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December 28 is Pledge of Allegiance Day

December 28, 2016/1 Comment/in December

Today is Pledge of Allegiance Day. We’re not sure why it is celebrated today since it doesn’t correspond to any date we can find regarding its origins, usage or changes. We do know this: the words many of us grew up saying have a fascinating history.

The Pledge of Allegiance was written by minister and Socialist Francis Bellamy in 1892. It was published in children’s magazine The Youth’s Companion to coincide with celebrations of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival, on October 12, 1492, in the Americas. (It was later revealed he had landed on an island in the Bahamas. Close enough.)

Bellamy designed it to be recited in 15 seconds. It read:

I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Of his choice to leave the word “equality” out of the pledge, Bellamy wrote:

Just here arose the temptation of the historic slogan of the French Revolution which meant so much to Jefferson and his friends, ‘Liberty, equality, fraternity.’ No, that would be too fanciful, too many thousands of years off in realization. But we as a nation do stand square on the doctrine of liberty and justice for all…

It’s telling that Bellamy, knowing the vehemence of opposition to equality for women and African-Americans, considered it “thousands of years off in realization.”

On June 29, 1892, President Benjamin Harrison issued Proclamation 335, making the public school flag ceremony the center of the first Columbus Day celebrations. Children raised money for more than 25,000 flags to be raised that day.

The National Flag Conferences of 1923 and 1924 altered the words slightly, resulting in this version:

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

The words “under God” weren’t added until 1954, mainly as a response to Communist threat. President Dwight D. Eisenhower declared:

In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource in peace and war.

Largely forgotten but more controversial in its day than religiosity or idolatry was the original salute to the flag. The Bellamy Salute required citizens to straighten their right arms at a slightly upward angle, palm down, fingers pointing forward. They then held still this stiffened position until the end of the recitation, when they would immediately drop their arms to their sides.

It bore a striking resemblance to a Nazi salute. Richard J. Ellis, in To the Flag: The Unlikely History of the Pledge of Allegiance, wrote that “the similarities in the salute had begun to attract comment as early as the mid-1930s.” On December 22, 1942, Congress amended the Flag Code, decreeing that the Pledge of Allegiance should “be rendered by standing with the right hand over the heart.”

Happy Pledge of Allegiance Day!

Sources:
cnn.com
ushistory.org
smithsonianmag.com

Forefathers’ Day

December 21, 2016/0 Comments/in December

Forefathers’ Day commemorates the landing of the Mayflower and the pilgrims’ subsequent founding of Plymouth Colony in North America. The ship arrived on December 11, 1620. So why is the anniversary celebrated on December 21 or December 22?

In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII announced his Gregorian calendar would replace the Julian calendar introduced in 46 B.C. by Julius Caesar. The Roman emperor’s system had miscalculated the length of the solar year by 11 minutes.

This concerned the pope because it meant that Easter, traditionally observed on March 21, fell further away from the spring equinox with each passing year. Ten days were subtracted to realign the seasons with the calendar. The beginning of the new year was also moved to January 1 from March 25.

England and the colonies didn’t convert to the new system until September 1752, causing the month’s calendar to look like this:

 cal 9 1752
  September 1752
 S  M Tu  W Th  F  S
       1  2 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Benjamin Franklin wrote of the change, “It is pleasant for an old man to be able to go to bed on September 2, and not have to get up until September 14.”

When the Old Colony Club of Plymouth inaugurated Forefathers’ Day in 1769, it mistakenly reset the anniversary of the ship’s landing to December 22. (Perhaps it utilized the 11-day difference appropriate to its own century.)

Members still observe the holiday on December 22, wearing top hats and marching down Plymouth’s main street led by a drummer. After firing a small cannon at the end of the route, they return to their club for breakfast and toasts to the Pilgrims.

Other groups like the General Society of Mayflower Descendants observe the occasion, sometimes called Compact Day, on December 21, as does the Pilgrim Society, a group formed in 1820 that serves a traditional dinner of succotash, stew, corn, turnips, and beans.

No matter how or when you choose to celebrate it, have a happy Forefathers’ Day!

December 20 is Mudd Day

December 20, 2016/1 Comment/in December

Today is Mudd Day. It commemorates the birthday of Dr. Samuel Mudd, who was accused of conspiring to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln and hiding his killer, John Wilkes Booth, after the fact.

