Further Information

Aberration of Light

In 1725 James Bradley, an English amateur astronomer, was attempting to observe stellar parallax when, through meticulous observation he observed that stars did trace out small ellipses in the sky as expected for parallax, but that all stars traced out precisely the same ellipses! This didn't make any sense at all; the only way the parallax of all stars could be same would be if all the stars were the same distance from the Earth--a regression to the Earth-centred universe with a vengeance! After a while, the apparent motion Bradley observed was discovered to be the result of the aberration of light. On each point in its orbit, the Earth is travelling with a velocity with respect to the distant stars that differs by 60 kilometers per second from the velocity at the opposing point--where the Earth will be six months hence.

Now 60 kilometers a second is pretty fast compared to freeway speed limits or even the velocity of Earth satellites, but it's only 0.02% of the speed of light. However, by Bradley's time the art and science of measuring the positions of stars had advanced to such an extent that he was able to observe the mere 41 arc-second displacement of the apparent position of stars due to aberration.

It wasn't until 1837 that astronomers managed to measure the much smaller parallax of the nearest stars. The classical aberration of light discovered by Bradley must be taken into account whenever accurate positions of objects in the sky are calculated.

Dr. Johnson

Regarding Clive of India:

"Will you not allow, sir, that vice does not hurt a man's character so as to obstruct his prosperity in life, when you know that [Lord Clive] was loaded with wealth and honours; a man who had acquired his fortune by such crimes, that his consciousness of them impelled him to cut his own throat."

(Boswell, Life of Johnson, Tues 12th May 1778)

Defenestration of Prague

Contributed by Joe Mabel:

In 1419 the Hussites threw seven members of the Czech Town Council out the windows of Prague's New town Hall to their deaths. In 1618, two Austrian vice-regents and some governors of Czech lands were thrown out of a window of the Prague Castle, landed in a garbage heap, and lived. (I'm not as certain of this one, and I can't find a reference): In 1948, Jan Masaryk, son of a former president and himself the last non-Communist minister in the Czechoslovakian government either fell or was pushed (most historians believe the former, although suicide was a possibility) to his death, also by defenestration, also in Prague.

Dionysius Exiguus

From Star of Bethlehem Christmas Star errors

"When determining the date of the birth of Christ, Dionysious Exiguus forgot that Caesar Augustus had ruled under the name of Octavian for four years, and thus made a four-year error.

"Dionysius Exiguus (Dennis the Little) was a Scythian monk and prominent scholar who lived in Rome and who had access to the state and church archives including many records now lost to us. It is true that Julius Caesar's grandnephew Octavian ruled as part of a triumvirate under his own name for four years, and was not proclaimed emperor Caesar Augustus until after he defeated the combined forces of Antony and Cleopatra at the navel battle of Actium in September, 31 B.C., but this was common knowledge. Schoolboys were expected to know the story, and a prominent historian working in Rome would not have made such a simple blunder.

"Dionysius carefully selected the year we would call I B.C. for the birth of Christ, and set the date at December 25th as was customary in his time, and commenced the Christian Era with January 1, 1 A.D. (six days later) to agree with the stars of the ordinary Roman year, and was probably not far from the mark."

Lord Ferrers' Hanging

From: The Procession to Tyburn, William McAdoo, Boni and Liveright: NY, 1927
Provided by Steven Maas

He wore his white wedding suit to his hanging: "This is the suit in which I was married, and in which I will die." Another source has this: "He prepared for hanging by dressing in his white wedding clothes, which were of a light colour, embroidered in silver, and he said he thought this, at least, as good an occasion of putting them on as that for which they were first made." (Albion's Fatal Tree, Douglas Hay, et. al., Pantheon Books: NY, 1975). I'm surprised P. didn't use that bit. Nothing about erectional betting in either book, and no mention of a silk rope. Much was made of the fact that even a lord with Plantagenet blood was "hanged with a hempen halter" and "dissected like a common criminal."--"an incision was made from the neck to the bottom of the breast, and the bowels were taken out; on inspection of which, the surgeons declared that they had never beheld greater signs of long life in any subject which had come under their notice."

Vector of Desire

According to a member of the Pynchon List, Nietzsche, in the prologue to Also Sprach Zarathustra, refers to people who yearn for the coming of the Übermensch as "Pfeile der Sehnsucht" which translates to "Arrows of longing." Don Larsson responded by pointing out a famous passage in William Blake:

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire;
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire.

Frizzen

From an (long gone) article by Mark Tully.

Rifles, pistols, muskets, fusees, carbines--the one thing that they all have in common is the lock. But how well do each of us know the various parts that comprise this vital piece of machinery?

Perhaps the most common faux pas we make when talking with the public about our weapons is in calling the cock a hammer and the hammer a "frizzen". The cock apparently got its name from its resemblance to a pecking rooster, and only became known as a "hammer" much later in the percussion-cap era. As for the term "frizzen," there simply was no such word in the 18th-century Ð in fact I could not find "frizzen" listed in ANY dictionary, new or old, including the huge, multi-volume Oxford Dictionary of the English Language. The best guess I have heard so far is that this anachronistic term dates from the late 19th or early 20th-century and is a corruption of the Dutch or Germanic word "frizzel" or "furison", both of which were apparently first used to described the hammer of a flintlock in 1892.

