The First Transgender Rebel – Isabelle Eberhardt

Isabelle Eberhardt
Isabelle Eberhardt dressed as an Arab male

The words feminist, adventurer, rebel and cross-dresser are not usually attributed to any woman in the 1890’s. But Isabelle Eberhardt boldly broke every rule of her day, then made up new ones.  In her short life, she smoked heavily, drank profusely, carried a revolver, had numerous lovers, and usually dressed like a man.  Who was this forgotten rebel on the 19th century?

Isabelle was born in Geneva 1877, 5th child to an aristocratic Prussian mother and a Russian father, who was both a political anarchist and defrocked priest.  At an early age, young Isabelle would dance about in their garden like an untamed animal, doing whatever she pleased.  She was taught by her father that girls should be as educated same as boys.  It helped that she was keenly smart.   She grew up multi-lingual, learning French, German, Russian, Latin, Italian, and Arabic. 

Isabelle began cross-dressing while still at home, where her father expected girls to perform both physical and intellectual labors.  She cut her hair boy-short and wore men’s clothing, more practical for riding horses. She was one of the only European women allowed to join the Fantasia – a Swiss exhibition that involved racing horses and shooting guns. Spellbound by foreign travelogues, she dreamed of visiting the exotic Maghreb in northwestern Africa.

At only 18, Eberhardt published her first short story, Infernalia, under the pseudonym Nicolas Podolinsky. It can only be described as necrophiliac erotica, or “sepulchral sensuality” as it was called in her day.  It would not be her only published work.

Then in 1897 at 21, Isabelle finally traveled to North Africa with her mother, where they both converted to Islam. Her mother died soon after, but Isabelle decided to remain there, making the Maghreb her home.  She journeyed through French colonial Sahara including Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria – often alone and on foot.  She began travelling dressed as a young Arab man, introducing herself as Si Mahmoud Saadi. Dressed in a male burna, with a fez atop her shaved head, she shared tents with both Arab men and French soldiers.

“What are you, a stranger, doing amongst all these nomadic warriors?” she was once asked.  “I am obeying my destiny,” was her answer.

Her conversion to Islam did not mean she was pious. Quite the opposite, she was a heavy drinker, smoker, and hashish addict. Eberhardt took numerous lovers, never saved much money, and lived destitute most of the time. Despite her high-energy, adventurous lifestyle, she was often moody and depressed, a trait she blamed on her Russian father.  Today, she’d likely be diagnosed as bipolar.  In short, Eberhardt was a train wreck waiting to happen.

Despite her many addictions, writing was centrally important to her and she was eager to be published.  Isabelle wrote she was “driven to maintain two lives, one adventurous that belongs to the Desert, and one, calm and restful, devoted to thought.”  She was also deeply spiritual and motivated to change the world. Eberhardt condemned French colonialism in the Sahara, and openly conveyed her resentment of established gender roles for men and women.

Isabelle didn’t seem to worry about getting pregnant.  Often poor and malnourished, she likely could not even get pregnant.  Tougher than most men, Eberhardt always chose the hard earth to sleep on over a soft bed. Physical denial was a means of self liberation over what she called her ‘inconvenient biology.’ When asked about her Spartan lifestyle, she responded:

“Suffering is a very positive thing, for it sublimates the emotions, and produces great courage.”

Isabelle Eberhardt

Her writings from the Maghreb were unlike the more romantic works about colonial Africa, favored by male authors.  She often placed her female characters in controversial roles. One of her characters decides to sell her body for money as the only escape for women who did not want to be trapped in any marriage.  Though now a Muslim, Eberhardt denounced the subservient role of Muslim women.  She nevertheless fully entered Arabic society, including the secret Sufi brotherhood, Qadriya.

It was not an easy path.  Her beliefs and male appearance often met with strong condemnation. It simply wasnʹt acceptable for a woman to: dress like a man, discuss politics, frequent coffee houses, smoke hashish and drink alcohol.  She cast off all norms associated with a turn-of-the-century woman.  It was said she drank more than a French Légionnaire, smoked more hashish than an addict, and made more love than a prostitute. When asked about her proclivities she responded:

“No one ever lived more from day to day than I, or was more dependent upon chance.”

