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March 5 is St. Piran’s Day

March 5, 2017/0 Comments/in March

Today is St. Piran’s Day, which honors the death of the patron saint of Cornish tin miners. According to legend, Saint Piran was born in Ireland in the fifth century, traveled to Rome to study the scriptures and was made a bishop upon his return.

The miracles he performed, such as raising soldiers from the dead, caused alarm and bought him a one-way ticket off a cliff with a millstone tied around his neck.

He didn’t sink into the sea but floated upon it to Perran Beach in Cornwall, where he built a chapel among the sand dunes. People from miles around flocked to hear him preach and witness his miracles.

It’s said that he discovered tin in Cornwall when a black stone upon which he’d built a fire leaked white fluid. The Cornish flag of St. Piran pays tribute to this story with its white cross on a black background, signifying tin flowing from the stone and good conquering evil.

According to Reverend William Haslam’s 1844 book, Perran-Zabuloe: With an Account of the Past and Present State of the Oratory of St. Piran in the Sands:

At length…worn out with age and infirmity, St. Piran called his followers around him, and, having addressed them for the last time, desired a grave to be prepared. He then took leave of them, and, descending into it with calmness, his spirit departed on the 5th day of March, about 480.

There is also a folktale that St. Piran’s body was exhumed and chopped up into pieces that were sent to churches for their reliquaries. Other accounts say he lived over 200 years, liked to drink and died by falling down a well. We have been unable to confirm or refute any of these stories.

A highlight of the St. Piran’s Day festivities is the World Pasty Championships. A traditional Cornish pasty is solely composed of beef, potatoes, turnips, onion and seasoning covered in a pastry crust which is crimped on the end and baked. Variations will be allowed during the competition.

Eden Project, an educational charity sponsoring the contest, has devised this Google map of pasty-related noshes around the globe.

The Cornish Pasty Association reports that the pasty became popular with miners in the 1800s. Tinners had no break to come to the surface so their wives had to make something that could easily be carried, held and eaten in the depths of a mine. Some say the crimped edge acted as a handhold, thrown out to prevent fingers covered with poisons like arsenic from contaminating the food. Others argue that pasties were wrapped in muslin or paper so that every bit could be eaten.

This day will culminate in the Trelawney Shout. At 9 pm in pubs across Cornwall, participants will sing the Cornish anthem, The Song of the Western Men, written in 1824 by Robert Stephen Hawker. Brush up on the lyrics and raise a glass to St. Piran and the men and women of Cronwall.

Happy St. Piran’s Day!

February 4 is Liberace Day

February 4, 2017/0 Comments/in February

Today is Liberace Day. It commemorates the death of Władziu Valentino Liberace (May 16, 1919 – February 4, 1987), the American pianist, singer and entertainer known as Mr. Showmanship.

He had begun playing piano at four years old and by the age of thirty became the highest-paid entertainer in the world, touring internationally, releasing albums, appearing in movies and on television and doing lucrative product endorsements.Liberace won two Emmy Awards, earned six gold albums and received two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He released an autobiography and set box-office records at Radio City Music Hall for 56 shows he performed only a few months before his death. His stage costumes, pianos, cars and homes were flashy paeans to excess. “Too much of a good thing is wonderful” became his motto.

His flamboyance fueled gossip and speculation about his sexual orientation. Liberace publicly denied his homosexuality, giving interviews about his ideal woman and appearing with Maureen O’Hara, Mae West, Judy Garland and others to give the impression of romantic involvement. Betty White spoke in 2011 about being set up by his manager to attend premieres as Liberace’s date, knowing full well that he was gay.

The women acted as “beards,” helping to conceal the performer’s homosexuality. It was a necessity in those days to avoid scandal. Until very recently, it was unheard of to “come out” without risking the destruction of one’s career. A leading man would lose his female fanbase, be branded a pervert and never work again.

Liberace appeared to be an easy target. But when gossip rag Confidential and newspaper Daily Mirror ran hateful articles about Liberace’s relationships with men, he sued them and won. Although he was fighting to stay closeted, he was also fighting for everyone’s dignity and right to privacy. He may not have known it, but he was battling against the expressions of homophobia considered acceptable in the press and life in general.

Rumors circulated for years that he had HIV. After his death on February 4, 1987, his physician claimed he had died of heart failure due to degenerative brain disease. Two days later, the request for a routine burial permit was rejected by the Riverside County coroner’s office, and his body was ordered to be delivered for an autopsy.

