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.

With the 75th anniversary of the Lindbergh baby’s kidnapping just past, Time has decided to rank the 25 most notorious crimes of the 20th century. I don’t want to quibble about the actual ranking. How do you really decide if John Wayne Gacy’s killing spree was worse than Ted Bundy’s? There are a couple of crimes in there I find worth commenting on though.

• Time starts with the Lindbergh kidnapping. It really is the perfect media-friendly crime. Charles Lindbergh was a huge hero back then so he brought his celebrity to the story. His baby was a blond haired, blue eyed and light skinned. Really he was the picture of 1930s eugenic dreams. Radio was commonplace by this time so everyone, no matter your education or income, could partake of news of the kidnapping. There was so much news to partake too! If you like crime dramas, read the Wikipedia summary of the case. It’s practically the outline for a novel.
• Time places the Piltdown Man fraud in the number 3 slot. I have to disagree with this choice entirely. Yes it was a big fraud but I really don’t consider it to be so Earth shattering. Scientists have faked evidence before and Piltdown Man ruined some careers, but it didn’t change the course of science.
• The Fatty Arbuckle case came next. I had always known there was something lurid about this story but I never bothered to look it up. Wow I never would have guessed this! An attendee of Arbuckle’s party at the St. Francis Hotel charged that Arbuckle raped a young actress with a beer bottle, puncturing her bladder in the process, and that ultimately lead to her death. The newspapers raked Arbuckle over the coals. Unfortunately for him the case dragged on through two hung juries. The third jury acquitted him and even apologized for all the legal trouble but the damage was done long ago. He spent many more years shunned by his industry and the public. Finally when he’s just beginning to turn his career around he dies of heart failure. Oh jeez, how tragic can you get? Why isn’t this the number one crime?
• America’s biggest art heist surprised me. I read the headline and when I saw it didn’t even have a catchy name for the crime I assumed this shouldn’t be on the list. I was wrong. Back in 1990, two guys dressed as Boston cops walked into a tiny museum, tied up the guards, shut off the security system and left with as many paintings as they could carry. Two that they stole, Vermeer’s The Concert and Rembrandt’s Storm on the Sea of Galilee, are much too famous to ever sell. Nothing has ever been recovered and the art world fears these paintings have been destroyed by the thieves. An unsolved case where $300 million in paintings are missing should have a good name. Someone needs to think of one.
• I think it’s an oversight on Time’s part that the Leopold & Loeb case didn’t make the list. You have two young, rich, geniuses who committed a thrill killing. Oh and they admitted to having gay sex with each other. All this in 1924! Come to think of it…why isn’t this in the top 3 crimes?

I think on first guess most people would make the mistake of assuming the Toledo War was one of a thousand little Indian wars fought during the 19th century. What makes this war far more interesting is that it was one of the few wars fought between US citizens, and can ultimately be blamed on poor mapmaking.

Above is the map that led to the conflict. This map, created by John Mitchell, was used to settle territorial disputes in the Treaty of Paris. The same map was used when Congress was organizing the (at the time) land in the northwest of the country. The language used in the Northwest Ordinance set a territorial border at a line drawn west to east from the southern tip of Lake Michigan to Lake Erie. On Mitchell’s map this gives the entire western shore of Lake Erie to the Ohio territory.

Unfortunately that map doesn’t correspond to reality, since Lake Michigan’s southern tip is well below Lake Erie’s northern shore. The wedge of land in question was bitterly contested. Ohio had become a state in 1803 and included that land in its state constitution. When Michigan applied for statehood in 1835, Ohio blocked the enabling act because of the disputed Toledo Strip. Both sides then passed laws making it illegal to recognize their rival’s claim over the land. Those laws led to the only casualty in this grandly named war. A Michigan deputy sheriff was stabbed while attempting to arrest an Ohio-supporting family in the strip.

That’s not to say there wasn’t plenty more bluster left. Both sides raised militias numbering in the thousands. Michigan’s efforts were for naught though. Both governments maneuvered their soldiers and residents harassed each other with lawsuits but Ohio had far more political weight. Ohio had a sizeable Congressional contingent and was considered a swing state in upcoming presidential election. With this clout Michigan was unable to get any support in the federal government. Congress passed and President Jackson signed a bill allowing Michigan statehood if it gave up its claims to the Toledo Strip. Michigan was compensated with the remainder of the Upper Peninsula from the Wisconsin Territory. Originally Michigan only included the eastern third of the UP. Facing bankruptcy Michigan gave in to Congress’s terms and ended the war.