Isabelle Eberhardt

Her behavior was peculiar not only to the French colonials, but also the local Imazighen tribes. While working as a journalist, both the Algerians and French tried to use her as a spy.  She never had much interest though, but that didn’t stop a sabre-wielding assassin from nearly cutting her arm off.  She survived the attempt and in classic fashion, kept the sabre as a trophy. She even lobbied to have her attacker pardoned, though the wound left her in severe pain.

Through her affiliation with the Qadiriyya Sufis, she championed often violent demonstrations against French colonial occupation. Eberhardt wrote of her travels in several newspapers, including The Algerian News. She never made much money from her writing though, and what little she had, she spent quickly on tobacco, booze or books.

In 1901, Isabelle married an Algerian soldier, Slimane Ehnni, with whom she fell wildly in love.

When they got married, she broke down and wore a woman’s wig, for once bowing to convention.  At one point, she even considered settling down to a quiet married life. “God had pity on me and heard my prayers,” she wrote. “He gave me the ideal companion, so ardently desired, and without whom my life would be mournful.” The young lovers talked about acquiring a small business to run together.

Isabelle Eberhardt
Isabelle Eberhardt in Moroccan attire

But it was absurd to think marriage would slow down a person like Eberhardt. While Ehnni’s post kept him in the north Saharan country, she worked as a war correspondent at the Moroccan-Algerian border. She carried out intelligence missions acting as intermediary between the local people. With her perfect Arabic and knowledge of the region, Eberhardt proved a valuable asset.

In the fall of 1904, Isabelle met up with her husband in the village of Aïn Sefra, in the Algerian province of Naama.  They hadn’t seen each other for 8 months and spent what would be her last happy night together. The next day, at around 11 in the morning, the two were having an argument in their tent, when a deafening wall of water rushed down from the Algerian mountains in a freak flash flood.  A large pack of melted ice would obliterate a quarter of the small town.

The couple barely had time to react to the strange roar, before a wall of water hit the town.  Ehnni was swept away and survived, but Eberhardt’s body was found pinned underneath a large wooden beam.  She was just 27.  She had just completed a manuscript of stories and the muddy pages still surrounded her like fallen leaves.  A grief stricken Ehnni ordered soldiers to sift through the rubble to find and preserve all her papers.

When she died, Isabelle Eberhardt was physically wasted. Though still young, heavy smoking, drinking, and drug use had taken their toll, as had years of poor nourishment.  She suffered from malaria and likely syphilis from her many partners. Despite her youth, were it not for the flood, her body would not have carried on much longer.

Isabelle Eberhardt’s legacy as a revolutionary feminist rests less on her writing than on her very life, which acquired legendary status. Her works appeared in books posthumously, published to critical acclaim. Vagabond made its debut as a novel in France in 1922. The Androgyne du Desert, as the French called her, has inspired plays, a 1991 film with Peter O’Toole, a 2012 opera, and even an off-Broadway musical, The Nomad. 

Today, androgyny is not such a scandal, or even a shock.  Numerous women, from actresses like Tilda Swinton, to models like Grace Jones, to singers like Pink have adopted an androgenous appearance and lifestyle.  And let’s not forget the opposite feminine adoption by men, with classic examples like musicians Elton John, Boy George, or Prince. Being transgender, nonbinary or gender neutral today, while more accepted, still carries with it some of the same social stigma endured by Isabelle Eberhardt, a hundred year ago.

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Edith Wilson – America’s Forgotten Woman President

Edith Wilson and President Woodrow Wilson
First Lady Edith Wilson and President Woodrow Wilson

On the morning of October 2, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson, then in his second term, attempted to stand from his bed in the White House private quarters and suffered a massive stroke. He collapsed to the floor and First Lady Edith Wilson had to drag him back to bed, where he lost consciousness. Mrs. Wilson frantically phoned the White House usher downstairs, “Please get Dr. Grayson immediately! The president is very ill!”

