Missing History

Despite what your US history textbooks may have tried to tell you, we will never have a complete understanding of history.  History is essentially one infinitely long game of telephone: things get corrupted and then accepted as fact, some parts drop out, some parts get added.  The view of history changes so often that there's a whole field dedicated to just studying views on history.

The reason that people are able to study how our view of history has changed (and a major part of studying history itself) is books.  Books are able to keep records of knowledge for thousands of years, passing their wisdom onto future generations.

Our wisdom for future generations.

Which is why it's such a shame when books, especially famous and important books, get lost.  The worst example of this is the destruction of the Library of Alexandria.  At the time, the Library was the single largest collection of knowledge anywhere in the world.  It was originally ordered by Alexander the Great, who wanted a collection of his empire's knowledge.  Although he never lived to see its completion, his dream lived on.

For a while, anyway. Like the lighthouse before it, the library proved that nothing famous in Alexandria can stay forever.  Amazingly, no one even knows who destroyed the library.  Suspects have ranged from Julius Caesar to Theophilus, a Patriarch of Alexandria, to Caliph Omar.  What is known, however, is that very few of the works held in the library survived.

The loss of the Library of Alexandria is possibly the reason that there are holes in every World History textbook.  No one really knows exactly what was lost with the library, but there is no doubt that invaluable historical texts were destroyed.  If the library still stood, who knows what we would have access to?

Conspiracy Theories

I love conspiracy theories.  They are the alternate history (or present) that usually make my craziest ideas seem pretty sane by comparison.  But while almost all conspiracy theories sound pretty crazy, that doesn't mean that they're all wrong.  In fact, some of the craziest sounding conspiracy theories wound up being right on the money.  These theories turned out to be things like:

Operation Snow White

You may have heard of Scientology, the religion that was founded by a Science Fiction writer and has had some issues with public relations in the past, both recent and not so recent.  So in the 1970's the Church of Scientology decided to go with the basic reaction of any group with a bad public image: they infiltrated the government to get rid of any records that portrayed them in an unfavorable light.

Over the course of about 2 years, the Church of Scientology had as many as 5,000 covert agents infiltrate various branches of the government, including the IRS, the Coast Guard, and the DEA.  The main goals were to gain a tax-exempt status as a religious group and to remove any evidence of Scientology's crazier plots (including when they tried to get a journalist committed to a mental institution).

Amazingly, the plan worked.  Then, in early 1977, one of the agents got arrested while breaking into a government building.  After that, it all unraveled very quickly, culminating in 11 high-ranking members, including the founder's wife, getting indicted in 1978.  6 of the 11 went to jail for four years, and each had to pay a $10,000 fine.

I would call that pretty light punishment for the people who orchestrated the single largest infiltration of the government in the history of the United States.

Government Media Control

Everyone has heard at one time or another the theory that the government actually controls everything that we see and hear in the media.  Most of the time, the people that you hear it from are also convinced that a secret organization actually rules the world, so I wouldn't put too much stock in the theory itself.

Then again, reality can be a strange thing.  In 1948 Frank Wisner, who was in charge of the sinister-named Office of Special Projects, started Operation Mockingbird.  This goal of this operation was to infiltrate every major media outlet with reporters who were on his payroll.

The program was astonishingly successful.  In under ten years, there were over 400 reporters on the government's payroll, including some of the big shots at ABC, NBC, CBS, The New York Times, and the Associated Press.  This level of infiltration allowed the government to suppress any story they didn't like as well as planting pro-government stories.  Apparently, this was all so easy because, as one operative noted, "You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month."

Luckily for us, the entire operation was disbanded in the mid-1970's.  Or not, according to much of the internet.


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For this post, much of my research and some of my sources came from Cracked.com, who I strongly recommend that you check out, especially this article:

http://www.cracked.com/article_18955_6-crackpot-conspiracy-theories-that-actually-happened.html#ixzz2JQs0GPDN

Interesting History: Troy

Troy is an ancient city made famous first by Homer in the Iliad (c. 1250 BC) and then by Brad Pitt in the film Troy (c. 2004).  It is best known as the namer of the Trojan Horse and the site of the Trojan War, which serves as something of a prequel for The Odyssey, making it the bane of high school students everywhere.  The city itself was thought to be mythical for a while, on account of how no one could find it.  And that's where the story gets interesting.

