History – Page 6

Jingle Bells

The hell-raising sleigh song that became a Christmas standard.

Jingle Bells was published in 1857 under the title One Horse Open Sleigh. It wasn’t until it was reissued in 1859 that it got the title we know today. It was written by James Lord Pierpont, the uncle of Wall Street titan John Pierpont Morgan (aka. J.P. Morgan). By all accounts James Pierpont was a pretty awful person. He lived for adventure, traveled the world, abandoned his family, didn’t attend his first wife’s funeral nor did he care for their children after she died, he fought for the south in the Civil War despite being from an abolitionist family in Massachusetts, etc. That said he did write one of the most famous Christmas songs of all time despite the fact that the song isn’t about Christmas.

Risqué High-Speed Sleigh Riding

Jingle Bells is one of several Christmas favorites that have nothing to do with Christmas. The lyrics & melody changed within Pierpont’s lifetime but in general the song is about a sleigh ride. Looking to the lesser known additional lyrics the song is specifically about getting away from the watchful eyes of the people in town and a boy taking a girl out for a secluded sleigh ride. The song then has the protagonist relaying his story to other guys and telling them to pick up girls in their sleighs and have a good time while they’re young.

These lyrics were most likely influenced by where & when Pierpont wrote the song. At the time the town of Medford, Massachusetts (where he wrote the song) had a strong winter sleigh racing scene. It was also a rum producing city. People would race their sleighs at top speed (frequently while drunk) down Salem Street. It was like a drunker 19th century version of American Graffiti. Today the town of Medford has a plaque commemorating the song and says the song is about sleigh racing. None of this is very Christmasy.

“*The Sleigh Race*“, Currier & Ives, lithograph, 1859

Jingle Bells … In Space

While in space for the 1965 Gemini 6 project, astronauts Tom Stafford and Wally Schirra snuck sleigh bells and a harmonica aboard the capsule. Alluding to Santa Claus, on December 16th they reported seeing “… a satellite going from north to south, up in a polar orbit.” They then proceeded to play Jingle Bells to an initially very confused mission control. Their instruments were the first every played in outer space and are now in the Smithsonian.

During the mid 1960s the song began to take-on alternate lyrics, the most famous of which is the Batman themed parody. The Batman Smells version seems to have started around the time of the original Adam West television show. Australia has Aussie Jingle Bells to better align to the summer heat of Christmas down under.

Added info: the titular “jingle” doesn’t refer to a type of bell, but rather it is a verb telling you to jingle/shake bells. Sleighs can run fairly silent on snow and so jingling bells are a safety feature serving as an audible signal that you are approaching.

Centralia

The lost Pennsylvania mining town with an uncontrollable fire raging underground.

For most people who have heard of Centralia they know it as a spooky abandoned ghost-town. They might even know it as the inspiration for the film adaptation of Silent Hill. But before Centralia was abandoned it was a normal small Pennsylvania mining town like most others in the area.

The abandoned Old PA Route 61, now known as the “Graffiti Highway”, before being covered in dirt by the state in 2020 to discourage visitors

The Fire

In the spring of 1962 one of the town trash dumps, which had previously been a strip mine, was set on fire in an attempt to clean it up for Memorial Day. The fire got out of hand and spread down into the abandoned mining tunnels below the town. The fire was not put out.

Given the estimated amount of anthracite coal under Centralia the fire could burn for another 250 years. Temperatures easily exceed 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. As the fire rages underground it expels gases above ground and causes the ground to shift both up & down. Even as roads buckled and sinkholes collapsed people continued to live in town.

The fire was relatively benign until late 1979 when it was discovered that the basement of Coddingtons gas station had a floor temperature of 136° F and the lot across from the station had steam coming out of the ground. The gas station was in the direct path of the underground fire that was aggressively spreading in multiple directions. In the 1980s hot mine gasses were spewing from the ground and into homes. Residents were sickened by carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.

The fire has spread across multiple fronts generally moving southwest but there is an additional fourth front to the East.

