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December 16, 1773: Boston Tea Party

December 16, 2016/1 Comment/in December

Today is the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. On December 16, 1773, the Sons of Liberty, disguised as Mohawks, stole aboard three British ships and emptied 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. This act of defiance, part of a wave of resistance throughout the colonies, was a protest against British rule. Earlier that year, Parliament had passed the Tea Act to shore up the failing East India Company.

Overall, the price of tea was lowered to undercut the prices of Dutch tea smugglers. (The colonies were legally permitted to buy tea only from the British.) However, it reaffirmed an existing three-pence-per-pound duty, one of many pieces of legislation enacted by Parliament without the input and consent of the colonies; this is often referred to as taxation without representation. The principle of self-governance, not the burden of higher taxes, motivated political opposition to the Tea Act.

The East India Company selected consignees in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Charleston and shipped 500,000 pounds of tea across the Atlantic in September. Meanwhile, colonists held several mass meetings where it was decided to refuse the tea and send it back to England with the duty unpaid.

Under pressure from these groups, the brokers in Charleston, New York, and Philadelphia turned away the shipments. Merchants in Boston, including three relatives of the governor, refused to cooperate and allowed the ships to dock. The Dartmouth arrived on November 28th, the Eleanor on December 2nd, and the Beaver on December 15th.

Around midnight on December 16th, a large crowd gathered to watch Samuel Adams and members of Sons of Liberty board the ships. It took nearly three hours to smash open all 342 chests and dump more than 92,000 pounds of tea into the water. (The tea, by the way, was from China: Bohea, Congou and Souchong black teas, plus Singlo and Hyson green teas.) For weeks, the harbor reeked of it.

The name “Boston Tea Party” was not coined until the 1820s. It was known simply as “the Destruction of the Tea in Boston.” Many colonists, including George Washington, condemned it at the time as an act of vandalism.

Parliament saw Massachusetts as the hub of resistance to British rule and enacted laws to punish the colony in general and Boston in particular. The Coercive Acts of 1774 shut down the port of Boston until damages were paid, nullified colonial self-government in Massachusetts, declared British officials immune from criminal prosecution and required colonists to house British troops on demand.

The Acts were intended to isolate Boston and New England. The other colonies were expected to abandon them and quash any of their own ideas of insurrection due to fear of reprisal. Instead, the Acts outraged and unified the colonists, who rushed to the city’s aid, sent supplies and began to organize groups to discuss the injustice of British rule and mobilize resistance.

In September and October of 1774, the First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia and petitioned Parliament to repeal the Coercive Acts, vowing to boycott British goods until then. Massachusetts began forming militias to defy martial law. On February 9, 1775, Parliament declared it to be in a state of rebellion.

On April 19, 1775, the first shots between British and American soldiers were fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. It is undeniable that the Boston Tea Party and Great Britain’s draconian response to it helped spark the American Revolution.

There were many other precipitating factors but the Boston Tea Party galvanized the populace and helped build a nation. It has been invoked in recent years by groups that appear to lack a working knowledge of the event. Let’s honor its place in history by treating it with the dignity and respect it deserves. (If you’d like to enjoy a cup of tea while you do, that’s fine with us.)

December 10 is Dewey Decimal Day

December 10, 2016/1 Comment/in December

Today is Dewey Decimal Day. Melville Louis Kossuth Dewey was born on December 10, 1851, in the hardscrabble town of Adams Center in Northern New York State. At the age of 22, while studying at Amherst College in Boston, he devised one of the most efficient methods of classification ever known, copyrighting the Dewey Decimal System three years later in 1876. He’s proven to be much harder to classify.

Dewey abhorred waste, championing conversion to metric measurements and the use of streamlined phonetic spellings. Upon leaving home, he shortened his name to Melvil and attempted to change his last name as well, but admitted defeat when his bank refused to recognize his new signature. Otherwise, we’d be referring to the Dui Decimal System right now.

Many libraries at that time utilized a numbering system that indicated the floor, aisle, section and shelf upon which each book was stored. When rearrangement became necessary, all of the books had to be reclassified. Dewey was determined to devise a simple, workable, permanent classification system.

He formulated a system of Arabic numerals with decimals for book classification. All printed knowledge would be organized into ten numerical classifications ranging from 000 to 900, with as many decimals as necessary to define the content of the book being classified.

Within three years, A Classification and Subject Index For Cataloguing and Arranging the Books and Pamphlets of a Library was published. It was widely adopted in the United States and England as well as elsewhere in the world. This system has proven to be enormously influential and remains in widespread use.

