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From the November 19, 1910 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Pottsville, Pa.–Mistaken for a dog in the gathering dusk last evening, Michael Bolemius, a 12-year-old hunchback, was run over by a heavy delivery wagon and killed after having been knocked down by the horses of a preceding wagon. Death was instantaneous. The drivers were today exonerated from blame.”
Tags: Michael Bolemius
On the road to the development of the modern bicycle and the great wheel craze of the 1890s–a mania so powerful that biking survived even the eventual rise of the automobile–there were some false starts. One such example was the Aeripedis, or Pedomotive Carriage, British inventor’s G.R. Gooch’s cumbersome 1842 “walking machine,” which supposedly made the act of ambulation markedly easier, reducing effort and stress. It was the Segway of its day, manual though it was, and even less successful. By 1850, Gooch himself had all but given up on his creation. From an article in the July 5, 1896 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
Tags: G.R. Gooch
From the March 9, 1910 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Washington–Eleven monkeys have been sent to the government hospital for the insane, though the little ‘forest men’ are sound mentally and healthy. Fresh from George Washington University, where their association was with professors and students of psychology, by whom their faculties for perception and sensation were pronounced to be more keen than those of the average man, the simians are now to be subjected to close scientific scrutiny in order that the savants may learn what effect may follow confinement among insane persons.”
“Stoudt predicted it would go 70 miles on the ground and 100 miles an hour in the air.”
A flying car in every garage is a technological dream deferred and probably for good reason: They’re not necessary, and there are no economic forces driving the creation of a commercially viable model. But that never stopped the dreamers among technologists, including transportation designer William B. Stoudt, from attempting to realize such modes of transport. An article from the August 5, 1943 Brooklyn Daily Eagle about the beginnings of what was officially known as Stoudt’s “Skycar” series, a succession of hybrid vehicles that never reached the market:
“Thee new modes of travel that would provide the average man with a plane that would land in his back yard and two types of craft to either fly or run on the ground are being developed in the laboratories of the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation, it was revealed today.
William B. Stout, a pioneer airplane designer, has designed for the company three vehicles for everyday use–the ‘helicab,’ a helicopter-type flying machine, the ‘aerocar’ and the ‘roadable airplane,’ both of which operate in the air and on the ground.
The ‘helicab’ has the feature of vertical ascent and the ability to land in a small space. The ‘roadable airplane’ has four wheels and folding wings which Stoudt believes would provide an ideal light delivery truck for a business man. It would be capable of going 35 miles an hour on the ground and 120 miles an hour in the air, with a flying range of 400 miles.
The ‘aerocar’ is designed along the lines of an automobile with detachable wings. Stoudt predicted it would go 70 miles on the ground and 100 miles an hour in the air.”
Tags: William B. Stoudt
From the August 5, 1910 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Washington–Four cents a hundred is the price which has been placed on the heads of flies in the District of Columbia. This is the stimulus which by Washington boys have been aroused by their mothers to a declaration of ‘war to the death’ on the typhoid-breeding housefly. The boys, it is reported, have started in on their work of slaughter with great glee.”
The photo finish is such an ingrained part of horse racing that it’s easy to forget that it didn’t exist for most of the sport’s history. The earliest mention of its use that I can find is an August 8, 1935 Brooklyn Daily Eagle article by W.C. Vreeland, a sportswriter and champion of the equine game, who urged for the installation of an “electronic eye” at every track. The story:
“Saratoga–From the time the racing season opened, in the middle of April, I had advocated a ‘camera eye’ to judge the finishes of all race courses in this State. After considering the advantages of such an arrangement which positively and accurately tells which horse pokes its nose in line with the winning post in front of his opponents, the members of the State Racing Commission have decided on an ‘electric eye,’ which will be adopted on Oct. 1.
The electric eye is a motion picture machine which makes a photo of horses in action, and at the same time makes a picture of a split-second hand moving across the face of a dial. The two pictures are made on the same film so that there can never be a question of what race is being filmed.
