joemirsky

Monday, June 8, 2020

Trademark of the Beast

This is one of 1122 articles in my book Now and Then Again, The Way We Were and the Way We Are, second edition. The book is available from Amazon for $20.95 print and $9.95 Kindle and also as an ebook from Apple, Kobo, and Scribd for $9.95. It's fixed format so it's better with a tablet, laptop, or computer. There are more articles from the book on another blog here. And there is a book preview website.

Trademark of the Beast

In the early 80’s, rumors began circulating that Procter and Gamble's logo with the man in the moon and 13 stars is secretly a satanic symbol with “666” concealed in the curls of the beard and that the hair and beard taper into devil’s horns.

The rumors also held that the president of P&G had come out as a Satanist on a talk show and that the company had given large sums to the Church of Satan. (There really is a Church of Satan.)

Boycotts of Procter and Gamble products were organized and hundreds of thousands of inquiries poured into the company from all over the world.

P&G sued a few individuals for spreading these rumors in the 1980’s. In 1990, P&G sued a Kansas couple who were Amway distributors (and P&G competitors), charging that they had distributed literature to their customers with the satanic rumors. P&G was awarded $75,000 in damages.

P&G found out that other Amway distributors had used the company's voicemail system to revive the satanic rumors and in 1995 sued Amway and some of its distributors.

After 12 years of dismissals and appeals, Procter and Gamble won a judgement against four Amway distributors for $19.5 million in 2007. Procter and Gamble had retired the man-in-the-moon logo in 1985 due to the controversy.

The devil-under-the-bed types are still out there, though more liability conscious. One web site carefully insinuates satanic associations by posing questions for you to answer. Does the Lucent logo, a roughly drawn red circle, represent the flames of hell and does Apple's logo depict a bite out of the forbidden fruit? And it noted that the price of the first Apple in 1977 was $666 (it really was).

Even Disney is not immune. They prod you to find “666” in the curlicues of the Walt Disney signature. The Lucifer Lighting Company was automatically diabolical.

Speaking of Lucifer lighting, one of the first matches was patented in 1828 and sold under the name “Lucifer.” The name stuck. Even into the 20th century you could light your fag with a Lucifer, as immortalized in a World War I song.

Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag
Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,
And smile, smile, smile,
While you've a Lucifer to light your fag,
Smile, boys, that's the style.
What's the use of worrying?
It never was worth while, so
Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag,
And smile, smile, smile.

The Ugliest Angel

The Ugliest Angel

Nicknamed “The Angel” as a child for his angelic face, Maurice Tillet was born in Russia to French parents in 1903. His father died when he was young and Maurice and his mother emigrated to France in 1917 during the Russian revolution. He developed acromegaly from a pituitary tumor when he was 19 which caused grotesque deformation of his face and body.

He served in the French navy for 5 years, getting out in Singapore in 1937 where he met Karl Pojello (Karolis Požèla), a Lithuanian professional wrestler, who mentored him in the wrestling business. The two went to Paris for training. Tillet wrestled in France and England as “The Angel” for two years and did very well: “England’s Ugliest Man Wins 180 straight Wrestling Matches” was the headline in Life Magazine September 4, 1939.

Pojello was born in 1893 in Lithuania and went to St. Petersburg to join his brothers in a pharmacy in 1906. He was the Russian amateur national champion and in 1913 he won an international tournament in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland). He served in the Russian army in World War I and was wounded.

He learned ju-jitsu from a Japanese instructor in Shanghai, went to Japan in 1923 and won a ju-jitsu championship at Yokohama. Later that year he went to the United States and became a citizen. He was popular and successful, wrestling all over the country. In 1928 he won the world light heavyweight championship. He went to Europe in 1932 and won the heavyweight championship at Nottingham. He went back and forth to Europe and America several times, returning for good in 1940 with Tillet. They were in Italy when the war broke out and sailed for the United States on the Italian liner S.S. Rex on January 2, 1940, arriving in New York January 12. Pojello became Tillet's manager.

On January 24, 1940 Maurice made his debut at the Boston Garden. Harvard scientists were in the audience and asked him if he would submit to being measured. He was 5 feet 8½ inches tall, weighed 276 pounds and had a 47 inch chest, a 19½ inch neck and a huge face. “The collar bones and rib cage are the most massive I have ever seen”, reported Time Magazine March 4, 1940 quoting one Harvard investigator.