Eminent Domain

In 1980 there were around 1,000 residents of Centralia. As the fire spread across multiple fronts, and the toxic conditions worsened, people began to move out in larger numbers. By 1992 there were only 5 remaining residents. What was left of the town was claimed by the state of Pennsylvania under eminent domain. Per an agreement with the state, as the remaining residents move away or die, the state demolishes their homes.

As of 2017 one of the few remaining homes left in Centralia.

Today there are still a few die-hard residents remaining. Centralia is now a grid of streets with no street signs, only four buildings, and a few cemeteries. Sidewalks are interrupted by the occasional cut-in for driveways which no longer exist. There are walkway stairs that go nowhere. You could drive through Centralia and not even notice. Nature has reclaimed most of the space that used to be people’s homes and businesses as the underground fire continues to burn.

Rather than being a freaky ghost-town, Centralia is a sad story about the end of a small town community. The documentary the Town that Was does a great job documenting the town’s history and its slow disappearance.

John Snow’s Cholera Map

Through his medical investigation, Dr. John Snow helped solve how cholera is spread and created a legendary data visualization in the process.

With the Industrial Revolution, London’s population grew enormously. People from the countryside moved to the city for work and for a different life. London became the largest city on Earth. Between 1750 and 1850 it’s estimated that London’s population doubled, from around 1 million to around 2.3 million people. What grew with it was a civil engineering crisis in how to handle so many people in such close quarters. In short: what to do with the filth? By 1850 modern plumbing had not been extended to all parts of the city and specifically the Soho area. People had cesspools in their basements where they would empty their waste. In other places the sewage was emptied into the River Thames, which was also a source of drinking water.

London’s booming population growth in the early 19th century led to filthy conditions.

Modern germ theory states that microscopic organisms are responsible for the spread of disease. Before we understood this people believed in the miasma theory which claimed that disease was spread by “bad air”. For centuries people believed that epidemics were being spread by dirty air, they had no knowledge of microorganisms. It’s not entirely misguided. Things that smell bad can, in fact, have disease. So while “bad air” may be a warning sign that disease is present, it’s not necessarily the air itself that causes sickness. In mid-19th century London miasma theory was the prevailing scientific theory but some scientists were beginning to doubt its validity.

Dr. John Snow challenged the prevailing miasma theory of disease through research and data.

You Know Something John Snow

Cholera is spread through tainted water or food that has come into contact with fecal matter. Between 1846 to 1860 the world was in a cholera pandemic, and in 1854 there was an outbreak in the Soho district of London. Nobody knew exactly how cholera spread but Dr. John Snow had a theory that it wasn’t miasma. A few years earlier in 1849 he published On the Mode of Communication of Cholera where he laid out a theory that a germ (that had yet to be identified) was responsible for cholera. He believed that cholera was spread by “…the emptying of sewers into the drinking water of the community.” The 1854 outbreak in Soho gave him a chance to prove his theory.

In the first 7 days of the outbreak 10% of the neighborhood died. Like a medical detective Snow began investigating the addresses of the deaths. He spoke to residents of the area, he asked where they got their water from, he took down notes, he looked at the sources of water for that part of London. The thing that was truly groundbreaking was that he visualized his data. He drew a map of the area, he noted the locations of water sources, and he added black bars at the addresses where deaths had occurred.

A detail of Snow’s 1854 cholera map. The Broad Street pump is at the center as a circle, and the deaths per address are the stacked black bars. You can view the full map here.

Unlike a data table, a data visualization has the ability to quickly & easily show trends. With a glance you can see patterns or outliers. You can tell a visual story with numbers. As Snow’s visualization grew he could see that cholera deaths clustered by one water source in particular: the Broad Street pump. He was able to show that other addresses in the area, who had their own private water sources (such as a local workhouse and a brewery) were mostly spared. The workhouse had 18 deaths but all of those individuals had separately gone to drink water from the Broad Street pump. This helped disprove the miasma theory because all of the workers should have gotten sick by the same “bad air”, but they didn’t. He took his findings to the local authorities. They found that the Broad Street pump was near a cholera infected home whose cesspool was leaking into the surrounding soil and infecting the water supply. Authorities removed the handle to the pump and deaths decreased.

