Rock Formations That Resemble Human Beings

I was reading about New Hampshire's Old Man of the Mountain (an anthropomorphic rock formation that crumbled several years ago and no longer exists) on Wikipedia when my eye wandered toward a link titled "List of rock formations that resemble human beings." "Well," I said to myself, "clearly I must click on this." It was thus how I discovered Hong Kong's Amah Rock, Scotland's Old Man of Hoy, and Israel's Lot's Wife. The article lists a number of mountains in the United States which are said to "resemble a reclining man." Resemble a reclining man? Can you say "Lame"? At least Massachusetts' Mother Ann is said to "resemble a reclining woman." Much better is Thailand's Ko Samui, "a rock pillar and a nearby cleft that resemble male and female human genitalia." Along those same lines, Oregon's Rooster Rock "resembles erect human male genitalia." Sadly it has not retained its original name of Cock Rock, a term now more commonly used to refer to musical artists such as AC/DC or Guns 'N' Roses. And finally, who can forget The Grand Tetons?

Charles Guiteau: The Assassin That Time Forgot

We all know John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald, and even some of us may know Leon Czolgosz (the man who assassinated President McKinley), but how many of us are familiar with Charles Guiteau, the man who assassinated President Garfield? That's what I thought. You might have assumed that, since nobody knows a single thing about Charles Guiteau and the Garfield assassination, the story must be really boring. But you would be wrong.

Charles Guiteau is like Emperor Norton, but minus the charm:

He inherited $1,000 from his grandfather (worth about $24,100 in year–2010 dollars) as a young man and went to Ann Arbor, Michigan, in order to attend the University of Michigan. Due to inadequate academic preparation, he failed the entrance examinations. After some time trying to do remedial work in Latin and algebra at Ann Arbor High School, during which time he received numerous letters from his father haranguing him to do so, he quit and joined the utopian religious sect known as the Oneida Community, in Oneida, New York, with which Guiteau's father already had close affiliations. Despite the "group marriage" aspects of that sect, he was generally rejected during his five years there, and was nicknamed "Charles Gitout".

Oh those utopian religious sects, what a bunch of cards.

He left the community twice. The first time he went to Hoboken, New Jersey, and attempted to start a newspaper based on Oneida religion, to be called "The Daily Theocrat". This failed and he returned to Oneida, only to leave again and file lawsuits against the community's founder, John Humphrey Noyes. Guiteau's father, embarrassed, wrote letters in support of Noyes, who had considered Guiteau irresponsible and insane.

And how wrong that man turned out to be.

Guiteau then obtained a law license in Chicago, based on an extremely casual bar exam. He used his money to start a law firm in Chicago based on ludicrously fraudulent recommendations from virtually every prominent American family of the day. He was not successful. He argued only one case in court, the bulk of his business being in bill collecting. Most of his cases resulted in enraged clients and judicial criticism.

I would venture to say that great advances in the legal field have been made since 1880.

He next turned to theology. He published a book on the subject called The Truth which was almost entirely plagiarized from the work of John Humphrey Noyes. He wrote a speech in support of Ulysses S. Grant called "Grant vs. Hancock", which he subsequently revised to "Garfield vs. Hancock" after Garfield won the Republican nomination in the 1880 presidential campaign. Ultimately, he changed little more than the title (hence mixing up Garfield's achievements with those of Grant). Guiteau never even delivered the speech in a public setting, instead printing up several hundred copies, but he believed that this speech along with his other efforts were largely responsible for Garfield's narrow victory over Winfield S. Hancock in the election of 1880. Guiteau believed he should be awarded a diplomatic post for his vital assistance, first asking for Vienna, then settling for Paris. He loitered around Republican headquarters in New York City during the 1880 campaign, expecting rewards for his effort, to no avail. Still believing he would be rewarded, Guiteau arrived in Washington on March 5, the day after Garfield's inauguration, and actually obtained entrance to the White House and saw the President on March 8, dropping off a copy of his speech.

Hmm...the security detail needed a little work in those days.

