Robert Kennedy’s amazing climb up Mount Kennedy: Always Do What You Are Afraid to Do

Following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a wave of tributes and memorials commemorated him around the world. One such memorial was the naming of a mountain in Canada – Mount Kennedy. Here, Christopher Benedict explains the story of how JFK’s brother, Robert Kennedy, attempted to make the first ever ascent of the mountain.

The Kennedy brothers in 1960. Robert is in the middle, with John on the left, and Ted on the right.

Difficult and Perplexing Times

There is no setting the clock on grief. Tragedy does not come with a catch-all instruction manual to help survivors cope in some uniform fashion with the incomprehensible. Retreating into a cocoon of counter-productive and self-destructive tendencies-denial, despondency, and inactivity-may suffice for most people. But, Robert F. Kennedy was not most people.

Which is not to suggest that he was impervious to such things. In the time spanning Jack’s murder and his own, he took to wearing his brother’s naval jacket, literally cloaking himself in sorrow. However, he also accepted this most wretched of calamities as a provocative personal challenge. To struggle against the stagnation of pre-conceived notions and overcome confidential fears and ideological obstacles to achieve forward progress in his own thought process and, therefore, of the society of which he was an active participant and public servant.

“He had always been a taker of risks from that day, so many years before, when he had thrown himself off the yawl into Nantucket Sound in his determination to learn to swim,” historian, Special Assistant to the President, and family friend Arthur Schlesinger wrote of Bobby, “and John Kennedy had said he had shown either a lot of guts or no sense at all, depending on how you looked at it.”

When the National Geographic Society proposed that the surviving Kennedy brothers Robert and Edward join the assemblage of experienced climbers seeking to be the first to ascend the Canadian mountain peak named for their fallen brother, a horrible plane crash less than seven months after Jack’s assassination, in which Ted suffered three broken vertebrae, two cracked ribs, and a collapsed lung, removed him from the equation.

It would have been more than understandable had Robert, terrified of heights and otherwise “rash but not reckless” in Schlesinger’s estimation, begged off the expedition, especially given the perilous nature of recent circumstances. For most people, this would have been perfectly acceptable. But, again, Bobby was not most people.

Lofty and Magnificent

Tributes to the martyred President John F. Kennedy emanated from all points on the globe common and obscure, his name and/or likeness affixed to coins, plaques, statues, stamps, streets, high schools and law schools, office buildings, an international airport in Queens, New York, the former Plum Pudding Island in the South Pacific from which Lt. Kennedy and his surviving PT-109 crew were rescued during World War Two after their craft had been demolished following an encounter with a Japanese destroyer.

The Canadian government had something in mind on a much grander scale. Though initially, in the opinion of Bradford Washburn, not grand enough. Washburn, founder and director of Boston’s Museum of Science, was a cartographer and mountaineer with an impressive list of first ascents to his credit, most notably the West Buttress of Mount McKinley, North America’s highest mountain.

He urged the Canadian Parliament to reconsider their original choice for Mount Kennedy, a 12,200-foot peak which he referred dismissively to as “a burble”. The uncharted 14,000-foot Yukon mountain near the Alaskan border that he had in mind was one Washburn had discovered himself from a Fairchild ski-plane during a 1935 mapping mission for National Geographic. Thirty years later, he was now gathering a survey and summit party on behalf of National Geographic and the Boston Museum of Science to set out for Mt. Kennedy and its two adjoining peaks. The expedition would include in its ranks Jim Whittaker, the first American to summit Mt. Everest in 1963, Barry Prather, who was a support member of the 1963 team but fell ill with pulmonary edema and was unable to continue, Mount Rainier park ranger Dee Molenaar and fellow Washington state native George Senner, British Columbia Mountaineering Club member James Craig, National Geographic photographer William Allard, and last  - but not least - New York Senator Robert Kennedy.

Asked by Whittaker about his training regimen for the upcoming journey, Bobby joked, “Running up and down the stairs and hollering, help!”

Lightheartedness was a fine defense mechanism to ward off the fear which must have been substantial to a novice climber. Even Whittaker worried over the potential for avalanches caused by melting spring snows, not to mention the concerns inherent to exploring uncharted territory where “one doesn’t know what those problems will be.” 

Mount Kennedy as shown from an airplane in 1984. Mount Kennedy is the high peak towards the left. Source: Gary Clark, available here.

Commitment of Body and Mind

His first actual sighting of the mountain came, “lonely, stark, forbidding” Kennedy recalled, on March 23, 1965 from a relatively safe sixty-mile distance in the confines of a Royal Canadian Air Force helicopter. The team members were deposited at 8,700 feet where Base Camp One had been established on the newly christened Hyannis Glacier for their first night’s stay. The following morning, the expedition gained an additional 4,000 feet of elevation over the unwelcoming terrain of Cathedral Glacier to reach the High Camp through a snowstorm that, by early evening, had developed into white-out blizzard conditions. This turn of events threatened the next day’s planned summit attempt.

Fortunately, wrote Robert Kennedy for his Life cover story, “during the night the snow stopped, the stars became bright, and the northern lights appeared over the ridge of the mountains.” As picturesque as it was propitious for the task at hand, their tents were nonetheless buffeted by 50 mph winds which “made sleep impossible” but also “either cleared or packed the fresh snow which had fallen and made our climb to the summit that much easier.” Not that it would be free of near disaster.

After waking at 6am to amenable temperatures of 5 above 0 for a breakfast of “soup, mush, and chocolate bars”, the climbers geared up and set off on their final assault at 8.30am. Bobby had learned well from his mountaineering mentors who were all duly impressed with the Senator’s efforts. He was, after all, a veteran of the legendary Kennedy football games on the front lawn at Hyannis Port which would not uncommonly end in bloody noses and bruised egos for brothers and sisters alike. He kept his attention on the progress of “how far we would be in 100 steps” but would also create a diversion in his mind by way of mentally reciting poems as well as passages from Churchill and Emerson. It was not for lack of focus, but simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, that Bobby, negotiating a 65-degree incline, suddenly plunged into an icy crevasse up to his shoulders. Quickly pulled free, he looked down from whence he emerged unable to see the bottom, pondering in retrospect the advice given by his mother Rose: “Don’t slip, dear.”

What Am I Doing Here?

“I had three choices: to go down, to fall off, or to go ahead”, reflected Bobby, who was told by a newspaper reporter prior to his departure that he had already written Kennedy’s obituary. With the grim determination for which he was famous (and feared), he reassessed that “I really had only one choice.” 100 feet from the summit, the ridge flattened and widened considerably and it was about here that he was untethered from his rope team of Jim Whittaker and Barry Prather.   

Whittaker, who had been awarded the National Geographic Society’s Hubbard Medal by President Kennedy during a Rose Garden ceremony a mere four months before JFK was killed in Dallas, was the first to selflessly urge Bobby ahead of the pack of proud and accomplished climbers so that he could be the first man to set foot on the summit of Mount Kennedy.

Ironically, at approximately 1pm Robert Kennedy unfurled and planted at the pinnacle of the mountain a three-foot tall flag bearing his family’s crest - the official moment of death ascribed to his brother. He also set in the snow, “with mixed emotion”, two PT-109 tie clasps as well as a golden inaugural medallion which complemented the bound copy of the President’s historic “Ask Not” address encased in plastic. “It was with a feeling of pain that the events of 16 months and two days before had made it necessary,” Robert later wrote. “It was a feeling of relief and exhilaration that we had accomplished what we set out to do.”

Happy to be home, Kennedy would neither scale another mountain nor entertain the desire to do so. Removed from the immediacy of quick thinking and physical exertion necessary in the present moment, however, Bobby was finally able to treasure the views and elements which “I’m sure would have greatly pleased the man for whom the mountain was named.”

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Sources

• Robert Kennedy and His Times by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (1978, Houghton Mifflin)
• Our Climb Up Mt. Kennedy by Robert Kennedy (Life Magazine, April 9, 1965)
• Mountain Tribute to JFK Evoked by Kennedy Trip to Yukon by Michael Jourdan (National Geographic, August 5, 2013) 
• The Strange History of Mount Kennedy, http://www.theclymb.com/stories/out-there/the-strange-history-of-mount-kennedy/

You thought you were having a bad day? Bad days from May in history…

We’ve just found out about an intriguing book that tells tales of bad days in history. In fact it has one bad tale for every day of the year - from the weird to the terrible. And as we enter May, we thought we’d share a few of these with you… From trouble in the American South to Mary Lincoln, and a clash between a communist and somebody who was very rich! So, following is an excerpt from BAD DAYS IN HISTORY: A Gleefully Grim Chronicle of Misfortune, Mayhem, and Misery for Every Day of the Year by Michael Farquhar!