Snow’s cholera map helped create modern epidemiology. COVID-19 visualizations are directly influenced by Snow’s work.

Today the pump still stands (without the handle) and sits outside of a pub named for Snow. Inside they pub has a few framed items that tell some of this story.

the Visualization of Data

To say that John Snow’s cholera map is legendary is not an exaggeration. Anyone with a passing knowledge of data visualization knows about his map. Modern epidemiologists still talk about his work. Snow’s methodical approach to data collection & data visualization influenced public policy and helped London prepare for the next cholera outbreak. It helped disprove miasma theory and advanced the modern germ theory we still use today. His cholera map helped make John Snow the father of modern epidemiology.

You can see the evolution of Snow’s work in today’s COVID-19 reporting. Contact tracing, the mapping of infections, accounting for local public policies regarding masks, tracking superspreader events – it’s all influenced by Snow’s 1854 cholera map.

Added info: Today there is a replica of the water pump where the old one stood, but Broad Street is now called Broadwick Street. The pump sits just outside of the John Snow pub.

Playing off of the lead character Jon Snow’s name, a White Walker from *Game of Thrones* stood outside of the John Snow pub in Soho in 2014. Photo via reddit.

Cocaine: the Early Years

Isolated from coca leaves, cocaine was widely available in various products during the late 19th and early 20th century.

The leaves of the coca plant have been chewed for their mild stimulating effects by South Americans for 8,000 years. Coca leaves made their way to Europe in the 17th century but the plant became a cash crop in the mid-19th century after German chemist Friedrich Gaedcke used the leaves to isolate the psychoactive alkaloid cocaine in 1855. Cocaine is much more potent than the coca leaves on their own, and since Europeans didn’t want to be bothered to chew leaves, manufactured cocaine became quite popular as it could be sold in numerous more easily digestible forms. Cocaine was touted as “a stimulant which is peculiarly adapted to elevate the working ability of the body, without any dangerous effect.”

With the late 19th century being the golden age of patent medicines, cocaine soon found its way into a variety of “cure-all” products. It was the new wonder drug and so businesses capitalized on that. Vin Mariani was an 1860s drink that combined Bordeaux wine, brandy, sugar, and coca leaves (which became cocaine when mixed with the alcohol). It was touted as having a variety of medical benefits and became very popular. Looking to make a similar coca-based “brain tonic”, Colonel John Pemberton of Georgia made Pemberton’s French Wine Coca. After Georgia enacted local prohibition laws in 1886 he removed the alcohol and created a non-alcoholic version of the drink that became Coca-Cola (which, in 1903, removed the cocaine).

Coca infused tonics & wines made cocaine drinkable and very popular.

Toothache drops were just one of many medicines that added cocaine.

You could have cocaine in cough drops, toothache drops, cigarettes, tonics, and as a recreational drug as just straight-up powder cocaine. Cocaine was used as a local anesthetic by dentists and by optometrists (who would put cocaine drops in your eyes). As part of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, Ernest Shackleton and other explorers used cocaine eye drops to treat snow blindness (the cocaine probably did more harm than good). Sigmund Freud published Über Coca in which he extolled the wondrous effects of cocaine. Freud believed that cocaine could cure opioid and alcohol addiction. He would later distance himself from touting such benefits, and stopped taking cocaine, as the dangers of addiction began to be known.

Soldiers on both sides of the war were both prescribed, and self-prescribed, cocaine.

WWI

As WWI started in 1914 cocaine was still prevalent in western society. In Britain people could go to retail stores such as Harrods and buy kits titled “A Welcome Present for Friends at the Front” containing cocaine, morphine, syringes and needles. You could buy your loved one drugs and send them to him at the front.

The Netherlands, which was neutral in WWI, supplied cocaine to countries on both sides of the war. The Nederlandsche Cocaïnefabriek became the largest cocaine manufacturer in the world and generated enormous profits. Soldiers in the trenches were both being prescribed, and self-prescribing, cocaine for the same stimulating effects as the people at home. Theodore Aschenbrandt, a Bavarian army physician, had previously demonstrated that giving soldiers cocaine could reduce the necessary food supplies by up to 20%. The British army produced a tablet called Forced March which was a mixture of cocaine and caffeine that would give soldiers a “boost.” Shackleton took Forced March to Antarctica as well. Forced March was discontinued in 1920 because demand was “too great.”

