Blog Archive for Sarah Albee, Writer of History and Science Books for Kids

Duel Purpose

Posted March 21, 2016

I saw the show Hamilton last week. My family is somewhat obsessed with it, and we knew every note of the soundtrack. Still, it exceeded our expectations.

One question left unanswered by the musical is: what became of Alexander Hamilton’s killer, Aaron Burr? Why was he not arrested for murder?

Quick summary: Burr, the Vice President under Thomas Jefferson, challenged Hamilton to a duel, after years of simmering tensions and mutual badmouthing of one another in the press. On July 11^th, 1804, Burr shot Hamilton, and by the afternoon of the following day, Hamilton was dead.

The duel had been fought in New Jersey, where dueling was legal. Still, there was a movement to have Burr arrested for murder in both New York and New Jersey. Dueling was a misdemeanor, but murder was a felony. Burr temporarily fled to Georgia, but in November, he returned to Washington to complete his vice-presidential term.

He then moved west, became embroiled in a conspiracy to seize some western territories, was arrested for treason, and acquitted. Whatever was left of his reputation was now destroyed. He left for exile in England, and lived there until 1812. He returned to New York, practiced law in relative obscurity, and died in 1836 at the age of eighty.

At the time of the Burr-Hamilton incident, dueling as a way to resolve grievances and defend one’s honor had become unfashionable in the North. Both George Washington and Benjamin Franklin had condemned the practice. It was still common in the South. But even in places where it was illegal, lawmakers tended not to enforce punishments for duelists. It wasn’t until the Civil War that dueling went completely out of fashion, even in the South.

Facts and Blarney about Saint Patrick (Reposting!)

Posted March 17, 2016

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day! While not Irish myself, I do have quite a few Irish relatives by marriage on my Italian mother’s side. (“They meet each other in church!” as my Irish uncle-by-marriage once cheerfully explained to me.) To honor the day, I thought I’d share five fascinating facts about Ireland’s patron saint, Patrick (approximately CE 389 to 461). March 17^th is believed to be his death date.

We’re not sure who the original inhabitants of Ireland were, although some historians believe the Greeks or Scythians arrived in Ireland as early as 1000 BCE. Around the fifth century BCE, the Celts moved in and there was a lot of clannish fighting; warriors were buried standing up, to be ready for battle. Their religion was polytheistic, overseen by priest-like druids, and everyone believed in fairies and witches and elves.

So on to the fascinating facts about Saint Patrick:

1. Saint Patrick wasn’t even Irish. He came from somewhere in western England, the son of a Roman citizen. Patrick had no interest in Christianity until he had a religious conversion as a teenager.

2. Patrick did not come to Ireland until he was sixteen, when he was captured by pirates. Irish brigands enslaved him and brought him to Ireland, where for six years he herded pigs. He escaped, caught a ship to Gaul (or maybe Italy), and after a time managed to rejoin his family in England. But by this time he had become intensely pious. He was ordained as a priest and returned to Ireland, believing he’d received a divine message to convert the pagan Irish to Christianity.

3. The three-leafed shamrock that has come to symbolize St. Patrick’s Day probably predated Patrick. According to legend, Patrick used the plant to teach the Irish about the Holy Trinity, although it had probably long been a sacred symbol of rebirth and eternal life in pagan times.

4. Saint Patrick supposedly banished all the snakes from Ireland, but there never were snakes in Ireland. The last Ice Age kept the island too cold for reptiles, and after it ended, the sea protected the island from being colonized by snakes. Archeologists have never found snake fossils. Both the shamrock myth and the snake myth were probably stories that were disseminated by monks, long after he’d died.

Every year on Saint Patrick’s Day, the Chicago River is dyed green for a few hours.

5. Actual Irish people did not, historically, wear green on Saint Patrick’s Day. It was a pretty minor holiday in Ireland. The day was popularized by Irish Americans in the 1970s as a way to honor their ethnic heritage. While it’s customary to wear green on Saint Patrick’s Day in the U.S., that color was considered unlucky in Ireland.

Sources:

Durant, Age of Faith (1950 ed), 82 – 4

“Snakeless in Ireland: Blame Ice Age, Not St. Patrick – National Geographic News“. Retrieved 16 March 2014

“St. Patrick’s Day Facts: Snakes, a Slave, and a Saint—National Geographic News” retrieved 16 March 2014

Images:

Saint Patrick by Andreas F. Borchert via Wikimedia Commons

Chicago River by Bert Kaufmann from Roermond, Netherlands, via Wikimedia Commons

Murderous Mosquitoes

Posted February 22, 2016

I saw this table posted at the site of my friend, Paul, who is an infectious disease specialist. Have a closer look. It’s pretty amazing.

It’s from the Gates Foundation website. What’s striking is that the deadliest animal on the planet is not humans (which I would have predicted), but mosquitoes (which would have been my second guess). I suppose you’d have to define just what is meant by “deadly,” as humans have indirectly caused the most harm to the planet in the form of pollution, environmental degradation, and destruction of habitats. But mosquitoes have certainly caused the most direct harm.

