the past is another country
Monday, September 30, 2002
The poor people of Grover's Mill never knew what hit them. On the evening of Halloween, 1938, as America watched war engulf Europe, the small town in New Jersey was visited by warfare of a different sort. On the Columbia Broadcasting System, an evening of dance music featuring Ramón Raquello was interrupted by one shocking announcement after another:
The battle which took place tonight at Grovers Mill has ended in one of the most startling defeats ever suffered by any army in modern times; seven thousand men armed with rifles and machine guns pitted against a single fighting machine of the invaders from Mars. One hundred and twenty known survivors. The rest strewn over the battle area from Grovers Mill to Plainsboro, crushed and trampled to death under the metal feet of the monster, or burned to cinders by its heat ray.
It wasn't much of a war; as one man put it, it was no more a war "than there's war between men and ants". The War of the Worlds was an unmitigated disaster for humanity. (more...)
11:04 pm 
Tuesday, September 24, 2002
One hundred and twenty-three years after Luigi Galvani electrocuted a dead frog, making its muscles contract and its legs twitch, a crowd gathered at Coney Island waiting to see an execution. Topsy the Elephant had killed three people, and even if one of them had fed her a lit cigarette, no one was much interested in granting clemency. Luna Park on Coney Island featured a number of elephants who gave rides to the amusement park's guests, and there was no way that they were going to let a rogue elephant remain at the park. The concept of animal cruelty being a more flexible one then; the ASPCA had objected to the original plan to hang Topsy, so unlike Mary the elephant, hanged in 1916, Topsy was going to die in the most modern and humane way possible: she was going to be electrocuted. (more...)
10:48 pm
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
In 1453, Constantinople fell to the Turks; for two centuries more, Europe faced an Ottoman Empire that threatened to conquer Vienna and spill into central and western Europe. But as Byzantine refugees fled into Europe, they brought with them their scholarship, helping to spur the Italian Renaissance forward, particularly with their translations of (and abiding interest in) Plato. But they brought something else with them: the Corpus Hermeticum. These books were the works of Hermes Trismegistus, contemporary of (or perhaps even precursor to!) Moses and greatest magician of the age, Hermes the Triple Master, Hermes Thrice-Great. (more...)
11:50 pm
Tuesday, September 10, 2002
Despite the paucity of my updates lately, I'm still out here. Last weekend, I moved into a new apartment a few blocks away from my old one, which was a great deal of sound and fury for very little physical translation. The new apartment has more light and more room than the old one, but a smaller and more poorly designed kitchen, which I hope will not impact V.'s principal hobby too badly. I hope to be back posting regularly as soon as my DSL is up and running, but given that I'm dealing with the most Kafkaesque of the Baby Bells, I don't expect that before next week. Some of my favorite compatriots seem to have succumbed to the beginning of the semester, but I have entirely different problems. Additionally, with the anniversary of Sept. 11th tomorrow, I haven't felt hugely enthusiastic about writing something cheerfully trivial. Chad Orzel's advice for commemorating that horrible day seems as good as any: "Buy a cop lunch. Buy a fireman a beer. Go to church, light a candle and pray." When the news was breaking, I immediately thought of giving blood; a year ago, donations surged beyond America's needs (and even America's storage capacity), but blood banks are still around and would still appreciate help. Thanks for bearing with me in my quiet time; I'll be jabbering again real soon.
7:23 pm
Tuesday, September 3, 2002
I've just found the solution to a minor mystery; every now and again when I'm reading some old science fiction, I run across a story or a well-conceived book review by H.H. Holmes. This in itself is not terribly surprising; I read a fair amount of older science fiction, and one of the local junk stores sells old magazines, including some back issues of Fantasy and Science Fiction. There are any number of writers whose work I'm vaguely familiar with and whose names hover right below a level at which I'm consciously aware of knowing who they are. I'd have assumed that H.H. Holmes was one of these, a John Wyndham or a Ward Moore, were it not for the fact that Dr. Henry H. Holmes, a Chicago druggist, was also America's first serial killer, whose house of horrors was exposed in the 1890s after an insurance scam went awry. (more...)
11:42 pm