Cocaine’s Dangers

The more that cocaine was consumed (in its many forms), the more that the dangers were exposed. It wasn’t all increased energy, sharper focus, and appetite suppression. People began to see the effects of addiction. In popular entertainment Arthur Conan Doyle gave Sherlock Holmes a drug habit of injecting cocaine from time to time, but this activity was met with disapproval from Dr. Watson.

Despite patent medicine companies paying newspapers for constant advertising space, newspapers began to report on (and sometimes sensationalized) the dangers of cocaine. Cocaine began to be associated with prostitutes & organized crime, with moral decay & societal erosion. This shifted public opinion and put in motion initiatives & laws to control cocaine (and other drugs).

Drugs have been an integral part of warfare since time immemorial. While most soldiers returning from WWI resumed their normal lives, for some the use of cocaine, morphine, and heroin had turned them into junkies. The February 12, 1916 The Times wrote that:

“… to the soldier subjected to nervous strain and hard work cocaine, once used, must become a terrible temptation. It will, for the hour, charm away his trouble, his fatigue and his anxiety; it will give him fictitious strength and vigor. But it will also, in the end, render him worthless as a soldier and a man.”
The Times, February 12, 1916

Just because the war ended in 1918 didn’t mean that a soldier’s addiction had ended.

Countries started passing laws to regulate & restrict cocaine. In the US the 1915 Harrison Narcotics Tax Act began to control the public’s access to cocaine. This was in part driven by wildly racist claims that cocaine was causing Black men to rape white women and was improving their pistol marksmanship. In the United Kingdom the Dangerous Drugs Act 1920 was enacted to exert greater control over cocaine than had been done through the Defence of the Realm Act 1914. This began the West’s modern era of drug prohibition.

Jack-o’-Lanterns

The Jack-o’-Lantern is an iconic part of modern Halloween but its origins are in much older traditions.

Humans have been hollowing out vegetables to use as lanterns for at least 10,000 years. The Māori of New Zealand use the word “‘ue” for both “gourd” as well as “lampshade.” While the jack-o’-lantern is Irish in origin, the pumpkin is a New World vegetable. So before 1492 the Irish used other vegetables to create makeshift lanterns, and one Irishman in particular used a turnip.

Jack of the lantern

Stingy Jack, Drunk Jack, Jack of the Lantern – his name varies about as much as his story does. The common thread among the variations of this folk tale is that Jack was a jerk. A bad drunk, or a liar, or both, Jack generally made trouble for the people of Ireland. Eventually the devil came for Jack but, clever as Jack was, he talked the devil into going for a drink before taking him to Hell. Jack convinced the devil to turn into a silver coin that he could use to pay for the drinks (again, Stingy Jack). Once in coin form Jack put the devil in his pocket beside a crucifix, torturing the devil. He released the devil on the condition that the devil go away for some period of time – some versions say 1 year, others say 10.

Eventually the devil came back for Jack but … and you’re not going to believe this … he was tricked again. This time Jack asked for one final taste of this life and tricked the devil into climbing up an apple tree to fetch an apple. Once in the tree Jack either carved a cross in the trunk, or he placed a cross at the foot of the tree, but either way he trapped the devil up in the tree. This time the devil agreed to go away forever and to never take Jack’s soul.

Eventually Jack died and was obviously refused entry into Heaven, but as per their agreement the devil refused him entry to Hell. So Jack was forced to forever wander between worlds. To light his way in this shadow world of existence, the devil gave Jack a burning coal which he placed inside a turnip as a lantern. This was the first jack-o’-lantern.

From turnips to pumpkins, jack-o’-lanterns are a fun (and scary) part of the Halloween season.

