We can’t erase Pitchfork Ben, but we can learn from him

For more than a century, Tillman Hall has dominated Winthrop University’s campus.

The three-story building, constructed in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, features a combination gabled and hipped roof configuration, projecting bay windows, and is highlighted by a clock tower with an open belfry.

The red-brick edifice was erected in 1894, during South Carolina Gov. Ben Tillman’s reign, and the structure was named for the Palmetto State politician, who would go on to serve in the US Senate, in 1962. Tillman was instrumental in the founding of both Winthrop and Clemson University.

Unfortunately for Winthrop, Tillman’s legacy hasn’t held up well under the scrutiny of history.

A virulent racist who worked not only to codify Jim Crow laws in South Carolina, Tillman personally advocated the lynching of blacks.

So perhaps it’s not unreasonable that a pair of former Winthrop students would like the Rock Hill-based school to consider changing the name of the structure.

However, Winthrop University officials have replied that state law prevents such action.

South Carolina law prohibits changing the name of buildings or monuments named for historic figures, Winthrop Board of Trustees Chairwoman Kathy Bigham wrote to former students Michael Fortune and Richard Davis in a letter this week.

In the letter, Bigham cites a South Carolina law that was passed in 2000 to protect war memorials and historic structures on public property. The law prevents anyone from changing the name of any street, bridge, structure or park that has been “dedicated in memory of, or named for, any historic figure or historic event,” according to the Rock Hill Herald.

Changing the state law requires a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly, the publication added.

Given that it’s difficult to get two-thirds of SC lawmakers to agree on what day of the week it is, it’s unlikely that anyone could gather enough support to rename Tillman Hall.

However, that doesn’t mean that Winthrop can’t use the building’s name as a chance to highlight Pitchfork Ben Tillman’s backwardism or how much damage his views have done to South Carolina over the decades.

NC soldier gets proper headstone after more than a century

For more than a century, the remains of Pvt. Franklin Cauble of the 42^nd North Carolina Infantry Regiment have rested beneath a mislabeled grave marker in Woodlawn National Cemetery in Elmira, NY.

Cauble, a Confederate soldier captured at the battle of Cold Harbor in 1864, succumbed to chronic diarrhea 150 years ago this week at the Elmira prison camp, at age 39.

The mistake occurred when the federal government replaced the original wooden markers of the more than 2,000 Confederate dead interred at Woodlawn with marble headstones in 1907.

Cauble’s grave was marked with the name of his friend, Pvt. Franklin Cooper of the 42^nd North Carolina, who survived his time at Elmira.

The National Cemetery Administration announced earlier this month that the error would be rectified and Cauble’s gravestone would be replaced, likely in the next few days.

“After a thorough investigation into claims regarding the error on the headstone, it will be replaced with an in-kind headstone bearing the correct surname of ‘Cauble,’” Kristen Parker, a spokeswoman for the cemetery administration, wrote in an email to the Elmira Star-Gazette.

German submarine, Allied freighter found off NC coast

Researchers working off the coast of North Carolina recently discovered predator and prey lying within a few hundred yards of each other on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

The freighter Bluefields and the German submarine U-576, which sank the former on July 15, 1942, and was then sunk by other Allied vessels, were found in 690 feet of water in August following a five-year search led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The vessels were lost during the Battle of the Atlantic, which included the German submarine fleet battling Allied conveys and naval ships.

The loss of the Bluefields and U-576 came during a period of intense warfare between convoys and U-boats in the area off Cape Hatteras during the six-month period following the United States’ entrance into the conflict.

Although German submarines had wreaked havoc on Allied ships along the East Coast prior to US entry into the war in late 1941, the action was particularly heavy during the first half of 1942.

An estimated 90 vessels – including four U-boats – were sunk off North Carolina between January and July 1942. It was “almost a ship every other day going down,” NOAA maritime archaeologist Joe Hoyt, the chief investigator on the project, told the Washington Post.

