Category Archives: Politics

1938: Washington Republicans elect a mule to represent them

In 1938, Republican Party members in the small town of Milton, Washington assembled for their monthly meeting. On the agenda was the election of a committeemen to represent them at county level. Only one written nomination was tabled, from a Mr Boston Curtis. With no other candidates put forward, Boston was duly elected, despite the voters not knowing who or what he actually was:

“Boston Curtis, a mule, has been elected as Republican committeeman in the town of Milton, Washington. Boston was entered in the race by the Democratic mayor and received 51 votes – without offering a platform or making a speech.”

Boston’s nominator, Mayor Kenneth Simmons, later told the press he had nominated the mule as a prank, not expecting him to be elected. According to Simmons, he made no secret of his japery. He had led Boston to the local courthouse and ‘signed’ the nomination form with his hoof print, while laughing heartily with city officials.

In the end, the joke was on those who blindly voted a mule up the Republican Party ranks:

“It was a pretty mean trick to play on a mule, getting him into politics that way and making a fool of him. But at least Boston Curtis can congratulate himself on being no more of a donkey than the 51 Republicans who voted for him, without taking the trouble to find out what he was.”

Source: The Milwaukee Journal, September 30th 1938. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1658: Cromwell’s body bursts, leading to fake funeral

The well-travelled head, purportedly that of Oliver Cromwell

Toward the end of his life, Oliver Cromwell – leader of the Roundheads and Lord Protector of the Commonwealth – was plagued by kidney or urinary tract infections. In the summer of 1658, he was also struck down by malaria and the death of his adult daughter. The ailing Cromwell was transported to Whitehall for medical treatment but died in considerable pain on September 3rd.

According to a contemporary account by English MP Thomas Burton, preparations for Cromwell’s funeral did not go well. The government planned a public viewing, a grandiose funeral and internment in Westminster Abbey. Given that all of this would take time to organise, they ordered that Cromwell’s corpse be immediately disembowelled and embalmed.

This preservation was carried out as instructed, however just three days after his death Cromwell’s corpse was already in a horrendous state:

“[The day after Cromwell’s death] his body… was washed and laid out; and being opened, was embalmed, and wrapped in a sere cloth… and put into an inner sheet of lead, inclosed in an elegant coffin of the choicest wood. Owing to the disease he died of… his body, though bound up and laid in the coffin, swelled and bursted, from whence came such filth [that] raised such a deadly and noisome stink…”

Another observer was George Bate, a physician present at Cromwell’s embalming. According to Bate, Cromwell’s corpse was wrapped tightly in four layers in cloth then buried in two coffins, one lead and one wood – yet despite this it still “purged and wrought through all”, or leaked from the outer coffin. Hence the decision was made to bury the putrid Protector, prematurely and privately:

“The corpse being quickly buried, by reason of the great stench thereof…”

Cromwell’s body was buried in Westminster Abbey several weeks before his funeral. In mid-October, Londoners were invited to view Cromwell’s ‘body’, though what they saw was an ornately-dressed wooden mannequin sporting a wax face. The funeral procession did not take place until November 23rd, eight weeks after Cromwell’s death. The coffin transported to Westminster Abbey was probably empty. Some £60,000 was spent on this elaborate charade.

Cromwell’s real body did not rest long. It was hauled out of the Abbey in January 1661 and later subjected to a posthumous execution and public humiliation. Cromwell’s head survived this mistreatment and was passed about by collectors for the next four centuries.

Source: Diary of Thomas Burton, v.2, 1657-58. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1958: New US national flag earns a B minus

In 1958, the United States was on the brink of admitting Alaska and Hawaii as its 49th and 50th states. In Ohio, a 16-year-old schoolboy named Robert G. Heft was given a school social studies project with a broad focus: design an original visual artefact connected with US history.

Aware that two states were about to be added to the union, Heft resolved to design a new national flag. At his local department store he spent $2.87 on a length of blue cloth, along with some white iron-on tape. Working on the dining table at home, Heft cut up an existing flag, something that horrified his mother. He then set about designing a new configuration containing 50 stars rather than 48.

Heft presented his updated flag to his teacher, the appropriately named Mr Pratt, who was far from impressed and graded it severely: a B minus. According to Heft, Pratt told him:

“Why you got too many stars? You don’t even know how many states we have… If you don’t like the grade, get it accepted in Washington then come and see me. I might consider changing the grade.”

Determined to prove his teacher wrong, Heft sent his design to the White House. Over the next two years he followed his submission with 21 letters and numerous phone calls. US president Dwight D. Eisenhower endorsed Heft’s design in late 1959 and on July 4th 1960 it became the new national flag of the United States.

Mr Pratt subsequently agreed to change Heft’s grade from a B minus to an A, although by then Heft had graduated from high school.