Maurice held the American Wrestling Association World Championship title from 1940-42, going 19 months undefeated until he lost to Steve “Crusher” Casey and again in 1944 when he defeated Casey. Maurice was billed as the highest paid sports star by the Sandusky Register-Star News April 20, 1946. In 1947 he became a U.S. Citizen. There is a wonderful photo of him holding his certificate joyously grinning as a citizen of the greatest country on earth.

Jack Pfefer, a wrestling promoter, created the “Swedish Angel” and other “Angels” of various nationalities appeared on the scene, forcing Tillet to change his moniker from “The Angel” to “The French Angel”. When Pfefer went to Tillet's dressing room in 1942 to arrange a match with the Swedish Angel, Tillet was so annoyed that he slapped Pfeffer who then sued Tillet for $30,000, saying the slap probably “caused brain concussion”, but the court only awarded $250 and the wrestling commission fined him only $50, both minimal awards seen as secretly sympathetic to Tillet at the time.
I
nseparable friends, Maurice and Karl with his wife Olga bought a mansion in Chicago, turned it into a boarding house, and lived in adjoining rooms on the first floor.

Maurice began deteriorating in 1945 and in 1953 he lost his final match in Singapore. On September 4, 1954, Karl Pojello died of lung cancer. Maurice, already suffering from heart disease, had a heart attack when he heard the news and died later the same day. They were buried next to each other on September 8 at the Lithuanian National Cemetery in Justice, Illinois with a common headstone.
It has been suggested that Maurice was the model for Shrek. An anonymous blogger who worked in the art department of Dreamworks while Shrek was being developed said that he had pictures on his wall of odd people including Maurice. Shrek did not reply to questions concerning his ancestry.

Friday, September 4, 2015

Free at Last

Free at Last

In the Old Hill Burying Ground in Concord, Massachusetts is a gravestone with this epitaph:

God wills us free; man wills us slaves.
I will as God wills; God's will be done.
Here lies the body of
JOHN JACK
a native of Africa who died
March 1773 aged about 60 years
Tho' born in a land of slavery,
He was born free.
Tho' he lived in a land of liberty,
He lived a slave.
Till by his honest, tho' stolen labors,
He acquired the source of slavery,
Which gave him his freedom;
Tho' not long before
Death, the grand tyrant
Gave him his final emancipation,
And set him on a footing with kings.
Tho' a slave to vice,
He practised those virtues
Without which kings are but slaves

This is one of the most famous epitaphs in history, written by Daniel Bliss, a loyalist lawyer from Concord just before the Revolutionary War who thought it was hypocritcal for those who espoused freedom from England to deny it to their negro slaves.

John Jack first turns up in church records as "Jack, Negro." He belonged to a shoemaker, Benjamin Barron, who died in 1754. His estate passed to his widow. Listed in the inventory of the estate was:

"One Negro servant named Jack £120"

"One Negro maid named Violet, being of no value."

John Jack raised £120 from earnings as a shoemaker to buy his freedom from his master's widow. In 1761 he bought from her daughter Susanna four acres of land and two more acres from someone else. Both deeds state he is a free man.

He worked at odd jobs for farmers and made shoes in the winter. Ailing, he sensed the end coming and made his will in December, 1772. In it he bequeathed everything to Violet, then living with Susanna Barron. But Violet was still a slave and could not legally own land and his properties passed back whence they came, to the Barron family. Daniel Bliss was appointed in the will as executor.

Daniel Bliss was born in Concord in 1740 and graduated from Harvard in 1760 and was admitted to the bar in 1765.

On March 20, 1775, Bliss allowed two British officers into his home in the center of Concord to recconoiter rebel activities and report back to General Gage. The presence of British spies was noted by the townspeople who threatened to kill him and his guests. Bliss was able to escape with the British officers late at night by a circuitous route.

He left his wife and children behind and arranged for his brother Samuel, also a loyalist, to go to Concord and salvage what he could and get his family to safety. Samuel was arrested on May 12, accused of guiding the British search for military contraband in Concord on April 19th that culminated in the Battle of North Bridge at Concord and the beginning of the Revolutionary War. He produced four witnesses who testified that he was in Boston on April 19 and he was released and fled to Boston.

Both he and his Brother Daniel received commissions in the British army and setttled in New Brunswick, Canada after the war, both doing very well.

The primary source of this article is John Jack, the Slave and Daniel Bliss, the Tory, a paper presented to the Concord Antiquarian Society in 1902 by George Tolman. Tolman says that one of the British officers who spied from Bliss's house in 1775 sent the epitaph home in a letter and it was published in a London newspaper and that the epitaph was copied many times and translated into many languages.