Falcons’ marketing department takes a short siesta

It’s long been a running joke that football players are better known for brawn than brains. Apparently, the marketing department of at least one professional football team didn’t pay all that much attention in college, either.

The Atlanta Falcons will be in London this weekend to play the Detroit Lions, part of the National Football League’s effort to broaden its fan base.

To give Falcons fans an inside look at the team’s journey across the Atlantic, the club posted the above infographic detailing the travel schedule.

Someone’s lack of geography knowledge could have proven costly, as the graphic showed the team traveling first to Baltimore and then to somewhere in Spain, rather than London, which would have left them more than 900 miles south of Wembley Stadium.

Fortunately, the Falcons were alerted to the mistake and corrected the error, greatly diminishing chances that a group of extremely large, muscular and no doubt irate men would be left wandering the confines of Barcelona Airport.

(HT: Deadspin)

When mapmaking was equal parts art and utility

Some have the ability to recall precise swathes of knowledge from their schooling. I am not one of those individuals.

While I can recollect misdeeds, mishaps and the occasional bout of corporate punishment, there are very few specific bits of knowledge I can remember being imparted some 40-plus years after I began elementary school.

One nugget that I do clearly recall involved a second-grade social studies lesson detailing why movable objects such as cars and planes didn’t make the cut when cartographers create maps. They are, of course, impermanent and most likely wouldn’t be in the same place the next day, making them useless to individuals attempting to navigate based on landmarks shown on a map.

Apparently, this is a relatively new concept for mapmakers, as evidenced by the blog Trains in Towns, which highlights steam locomotives shown on old-time maps.

Evidently, detailing train tracks, a permanent landscape feature, wasn’t enough for cartographers of the 19^th and early 20^th century to demonstrate the existence of rail lines.

Many of the so-called “bird’s-eye” or panoramic maps of the era show steam locomotives chugging along, belching out smoke and pulling cars through towns and cities.

These maps often feature other transient objects, as well, including ships at anchor, horse-drawn carriages, people walking down dusty lanes and even animals frolicking in fields.

I’m partial to the bird’s eye map of Columbia, SC, from 1872, which is on display at the local library. It shows not only trains, but, among other transitory features, horses galloping around a local race track.

The mapmakers of the period were, it would seem, creating works which could serve artistic as well as utilitarian purposes.

(Top: 19th century bird’s-eye map of unidentified river town showing steam locomotive, riverboats and horses pulling carriages. Source: Trains in Towns.)

How King, Coca-Cola helped erode segregation in Atlanta

Fifty years ago this month Martin Luther King Jr. received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolence.

King, an Atlanta native who had been actively working against segregation in the South for at least a decade when he was recognized with the honor, initiated a fundamental change in his home city’s business, religious and racial cultures when blacks and whites came together for the first time to share a meal in public to recognize the new Nobel laureate, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Not surprisingly given the climate of the era, the change didn’t come easily.

King was Atlanta’s best-known figure in 1964 and the first Georgian to win the Nobel Peace Prize, but the question of how a segregated city would celebrate the accomplishments of a black man wasn’t an easy one to work out, according to the publication.

“ … the races didn’t mix, and King was still black. The immediate question became, how do you honor the man who was now the city’s most recognizable figure?”

Initially, there was talk in the black community about perhaps having a dinner at Paschal’s, where Civil Rights leaders had often met to discuss strategy. However, it was recognized that King should be received by the entire city, not just a segment.

Rabbi Jacob Rothschild, along with Catholic Archbishop Paul Hallinan, Morehouse College President Benjamin E. Mays, Atlanta Constitution editor Ralph McGill and Mayor Ivan Allen Jr., formed a core group of organizers who set their sights on having a huge banquet at the Dinkler Plaza Hotel downtown, so that King might be honored by a gamut of Atlanta residents, according to the Journal-Constitution.

However, even after the dinner had been announced and a date set, no one bought tickets. Atlanta’s business community wasn’t buying into the idea.

Officials say shipwreck off Haiti is not Columbus’ Santa Maria

It appears that the shipwreck discovered earlier this year off the coast of northern Haiti is not that of Christopher Columbus’ flagship, the Santa Maria, according to the UN cultural agency.