May 1, 1948 and May 14, 1961 and 1963

Raging Bull Connor

There must have been something about the merry, merry month of May that got Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor’s blood boiling. With spring in the air, and racial inequality to be maintained at all costs, the super-segregationist public safety commissioner of Birmingham, Alabama, seemed extra-energized by the season.

Bull Connor in 1960. Source: City of Birmingham, Alabama. Available here. 

Start with May 1, 1948, when Glen H. Taylor, U.S. senator from Idaho, came to Birmingham—“the most segregated city in America,” as Dr. Martin Luther King later called it—and tried to enter a meeting of the Southern Negro Youth Congress through a door reserved for blacks, rather than the “Whites Only” entrance. The senator, then running for vice president on the Progressive Party ticket, was promptly seized by the police under Connor’s control. “Keep your mouth shut, buddy,” they ordered, before hauling Taylor away to jail.*

Then came more invigorating May days in the early 1960s, when Connor’s bigotry blossomed furiously in the face of new challenges to white supremacy. The Freedom Riders were coming to town, and Connor was good and ready for them. He had arranged with the Ku Klux Klan a memorable greeting party for May 14, 1961— Mother’s Day. According to one Klan informant, the terrorists had been assured by Connor’s Birmingham Police Department that they would be given 15 minutes “to burn, bomb, kill, maim, I don’t give a goddamn . . . I will guarantee your people that not one soul will ever be arrested in that fifteen minutes.” The Klansmen used the allotted time well, unleashing a savage assault on the riders with iron pipes, baseball bats, and chains.

Two years later, during the first week of May, Birmingham’s children inflamed Bull Connor further when thousands took to the streets in peaceful protest. Mass arrests were followed by a full-on assault on demonstrators with fire hoses and attack dogs—images that were captured on film and sent throughout the world. The media glare and national outrage that accompanied it made Birmingham too blistering hot for Connor that May. Unwelcome change was in the air, change he had inadvertently unleashed. By the end of the month, he was out of a job. Worse, his viciousness had pushed the previously inattentive Kennedy Administration to finally address the gross injustices in the South that Connor so viciously represented in Birmingham.

“The civil rights movement should thank God for Bull Connor,” President Kennedy said. “He’s helped it as much as Abraham Lincoln.”

* Connor had already given vent to his feelings about racial mixing a decade before, when he halted the integrated meeting of the newly formed Southern Conference for Human Welfare with this delightfully oxymoronic declaration: “I ain’t gonna let no darkies and white folk segregate together in this town.”

May 4, 1933

Immural Acts? Rockefeller vs. Rivera

Had it not been for Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the lobby of New York’s RCA building at Rockefeller Center might still be graced by the work of the world-renowned muralist Diego Rivera. The Rockefellers, capitalists to their core, commissioned Rivera, an avowed Communist, to paint a dramatic centerpiece for the new building. The lofty theme: “Man at the Crossroads Looking With Hope and High Vision to the Choosing of a New and Better Future,” which, in the midst of the Great Depression, would feature two opposing views of society, with capitalism on one side and socialism on the other. Perhaps some might have thought twice about such a potentially explosive topic, but family matriarch Abby Rockefeller was a big fan of the artist, despite, perhaps, his political views, and the fact that he had already ridiculed John D. Rockefeller in another work. Thus, Rivera set about his creative task—with a great big surprise up his sleeve.

A recreated version of Man at the Crossroads. It is by Diego Rivera and called Man, Controller of the Universe. Source: Gumr51, available here.

With work on the mural well under way, future New York governor and U.S. vice president Nelson Rockefeller went on one of his frequent visits to check on Rivera’s progress. This time, however, he saw something entirely unexpected incorporated into the work: a portrait of Lenin himself. Rockefeller was appalled, and on May 4, 1933, he shared his feelings with the artist in a letter asking him to change Lenin’s face to that of an unknown person.

Predictably, Rivera balked at the idea of altering his artistic vision. The same day he received Rockefeller’s letter, the artist responded: “Rather than mutilate the conception, I should prefer the physical destruction of the conception in its entirety.” With that, what Rivera called the “Battle of Rockefeller Center” was on. The artist was ordered to stop work on the project, and his fee was paid in full.

Amid the ensuing uproar from the art world, Nelson Rockefeller suggested the plywood-covered mural be removed and donated to the Museum of Modern Art. But the museum’s timid trustees wouldn’t touch it. Then, the following February, Rivera’s work was suddenly and unexpectedly smashed to bits and tossed into barrels—an act one critic described as “art murder.” The family claimed the destruction was inadvertent, the result of an unsuccessful attempt to remove the artwork intact. But Rivera didn’t buy that, nor did many art connoisseurs. In a wire sent from Mexico City—where he eventually reproduced the destroyed mural—the artist seethed: “In destroying my paintings the Rockefellers have committed an act of cultural vandalism. There ought to be, there will yet be, a justice that prevents the assassination of human creation as of human character.”

May 20, 1875

The Son Sets on Mary Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln tolerated his wife’s wild extravagances and occasional fits of fury with benign chagrin; his son Robert, much less so. On May 20, 1875, just over a decade after the president’s assassination, the younger Lincoln had his mother committed to an insane asylum. It was an ambush, really, one for which Mary Todd Lincoln was entirely unprepared.

The day before her forced confinement, Leonard Swett, a lawyer and adviser to the late president, arrived unexpectedly at the Chicago hotel where Mrs. Lincoln had taken a room. Accompanied by two guards, Swett escorted her to a packed courtroom where a judge, a previously empaneled jury, and an array of witnesses awaited her. Robert Lincoln was also there, having orchestrated the entire proceeding. The son had been long mortified by the eccentricities of his mother, who had endured the tragic loss of two young sons and witnessed the assassination of her husband. But mostly he was concerned about money—and how much of it she was spending.

The former first lady sat in the courtroom that day, by turns bewildered and infuriated, as a parade of experts—many of whom had never met her—testified as to her unbalanced mind, based solely on reports they had received from Robert. Hotel maids and others were called as well, offering such damning evidence as “Mrs. Lincoln’s manner was nervous and excitable.”

Then Robert took the stand. “I have no doubt my mother is insane,” he declared before the court. “She has long been a source of great anxiety to me. She has no home and no reason to make these purchases.”

The defense rested without ever raising an objection or offering a witness of its own. Robert had his mother’s appointed lawyer in his pocket, and he wouldn’t have stood for any rebuttal. While the all-male jury retired to determine Mrs. Lincoln’s fate, her treacherous son approached and tried to take her hand. Rejecting the transparent gesture, Mary Lincoln made her only statement of the day: “Oh, Robert, to think that my son would do this to me.”

Ten minutes later, the verdict of insane was rendered, and the next day Mary Todd Lincoln was locked away. 

We hope you enjoyed the article! There is a bit more on the book below:

BAD DAYS IN HISTORY: A Gleefully Grim Chronicle of Misfortune, Mayhem, and Misery for Every Day of the Year by bestselling author Michael Farquhar is available for purchase on Amazon. It offers a compendium of the 365 most dreadful, outrageous, and downright disastrous days in human history, all shared with Farquhar's trademark wit. 

The Southern Belle… And Spy in the American Civil War

During the American Civil War, one bold woman in the heart of the Confederacy dared to support the Union cause by freeing her slaves, aiding captured soldiers, and leading a spy ring that extended into the Confederate White House itself. Though her story may be obscure, her boldness and courage during the toughest years in American history tell the tale of a true American hero. Chloe Helton explains.

The Battle of Seven Pines, Virginia May 31, 1862. The battle took place near Richmond where Elizabeth Van Lew was from.

John Van Lew, Elizabeth’s father, was the owner of a wildly successful hardware store when he married Eliza Baker, the daughter of a former Philadelphia mayor. No doubt the prominence and wealth of the Van Lew family created the circumstances which allowed for Elizabeth’s successes in aiding the Union during the war. A well-rounded education and cushy wealth made for an outspoken and independent young woman in Elizabeth, and the distaste for these traits among the Richmond elite may account for some of the reason for an attractive, wealthy young woman like Elizabeth having never married. That is not to say, however, that she did not use her charms: often she was able to persuade high-ranking Confederate men to heed her requests, which allowed the success of many of her anti-Confederate actions during the Civil War.

When Virginia announced its secession from the Union, a celebratory parade marched through Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy. Perhaps every citizen in the whole city was present for the festivities except Elizabeth and her mother, Eliza. Elizabeth, an ardent Union supporter who after her father’s death had used her considerable inheritance to buy and free the families of her emancipated slaves, soured at the prospect of secession and considered fleeing the city. Not one to flee from unfriendly situations, and much too attached to her beloved family home, she eventually decided to stay, vowing to instead help the Union in any way she could.

