Holy Shit, Emperor Norton!

Joshua Abraham Norton was an English-born, South African-raised immigrant to the United States. He gained citizenship and took up residence in San Francisco, where he made a terrible decision to invest in a rice shipment with his inherited fortune. After the price of rice plummeted, he lost all his properties and declared bankruptcy.

Norton challenged the company with which he invested, claiming that they misled him about the quality of the rice. The California Supreme Court ultimately ruled against him, creating a deep-seated dissatisfaction within the fiery passion-pit of his belly. Like so many Facebook users today, Joshua Norton decided to express his displeasure with empty spectacles.

Which are a thing, I guess.

At least we hope that was his idea, because it would be a little bit disturbing if he actually believed that he could legitimately declare himself "Emperor of these United States."

Like so many modern-day secessionist petitioners (and unlike the very real secessionist Confederacy that began two years later), Norton expressed his political dissent with a powerful act of almost whimsical ignorance. The strange part, though, is that it sort of caught on.

Norton went around to all the local newspapers in San Francisco to hand deliver a letter, which read:

At the peremptory request and desire of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and now for the last 9 years and 10 months past of S. F., Cal., declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these U. S.; and in virtue of the authority thereby in me vested, do hereby order and direct the representatives of the different States of the Union to assemble in Musical Hall, of this city, on the 1st day of Feb. next, then and there to make such alterations in the existing laws of the Union as may ameliorate the evils under which the country is laboring, and thereby cause confidence to exist, both at home and abroad, in our stability and integrity. 

—NORTON I, Emperor of the United States.

The papers printed it, because why wouldn't you? No one had done anything so ridiculous before, and readers were eating that shit up.

Emperor Norton didn't just declare his reign and then let it go, either. He issued edicts ranging from abolishing both Congress and the Democratic and Republican parties to the criminalization of the colloquial San Francisco name, "Frisco." He even decided on a whim to add "Protector of Mexico" to his title.

It was here. This is where you heard the word "Frisco." From ICP. I'm sorry.

It got to the point where, despite being destitute, Emperor Norton was treated like royalty. Literally. He had an entourage. People paid deference to him. And not just people: high-end restaurants set tables aside for him on permanent reserve. They put plaques on his table to commemorate his visits. Theaters could guarantee improved ticket sales simply by reserving a balcony seat for the Emperor. He issued currency, and local businesses honored it. I mean...what?

Here's what's really crazy: he wouldn't have made that bad of an emperor, all things considered. Some of his proclamations were incredibly visionary and insightful. There are factions to this day who want to rename the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge to the Emperor Norton Bridge, because it was his idea first. The most they've accomplished so far is a plaque commemorating his role in the inception of the bridge.

Pictured: An actual goddamn plaque on an actual goddamn bridge.

During a riot against Chinese immigrants, Norton stepped out into the street, blocking the rioters from their prey, and recited the Lord's Prayer over and over again until the rioters realized that murdering people because of their race is kind of uncool and decided to go home. Around that same time he demanded that the international community establish a League of Nations similar to the actual League of Nations that would be created about 30 years later. Part of that decree called for an end to all hostilities between religions. We still haven't nailed that one down yet.

In January of 1880, Emperor Joshua Norton I collapsed in the street and died before an ambulance could reach him. The next day, San Francisco was in mourning. Obituaries solemnly expressed their grief. Plans for his funeral were modest at best, but the city's populace stepped in and produced a lavish ceremony worthy of his title. It is estimated that about 30,000 people, about 13% of the population of San Francisco at the time, attended.

From the ashes of financial ruin and political outrage, Joshua Norton rose to the honorary status of United States Emperor. He is unique in American History for that. Others have imitated him, but never with anywhere near his success. He was penniless, almost a vagrant, and simultaneously, he was royalty.

Holy shit.

Holy Shit, Hot Coffee!

When you read the words "frivolous lawsuit," there are two cases that will immediately leap to your mind. In both examples, you're probably wrong.

First, there's the one your cousin told you about, where the guy sued a homeowner for injuries sustained while attempting to rob his home. This one is easy. It's a damn lie, is all. No such case exists, and any similar ones were either dismissed out of hand or easily won by the defense.

