Victoria Woodhull (1838 – 1927) was a leader of the woman’s suffrage movement and the first woman to run for president, in 1872.
Pipe Down
The first bagpipes were made from an animal bladder, usually that of a goat or sheep. Pipes were inserted into the natural holes, where the animal’s neck or feet had been.
source: Metropolitan Museum Newsletter
http://tinyurl.com/cqmvz5h
Personal Space
To increase seating space in the concert hall for the first performance of Handel’s Messiah (in 1742), men were asked not to wear their swords and ladies not to wear hooped skirts.
Alice Roosevelt, First Daughter
In the wake of the recent inauguration, where the President’s daughters behaved with their characteristic adorableness, the subject of today’s blog is another First Daughter, Alice Roosevelt. While distinctly less adorable than Sasha and Malia, Alice was no less a source of fascination for the public. 
Alice Roosevelt (February 12, 1884 – February 20, 1980) was the only daughter born to Teddy Roosevelt and his first wife, Alice Lee. Her famously-beautiful mother died two days after giving birth to her, in 1884. Here’s a picture of Roosevelt and his first wife:
Roosevelt was so distraught at his wife’s death that he forbade anyone from mentioning his wife’s name in his presence. He called his daughter Baby Lee rather than Alice.
Roosevelt left for Dakota territory, leaving his newborn baby in his unmarried sister’s care while he went off to nurse his sorrows and hunt Big Game. Two years later he returned, remarried, and had five more children with his second wife, Edith. Have a look at the expression on Alice’s face (she’s the one standing in the back). You can get a real sense of her personality. And if you flit back and forth quickly from the picture of Alice’s mother (above) to Alice (below), you really see a startling resemblance.
Alice was seventeen when her father took office in 1901 after the assassination of President McKinley. Outspoken and witty, she became notorious for doing outrageous things, during a time when women were not supposed to do outrageous things—like, say, vote. She was known as a great beauty like her mother. She smoked in public, rode in cars with men, rode up debts playing poker and buying clothes, and brought her pet snake—which she named Emily Spinach—to parties.
Alice married Nicholas Longworth, a Republican member of the House of Representatives. The marriage was somewhat shaky, perhaps not helped by the fact that Alice campaigned against her husband when he ran for office, and that he, in turn, campaigned against her father for re-election, in favor of William Howard Taft. When the Roosevelts left the White House, she buried a voodoo doll of Nellie Taft, the incoming First Lady, in the back yard of the White House, and was subsequently banned from the next three administrations for various misbehaviors and off-color jokes.
She sure looks like she’s brimming with personality, doesn’t she? No wonder she became known as “The Other Washington Monument.”
Alice Roosevelt, hand tinted, 1903: Frances Benjamin Johnston via Wikimedia Commons
Theodore Roosevelt and his first wife, Alice Lee (Alice’s mother)
Roosevelt family:
Pres. and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt seated on lawn, surrounded by their family; 1903. From left to right: Quentin, Theodore Sr., Theodore Jr., Archie, Allice, Kermit, Edith, and Ethel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Theodore_Roosevelt_and_family,_1903.jpg
Alice in 1902
Frances Benjamin Johnston [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
First Families
No U.S. President has been an only child. (Three have had half-siblings: FDR, Clinton, and Ford.)
Poison Paper
Many ordinary cash register and credit card receipts—the kind printed on thermal paper–contain alarming amounts of BPA (a chemical known to cause health issues).
source: http://www.ewg.org/bpa-in-store-receipts
What Not To Wear…Or Eat…Or Wash With
When you write a book about insects and their effect on human history, as I’ve just done, you find yourself reading a lot about pesticides, and their dangers. Which leads to reading about food additives and industrial farming and inhumane animal factories.
And if you’ve also done a lot of research, as I’ve just done, about the history of what people have worn, and why, you find yourself reading about the history of perfume making, cosmetics made with lead and mercury, and fabric dyes containing dangerous substances, such as arsenic.
All of which can make you a little paranoid about the hazards of everyday living, even in this day and age.
Back in August, I blogged about the dangers of a group of unregulated chemicals found in many household products, cosmetics, and perfumes, known as phthalates, triclosans, and BPA. You can read that post here.
This past Friday, the New York Times ran an article on its op-ed page entitled “Eat Like a Mennonite,” in which the reporter, Florence Williams, tried to reduce her exposure to these common chemicals by eliminating as much plastic and scent and meat from her daily life as was possible. She couldn’t ride in a car (because of the phthalate-laden plastic interior), wear cosmetics or deodorant, or buy any food wrapped in plastic.
And then in Saturday’s New York Times, Nicholas Kristof ran this article citing a recent experiment that suggested that one factor in the current obesity epidemic may be these endocrine-disrupting chemicals found in our food, furniture, and shampoos. Even brief exposure to these chemicals caused lab mice to put on fat rapidly. His conclusion is that a good starting point would be to pass the Safe Chemicals Act, because these endocrine disruptors are the “tobacco of our time.”
It does make it hard to know what to wear, what to cook for dinner, how to live your life in general. I guess my own takeaway is to do what I can to keep my family’s exposure as low as possible.
Off to cook some lentils. . . .
Mennonites making Hay By Stilfehler (Own work) 2009 via Wikimedia Commons
Way to Go
On this day in 1778, Captain James Cook “discovered” the Hawaiian Islands. He later got stabbed to death by the people who already lived there.
A.K.A.
The first name of American writer Virginia Woolf was Adeline.
Slight Problems
Estimates vary, but Charles I of England may have been as short as 4’ 9”. He became significantly shorter after his beheading in 1649.