The horses appear along the top of the film, and the moving clock hand along the bottom. The actual picture of the race is never recorded in full, only the last furlong or sixteenth pole because the finishes only of races are matters of dispute.
The camera must be placed high above the race course on which it is to be operated. It is installed far behind the judges’ stand so that the horses will appear all one size in the eye of the camera. The camera itself is equipped with a developing mechanism which is set in motion at the same instant that the camera starts recording.
The film is automatically developed, washed, dried and printed in less than five minutes’ time after the race. The electric eye will cost each racetrack about $300 a day. The commission recommends that each racetrack in the State adopt it as part of the ‘placing’ of the horses as they finish past the winning post.”
Tags: W.C. Vreeland
From the November 23, 1910 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Chicago–After dictating into a phonograph a last message to his children, John Kryl, a sculptor, 71 years old, died yesterday.
Seeing that the end was near and fearing that he would not be able to see and speak to his five children, Kryl asked that a phonograph be brought. This was done and the father spoke in the language of his home land, Bohemia, his final words, telling his children that after a long life he was ready to die.
He bade them all farewell, and within six hours he was dead.”
Tags: John Kryl
Robots seem to have been capable of offering rudimentary salutations to Madison Square Garden conventioneers more than eight decades ago, but a Broadway speech and Q&A in the Roaring Twenties by a robot named Eric may not have been entirely legit. The bucket of bolts could certainly gesture and nod, but his “voice” may have come from an offstage confederate via remote wireless, though no such possibility was entertained in a report about the unusual stage debut in the January 20, 1929 Brooklyn Daily Eagle. The story:
“Eric Robot, ‘the perfect man,’ made his first public appearance in America on the stage of the John Golden Theater, 58th St. and Broadway, yesterday afternoon.
Eric arrived from England with Capt. William Henry Richards, secretary of the Model Engineering Association of England, 14 days ago, and plans a tour of the continent. Eric is the mechanical man invented by Captain Richards after many years of private experimental work, and was exhibited before the public for the first time 17 weeks ago in London.
Eric is made of aluminum, copper, steel, miles of wire, dynamos and electro-magnets. His eyes are two white electric bulbs, and his teeth, or rather tooth, is a blue bulb which, on the command, ‘Smile, Eric,’ appears, accompanied by a sputtering sound. The upper half of Mr. Robot’s body, Captain Richards explained, is devoted to the speaking mechanism, and the rest to the movable parts. Eric made a five-minute speech yesterday, talking in an ordinary male voice. Eric was bombarded with questions by the audience, and having been posted with answers to hundreds of probable questions, made a fairly good showing.”
From the March 21, 1910 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Massillon, Oh.–Because ill health prevented her from attending Palm Sunday services, Mrs. Jeremiah Yando, 65 years old, drowned herself in a cistern in the rear of her home.”
Tags: Mrs. Jeremiah Yando
“He said that if he could keep her warm she would just as much be his wife as before her death.”
Parting is such sweet sorrow, especially when we’re talking about the dearly departed, but one businessman in 1905 was too sad to let go when his wife died. He decided to keep her “alive” in her elaborate tomb and to keep her company. From an article in that year’s March 23 edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Jonathan Reed, who has lived almost continuously for seven years in the tomb of his wife at Evergreen Cemetery, was found shortly after 4 o’clock today, lying on the stone floor of the tomb apparently in a dying condition. The laborer who discovered the old man did not know who he was and before he had been identified he was taken in an ambulance to the Kings County Hospital. It was reported at 8 o’clock that Mr. Reed was still alive, but in a very critical condition.
The workman who found Mr. Reed happened to pass the doorway of the tomb shortly after 1 o’clock. He noticed that the iron door stood partly open, and thinking that something was wrong entered the tomb. When he saw the old man on the floor he thought that he was dead and hastened to inform Policeman Dooley, the special patrolman assigned to the cemetery, of the fact. Dooley, without waiting to investigate, summoned Dr. Meister from the Bradford Street Hospital to attend the man. Dr. Meister reached the tomb at 1:30 o’clock. He saw at once that the man was not dead, but had suffered a severe stroke of apoplexy. The physician sent a call to the Kings County Hospital for an ambulance, which carried Mr. Reed to the hospital, before any of those who had attended him knew who he was.