Dr. Samuel Mudd

After killing Lincoln on April 14, 1865, Booth fractured his fibula when he jumped from the president’s box seat to the stage of the Ford Theater and fled the scene. He and co-conspirator David Herold rode on horseback to Dr. Mudd’s house, arriving in the middle of the night. Mudd splinted Booth’s leg and let the men rest in a bedroom upstairs. They were at the house for at least twelve hours before leaving in late afternoon to continue their flight.

(The fugitives were cornered two weeks later in a Virginia tobacco shed by Union cavalry. Herold surrendered. Booth refused. Soldiers set the shed on fire and shot Booth as he tried to escape the flames.)

It’s possible Mudd didn’t know about the assassination. He went into town to run errands during the day of April 15th and certainly would have learned the news then. But he failed to report Booth’s visit for another twenty-four hours.

Authorities found Mudd’s hesitation suspicious. His inaction certainly allowed the men more time to escape. Under interrogation, he changed his story several times. He may have done so due to the stress of being questioned. He was arrested on April 26th, coincidentally the same day Booth was killed and Herold taken prisoner.

On June 29, 1865, Mudd was found guilty of conspiring to murder President Lincoln. He was sentenced to life in prison, escaping the death penalty by one vote. Four of the convicted, including Herold, were hanged eight days later.

Mudd was pardoned by President Andrew Johnson and released from prison in 1869. He died of pneumonia on January 10, 1883. Despite ongoing efforts to have his record expunged, Mudd’s conviction has never been overturned. A Facebook page is dedicated to clearing his name and his home has become a museum.

*****

One thing is clear, however. The phrase “your name is mud” has no connection to Dr. Mudd. Use of the word “mud” to label things as worthless or unwholesome dates back as far as the 16th century. Its usage was later applied to people, as documented in a 1703 description of London’s low life, Hell upon Earth:

Mud, a Fool, or thick skull Fellow.

The following citation appeared in an 1823 dictionary of slang terms.

Mud – a stupid twaddling fellow. ‘And his name is mud!’ ejaculated upon the conclusion of a silly oration, or of a leader in the Courier.

Oddly, “mud” was also used as a general intensifier. There are many published examples of “as fat as mud,” “as rich as mud,” “as sick as mud” etc. Eventually, the meanings coalesced into an epithet that insulted a person’s worth and identity, and sometimes carried a threat of violence. “Your name is mud” has been in use ever since.

Happy Mudd Day, we think.

Wright Brothers Day

December 17, 2016/1 Comment/in December

Today is Wright Brothers Day. On December 17, 1903, Orville Wright made the first successful flight of a heavier-than-air, mechanically propelled airplane.

Orville’s brother Wilbur, who’d won a coin toss to determine who flew first, had made the first attempt on December 14, 1903. He was unable to get off the ground and caused minor damage to the plane which took a couple of days to repair.

First flight, December 17, 1903

Orville’s flight over the dunes near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, lasted 12 seconds and traveled 120 feet before landing on the sand. Wilbur followed, and the two switched off several times. Wilbur’s last flight lasted almost a full minute and covered 852 feet.

The brothers’ plans to keep flying were dashed when winds flipped the aircraft, damaging it to the point that it was never used again. The plane known as the Wright Flyer hangs in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum but nearly didn’t make it there.

Samuel Langley, former Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and founder of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, had created the Langley Aerodrome, a plane with no landing gear that had to be launched by catapult. His first flight test had ended in failure nine days before the Wright brothers’ flight.

Langley and the Smithsonian attempted to invalidate the brothers’ patents. After the Aerodrome had been modified and successfully flown a few hundred feet in 1914, the Smithsonian put it on display as “the first man-carrying aeroplane in the history of the world capable of sustained free flight.” The attempt to rewrite history was unsuccessful and the courts upheld the patents.

Because of this, Orville Wright—Wilbur died in 1912—refused to donate the Wright Flyer to the museum. Finally, in the 1940s, the Smithsonian Institution admitted it had misrepresented Langley’s Aerodrome and Orville relented. The Flyer arrived at the museum in 1948, shortly after Orville’s death.

In 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a proclamation designating December 17 Wright Brothers Day.

When astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon on July 21, 1969, he carried, in a pocket of his spacesuit, a piece of muslin fabric from the left wing of the Wright Flyer and a bit of wood from its left propeller.

Happy Wright Brothers Day!

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