The Zika virusis vectored by the Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, which are the same species that transmit yellow fever, dengue, and chikungunya. Zika is truly terrifying, and yet it is the latest in a long history of insect-vectored diseases that have wreaked havoc on human populations. If you’re a kid and want to read more about the history of insect-vectored diseases, you might be interested in my book, Bugged.On a positive note—this article in Entomology Todayreports promising results with a clip-on mosquito repellant device.

Visiting Mount Vernon

Posted February 8, 2016

Last week, my history-teacher-husband and I traveled to Mount Vernon, the Virginia home of George Washington, for a research trip. The staff at Mount Vernon were beyond amazing. Gail Cassidy gave us an in-depth, specialized tour of the mansion and its surroundings (including special access to places like the basement, and the cupola). We met with Jaclyn Jecha in the education department, and the librarian, Sarah Myers, gave us a personalized, in-depth tour of the library and its holdings. We also met with a Mount Vernon historian (the delightful Mary Thompson), who has written about a billion pages of Mount Vernon history in clear, inviting prose (I told her she needs to write for kids), and who fielded my unending barrage of questions about GW and eighteenth century social history.

I spent long hours in the library, poring through binders and journals and letters that Sarah pulled for my personal use.

I wish I’d taken more pictures, but here are a few:

Our accomodations in the “scholars’ residence”:The entrance to the library:My view from my desk:Alexander Hamilton, hovering just above my head and channeling smart-vibes:Just some of GW’s papers (they’re still compiling more):The necessary, on the grounds of Mount Vernon:A peek inside—yep, a three-seaterThe dismal slave quarters, which must have been freezing cold in the winter.Me standing next to life-sized George. One of the burning questions I had for Mary was how tall WAS he? Some sources say 6’3. But in multiple letters to his tailor, GW himself describes himself as being six feet tall. Mary thinks that’s why his clothes never seemed to fit well. She thinks he was, in fact, just shy of 6’3.The ha-ha, which runs around the whole upper property and ornamental gardens. What? You don’t know what a ha-ha is? You can read about them here. And maybe my favorite thing: here’s GW’s personal copy of the brand-new Constitution. Sarah says he didn’t habitually write in his books, but he did write in this one: can you see where he penciled in “President?” Those would be his perceived duties, as president of the new country.

Margin Notes from a Master

Posted February 2, 2016

As a kid, I loved detective stories. My favorites were Agatha Christie (I can’t wait to read this new bookabout poisons in Agatha Christie stories). I also devoured Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. Both Christie and Conan Doyle were not just excellent writers—they were both excellent chemists. It was their stories that sparked my lifelong fascination with poison.

So I was thrilled to discover this award-winning articleat the Baker Street Journal website written by Harold Billings. While a librarian at the University of Texas, Austin, Billings acquired a medical textbook called The Essentials of Materia Medica and Therapeutics, written by Sir Alfred Baring Garrod. The copy is signed Arthur Conan Doyle/Edinburgh University/1878–79.

Conan Doyle was a doctor. He got his medical degree from the University of Edinburgh in 1881. Virtually every page of the book is heavily underlined and annotated in Doyle’s hand.

In one of his margin notes, Conan Doyle describes the effects of arsenic poisoning. Billings points out that it’s written with strange line breaks and punctuated as though in verse. (Conan Doyle does this with other poisons throughout the book.) He conjectures that the verse form may simply have been Conan Doyle amusing himself, or perhaps that he was writing it as a mnemonic device so that he could remember the symptoms. Whatever the reason, it’s one of the most evocative descriptions of the symptoms of arsenic poisoning I’ve seen.

Slow Arsenic Poisoning Vomiting—plenty of stools
Pain in the stomach & bowels
Pulse Wiry. Forehead feels stuffy
Eyes are red and are puffy,
The Last of the symptoms may seem a, Slight one, and that is eczema.
–ACD.

Wellcome Images

Keeping the Wolf at Bay

Posted January 25, 2016

Back in medieval times, most of the northern parts of Europe, and big swaths of the British Isles, were covered with dense forest. So close encounters with wolves were quite common. Packs of wolves could—and did—attack grazing livestock, and sometimes people. As a result, they were greatly feared.

A medieval bestiary has this advice if a wolf should surprise a person unexpectedly, and it has some real modern-day applications. Stay with me, here.

First off, should you see a wolf, you will most probably be rendered mute—that is, you’ll lose the power to cry for help. So what you’re supposed to do is, take off all your clothes immediately. Throw them onto the ground and stomp on them. Then find two stones and clomp them together. Your speech will be restored. It’s unclear what happens next, vis a vis the wolf. But at least your speech has been restored.

Today, wolves are, sadly, a threatened species in parts of the world. So chances are you don’t have to worry about coming across one near you. So how is this advice relevant for you? Why, think about it. Next time you have to deliver a presentation at school, and are worried about forgetting your lines, simply take off all your clothes and stomp on them. Then deliver your speech. The words will pour forth with no effort whatsoever.