When the marble workers and the other business men near the cemetery heard of the old man’s illness, they made an effort to have him sent to his home, but he had already been placed in the pauper’s ward at the hospital and it was decided to let him remain there.
Jonathan Reed, according to his own statement, is 70 years of age. He was formerly prominent in the Eastern District of Brooklyn as a business man and is believed to be wealthy. When his wife died about eight years ago, Mr. Reed had built for her in Evergreen Cemetery one of the most remarkable tombs ever constructed. It was his belief that there was no such thing as a life after death. When his wife died he told friends that the only change which had come about was that the warmth had left her body. He said that if he could keep her warm she would just as much be his wife as before her death. Acting on this theory, Mr. Reed had the tomb fitted elaborately with a dwelling room and from the time of its completion up to the present he had lived there constantly.
For a period of several hours every day and every night Mr. Reed had been accustomed to sit by the casket of his dead wife and talk to her just as he did when she was alive. He says that she understands everything that he says and that he understands the responses which she makes.
In spite of this remarkable eccentricity in regard to his dead wife, Mr. Reed is in other respects an unusually intelligent and interesting man. He converses on all subjects with a degree of knowledge and insight rare to a person of his age. It is only upon the subject of death that he appears to be at all deranged.”
Tags: Dr. Meister, Jonathan Reed, Policeman Dooley
“Chicago–Joseph Mikulec, who claims that he left Croatia, in Austria, February 5, 1906, on a 25,000 mile walk practically around the world, for a purse of $10,000 offered by an Austrian magazine if he finished the journey within five years, will be the guest of the local Croatian colony on Sunday. He will leave Sunday night for Springfield, part of his task being to visit the capital of every state in the Union. So far on the journey Mikulec has worn out forty-four pairs of shoes and is nineteen days ahead of schedule.”
________________________
Joseph Mikulec, globe trotter:
Tags: Joseph Mikulec
“The young inventor, with sweeping gestures of his hands, ‘drew music from the ether.'”
The creator of an 1920s electronic instrument that seemingly stole music from the air, Leon Theremin was considered the Russian counterpart to Thomas Edison for his innovations in sound and video. He also created ingenious spying devices for the Soviet Union when he returned to his homeland–perhaps he was kidnapped by KGB agents but probably not–after a decade in the U.S. The text of a January 25, 1928 Brooklyn Daily Eagle article reporting on the Manhattan demonstration of Theremin’s namesake instrument in front of a star-studded audience:
“In the not-too-distant future there is likely to be found in thousands of homes a simple and inexpensive device whereby music lovers may by a mere waving of the hands conjure from the air entrancing melodies.
This conclusion seems possible as the result of a demonstration last night in the Hotel Plaza of the ‘Theremin Vox,’ by its inventor, Prof. Leon Theremin, a slender, rosy-cheeked young Russian, the ‘Russian Edison.’
Musical celebrities, including Rachmaninoff, Toscanini and Kreisler, sat spellbound with amazement as the young inventor, with sweeping gestures of his hands, ‘drew music from the ether.’
By these same gestures he caused the colors of a spotlight played on his face to change in keeping with musical tones, thus creating a synthesis of color and harmony.
It was frankly described as crude by both the inventor and J. Goldberg, who assisted in the demonstration. They made it clear that they were not musicians and that far better results could be achieved by one possessing musical technique.
The apparatus is not a reproducer or transmitter, like the photograph or radio, but an actual originator of music, creating sound by the principle of applying different frequencies of an alternative current–the so-called ‘heterodyne’ principle.