According to California law, anyone suspected to have died of a contagious disease should be autopsied. Had this law been followed rigorously, the coroner would have been working non-stop dissecting anyone who’d died with the sniffles. How Władziu Valentino Liberace presented a public health hazard at that point is unclear. He’d already been embalmed.

Tests concluded that Liberace had died of cytomegalovirus pneumonia due to AIDS. His depressed immune system couldn’t fight the illness. Was the autopsy necessary? Was it done for spite, to tarnish the reputation of a dead man? Was it done because of the fear of AIDS, or prejudice against gay men? Was it done to right the wrong of a physician falsifying a death certificate? Or all of the above?

In reaction to media frenzy, the American Medical Association called for the confidentiality of all patient records. In any case, Liberace the man was beyond humiliation at that point. His body was returned to Forest Lawn Cemetery, where he was buried beside his parents. He bequeathed the bulk of his estate to the Liberace Foundation, which preserves a collection of his costumes and provides scholarships for students of the creative and performing arts.

Many of us got our first glimpse of fabulosity when we watched him as kids, before we knew what “gay” was. He was a talented and funny showman, completely at home in rhinestones and sequins, who seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself at all times. If you’ve never seen him play, check out his reinterpretation of Mack the Knife and check out this short compilation from Time:

Happy Liberace Day!

February 3 is the Day the Music Died

February 3, 2017/0 Comments/in February

On February 3, 1959, musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson were killed when their plane crashed in an Iowa cornfield. The tragic accident became known as “The Day the Music Died,” after a lyric in singer-songwriter Don McLean‘s 1971 anthem American Pie.

Richardson, Holly and Valens

At the time, they were on their way to a gig in Moorland, MN, a stop on their “Winter Dance Party” tour of the Midwest. Waylon Jennings, Tommy Allsup, and Dion DiMucci were on the way there on a school bus.

The tour began in Milwaukee, WI, on January 23, 1959. The first tour bus they rented was unequipped for the freezing winter weather. Due to the long distances between venues, everyone was stuck on the bus for many hours at a time.

The heater on the bus broke down. Drummer Carl Bunch suffered frostbite on his feet and was hospitalized in Ironwood, MI. The tour bus was replaced with a school bus and Bunch was left behind. Holly, Valens, and DiMucci took turns playing drums for each other at the performances in Green Bay, WI, and Clear Lake, IA.

By the time they reached Clear Lake on the evening of February 2, Holly was frustrated and decided to charter a plane to take him to Fargo, ND, after the show. The bus could then pick him up for the performance in nearby Moorhead, MN, sparing him hours of misery and allowing him to get some rest.

The four-seat Beechcraft 35 Bonanza Holly chartered was not named American Pie as many surmised from McLean’s song. It was known only by its registration number, N3794N. Except for a change in DiMuccio’s recollection timed to his book release more than 50 years later, the other survivors have always agreed on how the two remaining passengers ended up on that fateful flight.

The seats were meant for Holly’s bandmates Jennings and Allsup. Along with Carl Bunch, they had formed a group after Holly left his band The Crickets. Holly felt responsible for convincing them to come on this miserable trip. Valens asked Allsup for his seat on the plane. He initially refused before agreeing to a coin toss to determine who would fly and who would take the dreaded bus. Valens won. Richardson had the flu so Jennings gave up his seat.

In Waylon: An Autobiography, Jennings related the conversation that would haunt him for the rest of his life. When Holly learned he wouldn’t be coming along on the flight, he jokingly said, “Well, I hope your ol’ bus freezes up.” Jennings replied, “Well, I hope your ol’ plane crashes.”

The cause of the crash has been under investigation on and off ever since. It was initially blamed on the poor judgment of the 21-year-old pilot, who was not yet qualified to fly using instrumentation in conditions of poor visibility. But it was also found that warnings about worsening weather weren’t relayed to the pilot before he took off in light snow.

In early 2015, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was petitioned to reopen the case and look for evidence of mechanical failure as well as proof that the pilot had made a heroic attempt to land. (The latter is unlikely as the plane hit nose down at 170 miles per hour.) In May 2015, the NTSB announced it will not reopen the case.

It’s a somber occasion to remember the death of these rock and roll legends but also an opportunity to celebrate the music they brought into the world. Listen to some of their hits today. It’s one way to keep the music alive.

January 27 is Thomas Crapper Day

January 27, 2017/1 Comment/in January

Today is Thomas Crapper Day and commemorates the death, in 1910, of the man widely believed to have invented the flush toilet. Although that is, as they say, crap, Crapper was a shrewd marketer, leveraging his status as plumber to the British royal family to popularize indoor plumbing. He owned the first showroom of bathroom facilities and publicized the toilet at a time when no one spoke of such “necessities.”