You’re welcome.

http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/02/naked-came-the-werewolf.html

Scarred for Life

Posted January 18, 2016

I find the coolest stuff doing image research. Often it has nothing to do with the book I’m researching at the moment, but it’s what makes my job so awesome. Case in point: I stumbled across this portrait of the composer Christoph Willibald von Gluck, (1714 -1787) by the painter Joseph Duplessis, painted around 1775. And I was amazed—are those smallpox scars on his face?Smallpox was the scourge of the eighteenth century, and vast numbers of people who managed to survive the disease were scarred with pitted faces, but you so rarely see such realistic depictions in portraits from the time. (For instance, George Washington survived smallpox, but Gilbert Stuart, his go-to portraitist from about the same era as Duplessis, painted GW with a smooth countenance.)I’ve always liked Gluck (here’s one of his more famous pieces). I looked him up, and sure enough, Gluck had had smallpox, and his face was badly scarred. Then I found another depiction of him, by the sculptor Jean Antoine Houdon. Woah.

Jean-Antoine Houdon [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

That’s Classic

Posted January 11, 2016

This is poison hemlock, or Conium maculatum. Its leaves look a lot like flat-leaf parsley, don’t they? That similarity was unfortunate for one man, a Scottish tailor named Duncan Gow. In 1845 his children made him a sandwich for his lunch using what they thought was wild parsley. (My warped mind turns straight to–when was the last time all three of my children got together to make ME a sandwich? And would they ever in a million years think to add parsley to it?? But I digress.)

The “wild parsley” turned out to be poison hemlock, and Gow died. His death recalled that of another, more famous person who died by hemlock, the philosopher Socrates (ca 469 – 399 BCE).

The Death of Socrates in a 1790s rendition by Jean François Pierre Peyron

Socrates was sentenced to death for refusing to recognize the gods approved by the state, and for “corrupting the youth.” He was ordered to drink poison hemlock. According to an eyewitness account written by Plato, Socrates’s death was a gentle one, surrounded by his devoted followers. After drinking the poison, his feet went numb, and the paralysis slowly crept upward. “His legs grew cold and stiff,” and after that, his respiratory muscles became paralyzed. His mind remained clear to the end, though. His last words were “Crio, we owe Asklepias a rooster. Pay the debt and do not forget it.”

For several centuries, historians had debated whether Plato’s account of Socrates’ death was medically accurate. They didn’t believe that death by hemlock could have been as peaceful as Plato said it was. But Duncan Gow’s symptoms sound remarkably similar to those of Socrates.

So it seems Plato’s account may have been medically accurate.

Not a great picture, sorry, but it was exciting to see actual poison hemlock at the poison plant garden at Cornell University.

Motor Trends

Posted January 4, 2016

I just stumbled across a fascinating book called The Woman and The Car: A Chatty Little Handbook for all Women Who Motor or Who Want to Motor by Dorothy Levitt, written in 1909 (and available on Google Books here).

It’s worth a click through, but here are some highlights. In the chapter called “The All-Important Question of Dress,” the author shares the following tips:

I would advise shoes rather than boots as they give greater freedom to the ankles and do not tend to impede the circulation, as a fairly tightly laced or buttoned boot would do, but this is a matter of individual taste. In winter time it is advisable to wear high gaiters, have them specially made, almost up to the knee. (24)

And what to wear on your head?

As to head-gear, there is no question: the round cap or close-fitting turban of fur are the most comfortable and suitable, though with the glass screen up it is possible to wear an ordinary hat, with a veil round it. (26)

And:

Indispensable to the motoriste who is going to drive her own car is the overall.

Here’s Dorothy wearing her overall.In her chapter called “Motor Manners,” she lays out some rules of the road. Drivers should avoid pedestrians, she acknowledges, but:

Dogs, chickens and other domestic animals at large on the highway are not pedestrians, and if one is driving at a regulation speed, or under, one is not responsible for their untimely end.

And then there’s this:

If you have a syren fitted to your car, do not sound it in a town or village. A syren is really only necessary for Continental driving.

I should have mentioned that Ms. Lytton is British. The British and the French haven’t seen eye-to-eye since the Battle of Hastings. I imagine her use of the “syren” probably didn’t go over very well on the Continent.

This one’s from Library of Congress–one of my favorite driving costume pix

Bark Like an Egyptian

Posted December 3, 2015

Thinking of acquiring a new dog? In a past blog, I helpfully provided you with suggestions for what to name it, based on a medieval hunting manual. Today, I provide you with further suggestions, this time based on what ancient Egyptians named their dogs.

Here is a list*:

Good Herdsman

Reliable

Blackie

One Who is Fashioned as an Arrow

First, Second, Third, Fourth, (etcetera)

Grabber

Cook-pot

She of the Town

Useless

I’m wondering if some of these lost a bit of pizzazz in translation.

source: Guillaume Blanchard, via Wikimedia

*from Mary Elizabeth Thurston, The Lost History of the Canine Race, Andrews and McMeel, 1996, page 29