Back in 1836 when the deal was made, everyone assumed Michigan was the big loser. The Upper Peninsula was considered useless land. Years later a huge copper deposit would be discovered there beginning a mineral boom for their economy. So the real loser in this war was Wisconsin. If the UP remained in that territory who knows if cheese would have come to dominate the state’s culture?

I recently found an excellent blog named Strange Maps that, as its name says, posts strange and interesting maps online. Today I would like to comment on one in particular.

I have never heard of this footnote in history before but my mind is racing from the possibility of a United States of Greater Austria. The idea, championed by Aurel Popovici, was dreamed up by a group of intellectual advisers to the Archduke of Austria-Hungary. Just imagine what a huge alteration to history this could have been if it was adopted.

If you can’t imagine it, allow me to give you a brief history lesson. It was the assassination of this same Archduke that began the First World War. The assassin was fighting for Bosnia, a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to unite with Serbia. The First World War laid the foundation for the Second World War. The devastation of that war created the international system we have today. The most famous component of this is the UN, but it also includes organizations like the IMF and the World Bank. Today’s Middle East troubles began with the partition of the Ottoman Empire after WWI and escalated when Israel was created following WWII.

The question that will define this alternate history is if this new government satisfied the minorities in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire would there still have been a First World War? I’ve often heard it taught that the assassination of the Archduke was merely the spark that ignited the war. The implication being that if the Archduke survived, something else would have provoked the war because everyone was itching for it anyway. Is that really true?

The answer really depends on how comfortable the ethnic groups would be in the USGA. If Popovici’s plan worked these ethnicities would be satisfied with the autonomy given them within the federation. This should end most of the terrorist violence plaguing the country. The hardliners that remained would not have public support and as a result there would be little desire for war. On the other hand, if the ethnic groups still weren’t satisfied, the same scenario would play out as it did in our history.

Maybe I’m being too optimistic but I would like to think the USGA, by giving these people a stake in their own governance, would have turned them away from war. I don’t think any country would have been bold enough to invade another. Certainly most countries wanted war but they didn’t want to play the part of the aggressor. Everyone was simply waiting for an excuse to come to them. Since the Balkans would have been pacified by this representative government, I can’t think of another area in Europe chaotic enough to give a pretext for war.

Without a WWI, Tsarist Russia would have remained strong enough to suppress the Bolshevik revolution. This would have meant no cold war, or at least not an anti-communist one. The German Empire would have remained intact and there would have been no WWII. Without the economic consequences of WWI, the world’s economy would have continued to expand uninterrupted. However I don’t know if the Great Depression was inevitable. Economists are still arguing about what caused it.

Don’t let me paint too rosy a picture of the world. Although China would not have become communist because there was no USSR to prop up the Chinese communists, the country would still be ravaged by feuding warlords and an aggressive Japan. I think war between the US and Japan was inevitable too. Nuclear politics would be drastically different. Since Germany did not suffer defeat, there was no Nazi party around to seize power and chase Jewish physicists away to the US. Plus without the fright of a WWII the US probably wouldn’t have thrown much effort into a nuclear program. These two possibilities together mean Germany likely would have been the first country to develop a nuclear bomb.

I wish I knew the details of this proposed United States of Greater Austria. Would it be a republic or a constitutional monarchy? Would it have a parliamentary system or presidential one? Did Popovici model this new government after the USA or did the similarities end with the name? If you know of any good books covering this, let me know in the comments.

I have always been fascinated by the stories of contact between the Old World and the Americas before Columbus made it famous. I feel positive Columbus isn’t the whole story. João Vaz Corte-Real was honored for discovering the New Land of the Codfish. The odds are good he made it to Newfoundland about 20 years before Columbus, but we just don’t have solid evidence of it. What we do have is sketchy evidence Scandinavians made it to Minnesota almost 100 years before Corte-Real.

Everyone knows the story of Vinland, but that was just a brief sail along the North American coast and maybe a small coastal settlement at best. That’s no big feat for experienced sailors like the Vikings, especially when they could get supplies at Greenland. Getting inland as far as Minnesota is another matter.