An hour later, the doctor emerged from the bedroom in shock … the President of the United States was paralyzed.

For months to come, the entire affair, including Wilson’s extended illness and disability, was shrouded from the nation in secrecy. The President’s stroke left him severely paralyzed on his left side and partially blind in his right eye. Not to mention the psychological trauma that accompanies such a life-altering event. The press was told the president was not being seen in public because he was merely suffering from “a severe case of exhaustion.”

Highly protective of her husband’s standing, the First Lady shielded Woodrow from guests and began a “bedside government” that excluded much of Wilson’s Cabinet and Congress. Anyone who wished to see the President of the United States now had to go through Edith Wilson. She made the decision as to what was brought to the President’s attention and when.  With his consent, she secretly signed her husband’s name to all manner of correspondence and legislation.  How ironic that while the Women Suffrage movement marched at the White House fence, there was in fact a secret woman president inside.

How had this unprecedented situation come about?

For the prior 6 months, President Wilson had been in Europe negotiating World War I’s Treaty of Versailles AND planning the new League of Nations (precursor to our United Nations). As the summer progressed, he realized a defeat regarding the League was brewing in the wary Senate. So an already exhausted president returned to the US and embarked on a 4 week, 8000 mile speaking tour by train to make his case for the League of Nations directly to the public.

Wilson had a dangerous habit of working incessantly, without exercise, entertainment, or relaxation. Combining his professorial skills in history, political science, and oration, he threw himself into defending the League of Nations. But with each whistle stop, the man became paler, thinner, and ever more frail. He lost his appetite and he began complaining of severe daily headaches.

On an evening in September 1919, after speaking in Colorado, Edith discovered Woodrow in their private coach with his facial muscles twitching, along with blurred vision, and crippling nausea. In modern medical terms, the President had suffered a transient ischemic attack (mini-stroke) due to a brief loss of blood flow to the brain.

The speaking tour was abruptly canceled and the couple quickly returned to the White House. Upon their arrival in DC, the president appeared ill, but was able to walk from the station to their car. He tipped his top hat to the crowd, shook a few hands, and was whisked to the White House.  Barely a week later, the President suffered his far more massive stroke.

So who was this bold woman who stepped in and essentially ran the presidency?

Edith Bolling was born in the small hamlet of Wytheville, VA, daughter of a local judge of modest means. She desperately wanted out of her meager existence, sharing small quarters with a large family. She eventually married an older man, a Washington DC silver & jewelry store owner named Norman Galt. They had one child, who died in infancy. Her husband passed shortly thereafter. Though the store was deeply in debt, she took over management and brought it back to solvency.

In 1915, during a tea at the White House, she was spotted by the recently widowed President Wilson. The president’s first wife Ellen had died of kidney disease the year earlier. The lonely President was, as they say, smitten by the 43-year-old black haired beauty, who was 15 years his junior! Edith was certainly no wallflower and was in fact quite progressive in many ways. As a widow, she had purchased an automobile and became the first woman to be issued a Washington DC driver’s license.

Though he’s often portrayed as a stiff, aloof academic, Woodrow wrote long love letters to his first wife and was playful romantic with Edith. After a brief 8 month courtship, they were married in the White House. With World War I consuming Europe, any scandal over the quick marriage was ignored by the press and Congress. The popular Wilson was easily re-elected to a 2nd term.

By February 1920, news of the President’s stroke finally began to leak in the press.

Nevertheless, the full details of Wilson’s disability, and his wife’s management of presidential affairs, were never realized by the American public. How could the average American not know of this? You must remember at the time there was no internet, TV or even radio, just the newspapers.  During a meeting the bedridden president held with two demanding Senators, Edith cleverly hid the extent of his paralysis by keeping his left side covered with a blanket.

In those days, constitutional guidelines didn’t yet exist for transferring presidential power during a severe illness.  Wilson had all his mental faculties, and stubbornly refused to resign. The unambitious Vice President Thomas Marshall wouldn’t assume the presidency unless Congress passed a resolution, and the White House’s Dr. Grayson certified the president’s “inability to discharge the powers and duties of said office” as per the constitution.  Due in large part to Edith’s actions, neither of these happened.