The original gravestone was broken and lay on the ground by the grave until 1830 when Rufus Hosmer, a lawyer and son of a fiery patriot who had stood up to refute a loyalist speech by Bliss at a Concord town meeting in 1774, sponsored a faithful copy that still stands today.

Tolman sums up eloquently:

“But for this poor slave, without ancestry, without posterity, without kindred, of a despised and alien race, a social pariah, his title to immortality is found only in his epitaph, which has made him, to his own race, the prophet of that great deliverance that was to come to them in blood and fire, a century after he had worked out his own emancipation.”

Rest in peace John Jack.

Monday, August 24, 2015

Gaiety Girls

Gaiety Girls

“The Latest fad of women, delicate little paintings on the shoulders when in evening dress, was started by the Gaiety Girls, who now set the London styles. Two of them appeared at a supper party given by a spendthrift young earl at the Lyric club dressed in extreme decollete gowns. And on each shoulder was a delicately painted, small but gorgeous butterfly. The work was exquisitely done by a prominent water color artist.”

— This article, titled The Butterfly Fad appeared in the Carbon County Sentinel, Gebo, Montana, April 5, 1901.

Gaiety Girls were showgirls who appeared in musical comedies at the Gaiety Theatre in London. The extravagant shows were produced by George Edwardes. The eponymous A Gaiety Girl premiered at The Prince of Wales Theatre in 1893 and led to a series of hit “Girl” shows such as The Shop Girl, My Girl, and The Circus Girl at the Gaiety.

Gaiety Girls were respectable and admired. London fashion designers costumed them and this publicized their fashions much as red carpet movie galas do today. Consider that Gaiety Girl fashions were known even in a place as remote from London as Gebo, Montana.

Is Sex Necessary?

Is Sex Necessary?

Mr. Herbert Televox was a robot first built in 1927 by the Westinghouse Electric Company. It could pick up the phone and listen to instructions given by different notes blown on a pitch pipe and acknowledge with a series of buzzes.

Televox could wirelessly turn appliances on or off or check if the furnace was too hot in a home. Industrial uses included controlling electric loads for the power company. Three Televoxes, Adam, Cain, and Abel ("Eve being omitted because the automatic kingdom has not been divided into two factions"), were employed by the War Department in Washington to report and control reservoir levels.

The New York Times reported June 4, 1928 "Mechanical man now can also talk. Televox gets vocal cords to call up employer and tell him latest news." A few sentences were recorded on film, like a movie sound track. Now it would answer the phone with "Televox speaking" and could initiate a phone call: "this is the Televox calling for Main 5000." The rest of the conversation would then be with buzzes.

Mr. Televox made a special appearance at the American Booksellers' Association convention in 1930. When asked what his favorite book was, he replied Is Sex Necessary? a book by humorist and cartoonist James Thurber.

Now and Then Again

Now and Then Again, the Way We Were and the Way We Were

Second Edition

I owned Joseph’s Jewelry in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey (not the part of New Jersey they make jokes about) for 33 years until the continuing Great Recession, the forced corona virus shutdown of my nonessential business, finally did me in. I was a bench jeweler, stone setter, and gemologist.

I sent newsletters to about 1400 of my customers 3 times a year. The newsletters were an instant hit when I started them in 1997. They were so popular — people would call to thank me for sending them — I can’t believe I’m not rich. There were three four page letter size newsletters a year, Spring, Fall, and Holiday, mailed to my customers and also posted as a download on my web site, jewelrynewsletter.com, referenced occasionally in the book. I compiled the first 34 newsletters into a book titled Ornamentally Incorrect in 2008. This was followed by two other editions in 2011 and 2013. The 69th newsletter was done and ready to go when the shutdown happened; the articles from it are in this book.

My Little Chickadee

My Little Chickadee

“The Defendant is charged with violation of Section 949 of the Penal Law in that on September 13th, 1928, at 11:35 P.M., at 755 Seventh Avenue, the Earl Carroll Theatre, he did carry a bird in his pocket and took the same from his pocket and permitted the bird to fly upon the stage and cause said bird to fall to the floor so as to produce torture.”

— This is from the transcript of The People Of The City Of New York vs. William C. Fields W.C. Fields. Fields pleaded not guilty to torturing the bird.

Happy Anniversary

Happy Anniversary!

Happy Anniversary!