The story begins back in 1354 at the Swedish court of King Magnus Erikson. By then word had reached Sweden that the Greenland colony had been abandoned. It was rumored the colonists abandoned the Church and sailed west to live among the native pagans. This could not be tolerated so an expedition was sent to discover the fate of the colonists. This part is fact, but the rest of the story is speculation.

The expedition sailed west of Greenland searching for signs of their heathen countrymen. Making it through Hudson Bay, up the Nelson River and south through Lake Winnipeg, the expedition was left on foot. I imagine they chose to head south because it seemed natural to search in the direction of the better climate. At the southern point of Lake Winnipeg there are no waterways that would interfere with this decision. South the expedition headed, while our story moves to 1898.

Olof Ohman was clearing his field of trees and debris before plowing. Lying face down and covered in the root system of a nearby tree, Ohman found a stone tablet with strange writing. This tablet would come to be called the Kensington Runestone. The runestone spent a few years on display in a local bank, briefly examined at Northwestern University then left in storage on Ohman’s farm. To Ohman’s credit, he never tried to make money off it.

Hjalmar Holand, a grad student at the University of Wisconsin, bought the runestone in 1907 for $10. Holand actively sought media attention and archeological examination of the artifact. Up until now the runestone had been dismissed as a forgery. Holand convinced some academics to take a fresh look at it. Although the original tree had been removed, by examining nearby trees, they estimated the original tree was 40 years old. Considering the county had only been settled in 1858, any hoaxer would have to be very quiet and patient. Newton Winchell from the Minnesota Historical Society estimated the inscriptions were 500 years old based on the weathering of the stone. However, Holand had never been successful in convincing any Swedish linguists the text was authentic.

Very little academic work involving the Kensington Runestone occurred after that initial examination in 1910. Not until 1998 did anyone re-examine the physical evidence. This new test determined the stone had undergone “in the ground” weathering for at least 50 to 200 years. Further, these tests noted an absence of mica from the inscriptions. A comparison of 200 year old gravestones showed deterioration but not the same absence as with the runestone. Although you do have to consider different weathering patterns since the two stones weren’t subjected to the exact same conditions.

The major dispute centers on the translation. The runes used are obscure and not typical of 14th century Swedish. Here is the latest translation.

Front Inscription:

8 Geats (South Swedes) and 22 Norwegians on acquisition venture from Vinland far to the west We had traps by 2 shelters one day’s travel to the north from this stone We were fishing one day. After we came home found 10 men red with blood and dead AVM (Ave Maria) Deliver from evils.

Side Inscription:

I have 10 men at the inland sea/lake to look after our ship 14 days travel from this wealth/property Year of our Lord 1362.

It paints a grim end to the story. Landing at the shore of Lake Winnipeg, ten men stayed behind to guard the ships. The remaining twenty headed south. Healthy men, traveling light, should cover approximately 30 miles a day. Petersfield, Manitoba seems to be the closest town to the shores of the lake. Petersfield to Kensington, Minnesota is roughly 360 miles. By my estimation that is a 12 day journey. The men who left the tablet did it in 14 days, which is a pretty good approximation.

One day north of Kensington, while some of the men were off fishing, their camp was attacked by the natives and ten were killed. The remainder probably fled south feeling scared, hopeless and alone. Half their party had been slaughtered. They’re in a far away land surrounded by hostile natives. Their ships are two weeks away and to get to them they will have to evade the same people that killed their compatriots. I think they left the stone because they figured they weren’t going to make it back but didn’t want their deaths forgotten.

This story is gut wrenchingly powerful. Imagine how strong their isolation and fear must have been. I want to believe this is a true account. The physical evidence is very favorable that this stone comes from the right time, and when you consider the degradation of the mica layer, you can’t say a hoaxer found a weathered stone and carved a prank into it. The written language is the sticking point that keeps this artifact from rewriting our history books. I wish someone would retrace the route from Lake Winnipeg and search for more Scandinavian artifacts. Others have been found but they were never recovered using proper archeological techniques, so they cannot be considered as conclusive evidence. If we could establish that the Vikings had made it into the center of the continent, we could accept the runestone at face value.

Most Westerners haven’t a clue what the Tripartite Aggression was because that’s the name the Egyptians use. Over here we call it the Suez Crisis. Sadly, most Westerners probably still don’t know what I’m talking about. The fiftieth anniversary of the start of the crisis just passed a few days ago with barely any mention in the press. The Economist was the only news source I found bringing it up. It’s a shame too because that forgotten event crystallized much of today’s political battle lines.

