Chicago’s SS Eastland Disaster topped Titanic

The SS Eastland capsized in the Chicago River, 1915
SS Eastland capsized in the Chicago River, 1915

In July of 1915 on the Chicago River, the SS Eastland, carrying over 2,500 passengers and crew headed for a Western Electric company picnic, suddenly listed to port and rolled over into the muddy river.  844 souls perished, more than on the Titanic or Lusitania; yet the SS Eastland is lost in history to most.

On the morning of Saturday, July 24, employees of Western Electric Co. were heading to an annual picnic on Lake Michigan. About 7,300 people arrived around 6 AM at the docks between LaSalle and Clark Streets to be ferried out to the picnic site by 5 steamers. While small bands played, 2,500 workers and their families boarded the first ship scheduled to leave, the Eastland. These were mainly Polish, Czech and Hungarian immigrants who came to America for a promised better life.

Despite the cool, wet weather, 2,573 passengers and crew crowded aboard the Eastland and the atmosphere was festive! They were poor coworkers from Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works in Cicero. The Great Lakes Excursion Steamer Eastland was chartered to carry workers and their families on a pleasant day-long outing from Chicago to a park 38 miles across Lake Michigan in Indiana.

The passengers boarding the Eastland had chosen their best summer outfits to wear, for this was to be THE social event of the year for the poor workers.  Women wore long, brightly-colored dresses and their best hats.  Men wore their Sunday-best suits and starched white shirts with stiff collars. It was a rare Saturday break from a 6 day work week assembling telephone equipment. It promised to be a gala day of food, parades and sporting events.

The SS Eastland was the slickest, most glamorous ship at that time sailing on the Great Lakes. What a great part of your company picnic it would be, to have the opportunity to sail on this magnificent excursion steamer.

Employees had been advised to get their families to the docks early.

By 7 AM, men, women and children were boarding the Eastland at the rate of almost 50 per minute. A loud mixture of English and Eastern European tongues filled the gangplanks, decks and gangways.  At 7:15, the crew prepared for the morning’s journey and hauled in its gangplanks, forcing late passengers to leap aboard from the wharf along the Chicago River.

As a steady drizzle was falling, many of the women with young children in their arms or in tow, took shelter below decks in the drier air. A small band played Ragtime for dancing in the main hall and tea and coffee were being served.  On the upper decks, passengers crowded about to find empty wooden seats or space at the railings. It promised to be a splendid outing.

The Eastland was owned by the St. Joseph-Chicago Steamship Company and routinely ferried people from Chicago to points along Lake Michigan. Launched in 1902, it was designed to carry only 650 passengers, but a major retrofitting in 1913 allowed a whopping 2,500 people. The sleek, white steamship was called ‘The Greyhound of the Lakes,’ but also had another reputation as being unstable and top-heavy.

The SS Eastland prior to the 1915 Chicago River capsizing
The SS Eastland prior to the 1915 Chicago River capsizing

The boat relied on poorly designed ballast tanks in the hold to keep it upright. Changes in maritime law after the Titanic sank in 1912 required ships to carry enough lifeboats and lifevests for all. This made the narrow Eastland even more top-heavy. It was in now compliance with the law, but that extra weight created a serious hazard. The boat had listed heavily and nearly capsized on at least two prior sailings.

The SS Eastland had become an accident waiting to happen.

As the Eastland continued to fill with passengers, between 7:10 and 7:15 AM, it began to list slightly to port, away from the wharf. The movement didn’t seem to alarm the picnic-goers, but it caught the attention of the crew, the harbormaster and observers on land. Some of the passengers had gathered on the port side to wave at the crowd gathered on the riverfront to see them off.

The Captain of the Eastland was Harry Peterson, an experienced officer who’d sailed the Eastland many times. The Chief Engineer was responsible for the ballast system.  As the ship listed, Engineer Joseph Erikson opened two of the starboard ballast tanks to hold water and stabilize the ship. By the time the last passenger arrived, the boat had righted itself, but only briefly.

At 7:23 AM, it again listed, even further to port this time. Dishes begin sliding off shelves in the pantry and crashing to the floor. Water began pouring through open portholes and gangways into the lower engine room. The crew there, realizing what was about to happen, began scrambling up ladders to the main deck.  Thousands of horrified onlookers witnessed the Eastland’s roll. Other Western Electric workers, waiting along the Chicago River shouted out:

“Look out! She’s tipping!“

SS Eastland disaster witness

At 7:28 AM, the Eastland had listed to a precarious 45-degrees. The piano on the promenade deck rolled swiftly into the port wall, crushing two women.  A refrigerator icebox also slid to port, pinning a woman and her child beneath it. Panic ensued as passengers screamed and grabbed for any piece of the ship to hold onto.  Even more water flooded into port open portholes below deck.

Suddenly, the 275 foot long, fully-loaded ship completed her death roll into the Chicago River, completely submerging her port side, as one reporter described it, “Like a dead elephant shot through the heart.” The Eastland carried 11 lifeboats, 37 rafts and enough vests for all 2,500+ passengers and crew, but they were all useless now. 

When the boat started to topple, those passengers on the port side of the upper decks were unexpectedly hurled off, like rocks sliding down a hill.  In an instant, the surface of the river was covered with hundreds of struggling, screaming, splashing passengers. The ship’s twin smoke stacks tilted with the ship and headed for the water.

By 7:30 AM, the Eastland was lying completely on its port side in 20 feet of murky water, still tied to the dock. Shocked passengers on the right side could climb over the starboard railing and stumble across the exposed hull to safety, barely wet. They were the lucky ones. In the murky river, parents clutched their children and disappeared together beneath the brown water. Infants and babies separated from parents, floated about like corks, then sank as well.

Hundreds of passengers and crew were still trapping inside the floundering ship.

Alarms rang out throughout the city.  More than 10,000 people were on the busy riverfront that day, including the other Western Electric workers waiting to board their ships. Horrified onlookers raced to the rescue, men jumping into the river to pull bobbing survivors to the wharf. Others threw ladders, boards, chicken crates, whatever they could grab to provide flotation for those struggling. Eyewitnesses described the pitiful screaming as the most horrible aspect of all.

Passengers were hauled out of the river, and others dragged through starboard portholes. Many were cut and bleeding. Nurses and doctors rushed to the scene.  The injured were taken to a nearby hospital, which quickly became overwhelmed. The less injured were bandaged and sent home. Because of a shortage of ambulances, American Express trucks were enlisted to help.

Fire Department rescuers attempted to cut through the hull with torches, allowing them to pull out 40 people trapped alive.  Police divers entered the river searching for survivors, but only pulled up body after body. The city sent workers out with a large net to prevent floating corpses from washing out to the lake. “And the pitiful smallness of them!” one witnesses recounted:

“Children, and yet more children.“

SS Eastland disaster witness

A passenger’s fate was determined by where they were on the ship. Those clustered on the port side that rolled into the river, were doomed.  Those people inside found themselves in the new bottom of the ship, buried under hundreds of other people and furniture. River water flooded into portholes and doorways to claim them.  If you were on the starboard side, you were above water, but the way out was now up.

As the casualties mounted, the nearby Second Regiment Armory on Sangamon Street was converted to a morgue. As news of the disaster spread, families of Western Electric workers rushed to the docks and a line of grieving relatives grew. Just before nightfall, the public was admitted, 20 at a time, to look for family members. Hundreds of bodies lay in long rows waiting for a relative to lift a sheet and identify a loved one. Many of those that perished did not drown, but actually suffocated to death, crushed beneath other people and debris. 

By 8:00 AM, almost all of the survivors had been pulled from the river. The flooded Eastland settled to the bottom of the river, its starboard side still out of the water. Then came the gruesome task of locating and removing bodies. Seven priests arrived to administer Last Rites, but there was little work for them. 844 had perished.  Twenty-two entire families died in the tragedy.

By Noon, divers finally reached bodies that had been trapped underwater in the portside cabins.  They seemed to be mainly women and children who’d come in from the rain. Stretcher-bearers traversed the hull as stiff bodies were carried out, sometimes two bodies stacked on a stretcher as they ran out.

By Sunday, the next day, the magnitude of the disaster was most apparent in the Eastern European immigrant communities. House after house was draped in black crepe as weeping families sat inside mourning.   By Tuesday, all of the bodies lying in the armory morgue had been claimed.

On Wednesday, July 28th, Chicago was a city of funerals.