He proceeded to spend the next two months roaming around Washington, shuffling back and forth between the State Department and the White House, approaching various Cabinet members and other prominent Republicans and seeking support, to no avail. Guiteau was destitute and increasingly slovenly due to wearing the same clothes every day, the only clothes he owned, but he did not give up. On May 13, 1881, he was banned from the White House waiting room. On May 14, 1881, he was finally told personally never to return by Secretary of State James G. Blaine: "Never speak to me again of the Paris consulship as long as you live." He even went to the District of Columbia jail, asking for a tour of the facility to see where he'd be incarcerated. (He was told to come back later).

So let me get this straight: he could have just stood on the Capitol steps, waved his arms around wildly in the air, shouted out at the top of his lungs, "I am going to assassinate the president!" and nobody would have done anything about it?

On one occasion, he trailed Garfield to the railway station as the President was seeing his wife off to a beach resort in Long Branch, New Jersey, but he decided to shoot him later, as Mrs. Garfield was in poor health and he did not want to upset her.

Now that, right there, is some serious crazed gunman logic.

Garfield had no bodyguard or security detail; with the exception of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, U.S. presidents had never used any guards.

Yeah, I mean what good did bodyguards do ol' Honest Abe, anyway?

Guiteau became something of a media darling during his entire trial for his bizarre behavior, including constantly cursing and badmouthing the judge, witnesses, and even his defense team, formatting his testimony in epic poems which he recited at length, and soliciting legal advice from random spectators in the audience via passed notes. He dictated an autobiography to the New York Herald, ending it with a personal ad for a nice Christian lady under thirty. He was blissfully oblivious to the American public's outrage and hatred of him, even after he was almost assassinated twice himself. He frequently smiled and waved at spectators and reporters in and out of the courtroom, seemingly happy to be the center of attention for once in his life. At one point, Guiteau argued before Judge Cox that President Garfield was killed not by the bullets but by medical malpractice, which was more than a little true ("The doctors killed Garfield, I just shot him").

Well at least somebody was having a good time.

To the end, Guiteau was actively making plans to start a lecture tour after his perceived imminent release and to run for President himself in 1884, while at the same time continuing to delight in the media circus surrounding his trial. He was dismayed when the jury was unconvinced of his divine inspiration, convicting him of the murder. He was found guilty on January 25, 1882. After the guilty verdict was read, Guiteau stepped forward, despite his lawyers' efforts to tell him to be quiet, and yelled at the jury saying "You are all low, consummate jackasses!"

I don't think that was going to help.

On the scaffold as a last request, he recited a poem he had written during his incarceration which he called "I am Going to the Lordy." He had originally requested an orchestra to play as he sang his poem, but this request was denied.

Presumably because an orchestra was not available, I hope?

Emperor Little Earl, Anyone?

I'd heard of the Gold Rush, the Barbary Coast, and the 1906 Earthquake, but only just now have I finally become acquainted with Emperor Norton, the one and only "Emperor of the United States" and "Protector of Mexico":

Norton emigrated from South Africa to San Francisco in 1849 after receiving a bequest of $40,000 from his father's estate. He enjoyed a good deal of success in the real estate market and by the early 1850s had accumulated a fortune of $250,000. Norton thought he saw a business opportunity when China, facing a severe famine, placed a ban on the export of rice, causing the price of rice in San Francisco to skyrocket from four cents per pound to thirty-six cents per pound (9 cents/kg to 79 cents/kg). When he heard that the Glyde, which was returning from Peru, was carrying 200,000 pounds (91,000 kg) of rice, he bought the entire shipment for $25,000 (or twelve and a half cents per pound), hoping to corner the market.

Shortly after he signed the contract, several other shiploads of rice arrived from Peru causing the price of rice to plummet to three cents a pound. Norton tried to void the contract, stating that the dealer had misled him as to the quality of rice to expect. From 1853 to 1857, Norton and the rice dealers were involved in a protracted litigation. Although Norton prevailed in the lower courts, the case reached the Supreme Court of California, which ruled against Norton. Later on, the Lucas Turner and Company Bank foreclosed on his real estate holdings in North Beach to pay Norton's debt. Norton's mental state was severely affected by these financial setbacks. He declared bankruptcy in 1858 and left the city for a time. There are no known documents noting that Norton had an eccentric personality prior to the loss of his fortune, so it is not known whether his pronounced eccentricity was a permanent aspect of his character or arose as a result of the stressful financial straits he found himself in during the 1850s. Nonetheless, after his sudden loss of financial stability, Norton became (in the absence of a proper diagnosis) somewhat "odd", exhibiting the symptoms often referred to as "delusions of grandeur".