"Frizzen cover" is also an anachronism. Both Simes and Cuthbertson talk of "hammer stalls," being used as a safety device, but there is no mention of frizzens or frizzen covers in either text. The hammer can also be referred to as a "steel," but should never be called a frizzen.

Jacobites

From the Victorian Web at Hartwick College

The Jacobites were supporters of the claim to the British throne of the deposed James II and his son James, the "Old Pretender." Though a few of the old Tories in England worked secretly for the Jacobite cause, the chief centers of Jacobite resistance were in Scotland and Ireland, and were supported, of course, by the French, with whom the English, at the time, were more or less continually at war. For sixty years after the "Glorious Revolution" in 1688, there were real or imaginary Jacobite plots, though there were only two serious revolts, in 1715 and in 1745. The "15," a rising under the "Old Pretender" in Scotland and Northumberland, was an attempt to overthrow the recent succession to the throne of the Hanoverian George I. The "45" involved a much larger rising of the Scottish Jacobite Highland chiefs under "Bonnie Prince Charlie," Charles Edward Stuart, whose army won several victories in Scotland and invaded England -- ruled at the time by George II -- only to be forced back and slaughtered at the battle of Culloden, effectively ending the Jacobite cause forever.

And, if I may add, in the aftermath of the defeat in Culloden in 1745, there was an unholy reign of terror throughout the Highlands. Executions, deaths in prisons and forced transportations of entire highland villages followed. The pipes were not heard for over forty years, the wearing of the tartan was forbidden and entire estates were confiscated so that sheep could be grazed on land that had once been home to families. Things have never been the same.

Martin Luther's 95 Theses

27. Menschenlehre verkndigen die, die sagen, da die Seele (aus dem Fegefeuer) emporfliege, sobald das Geld im Kasten klingt.

27.They preach vanity who say that the soul flies out of Pugatory as soon as the money thrown into the chest rattles.

Indulgence was a church imposed confession of sin which took many different forms over the years. If you took part in a crusade or sent someone (for example a servant) on a crusade for you, your sins could be forgiven. When the Papal Court fell into financial trouble you were allowed to donate money for a crusade in order for your sins to be forgiven; it was as effective as going on a crusade yourself.

This information comes from Wittenberg, Germany Website

Philadelphia

Provided by Matthew Wiener:

Numbered streets in south Philadelphia run north-south, with the lower numbers closer to the Delaware river. There is no "First Street"; instead, there is "Front Street."

The major east-west streets are (from north to south) Vine, Race, Arch, Market, Chestnut, Walnut, Locust, Spruce, Pine, Lombard, and South. The last numbered street before the Schuykill river is 24th.

Most of the places of major fame and interest vis-a-vis America's founding are clustered around the 5th and Chestnut area.

The Royal Baby

Provided by Dennis Grace:

The Royal Baby is a simple selection: he's the fattest shellback (that's "non-pollywog" for you lubbers) on board. In ancient days (i.e., the 18th century) the Baby's belly would be smeared with tar (the same black pitch the sailor's smeared in their hair as a delousing agent, the same goo that necessitated those huge collars the tars wore). Then a cherry, olive, grape, or somesuch tidbit would be poked into the Baby's belly button. Each successive wog was ordered to "kiss" the RB's belly, actually to try to pluck the tidbit from the navel without getting a tarred face. Of course, once the wog's face was within an inch or so of the belly, poised with mouth open and teeth unsheathed, the RB would grab the wog's head and stuff his face into the tar. With a moment's liberal smearing, the tar would go up the wog's nose, into his teeth, eyelids, beard, and even ears. Earlier in this century, they started using gear grease. By the time I went through (1980), the US Navy had begun to insist the "tar" be more-or-less edible. Ours was a disgusting combination of shortening, green food coloring, and sardine oil.

Schiehallion

Provided by Cathy Smither:

From The Earth's Density, by K.E.Bullen, FRS:

In 1772, Nevil Maskelyne proposed a repetition of the Chimborazo (Peru) experiment in Scotland, and a Royal Society Committee selected Mt Schiehallion in Perthshire for the purpose. The mountain has a short east-west ridge, with steep slopes to the north and south. (The name was spelt Schehallien in Maskelyne's paper. Referring to the differences in spelling, Dr. P.L. Willmore tells me that he has the impression that "the early English explorers had some difficulty in transliterating the sounds made by the local inhabitants, particularly as the climate in the area is very conducive to colds.")

Careful surveys were first made during the period 1774-1776. Two observing stations were then set up on the same meridian, one on the northern and the other on the southern slope. At each station, Maskelyne made some 170 observations of the apparent zenith distances for more than 30 stars, and arrived at a mean difference of 54".6 for the two stations. The excess of this difference over the measured latitude difference 42".9 was attributed to the plumb-line deflection caused by the mountain.