So many were scheduled that there were not enough coffins, hearses and gravediggers, working 12 hours a day. By day’s end, almost 700 Eastland victims had been buried. In the days to come, an estimated half a million people arrived to view the Eastland and the disaster scene. Boat owners charged 10 cents to ferry the curious past the floating wreck, lying like a beached whale in the river.

The SS Eastland capsized in the Chicago River in 1915.
The SS Eastland capsized in the Chicago River in 1915.

Affixing blame for the accident began quickly. Eastland Captain Harry Pedersen, chief engineer Joseph Erickson and other senior crewmembers were taken into custody on Saturday, in part to protect them from the angry relatives of the victims. Two trials resulted from the Eastland disaster.

Charges were brought against the ship’s officers and owners for criminal negligence and manslaughter. Those charges were changed however by the presiding judge to conspiracy to operate an unsafe ship.  The verdict eventually handed down was that All Parties were found to be Not Guilty, as no conspiracy could be proven. Although evidence strongly suggested the crew had been negligent, no officers were prosecuted.

Another poor outcome was the pay-out to the victims’ families. A second civil trial was to determine the extent of the liability of the ship’s owners and crew. This trial was not completed until 20 years later. The court determined that the chief engineer was to blame for not maintaining the ballast system. Erickson died as the proceedings dragged on and that made him a convenient fall guy.

By Maritime Law, pay-outs to the victim’s families was limited to: the value of the Eastland wreck (around $50,000) minus what the ship’s owners had to pay for raising the Eastland from the river (about $35,000) minus the cost of the coal, and even the picnic concession company. All creditors had to be paid first. In the end, victims and families received little or nothing. Any money they received came from Western Electric and the Red Cross.

As to why it happened, experts concluded it was a poorly designed, unstable ship, with a bad ballast system, mismanaged by the crew, that had been rendered top-heavy as a result of the post-Titanic safety measures to add lifeboats, then overloaded with 2,500 passengers. The disaster was a tragedy that was essentially waiting to happen. It wasn’t a matter of if it would capsize, but really a matter of when.

The SS Eastland was pulled up from the river by its owners and repaired. Renamed the USS Willimette in 1920 it was converted into a naval reserve training vessel. Following World War II, in 1947 it was carved up and turned into scrap metal.

Just 10 weeks before the Eastland disaster, the Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk, with a death toll of 785 passengers. In 1912, 829 passengers had died when the Titanic struck an iceberg. 844 Eastland passengers died on a city river, just feet from the dock in 20 feet of water. Seventy percent of them were under the age of 25. Despite the immense loss of life, little attention has been given to this disaster historically, compared with those other more famous, albeit lesser, maritime disasters, or even the Great Chicago Fire.

Why? It’s really quite simple. There wasn’t anyone rich or famous onboard the SS Eastland, no popular stage actors, wealthy industrialists or famous socialites. It was all poor, hardworking, immigrant families that few cared about outside the working class streets of Chicago.  A full listing of all the victims’ names can be found at eastlanddisaster.org/people.

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Podcast: 6 Theories on the Mysterious Death of Edgar Allen Poe

Edgar Allen Poe shortly before his death.
Edgar Allen Poe shortly before his death.

Edgar Allen Poe was the Stephen King of his day.  A master poet and author of mystery and the macabre. To this day, his name alone evokes a chill down ones spine. Amongst his most popular works were Murders in the Rue Morgue and Masque of the Red Death. His life may have been cut short, but it was filled with brilliance, scandal, tragedy, and heartbreak. Perhaps fittingly, Poe’s death has also long been cloaked in mystery, with competing, twisted theories as to how and why in 1849, he vanished for a week, then passed away at only 40.

To Read a Blog Post CLICK HERE.

For more by writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.
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The Spanish Civil War and General Francisco Franco

End of the Spanish Civil War in Madrid
End of the Spanish Civil War in Madrid, 1939

The Spanish Civil War was a modern, western civil war that ended in an authoritarian regime. Francisco Franco rose to power during the Spanish Civil War and then ruled over Spain for 36 years from 1939 until his death in 1975. With the help of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, his Nationalist forces overthrew the democratically elected Second Republic. He proclaimed himself El Caudillo (The Leader), and proceeded to censor the press, take over the judiciary, ban the Basque and Catalan languages, make Catholic the national religion, and established a secret police to spy on its citizens.

Francisco Franco was a career soldier who rose quickly through the ranks, becoming general at only 33. When Spain’s left-leaning government began to weaken, Franco joined other generals in a right-wing rebellion. He led the uprising against the elected leftist government causing the Spanish Civil War, then took complete control when he won. He then presided over a brutal authoritarian regime in which tens of thousands were imprisoned or executed. How could a democratically elected government be overthrown during a Civil War in a modern European nation?

Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was born in a small coastal port on the Atlantic. The men in his family had served in the navy for generations, and Franco was expected to follow in the family business. Franco enrolled at the Infantry Academy in Toledo, graduating in three years with below-average grades.

The ambitious Franco volunteered to fight a Muslim insurgency in then Spanish-occupied Morocco. He was stationed in north Africa from 1912 until 1926. Franco impressed his commanders with both his boldness and brutality.  He received a number of promotions and married Carmen Polo y Martínez Valdés, from a wealthy merchant family. Franco’s growing reputation was even recognized by King Alfonso XIII, who sent a delegate to their wedding.

At 33, Franco became the youngest general in Europe. He was given command of the Spanish Foreign Legion.   

Under Franco, the Tercio de Extranjeros developed a reputation for swift brutality. He encouraged the torture and killing of prisoners.   When the legion left a Moroccan rebel village, nothing remained but burnt foundations and the corpses of men, women and children.  Two years later, he was named director of the Military Academy in Zaragoza and returned to Spain.

Meanwhile, King Alfonso XIII governed Spain as a military dictatorship.  In 1931, the king agreed, under duress, to allow democratic elections. It was the first time in sixty years that free elections had been allowed in Spain. When the Spanish people voted overwhelmingly for a republic over monarchy, Alfonso was forced to go into exile and the Second Republic was born.

The winning, left-leaning government passed measures that reduced the power of the military, the Catholic Church, and wealthy entrenched elites. A Socialist Manuel Azaña became prime minister. Franco was reprimanded for publicly criticizing the new government’s liberal actions.  His Military Academy was shut down, he was demoted, and sent to an out-of-the-way post in the Balearic Islands.

But the new government could not quell the growing divide between left- and right-leaning peoples within its borders. The politically divided country was wracked by deep, often violent political demonstrations and street fighting.  When new elections were held in 1933, a new more right-leaning government took control. As a result, Franco returned to a position of power.

The new government used Franco and his troops to ruthlessly suppress a miners’ strike in the Basque region. The right-wing approved of Franco’s actions and in 1935, the Minister of War, appointed him Chief of Staff.  In this post, Franco promoted nationalist officers and purged the army officers of Second Republicans.

Prior to the election in 1936, right-wing parties and factions in Spain coalesced and formed The National Front.  Manuel Azaña then established a similar coalition of left-wing political forces, calling them The Popular Front.  The Spanish people voted in January 1936.  The Popular Front received 34% of the vote and the National Front received 33% of the vote.  The Popular Front proclaimed victory and formed a new government.

The conservative National Front refused to accept the election results. Spain began to slip into chaos.

The Popular Front government upset conservatives by granting amnesty for all political prisoners. They introduced economic reforms that taxed the wealthy aristocracy. They granted greater regional autonomy, ended political blacklists, and provided compensation for renters historically oppressed by wealthy landowners.

The wealthy responded by transferring vast sums of capital out of the country to offshore accounts. This created an economic crisis, the value of the peseta plummeted. With inflation rising, workers demanded higher wages, leading to a series of strikes. Franco was once again marginalized to a minor post, in the Canary Islands. He joined with other high-ranking Spanish generals, led by General Emilio Mola, in planning to overthrow the liberal government in a coup.

President Azaña was willing to compromise and offered Nationalist General Mola the post of Minister of War, but the National Front was unwilling to compromise.  Azaña then gave orders for arms to be distributed to all left-wing organizations throughout Spain. In July of 1936, General Mola proclaimed a nationalists revolution.  

Nationalist forces launched multipronged uprisings in conservative pockets across the country, beginning the Spanish Civil War.  Franco flew to Morocco and began transporting Spanish troops to the mainland. He would then made contact with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy to secure arms and airplanes. The Nationalist generals agreed that Franco should replace Mola as commander of the Nationalist Army.

