For as long as Ted Kennedy’s name is remembered, it will be marred by Chappaquiddick. Up until today I never realized what a heinous story it is. I knew it involved a drunk Ted, a car crash and a girl dying. It sounded like a tragic and irresponsible accident to me. What I learned today is how callous and vile Ted behaved. Carl Cannon wrote a great narrative of the events on that night. I definitely recommend reading his post along with the Wikipedia entry, but I’ll summarize the key points in bullet form for the impatient.

Teddy Kennedy met up with friends and some girls at a party in a cottage on tiny Chappaquiddick Island, off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. It wasn’t a huge crowd. It was a small get-together for Ted’s friends and the “Boiler Room Girls”; some women who worked the phones for RFK’s presidential campaign the year before. Kennedy decided to leave the party and the following events become murky.

• Kennedy claims he left the party at 11:15 pm and Mary Jo requested he drive her back to town. A local cop saw Kennedy’s car at 12:40 am. No one at the party knew Mary Jo left with Teddy, and she also left her purse and hotel key at the party.
• Kennedy leaves his chauffeur at the cottage and ended up driving in the exact opposite direction from the ferry landing.
• Kennedy misses a turn in the road and drives into the water, flipping the car on to its roof. He manages to swim out of the car, but for some unknown reason Mary Jo cannot. Kennedy will later go on to say after he made it back to dry land, he jumped back into the water seven or eight times trying to find Mary Jo.
• Once Kennedy gives up on trying to locate Mary Jo underwater, he walks back to the cottage. He walks by four other cottages with working phones on his trip back.
• At the cottage, which also has a working phone, he told two of his friends about the accident. They returned to the scene and attempted to rescue Mary Jo. When that failed, they drove Teddy to the ferry landing where he swam back to town (ferry service ended at midnight). His friends would later claim they did not call the police because Teddy told them he would report this when he got back.
• Back in town, Kennedy returned to his hotel, which has a working phone, and went to sleep. During the night he would complain to the hotel owner about a noisy party that was keeping him up. In the morning he was seen chatting with a local about sailing.
• Kennedy’s two friends visit him at his hotel where they question why he didn’t report the incident. The three of them return to Chappaquiddick Island. Kennedy is seen making several calls at a pay phone by the ferry dock, but none are to the police.

Here’s my guess on what really happened that night. Ted’s story was a cover for an extramarital affair. He couldn’t admit to that because it would ruin his career and humiliate his family. It also makes more sense to believe Mary Jo wasn’t going home for the night because she left her keys and purse at the party. Ted didn’t bring his chauffeur along to drive because who wants a third wheel around when you’re trying to have sex? Remember that if Ted was really trying to catch the last ferry back to Martha’s Vineyard (and the cop’s testimony makes this impossible too), his chauffeur would have been stranded at the cottage.

Ted Kennedy was a despicable human being for allowing a woman to die to preserve his privileged life. The police diver who was sent after two local fishermen reported the submerged car said Mary Jo’s body was pressed up against a part of the car where an air bubble would have formed. He estimated she lived for two hours down there. Two hours where Kennedy could have called for police from four houses in between the accident and the party cottage, or called from the cottage, or called from a pay phone at the ferry dock, or called from his hotel room. These lefty journalists I see on TV trying to wax poetic about the Liberal Lion are vermin. This man was scum and deserves no praise. If you think I’m exaggerating, check out this recording. “[O]ne of his favorite topics of humor was indeed Chappaquiddick itself.” What a monster.

Ron Paul finally has one good idea. We have a piracy problem in the world, but combating it with a professional navy is expensive work. So we can turn to an old, forgotten power as a solution: the Letter of Marque. It’s right in Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution.

The basic idea is that Congress will empower privateers to capture pirates and destroy their vessels. It gets more complicated when you have to work out the bounty payouts and deposits. Generally speaking though Paul’s plan is to leave pirate hunting to private citizens. I frickin’ love the idea, but then again I think all pirates should be executed. There’s bound to be a fair number of people who disagree with me. It’s a Ron Paul idea so it will go nowhere, but damn, I just have to give credit where it’s due.

My interest in this book was sparked by a passing mention in a Wikipedia article on the Gadsden Purchase.

As originally envisioned, the purchase would have encompassed a much larger region, extending far enough south to include most of the current Mexican states of Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas as well as all of the Baja California peninsula.

Uh, what? The Gadsden Purchase has always been this bizarre little appendage to the border that’s barely ever mentioned in history classes. For years I wondered why that chunk of land was added to the US. What was there that was so important? And if it was important, why wasn’t it included in the original Mexican Cession after the war? Knowing that the purchase could have been a much grander plan made more sense to me, but it also whet my appetite. Why didn’t this grand plan go forth, and why even bother with this tiny bite of desert if Mexico didn’t want to sell something bigger? So intrigued, I looked over Wikipedia’s footnotes and came upon Seizing Destiny by Richard Kluger.

This is also the first library book I’ve read in years. Usually I buy everything I read from Amazon. This time though I was feeling extraordinarily cheap. Lacking my own library card I had a friend pick up a copy for me.

I gotta say Kluger is an angry man. In the first chapter he basically insults everyone. The Europeans are greedy degenerates. The Spanish are especially inept and pompous. The Natives, who you expect would get off with some liberal coddling, sound like wide-eyed ignoramouses. Kluger calls Americans “land hungry” every chance he gets.

And why did we have this ravenous appetite? You might expect a Berkeley academic to answer that question with “greed” and feel satisfied. Kluger pins it on poor farming practices. American farmers rarely ever tried to maintain soil quality. They frequently exhausted their soil’s nutrients and moved on to new parcels. This migration is what fueled the ever constant demand for land.

I can accept that explanation. I can see the futility in convincing farmers to bear the expenses of changing their farming technique when North America was so empty. They knew that westward land was just sitting there thanks to French and Spanish incompetence. Those colonies were patches of land used to harvest furs or mine precious metals. Why not take their useful soil away when they never bothered to use it. This attitude also explains why that thirst for land petered out at the end of the 19th century. America moved from agrarian to industrial. Farming was no longer the prime driver of the economy. America no longer needed more land to grow because its citizens found opportunity in other jobs. After the Civil War territorial expansion was justified as protecting or enhancing American trade. Alaska was purchased because it would save American vessels time crossing the Pacific by resupplying there. We held on to the Philippines and Puerto Rico because we wanted naval bases that would protect American trade. Even though we defeated Spain, we rejected annexing Cuba. If Americans really desired to expand the country for the sake of expanding the country, that would never have happened.