Samhain lanterns

The Halloween we know has its roots in the ancient Irish pagan festival of Samhain. A Gaelic harvest festival marking the end of the pagan year and the start of the new year, Samhain is the beginning of the dark half of the year. Festivities begin at sunset on October 31st and go through the night to November 1st. This one evening is believed to be especially supernatural where the boundary between this world and the spirit world is blurred. The ghosts of the deceased as well as the supernatural fairy folk (the aos sí) are said to temporarily cross over into our world.

To appease these spirits, and for protection from any tricks they may play, the ancient Irish would light bonfires, prepare special meals, and perform sacred rituals. Making lanterns from hollowed out vegetables was also believed to help ward off evil spirits.

They’re Coming to America

Eventually the Samhain lanterns and Jack’s lantern came together into one tradition. Jack-o’-lanterns supersized to pumpkins as early as 1834 when Irish immigrants brought the custom to America. Today most pumpkins grown in the United States and the United Kingdom are grown solely for decorations in the Halloween season. Despite being high in fiber as well as vitamin A, most pumpkins are never eaten. Billions of pounds of pumpkins are thrown in the trash each year after serving as seasonal decorations.

So after your jack-o’-lantern wards off the evil aos sí during Samhain, find a second use for that pumpkin as food.

Added info: every Halloween season the town of Kenova, West Virginia comes together to celebrate Halloween in a spectacular way. Ric Griffith’s home, ie. “the pumpkin house”, is decorated with over 3,000 jack-o’-lanterns.

Calvin and Hobbes (the real ones)

The characters of Calvin and Hobbes are named after a theologian and a philosopher.

The comic strip Calvin and Hobbes features a six year old boy named Calvin and his sometimes anthropomorphic stuffed tiger Hobbes. The two are named after 16th century protestant theologian John Calvin and 17th century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes. The characters of Calvin and Hobbes are decidedly a lot more fun than their namesakes.

John Calvin

Born in France in 1509, John Calvin trained to be a lawyer but moved to Geneva, Switzerland and became a major figure in the protestant reformation that was spreading across Europe at the time. Unlike Martin Luther, who looked to work with Catholic doctrine but make some changes, Calvin threw it all out and started from scratch creating an entirely new school of Christian thought. Among other things his new theology taught that we can’t know anything about God except what God chooses to reveal to us, that because of Original Sin we are driven to sin unless God steps in to help us, that you only partially have free will because God has predetermined your fate to end up in Heaven or Hell so you’re going to end up doing what it takes to merit the one you are destined for, and that there is nothing you can do about any of this.

The Catholic Church used to name heretical movements after the founder (such as Lutheranism). Similarly, this is how Calvinism was born. Calvin’s ideas for reformation became influential with a host of protestant groups including the Presbyterians, the Puritans, and the Huguenots. Calvin also believed that “… the human heart is a perpetual idol factory”, and that religious art was a distraction. This is why Calvinist churches are so plain and without statues or other ornamentation. Until this time the Catholic Church had been a lucrative source of work for artists, but because of the reformation movement’s austere aesthetic, to earn a living artists were forced to either produce more secular art or move to other cities or countries where the reformation hadn’t taken hold as strongly. This simple aesthetic applied to Calvinist clothing as well (such as the simple styles and Sunday black clothes of the Puritans).

In politics Calvin believed in the separation of church and state, but he also believed that politicians & royalty were in positions of power because God willed it. As such authority figures should be submissively obeyed even when said figures are unworthy of such deference (except if they are leading you astray from God). Which is kind of like Thomas Hobbes …

Thomas Hobbes

Born in 1588, 24 years after Calvin’s death, Thomas Hobbes’s world view was strongly influenced by the destruction brought about by the English Civil War. From this he produced Leviathan, which is his 1651 treatise of social contract political theory. In short, he believed that, when left on our own and without government, humans are violent and selfish. He believed we need government to help us rise above our base instincts. Without a political community he said that the life would be “… solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Similar to Calvin’s view that humans are compelled to selfishness & sin, Hobbes’s political philosophy was that without a government, the default “state of nature” for humans is chaotic and violent.

This is the basis for his argument that we not only need government but that we also must obey authority figures even when said figures leave a lot to be desired. In his mind, an abusive dictatorial government was still better than no government at all. There was almost no place for political revolution in Hobbes’s version of the social contract.