Its novelty consists in the method of controlling these frequencies of current by turning the knob of an ordinary condenser or by moving the hand within an electromagnetic field set up in the instrument, thus converting ‘radio howls’ into music.”
Tags: Arturo Toscanini, Fritz Kreisler, Julius Goldberg, Leon Theremin, Sergei Rachmaninoff
From the April 11, 1910 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Evansville, Ind.–Scores of people in this community complained yesterday that they were unable to get enough sleep. In fact, in several instances people have slept for fifteen or twenty-four hours and still were sleepy. The attribute this inclination to sleep to Halley’s comet.”
Nikola Tesla outlived a good deal of his fame, and he didn’t even make it to 140. Perhaps the greatest “electrician” ever, the one who knew a century ago that there would be drones and mobile phones, a man who dreamed so differently that he seemingly fell to Earth, Tesla’s scientific goals grew more outsize as he aged. He even announced in 1933, at age 76, that he would live at least 64 more years because he slept only once a year, for five or six hours, supplementing this rest with an hour-long nap now and again.
When he died in Manhattan an octogenarian, he wasn’t forgotten, but the lights had dimmed because his ambitions had grown so far beyond comprehension, and because he didn’t have a coterie of associates to burnish his reputation. His obituary in the January 3, 1943 Brooklyn Daily Eagle was relegated to page 11, despite his front-cover, above-the-fold mind. The story:
“Nikola Tesla, 86, the electrical genius who discovered the fundamental principle of modern radio, was found dead in his room at the Hotel New Yorker, Manhattan, last night.
Tesla never married. He had always lived alone, and the hotel management did not believe he had any near-relatives.
Despite his more than 700 inventions, he was not wealthy. He cared little for money, and so long as he could experiment he was happy.
Thought Radio a Nuisance
He was the first to conceive an effective method of utilizing alternating current, and in 1888 patented the induction motor, which converted electrical energy into mechanical energy more effectively and economically than by direct current. Among his other principal inventions were arc lighting, and the Tesla coil.
‘The radio, I know I’m its father, but I don’t like it,’ he once said. ‘I just don’t like it. It’s a nuisance. I never listen to it. The radio is a distraction and keeps you from concentrating. There are too many distractions in this life for quality of thought, and it’s quality of thought, not quantity, that counts.’
Evidently, he did a lot of thinking that never materialized. It was his custom on his birthday–July 10–to announce to reporters the shape of things to come.
On his 76th birthday, he announced: ‘The transmission of energy to another planet is only a matter of engineering. I have solved the problem so well I don’t regard it as doubtful.’
Told of ‘Death Beam’
When he was 78 he announced he had perfected a ‘death beam’ that would bring down a fleet of 10,000 enemy planes 250 miles from a nation’s borders and make millions of soldiers fall dead in their tracks. His beam, he said, would make war impossible.
Tesla was born at Smiljan, Croatia, when it was a part of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire.
He came to the United States in 1884, became a citizen and an associate of Thomas A. Edison. Later he established the Tesla Laboratory in New York and devoted himself to research.”
Tags: Nikola Tesla
From the September 27, 1911 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Kansas City–The eyelids of Rev. Joseph Hohe, rector of the Catholic Church near Bucyrus, Kansas, which were burned off when a lamp exploded in his hands, have been replaced by new ones constructed from pieces of skin cut from the priest’s arms and grafted onto the stumps of his lids, over which he has almost complete muscular control. The operation was performed in a local hospital.”
Tags: Rev. Joseph Hohe
From the July 10, 1926 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Angleton, Tex.–A ‘wild woman,’ unclad and with blonde hair reaching to her waist, who is reported to have been seen in the brushy bottomlands of Lineville Creek, in Brazoria County, was sought unsuccessfully today by a searching party of several hundred men. A pack of bloodhounds was taken to the scene by Sheriff Frank Crews.
The ‘wild woman,’ subject of ridiculed rumor for several weeks, was accepted as a reality yesterday when a man from Misema, a village in the bottoms, reported that a woman suddenly leaped from brush through which he was walking and ran into heavier undergrowth nearer the creek. Footprints made by a woman’s bare feet were found at the spot designated by the man, but rain had obliterated the remainder of her trail.”