That argument is still very interesting but that’s not why I picked up this book. I was hoping to hear all the little details that surrounded each territorial expansion. As Wikipedia hinted, the Gadsden Purchase could have been a much larger transaction that swallowed up a lot more of northern Mexico. Well why didn’t it happen? Why was it proposed? What happened in the negotiations? Was the US close to forging a deal for a huge chunk of territory, or was it never really realistic? I imagined the Mexican Cession, the Texas Annexation, the Louisiana Purchase, among other land transactions also had such interesting but little known details surrounding them.

In this respect I was disappointed in the book. There just wasn’t enough detail to satisfy me. It was fascinating to know that the Louisiana Purchase’s legality was quite dubious and that had nothing to do with any constitutional doubt about whether the federal government could purchase land. When Louisiana was transferred back to France from Spain, the Spanish insisted that France return the land if France decided not to move forward with colonization. Instead Napoleon backstabbed Spain and sold the territory to the US. Unlike what you see in textbooks, the borders of Louisiana were not neatly circumscribed either. The US spent a lot of time negotiating the borders with Spain, at least once Spain gave up demanding the land be returned.

All of this fascinates me, but I still wanted more. What the book also lacked was any mention of failed schemes. I would have loved to read about plans the US had for acquiring territory that failed, and who had plotted to detach land from the US but never succeeded. It’s those what might have been moments that really make my imagination run.

Seizing Destiny was generally a good read though. Kluger kept the book mostly free of that liberal Berkeley vibe. He saved it for the last half of the last chapter where he’s writing about the Panama Canal, and it still wasn’t as harsh as any characature you can come up with.

I mentioned this once or twice before. Puerto Rico is considered to be the 51st state in waiting, but doing so ignores some other possibilities. One of those possibilities came to my attention today. Now this news is about half a year old, but it’s still news to me. As David Cohen, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Insular Affairs, was stepping down from office last May, he commented that a union between Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) had gone a step closer. Such cooperation could lead to statehood for the group.

What was stressed in both Cohen’s comment and an earlier one from Felix Camacho, the Governor of Guam, is that this is a long term project. This insistence on slow political change purplexed me. I don’t know much of anything about the history of that island chain, but I figure there has to be some kind of bad blood between Guam and the NMI. You only stress slowness when you’re trying not to inflame public opinion. So what happened between these islands?

The Marianas Variety newspaper gave a concise summary of these issues while covering a Camacho speech. Back in 1969 a vote in Guam rejected reunification with the NMI. The island group had been administered as one unit since they came under Spanish rule in the 1600s. Their history diverages when Spain left. Guam went to the US as part of the peace settlement following the Spanish-American War. The Northern Marianas were sold to Germany. The Japanese seized them during WWI. When Japan invaded Guam at the start of the Second World War, they brought NMI Chamorros (the ethnic group indigenous to the island chain) with them to run Guam. Still bitter over their treatment under Japanese occupation, Guam refused to reunite with the Northern Marianas.

At least now I understand this aspect of the conflict. It seems like we have to wait for the WWII generation to die off. It does make me wonder what younger Chamorros think of the situation. Let’s take someone born after 1970, well after all the pain of WWII. On the one hand, they could find the situation ridiculous because they see the division as an arbitrary political one that ignores the centuries of shared culture between these islands. On the other hand, since Guam has been separated from the rest of the island chain for decades maybe they see little point in rocking the boat. Ethnic unity may not be such a strong pull anymore, and they don’t see anything to be gained from reuniting the Mariana Islands. I haven’t a clue what public opinion is in that region. I only know one person from Guam and I never had this discussion with them. Besides, they’re closer to that WWII generation anyway.

What I would like to see happen is a reunited Marianas petition for statehood. The State of the Mariana Islands would have a population of 260,072 and a land area of 393 square miles. It would have roughly half the population of Wyoming and a third of the area of Rhode Island. You’re probably asking why should something so small become a state. It’s a strategic location. The Marianas are the last islands before you get to Japan and the North Asian mainland. We can’t rely entirely on Japan for our Pacific military presence. Besides the military reality, it feels ridiculous to me to have these islands and not extend full statehood to them. There are hundreds of thousands of people there and many are already American citizens. A small land mass is not a valid reason to deny statehood in my mind.

I found another one of those future predictions articles from years past. I do really love these because they often have such a distorted view. We always make the mistake of thinking the stuff that’s important today will still be important later. This article comes from the November 1968 issue of Mechanix Illustrated.

You can read the article straight through if you follow that link above. You probably should since it’s more of a narrative than a list. Here, I’ll break these predictions down point by point.

“…sleek, two-passenger air-cushion car, press a sequence of buttons and the national traffic computer notes your destination, figures out the current traffic situation and signals your car to slide out of the garage. Hands free, you sit back and begin to read the morning paper—which is flashed on a flat TV screen over the car’s dashboard. Tapping a button changes the page.”

This is half ridiculous. I’m sure at the time it sounded crazy. 1968 was solidly inside the giant car era. Why have a roadster? Frankly I find the idea of an air-cushioned car weirder than the national traffic computer. If I understand “air-cushioned” right, this futurist is predicting hovercrafts would replace wheeled automobiles. A centrally controlled traffic computer is an idea that was expected to occur, probably up until the early 1990s. I think the Internet killed that futurist plan though. Before the Internet people didn’t imagine separate computers being networked would be of any great use. Decentralized computing is now the norm. Eventually we will have autonomous cars, but it won’t be because the government is running a giant computer that controls all of them.

“The car accelerates to 150 mph in the city’s suburbs, then hits 250 mph in less built-up areas, gliding over the smooth plastic road.”

I don’t really understand why, if all cars are controlled by computer, they need to drive slower in the suburbs. Maybe the traffic is denser but so what? The computer controls all the cars. Plastic roads are an interesting idea. I don’t know anything about hovercrafts though, so I guess riding on plastic would make them go faster? But they hover so why would the road surface matter? They shouldn’t be touching it.

“The traffic computer, which feeds and receives signals to and from all cars in transit between cities, keeps vehicles at least 50 yds. apart.”

Why keep them apart? The traffic computer should pack as many cars as possible on to the road. It would be more impressive if these cars were traveling 200 mph and were only inches apart. The problem here is that this futurist isn’t thinking this idea through to its end. They are making the mistake of applying the rules of human driving with the ”reality” of computer controlled driving.

“You whizz past a string of cities, many of them covered by the new domes that keep them evenly climatized year round.”

Domed cities on Earth. There are so many things wrong with that. Forget any kind of environmental concerns. I’m looking at this from an economic perspective. Cities will bear the expense of constructing domes over hundreds of square miles. Then they will pay to heat and cool these hundreds of square miles. You know these domes will have to be transparent because otherwise the population will complain about never seeing the sky. The air conditioning equipment would be enormous to cool down these gigantic greenhouses. Perhaps cities with cold winters would luck out and get free solar heating. However since the dome is enclosed, you need to constantly ventilate it. I assume internal combustion engines will be banned so the air shouldn’t be as particulate filled as today. I guess fans would have to be scattered throughout to keep the air circulating and huge filters would be needed to clean it. So each city will pay hundreds of billions just so it can stay 72-degrees all year round. Sure, that’s really worth it.

