassination claims, faked Apollo moon landings, Roswell, NM and Area 51, or COVID being engineered in China. Apparently for some conspiracy theorists, even seeing is not believing.

8) Rock and Roll

Posters and pastors in the 1950’s loudly proclaimed: “Rock and Roll is the Devil’s music! Don’t Buy Negro Records. That savage music is undermining the morals of today’s youth.’ That last part sound familiar perhaps to current generations? The images of young, integrated black & white audiences dancing together at concerts shocked social conservatives of the 1950’s Rock-n-Roll was invented by the likes of legendary Black American musicians like Chuck Berry and Fats Domino. This of course led to Elvis Presley’s swiveling hips, John Lennon’s Jesus quote, Woodstock‘s stoned hippies, Acid Rock’s big hair bands, Hip-Hop’s poetry to a beat, and on and on. Today, Baby Boomer grandparents who grew up listening to the Beatles and Rolling Stones, now say to their grandkids, “What the heck is that music you’re listening too? Why back in the day we had …”

9) Immigrants

Here is a blunt and stark quote from the past: ‘Those immigrants are dangerous criminals, they’re barbaric pagans, send them all back where they came from!’ Heard that from politicians recently? Try the 1850’s when it was directed at the Irish immigrants coming to America (not Muslims or Asians or Latinos). After the Irish wave came New York’s Ellis Island and the Italians, Swedes, Germans, Poles, Greeks, Turks and many more. We are a global planet with legal boundaries made by humans, not God. Boundaries can and often do shift with each war and generation. Every country has benefited in one way or another from waves of immigration, going as far back as Italian Marco Polo and China in 1295. Yet the ‘Us vs Them‘ knee-jerk mentality sadly continues to this day, even from those whose own great-grandparents were once struggling immigrants themselves. How quickly we forget.

10) Climate Change

The effects on our global climate from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil or natural gas have been known since the 1960’s. It was known that the building up of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, from doing so were slowly warming our planet. Yet decades of petroleum industry and lobbied political propaganda convinced the public it was all fake. All those intellectual, elite scientists were dead wrong. There was no harm at all, so keep buying gas. Today we know different. Our atmosphere and oceans have warmed, melting glaciers, creating sea level rise, causing devastating droughts, brutal winter storms, and catastrophic flooding. Even worse, because of a lack of political will today, we may have reached the point of no return – cursing our future grandchildren to a preventable climate crisis of our own making.

* * *

So how do we determine if an idea or concept in question Today will be on the Wrong Side of History tomorrow? Well, get out your crystal ball and tarot cards, for we often cannot. Social or moral issues, for example, are not based on science. ‘Only time will tell,’ as the old saying goes. Does it mean that the history that survived the test of time was “Right” in the end? Not necessarily. Slavery and even genocide, were legally justified in one form or another by many civilizations for thousands of years, up to the Nazi Holocaust. Remember, he who wins the war, gets to right (or rewrite) the history.

Plus, to state another sad truth – if you repeat a lie often enough, people will eventually believe it. Our current, instant internet culture has only magnified that fact. Just like with wars, the winner isn’t always Right, just stronger in the end … at least for the time being. As a modern, rational society, we like to think that logic, science, and morality will win out in the end, don’t we? That in the long run, absurd or immoral, or even EVIL ideas may have their days in the sun; but then like roaches or weeds, they are eventually removed. However, they never quite Die, do they?

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS
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The Great Smog of London Killed Thousands

Noon during Great London Smog of 1952
Noon during Great London Smog of 1952

Most everyone knows of the heavy smog that routinely hangs over China’s capital, Beijing. But few remember a far deadlier version that attacked London in 1952.  That’s right, London.  A FIVE DAY long blanket of smog so thick it brought road, air and river traffic to a complete halt and was so polluted it left thousands dead!  The Great Smog remains the deadliest environmental disaster in recorded history.  And ironically, the people it killed were partly to blame.

Since the 1800’s, London was no stranger to pollution.  Britain has long been affected by its famous pea-soup fogs, but these became much worse with the dawn of the Industrial Revolution of the mid 19th century. Hundreds of London area factories belched noxious smoke into the air, much of which was poisonous. The River Thames valley is flat and low-lying, making it hard to disperse.

Deadly smog episodes occurred in London as early as December 1813 (from house chimneys), then again in January 1880 (from houses and factories), and November 1948 (houses and factories and cars). The London death rate would increase after each incident.  The worst affected area was usually the East End, where most of the factories and lower-class houses sat. A small scale version had occurred just 4 years earlier Pennsylvania in the U.S., the so-called Donora Death Fog. No one thought such thing could ever happen in London though.

Back in the 1950’s, industrial smog had become a part of London daily life. As dawn broke on Friday, December 5th, the London sky was clear blue and winds were light. The sky was so clear in fact, the autumn ground cooled. When the moist air contacted the cool ground, a layer of fog formed.

Now an early-winter cold snap had been gripping London for weeks. As folks awoke that Friday morning, Londoners did what they have for centuries, they stoked their furnaces and fireplaces with coal to take away the chill. Smoke billowed from the chimneys of every London abode, and we’re talking thousands of chimneys.

Then a rare atmospheric inversion began trapping the smoke over London.

A 30 mile wide high-pressure system had stalled over southern England.  This pushed cold air downwards, creating an ‘inversion.’ So when smoke belched out of a thousand chimneys and stacks, it was trapped over London with no place to go.

During the morning of 5 December, the fog was not especially thick. But as the day progressed, a veil of smog began to enshroud Parliament’s Big Ben, St. Pauls Cathedral, and Tower Bridge.  Londoners had endured countless smogs, so no one had any idea a deadly catastrophe was brewing in the air above them.

This smog’s foul-smelling, yellow-brown appearance was totally different than the clean white fog of the English coast. With not even a wisp of a breeze, there was no wind to disperse the soot-laden air. Nonetheless, Londoners went about their business, going to work and school, ignoring it as much as possible. By the end of the day however, it became impossible to ignore.

Witnesses recall the blackness of this particular smog. After a few hours, drivers couldn’t see the curb from behind the wheel of their cars.  They turned on their headlights in mid-day to inch ahead in the gloom. Boat traffic on the River Thames slowed to a halt. Flights in and out of Heathrow Airport were grounded. Conductors walked in front of red double-decker buses holding lanterns to guide drivers down city streets. The smog had crippled all transportation, except for the London Underground. 

“It swirled like it was alive,” one witness said. “It’s like you were blind,” said another. 

Everyone in London would stumble along blind for the next four days.  The smoke blocked out the sun and the air turned colder. Londoners heaped even more coal on their fires, making even more smoke out their chimneys.  Evening concerts and motion picture shows had to be cancelled.  Streets were littered with abandoned cars as drivers were forced to walk home.  

The smog had a nauseating rotten egg smell.  Wheezing pedestrians with kerchiefs over their mouth, groped their way home, trying not to slip on the greasy black ooze beginning to coat streets and sidewalks. By the time they returned home, their faces were blackened by the air, resembling Welsh coal miners.