Tags: Sheriff Frank Crews
Even in death, Tex Rickard knew how to give them a show. The “them” in this case would be the admiring public who showed up in the tens of thousands to the wake of the boxing promoter, which was held in the ring area of Madison Square Garden. He was most famous for being the honest fight promoter who wouldn’t allow fixes or mismatches, whose affiliation with Jack Dempsey helped create the first million-dollar gates and who, in 1921, brought boxing to American radio audiences for the first time, introducing sports to mass media. But Rickard’s life went far beyond organized fisticuffs. He built both MSG (the third iteration) and Boston Gardens, he was a Texas marshal, an Alaska gold prospector, a gambling hall and bar proprietor, a longtime friend of Wyatt Earp, and the founder and first owner of the NHL’s New York Rangers. The grand man was sadly felled by an appendectomy gone bad a few days after his fifty-ninth birthday.
From the January 9, 1929 Brooklyn Daily Eagle article about his final “show”:
“In the center of the great arena of Madison Square Garden, that Tex Rickard’s showmanship built, the body of the fight promoter lay in state today while the thousands who had admired him in life filed by in silence for a final view of Tex Rickard in death.
Seventy-five or more a minute they passed the bronze casket under a blanket of red and white flowers. One line to the left and one to the right. One from the 49th St. entrance and the other from 50th St. Five thousand passed and looked in the first hour, 10,000 by noon, some 30,000 before the funeral service began at 2 p.m. The Rev. Caleb Moor, pastor of the Madison Avenue Baptist Church, officiated. The burial was to follow in Woodlawn Cemetery, the Bronx.
Actresses in sable coats, longshoremen, washwomen, policemen, bankers, lawyers, children in arms, millionaires, paupers, racetrack touts, Broadway hangers-on, ministers of the Gospel…it was a strange double procession that turned out toward the 8th Ave. exit or melted away in silence among the seats there to wait for the formal services later on.
Never before had this Madison Square Garden, Rickard’s own ‘temple of sports,’ seen such a phenomenon, and no doubt will never again.
Here had been skeptical crowds, enthusiastic crowds, cheering crowds, savage crowds that snarled and called for blood. Here had been lights and gongs sounding, jazz orchestras playing, the thud of leather against human jaws, the clink of skates on the hockey ice, the whirl of six-day bicycle racers. Today dim lights pierced the shadows up there near the roof, and from the tiny windows came streaks of shadowy daylight that only added to the dark.
$15,000 Casket
The body of Rickard, in immaculate evening clothes, lay in the $15,000 bronze casket on a slightly raised platform in the very center of what had been the prize fighting ring, the rink of the hockey players. From the shoulders down nothing was visible but the roses–roses, red and white. At the casket’s head stood Sgt. Timothy Murphy, longtime friend of the promoter, at a straight and stern attention, without moving muscle as the hours dragged by. Motionless as Rickard himself.
Clustered palms formed a sort of green cathedral nave around the altar on which were the remains of the man who had risen from Texas cow puncher to a world figure. And in dimness nothing else was visible except the spot of green, the dull, motley moving files, the flowers, the somber purple and the black splotches of crepe and here and there the bright blue uniform of a Garden attendant.
And for sound, only the shuffling feet of thousands of silent mourners.
Outside the crowd grew and grew. There had been perhaps 5,000 when the doors were thrown open shortly after 10 a.m. A bit of unruliness developed then when the mounted police in an effort to line the mourners up in twos rode up on the sidewalks. Soon this quieted down. By twos and twos they formed thereafter, beginning at the side entrances and extending gradually out to 8th Ave., to 9th and to 10th. Shortly after midday some 15,000 were waiting to follow those who had already entered.