You don't say.

When Norton returned to San Francisco from his self-imposed exile, he had become completely disgruntled with what he considered the vicissitudes and inadequacies of the legal and political structures of the United States. On September 17, 1859, he took matters into his own hands and distributed letters to the various newspapers in the city, proclaiming himself "Emperor of these United States":

At the peremptory request and desire of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and now for the last 9 years and 10 months past of S. F., Cal., declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these U. S.; and in virtue of the authority thereby in me vested, do hereby order and direct the representatives of the different States of the Union to assemble in Musical Hall, of this city, on the 1st day of Feb. next, then and there to make such alterations in the existing laws of the Union as may ameliorate the evils under which the country is laboring, and thereby cause confidence to exist, both at home and abroad, in our stability and integrity.

NORTON I, Emperor of the United States.

This reminds me of the time our summer camp program director left me in charge for a day, and I declared myself "King" of the entire summer camp. Zrbo can vouch for me on this.

In accordance with his self-appointed role of emperor, Norton issued numerous decrees on matters of the state. After assuming absolute control over the country, he saw no further need for a legislature, and on October 12, 1859, he issued a decree that formally "dissolved" the United States Congress...Norton's orders obviously had no effect on the Army, and the Congress likewise continued in its activities unperturbed. Norton issued further decrees in 1860 that purported to dissolve the republic and to forbid the assembly of any members of the Congress. Norton's battle against the elected leaders of America was to persist throughout what he considered his reign, though it appears that Norton eventually, if somewhat grudgingly, accepted that Congress would continue to exist without his permission, although this did not change his feelings on the matter.

I'm surprised to learn that the much deprecated nickname "Frisco" existed even back in the 1870s, and that it was just as irritating to native San Franciscans then as it is to them now:

The failure to refer to Norton's adopted home city with appropriate respect was the subject of a particularly stern edict in 1872:

Whoever after due and proper warning shall be heard to utter the abominable word "Frisco", which has no linguistic or other warrant, shall be deemed guilty of a High Misdemeanor, and shall pay into the Imperial Treasury as penalty the sum of twenty-five dollars.

I concur!

Norton spent his days as emperor inspecting the streets of San Francisco in an elaborate blue uniform with gold-plated epaulets, given to him by officers of the United States Army post at the Presidio of San Francisco. He also wore a beaver hat decorated with a peacock feather and a rosette. He frequently enhanced this regal posture with a cane or an umbrella. During his inspections, Norton would examine the condition of the sidewalks and cable cars, the state of repair of public property, and the appearance of police officers. Norton would also frequently give lengthy philosophical expositions on a variety of topics to anyone within earshot at the time.

Perhaps we should refer to our current homeless people as "emperors"?

In 1867, a police officer named Armand Barbier arrested Norton for the purpose of committing him to involuntary treatment for a mental disorder. The arrest outraged the citizens of San Francisco and sparked a number of scathing editorials in the newspapers. Police Chief Patrick Crowley speedily rectified matters by ordering Norton released and issuing a formal apology on behalf of the police force. Chief Crowley observed of the self-styled monarch "that he had shed no blood; robbed no one; and despoiled no country; which is more than can be said of his fellows in that line." Norton was magnanimous enough to grant an "Imperial Pardon" to the errant young police officer. Possibly as a result of this scandal, all police officers of San Francisco thereafter saluted Norton as he passed in the street.

What a silly police officer! Some of the items found in Emperor Norton's room upon his death were "fake telegrams purporting to be from Emperor Alexander II of Russia, congratulating Norton on his forthcoming marriage to Queen Victoria, and from the President of France, predicting that such a union would be disastrous to world peace. Also found were his letters to Queen Victoria and 98 shares of stock in a defunct gold mine." Apparently his remains were transferred to Woodlawn Cemetary in Colma. Field trip, anybody?