Growing opposition

At first her actions were not hotly opposed within the city. Southerners expected swift victory in the war and initially Northern prisoners were treated well, so even when Elizabeth requested that a captive Northern Congressman who had fallen gravely ill be treated in her own home it was easily allowed, and not much suspicion was aroused. The Congressman, Calvin Huson, Jr., died soon after his relocation despite tender care from the Van Lew ladies, but Elizabeth received a thank-you letter from Union soldiers in Richmond which she kept with her until her death. As the war dragged on supply shortages ravaged the South, and when Elizabeth requested permission to visit the infamous Libby Prison she was told - by the First Lady’s half-brother (a Confederate officer), no less - that a lady like her should not be fraternizing with the enemy. Elizabeth redirected her plea to the Secretary of the Treasury, C.G. Memminger, and after she turned some of his own famous arguments about Christians proving their love for each other through aid even to those who did not deserve it he did grant her request. She used her considerable fortune to buy produce for enemy prisoners in a time when most common city folk could scarcely afford to eat, and the result among her peers was social isolation and death threats.

Van Lew’s induction into espionage did not begin intentionally. Many of the prisoners had acquired pieces of information from the Southerners they came into contact with - guards, doctors, and deserters mostly - and when these bits of hearsay were all compiled it was considerably useful. Elizabeth simply passed it on to Union officers, and because part of her family’s farm was outside the city walls she was easily able to pass on information there without arousing suspicion. Some issues did arise: at one point her pass to visit the prisons was rescinded, but with more manipulation she was able to receive permission again. The prison guards also became wary of her and banned her from speaking to the prisoners. However, this did not discourage her from soliciting information: she poked messages into cloth with pins and slipped pieces of paper into the bottom of a food dish.

Supporting the other side

Despite her valiant and charitable efforts in the prisons, Elizabeth’s real claim to fame began when Jefferson Davis, the Confederate President, began asking for reliable servants for the Southern White House. Van Lew was apparently unable to pass up this opportunity and offered one of her freed slaves for hire, and Davis, who had known her father, accepted. When Mary Bowser began work in the White House, Davis didn’t think she even knew how to read, much less that she had been educated in the North and had photographic memory, so he was careless with his papers around her - too careless. Word soon got out that there was a leak in the White House, but nobody ever suspected the unassuming former slave.

Elizabeth did see other excitement during the war. In 1862 Union forces were tantalizingly close to capturing Richmond, and the feisty Southern belle even prepared a room in her house for General McClellan to stay as her guest. After a powerful speech from Robert E. Lee, however, the Confederates were able to drive them away. Until the next and final invasion of Richmond, Elizabeth bided her time by directing the spy ring she was now leading, which ran so smoothly and efficiently that despite frequent house checks by a suspicious Rebel officer no evidence could be found of her treason. She did protest these annoying visits, eventually housing a Confederate officer as a guest in order to ease suspicion. Van Lew also helped Colonel Paul Revere (a descendant of the Revolutionary Paul Revere) escape certain execution by helping him escape and housing him in her attic.

At the conclusion of the Civil War, as Richmond prepared for the march of Union soldiers into the city, Elizabeth proudly raised the American flag above her home. This bold action caused a mob to descend upon her mansion and she quashed it with feasible threats. After the war, though, Elizabeth’s pro-Union actions were revealed and she faced social isolation throughout the rest of her life. After a stressful stint as postmaster in Richmond and the death of her mother she fell into a depression which lasted the rest of her life. Her bold actions and unrelenting dedication to her cause cemented her in history as one of the most famous spies during the war, however, and her story is an inspiration.

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Reference

• Karen Zeinert - Elizabeth Van Lew: Southern Belle, Union Spy

The World War One German invasion of Belgium… What happened next?

In the early days of World War One, the Germans planned to march through Belgium as part of their plan to win the war. The Germans did not expect the Belgians to put up much resistance; however, events did not quite turn out that way. In the second of a two-part article, Frank Jastrzembski continues from part 1 and tells the tale of the heroic Belgian defense of its homeland in 1914…

General Gerard Leman., the Belgian in charge of the defense of Liege.

General Leman set up his headquarters in Liege on July 31, 1914. On August 3, he ordered the destruction of the bridges, tunnels, and railways connected to Liege as the German forces began to flood across the small Belgian border. The next day the German Army of the Meuse arrayed for battle outside the ring of forts. An ultimatum was sent out to allow the Germans to enter Liege. Leman boldly refused the demand to surrender.

The Third Division occupying the trenches between the easternmost forts was attacked by the units of the Army of the Meuse. The German officers arrogantly launched their assault shoulder to shoulder as if organized on a parade ground against the sheltered Belgian defenders. The German assault was cut to pieces with the help of Belgian machine guns placed in the adjacent forts. At Fort Barchon, the Belgians mounted a counter strike and threw the wavering Germans back with their bayonets. The German attackers withdrew bloodied and completely stunned by the dogged Belgian resistance.

The Germans mounted a daring attempt to capture or assassinate Leman on August 6. A detachment of thirty German soldiers and nine officers dressed as British soldiers drove up to Leman’s headquarters. One of Leman’s aides, Major Marchand, soon caught on to the trap and alerted the headquarters, but was subsequently shot down. The surprise German attack carried Leman’s headquarters, but in the confusion Leman escaped to Fort Loncin, west of the city.

Closer to Liege

The German high command decided on the realignment of their strategy by focusing on capturing the city of Liege itself. Thousands of German reinforcements were soon flooding to the outskirts in an attempt to make a concentrated breakthrough past the forts into the city. After refusing to surrender once again, Liege was shelled on August 6 by a Zeppelin LZ-1, killing nine civilians. The Germans would become vilified for the atrocities committed against the Belgian population. With enough pressure, there was a breakthrough between Fort Fleron and Fort Evegnee on August 10, putting the Germans in range of Liege itself.

The Third Division was controversially sent to join the main Belgian Army in Louvain. The reasoning behind this move was that it would be better suited if it joined King Albert and the main army rather than being bottled up within the forts and surrounded. The movement of the Third Division to join Albert left Liege with weakened defenses as German reinforcements continued to strengthen their chokehold around the city.

The few Belgians in Liege were eventually forced to surrender the city. Even though the city was in German hands, the forts were still intact, and the guns of the forts controlled the roads coming in and out of Liege. The German’s held Liege with approximately 120,000 men, but could not move in and out of the city without being under persistent artillery from the forts. The Germans could only move undetected at night and in small parties.

In the meantime, the Allies sluggishly reacted to honor their guarantee to protect Belgian neutrality. The French, under General Joseph Joffre, were too infatuated with attacking through Alsace-Lorraine, and were indifferent to the genuine threat on their left in Belgium. The British, who decided on sending an expeditionary force of four divisions of infantry and cavalry, were slow in transporting these men across the channel to help the besieged Belgians.

A new weapon

General Erich Ludendorff, the new commander of the Fourteenth Brigade, realized the Belgian forts were not going to surrender even with Liege occupied. He decided on a method other than sacrificing his men in useless frontal assaults. He ordered up some 305 mm Skoda siege mortars borrowed from Austria, and a 402 mm howitzer produced by Krupp steelworks. None of these steel behemoths had been used in combat before. The 402mm Krupp weighed 75 tons and had to be transported by rail in five sections then set in concrete before going into action. It would fire up to ten 2,200 lb. projectiles per hour. It had a range of up to nine miles and was fired by an electric charge with a 200-man crew.

On August 12, the German government relayed another message to King Albert demanding the Belgians surrender. “Now that the Belgian Army has upheld its honor by heroic defense to a very superior force,” the Germans arrogantly indicated, they asked that the Belgians spare themselves from “further horrors of war.” King Albert refused to reply. The massive siege guns were soon unleashed on each fort in succession.

The forts had a major weakness in their design. They were vulnerable to artillery attacks from the rear. The siege guns took two days to assemble, and on August 12, they began to pound the remaining forts in detail.

The massive shells decimated the defending concrete and steel forts and buried the defenders. The forts could not return fire as the German guns were out of range. The defenders of each fort were forced to hunker down and withstand the bombardment. On August 13, three of the forts fell. Fort Pontisse withstood forty-five shells in 24 hours of bombardment before it was taken by an infantry assault. Fort Chaudfontaine surrendered with only 75 out of 408 still alive from the hellish shelling. By August 14, all forts east and north of the city had fallen.