Source: WBUR interview with Robert G. Heft, July 3rd 2009. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1965: “Move over, this is your president”

History is replete with stories about the sex lives of US presidents, particularly Warren Harding, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton. One president whose bedroom antics have attracted less scrutiny is Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson.

According to his friends, colleagues and former employees, LBJ had an insatiable sexual appetite, backed by a considerable ego. This appeared to begin at college, where the future president was fond of exposing or waving his penis which he nicknamed “Jumbo”.

During and after his presidency Johnson engaged in scores of dalliances and affairs, fathering at least one illegitimate child. He was notoriously jealous of Kennedy’s reputation with the ladies, once claiming to have “had more women by accident than Jack had on purpose”.

Unlike Kennedy, however, Johnson was devoid of youthful good looks, seductive charm and patience. As a consequence, Johnson’s sexual propositions could be direct and confronting. One rather unnerving example of this was recalled by Carl Rowan, a high-ranking government official during the 1960s, and involved Johnson and a pretty young White House secretary:

“In 1965, when I headed the US Information Agency, I was approached by a shaken White House employee who told me of her first duty trip to the Texas ranch where President Johnson often retreated. She said she awakened in the wee hours of her first night there in terror, certain that someone was in her room. When a little pencil flashlight was shone on her face, she was too terrified to scream. Then she recognised Johnson’s voice saying ‘Move over. This is your president’.”

Intimidated and probably petrified, the woman complied with Johnson’s instruction. According to Rowan, she chose not to make a complaint against the president but did lodge a request a new job out of his reach. Rowan informed the White House and arranged for her to be transferred to the State Department.

Source: Carl Rowan, cited in Buffalo News (New York), January 28th 1998. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1770: Husband disappointed by what lies under wife’s make-up

In the Georgian period, many well-to-do men became paranoid about women using make-up to embellish or even conceal their natural features. There were several apocryphal stories of men marrying statuesque and ravishing beauties, only to discover something much less appealing on the wedding night.

One account comes from a letter-writer to The Spectator in 1711:

“No man was as enamoured as I was of her fair forehead, neck and arms, as well as the bright jet [black] of her hair… but to my great astonishment I find they were all the effect of art. Her skin is so tarnished with this practice that when she first wakes in the morning, she scarce seems young enough to be the mother of [the woman] I carried to bed the night before. I shall take the liberty to part with her at the first opportunity, unless her father will make her portion [dowry] suitable to her real, not her assumed countenance.”

These stories have given rise to one of the enduring historical myths of the period: the so-called Hoops and Heels Act. According to this story, the following bill was raised in the House of Commons in 1770 to prevent women from using costume and cosmetics to lure and entrap unsuspecting husbands:

“Be it resolved that all women of whatever age, rank, profession or degree, whether virgin maids or widows, that after the passing of this Act impose upon and betray into matrimony any of His Majesty’s male subjects, by scents, paints, cosmetics, washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool, iron stays, hoops, high-heeled shoes or bolstered hips, shall incur the penalty of the laws now in force against witchcraft, sorcery and such like misdemeanours… and that the marriage, upon conviction, shall stand null and void.”

A great number of historical texts claim this bill was raised in Parliament and either voted down or passed into law. The reality is that no evidence of it can be found in Hansard or other records of parliamentary debate and voting.

Source: The Spectator, April 17th 1711. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1884: Joe Quimby shoots his wife, gets a governor’s pardon

In March 1884, several newspapers reported that a West Virginia man, Joe Quimby, had shot dead his wife while drunk:

Quimby was duly charged with murder. In September, he appeared before a Mason County judge and was sentenced to 15 years’ hard labour. But in October 1891 Quimby, then less than halfway into his sentence, was given a governor’s pardon that generated considerable controversy at the time.

According to the papers of West Virginia governor Aretas B. Fleming, Quimby was pardoned on vague medical grounds because he “only hobbles about the place [the prison] doing nothing”. Quimby’s pardon was granted against the express wishes of the prison superintendent.

Source: Jamestown Weekly Alert, March 14th 1884; Public Papers of A. B. Fleming, October 23rd 1891. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1524: Spanish boy invites cartographers to chart his backside

In 1494, Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, effectively dividing the rest of the uncolonised world between them. But the treaty only covered the Atlantic hemisphere, so by the 1510s, Spanish and Portuguese explorers and colonists were again clashing, this time in Indonesia and the Philippines.

In 1524, both powers convened more treaty negotiations to divide the other side of the world. These meetings, held in the border towns of Badajoz and Elvas, were attended by some of the most notable diplomats, cartographers, astronomers and mathematicians of the age.

Leading the delegation from Lisbon was Diego Lopes de Sequeira, a prominent military leader and a former governor of Portuguese Goa. According to a contemporary report, Lopes and his advisors took a break from the negotiations and went walking along the banks of the Quadiana river. On the Spanish side of the river they saw:

“…a boy who stood keeping his mother’s clothes which she had washed… [The boy] demanded of them whether they were those men who were partitioning the world [on behalf of] the emperor. And as they answered ‘Yea’, he took up his shirt and showed them his bare arse, saying: ‘Come and draw your line through the middle [of this].’ This saying was afterward in every man’s mouth and laughed at in the town of Badajoz.”