It’s worth noting that the foundation for Hobbes’s argument, the belief that without government “uncivilized” humans would engage in constant bickering & violence and would always be looking over their shoulder for attacks from others, isn’t necessarily true. The philosophical novel Ishmael by Daniel Quinn partially explores this assumption and how the competition for greater wealth is what incites violence. Many early tribal groups living within their means were able to live in relative stability. It has also been argued that, as humans became more sedentary in civilizations, warfare increased because humans couldn’t move away from one another to avoid conflict.

Even keeping to 17th century social contract philosophy there are arguments against Hobbes’s ideas. John Locke also believed in the benefits of having a strong government, but he believed that if that government was jeopardizing your natural rights to “life, liberty, and property” you had the right of revolution to overthrow the government. Thomas Jefferson later copy & pasted Locke’s ideas for the Declaration of Independence.

Calvin & Hobbes

Ultimately both Calvin and Hobbes had fairly dim views of humanity. They believed that without an authority figure (be it God or be it a political leader) humans were by default mean and unable to make better lives for themselves. Fortunately the fictional Calvin and Hobbes are a lot more positive than their namesakes.

Calvin and Hobbes crossing a log bridge appeared in the *The Calvin and Hobbes Lazy Sunday Book*. It was later parodied by Nina Matsumoto showing the actual Calvin and Hobbes as Calvin and Hobbes crossing the log, and has since become a much parodied meme.

Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

The witches’ ingredients for the cauldron in Macbeth are mostly coded names for medicinal plants.

Macbeth’s Act 4 opening scene is probably one of the most well known scenes in Shakespeare. The Three Witches (aka the Weird Sisters) are in a dark cave with a boiling cauldron at the center. The witches gather and begin an incantation of dark magic, adding ingredients as they go. “Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.” Each witch then lists a series of ingredients that, at face-value, sound disgusting and macabre. But the ingredients are not what they seem.

Witches, like early alchemists, kept their knowledge a closely guarded secret. After putting all of that effort into R&D you didn’t want the competition getting a hold of your findings. But witches had other reasons for secrecy. Unlike the fictional witches in Macbeth, most “witches” were in reality female medical workers using herbs & botanicals to create medicines. In Medieval Europe medicine was a male-dominated profession and women caught practicing medicine were sometimes branded as witches. As such they had to keep their activity, and their recipes, secret. By using alternate names for their ingredients, the contents of one’s “spell book” were kept secret. Also, using alternate names worked as a safe-guard to keep their proprietary medical knowledge out of the hands of the general public who might mistakenly try to prepare these treatments themselves.

Some believe that almost all of the 23 ingredients in the witches’ brew are actually coded plant names, even the problematically named “liver of blaspheming Jew”. How much of this Shakespeare knew is unclear. All the ingredients together would make an unrealistic ridiculous concoction, so they were probably chosen for theatrical shock value. He may have found a list of real “witches” ingredients and used them without knowing they were coded names. Still, if you want improved blood circulation some eye of newt (aka mustard seed) might help.

A list with pictures of the 23 ingredients in the witches' brew in Macbeth — A list of the 23 ingredients in the witches’ brew, and their real world counterparts.
Learn more about these and other alternate ingredients.

Ghosts As Sheets

Ghosts represented as sheets come from the tradition of burial shrouds.

For most of human existence, unless you were wealthy, you weren’t buried in a coffin. Most people were buried in other ways and one of the most common was in a shroud or sheet of some kind (the original green burial). Coffins didn’t become common in Europe until the 18th century. So until then there were a variety of different kinds of shrouds but the basic idea was that the deceased was wrapped in cloth and lowered into their grave.

In this context, the idea of seeing a sheet/burial shroud walking about in the dark is terrifying. This is the origin of ghosts being portrayed as sheets – it’s from the understanding that a deceased person in their burial shroud was out of the grave and back from the dead.

Being buried in a shroud was a common practice in Europe and so, to see a shroud up and moving around, would have been a frightful sight.