UNESCO released a report earlier this month that concluded that a shipwreck in the Caribbean was likely from a 17th or 18th century vessel.

US explorer Barry Clifford had announced in May that he believed he had found the Santa Maria near the city of Cap-Haitien.

The ship, Columbus’ flagship from his first voyage to the Western Hemisphere, struck a reef and was abandoned in December 1492. Columbus returned to Spain with his two remaining ships, the Niña and the Pinta, beginning in January 1493.

“UNESCO said a team of experts who explored the site at the request of the Haitian government determined the wreckage was from a more recent vessel for reasons that included the discovery of copper nails and pins, used to fasten ship components, at the site,” according to an Associated Press report. “The Santa Maria would have used components of iron or wood, the agency said.”

The experts also believe that contemporary accounts, including Columbus’ own journal, indicate that the wreck is too far from the shore to be that of the Santa Maria, according to CNN.

The report added that it is possible the actual wreckage of the Santa Maria may be buried under what is now land because of heavy sedimentation from nearby rivers. It also recommended further archaeological investigation of the area.

The Santa Maria wasn’t a very big ship by modern standards, being about 60 feet long and weighing about 100 tons.

Clifford still stands by claim, calling the UNESCO report flawed because the agency’s experts did not consult him or the photos and charts he and his associates made of the wreckage site, according to the wire service.

He also said the copper components could have been used on the Santa Maria or the material came from another shipwreck that cross-contaminated the site in an area where a number of ships are known to have sunk.

“The explorer had reached his conclusion based on the location of the wreckage, the presence of the type of stones used for ballast in that era as well as a type of cannon that was there when he first took photos of the site in 2003 but had apparently been looted when he returned this year,” according to the Associated Press.

In its report, UNESCO faulted Clifford for announcing his findings in the media before officially informing the Haitian government of his intention to continue his research in the bay of Cap-Haitien.

(Top: 1892 US postage stamp featuring the Santa Maria.)

Glory of SF’s past captured by Bay Area photographer

San Francisco has long cast a lingering eye to its past, toward a halcyon age that was equal parts legend and reality, but remains embedded in the city’s DNA.

San Francisco’s glory days, which began with the California Gold Rush, lasted until after World War II, when the social upheaval of the 1960s brought tens of thousands of counter culturalists to the West Coast.

At the same time, manufacturing jobs left the city, housing prices began a steep rise that have continued almost unabated over the past few decades and, in connection partly to the latter, families began departing in droves for the suburbs.

In addition, thousands of social outcasts flooded in over the next couple decades as prisoners were released from overcrowded jails and the mentally ill were de-institutionalized.

Yet, the splendor of San Francisco’s earlier days can still be glimpsed in its architecture, particularly its early 20^th century office buildings and even earlier Victorian homes, and along its waterfront.

Among individuals who have helped keep the memory of old San Francisco alive is photographer Fred Lyon, a fourth-generation San Franciscan who began shooting images of the cities after World War II.

Now in his 90s, Lyon apprenticed at as a photographer at age 14 before enrolling in a Los Angeles art school. He served as a Navy photography in the Second World War, based in Washington, DC, and moved to New York at the conflict’s conclusion.

He returned to California in 1946, and has since spent nearly 70 years documenting life in the Bay Area, with his work appearing in such notable publications as Vogue, Glamour and Mademoiselle. In addition, his work can be found in dozens of books.

Lyon most recently released “San Francisco, Portrait of a City: 1940-1960.”

San Francisco television station KTVU has compiled nearly four dozen of Lyon’s images from the city’s immediate post-war years, which can be seen here.

As someone who has spent a bit of time in “The City” over the years, but never saw it in its prime, I can say that it certainly appears to have been a different era.

In today’s society, where one sometimes sees individuals at funeral wakes in shorts and flip-flops, it seems difficult to believe there was a time when men regularly wore fedoras and women nice dresses.

