Wednesday, November 20, 2013

THE PRAIRIE EDITOR: Ten Amazing Facts You Probably Didn't Know About

  THE WORST MARINE DISASTER OF ALL-TIME
      WAS THE SINKING OF THE WILHELM GUSTLOFF
      ON JANUARY 30, 1945.
      The Wilhelm Gustloff, built as a Nazi passenger
      cruise ship (and named for a Swiss Nazi demogogue)
      in 1937, had been stranded in the East Prussian port
      of Gotenhofen on the Baltic Sea since the outset of
      World War II. As Soviet troops overtook East Prussia
      in early 1945, over a million ethnic Germans, whose
      families had lived in East Prussia for centuries,
      attempted to flee to the German mainland a few
      hundred miles away via the Baltic sea route to avoid
      the pillaging and raping by the Russian soldiers as
      they reconquered the area. The Wilhelm Gustloff,
      built to accommodate 1500 passengers and 500 crew,
      was overloaded with about 11,000 men, women and
      children (some of whom were German soldiers), and 
      began a 200-plus mile sea trip in a storm. (The trip
      was no longer possible by rail or truck.) A Soviet
      submarine spotted the ship, and sent four torpedoes
      at it, sinking the ship in a brief time. Approximately
      9400 persons died in the sinking, making it it the
      largest loss of life from one ship disaster in history.
      [Further reading: Death in the Baltic by Cathryn J. Prince.]

  THE FATHER OF THE AMERICAN ENGLISH
      LANGUAGE WAS NOT A LITERARY PERSON,
      WROTE NO BOOKS, AND DID NOT EVER
      ATTEND A SCHOOL.
      Although his name is a household word in the United
      States and in much of the rest of the world for his
      role as president of the United States during the nation’s
      Civil War (1861-65) and his assassination, it is much
      less known that Abrham Lincoln is considered by
      some today as the father of the modern American
      English language. This role is usually assigned to
      a major literary figure (e.g., Shakespeare in British
      English, Dante in Italian, Cervantes in Spanish,
      Pushkin in Russian, et al). The only American writer
      who even comes close to Lincoln, and came after
      him, was Samuel Clemens (“Mark Twain”).
      Lincoln’s major speeches are still considered today
      as the finest examples of their kind by an American,
      and his collected speeches and letters form a unique
      body of the English language spoken and written in
      the U.S. as it was being transformed from its British
      origins. Lincoln’s language, almost alone among his
      19th century contemporaries (including Hawthorne,
      Emerson, Melville, Longfellow, et al) remains fresh
      today without the “dated” quality of almost
      everyone else in his era. Amazingly, Lincoln was
      entirely self-taught, and did not ever attend a school
      in his childhood.
      [Further reading: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
      Rutgers University Press]

  THE FIRST MODERN NOVEL WAS WRITTEN 
      MORE THAN A THOUSAND YEARS AGO by a
      Japanese noblewoman know as “Lady Murasaki” (but
      whose real name is unknown). A lady-in-waiting to the
      Empress Shoshi of the Heian period  of 11th century
      Japan, she wrote her extraordinary fictional account of
      life, manners and personalities of the contemporary 
      Japanese court in an unprecedented work entitled The
      Tale of Genji. It is also described today as the first
      psychological work of fiction. The novel form did
      not truly emerge until more than 500 years later in
      the West. Remarkably, The Tale of Genji is even 
      today a highly readable, fascinating masterpiece.
      [Further reading: Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki (trans.)]

  THE GREATEST AMERICAN NATURAL DISASTER   
      was the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 which
      inundated most of the mid-Mississippi River Valley
      following an unprecedented period of rain beginning
      in August, 1926. At its peak, months later, the flood
      covered 27 thousand square miles and dislocated
      millions of persons. More than 240 persons are known
      to have died (although the total death toll is not known).
      Cities such as Nashville and Memphis were under water.
      Damage estimates at the time were approximately half
      a billion dollars (in today's dollars, many hundreds of
      billions). The Flood changed the nation in many ways.
      Large numbers of black residents, many of them
      descendants of slaves, were put in concentration camps,
      and subsequently emigrated to large cities in the North.
      President Coolidge did not visit the area, but put his
      secretary of commerce, Herbert Hoover, in charge.
      (When Coolidge decided not to run for re-election in
      1928, Hoover, as a result of the publicity he received
      overseeing flood relief, was elected president.) Contending
      that the individual states could not adequately deal with
      the disaster caused by the Mississippi River which ran through
      them, the federal government assumed overriding powers
      through the Army of Engineers, and this marked the
      beginning of the rise of federal bureaucratic power in the
      U.S. The whole story of this disaster, now largely forgotten,
      is filled with colorful and extraordinary figures, many of
      whom became major national figures in the years that
      followed.
      [Further reading: Rising Tide by John M. Barry]

  THE LANGUAGES OF THE FINNS, ESTONIANS   
      AND HUNGARIANS HAVE THE SAME ROOTS
      BUT COME FROM ASIA NOT EUROPE.
      Known as the Uraic family of languages,
      Magyar, Finnish and Estonian have no roots in the
      much larger Indo-European family of languages
      which are spoken in most of the nations near them.
      Although their exact origins are not yet fully known,
      philologists, in fact, trace these languages partially
      back to Siberian Asian (Chuvash) roots and to those
      who came to the region more than two thousand
      years ago. Magyar, the official language of Hungary,
      is the largest non-Indo-European language spoken
      in Europe.
      [Further reading: The Story of Hungarian by Geza Balasz]