Ghost Impersonators

In 19th century Britain impersonating a ghost by dressing in a sheet became both a prank fad and a real problem. At best a prankster would wear a sheet, run around at night, and generally frighten people in humorous ways. At worst it was a way to terrorize and assault women. There are even a few incidents of these “ghosts” frightening people out of their homes, leaving the house temporarily free to be burglarized (the original Scooby-Doo villains). It was also used in mid 19th century America by the Ku Klux Klan who pretended to be the ghosts of Confederate soldiers, come back to terrorize the people of the south.

This motif of ghosts being represented as moving burial shrouds/sheets found its way into entertainment by way of the theater in the late 19th century. The ghosts of the stage would be in white sheets, move silently, and generally do the spooky things we think of today. Early animated cartoons portrayed ghosts in a similar manner, most notably with Casper the Friendly Ghost (who is shroud-like).

Ghosts as burial shrouds underwent some stylization and became the lovable cartoon ghosts we see across pop culture.

Today the motif is fairly harmless and pretty ubiquitous. You see it in the iconic Ghostbusters logo, the ghosts in Pac-Man, Boo from the Mario games, the ghost mascot of Snapchat (aka “Ghostface Chillah”), Boo Berry cereal, the ghosts of LEGOs, Halloween Tootsie Pop ghosts, etc. The burial shroud ghost continues to live on.

First Sleep & Second Sleep

We sleep in cycles and adult humans aren’t designed for 8 uninterrupted hours of sleep.

Sleep Cycles

When we fall asleep we go from consciousness to unconsciousness, but within unconsciousness there are different stages to sleep. We descend from N1 (which is a very light sleep) to N2 (a restful sleep) down to N3 and sometimes even N4 (which are the deepest and most re-energizing stages). But we don’t just do this once, emerging on the other side wide awake in the morning. More like a roller coaster, we travel down from light sleep to deeper sleep and back up several times throughout the night. Each time we do this is considered a sleep cycle, we have about 5 sleep cycles per night, and each one takes between 60-90 minutes adding up to around 7.5hrs of sleep.

At the end of the each sleep cycle, instead of going back to N1, we enter a very different kind of sleep known as rapid eye movement sleep (REM sleep) – from which the band REM is named. REM is so named because our eyes are moving around despite being closed. This is especially interesting because during REM sleep our eyes are on the short list of things that we actually can move. During REM sleep your body becomes paralyzed with the exception of your eyes, heart, and lungs. One potential reason for this is that during REM sleep we dream, and paralyzing our limbs is a safety feature that prevents us from acting out our dreams and possibly punching or kicking in our sleep. When REM sleep ends we either start a new sleep cycle or we wake up, but we don’t just wake up the next morning.

First & Second sleeps

While young children and teenagers can sleep uninterrupted throughout the night (and sleep longer), it is unusual for adults to do the same. We think we’re supposed to because we used to as kids, and society tells you to sleep for 8 straight hours, but to sleep uninterrupted throughout the night as an adult is fairly unusual. For millennia it was common practice to go to bed at sundown, sleep for about 4 hours, wake up for an hour or two, do some activities, and eventually go back to sleep for a few hours until sunrise. So instead of one period of sleep there were two, known as first sleep and second sleep.

What people did in this liminal time between first and second sleeps varied. Some would do the normal things of going to the bathroom or reading, but others might smoke, some might do some light house work, and some even visited neighbors from time to time. This waking period between sleeps was so common there were even special prayer books for these hours.

While in some more primitive tribes this idea of two sleeps is still common (such as in parts of Nigeria), this practice began to die out in the west in the 17th century. As people gradually pushed their bedtime back the time between sleeps grew shorter. At first it was just the wealthy, who could afford to burn more candles and stay up longer. Eventually larger cities began to illuminate some of the streets with lamps which extended waking hours for people of all classes. Coffee houses also became more popular in Europe during the 17th century which kept people wired for longer after the sun went down. But what really killed off first & second sleep was the industrial revolution of the 19th century. Through a combination of increased time spent in factories, gas & electric lighting becoming more prevalent, and a focus on efficiency, it became unfashionable to go to bed so early only to spend the middle of the night awake in activity.