The following day, Saturday, December 6, the winter sun was too low in the sky to burn the fog away. That day and for the next two, the smog continued to thicken. Authorities told parents to keep children home from school. Looting and burglaries increased as emboldened criminals easily vanished into the gloom.  Weekend soccer games were cancelled, a rare occurrence indeed. In most parts of London, it was impossible for pedestrians to find their way at night.

In case you’re wondering, with every opened door, the smog seeped inside buildings as well. A greasy grime covered exposed surfaces, like floors, windows and door knobs.  Librarians found smog lurking among the bookshelves. Movie theaters closed as the yellow haze made it impossible to see the screen, not to mention the coughing patrons made it hard to hear the sound.

On the second day, the deaths began as 500 people died in London from the smog. 

Some of the smog’s sulfur mixed with water in the air, turning into sulfuric acid vapor, caused severe breathing problems, plus skin and eye irritation.  When the ambulances stopped running, thousands of gasping and gagging Londoners stumbled through the smog to try and find the overwhelmed city’s hospitals.  

Lying on hospital beds and gurneys, the lips of the dying were turning blue. Cigarette smoking and long term exposure to pollution had already weakened many Londoner’s lungs. Particulates and acids in the killer smog finished the job by triggering massive pulmonary inflammation.  In essence, the dead suffocated in their own London air.

By Sunday, December 7th, visibility fell to one foot.  It was so dark and thick you could no longer see your feet outside. Services at St. Pauls Cathedral were cancelled as the dealt toll rose to over 1,000 souls. It wasn’t until undertakers began to run out of coffins, that the deadly impact of “The Great Smog” was finally realized by city officials.

London Bobby during the Great London Smog
London Bobby during the Great London Smog

The effects weren’t limited to people either.  Birds lost in the smog crashed into buildings. Dogs were found dead in the gutters.  Cattle died, their lungs black with soot, and were discarded rather than slaughtered.  Breeders  tried to fashion improvised gas masks by soaking grain sacks in whiskey and placing them over the cows’ heads.

Some 900 more died from the smog on Tuesday, December 9th.

The Great Smog was exceptionally lethal for the elderly, younger children and anyone with asthma or respiratory problems. Heavy smokers were especially vulnerable. The link to lung cancer was not yet known, so cigarette smoking was still widespread in the 1950’s.

Then on Tuesday night, a brisk wind finally swept in unexpectedly. The killer fog vanished off into the North Sea as quickly as it had arrived.  Thousands of Londoners were dead, and thousands more were about to die. Those who survived no longer spoke of London’s romantic pea-soup fog, where couples could sneak away for a hidden rendezvous.

Initial reports estimated that 4,000 more died in the immediate aftermath of the smog. But the detrimental effects lingered, and death rates remained well above normal into 1953. Many experts now estimate the Great Smog claimed as many as 12,000 lives.  Many suffered from long term breathing problems. Deaths from bronchitis and pneumonia increased more than seven-fold.

The British government was slow to act during the Great Smog. Heavy fog was, after all, a common occurrence in London, so there was no immediate sense of urgency. Following a government investigation, however, Parliament passed the Clean Air Act of 1956, which restricted burning coal in urban areas. Homeowners received grants to convert to cleaner oil heat furnaces. Factory operators had to convert to more smokeless fuels.

The transition took years however, and deadly fogs continued to occur, 750 died a decade later in 1962, for example. Thankfully, this kind of smog has become a thing of the past in London thanks to pollution legislation. While the killer fog is not very well remembered by current generations, it did change the way many nations around the world looked at their own air pollution. 

But sadly, not everywhere, as similar conditions are now well established in modern China. Beijing’s smog is infamous and legendary, and nearly derailed their 2008 Summer Olympic Games. With another atmospheric inversion, another death smog could occur there any day.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

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‘Count’ Cagliostro, Europe’s Charlatan Extraordinaire

Count Alessandro Cagliostro
Count Alessandro Cagliostro

Most everyone has heard of Europe’s’ legendary lover Casanova, but how many of you have heard of his equally infamous counterpart, Cagliostro? Though not a famed womanizer, Cagliostro was nonetheless Casanova’s equal when it came to sheer audacity. ‘Count’ Alessandro di Cagliostro was equal parts alchemist, freemason, criminal, and con-man. He’s perhaps best known for his part in Marie Antoinette’s infamous “Diamond Necklace Affair” that helped spark the French Revolution. He was not in fact a Count at all, nor was his name even Cagliostro.

He was born Giuseppe Balsamo, a poor Sicilian, in 1743 Palermo. When his father died and his mother couldn’t support him (though she always claimed royal ancestry), he was sent to live with an uncle. A scamp of a kid, he soon ran away, was brought back, and ran away again. Fed up with the boy, his uncle shipped him off to a Benedictine monastery, the Brothers Hospitallers of Saint John of God, as a novice.  This order devoted itself to medicine and service. Young Giuseppe soon discovered he possessed a talent for chemistry and pharmacology. Always looking out for himself, he quickly found a way this could benefit him personally. So when he began selling the monastery’s medicines in the street, the abbot promptly expelled him. This was fine with young Giuseppe as monastic life obviously didn’t suit his felonious nature.

He joined a band of gypsy vagabonds, committing acts of petty larceny across Sicily.

Frequently caught in the act, it was only thanks to his uncle that he wasn’t sent to prison. At 17, he began to feign interest in alchemy and the occult when a goldsmith named Vincenzo Marano arrived in Palermo. Marano had met with many alchemists who claimed to transmute metals, but young Giuseppe somehow convinced him that he alone had the true power, having stolen it from a demon while at the monastery. Giuseppe asked for 60 ounces of gold (a very large sum at that time) to conduct his magical ceremonies. He would then show Marano the location of his secret laboratory and create for him immeasurable wealth! At midnight, Marano was led to an empty field where the only thing awaiting him were gypsy thugs. Balsamo had the gold, but also had to leave Sicily to avoid arrest.

He abandoned his name and began to focus on the ‘talents’ that had served him well as a con-artist. Balsamo studied art, not for its beauty, but its technique, helping him build a skill for forgery. He traveled throughout the Mediterranean, soaking up the occult and alchemy wherever he found it. And with this knowledge, he began swindling people as a learned mystic. He professed to have traveled as far as Persia and even India, both lies, to learn the arcane arts.

In the meantime, he reinvented himself, choosing the much grander name of Count Alessandro di Cagliostro. He latched onto his mother’s belief and claimed to have been of noble birth, the son of the Prince of the Anatolian Kingdom of Trebizond! He was orphaned at an early age and raised by the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, eventually being initiated into that Sovereign Military Order, with whom he deeply studied, what else, alchemy.

In 1768, at the age of 25, Cagliostro returned to Italy, first to Naples, where he and an associate opened a casino to cheat wealthy foreigners. Authorities quickly discovered their ploy and forced the men to leave or face incarceration. He went to Rome next, where he established himself as physician, tapping into his monastic medical knowledge. He eventually rose to become secretary to Cardinal Virgilio Orsini.