Establishing a base of operations in right-leaning Seville, Franco began his campaign, advancing north and west. The operation put them in control of most of the western half of the country including Morocco, Seville and Aragon. After sealing the boarders with Portugal and France, Franco concentrated his forces on the left-leaning bastions of Barcelona and Madrid.  

Franco was then named head of the Nationalist government and Commander-in-Chief (Generalísimo).

Franco moved quickly to consolidate power. He secured the backing of the Catholic Church and sent his political rivals into exile.  He combined the fascist and monarchist parties into his right-wing Falange Española Tradicionalista, with Franco as party leader. Thousands of political prisoners of war would be executed rather than held in captivity.

Over the next 3 years, the right-wing Nationalist forces — backed by the Catholic Church, Germany and Italy — battled the left-wing Popular Front, who received aid from the Soviet Union and brigades of foreign volunteers, including Americans. Imitating the tactics of Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany, giant posters of Franco’s face were displayed on every wall all across Spain with the slogan:

One State! One Country! One Chief! Franco!

Spanish Civil War poster slogan

With superior military strength, Franco was able to eliminate the opposition region by region. German and Italian bombardments helped the Nationalists conquer Basque lands in 1937. In January 1939, the Popular Front stronghold of Barcelona fell to the Nationalists, followed two months later by Madrid. In April 1939, Franco received an unconditional surrender from Azaña. Sources estimate the number of civil war casualties was over half a million.

Many Popular Front leaders fled the country.  Military tribunals were set up to try those who remained, sending thousands more Spaniards to their death. Franco made Catholicism the only religion of Spain, banned the Catalan and Basque languages, censored the press, barred labor unions, and created a Gestapo-like secret police network to spy on its own citizens.

Though he received aid from the Axis powers during the Civil War, Franco stayed out of World War II, and declared neutrality.  He did meet with Adolf Hitler in 1940 to discuss Spain joining the Nazis.   Franco demanded that postwar he wanted control of Gibraltar, French Morocco, and parts of Algeria.  Hitler would not relinquish such hard-earned Nazi territory.

Hitler wanted his troops access to Spain to seize Gibraltar from the British.  Franco refused. Instead, he asked for arms so that Spain itself could capture Gibraltar. This time, Hitler refused   All Franco would do is send some 50,000 troops to fight with the Germans on the Soviet eastern front, and also opened his ports to German ships and submarines.

Generalissimo Francisco Franco
Generalissimo Francisco Franco of Spain

Following the war, Franco became known as El Caudillo (the Leader) and for nearly four decades would rule Spain with a repressive, single party, authoritarian regime. Franco developed a reputation as a narcissistic and vindictive leader. An estimated 200,000 political prisoners died as a result of starvation and executions.

In the aftermath of WWII, his former allegiances were not forgotten.

Spain faced diplomatic and economic isolation and was ostracized by the United Nations. However, with the advent of the Cold War, Franco’s strong anti-Communist bent made him popular with the United States.  In 1950, Spain was allowed to join the United Nations. In 1953, Franco allowed the U.S. to establish 4 air and naval bases in Spain. In return, NATO would protect Spain from foreign invasion. 

As Franco aged into his late 70’s, he tended to avoid daily political affairs, preferring instead to escape the capital to fish and hunt at his estates in the countryside.  In 1969, as his health began to decline, he handpicked Prince Juan Carlos, the grandson of King Alfonso XIII, as his successor. Juan Carlos had spent a good deal of time alongside Franco and publicly supported the regime.  Franco believed the Prince would maintain the authoritarian government that Franco had established.

Franco died in 1975 at the age of 82, after suffering a series of heart attacks and falling into a coma. At his funeral, hundreds of his supporters wore the blue shirts of his Falange party and raised their fists in a fascist salute.  Franco was buried at Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caídos, a huge monument to the Spanish Civil War, built by Franco.  However in 2019, his remains were removed from the memorial and placed in his wife’s mausoleum.

Two days after Franco’s death, King Juan Carlos I set about dismantling Spain’s authoritarian government. Juan Carlos pressed for change immediately upon taking the throne, including the legalization of political parties. He did not follow Franco’s wishes as expected.  Within two years, almost every vestige of Franco’s dictatorship had disappeared from Spain.  The first post-Franco elections were held in 1977 and Spain has remained a democracy ever since.

For more by historical writer Paul Andrews click BOOKs.
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Podcast: The Final Deadly Days of the Knights Templar

For almost 200 years, the famous Knights Templar had considerable power, wealth, and influence across Europe and the Mediterranean.  But it all came to an abrupt and bloody end in 1314. The Knights were originally founded as a Christian, monastic-military order, devoted to protecting pilgrims traveling to and from the Holy Land following the First Crusade. If a “monastic-military” order sounds a bit odd to you, you’re right.  Thanks to huge donations from Kings and Cardinals across Europe, the Knights Templar became one of the richest and most powerful orders in the Middle Ages.  So how did it all end?

The Knights of the Temple (Knights Templar) warrior monks
The Knights of the Temple (Knights Templar) warrior monks
To Read the Knights Templar Blog Post: CLICK HERE
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The Wilmington Massacre, America’s First Successful Coup

White supremacist mob pose in front of Wilmington's black Daily Record newspaper
White supremacist mob poses in front of the black Daily Record newspaper following the Wilmington Massacre, 1898

On November 10th, 1898, a white supremacist mob brutally massacred African Americans in the city of Wilmington, North Carolina. They then deposed the duly-elected city and county government in a violent coup.  The Wilmington Massacre has the ugly distinction of being the only successful coup in American history.  Lost in the political overthrow were the lives of over 100 black citizens, black businesses & leaders, and a most of all, a thriving southern black community.

Before the violence, Wilmington, NC, a coastal city a few miles upriver from the Atlantic Ocean, was thriving and remarkably integrated for 1898. Three out of the ten aldermen were African Americans, and Black people worked as policemen, firemen, and magistrates.  Two-thirds of the population were African American. Blacks owned barbershops, restaurants, tailors, and drug stores.

November 10th, 1898 changed all that, starting in the morning with a mob setting fire to the Black newspaper building. It ended at sundown with dozens dead in the streets and the overthrow of the city government, replaced by the leaders of the white supremacist mob.  Not a single person was later prosecuted for the murders. Even in the era of Jim Crow, such anarchy and brutality was exceptional for the South.  

How did the Massacre and Coup come about?

The massacre was part of a carefully orchestrated coup that toppled a rare, multi-racial government in the American South, post-Reconstruction.  The city also had a rare, Black Middle Class and some 65 black doctors, lawyers and teachers.  The far-reaching goal of the coup stretched beyond just Wilmington – to prevent black citizens across the entire state of North Carolina from ever voting again.

In the election of 1896, 2 years earlier, white Democrats lost control of the state government in Raleigh. A group of white Populists and Black Republicans won control of the state house and senate. The white Democrats were furious and vowed to never let it happen again, at any cost. The party of the old Confederacy promised to forever end “Negro domination” in state elections.

The NC Democratic Party began a broad white supremacy campaign to drive Populist and Republican politicians out of office during the next election in 1898. The campaign used political speeches, printed propaganda, and fear-mongering with the threat of violent “Black Uprisings” to create support amongst whites.  And it worked beautifully.  

They focused on stoking white men’s bigotry and anger, along with white women’s fears of being raped by rampant black men. Prior to the next election, the white newspaper, The Wilmington Messenger, published a controversial speech given by a wealthy Georgia socialite. She supported lynchings for any “inappropriate relationship” of a Black man with white women to “protect women from the ravening Negro beast.”

Alex Manly, the Black newspaper editor of The Daily Record in Wilmington, wrote an editorial condemning unlawful lynchings. It pointed out the hypocrisy of describing Negro men as “Black Brutes,” when white men were guilty of regularly raping Black women at will. He daringly added that some relations between the races were actually consensual.

This editorial only fueled racial tensions, with Wilmington now the focal point of the state.

Alfred Waddell, a U.S. Congressman and former Confederate colonel, called for the removal of the Black Republicans and white Populists from power in Wilmington. In his own speech, he proposed that white citizens should “choke the Cape Fear River with carcasses,” if necessary, to keep Blacks from the polls. White supremacist rallies across the state kept white outrage at a fever pitch.

On Election Day, November 8th, Klan-like Red Shirts across the state used threats and intimidation to stop Blacks from voting.  African American voters however again turned out in large numbers. White supremacists tampered with the returns and stuffed ballot boxes. Because of their illegal tactics, Southern Democrats swept the state election. The next day, The Wilmington Messenger proclaimed, “Yesterday was a glorious day for white supremacy in North Carolina.”

