Read more about the article Sea Monsters on Maps

Sea Monsters on Maps

The rise and fall of map sea monsters

Between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance exotic sea creatures were sometimes included in the watery regions of world maps. Many of the monsters were hybrid creatures – the top half was some land animal combined with the bottom half of a fish. This was in keeping with a long held idea from the ancient Greeks that anything on land had an aquatic counterpart in the sea. Sea rams, sea elephants, sea pigs, sea humans were all real possibilities. Over the centuries as explorers and traders traveled further abroad, they brought back tales of other strange creatures from around the oceans. Some of these beasts turned out to be real animals (such as whales) but others were just mistaken identity or entirely fictional stories. Either way, they ended up in maps.

Two kinds of maps

Generally speaking there were two kinds of maps in use during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: nautical maps and general maps of the world (mappae mundi). Nautical maps were more utilitarian and typically did not include sea monsters as it cost extra to include them and the illustrations were generally not very useful when sailing a ship. As such, most of the maps that included sea monsters were world maps for home use to learn about the world beyond your home town/city and the possible dangers at the borders of our knowledge.

Sea monsters were frequently found at the edges of the map which showed that the world beyond what had been mapped was unknown & possibly dangerous. They illustrated in a real sense the wonders of the world. They were also a way to hide gaps in the cartographer’s knowledge by taking up space with big animal illustrations (rather than big empty areas). Sea monsters also helped the marketability of these maps which was good for business.

A detail of a 1587 map of Iceland by Abraham Ortelius
A detail from the 1539 Carta Marina by Olaus Magnus
Another detail from the 1539 Carta Marina by Olaus Magnus

Eventually, the more sailors traveled the oceans the further out on maps the sea monsters were pushed. By the end of the 16th century much more of the globe had been explored & documented. The scientific knowledge of the flora & fauna of the world had grown and started to disprove some of these sea monsters. The more we learned, the unknown corners of the world in which to place these fantastical monsters eventually disappeared. By the 17th century instead of sea monsters on the margins there were illustrations of whales, other real life animals, or ships. This left us with more accurate, if a bit less interesting, maps of the seas.

Added info: Some sea monsters were included with ulterior motives. It is believed that Olaus Magnus’s 1539 map of Scandinavia included sea monsters in the Norwegian Sea to scare away potential foreign fisherman, and thereby protect the waters for the local fishing industry. A very Scooby Doo villain plan.

For more sea monsters, check out Chet Van Duzer’s Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps.

Read more about the article Saddam Hussein’s Romance Novel

Saddam Hussein’s Romance Novel

Zabibah and the King is a romance novel written by Saddam Hussein

When former president/dictator of Iraq Saddam Hussein wasn’t busy ruling/committing genocide, he found time for the arts. Between 2000-2003 he published four historical novels, all fiction, all written either by Saddam or written by ghostwriters under his direction. Three of the novels take place in the distant past of Iraq while 2002’s Men and the City takes place in the near past telling a fictionalized history of Saddam’s relatives fighting the Turks.

Zabibah and the King

It is 2000’s Zabibah and the King that is of particular interest. Zabibah and the King is a romance novel written by Saddam Hussein. On its surface the book is about King Arab of medieval Iraq, a beautiful commoner woman named Zabibah, and Zabibah’s abusive husband. The book is written as if an elderly woman is telling the story to a group of children, but there are large sections where Saddam is clearly airing his personal grievances that seem out of place if an elderly woman is telling them to children. As for the plot, when the King and Zabibah meet they mostly just talk about political theory, religion, and the best way to rule a country.

Eventually the abusive husband gets jealous that his wife is spending so much time with the King. He exacts his revenge by raping Zabidah and eventually teams up with the ruler of an enemy kingdom to wage war on King Arab. In the end Zabibah and her husband die in battle against one another, King Arab dies later, and when he dies he leaves the kingdom in the hands of a democratic council (which had been Zabibah’s idea) and the country prospers. Oh and also there is a whole section about bestiality between a bear and a herdsman which, again, is supposedly being told by an old woman to children.