While in Rome, he met a woman of his own pretenses, one Lorenza Feliciani, who preferred to be called ‘Serafina.’

As it turned out, she also had a gift for scamming people. The pair married (whether for love or business is unknown) and became trusted partners in dozens of cons. The couple stayed in Rome until members of the Italian Inquisition began to suspect Cagliostro of heresy.  The pair were forced to leave rather quickly, so he took his new bride back to Palermo, where Marano quickly recognized the ‘Count’ and had him arrested. He was saved from prison by a yet another duped nobleman and amateur alchemist. Cagliostro promptly swindled him out of 100,000 crowns as well and the unscrupulous pair fled to England.

There Cagliostro claimed to have met the immortal Count Saint-Germain who in 1770 initiated him into the ancient rites of Egyptian Freemasonry. The sect was supposedly based on the deities Isis and Osiris and featured extensive rebirth/reincarnation imagery.  He adopted as his sign the circular symbol of Ouroboros, the snake that bites its own tail. What does a conman do with such a claim? Why travel Europe of course, collecting money from wealthy aristocrats to start Egyptian Rite Freemason lodges of their own, both men and women in separate lodges.  He did so in Holland, Germany and even Russia.

The couple went to Paris in 1772, where Cagliostro opened lodges, sold magic elixirs and held séances with the dead. Cagliostro was welcomed with open arms by the gullible French nobility who embraced his Egyptian Rite. He was even recommended to US Ambassador Benjamin Franklin as a personal physician. Old Ben however was too shrewd enough not to buy into it though. King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette however became very interested and invited the Count to Versailles to hold magic suppers, becoming a regular fixture at court.

Life for the pair could not seem to get much better! However that shine was about to end in 1785.

Cagliostro became peripherally tied to an affair in which a female con artist, the Comtesse de la Motte convinced a wealthy cardinal to buy an expensive diamond necklace on behalf of Marie Antoinette to win the Queen’s favor.  The con artist actually sold the necklace and pocketed the profit. The Cardinal was accused of defrauding the royal jewelers and sent to prison by the King. Though Marie Antoinette was innocent, the whole incident portrayed her as frivolous Austrian and soured the French public against her. Cagliostro was arrested as an accomplice and imprisoned in the dreaded Bastille for 9 months. Following a lengthy trial, he was eventually acquitted, but banished from France.

Though released, his troubles were far from over. The pair travelled back to London where a muckraker Theveneau de Morande publicly accused him of being Giuseppe Balsamo, airing all his past crimes and scams to the newspapers of the day. Cagliostro refuted the claim and even earned a retraction, but the damage to his reputation was done.  He was no longer welcomed whereever he went.

Count Cagliostro AKA Giuseppe Balsamo
Count Cagliostro AKA Giuseppe Balsamo

Cagliostro and Lorenza returned to Rome in 1789, taking up their usual practice of elixirs and séances. All went well until he attempted to begin a Masonic Lodge in Rome. He met two gentlemen who asked to be initiated into the ancient Egyptian Rite. Cagliostro was more than happy to do so, for a price.  However, they proved to be spies of the Roman Inquisition. This time, none other than his own beautiful wife betrayed him. She made a deal to testify against him, in return for her own freedom.

The Inquisition imprisoned Cagliostro in Rome’s Castle of Saint Angelo, accusing him of heresy, magic, and conjury.

After an 18 month trial, the Inquisition sentenced him to death by hanging. But his sentence was later reduced by a sympathetic Pope to life imprisonment. Serafina, meanwhile, was shuffled off to a convent! Cagliostro attempted a feeble escape, but was easily caught and overpowered. He was sent next to solitary confinement at the castle of San Leo near Montefeltro, one of the strongest in Europe.  He died in 1795 at the age of 52 of unrecorded causes, most likely disease or malnutrition.

His reputation lived on however. Cagliostro had made a great impression on German writer Johann von Goethe. Some argue that Cagliostro served as a model for Goethe’s character, Faust, in the play of the same name.  Others, however, point to the less well-intentioned devil Mephistopheles. Some musical historians have linked Cagliostro to the Mozart’s The Magic Flute’s wise mystic Sarastro, who triumphs over the Queen of the Night.

Most historians label him as a reckless, sometimes successful charlatan. However, many claim Count Cagliostro was the real deal. Among his defenders was Madame Helena Blavatsky, who popularized mysticism, séances and fortune-telling a hundred years later at the end of the 19th century. Others, such as the modern Theosophical Society, considered him a guru of occult magic.  Cagliostro posthumously achieved immortality in all kinds of ways, as a Japanese anime villain, and even a font.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.

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Billionaire Howard Hughes & the Spruce Goose Flying Boat

Tycoon Howard Hughes aboard the Spruce Goose
Tycoon Howard Hughes in the Spruce Goose cockpit, 1947

The Spruce Goose, the largest aircraft ever constructed was flown only one time!  After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 and US entry into World War II, the War Department commissioned the Hughes Aircraft Company to construct a huge “FLYING BOAT.” They needed an aircraft capable of carrying hundreds of troops across the Atlantic to England.  Transport ships were far too slow and vulnerable to Nazi U-boat torpedoes.

Hughes Aircraft was owned by none other than billionaire Howard Hughes, the Elon Musk of his day.  The tall and handsome, Hughes was a famous tycoon, real estate mogul, aviator and Hollywood film maker.  He dated many of the film starlets of the period, including Katherine Hepburn and Bette Davis.  Hughes owned, for a time, Trans World Airlines (TWA) and the famous RKO Pictures Movie Studio.  He purchased not one but FOUR Las Vegas casinos: the Desert Inn, Frontier, Sands and Silver Slipper.  In 1938, Hughes set the world record for an around the world flight in just 3 days, 19 hours.

Howard Hughes suffered from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and severe germaphobia, which worsened the older he got.

Because of wartime rations on aluminum & steel, Hughes decided to build his Hughes H-4 Hercules aircraft entirely out of wood. Although constructed of birch, the plane’s long wing span and whitish-gray color earned it the nickname the “Spruce Goose” from the press. It was a name Hughes personally hated.  It had a wingspan of 320 feet and was powered by no less than eight giant Pratt & Whitney propeller engines.  By contrast, the wingspan of a modern Boeing 747 is only 196 feet.

The Spruce Goose cost $23 million (a huge sum for its time). Hughes was a known perfectionist and it took so long to design & build that World War II was over by the time it was complete in 1946. The aircraft had many detractors, including Washington politicians of course, who demanded Hughes prove the damn plane was even airworthy.  In 1947, Hughes was called to testify before the Senate War Investigating Committee to explain WHY development had taken so long after costing so much.  He famously said:

“Now, I put the sweat of my life into this thing. I have my reputation all rolled up in it and I have stated several times that if it’s a failure, I’ll probably leave this country and never come back.”