Edith Bolling Wilson and Woodrow Wilson
Edith Bolling Wilson and Woodrow Wilson

Slowly, Wilson partially recovered and (with Edith) managed to complete his second term. He died three years later at only 67 … with his last word being, of course – ‘Edith.’ Cognizant of her husband’s legacy, for the rest of her life Edith Wilson always insisted Woodrow had performed ALL of his presidential duties after his stroke. She stated in her memoir:

I studied every paper sent from the different Secretaries or Senators, digested and presented the items that warranted the attention of the President. The only decision that was mine was what was important and when to present matters to my husband.

First Lady Edith Wilson

Today, historians agree that First Lady Edith Wilson was much, much more than a mere “steward” of President Wilson during his illness and recovery. Decades before Hillary Clinton, she was in fact, essentially serving as the nation’s First Female President until Wilson’s 2nd term ended in 1921. Edith Wilson lived to the ripe old age of 89, playing a prominent role in D.C. society. She died in 1961 and is buried next to her husband in the crypt of Washington’s National Cathedral.

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How a Teenage Boy Started World War I

Archduke Franz Ferdinand and wife Sophie in Sarajevo
Archduke Franz Ferdinand and wife Sophie in Sarajevo just before World War I

On 28 June 1914, Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his beloved wife, Sophie were visiting the picturesque city of Sarajevo in the Balkans. He was attending military exercises in neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina. Franz Ferdinand was also the nephew of the Emperor, and heir to the throne as well!  The Austro-Hungarian Empire had recently annexed the Balkan provinces, infuriating neighboring Serbia. Tensions were high and the fuse for World War I was about to be lit by a teenage boy.

The Young Bosnians, revolutionary students and Serbian nationalists, learned of the Archduke’s visit.

They immediately plotted his assassination. The revolutionaries planted assassins along his travel route through the city. In Sarajevo, Franz and Sophie boarded an elegant open-topped car for a pleasant motorcade ride through the city to the town hall. They occasionally waved to the populace as they drove by.  As the cars passed, one of the Serb assassins suddenly hurled a bomb at their vehicle! It bounced off the folded roof top, and rolled underneath the wrong automobile. The loud explosion wounded two army officers and some unlucky bystanders, but not Franz Ferdinand and Sophie.

“I AM FINE!” the Archduke bellowed at is guards.  And rather than flee Sarajevo at that point, he incredibly insisted they continue on to town hall. Only upon finishing his royal duties there did he agree to leave the city. They drove away at a higher speed this time, to dissuade other potential bombers. Unfortunately, their chauffeur was unfamiliar with Sarajevo and turned off the Appel Quay onto a side street by mistake.  It was at this corner where Serbian teenager Gavrilo Princip was nervously waiting. Gavrilo (Gabriel) was a short, skinny 19-year-old peasant Serb, barely able to grow a mustache.  He and his co-conspirators had been radicalized by the infamous Black Hand Society after the Serbian army rejected them. 

As the 6 car motorcade attempted to back up, Princip saw his chance.

He whipped out his Browning pistol, charged forward, and fired two shots into the carriage at point-blank range. Bullets pierced the Archduke’s neck and Sophie’s abdomen as she lunged forward to protect her husband. She collapsed back onto the car seat. The Archduke clutched his bleeding neck. “No, no Sophie. Sophie, don’t die!” he managed to cry out. “Live for our children.” The motorcade rushed the pair to a hospital as they bled profusely.

19 Year old Gavrilo Princip, Serbian assassin who precipitated World War I

An angry mob instantly attacked Princip as he attempted to commit suicide with his pistol. He shouted proudly to the furious crowd, “I am a hero of Serbia!” The police arrested a black-eyed Gavrilo and threw him in jail. Within the hour, both Franz Ferdinand and Sophie had died. Sadly, it just happened to be their wedding anniversary as well.   They left behind three young children in Vienna.