After the eastern forts were reduced, the siege guns were brought up against the forts positioned to the west of the city. Fort Boncelles survived a 24-hour bombardment but soon fell on August 15 leaving little more than particles of concrete and scraps of metal. The bombardment left clouds of poisonous gas. By August 16, eleven of the twelve forts had fallen. Only Fort Loncin remained.

The last battle

General Leman had positioned himself in the last standing fort. The bombardment lasted for three days, from August 12-15. In an interval between the bombardments, the Germans sent emissaries under the white flag to try and convince Leman to surrender the garrison. Leman refused all demands. On August 16, Loncin was hit by a 420 mm shell that penetrated the magazine and exploded, demolishing the fortress.

German soldiers then entered on foot after the explosion. The majority of the garrison was buried in the debris, including their commander. Leman later vividly remembered the effects of the explosion as, “Poisonous gases seemed to grip my throat as in a vise.”

Hopeless as the situation was for the Belgians, they attempted to hold on to the fort. The last twenty-five or so Belgian defenders still able to stand were found in a corridor preparing for a last ditch effort to ward off the Germans. In another instance of tenacity, a corporal valiantly tried to drive the Germans back single-handily by firing his rifle in vain with one good arm, as his other arm was dangling wounded at his side. In a show of compassion, the Germans threw down their weapons and ran to the aid of the Belgian soldiers. Of the 500 defenders in Fort Loncin, 350 were dead and 150 wounded.

Fort Loncin in the aftermath of the battle.

The General

The Germans came upon the lifeless body of General Leman pinned beneath a block of stone. “Respect the General, he is dead,” uttered a nearby weeping Belgian adjutant. When it was realized that Leman was actually not dead, his lifeless body was carried out of the fort unconscious by German soldiers to General von Emmich. When he regained consciousness, Leman was said to have proudly pronounced, “It is as it is. The men fought valiantly. Put in your dispatches that I was unconscious.” Moved by his heroic proclamation, General von Emmich replied, “Military honor has not been violated by your sword. Keep it.”

Leman was transported to a prison in Germany. From his prison in Germany, Leman wrote to Albert pledging, “I am convinced that the honor of our arms has been sustained. I have not surrendered either the fortress or the forts…I would willingly have given my life the better to serve them, but death was denied me.”

The day after the fall of Fort Loncin, the German Army resumed its march through Belgium toward France. Though unsuccessful at Liege, the Belgian forces had delayed the German advance for two priceless days in its sweep toward France. The German invasion was stopped dead in its tracks on the Marne River on the outskirts of Paris in September of 1914. The chance of a quick German victory faded away and trench warfare began in earnest.

Leman was kept as a prisoner of war until December 1917, when due to his failing health, he was released to travel to France. After the war, he returned to Belgium with a hero’s welcome for his heroic defense of Liege. He retired to the city he was born and fought to defend. He died on October 17, 1920.

Some may argue that the importance of the two-day defense of Liege is inconsequential. However, the Belgians helped to dramatically alter the outcome of the 1914 campaign. The Times of London declared that Belgium earned “immortal renown” by helping to shatter the superstition that the German armies were invincible. Today Fort Loncin is a grave to roughly 300 of those who died and remain buried in the wreckage.

Did you find this article interesting? If so tweet about it, like it, or share it by clicking on one of the buttons below!

Further Reading

Davis, Paul K. Besieged: An Encyclopedia of Great Sieges from Ancient Times to the Present. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2001.

Donnell, Clayton. The Forts of the Meuse in World War I. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2007.

Horne, Charles F. The Great Events of the Great War Part Two. Volume II ed. The National Alumni, 1920.

Keegan, John. The First World War. New York: Vintage, 2000.

Lipkes, Jeff. Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium, August 1914. Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 2007.

Meyer, G. J. A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914-1918. New York City: Delacorte Press, 2007.

Pawly, Ronald, Pierre Lierneux, and Patrice Courcelle. The Belgian Army in World War I. Oxford: Osprey, 2009.

Tuchman, Barbara Wertheim. The Guns of August. New York: Ballantine Books, 1990.

Tucker, Spencer C., and Priscilla Mary Roberts. World War I: A Student Encyclopedia. 5 vols. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2006. 

The 4 most awesome swords ever…

Swords have been used in all manner of military engagements in history. But which are the best 4 ever? Adrian Burrows (aka Captain Max Virtus) returns to the site and writes a humorous piece in his own inimitable style!

There are three things in this world that are true. The Sun is hot. Water is wet... and swords are awesome.

As I sit here in the ‘sword wing’ of my house, I find myself gazing over racks and racks of blades and I start to consider... which of these are the Top 4 Most Awesome Swords. EVER (everyone does a Top 5 or a Top 10, I'm going for a Top 4).

This is tricky. After all there are so many swords in my warehouse to consider. In one of the boxes I have one of Napoleon's swords (I paid a mere $6.4 million dollars for it back in 2007, it's rather pleasant, the blade is gold encrusted and look's great but highly ineffective at completing basic sword requirements like chopping off limbs). Then there is the rather impressive 132cm long sword that belonged to the Scottish Hero William Wallace, surprisingly dubbed the Wallace Sword. Not to forget the rather impressive Tizona, the beautiful blade made of Damascus Steel that the Spanish Hero El Cid used to battle the Moors. But none of these blades were strange enough to belong in an Escapade in Bizarrchaeology. So that's why I settled on the following bizarrely brilliant weapons.

4. Khopesh Sword

The Ancient Egyptian Khopesh Sword is based on one simple question: why have a sword or an axe when you can have both? And thanks to King Eannatum of Lagash - who was the first to give this weapon a go back in 2500 BC - now you can. The Khopesh was rather short at 24 inches long but the blunted end proved very effective at being used as a hook to surprise an unwitting opponent. The sword was incredibly popular, and was an Egyptian warrior’s weapon of choice and must have fashion accessory for close to 1,200 years.

3. Seven Branch Sword

Why settle for one, two, three, four, five or six blades on your sword when you can have seven? That's a motto to live your life by and that's exactly what the Baekje Dynasty in Ancient Korea around 372 AD did. They constructed this mightily impressive and over bearingly bladey Seven Branch Sword. This weapon was never intended for battle and was instead built for ceremonial purposes. But having sharpened up the Iron blade and swung it around a bit I can assure you that it is highly effective as chopping seven melons in half. AT THE SAME TIME…

2. Gladiator Scissors

There are many different Gladiator types, the net and trident wielding Retarius and the gladius swinging Samnite amongst the most well known, not so the scissor holding Scissor Gladiator. The tube like metal casing protected the Gladiator's forearm in a bout, whilst the curved blade at the end allowed for parrying, slicing and hooking. In Ancient Rome, these three features combined to make for a crowd-pleasing weapon.

1. Urumi Swords

The problem with using a sword in battle is that it can be rather restrictive - it has a specific length of blade that only has a certain attack distance. This does not apply to the Urumi Swords and that is precisely what makes the Urumi Swords so phenomenally awesome. Imagine a sword crossed with a slinky and you have a Urumi Sword. Developed in the southern states of India during the Maurya Dynasty, this bladed whip like sword can only be used by an expert trained in Indian Martial Arts. Why? Well, the danger is that as you flail around with this giant extendible sword you might accidentally cut your own face off. Which believe me you would not want to do.

The standard Urumi consists of only one blade that is four to five feet long; however, the Sri Lankan version has up to THIRTY TWO blades attached to one handle. Not only that but the warrior would fight with one Urumi in each hand, leading to SIXTY FOUR blades whizzing around the place.

And the best thing about the Urumi? After you've finished the swings, spins and turns that make up the attack pattern you can wear the Urumi around your waist like a belt. Which surely must be the best belt ever. So not only is the Urumi the most awesome sword ever it is the most awesome belt ever too.

So, there you have it, the Top 4 Most Awesome Swords. EVER according to Captain Max Virtus. Does your list differ? Have I caused a horrible and irreproachable offence by not including your favorite historical sword? Then let us know in the comments below.

PS - Whilst this list was called the Top 4 most awesome swords. EVER, it did not include swords not invented yet. Otherwise this list would have obviously contained a Light saber.

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Captain Max Virtus takes history to the Max every week in Escapades in Bizarrchaeology. Find out more at https://bizarrehistory.wordpress.com.

The true story of the World War One German invasion of Belgium…

In the early days of World War One, the Germans planned to march through Belgium as part of their plan to win the war. The Germans did not expect the Belgians to put up much resistance; however, events did not quite turn out that way. In the first in a two-part series, Frank Jastrzembski explains the heroic Belgian defense of its homeland in 1914…

The Defense of Liege by W.B. Wollen. Source: available here.