Howard Hughes
The Spruce Goose Flying Boat
The Spruce Goose Flying Boat only flight, in Long Beach, California, 1947

So, under intense pressure, on 2 November 1947, a visibly strained and exhausted Hughes took the H-4 out himself onto Long Beach Harbor in California for an unannounced ‘taxi test.’ About three dozen invited guests, mechanics and members of the press were on board. Hundreds of onlookers had come to watch the massive aircraft taxi on the water.  The roar of its 8 propeller engines was impressive enough as it lumbered across the bay like a blue whale with wings.  The crowd was startled when, with Hughes himself at the controls, he actually lifted his wooden behemoth 70 feet above the water. He flew a little over one minute for about one mile at 135 mph.  Though short and brief, Hughes proved to skeptics, and the world alike, that the monster could actually fly.

Despite this success, the Spruce Goose never went into production.

The Hercules H-4 was never flown again. Its flight distance and lifting capacity were never tested by the military.  Its critics claimed the wooden framework was insufficient to support its cargo during long oceanic flights. Nevertheless, the eccentric Hughes refused to neglect what he saw as his greatest aviation achievement. Until his death in 1976, he kept the Spruce Goose hidden in a massive hanger with 300 employees who kept it ready for flight at any time, to the tune of $1 million per year.  In the 1980’s it was kept in Long Beach Harbor under a massive dome next to the ocean liner and now hotel, Queen Mary.

The Spruce Goose was carefully moved in 1993 and is today housed at the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon outside of Portland. Howard Hughes became increasingly eccentric and reclusive after 1950, investing in real estate rather than aviation. He retreated to his penthouses at places like his Desert Inn Casino in Las Vegas, never to be seen by the public again.  The OCD and germaphobe billionaire is said to have lived virtually naked, cutting his hair, beard and nails only once a year.  Sadly, this is the image many have of Hughes today, not the handsome and daring aviator he once was.

Addicted to codeine and other pain medications, Howard Hughes died of kidney failure and malnutrition (he was barely 100 pounds) in 1976 at age 71. He was likely comatose and passed in a Learjet on its way to Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas.  Hughes’s $2.5 billion estate was eventually divided up in 1983 among 22 of his cousins. His early life was presented in a 2004 movie The Aviator, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, with a special appearance by the famous Spruce Goose at the end of the film.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.
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The Many Murders of Russia’s Rasputin

Monk Grigori Rasputin
Colorized photo of Russian Monk Grigori Rasputin, 1915

How many murder attempts did it take to finally kill the infamous Siberian monk Rasputin?  Five, and all in the same night!

Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, was a Siberian-born peasant and monk.  At the young age of 23, he left his wife and three children to follow his calling and join an Orthodox monastery.  After only 3 months however, he quit and began wandering westward as a pilgrim, towards the Russian capital.  It was in St. Petersburg, remarkably, his fame as a self-proclaimed religious mystic began to grow.  He possessed a certain magnetism and allure that attracted zealots.  He was soon believed to be both a proven Healer and Prognosticator.

In 1906, he was introduced to Czar Nicholas II and Czarina Alexandra.  The couple was desperate for help to stop the bleeding of their hemophiliac son, and heir to the throne.  The 4 year old Czarevich Alexei had been injured and lay near death.   Before he even arrived at the Winter Palace, Rasputin boldly predicted the little one would not die!  By ordering the discontinuation of aspirin (the newly discovered wonder drug), the bleeding slowed and the boy lived.  Thereafter, Rasputin held high favor in the eyes of the Czarina Alexandra.  She invited him back often to the Winter and Peterhof Palaces and he became her closest confidant and advisor.

Rasputin began to slowly exert a powerful influence on the royal family, infuriating nobles, priests, and politicians alike.  He particularly influenced the Czarina Alexandra, and was rumored by the press to be her Secret Lover!  Though an ungroomed , unwashed monk in appearance, he projected a hypnotic animal-magnetism over women (and even some men), especially in the royal court.  Rasputin was no pious, saintly monk however. He relished his influential position and was widely criticized for his frequent drunken orgies.

When I go to confession, I don’t offer God small sins, petty squabbles, jealousies … I offer him sins worth forgiving! – Grigori Rasputin

When Czar Nicholas departed St. Petersburg to lead the Russian Army in World War I, Rasputin effectively ruled the royal family through Alexandra. He granted access to the Czarina in exchange for bribes or sexual favors.  Wary of the “Mad Monk’s” growing power, an unlikely trio of nobles planned his demise.  Led by Prince Felix Yusupov, husband of the czar’s niece, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, Nicholas’ first cousin, and Vladimir Purishkevich, an outspoken member of Parliament.  Their plan was simple, poison the monk to avoid the alarm of gunshots and ensure their escape.

Prince Felix lured Rasputin to Yusupov Palace on the night of 17 December 1916 with a request to help his supposedly ill wife.  In a basement apartment, potassium cyanide crystals were crushed and added to both his favorite pastries and his wine glass.  Afterwards, they planned to wrap the body in a rug and dispose of it in a hole cut in the frozen Nevka River.

Rasputin arrived after midnight and over the course of the night ate several pastries and drank numerous glasses of tainted Madeira wine, but showed NO ill effects!  Beginning to anger, Prince Felix excused himself and returned with Purishkevich’s revolver.  “You better look at your crucifix and say a prayer.” The Prince promptly shot Rasputin at close range in the chest before he could utter a word.  His fellow conspirators rushed into the room and watched the monk convulse on the floor, then lie still.

They went upstairs to celebrate their success, planning to dump the monk’s body later in the dead of night.  The Prince however, remembering well the cyanide’s lack of affect, felt the sudden urge to double check Rasputin’s body again.  Going downstairs, he discovered the body still warm!  Rasputin suddenly gasped, staggered to his feet, and grabbed Prince Felix about the neck. The Prince shook himself free and ran off, screaming: “HE LIVES! HE LIVES!”

The trio found Rasputin limping across the snowy courtyard, trying to escape! 

“I will inform the Czarina!” he somehow managed to shout back.  Purishkevich’s shot him twice more in the back and the monk fell to the frozen ground. Vlad ran to the monk and kicked him repeatedly in the head for good measure.  Dragging his body to the palace, the Prince then took his turn, beating the monk’s body with a dumbbell.   A policemen arrived at the door, having heard the gunshots, and they managed to convince him all was in order.

Not to be outdone, once the officer left, Rasputin moaned.  The bastard was still alive!  The men tied his hands and feet, then wrapped him in bed linens.  Tossing him in Valdimir’s car, they drove to the Petrovsky Bridge over the River Nevka.  By now it was almost dawn and they were running out to time!  They rushed and neglected to weigh down the body first, dumping him into the first hole they found in the freezing river.

Rasputin’s sodden corpse was discovered under the ice about 200 meters downriver two day later. Amazingly, his arms were found frozen over his head, trying to escape the sheets.  He was still alive when dumped in the river by the noblemen and had ultimately died by drowning! The Czarina ordered an immediate investigation. The three main conspirators were all arrested, found guilty and exiled. The royal family attended the funeral, but Rasputin’s family was not invited.