A detail from the late 17th century *Interior of a London coffee-house*. Coffee houses kept people up longer at night, reducing the amount of time people spent between sleeps.

The next time you find yourself frustrated at being awake in the middle of the night when you “should” be asleep, you can reframe the situation knowing that your body might know better. Having a biphasic sleep pattern and waking up during the night is a normal part of human physiology. Choosing to be active in the middle of the night like your ancestors once did, is optional.

The Missing Children of Hamelin

It is very likely the Pied Piper is based on real events

The basic story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin is that in 1284 the Medieval German town of Hamelin had a rat problem. A stranger came to town who claimed that, by playing music on his magic pipe, he could lure the rats to the Weser river and rid the town of its problem. He did so and afterwards when he came to collect his payment the town decided they weren’t going to pay the agreed amount. The piper exacted his revenge by using his pipe to lure 130 children of Hamelin away from the town where they were never heard from again. As fairy tales go it’s pretty … grim.

In the early 19th century this version of the story was recorded by the Grimm Brothers of Germany who documented various Germanic fairy tales that were part of the oral storytelling tradition. Unlike most of their fairy tales however, the curious thing about the Pied Piper is that it seems to be only partially fictional.

Not a normal fairy tale

For being a fairy tale, one of the first curious things about the Pied Piper of Hamelin is that it takes place in a real town, not a fictional location. Also, unlike the standard “a long time ago” or some other vague time frame, this story very specifically took place in 1284. Before the Grimm version, the earliest documented version of this story is in the stained glass windows of the church of Hamelin around 1300. The church was destroyed in 1660 but details of the church, its windows, and the story of the missing children were, by then, documented in several places. The Hamelin records of 1384 say that, for reasons not specified, 130 children of Hamelin left in 1284 and never returned.

What happened to the children of Hamelin?

While the stained glass windows documented the loss of Hamelin children they never mentioned a piper. The earliest documentation of a piper is the Lueneburg Manuscript of 1440-50. So for over a hundred years the story may have had no piper, just missing children.

At face value the idea that a piper used music to lure rats & children out of town is unlikely. That said there were instances of dancing mania in the Middle Ages, where groups of people would just start dancing as in some sort of mass psychogenic illness. Perhaps a musician initiated some mania that led the children away.

Another theory involves the rats and that the children may have died from bubonic plague or some other infection spread by rats. Here the piper goes from being a musician or magician, to becoming a rat catcher. This theory is unlikely though because, to start, why would a disease only kill the children the town and not the adults as well? More importantly, the rats didn’t become a part of the story until 1559. So for almost 300 years the story had already been told without rats.

Still another theory is that the children left on the failed Children’s Crusade of 1212 where children of Germany & France were said to have set out for the Holy Land to try and peacefully convert the Muslims to Christianity. The piper in this case would have been someone whose job was to recruit children to join the crusade. Then the children never returned because they were sold into slavery. But because of the differences in years, and that the Children’s Crusade is riddled with fictional details and inaccuracies, it seems unlikely like that this is the explanation for the missing children of Hamelin.

Perhaps the most likely explanation is found in German colonization efforts. By the 13th century there was a push to have Germanic people move eastward to colonize more land from Poland down through Transylvania. The term “children” could have been meant more as “people of the town” rather than actual little kids. In this sense these were adults who moved away from Hamelin to settle new lands. The piper in this case could have been some loudly dressed smooth talking recruitment agent who came to town to sell people on the idea of emigration. This colonization theory is supported by a documented trail of late 13th century Hamelin family names appearing in Eastern European areas. Similarly, German place names start to become the names of towns in these areas around the same time.

So rather than a magical story of children being lured away from town by a mysterious piper, the reality may be that some citizens of Hamelin decided to leave and move eastward. As a way to remember these expatriate friends & families the town commemorated the loss in stained glass and in a story (a story that got confused and changed over the years). If only they had commemorated why they left.

Added info: “Pied” means “multicolored”, so he was a piper wearing somewhat eccentric/eye-catching multicolored clothes.