All that stood amid the concrete wreckage of Fort Loncin were roughly twenty-five battered Belgian defenders out of the original 500-man garrison. The small portion of surviving Belgian defenders were gathered together in a shattered corridor. Soiled with dust, they stood anxiously clutching their rifles and awaiting the onslaught of German soldiers swarming over the rubble of the once formidable fort. Today a monument stands at the fort celebrating their heroic defense with the inscription, “Passer by... go say to Belgium and France that here 550 Belgians sacrificed themselves for the defense of freedom and the salvation of the world” based on the epitaph by Simonides for the Spartan dead at the battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC:

Go tell the Spartans passerby,

That here obedient to their laws we lie.

Brave Little Belgium

The German invasion through Belgium in August of 1914 was presumed to have been an effortless undertaking. The German soldiers and their officers were stunned by the tenacious defense the Belgians exhibited. The soldiers of the Belgian Army were jokingly referred to as “chocolate soldiers” for the way in which they would melt away in combat from any determined opposition. The Kaiser once said to a British officer, “I will go through Belgium like that!” slicing his hand through the air. However, this gallant little nation shocked and inspired the world with their dogged stand against an enemy invasion force that outnumbered them roughly fourteen to one. “Brave Little Belgium” became a rallying cry around the world signifying a free nation defending their sovereignty against an aggressive German invader.

The Belgian Army was ill prepared to face the juggernaut of the German Army. It numbered seven divisions amounting to 117,000 men, with only 93,000 considered combatants. The Belgian forces in the forts surrounding Liege numbered around 4,500 men, with the mobile Third Division stationed in the city composed of 25,000 soldiers.

The Belgian Army was considered one of the most decrepit armies in Europe. The cavalry still wore early nineteenth century uniforms, with the infantry sporting shakos, bonnets, or bearskins as headgear. In some instances, machine gun crews were drawn behind teams of dogs. What the Belgian forces lacked in size and modern equipment though, they more than made up for in their tenacious willpower to defend their borders.

Schlieffen Plan

The neutral nation of Belgium found itself positioned in the center stage of a colossal conflict when the Great War broke out in August of 1914. The German General Staff dusted off the Schlieffen Plan geared to strike a devastating blow to their French enemies. They sensibly anticipated that France would naively concentrate an offensive toward Alsace-Lorraine along the Franco-German border. The German General Staff was delighted when the French proceeded to overextend themselves in this aggressive movement.

While France was preoccupied with this maneuver, the Germans concentrated their soldiers on the opposite side on the Ardennes in an aggressive flanking movement. The heavily wooded Ardennes would shield this movement, allowing German infantrymen to boldly sweep around the French left flank and crash into Paris. The movement would allow them to outflank and strike the French Army from an exposed position. This was a brilliant strategy aimed to end the war with one swift and devastating strike.

One of the many major flaws in the Schlieffen Plan was underestimating the opposition of the neutral nation of Belgium. In order to successfully implement the Schlieffen Plan, German soldiers would have to move through Belgium. This movement would allow for the easiest route to travel through northern Germany into France. An ultimatum was sent out on August 2 with a twelve-hour window to reply. The Germans demanded that the Belgian King, Albert I, grant them military access and allow their infantrymen to march through Belgium uncontested. Albert was skeptical of German intentions, and flatly refused, asserting that if they entered Belgian territory their neutrality rights would be violated.

The Germans moved into Belgium nevertheless, deliberately violating Belgian neutrality. The Belgian’s only hope was to contain the German Army long enough for French or British support to arrive. If a stand was to be made, it would be done at the formidable fortresses surrounding the city of Liege.

Liege

The city of Liege was strategically located on a high bluff overlooking the Meuse River. Twelve massive triangular forts surrounded Liege, forming a circle of thirty-six miles in circumference. Each fortress was located a distance of six miles from the center of Liege. The fortresses were two to three miles apart, with fortifications dug in between to form a connected chain. Fourteen guns were located in each fort under revolving iron turrets and secured in concrete. Built to garrison around 200 men, these forts were made to withstand direct hits from the heaviest of artillery. World opinion viewed the position the most fortifiable in Europe, and expected it to hold out at least nine months against any serious military threat. 

Albert named his former teacher at the Belgian War College, Gerard Mathieu Leman, as the overall commander of the forces surrounding Liege. He could not have selected a better man for the defense of Belgium. At sixty-three years old, the commander would be fighting literally in the city of his birth in 1851. In the prelude of the battle of Gettysburg in the summer of 1863, Abraham Lincoln claimed the newly appointed Pennsylvanian commander George Meade would “fight well on his own dunghill.” Albert must have had the same predispositions of Leman.

In his youth, Leman was admitted to the Belgian Military School in 1867 and proved to be a brilliant student. He opted to serve in the engineers upon his graduation in 1872. In 1880, he was placed in command of the Belgian Royal Engineer Corps. In 1898, he was made professor of mathematics and fortifications at the Belgian Royal Military School. The scholarly papers related to mathematics and siege warfare published by Leman earned him world renown. In 1912, he was made a lieutenant general. Leman was described as a somber, distant man who inspired respect rather than devotion.

Albert appointed him a permanent member of the National Defense Council. This gave him command of the Third Division and the Liege fortified zone on the border with Germany. He zealously studied the approaches to the Ardennes and Meuse River crossings in anticipation of the German invasion. Albert gave Leman a direct order to hold Liege “to the end”. This was a daunting task for the inadequate force he had at his disposal.

Preparation for the attack

Roughly 60,000 soldiers were detached from various units in the German Second Army to form a special striking force to attack and neutralize the forts surrounding Liege. The Army of the Meuse, as it became known, consisted of six brigades under the command of General Albert Theodor Otto von Emmich. General von Emmich was convinced the Belgians would quickly submit.  

General Leman set up his headquarters in Liege on July 31, 1914. On August 3, he ordered the destruction of the bridges, tunnels, and railways connected to Liege as the German forces began to flood across the small Belgian border. The next day the German Army of the Meuse arrayed for battle outside the ring of forts. An ultimatum was sent out to allow the Germans to enter Liege. Leman boldly refused the demand to surrender.

The attack then began, and the Belgians offered much greater resistance than the Germans had imagined. Next time we will continue this little-known tale… Find out what happened here.

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Further Reading

Davis, Paul K. Besieged: An Encyclopedia of Great Sieges from Ancient Times to the Present. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2001.

Donnell, Clayton. The Forts of the Meuse in World War I. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2007.

Horne, Charles F. The Great Events of the Great War Part Two. Volume II ed. The National Alumni, 1920.

Keegan, John. The First World War. New York: Vintage, 2000.

Lipkes, Jeff. Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium, August 1914. Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 2007.

Meyer, G. J. A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914-1918. New York City: Delacorte Press, 2007.

Pawly, Ronald, Pierre Lierneux, and Patrice Courcelle. The Belgian Army in World War I. Oxford: Osprey, 2009.

Tuchman, Barbara Wertheim. The Guns of August. New York: Ballantine Books, 1990.

Tucker, Spencer C., and Priscilla Mary Roberts. World War I: A Student Encyclopedia. 5 vols. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2006. 

Just how did tobacco companies advertise cigarettes to women?

Cigarette advertisements were banned in many countries some time ago; however, this was not always the case. Prior to World War Two, cigarettes were believed to be good for you and advertising was allowed. And, as women’s power in society grew in the early twentieth century, so did their propensity to smoke cigarettes. Here, Rowena Hartley investigates how cigarette companies got women hooked on cigarettes through advertising…

A German cigarette advertisement, circa 1910.

Cigarettes and Mass Production

Nowadays the glorification of cigarettes is the domain of old movies and television shows, and we are far more likely to see adverts graphically detailing how they can harm us. Despite this, cigarettes have remained highly popular in almost every rank of society for over a hundred years. And yet, to begin with, they were a symbol of wealth. The very first cigarettes were hand rolled, which took precision and time, so could only be purchased by those who had plenty of disposable income. However, at the Paris Exhibition in 1883 American inventor James T. Bonsack presented a working model of his cigarette-rolling machine which could make 300 cigarettes a minute. The Wills brothers in England quickly snapped up this cigarette machine, but it was not long before a similar device called the Bohl machine was invented allowing other cigarette companies to compete in this market. Suddenly the market was flooded and not just with Wills but with Players & Sons, Lambert & Butler, and De Reszke cigarettes amongst others. By World War One cigarettes were the most popular form of tobacco and were being sold for the very accessible price of 5 cigarettes for a penny.