The man who actually discovered Troy was Heinrich Schliemann, a German archaeologist.  When he got to the site, he discovered that there were actually ruins of at least nine ancient cities, all stacked on top of each other.  This was fairly common practice in ancient times, because if somewhere was good enough to live (and like Troy, right on a lucrative trade route), there was no reason to let a few ruins get in your way.  You just built right on top of them.

When Schliemann saw this, he figured that since the Troy of the Trojan war was from Grecian times, it had to be on the bottom.  So he went right to blasting.  He went all the way down to the bottom level, where he claimed that he had discovered Troy and King Priam's treasure.  The only problem was that this left about a thousand-year gap in Troy's history.  But screw that, he found treasure!

See, treasure!

People just accepted this for about 20 years, until another archaeologist found that one of the other cities in the pile matched up with Homer's description much better.  A city five freaking levels above where Schliemann had claimed Troy was and almost 2,000 years younger.  So in his fervor to find Troy, Schliemann had actually blown straight through it, and did such a good job of it that archaeologists are still complaining about how much he destroyed to this day.

For those of you who haven't heard of We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel, it is a song about history.  More specifically, it outlines every major event (and several boxing matches) in American history from about 1949-1990 in chronological order.  It's actually extensive enough that a book of American history used the song as a guide for what to talk about for the period from 1949-1990.  It also has a fairly famous video.

What's almost amazing as the depth of the song itself is the sheer number of adaptions and parodies made to the tune (scroll down a little on the linked page for the list).  Some of them have just used the (admittedly catchy) tune, but others have continued to use the history theme, and some of them have been fairly impressive.  Here's a list of the three most impressive random histories I've seen set to Billy Joel.

Singapore (a.k.a "I Live in Singapura")

This song is the epitome of a random history.  I didn't know anything about Singaporean history until this video, but this song and video were hilarious anyway.  And while the song is still funny even in a vacuum, a little context can go a long way in making the video even better.

Political Scandals (a.k.a "We Didn't Start Satire")

This one is a pure song.  The video helps with some context, but the song is the real humor here.  It outlines almost every political scandal in Washington (and some in other states as well) starting in 1981.  This was written for the 30th year of Capitol Steps, a satire group from DC, and their knowledge shows.

Video Games (a.k.a "The Wii Didn't Start the Fire")

This is definitely my favorite song and video on the list.  These guys did a great job with the lyrics (which cover the history of video games from their beginning until about 2010), the sound effects (they frequently use sound clips from the things they're referencing, which are awesome if you recognize them), and the video (which uses video clips from virtually everything they mention).  They even kept the video in a similar style to Billy Joel.

The Iran Trap

Recently, I've been reading The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier for my history class.  It's a fairly interesting book that describes why the poorest countries (which account for approximately 1 billion people, hence the title) seem to be so far behind the rest of the world.  Collier describes four "traps" that these countries seem to fall into.  The traps are:

The Conflict Trap

This one is about civil wars and coups.  Both end up costing the countries billions of dollars, and in the few years after a civil war or coup the country is more likely to have another.  Collier also argues that the longer a country stays trapped in civil war, the more people are likely to profit from it and the increased interest in keeping the civil war going.

The Natural Resources Trap

This trap is counterintuitive.  Collier states that poor countries that suddenly gain abundant natural resources will likely be worse off than before for three reasons:
1) More resources means that conflict over those resources is more likely.
2) The more money the government can make off of the resources, the less they need to tax the citizens, which leads to a lack of financial accountability.
3) Dutch Disease

Landlocked with Bad Neighbors

Countries with access to the sea have access to the world.  Landlocked countries have access to their neighbors.  If a country is landlocked and their neighbors are unfriendly or in a state of turmoil, the country suffers.

Bad Governance in a Small Country

A bad government can destroy an economy very quickly.  So in a small country, where countries are already wary of investing because of the smaller workforce, bad governance can doom any prospect of foreign investment.