“Suddenly your TV phone buzzes…”

Again the obsession with video telephones. I’m not sure if this TV phone is attached to your car or not. If not, then we’re there. Cell phones can do video calls if both phones have the front-facing camera and a service provider that supports it.

“A business associate wants a sketch of a new kind of impeller your firm is putting out for sports boats. You reach for your attache case and draw the diagram with a pencil-thin infrared flashlight on what looks like a TV screen lining the back of the case. The diagram is relayed to a similar screen in your associate’s office, 200 mi. away. He jabs a button and a fixed copy of the sketch rolls out of the device.”

Done! Buy a Tablet PC and get a wireless network card from your cell phone company, and you can do this right now. Draw on your tablet, email your sketch to your business associate and he can print it out in his office.

“…you slide beneath the dome of your destination city. Your car decelerates and heads for an outer-core office building where you’ll meet your colleagues. After you get out, the vehicle parks itself in a convenient municipal garage to await your return. Private cars are banned inside most city cores. Moving sidewalks and electrams carry the public from one location to another.”

This isn’t an exciting prediction. If your car can drive itself, it can park itself. I brought this section up because I find amount of government control disturbing. The government controls the traffic computer, and by extension, controls where you go. The garage you park in is owned by the government. Are there no private garages in this world? You can’t even take your car into the city. You must rely on government controlled “moving sidewalks and electrams”.

“…U.S. population having soared to 350 million…”

Close. We’re at 303 million on May 2nd.

“Giant transportation hubs called modemixers are located anywhere from 15 to 50 mi. outside all major urban centers. Tube trains, pushed through bores by compressed air, make the trip between modemixer and central city in 10 to 15 minutes.”

Modemixer, what a stupid name. I’m sure the government owns the tube trains. No taxis in this future! Anyway, compressed air trains are not a new idea. Alfred Ely Beech tried to build a compressed air subway in New York City way back in 1870. It didn’t work then and it wouldn’t work now. Sure it’s fine for a short distance. I bet that block long Beech subway was very comfortable, but you can’t scale that up to a 15 mile trip without busting your budget.

“A major feature of most modemixers is the launching pad from which 200-passenger rockets blast off for other continents. For less well-heeled travelers there are SST and hypersonic planes that carry 200 to 300 passengers at speeds up to 4,000 mph. Short trips— between cities less than 1,000 mi. apart—are handled by slower jumbo jets.”

This is an interesting breakdown of future air travel. Intercontinental flights will be done by rockets. The poor people will have to settle for hypersonic planes. I can’t imagine why this guy thought this up. Being blasted into the upper atmosphere by rocket is not comfortable. Rich people aren’t going to pay to experience multiple g-forces, when a hypersonic plane is perfectly comfortable. I don’t care how fast a rocket goes.

“Dwellings for the most part are assembled from prefabricated modules…”

Pfft, no. I think people are still predicting assembly line homes for the future.

“Homes in Mi’s 80th year are practically self-maintaining. Electrostatic precipitators clean the air and climatizers maintain the temperature and humidity at optimum levels. Robots are available to do housework and other simple chores. New materials for siding and interiors are self-cleaning and never peel, chip or crack.”

Is an electrostatic precipitator the same thing as an Ionic Breeze fan from Sharper Image? We have roombas for vacuuming and scoobas for mopping. Okay robots can’t do every household chore but we’re getting there. I have read about self-cleaning building materials but it has always been in the context of skyscraper construction. I never heard of anything like that for a residence.

“The housewife simply determines in advance her menus for the week, then slips prepackaged meals into the freezer and lets the automatic food utility do the rest. At preset times, each meal slides into the microwave oven and is cooked or thawed. The meal then is served on disposable plastic plates. These plates, as well as knives, forks and spoons of the same material, are so inexpensive they can be discarded after use.”

Ah, blinded by 1960s culture. If housewives are freed from housework by these computers, why didn’t anyone ever figure women would get bored at home and want to get their own careers going? By the way, why do the meals get cooked at preset times? What if I have to stay late at work? The computer is going to cook my dinner and let it get cold? Oh and were disposable plates and utensils expensive in 1968? I thought they had this stuff back then. Why would this futurist assume everyone would switch to disposable stuff because it’s “so inexpensive they can be discarded after one use”?

“The single most important item in 2008 households is the computer. These electronic brains govern everything from meal preparation and waking up the household to assembling shopping lists and keeping track of the bank balance.”

Don’t you love that phrase “electronic brains”? We can see more of the obsession with centralization this guy had. Your single household computer would govern everything that goes on in the house. What a relief there’s no government controlled household computer that tells everyone when to eat and when to wake up.

“Not every family has its private computer. Many families reserve time on a city or regional computer to serve their needs. The machine tallies up its own services and submits a bill, just as it does with other utilities.”

Ha! So society can afford to convert cities into arcologies but computers will still be too expensive for everyone to buy. I’m sure they will be so small, they will only fill up one football field.

“Money has all but disappeared. Employers deposit salary checks directly into their employees’ accounts. Credit cards are used for paying all bills. Each time you buy something, the card’s number is fed into the store’s computer station. A master computer then deducts the charge from your bank balance.”

This guy can’t even get terminology right. He mentions credit cards, but then goes on to describe a debit card system. It’s not credit if the charge gets deducted from your bank account! By the way, who knew direct deposit was a sign of the bright, modern future. It always seemed too mundane and obvious to me.

“TV-telephone shopping is common. To shop, you simply press the numbered code of a giant shopping center…Much of the family shopping is done this way. Instead of being jostled by crowds, shoppers electronically browse through the merchandise of any number of stores.”

Well we have had the Home Shopping Network for quite some time but I don’t think this guy meant that. I think he would be disappointed by the human operators and your inability to choose what products you want to see. I think similar systems were tried in the 80s but the Internet has replaced all that. The vague idea of shopping at home is there, but the implementation is all wrong.

“The average work day is about four hours.”

No! Why is it futurists always seem to think that productivity means completing the same amount of work in less time? Didn’t anyone ever think we would do more work in the same amount of time?

“The pace of technological advance is such that a certain amount of a jobholder’s spare time is used in keeping up with the new developments—on the average, about two hours of home study a day.”

Well this is only marginally correct. I’m not really sure what this guy expects future people to be studying. “Technological advance” is an awfully vague phrase. In a broader sense I think this guy was arguing that people studying to advance their careers would be more common. I don’t know if that’s true. I hope so. I’d like to think people today want to improve their skill set. I don’t know if more people do that than in 1968.