The case your cousin was thinking about was actually a fictional one from the movie Liar, Liar, in which Jim Carrey's secretary relates the legend as though it were a fact to underscore the film's underlying thesis that lawyers are sometimes assholes.

Who's the liar liar now, Greta?

The second is the one where a lady sued McDonald's for a bunch of money and won because she spilled hot coffee on herself and got burned. That one is true. You just haven't heard the full story.

The story you usually hear -- the one that begs us all to consider tort reform -- is that some lady tried to drive around town while holding hot coffee in her lap and, surprise, she got some superficial burns. Because of some ambulance chasing hack of a lawyer (the story continues), she got a huge payout based on the lack of warning labels, and that's why we need warning labels for obviously dangerous things.

When will the government learn?

The first and possibly most important bullshit stain on that story is the extent of the injuries. We aren't talking superficial burns that she whined about and wore extra bandages to milk in court. Stella Liebeck, the 79-year-old plaintiff in the case, suffered severe, third-degree burns on 6 percent of her skin. She had lesser burns on 16% of her skin. Keep in mind that a third-degree burn less than one percent of your skin will send your ass straight to intensive care.

 If that's not enough, the most severe burns were on her knees, thighs, buttocks, and groin. If you named all the worst places on your body to get third-degree burns, a couple of those are bound to be in the top 5.

Number one, of course, is the ego.

 Liebeck spent 8 days in the hospital for skin grafts and follow-up care, during which she lost 20% of her body weight, ending up at a morbidly lean 83 pounds. After that, she spent two years receiving medical treatment related to the incident.

There is no justifiable description of this case that could suggest she was milking the injuries. They were honestly horrific, and you're lucky I'm in too good a mood to dig up the images of them.

Very, very lucky.

The second blow to the already fragile "frivolous lawsuit" characterization is the fact that Liebeck wasn't driving. She wasn't even in her own car. She was with her grandson, who had pulled over so she could put cream and sugar into her coffee. The car had no cup holders, which is how she ended up holding the cup in the worst possible spilling position.

Finally, the things that ultimately made McDonald's liable in the incident were the fact that the corporate policy on coffee was to keep it at a scorching 190 °F -- a temperature that will cause third-degree burns within 2 seconds of contact -- and the fact that the cup designs were flimsy and prone to lid malfunction. In fact, this was not the first burn-related lawsuit McDonald's had faced. They settled all the previous ones out of court.

At least they encouraged a modicum of environmental consciousness.

The company's defense was that customers were expected to order coffee from the drive-thru and let it cool while they traveled, drinking it once they arrived at their destination. It would have been a compelling argument if their own research hadn't revealed that almost all drive-thru customers started drinking their coffee immediately after buying it. The fact that the company openly admitted that they didn't share the extent of the burn risk with their customers certainly didn't help. Nor did the fact that they had already turned down a settlement offer for $20,000 in medical costs.

So Stella Liebeck won. The jury slapped McDonald's with a multimillion dollar fine to cover both Liebeck's medical expenses and punitive damages. The judge lowered the payout, and McDonald's decided not to appeal when they were able to negotiate a settlement for an undisclosed sum less than $600,000.

There are examples of people abusing the legal system, but this wasn't one of them. Even if the case would have been struck down on appeal, it wasn't nearly as black-and-white as the legends make it out to be.

Also, most of the time people try to abuse the legal system for financial gain, their cases are dismissed before reaching a trial. And when they're not, they're usually shot down in court. Because for all its faults, the legal system actually kind of works.

Holy shit.

Holy Shit, Greek Fire!

The popular interpretation of the Roman Empire falling around the middle of the Fifth Century is pretty wrong in a pretty big way. At that point, the Empire was divided into two major administrative regions. One was based in Ravenna (not even Rome!) and was down for the count by 476.

The other, based in Constantinople (not Istanbul) stuck around for another thousand years. It's known as the Byzantine Empire, and one of the reasons for its longevity was a little substance called Greek Fire, which was basically -- and maybe literally -- napalm.

You're familiar with that stuff.