Grigori Rasputin's corpse
Grigori Rasputin’s corpse, St. Petersburg, 1916

There would be little rest for the royal Romanov family however.  Within three months in 1917, Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik Revolution put an end to their imperial regime and the beginning of Communist Soviet Union. Nicholas and Alexandra were forced to abdicate, and were placed under house arrest in Alexander Palace.  Later, they were moved to Tobolsk in Siberia.  They tried to escape into exile, their entire family in disguise, but were recaptured in Yekaterinberg. 

Then in 17 July 1918, at 2:00 AM in the morning, the Czar and Czarina of Russia were forced into a basement room along with their children. They were both executed by their Bolshevik captors via firing squad. This was followed by all five of their young children, 4 daughters, including Anastasia and the Czarevich Alexei. As a final insult during the Russian Revolution, Rasputin’s body was dug up by the Bolsheviks and burned to ashes. He wrote a prophetic letter to his benefactor Alexandria just weeks before his murder.

Tsar of Russia, if you hear the sound of the bell which tells you that Grigori has been killed, you must know this: no one of your family will remain alive. They will be killed by the Russian people …

Grigori Rasputin letter to Czarina Alexandria, Dec. 1916
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An Immigrant’s Ellis Island Fate Depended on 29 Questions

Ellis Island Immigration Station, New York Harbor, 1900
Ellis Island Immigration Station, New York Harbor, 1900

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For a vast number of Americans, including myself, our great-grandparents arrived in the U.S. as immigrants in the early 1900’s. There were no modern airports back then, just a vast, grey ocean to cross.  So all the Poles, Russians, Italians, Greeks, Swedes, Hungarians, Germans and dozens of other nationalities made “The Crossing” and arrived by coal-fired steamship. 

For passengers newly arrived in New York City, 1st & 2nd class were left off in lower Manhattan with a just precursory check of their papers.  Poorer immigrants in Third Class or “Steerage,” however were ferried by barge, along with their meager baggage to Ellis Island, sitting in the shadow of Lady Liberty.  There, with a ship’s manifest number pinned to their clothes, they queued up by the thousands to enter the intimidating Immigration Station with its 4 ornate, domed towers.

After dropping off their luggage in the Baggage Hall, nervous immigrants were marched up a winding flight of stairs to the GREAT HALL, with its impressive, high arched ceiling and arched windows.  In the Registry Room, they wandered through a maze of tall metal pipe railings for registration.  One can only imagine the myriad of languages and smells that filled that historic chamber.   

First, each immigrant underwent a very brief physical exam (which included an assessment of their mental state).  In particular, doctors looked for rashes, fever, birth defects, limps, labored breathing, excessive coughing, lice, trachoma – a contagious eye disease, and even “feeble mindedness.” If they saw nothing suspicious, it lasted all of three minutes.  Anyone with suspected health issues was marked with white chalk on their clothing and sent to the Ellis Island Hospital, where their ultimate fate would be determined later.

The physicians’ letter code was X for a mental illness, B for back, G for goiter, E for eyes, L for lameness or limp, F for feet, H for heart, Pg for pregnant, P (pulmonary) for lungs, Sc for scalp, or S for senile.

If they passed the physical, the next step was waiting in long lines once again for questioning by the Immigration Inspectors.  Sitting on tall stools behind high desks, with translators at the ready, they had all the ships’ manifests in front of them.  An immigrant’s fate in the U.S. literally depended on these single men.  Any issue might put an immigrant in front of the dreaded Board of Special Inquiry, who would ultimately decide if they could stay in the U.S. or not.

During their crossing, they were required to complete 29 QUESTIONS and hand them in at Ellis Island.

Parents would complete the questions for their children.  Their answers became part of the ship’s manifest and were later scrutinized by the Immigration Inspectors in Ellis Island’s Great Hall:

Ellis Island Immigration Station's Great Hall
Ellis Island Immigration Station’s Great Hall, 1910

  1. Your manifest number (from your ship)
  2. What is your full name?
  3. How old are you?
  4. Are you male or female?
  5. Are you married, single, widowed, or divorced?
  6. What is your occupation?
  7. Are you able to read and write? (yes or no)
  8. What country are you from?
  9. What is your race? (note: no question was asked about religion)
  10. What was your last permanent place of residence? (city and country)
  11. What is the name and US address of a relative from your native country?
  12. What is your final destination in America? (city and state)
  13. Your number on the immigration list?
  14. Do you have a ticket to your final destination? (yes or no)
  15. Who paid for your passage?
  16. How much money do you have? (at least the equivalent of $50 dollars was needed)
  17. Have you been to America before? If so when, where and how long?
  18. Are you meeting a relative here in America?  If so, who and their address?
  19. Have you been in a prison, charity almshouse, or insane asylum?
  20. Are you a polygamist?  (Yes or No)
  21. Are you an anarchist? (a real anarchist would have been a fool to say yes)
  22. Are you coming to America for a job?  What and where will you work?
  23. What is the condition of your health?
  24. Are you deformed or crippled?
  25. How tall are you?
  26. What is your skin color?
  27. What color are your eyes and hair? (much like on today’s driver’s license)
  28. Do you have any identifying marks? (scars, birthmarks, or tattoos)
  29. Where were you born? (city and country)

[More at: https://www.nps.gov/elis/learn/historyculture/index.htm]

The key questions the inspectors focused on were purposely scattered throughout the list – in particular, numbers 6, 16 and 22.  Basically Do you know a trade?  Do you have enough money? And Where will you work in the United States?  In other words, would you be able to contribute to the United States, or be a burden on its society?

Due to the thousands being processed daily, the interview could take as little as three minutes!

If all was in order, physical and questionnaire, the nervous and very relieved immigrants were released. And that was it! There were NO complicated asylum requests, immigration judges, Green Cards or Visas to deal with back then. The entire process, including waiting in line, could take up to 5 nerve-wracking hours.  At any time, our ancestors might be denied entry and sent back across the ocean on the next available steamship.

The Immigration Ledger recorded: Family Name – Given Name – Age – Sex – Marital status – Read (Y/N) – Write (Y/N) – Nationality – Race – Occupation – Height – Hair Color – Last Residence – Final Destination.

Leaving the Great Hall were the Stairs of Separation where those free to go went down one side, and those detained went down another.  Dormitories were on the island to house the detainees.  That’s why it was referred to both as The Island of Hope and The Island of Tears. Once cleared however, they could go downstairs and grab a cheap meal in the Dining Hall, retrieve their meager baggage, exchange their foreign currency for dollars, and then be ferried to train stations in New Jersey or New York for trips westward.

Immigrants lined up to leave Ellis Island
Immigrants lined up with their baggage to leave Ellis Island, 1910

Imagine leaving all that you knew – your former life, and often some family, completely behind – with the hopes of a better life in free America, the land of unlimited opportunity.  Perhaps you were fleeing World War I or tyranny or poverty. You likely spoke not a word of English!  A single carpet bag or leather satchel carried all your worldly possessions – a change of clothes, all the money you had in the world, a treasured picture or two.  You survived a wave-tossed Atlantic crossing in the belly of a cold steamship, in overcrowded 3rd Class conditions with poor food and sea-sick passengers. Now your fate was determined by a physical exam, three minutes with an inspector, and 29 Questions!

