sandr020

Avery Brundage (1887-1975) grad­uated civil engineering from the University of Ill­in­ois in 1909. His links to anti-Semitism were first seen in his university days, where he was pres­id­ent of a fraternity chapter who would accept any Aryan male who did not have a Jewish parent. Brundage was a fine athlete who won the American National dec­athlon three times. He competed in the 1912 Summer Olymp­ics in Stockholm , where he represented the USA in both pentath­l­on and decathlon, but did not win any medals. He began to involve himself in sports administration, event­ually at the American Olympic Committee level. In 1928, Brundage was elected AOC president. Many sports administrators disliked women’s involvement at the top level. So the anti-woman movement was not pleased when, in July 1932, American athlete Babe Didrikson did brilliantly to win two Olympic gold medals in javelin and 80m hurdles. Didrikson was charged with “professionalism” because she had appeared in an advertisement ...

Over the past 150 years, The Republican Party/Grand Old Party moved from a racially prog­res­s­ive, Northern party.. to one that that domin­ates the South and gets almost no support from non-white vot­ers. These changes are totally counter-intuitive to a non-American historian, so I have examined three historians: Annabelle Quince , Natalie Wolchover  and Tim Stanley . The Whigs formed in opposition to the policies of Democratic Pres­id­ent, Andrew Jack­son (1829–37). The Whigs supported the suprem­acy of the US Congress over the Presidency, and favoured a programme of mod­ernisation, banking and pro­tectionism for manufacturing. It appealed to entrepreneurs, planters, reformers and the growing urban middle class, but not to labourers and farmers. Slavery was only one of many issues in the country’s politics then, usually rel­atively minor. The American South based its econ­omy on the en­slavement of non-whites, and the two major parties, Democrats and Whigs, were willing to let...

The origins of the boy scout movement have been well documented and well read.  Col. Robert Baden-Powell (1857–1941) had long been very familiar with the organis­ation called The Boys' Brigade , founded by his Scottish friend William Alexander Smith back in 1883. Members of the Boys’ Brigade were encouraged to combine drill and fun activities with Christian values. And during the Boer War in South Africa, Col Robert Baden-Powell was clearly very impressed by the 16 volunteer British adolescents in The Mafeking Cadet Corps . Later, back home in Britain, he used them in his military books as an example of bravery during the Boer War. Baden-Powell wrote a small military manual,  Aids to Scouting  1903, and found it useful for adults as well. With encouragement from William Alexander Smith, Baden-Powell decided to re-write Aids to Scouting to suit a younger market. This new book de­scribed outdoor activities, character development, citizenship and per­sonal fit­ness as th...

Let us start with whist. The  history of Whist can be traced at least to the early C16th in England (as mentioned in a pub­lish­ed sermon by Bishop Latimer in 1529) and through succeeding centuries under different names. Whist maintained its pop­ularity as a fashionable amusement, but it was not until 1742 that Edmond Hoyles’ famous Short Treatise on Whist appeared. In 1834 Lord Henry Cavendish-Bentinck (1804-70) invented the first sig­nal where partners defending against a contract could play particular cards to give a coded meaning, to guide each other. After ret­irement in 1857, Cavendish devoted himself to playing world class whist at the Port­land Club in London . In fact the first game of Duplicate Whist was pl­ayed in London that year, under Cav­end­ish’s dir­ec­t­ion.      Two beautifully dressed couples playing bridge c1900 The USA progressed in parallel with Britain in extending Duplicate. A dup­licate whist game was played privately in Chicago in 1880 ...

A Scandal in Bohemia by Gideon Haigh (Hamish ­Hamilton, 2018) tells an incredible story.  Mollie Dean (1905-30) was a very attractive Melburnian, a young woman who had great plans for the future. Many men said she was an excep­t­ional person, with great vital­ity and was a good conversation­al­ist. Women (like playwright Betty Roland ) said Mollie was sul­try or sullen-looking. Everyone agreed she was slim with dark bobbed hair and simple makeup. And that she was forceful and Bohemian, wanting to energet­ically discuss art, culture and pol­it­ics with the males. Clearly Mollie was a rising star, writ­ing a novel that would be call­ed Monst­ers Not Men . Mollie’s family was already problem-filled. Her father George, a tough school prin­cipal, died during her childhood. Her mother Ethel Dean was manipul­at­ive, controlling and physically violent. Ethel had just one plan for Mollie: to quickly marry her off, to a specific groom - mechanic Adam Graham (the Deans’ lodger in Elwood ...