Earlier in the morning the young Mrs. Rickard had come in with Jack Dempsey and Walter Field, assistant and close friend of the dead man. They sat down beside the casket. For a brief interval there, alone with these two men in the amphitheater, Mrs. Rickard wept over her dead. There was a gigantic piece of carnations and forget-me-nots from the employees of the Garden. The New York Rangers, Rickard’s own hockey team, sent a huge wreath, and their rivals, the Americans, offered another. … Many of the big dealers in New York found themselves stripped of flowers before midnight as a steady stream of orders poured in. Smaller dealers were asked to contribute and did. And all night long, even into this morning, huge pieces of floral offerings were being carried into the cavernlike old Garden, which had suddenly become a glimmering, brilliant bed of beauty.
Draped in Beauty
The Garden entrance was draped in black. Inside there were patches of black. Inside, however, were the flowers, and all the somberness of the crepe could not take away their brilliance. They said that even the Valentino funeral, which brought thousands of floral pieces, did not approach the Rickard ceremony.”
Tags: Jack Dempsey, Rev. Caleb Moor, Sgt. Timothy Murphy, Tex Rickard
From the June 17, 1911 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
Greeley, Col.–After lying in the tomb of an Egyptian mummy for probably more than a thousand years, ten grains of wheat sent to a Greeley farmer and planted west of here, germinated. From it eight stalks of wheat have grown and this promises a variety of wheat superior to any growing in this country.”
As if the millions upon millions of fatalities caused by World War I and the Great Pandemic of 1918 wasn’t awful enough, that concurrence of tragedies struck another blow to humanity, thinning out the applicants for American circus freak shows. But sideshow scout Nicholas Sally trudged on bravely, armed with dubious knowledge about genetics, as he looked for fresh talent in Europe. At journey’s end, he provided details of his findings to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle for an insane article in the February 20, 1921 edition. The story:
“Berlin–Nicholas Sally, freak hunter for the Dreamland sideshows at Coney Island and the Ringling Circus, has discovered one family in Berlin that did not suffer for lack of food during the war. It is made up of four brothers and two sisters, all of whom are under 23 years of age and weigh nearly 50 pounds each. Sally has arranged to take one of the brothers to America, along with a dozen other freaks he has picked up in various European countries, for exhibition during the coming season.
‘They have been hard to find this season,’ he said, ‘for a great many died during the war. Human skeletons are the scarcest of all. I have combed Hungary, Austria, Poland and Germany, which head the list of so-called poverty-stricken countries, but have not found a single skeleton.’
A man with a revolving head from Austria, a little woman who has fins instead of arms and two giants from Germany, a pair of midgets from Hungary, an English dwarf and a dog-faced man from Poland are the headliners of the collection of freaks that will start for America as soon as passport difficulties are cleared up.
‘Europe is the place to come for the special sideshow attractions,’ said Sally, who believes that the intermingling of races and intermarriages within families here are partly responsible for their great abundance. They plead for a chance to go to America for a year, and possibly longer if they make good, and get passage paid both ways, but demand much higher wages than they are paid here, for they believe the United States is a land where gold flows freely. Some of the freaks will be exhibited in Philadelphia and New York until the circus and Coney Island seasons open.
E.T. Benson also is in Germany making arrangements to ship to the United States the animals and trainers John Ringling obtained from the Hagenbeck Menagerie at Hamburg a few weeks ago.”
Tags: E.T. Benson, Nicholas Sally
From the October 7, 1901 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Paterson–Mrs. Leonard Shatem pf Vreeland Avenue was called to the door a few weeks ago by a man begging. He said his name was Charles Burk and told a pitiful story. She allowed him to go into the kitchen and gave him bread and tea. He asked for work. She told him to remain over night. For weeks he did chores around the house. Mr. Shatem said that Burk was a hard-working man, and he was glad that his wife had hired him. Now Mrs. Shatem has eloped with the tramp and left a note for her husband saying it was a case of ‘love at first sight.'”