“Most of this study is in the form of programmed TV courses, which can be rented or borrowed from tape libraries. In fact most schooling—from first grade through college—consists of programmed TV courses or lectures via closed circuit.”

I heard of this idea many times and real effort went into trying to make it work. It never caught on though and now distance learning is all done through the Internet.

“TV screens cover an entire wall in most homes…”

If only! Well a 42″ plasma screen would be astonishing to someone from 1968.

“…and show most subjects other than straight text matter in color and three dimensions.”

Not quite. Maybe they wouldn’t be as impressed as I thought.

“In addition to programmed TV and the multiplicity of commercial fare, you can see top Broadway shows, hit movies and current nightclub acts for a nominal charge.”

There’s On Demand service and pay-per-view. This is solved.

“A typical vacation in 2008 is to spend a week at an undersea resort, where your hotel room window looks out on a tropical underwater reef, a sunken ship or an ancient, excavated city. Available to guests are two- and three-person submarines in which you can cruise well-marked underwater trails. Another vacation is a stay on a hotel satellite. The rocket ride to the satellite and back, plus the vistas of earth and moon, make a memorable vacation jaunt.”

This feels like a very tired, common prediction from the mid-20th century. I have to question if people really believed this. I suspect people just parroted this back in any discussion of the future because it was so oft repeated.

“Farmers are business executives running operations as automated as factories. TV scanners monitor tractors and other equipment computer programmed to plow, harrow and harvest. Wires imbedded in the ground send control signals to the machines. Computers also keep track of yields-, fertilization, soil composition and other factors influencing crops. At the beginning of each year, a print-out tells the farmer what to plant where, how much to fertilize and how much yield he can expect.”

This is mostly true. Farmers are less and less the dirty rube of yesteryear. I don’t know what a TV scanner is, but GPS systems control tractors. Farm equipment is getting bigger and more automated. Satellite imagery is used to plan for planting and harvest. No wires are embedded in the soil though.

“Mariculturists have turned areas of the sea into beds of protein-rich seaweed and algae. This raw material is processed into food that looks and tastes like steak and other meats.”

Soylent Green is made out of people!

“Heart disease has virtually been eliminated by drugs and diet.”

I laughed out loud when I read this. The next time you see one of those futurist shows on Discovery or TLC, and they make some crazy prediction about cancer being wiped out and people living to 150, remember this prediction.

All in all, a pretty enjoyable list. I’m glad not to live in this future though. It’s a little too automated for my taste. I’d love a car that drove itself but I’d like to choose where it goes. I don’t want a domed city either. It feels like such a bland, sterile life. This future takes away a lot of interaction. I don’t just mean between humans either but you do lose a lot of that as well. Your car drives itself. Your house cleans itself. The kitchen cooks your meals for you. The convenience is great, but I think I’d be losing out on making decisions for myself. I would be stuck following all these programmed schedules.

History class is often so boring because the interesting tidbits are left out. What do we learn in school about the 13 colonies and the end of the Revolutionary War? Before the war, the colonies spent their time defending themselves from the Indians and getting grumpy about taxes. After the war we were all united in our great democratic experiment. If you had a good textbook it mentioned the Whiskey Rebellion or maybe Shay’s Rebellion to try and give students a sense of the chaos that was really going on. I always found this to be a lackluster narrative of the period.

Reality is so much more interesting. Would you have guessed Pennsylvania and Connecticut went to war over the Wyoming Valley in today’s Pennsylvania? The Pennamite-Yankee War was a series of skirmishes between Pennsylvania and Connecticut settlers. When King Charles II gave these colonies charters in the 17th century, somehow the Wyoming Valley (certainly unnamed at the time) was given to both. This didn’t become a problem for another hundred years because the land was remained mostly unsettled by whites. Connecticut was the first colony to move on the region and sent in 1754.

The first shots were fired in 1769. The Connecticut (or Yankee) population continued to grow over those 15 years. The establishment of Wilkes-Barre by Connecticut  in 1769 appears to be the trigger for the violence. Admittedly “war” is a grandiose term for this conflict. In the first years it was a fight among local hotheads with conflicting land claims, and only a handful of people would actually die. Connecticut’s claim was confirmed by King George III in 1771, and two years later would establish a second town: Westmoreland.

The local Pennsylvanians (Pennamites back then) did not accept the Crown’s ruling and were incensed by the influx of Yankees. They renewed the war in 1775 with serious force. The militia of Northumberland County was called out against the Yankees. The war simmered for the next few years as the American Revolutionary War was fought simultaneously.

In 1781, as the Revolution was winding down, Pennsylvania petitioned Congress to settle territorial dispute. It was nearly two years before a Congressional Commission handed down a decision in Pennsylvania’s favor. Named the “Trenton Decree” this decision was met with suspicion by the neutral public as previous land disputes were normally settled in favor of those who held the land physically.

The Pennsylvania legislature accepted the decision with gusto and promptly drew up harsh terms for the Yankees to vacate their settlements. Yankees would have to pledge obedience to the Pennsylvania government and renounce all claims granted by Connecticut. Yankee settlers would be permitted to lease half of their farms for eleven months before abandoning the land. The Yankees would have none of it and promptly resumed the war against Pennsylvania.

This war was different than before. It went beyond a band of hotheads out for personal revenge or gain. This time the fighters were organized and professional. The change is not a surprise. Most of them had just finished fighting the British. They were now familiar with how to conduct proper warfare. Although the Pennamites quickly gained the upper hand, by the end of 1783, the Yankees had routed them from the Wyoming Valley with the burning of the Wilkes-Barre fort. Now everyone waited for Congress to decide on a petition for a new trial of the boundary dispute.

Congress didn’t move any faster back then as they do now. They waited until 1785 to deny the petition. By this time the Yankee settlers lost their love for Connecticut who stopped supplying them. Neither did they want to be a part of Pennsylvania whose citizens drove them from their homes at the barrel of a musket. The idea of forming their own state quickly took hold. A week after Congress denied the petition, the Yankees appointed members to a provisional government. In 1786 a constitution was drafted for the State of Westmoreland. Ethan Allen had arrived with some of his Green Mountain Men to support Westmoreland. Allen was given command of the state militia.

Pennsylvania had largely ignored the region after they were run out in 1783. The brutality of the conflict soured much of the support for asserting their claim over the land. The displeasure subsided by 1787 when the Pennsylvania legislature voted to establish Luzerne County within the valley. The act named Westmoreland’s lieutenant governor, John Franklin, as a county election commissioner for the election to create the first government for Luzerne County. Franklin refused to submit to Pennsylvania’s authority and urged other residents of the Wyoming Valley to resist as well. He also petitioned Congress again to reopen the Trenton Decree.