Thinly veiled is the fact that Zabibah and the King is an allegory. The King represents Saddam himself, Zabibah is the people of Iraq, Zabibah’s rapist husband is the United States, and the enemy kingdom who help to wage war is Israel. Also the bear involved in the bestiality might represent Russian forces in some way. The book is Saddam laying-out his worldview, it’s about the United States’ 1991 invasion of Iraq during the Gulf War, and ultimately it’s a soapbox for Saddam to complain about things.

The book is not good but “remarkably” it was a bestseller in Iraq. Also Saddam used a 1998 painting titled The Awakening by Jonathon Bowser for the book cover, but never got permission from the artist.

Added info: Be sure to check out Saddam’s Goodreads author profile for more of his work and a very generous biography of him. Also there is a great Behind the Bastards episode on Saddam and his erotic literature.

Read more about the article Dog Days of Summer

Dog Days of Summer

When the dog star Sirius rises with the morning sun, it marks the most uncomfortable time of summer.

The “dog days of summer” are traditionally some of the hottest most uncomfortable days of the year (running more or less from July 3 through August 11 in the northern hemisphere). The ancient Greeks associated this time with heat, drought, sudden thunderstorms, lethargy, fever, and bad luck.

They are called the “dog days” because it’s at this time the star Sirius (which is actually a binary two star system) begins to rise at dawn along with the sun. Sirius is known as the “dog star” and is a part of the constellation Canis Majoris (Latin for “Greater Dog)”, all of which puts the “dog” in the “dog days”. It was thought that the morning appearance of Sirius, which is otherwise the brightest star in the night sky, added extra heat to the days making them more uncomfortable.

Potential spoiler: Sirius being the dog star is also the hidden-in-plain-sight reference with the character Sirius Black in Harry Potter, whose animagus ability is to turn himself into a dog.

Read more about the article Girl Scout Cookies

Girl Scout Cookies

Most Girl Scout cookies go by two names because the cookies are made by two different bakeries.

The Girl Scouts of the USA were formed in 1912 as an organization for young girls to learn skills and build friendships. As a fundraiser in 1917 the Mistletoe Troop of Muskogee, Oklahoma began selling homemade cookies. Selling cookies was so successful troops nationwide began to do the same. In 1933 Girl Scouts in Philadelphia worked with a commercial bakery to mass produce 100,000 boxes of vanilla cookies (which later became Trefoils) and by 1936 the Girl Scouts organization were using commercial bakeries around the country.

Depending on where you are in the United States, your cookies are made by one of two commercial bakeries:

  • ABC Bakers (a division of the Canadian corporation George Weston Limited), or
  • Little Brownie Bakers (a division of the Italian Ferrero Group)

Because of the two bakeries the cookies have different recipes and different names. As a result, what some know as Samoas, others know as Caramel deLites. What some know as Tagalongs, others know as Peanut Butter Patties. The newer cookies retain the same name regardless of bakery, as does the classic Thin Mint. As for the most popular Girl Scout cookie, at 25% of sales, it’s Thin Mint.

A comparison of just some of the cookie names between the two bakeries

Also: The Girl Scout logo is framed in a shape known as a trefoil (basically three overlapping circles) but with an additional stylized tail at the bottom to emulate the look of clover. The Little Brownie Bakers have labeled their version of shortbread cookies Trefoils as a nod to this branding. In the ABC Bakers version of the cookie, named Shortbread, the cookies’ form is less trefoil and more quatrefoil as it is basically four overlapping circles.

Read more about the article Where is the “Orient”?

Where is the “Orient”?

The Orient refers to places east of Europe, but where exactly depends on when you are asking.

Pinning down the location of the Orient depends on where you are and when you are. The word “orient” comes from the Latin for “east” so it generally means “the east” but more specifically it has meant “east of Europe.”

As Europeans traveled further abroad, the lands they considered “the East” aka “the Orient” was progressively pushed further east. For the Ancient Romans the Orient started as basically anything east of modern day Italy. The Eastern Mediterranean Levant area, Egypt, even along North Africa (which isn’t even east, it’s south of Europe) all became part of the “Orient.” These areas eventually became the “Near East” as the Orient came to include what is now the “Middle East” because eventually Europeans were interacting with people in the “Far East” coasts of Asia. All of these areas were at one point included in what was considered the “Orient.”