Here's an anniversary you'll want to celebrate: the installation of the first parking meter 85 years ago. Park-O-Meter No. 1 was installed on the southeast corner of what was then First Street and Robinson Avenue in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on July 16, 1935.

Cars would park all day, or even for weeks, stifling downtown business and the city fathers asked Carl Magee, editor of the Oklahoma City News, to help find a solution. Magee invented the parking meter to solve the problem.

Despite opposition, stores saw an increase in business as the meters forced a turnover of cars (at a nickel an hour) and parking meters quickly spread through the city.

Wampum

Wampum

If you vacation in Cape Cod, you’ll see inexpensive jewelry with white and purple mother-of-pearl set in silver. It is made from the shell of the quahog clam which has white and purple colors lining the inside of the shell. It’s called wampum jewelry. Wampum sound familiar? It’s that redskin to paleface word for money in old movies.

Wampum, Indian ceremonial beads later used as money was originally woven into belts presented to commemorate important occasions and rites of passage such as engagement and marriage.

The Hiawatha belt of 6574 beads commemorates the formation of the Iroquois Confederacy, the union of 5 (later 6) tribes in New York and Canada sometime between 1450 and 1600. A wampum belt commemorates a treaty between a Catholic convert chief of the Mi’kmaq and the Vatican in 1610.

The Great Diamond Hoax

The Great Diamond Hoax

In 1872, two Kentucky Prospectors, Philip Arnold and Jack Slack, brought a bag of uncut diamonds, rubies, and sapphires to the Bank of California in San Francisco. The bank president, William Ralston, was alerted to this bonanza.

Two San Francisco jewelers examined the stones and judged them to be natural and of excellent quality. Ralston said he would arrange financing for a mining venture if Arnold and Slack would show two of his men the site where the gems were found.

After a 36 hour train ride to the east and two days on mules, blindfolded, Ralston’s men reached the site. They returned to San Francisco with 7000 carats of rubies and 1000 carats of diamonds.

More Money Than You Could Ever Spend

More More Money Than You Could Ever Spend

Remember that greedy little fellow Richard Grasso? He’s the guy who was forced out as head of the New York Stock Exchange in 2003 after his buddies on the board gave him $140 million in deferred compensation on top of his $11 million a year regular paycheck. Not content, he sued to get another $48 million he was owed.

Shirt-Waists are for Pantywaists

Shirt-Waists are for Pantywaists

Do you remember reading about the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist fire in 1911? The fire in Manhattan killed 146 people, mainly young women garment workers. The fire led to better safety regulations and working conditions.

Shirtwaists were very popular then; Triangle was one of many factories making them. So what is a shirtwaist?

A shirtwaist was a woman’s blouse constructed like a shirt, with collar and buttons. It became a symbol of the modern independent woman in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It freed women from the voluminous floor-length dresses of their mothers. It was worn tucked into a skirt that sometimes showed a scandalous glimpse of ankle.

Shootout at the Circle K Ranch

Shootout at the Circle K Ranch

In early 1974 a shooting contest was held at the Circle K Ranch in Kaufman, Texas, 35 miles southeast of Dallas. The ranch belonged to the Hunt family, oil billionaires. Cowboys competed to be among the dozen to ride shotgun on three 707's bound for Zurich, Switzerland loaded with 40 million ounces of silver, almost 1400 tons.

Requiem for the Middle Class

Requiem for the Middle Class

There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." Warren Buffet — The New York Times, November 26, 2006.

"The World is dividing into two blocs - the Plutonomy and the rest. The U.S., UK, and Canada are the key Plutonomies - economies powered by the wealthy. Continental Europe (ex-Italy) and Japan are in the egalitarian bloc."

This is from leaked Citigroup internal memos from 2005 and 2006. Plutonomy: Buying luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances and Revisiting Plutonomy: The Rich Getting Richer see the U.S. as a plutonomy, a society in which most of the wealth goes to an ever-shrinking minority. A race to the top.

It's a Spinthariscope, Kemo Sabe

It's a Spinthariscope, Kemo Sabe

See genuine atoms split to smithereens inside this Kix Atomic Bomb Ring. For just 15¢ plus a Kix cereal boxtop the Lone Ranger Atomic Bomb Ring could have been yours in 1947.

The ring was advertised on the Lone Ranger radio show. It was also advertised in print, but came to be known as the Lone Ranger Atomic Bomb Ring.The contra-diction of a 19th century cowboy selling a 20th century weapon was missed, maybe because the business end of the ring bomb looked like the Lone Ranger's silver bullet. (My wife actually had one as a kid.)