The flooding of the tobacco market meant that, to begin with, cigarette companies spent vast amounts of money advertising their product to secure customers - only to find that their competitors were doing exactly the same thing and thus frequently cancelling out all of their efforts (this had the odd effect that when cigarette adverts were banned it actually meant that the cigarette companies had more profits as they were still selling the same amount of cigarettes). What this has to do with the early days of cigarette advertising is that on the whole smokers make very loyal customers, so once they started on one brand they were likely to continue to buy that same brand. Therefore, cigarette companies, soon after discovering the glory of untapped customers, were unable to show any further growth in the market or any proof that the advertising was working. In search of greater profits the cigarette companies decided to look to a previously ignored market: women.

Cigarettes, Women and sexual promiscuity

To begin with, women were not heavily targeted by cigarette advertisements, as cigarettes were a luxury item; their availability was highly restricted even amongst working men, never mind non-working women. Therefore it was generally only through men that women could access cigarettes and many women experimented with smoking by borrowing their husband’s pack. In itself this did not have any negative connotations but in the late nineteenth century unmarried men and women were closely observed and any behavior deemed inappropriate was quick to be frowned upon. So a man and a woman would have had to stand tantalizingly close to light a cigarette, and this was soon seen as provocative behavior, even foreplay. The image of a man and woman smoking in bed together still has strong and very obvious connotations about their earlier activities, although these implications were not just limited to amateurs. There was soon a strong association between cigarettes and prostitutes as they would often accept cigarettes from customers and then smoke them in the street whilst awaiting further business. This image was furthered by adverts warning men about the dangers of overly friendly women. Adverts of the time show that the combination of a cigarette and red lipstick apparently fits perfectly with “syphilis-gonorrhea”. The other (slightly less insulting) image of female smokers was that of the “New Woman” who was the subject of derision for the newspapers as she smoked heavily, drank heavily, wore men’s clothing, and neglected her household duties.

Despite the stigma, and in some cases because of it, cigarettes began to steadily grow in popularity so that by the end of the 1940s in the USA 33% of women smoked compared 50% of men, and in Britain 40% of women smoked compared to 60% of men. The increase in female smokers partially mirrored the growth of the market in general as cigarettes were becoming increasingly easy to purchase. The early twentieth century also saw a rise in working women, so it was more common for women to buy their own cigarettes and smoke them in and around their workplace. However, during the growth of female smokers from the 1880s to the 1940s, consumption was not just a grass roots movement. It was one heavily manipulated and encouraged by the tobacco industry.

Opening the Market

When tobacco companies started to market to women, they were important commodities. Most men were either non-smokers or dedicated to a particular brand; whereas women had less loyalty as they had not been directly targeted by cigarette companies to anywhere near the same extent. Therefore, there was a high chance that the company which encouraged women to smoke would also be the company who cornered most of that market. It is true that some women were already smoking before cigarette companies began to target them as consumers, but the majority did it at home and in secret in order to avoid the stereotypes associated with female smokers. This was not good for a tobacco company as it meant that there was less word of mouth advertising and fewer cigarettes consumed as women were limited in where they felt comfortable smoking them. This particular issue gave rise to Edward Bernays’ 1929 advertising campaign for Lucky Strike, where in the Easter Day Parade in Manhattan suffragettes would smoke “Torches of Freedom” to show their defiance against male dominance. The marching smokers did cause quite a stir not least in the sales of Lucky Strike, which sold 40 billion cigarettes in 1930 compared to 14 billion just five years earlier. After such shock tactics it became more common to see women smoking in public.

Although women smoking in public were becoming more acceptable there was still a major hurdle to overcome, which was that the cigarettes themselves were still made to suit men’s tastes. In the early days some cigarette companies, such as Wills, were hesitant to create a brand purely aimed at women, but it soon became clear that such attention could mean the difference between attracting and losing customers. In Britain the survey group Mass Observation found that women had to train themselves to like cigarettes or as one described it give “at least an appearance of enjoyment”. While that is also true of men, women were more likely to admit it. This meant that cigarette companies actually began to change the cigarettes themselves in order to have brands which appealed directly and almost exclusively to women. The number of Egyptian and Turkish blend cigarettes increased as their taste was milder and they also looked better in cigarette holders. In a more blatant stunt, Slims created a thinner cigarette in order to make it, and the hand attached to it, appear more elegant. Cigarette companies also began to manufacture jeweled accessories to further encourage smoking as well as brand loyalty. These were often in the form of cigarette cases with mirrors on the inside that made the product look more feminine but also subconsciously made the smoker relate checking her appearance to reaching for a cigarette. So society was open to female smokers, the manufacturers were directly targeting women, and cigarette companies were selling cigarette accessories. The final piece in the jigsaw was advertising.

Advertising Cigarettes to Women

Advertisers have found that the best way to sell their products is by having one clear selling point that they focus upon to attract the consumers’ attention. Once a brand is more established they can begin to have more ambiguous adverts, or introduce a new selling point to remind consumers of their product, such as offering a toy meerkat in order to compare insurance companies. However, in the early days of selling women cigarettes, most of the tobacco companies tended to focus on two main areas: health and style.

It was not until the 1950s that cigarettes were directly linked to throat and lung disease, so to begin with there were many adverts that recommended cigarettes on health grounds. Some cigarettes were even advertised on the basis that they helped alleviate sore throats. And even when this was proved false Lucky Strike slightly altered their advertisements to say that physicians agreed the cigarettes were “less irritating because it’s toasted”; this managed to keep the attraction without making any suable claims. The other health claims at least had an element of truth in them as cigarettes also advertised their ability to relieve stress and encourage weight loss. The adverts relating to health benefits were aimed at both men and women, but stress and slimming claims were more commonly aimed at women rather than men. One of the original claims made for encouraging women to smoke was that women were of a more nervous disposition and so would need the calming influence of cigarettes to help control their anxious tendencies. Similarly after many years of corset advertisements it was not a great leap to point out the slimming effects of cigarettes; again Lucky Strike was the forerunner of this phenomenon with their “reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet”. Even so, although health advertisement continues to be a popular selling point, the majority of cigarette brands focused on far more fashionable ways of selling cigarettes. 

A Lucky Strike advert from the 1930s showing the supposed health benefits of smoking. Source: tobacco.stanford.edu, available here.

Red Lips

It is a noted phenomenon in fashion that what originally might be seen as scandalous soon becomes another fashion item. Just as miniskirts and saggy jeans first shocked and provoked reaction, cigarettes soon went from a scandal to a fashion statement. Smoking is still a highly social activity and many smokers started due to their belief that it made them look sophisticated, an idea encouraged by film and television, as from the 1930s onwards almost every actor and actress seemed glued to a cigarette for most of the programs’ running time. For actresses such as Audrey Hepburn the cigarette holder became a vital part of her look and one that she is rarely seen without. Similarly, some actresses actually advertised for tobacco companies, for example Claudette Colbert (It Happened One Night) for Chesterfields and Barbara Stanwyck (Double Indemnity) for L&M Filters. Other tobacco companies bypassed the need to use actresses’ popularity to sell their products by creating highly stylized adverts such as Will’s Gold Flake which merely hinted at the sophistication cigarettes could bestow. Companies such as Slims and De Reszke adapted the product itself to entirely focus the product on women. Slims thinned their cigarettes and De Reszke began a “Red Tips for Red Lips” campaign in the 1930s where they cultured the end of the cigarette so that any lipstick marks would not be visible. However, despite the growth in the market, De Reszke’s Red Tips advert was one of the first cigarette adverts that directed itself solely at the female market.

In conclusion, although many of the adverts mentioned here were used to appeal to both men and women, in a matter of years women went from being an ignored market to making up almost half of consumers, a change which was in a large part down to the power of advertising. But, as with men, once female smokers were hooked and their loyalties claimed by a specific brand then it was back to the drawing board for the advertisers as they tried to find a new market to appeal to.

Did you find this article fascinating? If so, tell the world! Tweet about it, like it, or share it by clicking on one of the buttons below!

References

• Matthew Hilton, Smoking in British Popular Culture 1800-2000: Perfect Pleasures, (Manchester University Press, 2000); https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UjM8t6Ul73YC&dq=smoking+in+popular+culture&source=gbs_navlinks_s (Especially Chapter Four: ‘Player’s Please: The Cigarette and the Mass Market).
• Wills, B.W.E. Alford, WD & HO Wills and the Development of the UK Tobacco Industry, 1786-1965 (Methuen, 1973).
•  Wendy Christensen, ‘Torches of Freedom: Women and Smoking Propaganda’, The Society Pages, February 27 2012, http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/02/27/torches-of-freedom-women-and-smoking-propaganda/
• Penny Tinkler, ‘”Red tips for hot lips”: advertising cigarettes for young women in Britain, 1920-70’, Women’s History Review, 10:2 (2001) http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09612020100200289

A Revolution of Values - Martin Luther King’s Beyond Vietnam Speech

Martin Luther King, Junior was assassinated almost 47 years ago to this day - on April 4, 1968. But exactly one year before his assassination he gave a very memorable speech – Beyond Vietnam. It was a fascinating speech that discussed America and the Vietnam War. Christopher Benedict explains…

Martin Luther King, Junior in 1964.