Because of this non-specific generalized term, things that are “oriental” can be from a pretty wide variety of cultures. While the Orient Express train line only went as far east as Istanbul, Oriental Medicine generally refers to medicine from much further away in East Asia. Oriental spices can range from the Middle East to the Far East of Asia, but Oriental rugs have an even wider range across two continents from Morocco to the Pacific coast of Asia.

Orientalism

As Europeans traveled to these “new” lands, western artists seized the opportunity to create exotic works of art based on these little know worlds. Orientalism was a movement especially present throughout the 19th century in music, literature, and the visual arts where these distant cultures were represented to varying degrees of authenticity. At best it was an opportunity for artists to create something exotic and new, but at worst it was an exploitative way to get attention. Orientalism could be an excuse to paint fairly salacious scenes of Muslim harems or Turkish baths with little accuracy.

Inspection of New Arrivals by Giulio Rosati who specialized in orientalist paintings

Like defining exactly where the Orient was, orientalized art ranges from North African motifs, to Turkish, to East Asian and everything in-between. Egyptian orientalism was kickstarted by Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt, a fascination which also made its way to the United States (which is why the Washington Monument is, essentially, a massive Egyptian obelisk).

Bonaparte Before the Sphinx by Jean-Léon Gérôme

As European powers pushed further eastward, such as the forced opening of Japan in 1858, orientalism turned more towards East Asian cultures. One example is the Gilbert & Sullivan opera The Mikado which was set in Japan but had no real interest in accuracy to Japanese culture. Gilbert & Sullivan were looking to capitalize on England’s latest fad for all things Japanese.

Loosely borrowing from Japanese culture, The Mikado by Gilbert & Sullivan

Problems with the Orient

The lack of specificity is just one of the problems with the term “oriental”. Oriental is also European-centric at the exclusion of other cultures. Further, as the term “oriental” came to include not just lands & cultures but also the people of those cultures, the word developed a long racist history of being used in anti-Asian propaganda.

As such the term has mostly fallen out of favor. The best advice is to be specific to where/what/who you are talking about.

Read more about the article the 1992 Lithuanian Basketball team & the Grateful Dead

the 1992 Lithuanian Basketball team & the Grateful Dead

The 1992 Lithuanian mens basketball team had tie-dyed uniforms because they were financially supported by the Grateful Dead.

In 1990 Lithuania gained independence from the Soviet Union after 50 years of communist occupation. As a new country they had nationwide economic problems and funding their Olympic team was low on the priority list. So to try and raise funds for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Lithuanian basketball star Šarūnas Marčiulionis (who also played for the Golden State Warriors and eventually made the NBA hall of fame) went on a campaign to get sponsors & donors wherever he could. Enter the Grateful Dead.

An article in the San Francisco Chronicle about Marčiulionis and the Lithuanian team was brought to the attention of San Francisco based Grateful Dead who had Marčiulionis come to meet them at their rehearsal space. As drummer Mickey Hart said, “We’re always for the underdog, and this wasn’t just a basketball team. This was a struggle for life, liberty and freedom.” They cut Marčiulionis a check for $5,000 and supplied the team with tie-dyed uniforms in the colors of the Lithuanian flag with a slam-dunking skeleton on the front. When the Lithuanian team made it to Barcelona their tie-dye uniforms were an international sensation. While their actual game uniforms were fairly traditional, they did take the podium to receive their bronze medals (after a symbolic 82-78 victory over their former Soviet team) wearing their Grateful Dead tie-die.

An added bonus: Through the Grateful Dead’s charitable organization, the Rex Foundation, they sold Lithuanian tie-dye shirts to the public, with proceeds going to the Lithuanian basketball team and Lithuanian children’s charities, raising over $450,000. You can still buy a copy from the artist who designed them.

the Lithuanian Basketball team receiving their bronze medals wearing their tie-dye uniforms
the tie-dye Greg Speirs designed shirt, which you can buy
Read more about the article Fordlândia

Fordlândia

In 1928 Henry Ford built a town in the Amazon Rainforest to try and cut out the middle-man and produce his own rubber. It was a failure.

During the rising success of his automotive company, Henry Ford (famed industrialist, Nazi sympathizer, and know anti-semite who believe that Jews were controlling the banks and that Jazz was a Jewish conspiracy) realized that he had a problem with rubber. The source of the rubber used in Ford automobiles (for tires, hoses, belts, etc) was controlled by European colonial plantations in Asia. He was dependent on them and was at their mercy.