Here is a blog post of mine, reposted from 23/12/2008 and now modified. Prof Peter Singer , born safely in Australia straight after the 1939-1945 war, wanted to get to know his late grandfather, David Oppenheim . This was a man who died in the war in 1943, before he could reach a safe place. Luckily for Singer, heaps of documents survived. His aunt, Doris Liffman, had studied some of the letter-based material years earlier for her university degree. These days I ask my students to read Pushing Time Away ( Ecco, 2003), but not because they are necessarily interested in Peter Singer’s task in discovering his own family history. Rather I want them to un­derstand Viennese Jewish intellectual life from the late C19th until 1933. Peter Singer's book with his grandparents' portraits A new golden age of building came to Vienna, based on the grac­­ious Ring­strasse which was created 1860-90: all the city’s great institutions were lo­cated there. Diff­er­ent from the churches and imperi...

Harry Relph (1867-1928) was the 16th child of a very elderly Kent pub­lican. Harry stood only 4’6” high, with dwarfish legs, and was born with six digits on each hand and foot. His deformities were emphasised for public­ity, although he never wanted to be seen as a handicapped person. His earliest prof­essional perform­ance in 1880 was at a the  Rosherville Gardens  Gravesend , a favourite riverside resort. The 12 year old lad made his very first stage appearance with his own black-face comedy act. Harry took his stage name from an infamous English court case against The Tichborne Claimant that lasted from Ap 1873-Feb 1874, when Harry was still a toddler. In this court case, a Wapping butcher’s son called  Arthur Orton  turned up from Wagga Wagga in rural Australia. He pretended he was Roger Charles Tit­ch­borne , lost at sea in Ap 1854, and heir to an ancient Hamp­shire baronetcy. Orton, who weighed 25 stones, did 14 years in gaol. He was re­leased on ticket-of-le...

Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate  is by Neil Baldwin  (published in 2002). Baldwin reported that car manufacturer  Henry Ford (1863-1947), inventor Thomas Edison and tyre magnet Harvey Fires­t­one used to go on motor-car expeditions to the Appalachian and New Eng­land hills. Normally, when the great business tycoons of the early C20th met, most of them generally kept their views hidden be­hind the fences of their very private country clubs. Ford, on the other hand, advert­ised his anti-Semitism almost as widely and loud­ly as he promoted his Model T. As did aviator Charles Lindbergh. In 1919, Ford purchased The Dearborn Independent ,  then a small newspaper published in the Michigan city where his factory was. For the next eight years, the weekly publication became a veh­ic­le for his bigoted political views. One of the paper’s chief targets was the “International Jew”, a sinister figure cited as the root cause of WWI. For 91 newspaper editions, ...

Ellis Island  is a small is­l­and in New York Harbour located in the up­per bay near the New Jer­sey coast. By the time Samuel Ellis became the island's private owner in the 1770s, Ellis Island developed into a harbour fort, ammun­ition and ordinance depot, and finally an immigration station. When the British occupied New York City during the Rev­ol­utionary War (1775–83), its large naval fleet sailed freely into New York Harbour. The Continental Congress voted for independence in 1776. The Federal government eventually purchased Ellis Island from NY State in 1808. When the government realised its strategic value in defending against British invas­ion, they built a series of coastal fortificat­ions in New York Harbour. This was even before they knew about the War of 1812 between the USA, the UK and their respective allies. But the fort was not needed in the 1812 War and served only as an ammunit­ion storage. They built a parapet for 3 tiers of circular guns, plus two earthworks f...

Independence came at the end of WWI when the Austro-Hungarian Emp­ire fell apart. It marked the first time since the Battle of White Mountain in 1620 that Bohemia was not under foreign rule. The First Republic was declared on 28th Oct 1918 when a Czech novelist read the independence proclamation of the sovereign state of Czech­osl­ovakia in the St Wenceslas Square. So the reading in the square was seen as the official start of the new country. During the cele­brations in Nov 1918, a mob tore down a Victory Column on Old Town Square. It had been there since 1650 and celebrated a battle that occurred on Charles Bridge at the end of the Thirty Years’ War. Some said the column glorified the Hapsburg domination of the country. This year locals and tourists are invited to comm­em­orate the est­ablishment of Czechoslovakia in 1918, following the end of WWI. To mark the 100th anniversary, hundreds of cul­t­ural, social and sport­ing events will take place throughout 2018 that high­light the ...