(Photo credits: Fred Lyon, courtesy of KTVU-TV.)

Sahara desert ants: A study in adaptability

The Sahara desert is about as unforgiving an environment as exists on Earth.

The African desert is characterized by intense heat and a scorching sun, especially during the hot season, when surface temperatures can reach more than 150 degrees during midday.

Most living organisms wait out the broiling heat in the shade, but not the Sahara desert ant, which seizes on the opportunities presented by the high temperatures.

Once the heat becomes unbearable for other species, the Sahara desert ant (Cataglyphis bicolor) emerges from the shade of its burrow to feast on the corpses of insects that have succumbed to conditions.

This species is reported to be able to forage in surface temperatures of up to 158 degrees for short periods despite the fact that it lives in an environment which has almost no identifiable features, according to the BBC.

Several abilities enable the Sahara desert ant to accomplish this feat:

• While venturing out it periodically takes measurements of its angle in respect to the Sun, which allow it to plot a straight line back to its nest;
• It relies on a unique odor signature that can guide it back to its home; and
• It appears to use an internal pedometer to count its steps in a harsh setting where odors quickly vanish, enabling it to “count back” to its nest.

Being able to withstand such extreme heat reduces competition for food from less thermo-tolerant scavengers and likely reduces its chances of running into a predator.

“Three main characteristics and behaviors allow the Sahara desert ant and other thermophilic ants to be active in temperatures that would quickly kill most other animals,” according to the BBC. “They are quick; Cataglyphis fortis and Cataglyphis bombycina, its close relatives, have been clocked moving at one meter (3.3 feet) per second. Their relatively long legs mean temperatures at the height of their bodies are 6-7 degrees cooler than on the ground.

“They also pause on dry stalks of grass onto which they off-load excess body heat,” the news service added.

These abilities allow the Sahara desert ant to venture out at midday for 3-5 minutes at a time. Given the speed at which it can travel, Cataglyphis bicolor has the ability to travel farther from its nest than any other creature that lives in the Sahara with respect to size.

11-year-old me on why ancient man steered clear of Office Depot

Word is we had a lunar eclipse down our way early this morning. The event offered me an opportunity to recall how utterly obtuse I was 40 years or so ago.

Last night, as I dropped my girls off at their mother’s house, we discussed the eclipse. They explained how they were considering getting up around 5 a.m. to view the unusual celestial occurrence. They had a basic understanding of what caused the event and were excited to see it.

As I drove home, I recalled that when I was the age of my youngest daughter, 11, I not only didn’t understand what an eclipse was, I was utterly unfamiliar with the word. As evidence, I can recall the first time I heard about the concept of an eclipse.

My mother was attempting to explain that people can be afraid of that which they do not understand and was describing how ancient societies were often very superstitious and fearful of rare phenomena. Among things that confused and frightened prehistoric people, she explained, were eclipses.

As I was unacquainted with the word, and not a particularly bright 11-year old, my ears only caught the second part of the word, “clips,” and my mind immediately wandered to “paper clips.”

With an ignorant arrogance not unknown among 11-year-old boys, I immediately thought, “Wow, what a bunch of morons – afraid of paper clips! Ha! Ha! Ha!” Mind you, I wasn’t confident enough in this anthropological assessment to voice this view to my mother; I simply sat there in smug, silent awe that a group of people could be afraid of office supplies.

Sure, paper clips could be exasperating when they got all looped together, and they could cause some really agony if the end of one got under a fingernail, but any society that was afraid of paper clips must have been a pretty pathetic one, I reasoned.

Looking back, I don’t know at what point I finally learned what an eclipse actually was, or at what point I realized what it was my mother had been talking about, but some years later I made the connection that I’d been off base – way off base.

Needless to say, my girls – who are a bit wiser and certainly more intuitive than their father was at their age – always get a chuckle out of that story. And there’s certainly no shortage of similar tales for me to regale them with. I guess that’s one of the few benefits of having been a dense kid.

(Top: Lunar eclipse seen earlier this year. Not pictured: Paper clip.)