Back in 1952, Egypt’s dictator, Gamal Abdel Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal, seizing it from the French management company. Rather than being done for socialist ideology or even nationalism, the seizure appears to have been motivated by revenge. The Americans and the British had recently withdrawn their offers of development loans to build the Aswan High Dam. The dam was Nasser’s key project to which he pinned all his plans for future economic growth. When he took over the Suez Canal, Nasser claimed he needed the transit fees to fund the dam construction. After the war, Nasser used Soviet money to build at Aswan, but taking the Suez away from the Europeans was his way of thumbing his nose at the old colonial masters.

The British feared Nasser as a nascent Hitler. The French were more self serving in their opposition. The French government owned a stake in the canal management company and didn’t want to lose the revenue, but also Nasser was aiding Algerian rebels. Both France and Britain wanted Nasser gone, but neither could come up with a justification for war. Here’s where I disagree with them. To me, when a foreign government robs your citizens, that’s enough justification. Egypt stole property from a French company. France has the right to stand up for its citizens and take that property back. Britain can always come along as an ally. The Europeans didn’t see it that way, probably because it is an economic justification. Luckily for them, Israel stepped in to provide their high-minded reason for war. Israel would invade Egypt to put an end to their incursions across their southern border. Britain and France would then retake the canal with the justification that they were acting as peacekeepers separating the two warring sides and safeguarding international shipping.

Sounds like a pretty lame excuse to me, and the rest of the world didn’t buy it either. It looked particularly lame when the British bombed the Egyptian air force into nothing and the two armies raced into Egypt to capture Nasser. This is where the Americans involved themselves and created the relations we have today with Europe and the Middle East. Eisenhower was blindsided by the invasion and that made him furious. He threatened to withhold IMF loans from the UK, which would lead to the collapse of their economy. Naturally the British relented. The French backed down with them because the French army was under British command. The invasion force left Egypt and UN peacekeepers were sent in. Why did Ike care so much? You can thank the Cold War. Eisenhower was afraid that if former colonial powers started flexing their muscles again, the third world would go over to the Soviet side.

When those troops left, the world was changed. The British were scarred into inaction. They failed to oust Nasser and were restrained by the Americans. Since then the British would not act without the US onboard. The French noted that the British would not put Europe ahead of their relationship with America. A year after Suez the French established the European Community, and kept Britain out until the 1970s. Israel was chastised by Eisenhower but that did not last long. With the British retreat from Mid-East affairs, the Soviets became the Arab champion. With the Soviets on the Arab side, the US reflexively jumped to the other and Israel was pulled into the US orbit. The Arab world was emboldened by Nasser’s gamble. He dared the old powers and won. This looked even bolder back in the 50s because American pressure to leave Egypt was secret. This also handed a public relations victory to the Soviets. Khrushchev threatened to attack the British and French with “rocket weapons” if they didn’t withdraw from Egypt. They left soon after because of the US, but the public didn’t know that at the time.

It’s hard to say if things would be better today if the Anglo-French force did topple Nasser. Arab nationalism would certainly have been stunted. Nasser was the idol for that whole movement. Remember all the knock-on effects though. If the US didn’t force Britain to back down, France wouldn’t have lost trust in Britain and wouldn’t have had to turn to Europe. There may never have been a European Community or European Union. The Cold War would have continued, but with a confident and independent Anglo-French alliance, it would have been much more complicated. Could success in the former British colony of Egypt lead to British assistance in Algeria? Maybe they would have held on to their African colonies a lot longer and fought far bloodier wars. Could the French have gone back to Vietnam and avenge their defeat at Dien Bien Phu? How would the middling European powers adjusted to a resurgent Britain and France? West Germany and Italy may have sought closer US ties to keep themselves from being drowned out, or they may have done just the opposite. They could have courted Soviet leaders and tried playing the Soviets and Western Europe off each other. Would Franco’s Spain come out from behind its fascist wall sooner?

Look at all the possibilities I’ve thought of already and that’s just with Europe. Who knows how this would affect the US, the Soviets or the whole Middle East? It really saddens me that history classes don’t make a bigger subject out of the Suez Crisis. If it’s discussed at all, it’s dismissed as the last breath of colonialism. The effects on the wider world are never explored, which is a shame considering how we live with them today.