The negotiations ended with the Treaty of Zaragoza which, in general terms, handed Portugal colonial rights over the Asian mainland, while Spain was given access to islands in the Pacific.

Source: Richard Eden, The Decades of the Newe Worlde, London, 1555. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1865: A citizen writes to Abraham Lincoln demanding “Peas”

In January 1865, US president Abraham Lincoln received an unsigned letter sent from Pittsburg. The letter was riddled with poor spelling and grammar, for which the writer apologised (“I am nervos and a poor schollor”). The focus of the letter, however, was unmistakeable:

“Dear friend, the Peapple is in for making Peas, yes Peas they wand and thay pray that you will make it… before the Lextion [election] there was Bills posted up evrewhere that you would make a change in the cabnet and would make Peas… the tok is about Peas but we cant see it and have not seen it… this cruel Ware has bin going long a nuf…”

I your Truly optaind Servend.”

Source: Letter to Abraham Lincoln, unsigned, Pittsburg, January 16th 1865. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1917: Judge counts 2,700-plus Coca Cola fiends in Georgia

By the outbreak of World War I, the push for a nationwide ban on alcohol in the United States was in full swing. The American prohibition movement was the sum of many parts, including various religious, women’s and temperance groups.

Prohibition may also have enjoyed the financial backing of Coca Cola. During debates on the floor of the US Senate in early 1917 James Edgar Martine, the junior Senator from New Jersey, claimed the prohibition movement was being bankrolled by:

“…the splendid wealth acquired through the manufacture of the decoction known as Coca Cola… The owner [of this company] lives in a princely home in Atlanta… there is a lobby there and $50,000 has been put up for the purposes of maintaining the Coca Cola interests… to shut people off from other beverages and hence make them resort to their drinks.”

Coca Cola was itself invented to dodge Atlanta by-laws prohibiting the sale of alcoholic drinks. Despite its cocaine content and narcotic effects, Coca Cola was permitted to be sold as a medicinal tonic rather than an intoxicant. Cocaine was removed from Coca Cola around 1903 and replaced with strong levels of caffeine but many still considered it a stupefying drink with potential dangers to the welfare of those who consumed it.

According to Judge Stark, Coca Cola addiction was responsible for serious social problems in the state of Georgia:

“A half dozen reputable physicians have stated that there are over 300 girls in Atlanta that are Coca Cola fiends and nervous wrecks… Coca Cola and such drinks not only make physical wrecks out of our men but destroy the physical welfare of our women and children and make nervous wrecks of them. There are over 2,700 known Coca Cola fiends in this state, and if all could be numbered it would amount to over 5,000.”

Whether because of prohibition or canny marketing or both, Coca Cola sales boomed over the next decade. In 1920, the company churned out almost 19 million gallons of the drink and generated $US32.2 million in sales. By the end of 1921 there were more than 1,000 Coca Cola bottling plants across the US and the product was available at almost every soda bar in the country.

Source: Logan Republican, Utah, March 6th 1917. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1911: Public schools no place for “the sons of Pork Butchers”

In 1907, the British parliament passed the Education (Administrative Provisions) Act, a significant piece of educational reform. One of the provisions of this act was to facilitate full and partly-funded scholarships so that talented working-class boys could attend prestigious but expensive private schools.

Two beneficiaries of these scholarships were Eric Blair, later George Orwell, and the Trinidadian historian and cricket writer C. L. R. James. But the state-funded admission of working-class boys to elitist public schools did not please everyone, and for years there was considerable criticism and debate.

Two examples appeared in The Guardian in March 1911, one from a writer claiming to be a public school headmaster, the other a public school student:

“The real difficulty is not the social or pecuniary inferiority of the elementary boy but his enormous moral inferiority. Most of the other boys that come to us [at public schools] have a very definite idea that certain actions and thoughts are “caddish” or “bad form” or “blackguardly”… I have been dealing with a certain proportion of elementary boys for some years and I have failed to find any parallel idea of the word.”

‘Head Master’

“I wonder whether you have ever considered the matter from the side of a gentleman forced to come into daily contact with the innate vulgarity of the lower orders. Is it not more probable that the sons of gentlemen will be levelled down, rather than the sons of Pork Butchers levelled up, by continual daily contact? The lessons of the gutter are more easily learnt than the traditions of caste.

“The fact that by keeping particular secondary and Public Schools a reserve for a particular class keeps the higher walks of life, in the professions and public services, a preserve for the same class, is surely a great argument in its favour. The lower classes never were a governing class, and why should the master sit side by side with the servant?”

‘Public School Boy’

Source: The Guardian, March 29th 1911. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.