  THE GREATEST LIVING POET CAN’T
      SPEAK OR WRITE .
      The Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer suffered a
      stroke in 1990, and has since been unable to speak
      or write. Nevertheless, he received the Nobel Prize
      for literature in 2011, and is considered by many
      to be the greatest living poet in any language.
      His short and austere poems, critics say, create
      stunning images and spaces. Before his stroke,
      he worked professionally as a psychologist in a
      prison while at the same time writing poems and
      publishing several books of Swedish poetry. He has
      since been translated into many languages.
      [Further reading: Twenty Poems by Tomas Transtromer, 
      and Windows & Stones by Tomas Transtromer; (both 
      translations)]

  ONE OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST
      SCULPTORS HAD NO TRUE HANDS.
      The 18th century Brazilian sculptor Antonio Lisboa
      was the son of a Portuguese carpenter and a slave
      mother. While relatively young, he developed either
      leprosy or sclerodoma, and lost all the fingers of his
      hands as well as his feet. He became known as “O
      Aleijadinho” (or “The Little Cripple”). Most of his
      scupture in the Brazilian province of Minas
      Gerais were created after he was disfigured, and
      through truly remarkable efforts, he created many
      masterpieces, most of which survive today.
      [Further reading: O Aleijadinho by D.G. Ferreira (in 
      Portuguese]

SAUDI ARABIA DID NOT EXIST UNTIL
      1924, OIL WAS NOT DISCOVERED THERE
      UNTIL 1937, AND THE GOVERNMENT DID
      NOT MAKE A REAL PROFIT FROM OIL
      UNTIL AFTER WORLD WAR II.
      Until 1924,the Arabian peninsula had no fixed
      national boundaries, no formal nation states, and      
      was inhabited primarily by nomadic Bedouin tribes
      that went back thousands of years. It technically was
      part of the Ottoman empire under its sultan who then
      ruled the Islamic world. Ibn Saud, a young leader
      of the Wahhabi tribe and 6 foot 4 inch warrior prince
      who grew up living in tents and moving about the
      southern Asir region of Arabia with his family,
      began his unification of the various tribes in 1902
      by seizing the ancient Wahhabi capital of Riyadh,
      and then by systematically eliminating in battle the
      usually more powerful rival sheikhs in the region
      over the next two decades. After the sultan was
      deposed and the Ottoman empire dissolved
      following World War I, Ibn Saud was declared king
      of the new Saudi Arabia. Short of cash, he made
      deals with the British, and then the Americans, to
      allow exploration for oil and gas in the peninsula
      which led to major discoveries in 1937. Because of
      breakout of war in Europe and Africa in 1939-40,
      the huge profits from the oil fields did not appear
      until after World War II, when Saudi Arabia became
      the world’s largest producer and seller of oil.
     [Further reading: Ibn Saud by M. Darlow & B. Bray]

  THE AMERICAN SPY WHO FOUND OUT
      THAT THE GERMANS WERE NOT
      WORKING ON THE ATOMIC BOMB
      WAS PREVIOUSLY A CATCHER IN MAJOR
      LEAGUE BASEBALL FOR 15 YEARS.
      Morris “Moe” Berg played for American League
      teams for most of his 15-year baseball career, and 
      was called “the brainiest man ever to play baseball.”
      Casey Stengel, of all persons, even once called him
      “the strangest man ever to play baseball.” An
      impoverished son of European Jewish immigrants,
      he received degrees from Princeton and Columbia
      law school, and became famous early for his highly
      successful appearances on the national radio quiz
      show “Information Please.” He spoke seven
      languages, and when war broke out, he became a      
      U.S. spy sent to Italy and Central Europe to assess
      the Nazi atomic bomb program. After World War II,
      he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency. In
      spite of his extraordinary and colorful career and 
      life, he died in obscurity in 1972.
      [Further reading: Heisenberg’s War by Thomas Powers]

THE SMALLEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD
        IS LOCATED ON THE UPPER FLOORS OF
        A VILLA IN DOWNTOWN ROME, HAS EXISTED
        FOR ALMOST 1000 YEARS, HAS DIPLOMATIC
        RELATIONS WITH MORE THAN 100 NATIONS,
        IS AN OFFICIAL OBSERVER AT THE UNITED
        NATIONS, COINS ITS OWN MONEY AND PRINTS
        ITS OWN STAMPS.
        The (shortened) name of this country is officially
        Sovrane Militare Ordine di Malta or S.M.O.M.
        It is an important worldwide Catholic philanthropic
        entity known traditionally as the Knights of Malta,
        and it once ruled the island nation of Malta, and was
        a major European naval power. Today, its size has been
        reduced to two villas in the city of Rome and some land
        in the outskirts of the Italian capital. It has an official
        population of three persons.  Only the upper floors
        of one of the villas is considered the sovereign territory
        of S.M.O.M. It is therefore the only nation on earth which
        can only be entered by elevator.
        [Further reading: Report From Practically Nowhere by
        John Sack]
       
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Copyright (c) 2013 by Barry Casselman. All rights reserved.


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