Democrats may have won every seat in the state legislature, but African Americans and white Populists still maintained power in Wilmington’s government. Alfred Waddell, white politicians and businessmen plotted an insurrection, which the city’s white soldiers, police, and vigilantes executed.  The soldiers came from an all-white state militia stationed in Wilmington, commanded by white supremacist, ex-Confederate officers.   

On November 9th, The Wilmington Messenger published a notice from Waddell:

“Attention White Men: There will be a meeting at 11 o’clock at the Court House. Business of the furtherance of White Supremacy will be transacted.”  

Wilmington Messenger notice, 9 November, 1898

An estimated 800 people attended, including ministers, lawyers, doctors, merchants and working men. They drafted a resolution known as the “White Declaration of Independence.” It stated, “We, the undersigned citizens of the city of Wilmington, do hereby declare that we will no longer be ruled, and will never again be ruled by men of African origin.”  More than 450 angry white men signed the declaration.

A group of African American leaders, the Committee of Colored Citizens, were then summoned to a meeting, and ordered to respond to the Declaration by 7:30 AM the next morning. They went to Jacobs’ Barber Shop and drafted a rebuttal reply.  The Committee elected a young Black lawyer, Armond Scott, to deliver their reply. By now, Wilmington’s streets were filled with visibly armed white men. Fearing for his own safety, Scott drops the reply in the mail, and does not deliver it in person.  

On NOVEMBER 10th, 1898, a crowd of white men gather at the Court House. When the Committee of Colored Citizens’ response does not arrive, Waddell leads the men to the Wilmington Light Infantry’s Armory where they arm the mob.  They then march to The Daily Record’ s office a few blocks away.  The whites demanded that both Manly and the newspaper be forever banned from the community.  Manly escapes, ironically because he was mistaken for white, due to his light skin.  At 9:00 AM, the mob ransacks The Daily Record office.

The white mob then sets the newspaper building on fire.

Word of the arson spreads quickly through both White and Black neighborhoods. Tensions ignite at 11:00 AM when Black men at Walker’s Grocery Store face off against white men at nearby Brunje’s Saloon. A shot is fired and someone yells, “White man killed!” Gunfire erupts from the white mob. Unarmed Black men scatter, but were chased through the streets and gunned down.

Violence quickly spreads and the white mob grows to over 2,000 by day’s end. They poured into Black neighborhoods with rifles, revolvers, and even a Gatling gun. The mob now includes soldiers, police, lawyers, bankers, even clergy. Whites began to hunt and gun down black men, many of them simply running to get home safely.  As many as 25 black men are killed trying to cross the 4th Street Bridge. The Gatling gun is even aimed at St. Stephen AME Church. 

Waddell telegrams the governor to call out the other militias, falsely claiming Blacks were rioting in Wilmington! Governor Russell puts Colonel Walker Taylor, a local militia officer in charge of the troops and calls for him to “Preserve the Peace,” at all costs. Wilmington is placed under Martial Law. In the chaos, hundreds of African Americans flee into the marshy swamps surrounding the city.

At City Hall, the coup occurs at 4 PM in the afternoon. 

Waddell and Tayler throw out all the democratically-elected aldermen and install coup leaders. Republican and Populist city officials are forced to resign at gun point. Coup leaders then “elect” Alfred Waddell as mayor.  The mob takes away Black leaders at gun point and jails them “for their own safety.”

The next day, an armed escort forcibly marches the elected city government to the train station and banishes them from the city.  This included Thomas Miller, the richest Black man in town and three prominent white men—the Police Chief, County Commissioner and Mayor. The coup leaders then demanded that white men be hired instead of African Americans. So the Fire and Police Departments fire all the Black men and replace them with whites.  

The new police force reported that only 25 black men had been killed. However, it’s believed that over a hundred African Americans had been murdered and their bodies dumped into the Cape Fear River. All of those known to have died in the massacre were Black. This official list of names never includes all those murdered.

Over the next few weeks, over 2000 African Americans flee the city in response to the Wilmington massacre and coup. Wilmington turned from a black-majority city into a white supremacist haven. In the months to come, No one was prosecuted or punished for the killings and destruction.  A “Black Race Riot” was cited by the white mob as justification for the murder and violence.

In 1900, the NC state legislature effectively stripped African Americans of the right to vote through various Jim Crow Laws. President William McKinley ignored pleas from Black leaders to send in U.S. troops to protect NC Black citizens on election day. Two years before the coup, 126,000 black men were registered to vote in NC. Four years after the coup, the number was just 6,100.

What happened that bloody day was nearly lost to history.

For over 90 years, the perpetrators were cast as heroes in Southern textbooks. The black victims were continually described as rapists and rioters. It took nearly a century for the truth to finally creep back into the general public’s awareness. It was only as the 100 Year Anniversary of the coup grew near, that the city of Wilmington reexamined its own past and the suffering it caused its own Black community.

1898 Memorial in Wilmington, NC
The 1898 Memorial to the Wilmington Massacre, erected in 2008

Today, there’s little physical evidence of what happened there in 1898.  In 2008, one hundred ten years later, the Wilmington Massacre 1898 Memorial was unveiled in Wilmington.  The monument consists of six, sixteen feet high paddles standing in a half circle.  They represent the religious belief among African cultures that those who pass from the living to the dead, do so via water.

There are have been many violent moments in U.S. history, perpetrated against Native Americans, immigrants and African Americans. The Wilmington Massacre, committed by a white supremacist mob, was unique: It was the only successful coup d’état ever to take place in U.S. history on American soil.

如需阅读历史作家保罗·安德鲁斯的更多作品，请点击书籍。
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Lepa Radic, Teenage Resistance Partisan was Executed by the Nazis

Lepa Radic being lead to her execution by the Nazis

Lepa Radic was just a 17-year-old Yugoslavian girl when she was hanged by the Nazis for being a Partisan in 1943.  This extraordinarily brave girl had joined the Yugoslav Partisans in the fight against their Nazi oppressors in World War II, and taken on the most dangerous assignments.  What turn of events lead to her transformation, capture and ultimate execution?

World War II spread rapidly across Europe in 1940 as Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany had conquered Poland, then France, then most of the continent.  Local resistance movements quickly popped up in nearly every occupied nation. These groups did everything from publishing anti-Nazi pamphlets, to helping downed Allied pilots, to conducting guerilla raids and acts of sabotage.  Most were ordinary citizens, some of them, even teenage girls.

Yugoslavia had been created in the treaties following World War I.  The multi-ethnic nation of Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, and Slovenians began as a democracy, but fell into dictatorship in 1929.  As the Nazis took control of Europe, Yugoslavia attempted to remain neutral. But in early 1941, the nation’s leaders yielded to the advancing Nazi threat and joined the Axis powers of Germany, Italy and Japan. Just two days later, Yugoslavian military leaders conducted a coup, installing 17-year-old King Peter II as the head of a new nationalist government.

The spring of 1941 was key to Adolf Hitler.

He intended to invade the Soviet Union with his Operation Barbarossa. However, the emergence of this new nationalist Yugoslavia forced him to delay that plan. He had to secure his Balkan flank against Josef Stalin before invading Russia.  Hitler issued Directive 25, classifying Yugoslavia as hostile and ordered it invaded. The Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia began in April, and the small Yugoslav military surrendered after only 11 days. However, that attack delayed Hitler’s invasion of Russia by 4 critical weeks. That one less summer month to invade the Soviet Union, eventually contributed to Hitler’s failure in Russia. 

The Ustaše regime ruled Yugoslavia as a Nazi puppet, that brutally oppressed Jews and Serbs. While the Nazis and Ustaše government controlled major cities, the German invasion failed to reach its remote and rugged mountains. The Nazi victory wasn’t decisive at all.  This allowed two Serbian resistance groups to emerge there, the Chetniks and the Partisans. 

The Chetniks were Yugoslavian ex-military and loyal to the government of Peter II, now in exile. While some Chetniks opposed the Nazis, some factions collaborated with their occupiers.  As for the Partisans, Yugoslavia banned Communism in 1921, forcing its Communist Party underground. After the Nazi invasion, the Yugoslav Socialists became the Partisans. As their group held socialist beliefs, the Partisans were opposed by the royalist Chetniks. Their leader was Josip “Tito” Broz, the head of the underground Communist Party of Yugoslavia. The Partisans’ goal was drive out the Nazis and establish an independent socialist nation.

Where does young Lepa Radic figure into all of this chaos? 

