News, Entertainment, Enlightenment
Fort Wood, which is what the Statue of Liberty is built upon, was the place for public hangings in New York City before the statue of was built. The last New York public hanging occurred there on July 13, 1860. The star was the pirate Albert Hicks. More than 12,000 gathered in ships in the harbor to watch.
Gen. Nathan Bedord Forrest III, the great grandson of the Civil War (and Ku Klux Klan) leader was killed in a bombing raid against the German submarine base at Kiel on July 13, 1943. Some say he was the first American general to die in combat in World War II but that’s parsing things.
Brigadier General Guy O. Fort of the 81st Philippine Division was captured, tortured and executed by the Japanese in January 1942, while Brigadier Gen. Charles L. Keerans Jr., assistant division commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, went missing in action on June 11, 1943 due to a friendly fire incident and was later declared dead.
The Wyoming, a six-masted schooner, was the longest wooden ship with a length of 450 feet. OK, Noah’s Ark would have been the same size if you assume a cubit was a foot and a half. The Wyoming sailed the seas from 1909 until it sunk in 1924 off of Chatham, Mass in a nor’easter. None of its 14-man crew survived.
Cholera was not medieval at least as far as Europe is concerned. It spread to Europe from India in the first quarter of the 19th century.
Catbirds are great to have around your garden. Their summer diet consists mostly of ants, beetles, grasshoppers, caterpillars and moths.
Modern beer brewing was introduced to China by the Poles in the late 19th century. China is now the largest consumer of beer.
Lower Manhattan hosted pirates — as in avast matey, shiver me timbers pirates — up until the Civil War. One of the last people hanged for piracy was Albert Hicks who at the end was operating out of that part of the Big Apple. Hicks is thought to have killed hundreds around the world during his career.
The William D Lawrence is the largest sailing ship built in Canada and one of the largest in history. It was 335 feet long and sailed the seas from 1874 to 1891. It has been placed on Canadian stamps and coins and was the subject of three formal ship portraits.
When someone is three sheets to the wind they shouldn’t drive. Makes sense. The phrase comes from sailing ship days. “Sheet” does not mean sail but the rope attached to the corner of the sail used to control it. When these rope were loose, the sails would flap. When three were loose, there would be control problem. The original phrasing was “three sheets in the wind.”
Of the 54 signers of the Declaration of Independence only Button Gwinnett died violently. He was shot in a duel.