This time the people of Westmoreland were not united. A public discussion of the county election at Forty Fort turned into a riot. Likely because of Pennsylvania’s soft-handed approach, there was no mass protest. Pennsylvania’s authorities did not send in militia to throw people off their land. Instead they set about arresting John Franklin on a treason charge for telling people to ignore the Pennsylvania government. His arrest ended the nascent State of Westmoreland. The conflict wasn’t entirely over but it returned to the low-level fighting that started this war. Once the Pennsylvania legislature confirmed the land grants claimed by Yankees, the conflict in the Wyoming Valley ended and Pennsylvania’s claim to the territory was unchallenged.

The map I created to show Westmoreland is based on Connecticut’s land claim. Originally this was an extension of Litchfield County in Connecticut proper. In 1776 it was re-established as Westmoreland County. I assume the residents would have claimed the entire area that Connecticut originally claimed for their state, but I have never found any border descriptions to confirm my assumption. I still think this is pretty good to illustrate the region that was contested for so long. I overlaid the State of Westmoreland on a modern county map of Pennsylvania. The original Luzerne County in 1787 would have occupied most of Westmoreland.

Now isn’t this story a little more interesting than the usual bland pabulum they feed kids in school? My version is a little wordy but it could certainly be edited down into a few paragraphs for a textbook. This along with the other stories that are out there would do wonders in making history class interesting.

By the way, I love the word “Pennamite”. It sounds like some Old Testament tribe. And lo the Lord thy God struck down the wicked Pennamites with famine! And not a grain of wheat, nor seed of mustard was to be found in the land. And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. We should so go back to calling Pennsylvanians that.

Puerto Rico has long been assumed to be the 51st state in waiting, but there are actually alternatives. One such is the hypothetical State of Jefferson. In the general sense the new state would be made from counties in extreme Northern California and southern Oregon. The exact counties have varied through the years, but that just shows this idea has been around for a long time.

1852 began it all. In that year a bill proposed creating a State of Shasta from much of Northern California. Two years later, another bill proposed a State of Klamath composed of parts of Northern California and Southern Oregon. Similar secession bills would pop up every couple of years. The counties included may have changed from time to time, but in general the idea to split off that northern third of the state is an old one.

The boldest effort, although not necessarily the most serious, took place in 1941. Residents of the counties along the California-Oregon border decided to declare their own state. Gilbert Gable, the mayor of Port Orford, Oregon, started the movement with the hope that the effort would get the state governments to spend more on roads in the region. But Gable’s separatist idea got others excited in California. A group of men brandishing rifles stopped traffic on US 99, south of Yreka, CA, to hand out leaflets declaring the State of Jefferson was in rebellion against California and Oregon. Jefferson would “secede each Thursday until further notice.” A governor and legislature was chosen, and Yreka was declared the state capital. The movement was getting a lot of media attention until Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. With the start of the war the separatist fervor petered out.

The idea of separate state didn’t die out completely though. Shasta was resurrected for a time in the 1950s during a dispute over water rights. Shasta died out quickly again and Jefferson returned as the nebulous dream of a new state free from Sacramento and Salem. Today Jefferson remains as an incomplete thought. Novelty signs are placed on roads welcoming people to the State of Jefferson. There’s a network of radio stations that calls itself Jefferson Public Radio. There’s a jazz band named for the stillborn state. As far as I can tell though there is no solid political support. No mayor or state representative has taken it upon themselves to organize the movement into something serious.

I think that is a damn shame because this region needs serious politicians. California’s extreme north and Oregon’s south are both economic backwaters. Unemployment usually runs double the statewide average, at least in north California, and incomes are lower there too. Government needs to create an environment that’s conducive to business, but that can’t happen in this situation. The region is too underpopulated to get any attention at all from their capitals. Sacramento is only aware of the coastal strip from LA to San Diego, the Bay Area, and the Central Valley. The rest of the state doesn’t exist. I’m sure it’s the same deal in Salem, Oregon. I suspect nothing south of Eugene gets noticed in that capital. The region should govern itself because the residents are the only ones paying attention to their problems.

The slashed line area you see in the center is the 1941 State of Jefferson. The whole green area roughly includes the counties that correspond to modern plans for Jefferson. I say “roughly” because my map includes the entire Upstate California economic development zone. Upstate California was a name given to that region in an attempt to differentiate it from “Northern California” which most people associate with the Bay Area. Other State of Jefferson proposals don’t go as far south as mine does, but I think if these counties can be included in the same economic association, they can also be included in a new state. They share the same problems and have a similar rural lifestyle. I think it would be to their advantage to go with Jefferson.

I do see a problem with my plan though. California would never agree to give up Lake Tahoe. El Dorado and Placer counties will probably have to remain.

I really wonder what sort of state it would be. I haven’t lived there so I can’t say for sure, but from what I’ve read the chief grievances are economic. The infrastructure is too poor to support economic growth and statewide policies discourage business growth. If Jefferson really did become self-governing, they could tackle these issues directly. The Jefferson state government could build all the roads and bridges it can afford. I would expect a generous tax policy too. The 1941 movement declared there would be no sales tax, no income tax, no property tax and no liquor tax. The state would get funded from taxes on resource extraction companies. Is that fiscally possible today? I have my doubts even with today’s high commodity prices, especially if Jefferson’s residents still want a big road-building program. Still though the new state government could halve California’s tax rates and become a very attractive place to do business. The place is timber rich and, I think, still has copper mines. Perhaps Jeffersonians may permit oil companies to explore coastal drilling sites, although I’m not sure the likelihood of a find in that region. I thought the offshore oil was down in LA.

Then again a lot of things have changed since the mid-20th century. Do Jeffersonians still want economic development as they once did? Perhaps the residents would prefer to turn their entire state into a nature preserve. The place is a hinterland and they may want to keep it that way. Maybe they’re all treehuggers up there. I don’t know. What I do know is that Sacramento and Salem don’t know either. This region has always been neglected. Leaving it to stand on its own would be the best way to solve its problems.

Jefferson would have a quick start. It already has a state flag and state seal. Presumably Yreka would remain as the capital. For the fun of it I’d like to talk about my quibbles with these. Actually it’s only one thing. I’m just not thrilled about naming a Pacific state after Thomas Jefferson. It feels strange to me because I don’t identify him with the history of this region. I think Shasta makes a nice name, as would Fremont for John C. Fremont. Klamath sounds more like a monster than a state, but since it is a major river there is a logic to naming the state after it. I considered Carson for Kit Carson, but he seems more of a southwestern hero. Plus I think most Americans today would actually think the state was named for Johnny Carson.

I really like the flag and seal. I wouldn’t touch the seal at all. The double cross has great symbolism to it and adopting it would be a fun lesson in history for the future. The green field flag is a very good idea. The region has huge swathes of forest so green is a natural color to use. I don’t like to use words on flags though. This is a common practice with state flags but I never cared for it.