Call to Conscience

Even to the secular citizen, New York’s Riverside Church is an architectural and historical wonder. Situated on Manhattan’s upper west side, this interdenominational place of worship, conceived and funded by John D. Rockefeller Jr., straddles the Hudson River and is mere blocks away from Columbia University. Grant’s Tomb, located at the northern-most tip of Riverside Park, can be found almost directly across Riverside Drive.

Its spiked, ornately carved gothic tower dominates the Morningside Heights skyline and makes it the tallest church in the United States, twenty-fourth in worldwide rankings. The cavernous nave and altar are quite a sight to behold owing to the dozens of vibrant stained-glass windows, low-hanging circular chandeliers, sculpted religious icons, and the massive arrangement of organ pipes. These encircle the pulpit from which Nelson Mandela spoke just four months after his 1990 release from prison on Robben Island, South Africa.

Fidel Castro, Cesar Chavez, Bishop Desmond Tutu, former president Bill Clinton, and Jesse Jackson (delivering the eulogy at Jackie Robinson’s funeral in 1972) likewise have uttered sage words (a patience and posterior-fatiguing four hours’ worth, in Castro’s case) which have resounded throughout Riverside Church’s hallowed halls.

On April 4, 1967, one year to the day until he would be murdered in Memphis, Martin Luther King Jr. would issue from this same stage what he already knew would be a controversial and divisive plea to a “society gone mad on war” for “radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam”.

Already derided as an antiquated ‘Uncle Tom’ first by Malcolm X and then by Stokely Carmichael, who was busy preparing the factions of his Black Power movement to congregate as “groups of urban guerillas for our defense in the cities”, King would come under attack not only by black radicals who mistook his non-violent teachings for a kind of manacled pacifism, but by his own constituencies within the Morehouse College alumni, NAACP, and Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Their main point of contention involved what they feared to be Martin’s gradual philosophical shift from civil rights to foreign policy, a concern shared by the country’s ‘moral majority’ who, as it was, had little to no tolerance for King’s dream of an integrated nation and even less, it seemed, for his unsolicited opposition to the administration’s ongoing and escalating military intervention in Southeast Asia.

And why, fretted many of his friends, advisors, and advocates, risk alienating or infuriating Lyndon Johnson, who had signed the Civil Rights Act and publicly called out the Ku Klux Klan, in the process?

Despite his rapidly declining popularity, which was responsible for a prolonged and deepening depression, Martin Luther King nonetheless clung to the unfaltering belief that “a time comes when silence is betrayal.”

Time to Break the Silence

“I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice,” Dr. King begins somberly.

The pews are filled to capacity, black audience members, in a stark reminder of how far society had yet to go despite the progress previously made, barred from the first several rows. Additional improvised seating proves inadequate, the overflow crowd choking the sidewalk of 120th Street.

“Men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy,” he continues. “Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in their surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But,” he insists, “we must move on.”

A preacher by vocation and by nature, King’s reputation and tradition was that of an extemporaneous speaker. This oration would prove to be the lone exception. Drafted, redrafted, and drafted time and again, the ‘Beyond Vietnam’ speech would ultimately have as much preparation and surgically precise execution devoted to its construction as the very building in which it was recited.

Vincent Harding was its chief architect. It was a prominent role that would plague him with guilt and grief in equal measure one year later. Harding befriended King in 1958, during Martin’s convalescence back home in Atlanta. He had been stabbed in the chest with a letter opener by a deranged woman named Izola Curry during a Harlem book signing for Stride Toward Freedom, leaving him, as he was fond of telling it, “just a sneeze away from death”.

“He and I understood each other, recognized that we were very close to each other on issues having to do with Vietnam, with war and peace, and with the dangers of America becoming an imperialist power in the world,” Harding told Democracy Now! hosts Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez in 2008. “And so he asked me if I would do a draft of the speech, because he knew that I would not be putting words into his mouth. I would simply be speaking as my friend would want to speak, and that was the way that I went about the task that he asked me to do.”

Shouldering both the burden and the privilege to “speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls enemy”, Martin Luther King was tasked with representing the collective views of the Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam.

“This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front,” King stated. “It is not addressed to Russia or to China.” Neither was it an attempt to paint them as “paragons of virtue” nor to delegitimize their suspicion of the United States’ sloppy attempts to color itself as such, virtuous intent betrayed by roughhouse tactics.

Invoking the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s motto “To save the soul of America”, Dr. King refused to withhold his denunciation of the nation’s arrogant preference for confrontation over contemplation, specifically to the detriment of the young, the poor, and the black, “crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.” 

Compassion, however, must also be extended toward and encompass “the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now.” Otherwise, observed King, “there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.”

Giving Voice to the Voiceless in Vietnam

“They must see America as strange liberators,” said King of the Vietnamese. “We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions, the family and the village. Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness.”

He dedicated the bulk of the speech’s middle portion to fleshing out most Americans’ skeletal knowledge of Indochina and clarifying, in the process, our country’s complicity in stitching together the flags of discontent that the Vietnamese had unfurled and which we then sought to shred and scatter in the mud.

Led by Ho Chi Minh, free from Chinese influence, and having “quoted from America’s Declaration of Independence in their own document for freedom”, the Vietnamese proclaimed their sovereignty from beneath the oppression of French and Japanese occupation in 1945. France was keen to recolonize Vietnam and sought to see it through with American-supplied financial aid with the addition of military advisors and weapons.

“It looked as if independence and land reform would come again from the Geneva Agreement,” explained King. “But, instead came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation.”

Soon enough, the U.S. was not content to simply drop propagandist leaflets on the peasants in support of their handpicked dictator Ngo Dinh Diem, and rained down bombs on their hamlets instead. The Vietnamese children were rendered homeless and hopeless, “running in packs on the streets like animals…degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food…selling their sisters to our soldiers…soliciting for their mothers.”

King hoped that the more sophisticated among our soldiers and citizens would recognize and atone for the fact that “we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

Having already drawn upon a passage from Langston Hughes, King would also relate a message written by an unnamed Vietnamese spiritual leader, which bears repeating in full here.

“Each day the war goes on, the hatred increases in the hearts of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that, in the process, they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.”

Words that echo loudly today in the wake of Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo, Benghazi, and targeted drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen. Although their source was not disclosed during King’s speech, they in fact stemmed from Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. A peace activist, scholar, and writer, he founded the Van Hanh Buddhist University of Saigon and the School of Youth and Social Service, as well as the La Boi publishing house. Thay (or ‘teacher’, as he is commonly known) also established the Engaged Buddhism movement, which aided Vietnamese victims of American carpet bombing and scorched earth policies, and later the Order of Interbeing, a group of laypeople devoted to taking and living according to the Bodhisattva vows, walking the path of the Buddha with mindfulness and compassion for all sentient beings.

Excommunicated by both North and South Vietnam during an extensive tour of the United States and Europe, in the course of which he tirelessly yet fruitlessly implored world leaders to end the war and fronted the Buddhist delegation at the Paris Peace Talks of 1969, Thay would ironically find a new home in France, of all places. There, he would build and lead Plum Village, which grew over time from a simple farmstead to the largest Buddhist monastery in the Western hemisphere, from where he continues to write and conduct retreats.

Thich Nhat Hanh would cross paths with Martin Luther King Jr. during his aforementioned global peace-seeking mission, the civil rights icon so enamored with the Vietnamese monk that he referred to him as “an apostle of peace and non-violence” and personally nominated him for the 1967 Nobel Peace Prize, for which no one was awarded.

The Brotherhood of Man

King acknowledged his own 1964 Nobel Peace Prize as “a calling which takes me beyond national allegiances.”

“The Good News was meant for all men, for communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative,” he asserted. “What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with death, or must I not share with them my life?” After all, King correctly diagnosed America’s “comfort, complacency, morbid fear of Communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice” as the chief culprits responsible for the festering sores now oozing amongst the “many who feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit.” It stands to reason then, he prognosticates that, “Communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated.”