Lepa was born in 1925 to Serbian parents, in the Bosnian village of Gašnica. During her school years, she was recognized as a serious and studious student.  She came from a hard-working family with communist roots. Her uncle, Vladeta Radić, was actively involved in the underground labor movement and Lepa read many books banned by the government. As a teenager, she too became active in the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia. She joined the Yugoslavian Communist Party in early 1941 at only 15. Then came the Nazi invasion in the spring.

Her father Svetor, and two uncles, all joined the Partisan movement that same summer. But by November, their activities attracted the unwanted attention of the puppet Ustaše government. Secret Police arrested the entire Radić family, including Lepa and her siblings, and held them at the Stara Gradiška prison in Croatia. Two weeks later, undercover Partisans managed to help Lepa and her sister Dara escape. Her father and uncles however, were quickly executed.  After their rescue, the sisters vowed to avenge their father by joining the Partisans the very next month.  Though risking her own life, Lepa Radić courageously joined the 7th Partisan company of the 2nd Krajiski Detachment. She was just 15 years old. 

Lepa volunteered for one of the most dangerous assignments.  She would be serving as a nurse on the front lines, transporting the wounded off the battlefields and helping vulnerable families flee the Axis powers.  She participated in every major combat operation in her area. Her youth and ability to connect with other young people quickly proved to be useful for the Partisans.

She became a field activist next, and later promoted to partisan leader, traveling to villages to recruit new Partisans amongst the young. On one mission, she led a group of young people to harvest fields of grain close to Nazi positions in order to feed the Partisans. For two years, she fought Nazi oppression until her brave actions caught up with her.   

In January 1943, the Nazis and their Chetnik allies, launched Operation Case White.

This was a major offensive against the Yugoslav Partisans. This operation would devastate and nearly destroy the Partisan front. At the Battle of Neretva, Lepa was charged with evacuating the wounded to a field hospital near Grmeč. Saving the wounded was one of the Partisans’ pillar strategies. They had vowed to never leave the wounded behind, because the Nazis routinely executed them. 

In February 1943, Lepa Radić was organizing a rescue of some 150 women and children seeking refuge from the Nazis. Units from the 7th SS Division caught up with them, flanking Lepa and the refugees. She refused to surrender without a fight. Lepa attempted to give them time to escape by firing at the attacking Nazi SS forces with a barrage of rifle fire.  She fired all the ammunition she had left at the advancing Nazis and never ran herself.  Once her weapon was exhausted, the Germans stormed forward and captured her. 

She was taken to the village of Bosanska Krupa.  First, the Germans kept her in isolation, torturing her relentlessly in an attempt to extract information about the Partisans.  But she refused to offer anything but her own name. When after three days of giving them nothing, they sentenced Radić to death by hanging for firing upon a Nazi Division. She continued to refuse to divulge any information about her comrades all the way up to her execution.

On February 8, 1943, Lepa Radic was brought outside to a hastily constructed gallows. It was nothing more than a rope swung over a large tree branch in the town square, in full view of the public. Rather than appearing frightened, she looked resolute instead. As they placed the rope noose around her neck, she passionately cried out to the crowd of Yugoslavs and German soldiers:

“Long live the Partisans! Fight, people, for your freedom! Do not surrender to the evildoers! I will be killed, but there are those who will avenge me!”  

Lepa Radic, 8 February 1943

The Nazi commander in charge scowled at the girl and offered Lepa one last chance to spare her life by giving them the names and location of her Partisan allies. Instead, she shouted a second time:

“I am not a traitor of my people. Those whom you asking will reveal themselves, when they have succeeded in wiping out all you evildoers, to the last man!” 

Lepa Radic, 8 February 1943

Lepa Radic is hanged by the Nazis in 1943

And with that, the angry officer kicked the chair out from under her and she was hanged by the neck until dead. Lepa was just 17. The Nazi officer later reported on her execution: “The bandit girl, hanging in Bosanska Krupa, has shown unprecedented defiance.” In truth, she had intimidated her enemy by showing them a 17 year old Partisan girl having no fear of death.

The execution was captured by the Nazis in a series of haunting photographs meant to intimidate and frighten the population.  Instead, it had the opposite effect. She inspired them.  The legacy of Lepa Radić lived on. No matter if she made the ultimate sacrifice, her death would be avenged, leading to ultimate victory against the Nazis two years later.

After World War II ended, the Yugoslavian Communists under Tito became the country’s ruling party.  As a result, they recognized the Yugoslavian Partisans as one of the most effective guerilla armies in the entire war. In 1951, Lepa Radic posthumously received the National Order of the People’s Hero award, the nation’s second-highest military honor.  She was the youngest person ever to receive the award.

The courage and bravery of this amazing 17-year-old girl continues to inspire those who stand up to the forces of tyranny and fascism around the world. Her heroism is still remembered and admired throughout the Balkans and eastern Europe to this very day. 

For more by writer Paul Andrews, click on BOOKS.
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Jamaica’s Port Royal, the Wickedest Place on Earth, Sank into the Sea

A map of Port Royal, Jamaica in 1692

In 1692, Jamaica’s Port Royal was the richest, busiest, and most nefarious port in the new Americas.  It was frequented by smugglers, pirates, prostitutes and all other unsavory types who roamed the Caribbean Sea. Feared pirates like Blackbeard, Calico Jack Rackham, and Captain Morgan attacked Spanish ships and returned with their booty. Port Royal was so notorious it was considered the “Sodom of the Seas, The Wickedest City on Earth,” an out-of-control haven of booze, gold, and sex. Think of an R rated Pirates of the Caribbean movie and you get the idea. All that rapidly changed the morning of June 7, 1692 when Port Royal was hit by a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami.  Most of the port city literally sank into the sea like the legendary Atlantis.

Port Royal sat entirely on a triangular sand spit of about 50 acres, sticking out into the deep harbor of Kingston, Jamaica.  It was one of the busiest ports in the Americas, with over 200 ships visiting a year.  Port Royal was also densely populated, filled with close to 6,500 souls. Founded originally as a Spanish colony over a 150 years earlier, Jamaica was taken over during an English invasion in 1655.  In Port Royal, then-governor Edward D’Oyley was forced to a recruit a coalition of pirates and privateers to protect his port against the Spaniards. The English turned Port Royal into a military naval base. Its strategic location in the middle of the Caribbean made it ideal for trade, smuggling, and ill-gotten loot.

Under English control, Port Royal went through a remarkable growth in wealth and reputation.

In 1692, it was the largest and richest English town in the Americas. Visitors were impressed with the numerous brick buildings, in contrast to the wooden houses of other colonial towns. Port Royal was laid out with wide, unpaved lanes, named after familiar London streets, each lined with buildings up to four stories tall. Some were constructed right out onto the water, on top of the coral reef.  Rents ran as high as London and it rivaled Boston in size and power.

The riches brought in from trading slaves and sugar, saw Port Royal turn into an unhinged haven of debauchery. A quarter of its buildings were eithers taverns, gaming dens, or brothels.  Pirates routinely attacked and plundered poorly-defended Spanish ships and ports of the Caribbean, while spending their riches on a hedonistic lifestyle in Port Royal. The pirate crews’ voracious taste for wickedness became legendary along the coast. The buccaneers had a free hand to do whatever they pleased, as they were technically the ‘defenders’ of Jamaica.

Amongst them lived and worked various professions – bricklayers, carpenters, shoemakers, smiths, tanners, tailors, armorers and their families. They lived and worked in nearly 2,000 multi-story, often brick buildings, all built, not on bed rock, but rather in the loosely packed sand of the spit.

The earthquake struck without warning on Saturday morning, June 7, 1692 at 11:15 AM.

Survivors said it continued for almost 15 minutes, during which time it destroyed nearly every structure on the peninsula.  Rev. Emmanuel Heath, the Anglican rector in Port Royal, was new to Jamaica. He was yet to embrace the humid climate, the unwashed populace, or the sordid town itself. That particular day, after finishing his morning prayer service at St. Paul’s Church, he walked to a nearby tavern to meet with a friend, John White, the island’s Council President. Soon goblets of wine were brought to them and White lit a satisfying pipe of tobacco.  Suddenly, the wooden floor beneath their feet began to rumble and shake. A shocked Rev. Heath turned to his friend and asked, “What is this?”  There was not time for a response as a multitude of screams erupted.