While approximately one in five were detained for the hospital or Board of Special Inquiry, only 2% of the 12 million immigrants processed at Ellis Island from 1892 to 1954 were ever deported and sent back to their countries – ONLY TWO PERCENT.  The rest were welcomed into the ‘Melting Pot’ that is the United States of America.  They became our grandparents and great-grandparents. 

They were NOT, however, generally welcomed by the average, established American. This included, ironically, the Irish Americans who had come to the U.S. decades earlier.  Bigotry and discrimination against immigrants were unfortunately the norm for decades, leaking unfortunately into our modern times.

Nevertheless, a century of their hard working class labor in mills and factories helped make America into the great and powerful nation it is today. Most eventually became American citizens.  Their foods, their holidays, their customs and traditions all joined the Melting Pot and became American standards over the generations.  Try to imagine the U.S. without Italian pizza, German Christmas trees, Mexican tacos, or Irish St. Patricks Day.   Most Americans wouldn’t be here, if it wasn’t for the courage and sacrifice of their immigrant ancestors and the nation that welcomed them.

Some thoughts to ponder as, a century later, immigrants and immigration are yet again at the forefront of the American way of life, and indeed across the entire world.

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Home » Blog » Page 25

The Lindbergh Kidnapping – a Real Crime of the Century

Lindbergh Kidnapping Headlines
Lindbergh Kidnapping Headlines, 1932

Aviator Charles Lindbergh famously flew his single engine plane, The Spirit of St. Louis, for 33 hours from Long Island to Paris in 1927. He became the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean solo. The blond, handsome airmail pilot, only 25 years old, became an international superstar. He was like a movie-star crossed with a sports-star. The kidnapping and murder of his toddler son was to end all that.

Five years after his famous flight, ‘Lucky Lindy’ would be at the center of The Crime of the Century. On Tuesday, March 1st, 1932, two year old Charles Lindbergh Jr. was suffering from a winter cold.  Charles Sr., his wife Anne and son were at home on their new estate in Hopewell, NJ. Little Charlie’s nurse, Betty Gow, put him to bed around 7:30 pm.  His parents sat in the parlor, reading and listening to the radio. At 10 pm, the nurse returned to check on him and made a horrifying discovery – Charlie Jr. was gone and the bedroom empty!  Lindbergh rushed upstairs, flung opened the nursery door, and found the bed empty. He noticed an open window with an envelope lying on the sill. 

The envelope contained a badly written ransom note that said:

“Dear Sir, Have $50,000 ready … After 2-4 days will inform you were to deliver the mony. We warn you for making anyding public or for notify the Police, the child is in gut care.”

Excerpt of Lindbergh Kidnapping Ransom Note, 1932

A kidnapper had used a homemade ladder to climb to the 2nd floor and left muddy footprints in the room. Lindbergh dashed downstairs, grabbed his hunting rifle, and with their butler, went out searching the woods. Charles Lindbergh ignored a warning in the note and called the local and state police. A massive search of the surrounding woods ensued. By 10:30 pm, the radio was announcing the shocking news to the world. They next day, every U.S. newspaper gave the story its headlines. Soon, false sightings of the Lindbergh baby were coming from all corners of the country.  None were real.

Second story bedroom window used in the Lindbergh kidnapping, 1932
Second story bedroom window used in the Lindbergh kidnapping, 1932

Colonel Norman Schwarzkopf of the NJ State Police was in charge of the case, but ceded responsibility for the investigation to the famous Lindbergh himself. Headquarters for the investigation were established in the family’s home. Lindbergh’s inexperience however produced some major goofs – footprints near the house were trampled by the searchers and evidence was mishandled by too many people. No fingerprints were found. The state police offered a $25,000 reward for anyone who could provide information pertaining to the case.

Then, a follow-up letter showed up on March 6th, with more instructions, this time demanding $70,000 as penalty for going public.

Other blunders and oddities in the case would follow …

Even gangster Al Capone offered his assistance – in return for being released from prison. The authorities did not take him up on it. A week later, John Condon, a retired teacher from the Bronx, called the Lindberghs, claiming he had made contact with the kidnappers! Condon had written a letter, published in the Bronx News, offering to act as independent intermediary. A man named John, claiming to be the kidnapper, wrote to him. Condon was allowed by a desperate Lindbergh and the police to make contact with the kidnappers.

On April 2nd, the ransom money, in gold certificate bills, was delivered by Condon to a Bronx cemetery, while Lindbergh himself waited with police in a nearby car. The kidnapper said they were a gang of Scandinavians and gave Condon a note, supposedly revealing the baby’s safe location.  It led them to the New Jersey coast in search of a boat called Nelly. No boat nor the Lindbergh baby were ever found. They’d been double-crossed.

On May 12th, 72 days after the kidnapping, a truck driver named Orville Wilson stopped on the side of the road in New Jersey to relieve himself. He found the decomposed body of a baby boy in the woods, less than 5 miles from the Lindbergh house. The child had been dead from a fractured skull, presumably dropped from the ladder the night of the kidnapping. He had been dead all along. The kidnapping case was now a murder investigation.

Serial numbers from the ransom money first surfaced in New York City. Over the next two years, more and more of the dollars would pop up. Finally, in September 1934, a marked bill turned up at a gas station in Manhattan’s east side. The attendant wrote down the license plate of the customer, who gave him a $10 bill for 98 cents of gas. It was tracked to a German immigrant carpenter by the name of Bruno Hauptmann. When his Bronx home was searched, detectives found $14,000 of the Lindbergh ransom stuffed in an oil can. Despite his pleas of innocence, Hauptmann was arrested and indicted for murder, 2 years after the crime.

The Crime of the Century became the Trial of the Century.

60,000 people besieged the tiny town of Flemington, NJ.  Hauptmann was defended by “Big Ed” Reilly, a flamboyant attorney who had seen better days. Lindbergh himself testified that he recognized Hauptmann’s voice from the night he & Condon delivered the ransom money in the graveyard. Hauptmann took the stand and strongly denied any involvement. He claimed a friend, who had died in March, and had distrusted banks, had given him the money to hold. He said he had been beaten by the police while in custody and forced to alter his handwriting to match the ransom note.

The prosecution’s case was not airtight. Besides the money, the main evidence was testimony from handwriting experts and the prosecution’s claim of a connection between Hauptmann, a carpenter, and the wood used in the home-made kidnapping ladder. Following 11 hours deliberation, the jury found Hauptmann guilty of first degree murder..

