Although they are celebrating Separation in Anguilla, where it never gets cold, most of today's issue is very cold indeed. Our birthday today is of the English arctic explorer William Edward Parry who found, but did not pass all the way through, the Northwest Passage. As second in command on his first expedition he was sure they were on the right track, his captain saw mountains ahead and declared it a dead-end and gave it up. Parry was right, the captain wrong, and Parry led the next three expeditions. He spent enough time in distant northern Canada to learn Arctic survival from the Inuits, knowledge that was ignored by the Royal Navy but of great use in his own voyages.
It would also have been of great value to George Washington, who set up camp at Valley Forge on this day. Some of his men learned cold-weather tricks of their own. One example: barefoot sentries stood on their hats to avoid frostbite. To keep the theme going, I've chosen quotes related to ice.
In publishing history we see the first edition of Poor Richard's Almanack, and the discovery of the far older Dead Sea Scrolls. We also mark the first broadcast from outside the earth's atmosphere, and a bizarre incident in which a vicious killer revealed himself to the law.
1732 - Benjamin Franklin begins publishing Poor Richard's Almanack at Philadelphia, using the name Richard Saunders. It sold an average of 10,000 copies per year until 1758, when other interests (scientific experimentation and independence for the colonies) and diplomatic assignments took him away from publishing.
1777 - General George Washington and the Continental Army encamped for the winter at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. There were about 11,000 untrained and under-equipped men in the camp, many even without shoes. Of the deaths suffered by the army in the Revolution, fully a quarter were due to the weather and lack of preparation during the six months they stayed.
1789 - The French Assembly decreed that the royal estates should be considered "biens nationaux" or national lands, adding them to the property of the Catholic Church which had been seized by decree of 2 November. On 9 February 1792 the property of those who had fled France were added. Claims against this property, called assignats, circulated as currency, the property was sold throughout the 1790s.
1947 - The first of the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in a cave near Khirbet Qumran on the western shore of the Dead Sea. A young Bedouin shepherd, Muhammad Adh-Dhib, was looking for a lost goat when he found pottery jars in a cave. The scrolls, in Hebrew and Aramaic, were inscribed on leather and wrapped in linen cloths, belonged to a community of Essenes who lived at Qumran until AD 68.
1958 - The first radio broadcast from space, a prerecorded Christmas greeting from US president Eisenhower, was repeatedly broadcast from the orbiting upper stage of an Atlas rocket: "To all mankind, America's wish for Peace on Earth and Good Will to Men Everywhere."
1978 - John Wayne Gacy, under suspicion in the disappearance of a local teenager, invites two police officers into his Des Plaines, Illinois house for coffee. While questioning Gacy the officers smelled something decaying, returned with a warrant, and found 27 bodies buried under the house and two in the yard. With four others that had been dumped in the river, Gacy was charged with the rape, torture, and murder of 33 young men - he was executed in May of 1994.
Separation Day, Anguilla - Commemorates the 1980 separation from the island nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis, forming a separate British Dependent Territory. Things happen slowly in the Caribbean, they staged a revolt in 1967 demanding the split, they gained de facto separation in 1971, on this day in 1980 the paperwork was completed.
1790 - William Edward Parry, British naval officer, explorer - Born at Bath, England, son of a well-known physician. Joined the Royal Navy in 1803, served in ships in the Baltic and near North America, chosen as second in command to John Ross in the 1818 expedition to find the Northwest Passage. At the furthest the expedition reached, Parry thought they were proceeding on course, Ross concluded that they were in a bay and turned back. Back in England Parry's account was accepted, Ross was disgraced. Parry was chosen to lead the next expedition in 1819 to 1820 after passing through Lancaster Strait and reaching 110 degrees west longitude, earning him the 5,000 pound prize for reaching that milestone. The next expedition from 1821 to 1823 generated a great deal of careful mapping, and Parry learned a great deal about survival in Arctic conditions from the Inuit. (Some other explorers benefited from the knowledge, the Admiralty completely ignored it.) Parry's last attempt at the Northwest Passage was from 1824 to 1825, but lost a ship and returned without much additional progress. He returned to the Arctic in 1827, sailing north from England to Spitzbergen, where steel runners were added to the boats to cross ice as well as open water. Ice floes and extreme fatigue among his men stopped his northern progress at 82 degrees 45 minutes north latitude, within 500 miles of the North Pole, a record that would stand until 1876. Parry published journals of the three trips into the Northwest Passage and an account of the North Pole attempt and retired at the rank of rear admiral. He died at Elms, Germany (near Koblenz) on 8 July 1855.
There are many in this old world of ours who hold that things break about even for all of us. I have observed for example that we all get the same amount of ice. The rich get it in the summertime and the poor get it in the winter.
- Bat Masterson
You cannot speak of ocean to a well-frog, the creature of a narrower sphere. You cannot speak of ice to a summer insect, the creature of a season.
- Chuang Tzu
Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life's relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice flowers on the window panes, which vanish with the warmth.
- Søren Aaby Kierkegaard
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Copyright 2000 G. Armour Van Horn, all rights reserved. This document may be distributed freely. Please forward the complete message including this copyright notice.