Plaque Build-Up

Q: When is a prank not a prank? A: When it's taken seriously for forty years.

Continuing on with the theme of early North American exploration, allow me to discuss a Wikipedia article on Drake's Plate of Brass. I remember reading in 4th grade that, while sailing around the world, Sir Francis Drake landed somewhere along the Northern California coast, mostly likely in what is now called (get this) Drake's Bay out by Point Reyes National Seashore. My nine-year-old imagination was tickled pink by the vision of some sailor wearing Elizabethan tights (and those neckline ruffles you always see in pictures of Shakespeare) landing anywhere even within spitting distance of my seemingly ahistorical home region. The textbook mentioned that a Plate of Brass had been found on the beach sometime in the 1930s, and historians concluded that it was indeed a fabled artifact from Sir Francis Drake's voyage.

Except it wasn't. Wikipedia has just dashed my childhood dreams by explaining that, apparently sometime after my 4th Grade textbook was published, historians finally concluded that the plate was a hoax perpetrated by "a playful fraternity of California history enthusiasts, the Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus ('ECV')." Oh, you know those ECV boys, always up to something. According to Wikipedia, "ECV describes itself as 'dedicated to the erection of historical plaques, the protection of widows and orphans, especially the widows, and having a grand time while accomplishing these purposes.' " So where can I sign? "G. Ezra Dane, an ECV leader, initiated the hoax as a joke intended for fellow 'Clamper' George Bolton to find." Ah, but the best laid plans of mice and men...

Von der Porten, Aker, and Allen surmise that the conspirators probably planted the plate in Marin in 1933, not far from the supposed location of Drake's landing. William Caldeira, a chauffeur, found the plate while his employer, Leon Bocqueraz, was hunting near the shores of Drake's Bay with a companion, Anson Stiles Blake. Bocqueraz was a banker, while Blake was a prominent and active Berkeley alumnus. Both were members of the California Historical Society. Caldeira showed the dirt-covered plate to Bocqueraz, then stowed the plate in the car to investigate later and then forgot about it. Some weeks later, he found it again while cleaning the car on the San Rafael Ferry and threw it away on the side of the road in San Rafael – several miles from its original location, but still in the Marin area. This was the first of a series of events that ultimately spun the joke out of the conspirators' control.

Hey, what's this big Elizabethan plate of brass doing in the backseat? Maybe I should just toss it on the side of the road?

The plate was found again three years later in 1936 by Beryle Shinn, a shop clerk. Shinn showed it to a friend, a Berkeley student, who suggested he take the plate to Bolton. In February 1937, Shinn brought it to Bolton, which to Bolton was fulfillment of a decades-old professional dream. Bolton compared it to Francis Pretty's contemporaneous description of the plate. He alerted Robert Gordon Sproul, the University of California president, and Allen L. Chickering, the president of the California Historical Society, to the possibility of a major find. Chickering and Bolton negotiated to buy the plate, offering to pay $2,500 and to assume all risk regarding the authenticity of the plate ... Bolton soon announced at a California Historical Society meeting on April 6, 1937, "One of the world's long-lost historical treasures apparently has been found! ... The authenticity of the tablet seems to me beyond all reasonable doubt."

Future historians, let this be a lesson to you: do not summon the words "beyond all reasonable doubt" lightly.

The conspirators found a number of ways of trying to tip off Bolton without actually coming forward themselves. V. L. VanderHoof, a fellow Clamper and Berkeley professor, actually created a spoof of the plate only a few weeks after the announcement of the find, hoping to show Bolton that modern tools could make a plate that looked remarkably like the "real" plate. Clamper Edwin Grabhorn, a Western history publisher, published a spoof letter from the "Consolidated Brasse and Novelty Company" offering a "special line of brass plates" guaranteed to "make your home-town famous." Finally, ECV produced a small press run of a book, Ye Preposterous Booke of Brasse, detailing problems with the metal content, wording and spelling. The book even instructed the reader to look for the "ECV" in fluorescent paint on the back and stated outright "we should now re-claim [the plate] as the rightful property of our ancient Order", meaning ECV.

