OCTOBER 16 — 1859 Brown sets out for Harper’s Ferry; 1869 Legend of the Cardiff Giant is discovered at Stub Newall’s farm; 1923 Walt and Roy Disney open up shop; 1998 Jon Postel, co-creator of the Internet, dies
OCTOBER 16 – Raid of Harper’s Ferry.
…Born in 1800, John Brown grew up as a staunch abolitionist, didn’t have much success in any of the several businesses he began and was bankrupt by the tie he was 42. In 1858 he attended an abolitionist meeting in Chicago that changed his life forever. He devised a plan to establish a militant base in the Blue Ridge Mountains where he would take in runaway slaves and launch attacks on slaveholders. He was on a mission to destroy the entire institution of slavery.
He assembled a small group of prominent abolitionists, known as the secret six, and obtained funding to build a guerrilla force. It took about a year for his group to band together; many people just thought the whole going against the U.S. Government was just a bad idea. In fact Frederick Douglas told him, “You’re walking into a perfect steel-trap, and you will never get out alive.” Spoiler alert: Douglas would be correct!
Regardless by the end of summer 1859 Brown had assembled a 22-man guerrilla force consisting of several black men and three of his sons. On October 16, 1859, Brown and his men left their farmhouse sanctuaries and headed to Harper’s Ferry. Approaching the town around 4 a.m. on the 17th, Brown and his men captured elite citizens and seized the federal armory and arsenal. Part of Brown’s plan was to have the local slave population and freedom fighters join the raid and turn it into a Hugh national uprising.
Well, Brown was wrong. Upon rounding up about 60% of the town’s population and their slaves, it became clear that the slaves were not willing to join Brown’s raid. Once the news broke out what was going on in Harpers Ferry, It didn’t take long for Brown’s plan to unravel. He took shelter in the arsenal’s engine house, but Col. Robert E. Lee and Lt. J.E.B. Stuart led a company of U.S. Marines to storm the engine house, killing 10 men, including two of Brown’s sons, and captured Brown. The wounded Brown was quickly placed on trial and on November 2, charged with treason against the state of Virginia, murder, and slave insurrection.
Brown was sentenced to the gallows and hanged on December 2, 1859. As he approached his fateful noose, he handed his guard a note that read: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.” Finally he was right about one thing. Brown’s Raid escalated tensions between the North and the South and would go down in history as one of the many key events leading to the Civil War.
1923 – Walt Disney opens up shop.
Let’s face it, some people can just bounce back from failure better than others, and Disney is the model behind that story. Before building his empire, he was rejected by a few banks. But as Disney himself would later say, “The difference between winning and losing is most often, not quitting.” So he peddled his idea about a cartoon mouse, and got rejected by more banks. “When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionably,” he would say.
The banks he was trying to sell his ideas to think the idea of a cartoon mouse was ridiculous and wouldn’t go anywhere. “First think,” He would say, “Second, dream. Third, believe. And finally, dare.” Bank after bank after bank rejected Walt Disney. “Everyone falls down. Getting back up is how you learn to walk.” In all, the great Disney would be rejected by a total of 302 banks. “The more you are in a state of gratitude, the more you will attract things to be grateful for. “It was on this day in 1923, Walt and his brother Roy Disney founded the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, which would later become the Walt Disney Company, currently the world’s largest independent media conglomerate, according to Wikipedia.
1829 – The Tremont Hotel opens up in Boston.
It was there until 1959. Ah yes, really really old, granite faced, a four story monstrosity. But enough about my ex girlfriend. The Tremont hotel is noted for being the first hotel to have indoor plumbing and running water. Check this out. It had several others firsts I found on Wikipedia. Free soap, indoor toilets and bath, a reception area, and locks on the doors. Cool stuff.
1998 – Jon Postal passes away. And what a nerd this guy was. He was so nerdy in fact he had a strong influence on the development and administration of TCP/IP, SMTP, and DNS.
Now I realize not everyone works in IT like I do, so those are fancy acronyms that mean Internet language, outgoing mail server and name server protocol. Name servers are what translate IP addresses into words in your browser’s address bar. Postel was a graduate student at UCLA where he developed the ARPANET, which was the pre-Internet we use today, for the U.S. Department of Defense. And we thought Al Gore invented the Internet! Oh, that Al.
