Category: History

Time Is A Telescope

clock

Next Sunday in North America, we are switching to Daylight Saving Time, which means we move our clocks ahead one hour.  What a crock!  That’s like cutting the top end off a blanket, sewing it to the bottom and saying you’ve got a longer blanket!  Here’s the deal.  Time is a telescope.  It contracts and expands and, depending on how you look at it, throws everything out of proportion.  For example, an itch in the middle of your back can seem like an eternity; whereas a kiss, no matter how long it lingers, is always gone too soon.  When I was a kid, Saturdays were too short, summers were too long and February frequently had 35 days.  Now that I’m an — uh — older gentleman, days, weeks, months and even years are flashing by at warp speed.

The reality is, though, time is actually getting bigger.  The rotation of the Earth is slowing down ever so slightly, so a second is now an itty-bitty bit longer than it was when we first discovered them.  Luckily, the international time people (Coordinated Universal Time) have noticed this, and they add a leap second to the clock every once in a while so we don’t stray that far from solar time.  Cool fact, huh?  Here are a few more that might change your concept of time.

It takes most people more time to tie their shoes than it takes Usain Bolt to run 100 metres.

There are only 525,600 minutes in a year.

Cleopatra’s reign in Egypt is closer to our time than it is to the time when the Pyramids were built.

Oxford University is older than the Aztec civilization in Mexico.

Spain was a predominantly Moslem country for 200 years longer than it’s been predominantly Christian.

Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone the same year Crazy Horse and his buddies killed General Custer and all his troopers at the Little Big Horn.

The 10th President of the United States, John Tyler, who was born in 1790, has a grandson, Harrison Tyler, who is alive today — and living in the family home, Sherwood Forest Plantation, Virginia.

This year’s Oscar presenter Eva Marie Saint is older than the Empire State Building, Hoover Dam, Mount Rushmore and the Golden Gate Bridge.

Barbra Walters, Christopher Plummer and Anne Frank were all born in the same year.

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show toured Germany and Austria in 1906 — when Adolf Hitler was 17 years old.

William Shakespeare and Pocahontas were contemporaries.

But my absolute favourite is:

According to The Economist, the median age of all the humans on our planet is 28 years– which means that half the people on Earth were born after the first episode of The Simpsons!

The Much Maligned Mistress

nell-gwyn

Today, in North America, it’s Groundhog Day.  For those of you who are unfamiliar, this is the day when a select group of small-town politicians and business people get their 15 minutes of fame by torturing a rodent.  You can read about it here.  The day has no other redeeming qualities except Harold Ramis made a decent movie out of it.  However, and much more importantly, today is also Nell Gwyn’s birthday.  Again, for the unfamiliar, Nell Gwyn was the most famous of King Charles II’s numerous mistresses. (He had about a dozen.)

So, to hell with the rodent.  Here’s a brief look at one of the most forgotten heroines of history — the mistress.

Diane de Poitiers — She became Henry II’s mistress when he was 16 and she was 35 and basically ran the show in France for the next 24 years!  She even wrote most of his official correspondence and signed it HenriDiane.  When Henry married Catherine de’ Medici, a woman he didn’t even like, Madame de Poitiers practically pushed Henry into Catherine’s bed to ensure the continuation of the dynasty.  (They had 10 children!)

Aspasia of Miletus — There is a lot of speculation (from folks like Plato and Plutarch) that Pericles’ mistress Aspasia was such a brilliant conversationalist that she may have “helped” him write some of his famous speeches.

Alice Keppel — She became Edward VII’s mistress when he was 57 — old, fat, a closet alcoholic and grumpy with gout.  Why she put up with him is impossible to know, but even the British Prime Minister Asquith thanked her for her “wise counsel.”  Coincidentally, Mrs. Keppel is the great-grandmother of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, who was Prince Charles’ mistress before, during and after his turbulent marriage to Princess Diana.