Larger brick houses began crumbling immediately.  Smaller ones began sliding off into the waters of the harbor.  The earthquake had caused a liquefaction of the spit’s sand, sending it undulating into waves. Large fissures opened and closed, crushing helpless people. Not only were its buildings destroyed with people inside, when the unthinkable happened.  A major portion of the liquifying sand then sank beneath the surface of the harbor.

Two thirds of Port Royal sank beneath the sea, drowning thousands more.  The city’s graveyard split open!  Survivors had to contend with a frightening scene of coffins, bodies, and bones floating around with those just killed. And if all that was not bad enough, the sinking caused an underwater landside which produced a deadly 40 foot tidal wave, which swept into Port Royal and nearby Kingston.

Many of those not killed instantly inside a fallen structure, or swept into the sea, were killed by the massive tsunami. It swept more than twenty vessels off their moorings and sunk them in the harbor. The HMS Swan was carried from the harbor and deposited on top of a building on the mainland.

Over Two Thousand were killed instantly by the Triple Threat.

Another two thousand would die in the days to come from injuries, disease or scavengers. Many stuck alive beneath falling buildings were later devoured by hungry dogs and vultures. As dazed survivors searched the water and rubble for loved ones, thieves were quick to take advantage of the situation, robbing the dead of their valuables and looting the crumbled warehouses.

After the earthquake, only twenty of those fifty acres of Port Royal were still above water. Thousands of the dead bobbed about the harbor for days, causing an intolerable stench.  Others disbursed by the tsunami lay unburied on the rocks and sands where they were washed up.  In the aftermath, virtually every building in the city was uninhabitable, including two English forts. Meanwhile, throughout Jamaica, deep mile-long gaps were opened, often 20 feet wide.  Mountains were levelled, and the courses of rivers had changed.

Rev. Heath survived and describes dashing through narrow streets, “the houses and walls fell on each side of me.” He stumbling his way back to his home, that he might “meet Death in as good a stance as I could.” Heath and White both somehow survived. Many, including Rev. Heath, felt the quake and tidal wave to be a sign of divine retribution for Port Royal’s being the ‘wickedest city in the world.’ He hoped that this terrible judgment would stand as a warning, and that God would make people of ill repute reform their lives.

A depiction of Port Royal, Jamaica after the earthquake
A depiction of Port Royal, Jamaica after the earthquake

Many survived the disaster by holding on to a tree branch or floating wood. They described the sandy streets rising and falling like waves of the sea. They saw people disappear into the sand, then watched as the sand itself dropped away into the harbor. Geologists now believe it to have been of a magnitude 7.5 earthquake that struck Jamaica, with Port Royal at the epicenter.

Poor Port Royal would never recover.

Aftershocks discouraged survivors from completely rebuilding. Instead, the nearby port of Kingston was expanded and later became the capital.  While many colonists relocated to Kingston, some fishermen and merchants remained in Port Royal. A devastating fire swept through the rebuilt town in 1703. Two hurricanes ravaged the area in 1722, and again in 1744, cementing the town’s future. Two earthquakes hit again, one in 1770 and another with a tsunami in 1907, destroying the old fort. Another fire, in 1815, did extensive damage.  By the turn of the century, there were less than 100 homes in Port Royal.

For a hundred years, sailors feared the Sunken City, still visible below the blue-grey waves. They noted the unnerving sensation of floating over the tombs of dead. Today, the remains lie under about 40 feet of water, attracting sightseers and scuba divers. Port Royal provides an underwater museum and a unique site of archeological research. The submerged ruins are a time capsule of everyday life in a 17th century colonial port. In 1969, explorer Edwin Link discovered a brass pocket-watch, dated 1686, with the time stopped at exactly 11:43 am.

Visitors to Port Royal today will find a small, isolated fishing village at the tip of a sand spit that extends into Kingston Harbor for about 18 m/29 km.  With a few sleepy residential streets and a handful of bars, the town is a far cry from its decadent past. Visitors would never guess that it was once the Sodom of the Seas, or the Pompeii of the Caribbean.  In 1981, archaeology expeditions began on the underwater site, yielding a wealth of artifacts.  Aside from the relics recovered, the site remains largely unchanged.

History often repeats itself. So, for better or worse, in January of 2020, the first of many massive cruises ships docked at Port Royal. An innovative new floating pier extends out into the harbor, welcoming 4,000 or more smiling passengers onto the small spit, eager to spend their well-earned booty and have some hedonistic fun in the former Wickedest Place on Earth.

Click BOOKS for more by historical writer Paul Andrews.

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The History of Climate Change in 10 Minutes

The thin Earth's atmosphere as seen from space
Earth’s thin protective atmosphere as seen from the International Space Station, 2020

It’s taken nearly a century of research to convince the majority of the earth’s population that humans are polluting the atmosphere and changing the climate of the planet.  Decades of data now shows that not only is climate change real, but that our political disregard has now left us near the point of no return, with dire consequences ahead of us.  As the earth heats up, climate change has now become the Climate Crisis.  But how did we get to this point so fast? 

By the 1800’s, coal had replacing charcoal and wood as the common fuel across Europe.  Mining made it readily available and it took far less coal than wood to produce the same amount of heat.  The invention of an efficient steam engine by James Watt, paved the way for the massive Industrial Revolution of the mid-century. It also began coal’s use across the globe in locomotives, steam ships, and mills.

As early as the 1820s, French physicist Joseph Fourier stated that some of the sun’s energy reaching the earth is held by the atmosphere, keeping our planet warm.  He proposed that Earth’s thin atmosphere acts the same way a greenhouse does.  Irish scientist John Tyndall explored which gases in the atmosphere played a role in that “Greenhouse Effect.”  His tests in the 1860’s showed that coal gas, containing carbon dioxide and methane, was especially effective at absorbing heat energy. 

By 1895, Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius wondered if increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere from both natural AND manmade means might warm the Earth further. He investigated what might happen if atmospheric CO2 levels doubled. The possibility seemed remote at the time, but his results suggested that global temperatures would increase by a surprising 5C or 9F if left unchecked.

Several events outside the scientific world would change the planet forever. 

In 1859, Edwin Drake struck oil in Titusville, PA, jumpstarting the modern petroleum industry, ultimately led by John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company.  In 1886, German Karl Benz unveiled his curious-looking horseless carriage, the Motor-Wagon, the first true automobile.  It had a new-fangled internal combustion engine, running on a new fuel derived from oil called gasoline. 

A 2nd Industrial Revolution exploded when Westinghouse’s AC electricity (created by burning coal or oil in power plants), expanded industries even further.  The 1920’s saw the opening of vast oil fields in Texas. Then in far off places like the deserts of Arabia and Persia, where the British had discovered oil. Henry Ford produced the inexpensive and wildly successful Model T automobile to the general public. Suddenly the average person could afford a car.

By the 1930’s, British engineer Guy Callendar noticed that carbon emissions from all those tall, factory smoke stacks and car exhausts might be having a warming effect on the planet.  He noted that the North Atlantic region had already warmed significantly following the Industrial Revolution.  He argued for the next 30 years that the greenhouse-effect was warming the planet.  

Our vast oceans naturally absorb some of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  But in 1957, oceanographers Roger Revelle and Hans Suess showed that even our vast oceans will not be able to absorb ALL the extra CO2 that humans were belching into the atmosphere by burning coal and oil. In addition, the oceans too were warming and threatening aquatic life and the fishing industry.

Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory conducted probably the most famous climate research project. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography started it in 1958 when  Geochemist Charles Keeling came up with a way to record CO2 levels.  His data become known as the “Keeling Curve.” The upward, or hockey stick-shaped, curve showed an exponential rise in CO2 levels in our atmosphere. Later computer modeling predicted the possible outcomes of such a rise, showing that doubling CO2 could produce a 2 C or 3.6 F warming of the earth within 100 years.

But what exactly did climate change mean practically for the Earth? 

By 1968, polar studies suggested the future collapse of vast Antarctic ice sheets, which would cause sea levels to raise catastrophically over a century. Some South Pacific island nations would quite literally disappear.  That same year, Apollo astronauts orbited the Moon for the first time.  Humans could now see the Earth as a fragile blue marble, with a wafer-thin atmosphere protecting it, an atmosphere we were constantly dumping pollutants into. 

In April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day took place in the U.S. co-founded by Senator Gaylord Nelson and Harvard graduate student Denis Hayes.  The new Environmental Movement had begun to attain political influence, spreading concern about global pollution.  U.S. President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency and signed the Clean Air Act by year end.