So now that that's out of the way, let's see how the traps apply to a country that's been in the news a lot recently: Iran.  In order:

1) Iran isn't caught in the conflict trap.  This isn't surprising when you think about the state of Iran now, but it is impressive that Iran avoided the trap 30 years ago.  They were able to avoid falling into a state of constant warfare by having a brutal regime that essentially exterminated all competition.

2) Iran also avoided the natural resources trap, despite having great oil reserves.  Part of the reason is that oil was discovered decades ago, which gave Iran time to build structure around the industry.  Another part of the reason is that the oil was discovered by the British, who had experience in the oil industry.  These factors combined to give Iran a stable oil business.

3) Iran's not landlocked.  Simple as that.

4) Iran also isn't a small country, and because the oil industry is so strong, all the government has to do is stay out of the way and then they can dive into their money pools like Scrooge McDuck.

Post-presidential Stuff

When you're the President of the United States, you are one of the most watched people on Earth.  Everyone knows where you are and what you're doing at all hours of every day you're still the President.  But on the day the new guy shows up and throws you out of the White House?  Boom, no one cares anymore.

That may seem a little harsh at first glance, but just answer this one question: what is George W. Bush doing right now?  I've got no idea either.  Even his Wikipedia page only goes up to September 2011, over a year ago.  All I know is that he's no longer involved in Washington, D.C., and I'm fairly relieved.

While Bush seems to have given up the political realm so far, some former Presidents just couldn't shake the urge to be a politician.  I'm not talking about the guys who ran for a second term and lost, I'm talking about the ones who apparently sold their homes outside of Washington and never wanted to leave.  People like:

John Tyler

John Tyler was the first Vice President to assume the role of President after William Henry Harrison died only 32 days into his term.  This sparked a huge controversy over whether Tyler was actually the President or just the "Acting President," who would serve until someone else would be elected.  Long story short, Tyler took the oath of office and became the President.

As if that wasn't enough controversy for one term, he also essentially stole Texas from Mexico.  He held this off until late in his term because he thought that this would help him get reelected as an Independent in 1844 because he had pissed his party off so much that they tried to impeach him, but instead wound up sticking his successor with the gritty details (in this case meaning war).

Mostly because of the whole alienating-his-entire-party thing, Tyler is often considered one of the worst Presidents.  But hey, it's not like started the Civil War or anything.  That was all Buchanan.

The Post-Presidency

While it's not entirely true that Tyler started the Civil War, he did less than nothing to stop it.  After retiring to Virginia and doing some hilarious things shortly after his Presidency ended, he reentered politics in early 1861 during the Virginia Peace Conference, which was a last-ditch effort to stop the Civil War.  When that didn't work, Tyler started openly advocating for Virginia's secession.  After the war broke out, he immediately sided with the South, going so far as to serve in the Provisional Confederate Congress.  That's right, a former President of the United States was now serving in the Confederate government.

Tyler was actually elected to the actual Confederate Congress, but died before he could take his seat.  His death is the only time in US history that the federal government hasn't officially recognized a former President's death, mainly because he was working for the enemy at the time.

William Howard Taft

Consistently voted "Best Mustache" of all Presidents

 William Howard Taft was the 27th President, and directly succeeded Teddy Roosevelt in office.  Taft was Teddy's good friend and Cabinet member, and was the person most likely to follow Roosevelt as the President.  Despite this, he was never really sure if he wanted to be President, instead wishing to be a Supreme Court Justice.  He apparently made this clear to Teddy, but wasn't appointed.

So Taft, with Roosevelt's support, ran for President.  Teddy thought that Taft was a true Progressive like he was, but Taft showed that he was more traditionally Republican.  Taft was still a Progressive, but not nearly as progressive as he was expected to be.  Not helping matters was the fact the Roosevelt, the man who essentially pushed Taft into the White House, left on an African safari almost as soon as he left Washington.  Taft was left without the wisdom of his mentor, and because he followed many precedents without question, he was a considerably weaker President that Roosevelt.