King hits his full stride near the end of the speech employing his favored and very effective leitmotif of recurring refrains, this time structured around the thematic foundation of “a true revolution of values.” But not before first tearing down the decaying façade of the present ideological infrastructure built above a nation “approaching spiritual death” with the following words of warning, which may well be the most poignant ever spoken on the subject, by King or any other human being.

“We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

Tomorrow Is Today

There is an urgency, not only to Vincent Harding’s written words, but also in Martin Luther King’s bombastic voice, when he conjures the imagery of “an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect.” This speaks to the great question of how we wish to be remembered. What legacy we would like to leave behind individually, but even more importantly, as an interconnected society, in which we all have some say in the choice between “non-violent co-existence or violent co-annihilation.”

“If we make the right choice,” King finishes with a flourish, “we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood…when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

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Sources

• The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. edited by Clayborne Carson (Warner Books, 2001)
• Interview with Vincent Harding from Democracy Now! broadcast February 28, 2008
• Fragrant Palm Leaves: Journals 1962-1966 by Thich Nhat Hanh (Riverhead Books 1999)
• A Call to Conscience documentary, produced by Tavis Smiley for PBS, March 2010 

John Tyler - The Accidental President

John Tyler assumed office after William Henry Harrison died. But how would the American Republic react? Would there be anarchy? Or would the system remain strong? William Bodkin explains the story of how John Tyler took office in 1841…

A portrait of John Tyler.

The president was dead.

For the first time in American history, but sadly not the last, a president had died in office.  One short month after his inauguration, on April 4, 1841, William Henry Harrison was no more.  Not a soul in the United States of America was quite sure what it meant.

The Constitution, on its face, seemed clear.  Article 2, Section 1 stated that in the event of the president’s “death, resignation or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice-President.”  But what did that mean?  The “same shall devolve”?  Was it merely the powers of the presidency?  Was the vice-president merely “acting” as the president for the remainder of the dead president’s term?  Or was it something else?   Did the vice-president inherit the office, as generations of princes, and too few princesses, had when kings breathed their last?

The future of the Presidency was in the hands of one man, vice-president John Tyler.  But his decision would have to wait.  Tyler was not in the nation’s capital, but home in Williamsburg, Virginia.  Tyler had left Washington, D.C. soon after his inauguration.  In those days, the vice-president’s sole responsibility was to preside over the Senate.  That august chamber was in recess until June.  Tyler had known about Harrison’s illness, but elected to stay in Williamsburg lest he be seen as a vulture perched over Harrison’s bedside, waiting for his demise.

Two messengers were sent on horseback from Washington, D.C. to Williamsburg to inform the vice-president.  One was Fletcher Webster, son of Harrison’s Secretary of State, Daniel Webster. The other was Robert Beale, doorkeeper of the U.S. Senate.  The men galloped through night and day to summon the future of the Republic.  It was dark when the men arrived on the morning of April 5, 1841.  The young Webster pounded on the door, but received no response.  The Tyler family was asleep.  Beale, used to rousting intoxicated Senators, gave a try, pounding more vigorously then his friend.  Finally, John Tyler opened the door.  Recognizing the men, he invited them in.  Webster handed over the letter the cabinet had prepared:

“Washington, April 4, 1841

Sir:

It becomes our painful duty to inform you that William Henry Harrison, late President of the United States, has departed this life.  This distressing event took place this day, at the President’s mansion in this city, at thirty minutes before one in the morning.

We lose no time in dispatching the chief clerk of the State Department as a special messenger to bear you these melancholy tidings.

                  We have the honor to be with highest regard,

Your obedient servants.”

Well-qualified?

Tyler accepted the news solemnly.  Letter in hand, he woke his family to tell them.  He dressed, had breakfast, and by 7AM departed with his son, John Jr., who often acted as his personal secretary.  The two took every means of transportation available in 1841: horse, steamboat, and train.  Tyler and his son arrived in Washington, D.C. just before dawn on April 6.

Oddly enough, John Tyler was quite possibly one of the more qualified men to assume the presidency.   No previous vice-president had his resume of political accomplishment: state legislator, governor of Virginia, United States Congressman, U.S. Senator, and vice-president.  Tyler’s father had been also been Governor of Virginia, and had been friends with Thomas Jefferson.  One of the pivotal moments of young John Tyler’s life was when the great Jefferson visited Tyler’s father in the Governor’s mansion for dinner.  Tyler saw himself as not just the successor of William Henry Harrison, but the heir of the legendary Virginia dynasty: Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe.  There was, however, one small problem.  Tyler, true to his origins in the Virginia aristocracy, wasn’t quite a Whig, like Harrison.  But he wasn’t quite a Democrat either, as he had been a fierce opponent of Andrew Jackson.  He was, quite simply, a Virginian.

The former presidents were not about to let Tyler, or the nation, forget it.  Andrew Jackson derided Tyler as the “imbecile in the Executive Chair.”  John Quincy Adams, finding in rare agreement with his old nemesis, blasted the new president as “a political sectarian of the slave driving, Virginian, Jeffersonian school, with all the interests and passions and vices of slavery rooted in his moral and political constitution.”  Adams lamented that Harrison’s death had brought “a man never thought for it by anybody” to the presidency.  Many feared that Tyler would simply be steamrolled by Congress, led by perpetual presidential striver Henry Clay of Kentucky, then a U.S. Senator.  They believed that Tyler lacked the strength of character to deal with the nation’s roiled factions.

They were wrong.  When Tyler arrived in Washington, he seized command.  Tyler tolerated no debate over whether he was the acting president.  He was president in word and deed.  Tyler immediately convened Harrison’s cabinet, declaring that he was not the vice-president acting as president.  He was the President of the United States, possessing the office and all its attendant powers.  Secretary of State Webster, himself one of the other great presidential strivers of pre-Civil War America, told Tyler that President Harrison and the cabinet had cast equal votes in reaching decisions and that the majority had ruled.  Webster did not, of course, explain what decisions had been made by Harrison in the month of his presidency that he had spent on his deathbed.  Tyler firmly rejected the “democratic” cabinet.  He advised the Cabinet that he was very glad to have them. They were a true assemblage of able statesman.  But he would never consent to being dictated to.  He was the President of the United States, and he would be responsible for his administration.  Tyler told the Cabinet he wished them to stay in their posts, but if they would not accept what he said, he would gladly accept their resignations.  No one resigned.

More powerful than any person

Webster suggested that Tyler take the Oath of Office as President to quell any uncertainties.  Tyler asserted that it was unnecessary. He believed that the oath he had sworn as Vice-President was sufficient.  However, he saw the wisdom in putting the nation’s doubts to rest.  William Branch, Chief Justice of the United States Circuit Court of the District of Columbia, was summoned.  Tyler took care to advise Judge Branch that he was qualified to assume the presidency with no further oath, but asked that the judge administer it to him again, “as doubts may arise and for the greater caution.”  The Presidential Oath was administered. 

One of the more enduring attributes of the American Republic is the idea that no one is indispensible to its functioning.  Presidents, Generals, Senators, and Governors come and go. The Republic marches on.  George Washington set the tone by leaving the presidency after two terms in office.  And thanks to John Tyler, the nation knew that if a president should leave office before his term expired, the Republic’s leadership could change hands between elections, even arguably moving from one political party to another, without unrest in the streets, or shots being fired.  It would happen simply by operation of the Constitution and the laws of the land.

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William's previous pieces have been on George Washington (link here), John Adams (link here), Thomas Jefferson (link here), James Madison (link here), James Monroe (link here), John Quincy Adams (link here), Andrew Jackson (link here), Martin Van Buren (link here), and William Henry Harrison (link here).

Sources

Gary May.  John Tyler: The American Presidents Series: the 10th President: 1841-1845 (Times Books, 2008).

Witcover, Jules.  Party of the People: A History of the Democrats (Random House 2003).

Schlesinger, Arthur M., ed. Running for President, the Candidates and Their Images: 1789-1896.

Miller Center of the University of Virginia: U.S. Presidents series: John Tyler (http://millercenter.org/president/tyler).

The History of Interior Design - in the White House!

We were recently sent a fascinating infographic on the history of interior design in the White House. Naturally we felt that we had to share it with you! We hope you enjoy this very different type of article…

The infographic shows the tremendous changes the White House has undergone through the decades, embracing new interior design styles while letting presidents sit next to antique furniture.

It is common practice that presidents are allocated a renovation budget to enable them to add his mark, so to speak, to their temporary home. Many choose a new design for the rug in this famous room during their time in the Oval Office. The rug itself is one subtle method of letting the world have a visual representation behind the ideologies, reflecting the era and personality of each president while they are in office.

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