The evidence and public demand for blood were enough to convict.  Hauptmann was sentenced to death. Appeals were made all the way to the Supreme Court, but none were successful. NJ Governor Harold Hoffman voiced doubts about the case and the verdict, and even visited Hauptmann in his cell. Questions were raised – ranging from witness tampering, to evidence planting, to who his co-conspirators might be?  Nevertheless, Hauptman was executed at Trenton State Prison on April 3, 1936 in the electric chair. 

Conspiracy theories abound to this day, claiming poor Hauptmann was framed and the kidnapping was in fact ‘an inside job’ within the household staff. One theory even claimed that Lindbergh himself accidentally dropped the boy from the window and orchestrated the entire kidnapping cover-up.

Charles and wife Anne Lindbergh
Charles and wife Anne Lindbergh during the investigation, 1932.

In the aftermath of the infamous crime, kidnapping was made a federal offense via the ‘Lindbergh Law‘ in 1932.  To escape the intense publicity, Charles Lindbergh and his wife moved away from Hopewell in 1936, living in England. They returned to the U.S. in 1939 prior to World War II to live in Connecticut.  During the war, he was suspected by President Franklin Roosevelt and the White House of being a Nazi sympathizer due to his staunch anti-war speeches and anti-Semitic beliefs.

He and his wife Anne went on to have 5 more children.  After the war, he also secretly fathered 7 illegitimate children with 3 different German mistresses. They never knew the famous Charles Lindbergh was their father until after his death when love letters were discovered. Lindbergh died from lymphatic cancer in Hawaii in 1974 at age 72. Anne Lindbergh lived a long life and passed away in 2001 at age 94 of a stroke. DNA tests conducted in 2003 have since confirmed the lineage of Charles’ seven illegitimate German children.

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The Race for the Polio Vaccine – Salk vs. Sabin

Dr. Jonas Salk on the cover of Time magazine 1955
Dr. Jonas Salk on the cover of Time magazine 1955

Long before COVID, during the early 1900’s, summer was not a welcomed season for both parents and children.  For back then, summer was also ‘Polio Season.’ Children were susceptible to poliomyelitis, an incurable disease that affects the central nervous system resulting in paralysis.  Polio is a highly contagious virus that spreads from contact with water or food tainted with fecal contamination. ‘Polio Panic’ was a surpassed only by fear of a nuclear World War III. The world desperately need a polio vaccine.

That the disease crippled so many children was alarming enough. But the shock wave that followed a local outbreak was devastating. Communities resorted to measures used to combat the spread of influenza or even small pox. Neighborhoods were quarantined, schools and movie theaters closed, windows were shut in the summer heat, and public pools abandoned.

Worse still, most hospitals refused to admit children with polio. Families were forced to rely on house calls by doctors who could do little more than fit tiny children with heavy metal braces. Polio paralyzed some patients’ chest muscles removing their ability to breathe. If they were fortunate, they would be placed in one of the dreaded IRON LUNGS, huge cylindrical respirators which pulled air in and out of their small chests.

In 1921, the war on polio recruited an unlikely ally.

Although polio mainly struck children, 39-year-old Franklin Roosevelt became ill after attending a summer Boy Scout rally. Within days, he was paralyzed from the waist down. Although as President he hid his disability from the public, he became a champion of its medical research. In 1937, he announced the formation of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, also known as The March of Dimes. Citizens donated dimes to support polio research. In the first year alone, it raised almost 2 million.

Two heroes emerged in the 1950s, waging war against polio. The 1st, Dr. Jonas Salk of the Univ. of Pittsburgh developed a method to kill the virus with formalin. When injected into monkeys, his vaccine protected the animals against polio! In 1952, Salk began testing in humans, starting with children already infected with the virus, often at institutions for the disabled or mentally ill. Strongly believing in his vaccine, Salk went so far as to inject himself, his wife, Donna, and their three sons in the family’s kitchen.

Controversy arose when a 2nd competing researcher, Dr. Albert Sabin of the Univ. of Cincinnati, claimed Salk’s inactivation method failed to kill ALL the polio virus. Sabin was almost a decade older and considered the more experienced researcher. Testifying before Congress, he attacked Dr. Salk’s killed-virus vaccine. There was no proof the vaccine conferred long-lasting immunity.

Sabin predicted that any live virus remaining in the vaccine would doom innocent children.

Despite these doubts, Salk’s method was validated and he published his results in 1953. The March of Dimes decided to finance a massive Field Trial of Salk’s vaccine on 2 million American children between 6 and 9. The large-scale trial was made possible by major pharmaceutical companies like Eli Lilly, Wyeth Labs, and Parke Davis, producing his vaccine on a large scale.

In 1954, half of these “Polio Pioneer” children received a vaccine injection, while the other half received a placebo. Significant risks exist when administering any untried vaccine. As Salk told a journalist:

“When you inoculate children with a polio vaccine for the first time, you don’t sleep well for two weeks.”

Dr. Jonas Salk

On April 12, 1955, on the 10th anniversary of FDR’s death, Dr. Thomas Francis, Salk’s mentor and the trial director, called a press conference at the University of Michigan to report the results. Salk was still in the dark as to the conclusion, and had little idea what Francis would say. The conference was broadcast to 54,000 physicians; millions of Americans tuned in by radio. The pronouncement was stunning.

The vaccine was safe, potent, and 90% effective in protecting against polio!

The audience of over a thousand gave Salk a standing ovation as he took the stage. A pleased, yet overwhelmed Salk looked at the crowd. “The objective here was not merely a reduction in crippling cases of polio, but rather the elimination of fear.” He thanked the many people who had made this success possible, but failed to mention his closest colleagues by name. This caused a rift between Salk and some of his research associates that persisted for decades.

There were over a hundred reporters at the event. Word got out around the globe overnight. The polio scourge had been whipped! Every front page and newscast proclaimed the victory. Polio panic would soon be over as pharmaceutical companies would create millions of doses of the new vaccine. Church bells and fire sirens sounded across the US. People gathered in churches to pray thanks. Many openly wept.

Salk immediately became a national hero and celebrity. That evening, he appeared on Edward R. Murrow’s television show See It Now. “Young man, a great tragedy has befallen you,” Murrow said, “you have lost your anonymity.” When asked who held the patent on the vaccine, Salk’s response became legendary:

“Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”

Dr. Jonas Salk, when asked who owned the patent

Salk disagreed with owning a patent as millions of Americans had paid for the research via the March of Dimes.  Of course the polio vaccine wasn’t novel enough to be patentable according to US law, and Salk knew it.  Forbes once estimated that Salk could have earned over $7 billion in revenues.

President Eisenhower gave Jonas Salk a special citation at the White House.

The fame was unwanted however. Hotels offered Salk their best suites, pilots announced his presence on airplanes, he could not eat at restaurants as everyone wanted to shake his hand. The March of Dimes lionized Salk to the point of offending his colleagues yet again. Other researchers grumbled that he hadn’t found anything new; just applied research that was already there.