From the March 20, 1929 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Artificial fireflies the size of turkeys which will give off brilliant perpetual light without the vexation of meters, monthly bills and repairs were forecast last night in an address on ‘Living Lamps’ before the American Institute in Cooper Union by Dr. E. Newton Harvey, professor of psychology at Princeton University.
And whereas the firefly of nature only flashes, burning up the tiny amount of ‘oil’ in its lamp and then staying dark again until it has reformed its ‘oil,’ the robot firefly would be so contrived as to give a continuous glow, reforming a part of its ‘oil,’ which is technically called ‘luciferin,’ while it was burning the rest, this being an incessant process.”
Tags: Dr. E. Newton Harvey
“I have my manias, and I impose them.”
Italo Balbo, Mussolini’s Air Minister, created an experimental office environment that was a technocrat’s dream, humming with gizmos, even if it shared some of the fascist tendencies of his politics. There was an Automat-style lunchroom and a tubing system that delivered coffee to desks, which was wonderful provided you weren’t aging, sickly or disabled. Then you weren’t allowed to work there. An article from the February 23, 1933 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Paris–Fascist Air Minister Italo Balbo of Italy, soon to fly to America with 20 planes, has hot coffee shot up to his office through pneumatic tubes. So in fact do all the 2,000 clerks and other personnel of his ministry.
This is but one of the fantasies that the 36-year-old, prematurely bearded air minister (possible successor to Mussolini) has incorporated in the newest of Rome’s government buildings.
In spite of his youth he is probably the dean of the world’s air ministers, since he is in his sixth year of office. To Claude Blanchard whom he showed around the building, he stated that he had deep dislike for ordinary government offices.
‘I have my manias, and I impose them,’ he laughed. ‘There is not a drawer in the building.’ He explained that his first four years in politics gave him a horror of desk drawers.
Blanchard describes the ministry as a combination of ‘factory, museum, laboratory, gymnasium, restaurant, bank, university and storehouse.’
Every desk has a telephone and a pneumatic tube such as department stores use to shoot change from customer to cashier and back. The elevators are endless chain affairs which never stop; and on and off which passengers leap while they are in motion.
No Gray Hairs In Sight
There are no paralytics or rheumatics in the ministry. Blanchard said that he did not see one gray hair.
Balbo, while visiting Chicago, 1933.
Balbo’s own office is a wide bright room, the walls of which are decorated with huge maps painted in the seventeenth century manner. While they were talking something like a steamboat whistle blew; and the minister invited the guest to lunch.
After a descent in the non-stop elevators they came out in an immense stand-up lunch room, in which everybody from the minister down to the workmen in aprons and overalls eat at once. They all pay for it, the minister and upper ranks paying 32 cents and the men in overalls seven. Forty-five minutes are allowed for lunch. Blanchard, between Balbo and a high staff officer, lined up at one of the long nickel and porcelain shelves, opened the small nickeled doors in front of him. There, kept hot by electricity, was the whole meal.
It was not a completely standardized meal. The menu had been circulated earlier in the morning and everybody had shot back his order by pneumatic tube.
In fifteen minutes the lunch was over and everybody flowed around to a colossal bar filled with glittering coffee ‘espresso’ machines. Each made his own coffee; and it was there that Balbo showed with some pride the system by which the clerks get coffee in their offices without leaving their desks. A clerk shoots an order down the tube with his desk number on it; and in a moment a sealed bottle with the coffee in it plops out of the tube.
It is a good ministry to work in. It closes at a quarter to four.”
Tags: Italo Balbo
From the May 6, 1910 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Pueblo, Colo.–Announcing that he was a ‘rip-snorting, roarin’ Texas steer,’ a man who later gave his name as John Jones at Police Headquarters, terrorized the women in a residence district yesterday afternoon, until one of them, a ranch-bred woman, accorded to the obstreperous ‘steer’ proper Western treatment by lassoing him with a clothes line and tying him to a waterplug where he was kept until the arrival of the police.”
