History of the Day: 11/19

On this day in 1863, President Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, a fantastically brief, yet powerful, speech which argued that the Union soldiers who had died were preserving government "of the people, by the people and for the people" by, in essence, preventing some of the people from forming their own government. Of course, those people were attempting to preserve a society formed on the backs of other people who had no rights at all, so really everyone was lying. Here is the only confirmed photo of Lincoln at the gathering.

By the way, Lincoln's speech bears more than a passing resemblance to another speech given during another civil war of sorts, the Peloponnesian War (between Athens and Sparta) in ancient Greece. Pericles' funeral oration is so similar, it is as if Lincoln took it and masterfully truncated it to a more manageable chunk. Here is Thomas Hobbes translation of that speech (go figure).

Billy Sunday, former baseball star and famed evangelical preacher, was born on this day in 1862. His sermons were pretty standard revival tent fare, but his delivery was spectacular. He would turn somersaults, stand on his head, spin around and jump up and down while he spoke. Here he is at the White House. Some of the Progressives of his day such as Carl Sandburg and Sinclair Lewis, derided Sunday for his connection with traditional Republicans and big business. Lewis wrote a story which included a "Mike Monday"...

... the distinguished evangelist, the best-known Protestant pontiff in America...As a prize-fighter he gained nothing but his crooked nose, his celebrated vocabulary, and his stage-presence. The service of the Lord had been more profitable.

But this was unfair, as Sunday supported several Progressive positions. He was in favor of urban reform and women's suffrage and condemned capitalists whose...

...private lives are good, but whose public lives are very bad, who would not pick the pockets of one man with the fingers of their hand, but who would, without hesitation pick the pockets of eighty million people with fingers of their monopoly or commercial advantage.

Of child labor, he said:

Men who will gladly draw their check for $10,000 and give it a child's hospital see nothing ridiculous in the fact that the $10,000 for the child's hospital came of out of $200,000 made from a system of child labor which crushes more children in one year than the hospital will heal in ten.

I guess he was kind of Mike Huckabee 100 years ago. Happy birthday as well to Tommy Dorsey, possibly the greatest of the Big Band era band-leaders, born in 1905. He propelled many unknown singers to fame, including Frank Sinatra. You can hear him on the Tommy Dorsey Show here. (with Frank Sinatra) There's a surprisingly large amount of Dorsey's music available on the internet, including some well known tunes such as Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, Boogie Woogie, and (because Christmas apparently started three weeks ago) Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town.

Happy birthday to the McCaughey septuplets, born on this day in 1997. Ready to feel old? They'll be going to middle school next year.

Finally, today is both Equal Opportunity Day and World Toilet Day. First, some mention should be made of World Toilet Day which was started by the World Toilet Organization (or WTO, and I'm not kidding) which was, in turn, started by a gentleman who wanted to "break the taboo of toilet and sanitation and legitimize it for mainstream culture." Right on! So, what do Equal Opportunity Day and World Toilet Day have to do with each other? This was argued in ancient Persia in the court of King Darius. The third chapter of the first book of Esdras (part of the Apocrypha, sadly ripped from most Protestant Bibles) chronicles a debate between four men who argued whether women, truth, the power of the king or wine were the strongest. The one arguing for wine said:

Gentlemen, how is wine the strongest? It leads astray the minds of all who drink it. It makes equal the mind of the king and the orphan, of the slave and the free, of the poor and the rich. It turns every thought to feasting and mirth, and forgets all sorrow and debt. It makes all hearts feel rich, forgets kings and satraps, and makes everyone talk in millions. When people drink they forget to be friendly with friends and kindred, and before long they draw their swords. And when they recover from the wine, they do not remember what they have done. Gentlemen, is not wine the strongest, since it forces people to do these things?

Basically, alcohol equally lays everyone before the porcelain throne. I can personally attest to this, although, for me, it was bad lasagna and not wine that did me in on Monday. (Shudders with the memory.)