But this symbolism talk is just for fun. I don’t care about the name of the state or the flag colors, as much as I would like to see any new state formed there. If the Jeffersonians ever get down to business, they would have my support.

About a week ago a science story was picked up by the mainstream press. It concluded that females are genetically predisposed to like redder colors, such as pink, and men liked blues. It was a perfect feel good “science” story. It explained why girls get pink and boys get blue and gave a veneer of rationality. Researchers confirming our own common sense always makes for a good story.

Except when you dig a little deeper you see it’s bunk. Blue for boys and pink for girls didn’t happen until around World War Two. It used to be the exact opposite. To prove that I wanted to find the original reference from a Ladies Home Journal in June 1918. Unfortunately my online search turned up nothing related. However that same search turned up a hidden gem.

The December 1900 edition of Ladies Home Journal featured an article by John Elfreth Watkins, Jr. called, “What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years”. I have no idea who Watkins was, but he made some startlingly accurate predictions about the 20th century, and a few that were just plain wrong. Still it’s very entertaining for us who live in his future.

Prediction #1: There will probably be from 350,000,000 to 500,000,000 people in America and its possessions by the lapse of another century. Nicaragua will ask for admission to our Union after the completion of the great canal. Mexico will be next. Europe, seeking more territory to the south of us, will cause many of the South and Central American republics to be voted into the Union by their own people.”

Watkins was a little optimistic here. We’re only a little over 300 million here in 2007. That territorial expansion talk is so very 19th century. I bet he would be very disappointed to find out we didn’t acquire any new land after 1900.

Prediction #2: The American will be taller by from one to two inches. His increase of stature will result from better health, due to vast reforms in medicine, sanitation, food and athletics. He will live fifty years instead of thirty-five as at present – for he will reside in the suburbs. The city house will practically be no more. Building in blocks will be illegal. The trip from suburban home to office will require a few minutes only. A penny will pay the fare.

It’s funny how this prediction has such high aspirations and yet still doesn’t exceed reality. First though was the average life expectancy in 1900 only 35 years? That seems incredibly low to me. I would have guessed 50 years was the average, not what they aspired to.

That city planning talk was especially good. The idea of making middle and high density housing illegal is pretty funny from our perspective, but he was right about the growth of the suburbs. Watkins lived in the age when the suburbs first took on the role of a bedroom community for city workers. I suppose it was obvious to say they would grow, but his faith in public transport was impressive. At least I think it was. How much would a penny in 1900 be worth today?

Prediction #3: Gymnastics will begin in the nursery, where toys and games will be designed to strengthen the muscles. Exercise will be compulsory in the schools. Every school, college and community will have a complete gymnasium. All cities will have public gymnasiums. A man or woman unable to walk ten miles at a stretch will be regarded as a weakling.

Gym class in public school was a brand new idea back in that age. You can really see the influence of progressivism when he thought gyms would become basic urban infrastructure.

Prediction #4: There Will Be No Street Cars in Our Large Cities. All hurry traffic will be below or high above ground when brought within city limits. In most cities it will be confined to broad subways or tunnels, well lighted and well ventilated, or to high trestles with “moving-sidewalk” stairways leading to the top. These underground or overhead streets will teem with capacious automobile passenger coaches and freight with cushioned wheels. Subways or trestles will be reserved for express trains. Cities, therefore, will be free from all noises.

I don’t understand why he would make this prediction. They had elevated trains in those days and they were godawful noisy. Creating more elevated trains and elevated roadways should be noisier. Plus, what did he think would happen to the street level? And where would these elevated cars park? Watkins did not think this through.

Prediction #5: Trains will run two miles a minute, normally; express trains one hundred and fifty miles an hour. To go from New York to San Francisco will take a day and a night by fast express. There will be cigar-shaped electric locomotives hauling long trains of cars. Cars will, like houses, be artificially cooled. Along the railroads there will be no smoke, no cinders, because coal will neither be carried nor burned. There will be no stops for water. Passengers will travel through hot or dusty country regions with windows down.

Ah the dreams of the pre-flight era. Remember the Wright Brothers’ flight wouldn’t happen for another three years. The Europeans and Asians have beat his speed predictions, but I don’t think any trains in the US can do 150 mph. The fastest train is Amtrak’s Acela line, but I think that only does 120 mph and that’s not even for the full route. A trip from New York to San Francisco would take four days by train but a mere 6 hours by jet.

At least he was right about the rise of electric trains and air conditioning. The a/c prediction was the boldest. Was there even an a/c system built in a lab back in 1900?

Prediction #6: Automobiles will be cheaper than horses are today. Farmers will own automobile hay-wagons, automobile truck-wagons, plows, harrows and hay-rakes. A one-pound motor in one of these vehicles will do the work of a pair of horses or more. Children will ride in automobile sleighs in winter. Automobiles will have been substituted for every horse vehicle now known. There will be, as already exist today, automobile hearses, automobile police patrols, automobile ambulances, automobile street sweepers. The horse in harness will be as scarce, if, indeed, not even scarcer, then as the yoked ox is today.

It’s hard to say how bold a prediction this was. I live with cars everywhere, so it’s natural to assume their dominance was inevitable. In 1900 though maybe that wasn’t so clear.

Prediction #7: There will be air-ships, but they will not successfully compete with surface cars and water vessels for passenger or freight traffic. They will be maintained as deadly war-vessels by all military nations. Some will transport men and goods. Others will be used by scientists making observations at great heights above the earth.

Military attack blimps!

Prediction #8: Aerial War-Ships and Forts on Wheels. Giant guns will shoot twenty-five miles or more, and will hurl anywhere within such a radius shells exploding and destroying whole cities. Such guns will be armed by aid of compasses when used on land or sea, and telescopes when directed from great heights. Fleets of air-ships, hiding themselves with dense, smoky mists, thrown off by themselves as they move, will float over cities, fortifications, camps or fleets. They will surprise foes below by hurling upon them deadly thunderbolts. These aerial war-ships will necessitate bomb-proof forts, protected by great steel plates over their tops as well as at their sides. Huge forts on wheels will dash across open spaces at the speed of express trains of to-day. They will make what are now known as cavalry charges. Great automobile plows will dig deep entrenchments as fast as soldiers can occupy them. Rifles will use silent cartridges. Submarine boats submerged for days will be capable of wiping a whole navy off the face of the deep. Balloons and flying machines will carry telescopes of one-hundred-mile vision with camera attachments, photographing an enemy within that radius. These photographs as distinct and large as if taken from across the street, will be lowered to the commanding officer in charge of troops below.

I assume the forts on wheels would be tanks. That plays into his belief in the rise of the automobile. This was 14 years before World War One started, so I’ll give him credit for coming up with the tank. Still though he couldn’t break away from air ships to imagine heavier than air machines flying.

