Monday January 23, 2012
We all laugh about knowing Luddites, people who just can't handle new technology. But the actual Luddites were no joke.
As machinery was introduced into the woolen trade in England 200 years ago, weavers who had been producing cloth in their cottages for generations saw a very real threat to their way of life. Improvised armies set out by night and began smashing the new machines.
By the winter of 1811-1812 nighttime raids to destroy "shearing frames" became widespread in some regions of England. Taking their name from a local legend, a boy named Ned Ludd who had broken a machine, the rebellious machine smashers called themselves Luddites.
The Luddite raids turned violent, and eventually Parliament made "frame breaking" a capital offense. The British Army was sent out to suppress the mayhem.
Ultimately, the men smashing textile machinery with hammers couldn't win. Spies and informers infiltrated the movement, trials were held, and a number of Luddites wound up at the end of a rope.
Read the full article: The Luddites
Illustration: the mythical General Ludd/Getty Images
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Thursday January 19, 2012
In late January 1862, 150 years ago about now, workmen in Brooklyn, New York were frantically finishing one of the most innovative machines ever constructed: a warship made of iron.
Newspapers originally called it the Ericsson Battery, after its inventor, Swedish-born engineer John Ericsson. The U.S. Navy had been skeptical of Ericsson's design, but after President Lincoln was impressed by a model of the proposed ship, a contract was awarded to build it.
One problem was getting it built quickly, as it was known that the Confederates were building their own ironclad warship on the hull of a steamer abandoned by the U.S. Navy in Virginia at the beginning of the Civil War.
In about 100 days during the winter of 1861-62, the Union ironclad, which would be named USS Monitor, was riveted together. It was like nothing else afloat, and in early March 1862 it would meet its Confederate rival, CSS Virginia, at the Battle of Hampton Roads.
View Vintage Images: USS Monitor, Civil War Ironclad
Illustration: USS Monitor/Library of Congress
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Monday January 16, 2012
News reports about the cruise ship
Costa Concordia are a reminder of one of the great sea disasters, the
wreck of the SS Arctic in 1854.
The Arctic was a spectacular ship for its day, a large steam-powered liner with paddle wheels on its sides. It made fast Atlantic crossings and was known for its luxurious appointments.
When it suffered a mid-ocean collision with another ship, panic broke out aboard the Arctic. Members of the crew took lifeboats for their own use, hundreds of passengers were left to drown in the icy north Atlantic, and not a single woman or child survived.
Approximately 350 people perished when the Arctic went down. The news of the disaster traveled by telegraph, and the actions of the crew created a major scandal in the press.
The fate of the 80 women and children aboard the Arctic resonated deeply, and led to the tradition of "women and children first" being adopted in other maritime disasters.
Illustration: Lithograph depicting the sinking of SS Arctic/Getty Images
Read the full article: Wreck of the SS Arctic
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Sunday January 15, 2012
The phrase "forty acres and a mule" represented a promise many freed slaves believed the U.S. government had made at the end of the
Civil War. There was widespread hope and expectation that former slaves would be given land to become independent farmers.
The reality never lived up to the promise. Yet the rumors which circulated were based in fact: an order issued by General William Tecumseh Sherman, after the U.S. Army marched from Atlanta, Georgia, to the sea.
As Sherman's forces devastated Georgia, vast numbers of freed slaves followed along. And after Sherman took the city of Savannah at the end of 1864 the idea of land redistribution was formulated.
In January 1865 Sherman ordered that plantations along the Georgia and South Carolina coasts would be broken up and the land distributed to the families of freed slaves.
Under the direction of the newly created Freedmen's Bureau, land was given to former slaves. But when Andrew Johnson became president following the assassination of Lincoln, the freedmen were evicted and the land was returned to plantation owners.
And most former slaves were condemned to the system of sharecropping, which locked most of them into a life of poverty.
Read the full article: Forty Acres and a Mule
Illustration: Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman/Getty Images
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