Tensions were already running high between all of Europe’s great allied powers. There had not been a continental war for almost 60 years, but all that was needed was someone to light the fuse.  The Austro-Hungarin Empire considered the Serbs thieves, pigs and dogs, in no particular order. Gavrilo Princip’s assassination of the Archduke set off a rapid chain reaction of hostilities across Europe. They would culminate in our planet’s first ever WORLD WAR:

  • Exactly a month later, on 28 July 1914 Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.
  • Russia, bound by treaty to Serbia, then began to mobilize its vast army in Serbia’s defense.
  • Germany, allied to Austria-Hungary, saw this as an act of war, and declared war on Russia on August 1st.
  • France, bound by treaty to Russia, then mobilized its army as well, so Germany declared war on France as well on August 3rd.
  • Germany then invaded neutral Belgium the next day, as a precursor to reach Paris.  Britain, allied with Belgium & France, then, declared war against Germany on August 4th, and by extension Austria-Hungary as well.
  • Japan, bound by treaty with Britain, declared war on Germany on August 23rd.  Austria-Hungary responded by declaring war on Japan on August 24th. 
  • The Ottoman Empire invaded Russia in October, so the Russian Empire declared war against the Turks.
  • With the British Empire came the armies of its many colonies in Australia, Canada, India, and South Africa.
  • Italy managed to stay out of it for a year, but joined on the side of the Allies in 1915. It’s really tragic how quickly and easy war was able to cascade globally out of control.
  • U.S. President Woodrow Wilson tried to stay neutral at first, but finally declared war against Germany and Austria-Hungary and entered the war in 1917.
  • The alliances were chosen and battles quickly broke out across Europe.  Britain-France-Russia-America against Germany-Austria-Hungary-Turkey, AND all their colonies across the globe. 

More than 9 Million soldiers on both sides would die in the bloody trenches and battlefields of the “GREAT WAR TO END ALL WARS.”

World War I introduced new implements of death for the very first time, like tanks, machine guns, bi-wing airplanes and poison mustard gas . Four long years later, millions of young men had perished in the French and Belgian trenches or the battlefields of eastern Europe. The introduction of American forces finally tipped the scales. Germany and Austria-Hungary were forced to surrender at the Paris Armistice.  It was signed in a railroad car outside the capital on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month – 11 November 1918.

But it wasn’t over for many. The Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918 would bring further death to the world. The surviving troops returned to their home nations with the deadly influenza virus in their lungs. 50 Million more people would die from the pandemic.

And what of teenage Gavrilo Princip?  At his October trial in Vienna he stated:

“I am a nationalist, aiming for the unification of all Yugoslavs.  I do not care what form of state, but we must be free from Austria.”

He was legally too young to be hanged, being just 20 days shy of his 20th birthday.  The court instead gave Gavrilo a 20-year prison sentence.  He was sent to the Terezin prison in Bohemia and placed in chains and solitary confinement. He died of severe malnutrition and tuberculosis four years later, at only 23.  In Serbia today, Princip is remembered as a national hero and a freedom fighter, who fought to liberate his people from Austrian imperial rule. In 2014, 100 years later, a statue of Gavrilo Princip was erected in Belgrade and unveiled by the Serbian President.

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Teddy Roosevelt’s Darkest Day was NOT as US President

Young Theodore Roosevelt 1884
Young Theodore Roosevelt 1884

Theodore Roosevelt’s darkest day did not occur while he was President of the United States, but rather 17 years earlier.  On  13 February 1884, a young Teddy Roosevelt was toiling away in the New York state legislature in Albany. He was attempting in his usual energetic fashion to get a reform bill passed.  He had found his niche in politics and was the Bull-in-a-China-Shop of the state assembly, admired by some and ridiculed by others.  A day earlier, his darling wife, Alice, had just given birth to their first child in Manhattan, a daughter whom they named Alice Lee.  Roosevelt could not have been more fulfilled or happy.