Prediction #9: Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance. If there be a battle in China a hundred years hence snapshots of its most striking events will be published in the newspapers an hour later. Even to-day photographs are being telegraphed over short distances. Photographs will reproduce all of Nature’s colors.

Prediction #10: Man will See Around the World. Persons and things of all kinds will be brought within focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of miles at a span. American audiences in their theatres will view upon huge curtains before them the coronations of kings in Europe or the progress of battles in the Orient. The instrument bringing these distant scenes to the very doors of people will be connected with a giant telephone apparatus transmitting each incidental sound in its appropriate place. Thus the guns of a distant battle will be heard to boom when seen to blaze, and thus the lips of a remote actor or singer will be heard to utter words or music when seen to move.

This is pretty impressive. Was anyone even working on television at the time?

Prediction #11: No Mosquitoes nor Flies. Insect screens will be unnecessary. Mosquitoes, house-flies and roaches will have been practically exterminated. Boards of health will have destroyed all mosquito haunts and breeding-grounds, drained all stagnant pools, filled in all swamp-lands, and chemically treated all still-water streams. The extermination of the horse and its stable will reduce the house-fly.

Haha, he’s definitely from a pre-environmentalist age. Mosquitoes, flies and roaches are disgusting bugs but I know they would have their defenders if anyone tried to wipe them out.

Prediction #12: Peas as Large as Beets. Peas and beans will be as large as beets are to-day. Sugar cane will produce twice as much sugar as the sugar beet now does. Cane will once more be the chief source of our sugar supply. The milkweed will have been developed into a rubber plant. Cheap native rubber will be harvested by machinery all over this country. Plants will be made proof against disease microbes just as readily as man is to-day against smallpox. The soil will be kept enriched by plants which take their nutrition from the air and give fertility to the earth.

This one, and the sequence below, are pretty strange. I don’t really get why Watkins associated giant fruits and vegetables with abundance. The point isn’t lost though. Crop land will become more productive. Watkins was probably thinking more like the green revolution of the mid-20th century, rather than today’s gene manipulation.

Prediction #13: Strawberries as Large as Apples will be eaten by our great-great-grandchildren for their Christmas dinners a hundred years hence. Raspberries and blackberries will be as large. One will suffice for the fruit course of each person. Strawberries and cranberries will be grown upon tall bushes. Cranberries, gooseberries and currants will be as large as oranges. One cantaloupe will supply an entire family. Melons, cherries, grapes, plums, apples, pears, peaches and all berries will be seedless. Figs will be cultivated over the entire United States.

Prediction #14: Black, Blue and Green Roses. Roses will be as large as cabbage heads. Violets will grow to the size of orchids. A pansy will be as large in diameter as a sunflower. A century ago the pansy measured but half an inch across its face. There will be black, blue and green roses. It will be possible to grow any flower in any color and to transfer the perfume of a scented flower to another which is odorless. Then may the pansy be given the perfume of the violet.

Prediction #15: No Foods will be Exposed. Storekeepers who expose food to air breathed out by patrons or to the atmosphere of the busy streets will be arrested with those who sell stale or adulterated produce. Liquid-air refrigerators will keep great quantities of food fresh for long intervals.

I found this pretty interesting. Watkins got refrigeration right, but we haven’t yet reached the point where air exposure is considered tainting food.

Prediction #16: There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary. Spelling by sound will have been adopted, first by the newspapers. English will be a language of condensed words expressing condensed ideas, and will be more extensively spoken than any other. Russian will rank second.

People today probably find this the most bizarre, out-of-left-field prediction to make. That’s because we have forgotten about a serious attempt to simplify English spelling in those days.

Prediction #17: How Children will be Taught. A university education will be free to every man and woman. Several great national universities will have been established. Children will study a simple English grammar adapted to simplified English, and not copied after the Latin. Time will be saved by grouping like studies. Poor students will be given free board, free clothing and free books if ambitious and actually unable to meet their school and college expenses. Medical inspectors regularly visiting the public schools will furnish poor children free eyeglasses, free dentistry and free medical attention of every kind. The very poor will, when necessary, get free rides to and from school and free lunches between sessions. In vacation time poor children will be taken on trips to various parts of the world. Etiquette and housekeeping will be important studies in the public schools.

What did I tell you – simplified English. I guess he expected it to take off. A free university education is just an extension of the rise of public schooling which was pretty new in 1900. Actually I do think we’re headed in that direction. When public school began people would get just a few years of education and then head to work. Later a high school graduation became the minimum necessary to make a living. Now we are just starting to see the limitations of a bachelor’s degree. Sometime in the future I could see a bachelor’s becoming like a high school diploma in 1950, but probably not until after 2100.

Prediction #18: Telephones Around the World. Wireless telephone and telegraph circuits will span the world. A husband in the middle of the Atlantic will be able to converse with his wife sitting in her boudoir in Chicago. We will be able to telephone to China quite as readily as we now talk from New York to Brooklyn. By an automatic signal they will connect with any circuit in their locality without the intervention of a “hello girl”.

Watkins seems to have got the evolution of the telephone right. Automatic switching came first and then wireless. I wonder if he imagined we would be able to carry our phones in our pockets, or was he still thinking of a big, clunky machine that just happened to be wireless?

Prediction #19: Grand Opera will be telephoned to private homes, and will sound as harmonious as though enjoyed from a theatre box. Automatic instruments reproducing original airs exactly will bring the best music to the families of the untalented. Great musicians gathered in one enclosure in New York will, by manipulating electric keys, produce at the same time music from instruments arranged in theatres or halls in San Francisco or New Orleans, for instance. Thus will great bands and orchestras give long-distance concerts. In great cities there will be public opera-houses whose singers and musicians are paid from funds endowed by philanthropists and by the government. The piano will be capable of changing its tone from cheerful to sad. Many devises will add to the emotional effect of music.

It’s interesting that he connected live music with the telephone and not with any recorded medium. Didn’t Edison invent that recording cylinder before 1900? Why would he expect this complicated distance concert arrangement?

Prediction #20: Coal will not be used for heating or cooking. It will be scarce, but not entirely exhausted. The earth’s hard coal will last until the year 2050 or 2100; its soft-coal mines until 2200 or 2300. Meanwhile both kinds of coal will have become more and more expensive. Man will have found electricity manufactured by waterpower to be much cheaper. Every river or creek with any suitable fall will be equipped with water-motors, turning dynamos, making electricity. Along the seacoast will be numerous reservoirs continually filled by waves and tides washing in. Out of these the water will be constantly falling over revolving wheels. All of our restless waters, fresh and salt, will thus be harnessed to do the work which Niagara is doing today: making electricity for heat, light and fuel.