... The density of the mountain was estimated as 2.5 g/cm^3, thus yielding 4.5 g/cm^3 for the mean density of the earth.

NB, the accepted value today is about 5.5 g/cm^3

Strike of 1750

From "A Dynamic Society: Social Relations in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne 1660-1760" by Joyce Ellis. In The Transformation of English Provincial Towns 1600-1800, edited by Peter Clark, Hutchinson and Co. (Publishers) Ltd., London, 1984

"Few decades of the early eighteenth century passed without a major strike on the Tyne, which invariably involved successful picketing, sometimes holding up trade on the river for weeks at a time. The seven-week strike of 1750 was perhaps the longest in this period, but somewhat shorter disturbances in 1701, 1708, 1710, 1719 and 1738 all caused grave disruption to Newcastle's coal-based economy and demonstrated the keelmen's collective strength.

"By 1750 [the keelmen] were reported to be displaying printed bills in public places setting out their grievances, indicating a development in tactics as well as the advanced' nature of these industrial disputes. It was this evidence of organization and control that was most disturbing to the authorities, partly because it threatened comfortable contemporary assumptions that all members of the lower orders were 'a sort of Unthinking people', and partly because of the authorities' relative impotence in the face of a simple, orderly refusal to work.

"The constantly-repeated claim that the keelmen were espousing Jacobitism may also be traced to this desire to translate the strikes into something that fitted into the accepted framework of the social order. In fact the Scots Presbyterian keelmen seem to have been fairly safely anti- Jacobite..., and in 1719 they achieved official recognition as 'the only well affected Mob in England.'

"There is much to support Morris's contention that the origins of nineteenth-century class society are to be found on Tyneside rather than in the Lancashire cotton industry."

Zenith Sector

A sector, more fully called a zenith sector, is a telescope meant to view only the zenith (i.e., the point in the sky straight above you). To do this, the telescope is part of a larger contraption, complete with built-in plumb line to maintain verticality and and a circular sector with micrometer at the bottom for precise measurements of angle, and some cross hairs--usually several--so that one can time when key stars cross the zenith itself. The sector that Bird made for Mason and Dixon was lost in a fire sometime in the late 19th century.

Tyburn

From Roy Porter's London: A Social History:

Tyburn: On the site of present day Marble Arch, i.e. the south end of Edgware Road and at the western edge of Oxford Street, at the northern extremity of Hyde Park.

The first permanent gallows had been set up at Tyburn in 1571, (though Smithfield, Newgate Prison, and Tower Hill [near Wapping] had also been execution sites). Public executions were intended to act as a deterent (to crime); but apprentices, allowed a Tyburn fair holiday, regarded victims as heroes, especially when they exited with a swagger. The (2-mile) procession from Newgate to Tyburn would last about two hours; carts stopped at taverns, and many condemned men were drunk by the time they reached their end---promising to pay for their drink when they 'returned.' Enormous crowds gathered, accommodated near the 'fatal tree' in a stand known as Mother Proctor's Pews. In 1783 executions were ended, the Tyburnia district was re-christened 'Paddington,' and the Bishop of London soon after began to develop about one square mile of church land into a fashionable residential colony of townhouses, populated originally by Jewish and Greek merchants and the Newly Rich.

Sir Henry Vane

Provided by Steven Maas:

It's Hank the Younger that lived from 1613-62 and was governor of Massuchesetts. Contemporary accounts often don't make it clear because the Younger is often referred to simply as Sir Henry Vane. Both Vanes were involved in Strafford's execution but apparently it was the Elder who hated him.

Sir Henry Vane the Elder (1589-1655) purchased several estates in 1629, including Raby. Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford (1593--1641) incurred the wrath of Henry the Elder in 1640 by petitioniing for and receiving the title of Baron of Raby (he didn't take the property, just the title). Henry wanted the title for himself and his heirs. As secretary to the King and the Privy Council, Henry the Elder took notes at a meeting where Strafford suggested using an army of Irish Catholics to defeat the rebellious Scots. Henry the Younger (1613-62) found a copy of the notes (the Elder had sent the original to King Charles I who had burned them) and showed them to John Pym (1584--1643), leader of Parliament. They made "a copy of a copy" (M&D 226) of the notes. The notes were used as evidence when Strafford was put on trial, accused of various offenses. He was convicted and executed.

It appears that, as Dixon says, "Young Vane was never a Regicide" (M&D 226). Henry the Younger was a Puritan and on the side of Cromwell's forces during the Civil War but was not present during the trial and execution of Charles I. Henry the Younger worked unsuccessfully to prevent the Restoration, and was arrested in 1660 and executed in 1662. Pepys mentions his execution.

Wapping

A residential district immediately to the east of the City of London and the Tower, Wapping was home to most of London's working commercial docks in the 17th and 18th centuries, and thus of a great variety of foreign and domestic seamen. London's great centre for the rough and tumble culture of sea-faring, it was densely populated, often but not always by poor persons living in overcrowded conditions. The area possesed one of the greatest concentrations of public and bawdy houses in London (rivaled only by the South Bank) during that era.