In 1974, the earth’s population reached the 4 billion milestone, doubling in the roughly 50 years since the 1920’s.  It would double again in 40 more years to 8 billion in 2014.  Droughts in Africa, Ukraine, and India during the 1970s caused famine and world-wide food crises. It fanned fears about climate change and water shortages.  The deforestation of CO2-absorbing equatorial Amazon rainforest in Brazil, the so-called Lungs of the Planet, were recognized as a major factor in climate change.  In 1975, U.S. scientist Wallace Broecker first coined the term “Global Warming” in the title of a scientific paper, and it was suddenly everywhere.

IN THE 1980’s, the U.S. election of Ronald Reagan, however, brought a backlash against environmental regulations. Political conservatism, along with the petroleum industry, became linked to loud skepticism and ridicule of “global warming.”  The meltdown of the Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor in Ukraine put a pause on more nuclear plants.  Japan’s Fukushima terrible tsunami disaster in 2011 more or else put the nail in nuclear power’s coffin.  1988 was a critical turning point when that year’s Summer became the hottest on record (one beaten MANY times since, most recently in 2016).

That year also saw more widespread droughts, wildfires and hurricanes globally. 

Drought stricken crops in the Ukraine caused by climate change
Drought stricken crops in the Ukraine caused by climate change, 1988.

Scientists sounded the alarm again about climate change and we finally saw the media, public, industry and some governments pay closer attention.  A year later, in 1989, the United Nations established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to provide a scientific, economic and political view of climate impacts. Conservative UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in a speech to the UN, called for a global treaty on climate change. 

Researchers began accepting the ramifications of a warming Earth. There would be rising ocean levels, polar ice melting, severe heat waves, droughts, famines, and more powerful typhoons/hurricanes fueled by hotter oceans.  Studies predicted that as the poles melted, sea levels could rise between 11 and 38 inches (28 to 98 cm) by 2100. That would be enough to swamp many of the Earth’s low-lying coastal cities like Miami, Amsterdam, Bangkok, and Manilla.

The UN’s IPCC produced an Assessment Report concluding that temperatures have indeed risen over the last century. Humans are indeed adding to the atmosphere’s greenhouse gases and influencing climate. Reports of the breaking up of Antarctic ice shelves and Greenland glaciers began affecting public opinion.  The Kyoto Protocol, adopted in 1997, was the first global agreement to reduce greenhouse gases, and was signed by India, China, EU Leaders and U.S. President Bill Clinton. 

Kyoto called for reducing the emission of 6 greenhouse gases in 41 countries by 2012.  The next year, a freak Super El Nino produced the warmest year on record … once again.  The controversial “hockey stick” graph appeared again, indicating that modern-day temperature rise is striking, compared with the last, relatively flat 1,000 years.

In 2001 however, U.S. President George W. Bush withdrew the U.S. from the Kyoto Protocol (joining Sudan and Afghanistan). He said it was “fatally flawed” and that it would hurt the U.S. economy.  2003 brought a deadly Summer Heat Wave across Europe, accelerating the split between European and U.S. public opinion.  Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore released a controversial documentary in 2006, An Inconvenient Truth, on the dangers of climate change. The film won an Oscar and Gore won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. 

Politicization of climate change exploded, with some industry and government skeptics arguing that IPCC predictions and films like Gore’s were nothing but overblown, liberal science fiction.

The next milestone was the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.

In the Paris Agreement, 197 countries pledged to set targets for their greenhouse gas cuts and to report their progress.  Its goal was to prevent a global temperature rise of 2 C (3.6 F), a critical limit. It was signed by U.S. President Barack Obama. The U.S. had gotten a taste of that when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans a decade earlier, spurring debate over the impact of global warming on storm intensity. 

Then President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement (joining Iran and Libya) in 2016. He cited “onerous restrictions” that punished the United States. That same year, NASA and NOAA found Earth’s 2016 surface temps to be the warmest in modern record. Sounding familiar now?  By 2018, the UN IPCC concluded “rapid, far-reaching” actions were needed NOW to cap global warming in order to avert dire, irreversible consequences for the planet by 2050. In 2020, President Biden placed the U.S. back in the Paris Agreement, then in 2025, President Trump withdrew it again, calling climate change a hoax.

Meanwhile, the younger generation was watching the adults’ indecision and inaction impacting their future planet.  In 2018, a Swedish teenage girl named Greta Thunberg began protesting in front of her country’s Parliament. Her protests to raise awareness for climate change went viral and over 17,000 students in 24 countries participated in her climate strikes. In 2019, Thunberg was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The UN Climate Action Summit has since set a deadline for achieving net zero emissions in 2050.

The 2020‘s brought the Earth multiple, heavy impacts of climate change.

U.S. Hoover Dam and Lake Mead at its lowest levels since 1930
U.S. Hoover Dam and Lake Mead in 2024 at its lowest levels since 1930

We saw a record number of wildfires in the western U.S., burning 10 million acres.  A record number of named hurricanes in the Atlantic , with a dozen reaching U.S. landfall. Record setting droughts experienced in East Africa, Australia and the southwestern U.S.  Record setting monsoon season flooding seen in Bangladesh and eastern India.  Record setting typhoons, cyclones and flooding hitting the Philippines and South East Asia. Record deaths of large coral reefs and species loss throughout the world. Record setting glacier retreats in mountain ranges including the Alps, Greenland, and Alaska. Record setting melting of the Antarctic polar icecap into the oceans.

Over the last decade, new renewable energy systems have developed exponentially. Cost efficient solar, wind, and geothermal tech are surging in the marketplace. Renewable energy is now profitable and a new source of employment.  Investment in coal has stalled, and in some countries stopped completely.  More automobile manufacturers, like Elon Musk’s Tesla, are making profitable electric vehicles. 

Nevertheless, we are still a fossil fuel-based global economy and any transition away from that faces a massive political struggle. The entrenched and very powerful petroleum industry fights it every step of the way, lobbying and funding politicians. Some political leaders continue to call climate change a hoax and have convinced millions it’s some type of scientist-lead conspiracy.

Generation Z is now young, 20-something adults, raising their voices and votes against the causes of climate change and those politicians choosing to ignore it. Gen Z’ers knows THEY will inherit the resulting planet the Baby Boomers have polluted. Our human adoption of carbon-based energy was turned on by the Industrial Revolution, and can be turned off in the future given pro-active action.

Renewable energy is not a cure-all.  We won’t magically stop using petroleum fuels and return to a clean atmosphere, cooler oceans, and normal temperatures.  The effects of greenhouse gases will take decades to work themselves out, IF we reduce their output very soon. To not do so is frankly unthinkable, for those living, our children and grandchildren, and those yet to be born. 

如需阅读历史作家保罗·安德鲁斯的更多作品，请点击书籍。
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Podcast: The Lusitania Sank in just 18 Minutes, Beating Titanic

The British ocean liner RMS Lusitania was struck by a German U-boat torpedo in May of 1915. It sunk within sight of the Irish coast in just 18 Minutes! Compare that to the rather ‘luxurious’ sinking of the Titanic three years earlier in 1912 that lasted 2 hours and 40 minutes. We have all seen the popular Titanic movie, so just imagine our two protagonists, Rose and Jack, having just 18 minutes to escape the massive sinking ship! Welcome aboard the Lusitania.

RMS Lusitania sinks off the Irish coast in 1915.
RMS Lusitania sinks off the Irish coast in 1915
To read a blog version, CLICK HERE.

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Bela Kiss, the Hungarian ‘Vampire’ Serial Killer

Bela Kiss, vampire serial killer - Hungarian military photo, 1914
Bela Kiss, vampire serial killer – Hungarian military photo, 1914

Romania’s Transylvania may be the birthplace of the fictional vampire, Count Dracula, but Hungary holds the distinction of harboring Bela Kiss.  He was a real-life serial killer who murdered and drained the blood from at least 24 young women just before World War I.  That puts London’s Jack the Ripper, at only seven victims, to shame.  But like the Ripper, he was never apprehended, even though his identity was known.

Little is known about his childhood, but by 1901, Kiss was 23 years old. He was living in Cinkota, a town just outside of Budapest, where he rented a house at 9 Kossuth Street. There he ran a prosperous business as a tinsmith. He was well-liked by his neighbors, quite charming, intelligent, and well read, especially in astrology and the occult.  Bela was also tall and handsome, with blond hair and striking blue eyes.  Townspeople regarded him as a gregarious fellow and eligible bachelor.  He would throw well-attended, lavish dinner parties at his house.

Eleven years later, in 1912, Kiss married a local teenage girl, 15 years younger, named Marie.