Naturally, Teddy was not happy about this.  After returning from Africa, he declared that he would run for President again in 1912.  When he couldn't pick up the Republican nomination (our political parties will always renominate the incumbent, regardless of popularity, as evidenced by this example and that Herbert Hoover, the guy with no popularity during the Great Depression, got renominated), Teddy formed his own party (the Bull-Moose Party) and ran on that ticket.   In the 1912 election, Roosevelt actually beat Taft in both the electoral college and popular vote, but the split in the Republican party allowed Woodrow Wilson to win.

The Post-Presidency

 Remember how Taft always wanted to be a Supreme Court Justice but Teddy would never let him?  Apparently he never gave up on that dream.  After working for Yale for a while and running the National War Labor Board during WWI, Warren G. Harding nominated Taft for the vacant spot of Chief Justice.  Taft was overjoyed, and the Senate approved him with a 60-4 vote.  He served on the Court for 9 years until shortly before his death.

Random Election Things

This election could get crazy.  It's already predicted to be a close race, close enough that things such as the weather or whose name comes first could sway the vote.  A lot of people may remember the 2000 election, where Bush won only after some shenanigans in Florida, but they may not know about all the crazy, random outcomes of elections throughout US history.  And I don't mean random like when Ford had no knowledge of foreign policy, I'm talking about things like...

James Madison runs unopposed, doesn't get every vote

In the 1820 election, the Democratic-Republican party was the only real party left.  The Federalists had collapsed because of their opposition to the War of 1812, even while we were winning.  This meant that only one (major) candidate was running for the first time since 1792, when Washington ran for his second term.

So when the electoral college has only one person to seriously consider, there's only one person who's going to get any votes, right?  Nope.  Apparently, George Washington is an imposing historical figure.  He was elected by unanimous vote in both his terms, and one elector decided that Madison was no Washington.  So in 1820, a single Delaware elector cast a vote for John Quincy Adams, who wasn't even running, just so Madison wouldn't get the unanimous vote.


We should probably thank that one Delaware elector, because Madison's second term is considered one of the most corrupt in history.  Nice job, Delaware!

Andrew Jackson wins the popular vote and elector college, loses the election

If 1820 was marked by order due to a single-party control, the 1824 election is marked by total anarchy.  So just four years after only one serious candidate ran for office, we now had four serious contenders.  Of the four, Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams were the two favorites, and that's how it played out on election day.  Jackson beat Adams by 15 electoral votes and 10% of the popular vote, but fell 31 votes short of an electoral majority.  Since no candidate won a majority, by the Constitution, the election then went to the House of Representatives.  Only the top three finishers were allowed on the ballot for that vote (which excluded Henry Clay, who came in fourth), and before it could be held William Crawford suffered a stroke, leaving him in no condition to be president.  So it was now down to just Adams and Jackson.

In the House, something crazy happened.  For some reason, a full quarter of the representatives still voted for Crawford.  And despite being the top candidate in both the electoral college and popular vote, Jackson only received 33% of the electoral college vote.  For everyone keeping score at home, that means that Adams received 41% of the vote.  So it was still a deadlock.

Wait, the individual votes aren't what count?  Each delegation only really gets one vote?  Yep.  So even though he couldn't get a majority of the House, Adams managed to squeak out a majority of the states' votes, giving him the presidency.

Naturally, Jackson was pissed, and came back with a vengeance next election, making John Adams and John Quincy Adams both one-term presidents.


Hayes gets negotiated into the Oval Office

The 1876 election should have its picture in the dictionary next to the word "shenanigans."  After most of the votes had been counted, Samuel Tilden was leading Hayes in electoral votes 184-165, with only 20 disputed votes left uncounted.  If Tilden got a single one of those disputed votes, he would be the president.  Everyone momentarily freaked out, but when order was restored a special congressional commission was assigned to decide who would recieve those votes.

Assuming probability holds true even in Congress, at least one of those ballots should have gone to Tilden.  What happened instead is now referred to as the "Compromise of 1877."  The Democrats agreed to give Hayes every disputed vote, under the condition that Hayes ended Reconstruction.  So we have Rutherford B. Hayes to thank for much of the segregation in the south for the next century.  Not bad for the least guessed president on Sporcle.