Hint, hint, nudge, nudge. But alas, it took a group effort from Berkeley, Oxford, and MIT in the 1970s to finally declare the plate a fake. Bolton died in 1953 and never got the joke.

Lousy 4th Grade textbook. What did you know?

French Texas?

Would you like some honey Dijon mustard with your barbecue sauce? Didn't think so. I'm not sure how this is going to sit with the Freedom Fries crowd, but thanks to Wikipedia's "Today's Featured Article" (which previously gave us "Anti-tobacco movement in Nazi Germany"), I've just discovered that the first Europeans to colonize Texas were not the Spanish, but the French. Sacre bleu! Apparently a French colony named Fort Saint Louis existed between 1685 to 1689. This has to be the most pathetically doomed expedition I have ever read about. Its sense of existential futility seems tailor-made for a Werner Herzog movie. Absolutely nothing appears to have gone right. Infighting, disease, inaccurate maps, Native American attacks, shipwrecks, you name it. The hero, or rather, anti-hero is one Robert de la Salle. Where do we start?

According to the article, La Salle "intended to found the colony at the mouth of the Mississippi River, but inaccurate maps and navigational errors caused his ships to instead anchor 400 miles (650 km) west, off the coast of Texas near Matagorda Bay." Hey, Columbus got lost too, all right? Granted, he was aiming for India and instead discovered a whole new continent, whereas La Salle was aiming for New Orleans and instead discovered ... Texas. Not quite as impressive? "Although Hernando De Soto had explored and claimed this area for Spain 140 years before,[2] on April 9, 1682, La Salle claimed the Mississippi River valley for French king Louis XIV, naming the territory Louisiana in his honor.[3]" Sure, why not? What was De Soto going to do, file a lawsuit? Apparently Spain had declared war on France in 1683, but "shortly after [La Salle's] departure, France and Spain ceased hostilities, and Louis was no longer interested in sending La Salle further assistance." Have fun on the trip! Nice knowing you!

The chronicler of the expedition, Henri Joutel, described his first view of Texas: "The country did not seem very favorable to me. It was flat and sandy but did nevertheless produce grass. There were several salt pools. We hardly saw any wild fowl except some cranes and Canadian geese which were not expecting us."

Welcome to Texas.

Against Beaujeu's advice, La Salle ordered La Belle and the Aimable "to negotiate the narrow and shallow pass" to bring the supplies closer to the campsite.[20] To lighten L'Aimable's load, its eight cannons and a small portion of its cargo were removed. After La Belle successfully negotiated the pass, La Salle sent her pilot to L'Aimable to assist with the navigation, but L'Aimable's captain refused the help.[19] As the Aimable set sail, a band of Karankawa approached and carried off some of the settlers. La Salle led a small group of soldiers to rescue them, leaving no one to direct the Aimable. When he returned, he found the Aimable grounded on a sandbar.[18] Upon hearing that the captain had ordered the ship to sail forward after it had struck a sandbar, La Salle became convinced that the captain had deliberately grounded the ship.

As if the Indians and the terrain weren't bad enough, you gotta start playing games with me.

On March 24, La Salle took 52 men in five canoes to find a less exposed settlement site. They found Garcitas Creek, which had fresh water and fish, with good soil along its banks, and named it Rivière aux Boeufs for the nearby buffalo herds. Fort Saint Louis would be constructed on a bluff overlooking the creek, 1.5 leagues from its mouth. Two men died, one of a rattlesnake bite and another from drowning while trying to fish.[24] At night, the Karankawa would sometimes surround the camp and howl, but the soldiers could scare them away with a few gun shots.

That probably wasn't going to work for long. Also, "drowning while trying to fish"? Can't an expedition catch a break?

From January until March 1686, La Salle and most of his men searched overland for the Mississippi River, traveling towards the Rio Grande, possibly as far west as modern-day Langtry.[29][30] The men questioned the local Native American tribes, asking for information on the locations of the Spaniards and the Spanish mines, offering gifts, and telling stories that portrayed the Spanish as cruel and the French as benevolent.

Smooth, guys. Real slick.