Postel watched over the administration of the internet as we know it today, which obviously started booming in the 1990s. He was concerned about its lack of regulation, and shortly before he died, he submitted a proposal to the U.S. government for an international nonprofit organization that would keep the Internet in check. He stated in RFC760, the robust RFC or Postel’s Law, that Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send”. Makes sense as a computer user, right? We should be able to send out information on various platforms that exist, but be careful which we receive, right? He died of heart complications at age 55, this great American from L.A. who helped to create the Internet. You’re welcome world Now in World Series news, since it’s that time of year…
1869 Diggers discover Cardiff Giant at Stub Newell’s farm.
It was quite possibly one of the greatest hoaxes in American history. I’ve often said that we Americans are gullible. For instance, I love bacon and eggs, especially together, but they reason why Americans bought the idea that it’s a healthy breakfast is one that I go into my March 9th up when I talk about the Father of Public Relations Edward Barnays.
This one might be even funier. When the workers found a seemingly petrified 10’ colossus of man visitors from all over the Cardiff New York area, and pretty soon Syracuse and Albany, were asking what is it?
Is it from another planet? Is it a missing evolutionary link? Is it from the book of Genesis? Is it my ex-girlfriend? It all started when an atheist and a Methodist reverend walk into a bar. No it’s not a joke, and actually I don’t know if it was a bhar or not. But the atheist was cigar maker George Hull, and he got into a big debate with the reverend about whether or not the Bible should be taken literally or not, specifically Genesis 6:4 where it says the Nephilim, or the sons of God who were mighty men walked the earth in those days.
So Hull thought it would be great if he could reproduce a mighty man to fool people and maybe make a few bucks while at it. He purchased a 5-ton block of gypsum in Iowa and hired a sculpture in Chicago who swore to secrecy of what they were doing, and the for the next couple years Hull himself would pose as the model that double become a giant naked man with his right hand on his stomach.
They pt sulfuric acid on it to make it looked eroded and ancient, and even used pins to poke holes all over the body to make it look like skin pores. Hull had a cousin named William Newall, call him Stub, who had a farm in Cardiff New York. Hull had the 10’ 3,000 lb statue delivered in an iron box and buried it near the barn. Hull went back to his tobacco work at home in Binghamton for a year, and then told Stub it was time to get his trickery and treacherous plan in motion. Stub Newall played the part beautifully.
He hired some workers to dig a well at the burial spot, and by the end of the day the Giant Cardiff was becoming news throughout the town. Folks were lining up to pay 50 cents apiece to see the Giant Colossus by the thousands. They eventually sold it to a group of businessmen for around $30,000, and soon enough the jig was up. Geologists and paleontologists noticed a first glance it was a fake, and yet people didn’t care, and still came in droves to see the big fella.
PT Barnum offered $$60 Gs, or about a million bucks today, but no deal. For his freak show, Barnum would replicate the Cardiff Giant, and pretty soon there were about a half dozen replicas throughout the country. As far as Hull went, although he was discredited by this point, he tried again anyway with another statue buried in Colorado of a man with a tail.
This time, nobody bought it. These days, you can catch the Cardiff Giant at the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown, right next to the Baseball Hall of Fame in New York!
1912 – Fred Snodgrass drops ball, causing the New York Giants to lose the World Series to the Boston Red Sox. The series was tied, and in the last game in the 10th inning, Snodgrass caught an easy fly ball that would have won the Giants the series, if Snodgrass hadn’t dropped it. Over a century later, Snodgrass is best known for dropping this easy catch. You can read about it in the Lawrence Ritter book, The Glory of their Times.
1992 — Irish singer Sinead O’Connor is booed off the stage at a show honoring Bob Dylan at Madison Square Garden. The crowd was reacting to O’Connor’s tearing up a picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live two weeks earlier. And here I thought it was because she took a really cool upbeat jazzy fun Prince Song called Nothing Compares 2 U and made the most depressing song of the year.