Around the same time that Salk began his work, Dr. Albert Sabin began working on a weakened live-virus vaccine. Sabin felt that his oral vaccine was superior to an injection, as it would be easier to give to kids and cheaper to manufacture. Sabin began testing his vaccine on humans, included prisoners from Ohio’s Chillicothe Penitentiary. Volunteer inmates were paid $25 with a promise of some time off their sentences. None of the 30 prisoners developed polio, and the test trial was deemed successful.

Just 2 weeks after the victory announcement, scattered reports appeared of children developing polio after vaccination. An investigation implicated one of the manufacturers, Cutter Laboratories. Cutter was quick to blame Salk’s inactivation method, arguing it didn’t work on large batches. Albert Sabin chimed in calling it the “Salk Accident.” Jonas Salk was in the spotlight again, but for the wrong reason.

It was soon discovered that Cutter failed to follow Salk’s strict protocol for inactivating the virus.

The ‘Cutter Incident’ was heartbreaking for Salk. “I cannot escape a terrible feeling of identifying with these poor people who got polio.” Because of Cutter’s cost-cutting, 260 people contracted the disease. Nevertheless, his vaccine proved a Godsend. By 1961 polio, was all but eradicated from the United States.

Because Salk’s vaccine was now being used in the US, Albert Sabin couldn’t get support for his large-scale field trial like that of Salk. In 1957, Sabin convinced the Soviet Union to conduct field studies on his oral vaccine. Ultimately 2 million Soviet children were vaccinated. Sabin’s Russian trials were also deemed highly successful.

Dr. Albert Sabin and his polio vaccine, 1963
Dr. Albert Sabin and his polio vaccine, 1963

Sabin quickly entered into an agreement with Pfizer pharmaceuticals to produce his ‘attenuated‘ live-virus vaccine. Sabin’s oral polio vaccine, administered to kids on a sugar cube, eventually replaced Salk’s injected vaccine in many parts of the world. By 1963, it became the gold standard, and the one used to eradicate polio globally.

Salk claimed his killed virus vaccine was safer, but his resistance was futile. The Sabin polio vaccine, cheaper and easier to deliver, won the race in the end.  Sabin belittled Salk’s earlier achievement as “kitchen chemist’s work,” which anyone could have done. Subsequent honors went to Albert Sabin that never came to Salk, like membership in the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. Neither Salk nor Sabin ever received the Nobel Prize in medicine. It’s been speculated this was due to their close, but necessary, ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

In 1963, The Salk Institute opened in La Jolla, California. He got funding from the March of Dimes and recruited Nobel Prize-winning scientists to investigate cancer, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and eventually AIDS. So although Jonas Salk is credited with ending the scourge of polio because his killed-virus vaccine was first, Albert Sabin’s inexpensive sugar cube vaccine continues to successfully prevent the spread of polio in every corner of the world to this day.

Dozens of new safe and effective vaccines, in the decades since polio have revolutionized global immunization, most especially for childhood diseases. As the world currently rushes towards vaccinations for new viral variants, take note of the years of careful scientific research it took to get a successful and safe polio vaccine for millions around the world.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.
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The Woman on the Dollar Coin – Susan B. Anthony

susan-b-anthony
Susan B. Anthony, Abolitionist and Suffragette, 1872

What does the average American know about Susan B. Anthony other than: She’s that stern-looking woman on a U.S. dollar coin. Susan B. Anthony lived a very long and very productive life over a century ago as a leading Abolitionist and Suffragette. In fact, women would not have had the right to vote as early as they did (1920) if it were not for the tireless work of Susan B. Anthony.

Born in 1820, she grew up in Rochester, NY, the child of Abolitionist Quakers. At 17, she went off to a boarding school to become a teacher, and at 26 was made Head Mistress of a Women’s Academy, an impressive feat for someone so young.  By 29 she was involved in the early Temperance (Prohibition) movement, giving speeches on women’s rights.  What did Temperance have to do with women’s rights, you might ask?

If a woman divorced her alcoholic husband, she forfeited everything – her home, money AND children to her spouse.

In 1852, she met a woman who would change her life forever, Elizabeth Stanton, one of the original US suffragettes. Stanton was already famous herself for organizing the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention 4 years earlier. Together the duo made an efficient team as Elizabeth was a talented writer and Susan a dynamic speaker. They formed the National Woman’s Suffrage Association, which by the way, is still around today. You might know it as the League of Women Voters.

During the Civil War, she helped none other than Harriet Tubman ferry escaped slaves through New York state to Canada on the famous Underground Railroad. She assisted Abraham Lincoln by canvasing the northern states, collecting over 400,000 signatures on a petition to pass the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery. The Amendment was narrowly passed by Congress in 1865.

After the Civil War, in 1868, she and Stanton started The Revolution, not A revolution, but rather a NY newspaper with that purposely provocative title.  It was the first newspaper published by women, written by women, for women readers.  Sadly, The Revolution only lasted 2 years due to a lack of funding from any male backers or advertisers, but it was still revolutionary, and made Susan B. Anthony famous as well.

In 1872, the 14th Amendment passed giving Blacks the right to vote.

It was written stating all US citizens had the right, so Susan and 50 of her followers convinced pollsters in New York state to allow them to vote in the presidential election that year since women were citizens too. Vote they did and were promptly arrested by a Marshal.  As the instigator, Susan B. was the only one put on trial in The United States vs. Susan B. Anthony.  An all male jury found her found guilty of illegally voting. She was not allowed to speak until after her sentencing.

When the judge finally asked her if she had anything to say, she stood and let fly a now famous invective stating:

My constitutional, civil, and judicial rights were tramped upon as I did not have a jury of my peers, for they were all men!  The laws were made by men, under a government of men, and for the benefit of men! The only chance women had for justice was to violate the law, as I have done, and vow to continue to do!

Susan B. Anthony at her 1873 trial

The flustered Judge Ward Hunt fined her $100, which, she refused paid. The judge wanted her out of his sight and did not order her to be taken in further custody.

She did not stop there. In 1893, Susan B. learned the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition would have no exhibit noting the contributions of women. She lobbied the wives of Washington cabinet members, senators AND Supreme Court justices. She eventually got a Women’s Pavilion, designed by a female architect, added to the Worlds Fair, at which women’s accomplishments and rights were proudly displayed and freely discussed. Susan B. spoke to large crowds at the exhibition about woman’s rights.

Sadly, Susan B Anthony never saw women get the right to vote.

Susan B. Anthony in her later years
Susan B. Anthony in her later years, 1893

She semi-retired at 71 to Rochester, NY though still remained an active suffragette. Her 80th birthday was celebrated at the White House with President William McKinley. She died of pneumonia in 1906 at the age of 86. In case you were wondering, she never married, deciding early on that having a husband and children could impede her tireless work for women.  

Susan B. Anthony inspired and left thousands of women’s rights advocates in her wake. Her last words were ‘Failure is impossible.” And she was right.  Women did finally get the right to vote the same as men, 14 years later in 1920. The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is in fact officially known today as the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. The U.S. Post Office issued a stamp in her honor in 1931 and another in 1958. In 1979, a dollar coin was produced with a profile of her determined face, the first woman ever to be on U.S. currency.

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