While La Salle was gone, six of those who had remained on the Belle finally arrived at Fort Saint Louis. According to them, the new captain of the Belle was always drunk. Many of the sailors did not know how to sail, and they grounded the boat on Matagorda Peninsula.

Not knowing how to sail. That may be a problem.

By early January 1687, fewer than 45 of the original 180 people remained in the colony, which was beset by internal strife.[34][36] La Salle believed that their only hope of survival lay in trekking overland to request assistance from New France,[35] and some time that month he led a final expedition to attempt to reach the Illinois Territory.[34] Fewer than 20 people remained at Fort Saint Louis, primarily women, children, and those deemed unfit, as well as seven soldiers and three missionaries with whom La Salle was unhappy.[36] Seventeen men were included on the expedition, including La Salle, his brother, and two of his nephews. While camping near present-day Navasota on March 18, several of the men quarreled over the division of buffalo meat.

It always comes down to the buffalo meat, doesn't it?

That night, one of La Salle's nephews and two other men were killed in their sleep by another expedition member. The following day La Salle was killed while approaching the camp to investigate his nephew's disappearance.[34] Infighting led to the deaths of two other expedition members within a short time.[37] Two of the surviving members, including Jean L'Archeveque, joined the Caddo. The remaining six men made their way to Illinois Country. During their journey through Illinois to Canada, the men did not tell anyone that La Salle was dead. They reached France in the summer of 1688 and informed King Louis of La Salle's death and the horrible conditions in the colony. Louis did not send aid.[38]

"Excuse me while I wipe my hands of this whole sordid affair. So tell me, what is for dinner?" It must have been nice to be a king back then.

La Salle's mission had remained secret until 1686 when former expedition member Denis Thomas, who had deserted in Santo Domingo, was arrested for piracy. In an attempt to gain a lesser punishment, Thomas informed his Spanish jailers of La Salle's plan to found a colony and eventually conquer Spanish silver mines. Despite his confession, Thomas was hanged.

Hey come on! That's cheating! Not fair. And now, to the scene of the wreckage:

The fort and the five crude houses surrounding it were in ruins.[30] Several months before, the Karankawa had attacked the settlement. The Native Americans left a great deal of destruction and the bodies of three people, including a woman who had been shot in the back.[42] A Spanish priest who had accompanied De León conducted funeral services for the three victims.[30] The chronicler of the expedition, Juan Bautista Chapa, wrote that the devastation was God's punishment for opposing the Pope, as Pope Alexander VI had granted the Indies exclusively to the Spanish.[42][43]

That's it! That's why the expedition failed. Not because they were ill-equipped, disorganized, and morally repugnant, but because they were opposing the Pope. Thank you, Spanish, for putting it all into perspective. Speaking of perspective, the Spanish received a note from one Jean L'Archeveque, consisting of the following:

I do not know what sort of people you are. We are French[;] we are among the savages[;] we would like much to be Among the Christians such as we are[.] ... we are solely grieved to be among beasts like these who believe neither in God nor in anything. Gentlemen, if you are willing to take us away, you have only to send a message. ... We will deliver ourselves up to you.[43]

Oh, so now the Spanish aren't so bad, huh? Not after you've been living with the savages, eh?

Sorry French. You and Texas were just not going to work out.

Thanks For The Alienation

Thomas Edison - Wikipedia

It's possible that I owe almost all of my ability to drown myself in the pre-recorded media of other eras to some smelly geek from New Jersey (I suppose I can also thank him for the ability to stay up much later than a human being naturally should, but I'll do that later). In the back of my mind I've always been impressed that the same man could have been responsible for both recorded music and the motion picture; doesn't that make him like "the Godfather of Pop Culture" or something? Too bad he had almost no interest in art whatsoever. Reading his bio, it seems that his biggest legacy is one of really putting the "pop" in popular culture. Sure, anybody can make a piece of metal glow in a lab somewhere, but how many people can build a contraption that sits on a shelf somewhere until someone tries to plug it in at a time of their own convenience? Still, I'd always pictured him to be sort of an Orson Welles when he's really more of a Walt Disney.