Barbara Palmer — She became Charles II’s mistress while he was still in exile and practically ordered him to accept the throne when Cromwell finally had the good sense to die.  By all accounts, Mrs. Palmer was bossy, bad-tempered and promiscuous.  (She even had an affair with her cousin John Churchill.)  However, she got things done, including “suggesting” Charles declare war on Holland in 1665 and pushing a lot of people around to get London rebuilt after The Great Fire.  Eventually, Charles had to dump her because she was Catholic.  Two of Barbara Palmer’s descendents are the late Diana, Princess of Wales and Sarah, Duchess of York.

Which brings us to Nell Gwyn

Nell Gwyn — As the mistress of Charles II, Nell Gwyn was the very soul of the Restoration.  She was witty and urbane, danced, sang, gambled and helped make England fun again after the dreary days of Oliver Cromwell.  Plus, unlike Barbara Palmer, she kept her mouth shut.  In fact, Nell Gwyn was so good at her job that she’s the only royal mistress ever publically immortalized with a statue.  It’s on Sloane Street, Chelsea.

These days “mistress” is one of those bogeyman words.  It upsets our puritanical view of female sexuality and makes us vaguely uncomfortable.  The problem is, because our society’s sexual sophistication is limited to Kim Kardashian flashing her ass across Instagram, we simply can’t get past the idea that a “mistress” could be anything more than a high-priced hooker.  Guess again!  Nothing could be further from the truth.

So, rodent, go back in your hole.  I’m celebrating mistresses!

The Tide Pod Challenge

eatingI’ve been away from my desk for a couple of weeks, so by the time I became aware of the Tide Pod Challenge, it was over.  No great loss: I’m not a big fan of eating soap!  Luckily, though, I’m still in time to catch all the yipping about what makes “normal” people suddenly go nuts and do stupid things — like eating soap.  According to the pundits, there any number of reasons — ranging from subliminal advertising and our sorry education system to the usual suspect: Donald Trump.  However, the biggest bogeyman, by far, is Social Media, that vague one-size-fits-all villain that does everything but plug toilets and murder people.  (Yeah, yeah, yeah!)

Let me set the record straight.  Like our canine cousins, people run in packs, and they’ve been doing it for at least 100 millennia: long before Mark Zuckerberg figured out that the Internet could be manipulated to meet Harvard girls.  Humans naturally have a group mentality.  Social media didn’t invent that; it just makes it easier.

All you have to do is look at fashion.

There is nothing more useless than the necktie, yet men have been trying to lynch themselves with it for centuries.  Actually, the necktie was born when gunpowder swept the neighbourhood in Europe.  French soldiers tied scarves around their necks so they could use the loose ends to wipe the soot out of their eyes after they fired their muskets.  Everyone loves a man in uniform, so tons of guys (who’d probably never even seen a battlefield) adopted the style to add a little swagger around the ladies.  Apparently, it worked.

I have no personal experience with high heels, but I’ve rubbed enough female feet in my time to know Mother Nature never intended women to elevate themselves this way.  Actually, high heels are nothing more than a celebrity fashion trend that went “viral” — before viral was even a word.  Originally, high heels were worn by men to grip the stirrups on horseback.  Makes sense.  However, rumour has it that Catherine de’ Medici got so tired of stepping out of her carriage into the slime that ran in the streets of 16th century Paris that, one afternoon, she borrowed a pair of her husband, Henry II’s, high-heeled boots.  The Medici girls were uber-trendy before the Kardashians ever thought about it, and high heels have been de rigueur in high society ever since.

And it goes on and on:

In the 1920s, women wrapped their breasts to simulate a flat chest (that’s gotta hurt) and, in the 40s, men wore trousers baggy enough to share with a friend.

A little closer to home, remember the ubiquitous fanny packs?  They were everywhere until we all discovered they were the international symbol for Steal My Stuff.

Crocs!  (I’m not going to say another word because I know most of us have a secret pair stashed away somewhere.)

My point is, wasting time blaming Social Media for people eating soap is as ridiculous as my wife and I cussing out the French every time we have to go to a formal dinner.  Why bother?  So instead of asking ourselves, “Why are so many people eating soap?” we should be seriously looking at why our society produces soap eaters, in the first place.