Only 25 years old, the thrilled new father intended to return home the next day to see his wife and new child. That is, until his brother sent him an urgent telegram summoning him back at once!  He was shocked to read that both Alice AND his widowed mother were gravely ill.  A panicked Roosevelt did not even pack a bag and rushed to the Albany train station. He arrived in New York City well after midnight, and took a handsome cab to their townhouse on East 57th Street.  His younger brother greeted him at the door of his family home. Elliott looked pale and ominously proclaimed to him,

“Theodore, there is a curse on this house.”

His widowed mother, Mittie, had developed typhoid and was burning with fever on a couch downstairs.  His younger sister Corinne sat next to her, applying a cold compress to their mother’s forehead.  And just upstairs in their bedroom, his beloved Alice lay in a semi-comatose state. She was barely able to recognize her husband. He sat on the bed next to her with tears in his eyes. He squeezed her hand in his, “Alice, my darling, it is I, Theodore.”  In addition to all this, he had a newborn child, Alice Lee, crying in a bassinet at the foot of the bed.  His older sister Barnie was attempting to comfort the newborn baby.  With the family doctor hovering between patients, Roosevelt settled in for what proved to be very long and sleepless night.

At three in the morning of the 14th, his mother succumbed to her high fever and passed away.  Leaving her with his three siblings, a distraught Teddy Roosevelt then staggered upstairs to be with Alice.  At 2 pm in the afternoon, his wife of four years died in his arms of Bright’s Disease, a severe kidney ailment that had gone undiagnosed.  She was only 22 years old.  One can only imagine the grief and disbelief the future president went through that dreadful day.  That evening, though possessing a healthy new daughter in the nursery, Roosevelt wrote a large X and a single sentence in his diary:

‘The light has gone out of my life ...’

This double tragedy devastated the usually optimistic young Teddy. Burdened by grief, he felt he could not yet be a father to his new child.  He left the infant Alice Lee in the care of his older sister Bamie.  Then he resigned as state assemblyman and abandoned his political career.  Instead, he struck out as far from New York City as he could get. He travelling to the wild and untamed Dakota Territories.  There he bought a small ranch which he named Elkhorn. He built a log cabin, and lived as a cattleman, though as he had no experience doing so.  At first, he was laughed at by the locals, this rich fellow with spectacles and fancy clothes. In typical fashion, he threw himself into learning to ranch and gradually earned the respect of real cowboys.

The stark isolation from his former life slowly helped heal the future president.  After two years in the Dakotas, Teddy Roosevelt decided it was time to return home. He needed to become a father to Alice and resume his life. So distressed by his wife’s death, he rarely spoke of her again, even to their daughter as she grew up. He ordered those around him not to utter his wife’s name again, and did not write of her in his autobiography years later.

Teddy Roosevelt Rough Rider
Colonel Teddy Roosevelt Rough Rider, 1898

Once back in New York, he again took up politics, as New York City’s Police Commissioner, enacting a series of reforms in the notoriously corrupt department.  He married his second wife, a childhood friend Edith Carow, and together they raised his high–spirited and precocious daughter, Alice Lee, who later became a bit of a national celebrity.  He eventually had five more children with Edith.   President McKinley appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Navy next, beginning his Washington career. After a famous stint with the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War in Cuba, he became a national hero, then Governor of New York in 1898.

It was around then, the Republicans selected a still young Teddy Roosevelt as President William McKinley’s Vice President. When McKinley was assassinated in 1901, barely a year into his second term, Theodore Roosevelt suddenly rose to become President of the United States.  He was only 43.  He went on to achieve many great accomplishments including building the Panama Canal, starting the National Park Service, winning the Nobel Peace Prize, and breaking up powerful corporate monopolies.  TR, as he was called, easily won a second term and became one of America’s most beloved presidents, eventually earning a place on Mount Rushmore.

Of his first wife Alice, TR wrote the last words he ever spoke of her for a private memorial at the funeral:

“She was beautiful in face and form, and lovelier still in spirit; as a flower she grew, and as a fair young flower she died.  Fair, pure, and joyous as a maiden; loving, tender, and happy as a young wife; when her life seemed to be just begun, and when the years seemed so bright before her – then, by a strange and terrible fate, death came to her.”

Theodore Roosevelt
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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.”

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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?

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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.

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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‘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.

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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.

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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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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