So in 1928 Ford launched a plan to produce his own rubber, a plan that would allow him to cut out the middle-man. Ford purchased 2.5 million acres of Amazon Rainforest from the Brazilian government to grow rubber trees. To cultivate and process this rubber he created a prefabricated town for 10,000 workers, and he called it Fordlândia.

Fordlândia

The town was a slice of Michigan in the middle of the Amazon. It had American style homes, white picket fences, hospitals, schools, a golf course, tennis courts, a movie theater, swimming pools, etc. Stray dogs were caught and puddles were drained to reduce the possibility of malaria carrying mosquitos. The town was also a cultural project where employees would have to follow Henry Ford’s ideas of healthy living. There was no alcohol, almost no women, they had to eat oatmeal and canned peaches, and employees were encouraged to participate in poetry readings, square dancing, and gardening.

Eventually Fordlândia failed. The Brazilian workers grew tired of following Ford’s rules for how to conduct their lives during their off-hours. They revolted more than once and took trips to the “Island of Innocence” which was a bar / brothel just upriver from town. Some of the Ford managerial employees went mad in the jungle, as was the case with Mr. Johansen who bought perfume from a trading post upriver and started chasing farm animals shouting “Mr. Ford has lots of money; you might as well smell good too.”

As for the rubber trees, Ford ignored agricultural experts and had the trees planted too close together in poor rocky soil. They developed blight, they became a salad bar for the local insect population, and failed to ever really produce rubber. Fordlândia was abandoned in 1934 and the project moved to new land 25 miles downstream, but with the invention of synthetic rubber the entire project was shut down for good in 1945. Over 17 years Ford spent $25 million on Fordlândia, or around $379 million in 2019 dollars. The land was sold back to the Brazilian government for just $244,200. Fordlândia was an expensive commercial & social failure. Henry Ford never visited Fordlândia.

Over the years the Brazilian government tried to use the town but eventually abandoned it. By the early 2000s less than 100 people lived there but the space has seen a renewal. Today, while much of it is in ruins, the habitable areas are home to around 3,000 Brazilians.

Read more about the article Tippi Hedren’s Nails

Tippi Hedren’s Nails

Tippi Hedren helped Vietnamese immigrants become manicurists, who eventually dominated the American nail salon industry

Tippi Hedren began her career as a model and moved into acting. Her big break was being discovered by Alfred Hitchcock and was cast as the lead of 1963’s The Birds. The two worked together again when she starred as the titular Marnie in 1964. While Hitchcock was a great director he was not a great person (particularly to Hedren) and they never worked together again. His bitterness over being rejected by her led him to use his movie studio clout to prevent her from working on other films for years, from which her career never really recovered.

Fast-forward several years and Hedren is working on smaller movies but has also more time for her political activism. She became an animal rights activist, famously living with a lion named Neil, and eventually started the Shambala Preserve as an animal sanctuary for a variety of big cats. Shambala is also where Michael Jackson’s two tigers (Sabu & Thriller) ended up. Hedren also became involved with the charity Food for the Hungry, which gets us to her nails.

Tippi Hedren and her pet lion Neil

Vietnamese Manicurists

After the Fall of Saigon in 1975, with the charity Food for the Hungry, Hedren volunteered on a rented Australian battleship in the South China Seas rescuing Vietnamese refugees. Later she went to Sacramento to volunteer at Camp Hope, a Vietnamese refugee camp. As she was trying to help the women of the camp start new lives in the United States as seamstresses or typists, she noticed that what the women were really interested in were her nails and she hit upon an idea.

Hedren had her manicurist Dusty Butera flown up to Sacramento to begin teaching twenty Vietnamese women how to be manicurists. These lessons continued for a few months and eventually those women enrolled in the local Citrus Heights Beauty School. Those twenty women would go on to teach other Vietnamese women, and those women taught other women, and so on.

In 2015 it was estimated that 51% of all manicurists in America were of Vietnamese descent. In California it’s estimated to be almost 80%. This Vietnamese domination of the American nail salon market is directly tied back to Tippi Hedren’s efforts to help immigrants start new lives. In 2019 Tippi Hedren was honored at the Vietnamese American Nail Appreciation Gala in recognition of her activism that started an industry.