In 1883, Dewey was recruited by Columbia University to become its librarian. The following year, he founded the School of Library Economy—the first school for librarians ever organized. It opened on January 5, 1887. He personally enrolled each student. Of the twenty-six, nineteen were women.

Columbia forbade admittance to females. Since Dewey believed that women were destined to become librarians, he ignored this rule. That didn’t make him a feminist, though. His enrollment questionnaire required an applicant to report her height, weight, hair and eye color. Inclusion of a photograph was strongly recommended.

In spite of the school’s financial success, Columbia shuttered it the following year and Dewey moved on, accepting an invitation to become director of the New York State Library in 1883. In 1895, he founded a private resort in Lake Placid, New York, and began to campaign for the Olympic Games to be held there. Ten years later, Dewey was forced to resign as State Librarian after complaints that his Lake Placid Club denied entrance to smokers, drinkers, blacks and Jews.

In 1926, he moved to Florida to establish a new branch of the resort. He died on December 26, 1931, in Lake Placid, Florida. The following year, Lake Placid, New York, hosted the Winter Olympics.

Turns out Dewey was more complicated than his system.

Official Lost and Found Day

December 9, 2016/0 Comments/in December

Official Lost and Found Day was created in 2012 to encourage people to seek out things they’ve lost. The holiday became “official” three years later when it was recognized by Chase’s Calendar of Events. It is always observed on the second Friday of December.

Collecting lost things in a central location is nothing new. The practice was documented on papyrus in ancient Greece and Rome. Japan’s system dates back to a code written in 718 A.D. that called for severe punishment of those who failed to turn over items they’d found. In 1733, two officials who kept a parcel of clothing were paraded through town and then executed. (Thankfully, the law was reformed in the late 19th century.)

In 1805, Napoleon ordered the establishment of a place “to collect all objects found in the streets of Paris.” In 1893, the city began to actively try to track down the owners. While the policy is still in force, it’s estimated that only one in four lost belongings finds its way back to its original home.

In the course of its history, the Paris Lost and Found has received five human skulls, a 17th-century saber, World War I helmets, muzzle-loading pistols, a Victorian Era tripod and telescope, two floor-length wedding dresses and two chunks of masonry from the World Trade Center site.

Transport for London’s lost property office opened in 1934 and collects about 130,000 objects each year, ranging from obvious items like mobile phones and wallets to more unusual ones like kitchen sinks, urns filled with ashes, false teeth, prosthetic limbs, wheelchairs and breast implants.

How can we “find” the meaning of Official Lost and Found Day? Founder Lance Morgan explains:

Official Lost and Found Day is a day for renewed hope and belief that lost items should never be forgotten or abandoned to lost and found limbo. Please take a moment on Official Lost and Found Day to make one more effort, one more leap of faith, that what you’ve lost isn’t gone, it’s just not conveniently handy. Reach out, make a call, stop by the office, retrace your steps. What was lost can be found. It’s up to you.

At Worldwide Weird Holidays, we’re going to start by looking between the sofa cushions. Even if you don’t find a thing, have fun looking and we think you’ll find yourself having a happy Official Lost and Found Day!

December 7 is National Cotton Candy Day

December 7, 2016/0 Comments/in December

Today is National Cotton Candy Day. The confection dates back to the 1400s, when it was called “spun sugar.” Producing it by hand was a costly and laborious task, making it unavailable to the general public. Four men—two of them dentists—helped usher in the modern process that would make it a summertime favorite at carnivals, fairs and the circus. So why isn’t National Cotton Candy Day celebrated in July or August? We have no idea.

Here’s what we do know. Dentist William Morrison and confectioner John C. Wharton invented the first electric spinning machine in 1897 and were granted a patent two years later.

They introduced “fairy floss” at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri. Curious visitors bought more than 68,000 boxes at 25 cents apiece, spending a total of over $17,000.

In 1900, Thomas Patton patented a gas-fired rotating plate that allowed him to form threads of caramelizing sugar on a fork. It debuted at the Ringling Bros. Circus and was an instant hit with children, if not their mothers, who had to clean up the sticky mess left behind on hands, hair and clothes.

Although he never received a patent, dentist Josef Delarose Lascaux built his own machine and sold it to patients at his Louisiana office, where he could cater to sweet tooths and the inevitable cavities that followed. He is widely credited with changing the name to “cotton candy” in 1921.

In 1949, Gold Medal Products launched a version with a spring base. It improved upon its predecessors by being more reliable, less likely to break down or overheat. Variations of this device are used to this day.

The next time you buy cotton candy, which starts out three times the size of your head but condenses seemingly instantaneously to a gritty coating on the roof of your mouth and a pastel crust in your hair, you can thank these four men for making us crave this diabolically delicious treat.

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