Crapper is one small part of the largely untold history of the device that transformed the world. Humans have been building indoor plumbing for millennia. Excavations have shown evidence of flushing toilets dating back as far as 2600 B.C., during the mature Harappan phase of the Indus Valley Civilization.

John Harrington (also spelled Harington) invented a version in 1596 with a cord that, when pulled, would allow a rush of water from the “water closet,” flushing away waste. He installed one at his home and also built one for his godmother, Queen Elizabeth I. He called it the Ajax as a play on”jakes,” a slang term for toilet in use at the time. He may be the reason we sometimes call it a “john.”

An author, Harrington wrote “A New Discourse upon a Stale Subject: The Metamorphosis of Ajax.” Superficially, its subject was his invention; in truth, it was a thinly-veiled allegory about political stercus (manure) poisoning the state. The book got him banished from court for a time, and the queen referred to him as her saucy godson.

(Side note: A scent called Stercus was introduced at Smell Festival 2014 in Bologna, Italy. The perfumer named his brand Orto Parisi to honor his grandfather, who fertilized his garden with his own excrement. The bottle was displayed on a slab of dried, pressed manure inside a golden frame. Order here if you dare.)

Yup, that’s a tray made of poop.

Fellow Brits refined Harrington’s design. Alexander Cumming invented the S-trap in 1775, which used a sliding valve called a “stink trap” to seal the bowl’s outlet and prevent sewer stench from entering the home. It is still in use today. Two years later, Samuel Prosser patented the “plunger closet,” which featured a separate flush tank.

After noticing that toilets he installed in London tended to freeze in winter, Joseph Bramah replaced the sliding valve with a hinged flap and also developed a float valve system for the flush tank. Many sources state that a coworker named Mr. Allen devised the apparatus. But Bramah received the patent in 1778 and, as a result, we can’t even find Allen’s first name in historical records. In 1852, George Jennings patented his own improvements and later constructed London’s first public toilets.

At last, we’re back to where we started. When did Thomas Crapper receive patent #4990, prominently featured in his advertisements? He didn’t. Albert Giblin was awarded patent #4990 for his “Improvements to Flushing Cisterns” in 1898. (Many sites mistakenly report the year as 1819. We have located the original patent and drawings.)

Adam Hart-Davis of Exnet used the British Library to painstakingly track down all patents awarded to Thomas Crapper. According to him, “Mr. Crapper took out exactly six, starting in 1881 (#1628) to do with ventilating house drains, and ending in 1893 (#11604) for a mechanism to flush a lavatory by means of a foot lever. None of his patents was #4990. None of his patents was for a valveless water-waste preventer (WWP).”

It’s possible that Giblin, of whom little else can be learned, sold his patent to Mr. Crapper. What we can state with certainty is that Thomas Crapper and Company, claiming to be “The Original Patentees and Manufacturers of Bathroom Appliances,” is still in business today.

The company website tells the story of Crapper’s design of the first automatic flush toilet with a springloaded seat that would fly up, pulling rods which would trigger the flushing action. Unfortunately, with time and use, the rubber buffers attached to the seat’s underside began to break down and become sticky.

“This caused the seat to remain down, attached to the loo pan for a few seconds as the user got to his feet. Seconds later the seat, under stress from the powerful springs, would free itself and sweep violently upwards – striking the unfortunate Victorian on the bare bottom!”

It became known as the “Bottom Slapper” and was not a commercial success. (One could say it was a hit and then it wasn’t.) We trust that the royal family, who contracted Crapper to install plumbing fixtures at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, were never subjected to that indignity.

Manhole covers bearing the company name have become minor tourist destinations. One in particular outside Westminster Abbey, another site supplied by Crapper, has become a popular spot to take brass rubbings. Some of the enthusiasm for this activity may be due to the misconception that the term “crap” as slang for human waste originated with Thomas Crapper. In fact, it predated him by hundreds of years.

He may have been indirectly responsible for the American habit of calling a toilet “the crapper.” Every time U.S. soldiers stationed in Britain during World War I used a bathroom, they saw “CRAPPER” in the porcelain of the toilet and sink. The association between “crap,” “Crapper,” and the act of crapping in a Crapper was so irresistibly hilarious that they brought it home with them, and their descendants continue to use it every day—-in word and deed.

If this holiday, focused as it is on a distasteful bodily function, seems undeserving of your attention, ask yourself this question: If you could only choose one, which could you live without? Your toilet or your iPhone?

Take that, Apple.

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