Thoughts:

So was he deaf or something? How could he have invented the phonograph if he was deaf? And why hadn't I ever heard about this before? Maybe he was only partially deaf:

"The cause of Edison's deafness has been attributed to a bout of scarlet fever during childhood and recurring untreated middle ear infections. Edison around the middle of his career attributed the hearing loss to being struck on the ears by a train conductor when his chemical lab in a boxcar caught fire. In his later years he modified the story to say the injury occurred when the conductor, in helping him onto a moving train, lifted him by the ears.[3][4]"

Can that really make you deaf? Or maybe medicine was really that bad back then. Maybe it was all for the best:

"Edison's deafness allegedly aided him because it blocked out noises and prevented Edison from hearing the telegrapher sitting next to him."

Have deaf people been used in this way throughout history? Like do airlines hire deaf people to work near loud jets and stuff? Think of the potential.

"Edison said he wanted the lab to have "a stock of almost every conceivable material." A newspaper article printed in 1887 reveals the seriousness of his claim, stating the lab contained "eight thousand kinds of chemicals, every kind of screw made, every size of needle, every kind of cord or wire, hair of humans, horses, hogs, cows, rabbits, goats, minx, camels...silk in every texture, cocoons, various kinds of hoofs, shark's teeth, deer horns, tortoise shell...cork, resin, varnish and oil, ostrich feathers, a peacock's tail, jet, amber, rubber, all ores..." and the list goes on.[14]"

First Witch

Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison'd entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.

ALL

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Second Witch
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and owlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

ALL

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Third Witch

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches' mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Silver'd in the moon's eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.

So how about the "War of the Currents"? Doesn't quite have the same oomph of "War of the Worlds," or "War of the Roses" even. But we shouldn't assume that just because the name was dull that the war was dull:

"Despite Edison's contempt for capital punishment, the war against AC led Edison to become involved in the development and promotion of the electric chair as a demonstration of AC's greater lethal potential versus the "safer" DC. Edison went on to carry out a brief but intense campaign to ban the use of AC or to limit the allowable voltage for safety purposes. As part of this campaign, Edison's employees publicly electrocuted dogs, cats, and in one case, an elephant[18] to demonstrate the dangers of AC."

Talk about shock tactics! (da dum dum)

"Another of Edison's assistants was Nikola Tesla, who claimed that Edison promised him $50,000 if he succeeded in making improvements to his DC generation plants. Several months later, when he had finished the work and asked to be paid, Tesla claimed that Edison said, "When you become a full-fledged American you will appreciate an American joke."[19]

Funny!

But apparently not evenyone could take a joke:

"Although Tesla accepted an Edison Medal later in life and professed a high opinion of Edison as an inventor and engineer, he remained bitter. The day after Edison died, the New York Times contained extensive coverage of Edison's life, with the only negative opinion coming from Tesla who was quoted as saying, "He had no hobby, cared for no sort of amusement of any kind and lived in utter disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene" and that, "His method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 percent of the labor. But he had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor's instinct and practical American sense."

My my, somebody's jealous! Tesla sounds more like a jilted lover than a frustrated collaborator. I detect a hidden sub-plot.

Thank goodness Edison was an inventor instead of a doctor:

"Influenced by a fad diet that was popular in the day, in his last few years "the only liquid he consumed was a pint of milk every three hours."[24] He believed this diet would restore his health."

Well? Well? Did it work?

Let's also be glad that Edison won out over Alexander Graham Bell on the phone greeting question:

"While working with Alexander Graham Bell to discover words of greeting, Edison is credited as creating the word "Hello" as a telephone greeting in 1877.[26][27][28] Bell, however, preferred "Ahoy-hoy" as a greeting.[29]"

I mean, "Ahoy-hoy" definitely has some potential. I think I might start using that actually. Don't be surprised if you give me a call and hear "Ahoy-hoy" from now on.

"Edison was so fascinated by Morse Code that he taught it to his girlfriend Mary Stilwell, proposed marriage to her in the code, and nicknamed their first two children "Dot" and "Dash"."

How romantic.

"Edison's company was considerably late in the business of releasing music on phonographs. Reportedly, Edison considered his invention to be limited to a business dictation machine, and the concept of pre-recorded music never crossed his mind."

Hello! Come on buddy! Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.