The Funnies - Special Edition: Happy Armistice Day

"Joe, don't this remind you o' the night when the outfit was movin' up to the front in Argonne?"

"Yes. Only - you an' me had a job then, Jim."

Life Magazine, 1920

The Funnies - Special Edition: Happy Armistice Day

"Do ye favor this here soldiers' bonus?"

"Well, it's like this: if I sh'd fall into the crick and you'd pull me out so'st I wouldn't drown, and I'd offer ye a dollar and a half with ten per cent off fer cash, wot'd ye think o' me?"

Life Magazine, 1922

Rubber Limbs and the USS Oneida

Running a blog that thrives on old periodicals means constantly pouring through moldering magazines and newspapers in search of the odd and intriguing. In the six or so years I've been publishing my missives on the past I've seen hundreds of ads for cars, trains, ships, planes, canned goods, candy, and vacations around the world, but this week I stumbled across a first: an ad touting artificial limbs. 

A. A. Marks wasn't the first company to manufacture artificial limbs. The earliest example comes from Capua, Italy where a bronze, iron, and wood leg dating back to 300 BC was unearthed during an 1858 excavation. Through history the art of replacing lost limbs ebbed and advanced, often in step with the history of human conflict. In the early 14th century a German mercenary invented the first hand with movable joints. Through the 17th and 19th centuries advances in articulation continued and with the scourge of amputations that attended the American Civil War, companies like A. A. Marks continued to push the prosthetic envelope.

The ad comes from the April 1893 edition of Railway Carmen's Journal and features a stalwart looking gentleman in US Navy uniform wearing a cap that bears the name of the U.S.S Oneida. The Oneida met its fate twenty-three years prior to the running of Marks' ad and she saw action in the Civil War, either of which would explain the gentleman's advanced age. It's hard to be certain, but a further look through the magazine revealed I'd apparently just been ignorant of just how many ads for prosthetic limbs were running at the time. It's hard to know if the reason owes to the dangerous nature of the railroad industry at the turn of the last century or if it's a testament to the number of men who would have been in the market to upgrade the prosthesis they'd been living with since the war.

The Funnies - Cowards (1922)

"Believe me! This is the last time I'll lead this pack of cowards!"

Life Magazine, January 5, 1922

Two Hundred Years Ago - The Sunset of the War of 1812

Two hundred years ago today, in the Flemish city of Ghent, two combatants sat down across from each other to sign a treaty ending two years of war and forging an unlikely alliance that would weather two World Wars and change the course of world history. Though Andrew Jackson famously defeated the British at New Orleans in January of 1815 and the treaty wouldn't be ratified by the US Congress until February 18, 1915, the Prince Regent's signature officially put hostilities to an end and restored the pre-war borders of both countries. Ironic that Britain and the United States would be involved in another war a century later, this time fighting side-by-side in the trenches. Time makes strange bedfellows.

Steampunk Saturday - The California Tank

Behold the tank as imagined by designers in California back in 1917. The design steals from the British tanks present on the battlefields of World War I with one exception, a single front wheel and armor that would make it utterly useless on the battlefield. Even the article in Popular Mechanics stated that the California design would be hopeless in a landscape of shell craters, obstacles, and trenches. Still, it does look a little like the love-child of H. G. Wells and Leonardo Da Vinci. Worthy steampunk fodder, I'd say.

The End of World War II - 69th Anniversary of the Bombing of Nagasaki

Mushroom Cloud over Nagasaki as seen from Koyagi-jima on August 9, 1945

Today marks the 69th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, an event that would lead to the end of World War II and the beginning of a nuclear debate that continues to this day.

On August 9, 1945, at 11:01, the American B29A Superfortress piloted by Major Charles W. Sweeney opened his bomb bay doors and dropped Fat Man over the Japanese industrial center of Nagasaki. The weapon exploded at an altitude of 1650 feet above a tennis court located half way between the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works which made torpedoes for the Japanese war effort. The resulting 21 kiloton explosion generated temperatures of over 7000˚F and winds reaching 624 mph, vaporizing its victims and reducing much of the city to burning rubble in an atomic flash. Estimates of the death toll range from 39000 to 80000, and six days later the Japanese surrendered, ending World War II.

World War I - The Outbreak of War

Punch Magazine, August 1914

The last we touched base with Austria-Hungary and their German allies, they'd sent an ultimatum to Serbia demanding untenable changes be made to avoid dire consequences. Well, it's probably not surprising that the Serbs didn't come through, they never were intended to and the Austria-Hungarian gesture was only meant to paper over the coming war. So, on July 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia which prompted Russia to mobilize her troops in preparation to enter the war on the Serbian behalf.

On July 31, Germany sent a warning to the Russians, telling them to stop their troop mobilization mobilization and, after being refused, she plunged headlong into war. The Germans declared war on Russia on August 1, on France on the third, and on Belgium on the fourth. The same day as declaring war on Belgium, Germany executed a modified version of the Schlieffen Plan, a proto-blitz into France through Belgium which intended to encircle the French army on the German boarder and take France out of the conflict quickly. The effort stalled at the Belgian city of Liege where German general Karl von Bulow encountered unexpected resistance. Belgium had been guaranteed independence and neutrality under the 1839 Treaty of London, the violation of which brought Britain into the war.

France counterpunched on August 7th, the VII Corps attacked Alsace in an attempt to capture Mulhouse and Colmar with a second offensive taking place on August 14 when the 1st and 2nd Army attacked toward Sarrenbourg-Morhange and Lorraine. The Germans withdrew, inflicting losses on the French, and the bloody oscillation that would be the hallmark of World War I already was set in motion.

The War of 1812

On this date in 1812 James Madison signed the declaration that started the War of 1812 with Great Britain. War was opposed by a sizable minority, but the British economic blockade of France, the pressing of American sailors into service aboard British vessels, and the British support for hostile Great Lakes tribes on the American frontier gave congressional war hawks the support they needed.

American forces began the conflict by launching a three-point invasion of Canada, which failed miserably. In 1914 Napoleon Bonaparte's empire began to crumble, allowing the British to focus on combat in America. Washington DC fell that year and in August the White House, the Capitol, and other government were burned by British and Canadian troops as repayment for similar acts of arson by US troops while in Canada.

September brought the turning of the leaves and the tide. Thomas Macdonough won the Battle of Plattsburg Bay on Lake Champlain, forcing the invading British to retreat back to Canada and leading to the conclusion of US-British peace negotiations in Belgium. On Christmas Eve 1814 the Treaty of Ghent was signed and the War of 1812 formally came to an end, but it wasn't the end of hostilities.

Communication of the era being what it was, British forces assailing the US Gulf Coast weren't informed of the treaty for weeks. On January 8, US forces under the command of Andrew Jackson achieved what is arguably the greatest American victory of the war when they routed the British at the Battle of New Orleans. News of the Treaty of Ghent and Jackson's victory reached the US public nearly simultaneously, fostering a false connection between the two, encouraging a new found sense of confidence in American power, and providing inspiration for a 1960's hit by Johnny Horton.