Tags: John Jones
Before computers became our “second brains,” there were stage performers paid well for displaying astonishing feats of memory. Such was the career of a Horatio Alger-esque immigrant from a century ago, Felix Berol, who allegedly retained hundreds of thousands of fascinating facts and used them to wow vaudeville crowds and teach memory retention via correspondence courses. From an article about his sudden death in the April 20, 1914 Brooklyn Daily Eagle (which doesn’t mention that Berol had willed his brain to the Philadelphia Medical Association):
“Felix Berol, ‘the man with 300,00 facts in his head,’ who was conceded to be one of the world’s greatest memory training experts, died suddenly at 2 a.m. today at his home, 609 Fairview Avenue, Ridgewood Heights.
Mr. Berol and his wife and his niece, Miss Ellie Kosch, returned from Coney Island shortly after midnight, and after a late supper he retired. Shortly before he died he called to his wife and complained of feeling ill, and suddenly collapsed in her arms.
Although heart disease is supposed to have been the cause of death, an autopsy will be performed by a coroner’s physician this afternoon to determine exactly what he died from.
The news of Mr. Berol’s death came as a shock to the members of the Central and Bedford branches of the Young Men’s Christian Association, where only a week ago he gave the first of a series of nine lectures on memory training. He was to have given the second lecture of the course at the Bedford Branch tonight, and at the Central Branch tomorrow night. Unless some former pupil who completed the course at the West Side Branch of the Y.M.C.A. undertakes the lectures, the course may be abandoned.
Mr. Berol attended the dance of the Young Women’s Christian Association at the Central Branch on Schermerhorn Street last Saturday night, and was then apparently in the best of health. He danced several times, and didn’t appear to be the least bit fatigued when he departed for his home early Sunday morning. It was his boast that he had never been sick a day in his life, and he attributed his good health to the fact that he constantly exercised his mind.
In addition to lecturing at the Y.M.C.A. branches, Mr. Berol was conducting a correspondence course through Funk & Wagnalls, the publishers, and had 2,500 pupils.
Mr. Berol was born in Berlin, Germany, on February 1, 1872. He got an education in the public schools of Berlin and came to this country when a boy. His mind was sluggish and dull, and it was with the greatest difficulty that he could remember a fact. As a result, the best kind of job the young immigrant boy could land was washing dishes in a cheap restaurant.
One night, tired and sleepy, he sauntered into Cooper Union and picked up a book at random. It was Henry George’s Progress and Poverty, and, as he turned the pages, he was for the first time in his life interested in reading.
By reading Progress and Poverty, Berol’s whole career was changed. From then on, he thirsted for knowledge, and, realizing that his mentality was exceedingly dull and that he couldn’t remember anything he read, he started to hunt up books on memory. He haunted Cooper Union, the Astor Library and other libraries in his spare time, devouring everything pertaining to memory that he could lay his hands on. After months of hard work, he mastered the principles of the subject as laid down by teachers of memories. Within seven months he was able to perform astonishing feats of remembering and branched out in vaudeville as ‘Berol, the Mental Marvel, With 5,000 Facts in His Head.’ His success was instantaneous; he was booked as a headliner and commanded big salaries, which made a fortune for him.
At a big financial sacrifice, he abandoned the stage to devote his time to educational work in the teaching of his wonderful but simple memory training system.
Berol actually had 300,000 facts in his head, any one of which he could name in an instant. He could give exact dates of births and deaths of great men, the date of every battle in the history of the world, and the population of every city and town in the United States of more than 5,000, and thousands upon thousands of statistics.”•
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Tags: Ellie Kosch, Felic Berol, Marguerite Berol
From the September 26, 1911 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Kalamazoo, Mich.–While pulling a tooth yesterday, Dr. Burr Bannister, one of the oldest dentists in Kalamazoo, was perhaps fatally injured. The patient turned to one side during the operation and tipped the chair over, pinning the doctor beneath it. One of the arms of the chair struck the dentist in the stomach, causing an internal hemorrhage.”
Tags: Dr. Burr Bannister