Read more about the article Cinnamon

Cinnamon

From a mythical origin story, to common kitchen spice, cinnamon has a long strange history.

To start, cinnamon is a spice (which means it’s not leaves, which is what herbs are). It comes from the bark of trees in the Cinnamomum family. It’s been used for thousands of years but where it grew was intentionally shrouded in mystery for much of that time. During the spice trade cinnamon was harvested in southern Asia, brought to the Middle East along the Maritime Silk Road, and then resold by spice merchants around the Mediterranean and onward. To maintain control over the Western market, the Asian origins of cinnamon were kept secret by its Arabian merchants.

This cinnamon subterfuge begins with an incredible origin story. Westerners were told that there was a species of Arabian bird called the Cinnamologus (ie. “cinnamon birds”) which made their nests with pieces of cinnamon that they collected from an unknown land. These nests were either high on cliff faces or at the tops of very tall trees depending on who was telling the story. The key was that the nests were inaccessible. So the cinnamon was harvested by either leaving heavy pieces of meat out for the birds, who would carry the meat back to their nests but the weight would topple the nest to the ground, or the nests were shot with projectiles which would do about the same thing.

Medieval manuscript depictions of the harvesting of cinnamon

This exotic & daring method of harvesting cinnamon only made it more desirable, much more so than if people found out you just had to peel the bark off of a tree and let it dry. Not everyone believed these stories, but either way the market supply was cornered by Arabian merchants and so cinnamon remained an expensive spice & Western status symbol for hundreds of years.

Two kinds of cinnamon

Today southern Asia still produces most of the world’s cinnamon. There are several kinds but the two you will find the most are Cassia Cinnamon (aka Chinese Cinnamon) and Ceylon Cinnamon (aka “True” Cinnamon). Cassia Cinnamon originates in China but is now grown all around southeast Asia. It has a bold flavor and is the version of cinnamon most commonly found in the United States. Ceylon Cinnamon comes almost exclusively from Sri Lanka (Ceylon being the old name for Sri Lanka). It has a subtler taste but in the culinary world it is considered the superior cinnamon (hence, “True” Cinnamon). One other difference is that Cassia Cinnamon contains higher concentrations of the chemical compound coumarin, which in large amounts can cause liver and kidney damage.

In general, other than just tasting nice, cinnamon has a variety of potential health benefits and it’s proven to be antimicrobial. Cinnamon can kill E. coli along with other harmful bacteria and as such was used for thousands of years to preserve meat (including during the embalming process of Egyptian mummies, which is just preserving meat of a different kind).

Read more about the article Googie Architecture

Googie Architecture

1950s American suburban sprawl created an eye-catching architectural movement.

The American post-war economy of the 1940s boomed. With this increasing wave of affluence many Americans joined the middle class and subsequently moved to the suburbs. If you were living in the suburbs then you had to drive everywhere and as you flew down the road in your new car business owners knew they had to stand-out to be noticed. Enter, Googie Architecture.

If you threw some rocket ships, neon lights, trapezoids, and boomerangs into a 1950s blender, you’d get Googie Architecture. Googie is mid-century modern but with a lot of flair. The name comes from a now demolished Hollywood coffee shop called Googies. In 1949 famed architect John Lautner designed the Googies shop with striated lines, odd angles, and in big neon letters “GOOGIES” with eyes in the O’s. Soon other businesses created their own energetic designs, and from the late 1940s through the 1960s it was an architectural arms race for customers’ attention & dollars.

The Theme Building at Los Angeles International Airport

Today many Googie buildings are gone, replaced as design trends have changed. The Googie style McDonalds restaurants of the ‘50s with giant golden arches & cantilevered roofs, were replaced by the dull rectangular beige shingle-roofed McDonalds of the ‘70s (which were also replaced).

Still, some excellent Googie buildings live on. The Seattle Space Needle, the Theme Building at LAX, the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas Nevada” sign, and more still stand as testaments to a mid-century space-age era where function followed form.

An added bonus: Wildwood, New Jersey is full of Googie architecture, but there it’s referred to as Doo-Wop architecture. Also with the return of American soldiers from the Pacific, 1950s America produced another kitschy architectural style known as Tiki which celebrated an exaggerated/fanciful version of South Seas Polynesian culture.

In Wildwood, NJ, Googie is called Doo-Wop architecture