After only a year of marriage, young Marie began a tryst with a Cinkota artist named Paul Bikari. Soon after Bela discovered the affair, both she and Bikari mysteriously disappeared.  Kiss claimed to his neighbors that the adulterous couple ran away together and immigrated to America.  But in reality, he had strangled them both to death, becoming his first two known victims. Now alone again, he hired an elderly housekeeper by the name of Mrs. Jakubec.

It was also around this time that Kiss began plotting more horrific murders. He placed personal ads, under the alias of Hofmann, in Budapest newspapers, claiming to be a lonely widower looking for marriage. Kiss then used his considerable charms and good looks, to court select women looking for a husband.  He targeted those who were well-off and who had few, if any, nearby relatives.  Bela was regularly seen entertaining various higher-class ladies, most of whom resided in Budapest.  He managed to convince some of them to give him their money, and even sign over their assets to him.

Thus began a long list of lonely women his neighbors saw him with in town.  Rarely the same one from one month to the next.  Kiss continued corresponding with wealthy women. Then, after defrauding them of their money, he would lure them to his house. There, like his wife and her lover, he’d strangle them to death with his bare hands or a length of rope. Although Mrs. Jakubec lived in the house, she never saw any of these women for very long.

Soon a neighbor noticed that Kiss was amassing a large collection of metal drums in his back yard. 

This nosy neighbor thought he was secretly hiding alcohol and reported it to the police. When the constable arrived to investigate, Kiss simply smiled and laughed. He explained he was simply stockpiling gasoline in anticipation of the upcoming war (World War I) and the rationing that would undoubtedly occur. The policeman accepted this logical explanation and no one bothered to actually look inside the barrels. 

In 1914, a teenage Serbian shot the Austrian Archduke in Sarajevo and set off World War I – between Austro-Hungary and Germany against Russia, France and Britain. Like most younger men, Kiss was conscripted to fight for the Austro-Hungarian army in The Great War.  He was assigned to the 40th Honved Infantry Brigade. Before leaving, he entrusted his rented house on 9 Kossuth Street to his loyal housekeeper, Mrs. Jakubec.

Two years transpire and rumors began to circulate in Cinkota that Bela had been either killed at the eastern front, or captured by the Russians. His brigade had seen heavy fighting in the Carpathian Mountains. Casualties were high at the eastern front and his landlord took these rumors as perfectly believable. He decided to clear out Kiss’s belongings from his rented house and put in a new tenant.

Upon inspecting the back yard, he noticed seven large drums that were soldered shut.

The landlord decided to check inside one of the large drums and cracked it open.  He was immediately accosted by the smell of death and decomposition. Horrified, the landlord quickly ran to the house and called the local constable.  The police chief remembered the “gasoline cache” at Kiss’ home and went to acquire it for the Hungarian war effort.

The police arrived in July of 1916 and, over the loud protests of Mrs. Jakubec, began to completely open the metal drum. The officers too were overwhelmed by the horrid stench that emanated from it. Rather than finding gasoline, they discovered the barrel contained the submerged, nude body of a woman with brown hair and a rope about her neck!

Submerged in a brine of methanol (wood alcohol) the corpse was only slightly decomposed and relatively well-preserved. Opening the six other drums revealed the same grisly contents: naked corpses of young strangled women submerged in methanol.  Like many serial killers, Bela Kiss sought to keep, and even preserve, the bodies of his victims like trophies.

The seven drums were sadly only the beginning.

The constable quickly informed the central police in Budapest, who sent Dr. Karoly Nagy, detective chief of the Budapest Police, out to investigate.  Upon seeing the multiple corpses, Nagy immediately notified the Hungarian Army to arrest Bela Kiss at once, if he was still alive.  The discovery sparked a frantic search for Kiss throughout eastern Europe. But in the summer of 1916, the Hungarian Army was in the middle of a chaotic World War. And to compound matters, “Bela Kiss” was, believe it or not, a common name among Hungarian men of the time.

The metal drums at Bela Kiss house at 8 Kossuth Street, Cinkota, Hungary
The metal drums at Bela Kiss house at 8 Kossuth Street, Cinkota, Hungary, 1916

Nagy and his men conducted a detailed search of the property at Kossuth Street. They soon discovered an entire cache of drums buried around the property.  Each one bore another young female corpse pickled in methanol, until 24 in all were accounted for. Two were Marie Kiss and Paul Bikari. All the victims had been strangled like poor Marie.  Some reportedly had puncture marks on their neck.  Autopsies revealed that Kiss had first drained them of their blood before burial.  As the blood was never found, Budapest buzzed with the rumor he had drank it all. That and his supposed ability to mesmerize women led to the nickname of The Vampire of Cinkota.

As Mrs. Jakubec had protested the opening of the barrels, she was immediately arrested as an assumed accomplice in the grisly murders. A distressed Mrs. Jakubec vehemently denied any knowledge of the bodies or of knowing the names of the dead women.  She was in fact adamant in her defense of her employer, the charismatic Bela Kiss. They later learned that the serial killer had left her a small amount of money in his will.  She was later cleared of all suspicions.

Under questioning, the housekeeper stated that Kiss had told her to NEVER enter a certain room in the house, nor let anyone else enter it.  Then Nagy arrived at the locked door, Mrs. Jakubec explained she was not in possession of the key. Police broke down the door, and the chief detective entered the room.  Inside, he found Bela Kiss’s murder den, a room stuffed with evidence of his crimes. 

Bookshelves were filled with volumes of books on topics like poisoning and strangulation. Inside a desk were letters and documents revealing that Kiss had spent more than a decade corresponding with dozens of women.  He advertised in Budapest newspapers under the name Hofmann, claiming to be a lonely man in search of a wife—preferably one with a small fortune.  

When such a woman responded, he’d visit her in the city, lavish her with gifts, and generally romance her – all the while learning if she had close relatives nearby. Those who were alone and wealthy he convinced some to send him large sums of money or their entire savings, in order to start a new life together.

It was inside the desk Nagy also found an album with photos of about 70 women.

The documents seemed to indicate Kiss had been a serial killer and murdering women all the way back to 1903 (eight years before he married Marie). The serial killed reportedly received 174 marriage proposals through his advertising, and accepted marriage from no less than 74 women.  At least 22 came to Cinkota and met their end pickled in a metal drum at 8 Kossuth Street.

Each of the 74 women had their own packet of correspondence in Kiss’s desk.  Nagy reached out to local Budapest precinct police to trace the women. This allowed Nagy to identify several of the bodies as woman reported as missing.  In some cases, the women had sued Kiss for defrauding them out of money on the promise of marriage. Their cases were thrown out when they mysteriously failed to show up in court.

Months passed searching for Kiss, when word came to Nagy in October that a soldier named Bela Kiss was hospitalized in Serbia, suffering from typhoid fever.  Nagy took off right away and boarded a train for Belgrade. Military authorities at the hospital believed they had the right man and detained him. Poor Nagy would never find out for certain. The slippery Kiss found a way to escape before Nagy could arrive. He threw off the hospital guards by placing, of all things, a dead soldier in his bed as a decoy; perhaps in the hope he’d be pronounced dead.

That encounter would be the closest anyone would come to ever catching Kiss. 

Over the decades that followed, several people would claim to spot the serial killer—especially as news of his notorious crime spread across Europe. One witness claimed they saw him right in Budapest in 1919. Others put him in nearby Romania and Turkey. Another man claimed Kiss was with him in the French Foreign Legion in 1920, under the name “Hofmann” again.  Kiss supposedly bragged drunkenly one night about his skill at strangulation.  When police came to investigate, Hofmann he had already fled and evaded capture again.  

In 1932, a New York City detective named Henry Oswald, with a famous memory for faces, was absolutely positive he’d spotted Bela Kiss exiting a subway station in Times Square, but lost him in the crowd. The last reported investigation into a sighting was four years later in 1936. Rumors circulated that Kiss, by now in his late 60’s, was working as a janitor at a New York City apartment building on Sixth Avenue. When police stopped by to check it out, however, they found the janitor had vanished.

And that was the last anyone saw of Bela Kiss. We may never know how or when he met his end, or whether he limited his killing spree just to the brined bodies found at his rented home outside Budapest. What is for certain is that this prolific serial killer somehow, whether through cunning or sheer luck, evaded his entire life the justice he so richly deserved. The final fate of the infamous Vampire of Cinkota serial killer remains a mystery. Where did he go to next? Did he kill again? If so, how many … and who?

For more by writer Paul Andrews, click BOOKS.
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