Hydro power was the solar power of the turn of the 20th century. As far as they knew it was cheap, easy energy with no consequences. We learned our lesson decades later. This makes me wonder if there will be some unforeseen consequences from covering the Earth with banks of solar cells.

Prediction #21: Hot and Cold Air from Spigots. Hot or cold air will be turned on from spigots to regulate the temperature of a house as we now turn on hot or cold water from spigots to regulate the temperature of the bath. Central plants will supply this cool air and heat to city houses in the same way as now our gas or electricity is furnished. Rising early to build the furnace fire will be a task of the olden times. Homes will have no chimneys, because no smoke will be created within their walls.

Prediction #22: Store Purchases by Tube. Pneumatic tubes, instead of store wagons, will deliver packages and bundles. These tubes will collect, deliver and transport mail over certain distances, perhaps for hundreds of miles. They will at first connect with the private houses of the wealthy; then with all homes. Great business establishments will extend them to stations, similar to our branch post-offices of today, whence fast automobile vehicles will distribute purchases from house to house.

Well now I understand what will be at street level. Subways will move trains underground. Elevated roads will move cars up off city streets, and that will leave room for a vast network of pneumatic tubes!

Prediction #23: Ready-cooked meals will be bought from establishments similar to our bakeries of today. They will purchase materials in tremendous wholesale quantities and sell the cooked foods at a price much lower than the cost of individual cooking. Food will be served hot or cold to private houses in pneumatic tubes or automobile wagons. The meal being over, the dishes used will be packed and returned to the cooking establishments where they will be washed. Such wholesale cookery will be done in electric laboratories rather than in kitchens. These laboratories will be equipped with electric stoves, and all sorts of electric devices, such as coffee-grinders, egg-beaters, stirrers, shakers, parers, meat-choppers, meat-saws, potato-mashers, lemon-squeezers, dish-washers, dish-dryers and the like. All such utensils will be washed in chemicals fatal to disease microbes. Having one’s own cook and purchasing one’s own food will be an extravagance.

I really wish this was true. Lately, I’ve been so sick of cooking.

Prediction #24: Vegetables Grown by Electricity. Winter will be turned into summer and night into day by the farmer. In cold weather he will place heat-conducting electric wires under the soil of his garden and thus warm his growing plants. He will also grow large gardens under glass. At night his vegetables will be bathed in powerful electric light, serving, like sunlight, to hasten their growth. Electric currents applied to the soil will make valuable plants grow larger and faster, and will kill troublesome weeds. Rays of colored light will hasten the growth of many plants. Electricity applied to garden seeds will make them sprout and develop unusually early.

Prediction #25: Oranges will grow in Philadelphia. Fast-flying refrigerators on land and sea will bring delicious fruits from the tropics and southern temperate zone within a few days. The farmers of South America, South Africa, Australia and the South Sea Islands, whose seasons are directly opposite to ours, will thus supply us in winter with fresh summer foods, which cannot be grown here. Scientist will have discovered how to raise here many fruits now confined to much hotter or colder climates. Delicious oranges will be grown in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Cantaloupes and other summer fruits will be of such a hardy nature that they can be stored through the winter as potatoes are now.

Prediction #26: Strawberries as large as apples will be eaten by our great great grandchildren for their Christmas dinners a hundred years hence. Raspberries and blackberries will be as large. One will suffice for the fruit course of each person. Strawberries and cranberries will be grown upon tall bushes. Cranberries, gooseberries and currants will be as large as oranges. One cantaloupe will supply an entire family. Melons, cherries, grapes, plums, apples, pears, peaches and all berries will be seedless. Figs will be cultivated over the entire United States.

This is the same as prediction #13. Not sure why it was doubled.

Prediction #27: Few drugs will be swallowed or taken into the stomach unless needed for the direct treatment of that organ itself. Drugs needed by the lungs, for instance, will be applied directly to those organs through the skin and flesh. They will be carried with the electric current applied without pain to the outside skin of the body. Microscopes will lay bare the vital organs, through the living flesh, of men and animals. The living body will to all medical purposes be transparent. Not only will it be possible for a physician to actually see a living, throbbing heart inside the chest, but he will be able to magnify and photograph any part of it. This work will be done with rays of invisible light.

Electric current without pain? Okay, sounds like someone doesn’t know much about electricity. At least he predicted MRIs.

Prediction #28: There will be no wild animals except in menageries. Rats and mice will have been exterminated. The horse will have become practically extinct. A few of high breed will be kept by the rich for racing, hunting and exercise. The automobile will have driven out the horse. Cattle and sheep will have no horns. They will be unable to run faster than the fattened hog of today. A century ago the wild hog could outrun a horse. Food animals will be bred to expend practically all of their life energy in producing meat, milk, wool and other by-products. Horns, bones, muscles and lungs will have been neglected.

It’s funny how when Watkins says there will be no more wild animals, he means it as a sign of progress. Now there may be a twinge of regret from him as we have to sever a link to nature, but there’s no indication that he doesn’t want this to happen.

Prediction #29: To England in Two Days. Fast electric ships, crossing the ocean at more than a mile a minute, will go from New York to Liverpool in two days. The bodies of these ships will be built above the waves. They will be supported upon runners, somewhat like those of the sleigh. These runners will be very buoyant. Upon their under sides will be apertures expelling jets of air. In this way a film of air will be kept between them and the water’s surface. This film, together with the small surface of the runners, will reduce friction against the waves to the smallest possible degree. Propellers turned by electricity will screw themselves through both the water beneath and the air above. Ships with cabins artificially cooled will be entirely fireproof. In storm they will dive below the water and there await fair weather.

It kind of sounds like he’s describing giant hovercrafts that can also act as submarines. That’s pretty far out there. At least we beat his speed expectations.

This is a US propaganda poster from the First World War. I assume this was produced by the Our Boys in France Tobacco Fund. Now I’m not about to lecture on smoking. I just have to wonder why on Earth this level of exaggeration was acceptable? You need food and you need weapons for an army. Cigarettes should not be high the list of priorities. It just astounds me.

Here are a few letters from that era I’ll throw in for good measure. They’re not the most inspiring stuff so they don’t get their own post.

This is a priceless piece of history. I just found it last night, after I wrote about the correction of NASA’s annual mean temperature data.

This is a Newsweek article from 1975 describing how food production will drop off because of a worldwide fall in temperature. I read that this was actually one part of a whole series of global cooling articles but I have not found any other from this alleged series. One day I’ll need to browse the microfiche at the library.

Some excellent supplemental reading is a rebuttal from the Boston Globe of Jon Meacham’s, the current Newsweek editor, dismissal of this historical treasure. My favorite part was how Meacham claims there was no consensus on global cooling when in 1975 Newsweek wrote meteorologists were “nearly unanimous” in their agreement.