Greek Fire was invented just in time to be used spectacularly in the First Arab Siege of Constantinople (not Istanbul). The city was surrounded, and the Umayyad Caliphate was feeling pretty confident that they were going to add a new member to their conquest club. For years, skirmishes were almost a daily occurrence. The Arab fleet sat in the Bosporus defying the Byzantines to come see what would happen if they tried to break out.

The Byzantine fleet started behaving strangely. In a time when naval warfare was all about smashing ships into each other as hard as you could, they were appearing in the harbor with strange siphons attached. When the two fleets finally met in a pitched battle in late 677 or early 678, the purpose of the siphons became devastatingly clear. 

This honestly looks like something I would have doodled in middle school

The Arabs got very literally hosed. With fire. Liquid fire. Liquid fire that burned with the fury of Achilles even on the surface of the ocean. The whole experience really put a damper on Umayyads' trip to Constantinople (not Istanbul), and they promptly left to write an unfavorable Yelp review.

"There were no mints on the pillow. In fact, there were no pillows. And they set fire to my person."

Forty years later, the Umayyad Caliphate returned to prove they hadn't learned their lesson. In what historians call one of the most important and decisive battles in history...the same thing happened again. The Second Arab Siege of Constantinople was routed by Greek Fire.

Greek Fire continued to give a ludicrously unfair advantage to the Byzantine navy until around the 13th Century. At that point, they may have lost access to the areas where ingredients for the substance could be found. We're not sure, because it was such a closely guarded secret that we don't really know what the hell Greek Fire was. The general consensus among scholars is that it was probably made with a form of petroleum and was sort of like napalm.

And that it would make for a bitchin' battle scene in a fantasy series.

What we do know is that Greek Fire was so powerful that it is credited with stopping the Arab conquest of Eastern Europe dead in its tracks.

Holy shit.

Holy Shit, The Great Mississippi Flood!

Remember when Katrina hit New Orleans, and everyone talked about how it was the biggest natural, social, economic, and political disaster to ever be caused by the weather?

Well, it wasn't.

It didn't even end this guy's career.

That dubious honor belongs to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.

The Great Flood actually had its origins in 1926, when an unusually high volume of summer rain started testing the capacity of levees all along the Mississippi. By September, tributaries in Iowa and Kansas were ready to burst from their cages. By Christmas, the water level of the tributary Cumberland River had already reached 56.2 feet in Nashville, a record that still hasn't been topped.

Not even during this monstrosity

Finally, in the Spring of 1927, the levees started to break in earnest. 27,000 square miles of land along the river was devastated by the ensuing floods. That's almost the size of South Carolina. The flood hit areas of Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas.

The damage clocked in at over $400 million, and 246 people lost their lives. In some areas, the flooding carried the force and twice the water volume of Niagara Falls. At its widest extent, the Mississippi grew to a staggering 60 miles, which is more than twice the size of the freaking Amazon at its greatest extent. During the wet season.

Take a close look at the map. It's big.

Politically speaking, the hardest hit area was New Orleans. State officials in Louisiana made some difficult and terrible decisions to protect the city. Decisions that involved literally blowing up nearby levees and intentionally flooding the Parishes of St. Bernard and Plaquemines. Then it got even messier.

Helpful.

The people of St. Bernard and Plaquemines were understandably a little miffed about having their homes destroyed by elected officials. That annoyance would later turn to downright anger when it turned out that the effort was entirely unnecessary anyway, and New Orleans had already been spared. Natural breaches in other levees relieved pressure on the levees around New Orleans, so their involuntary sacrifice was in vain.

Then it gets even messier.

At the time, most citizens of St. Bernard and Plaquemines were focusing on the whole "not drowning" part of daily life rather than the "whose fault is this" part. The government was happy to help with that, so long as you were white. If you were black, you had to wait your turn. Then you had to spend some time in a refugee camp with the kind of hospitality you would expect from House Frey.

Heh.

Then you would never, ever receive a dime of promised federal aid. And you'd be forced at gunpoint to rebuild levees. For some reason, "forced to work" and "not receiving a dime" sounds familiar in this context.

It was kind of shitty.

So the Republican Party sprang into action. They were in power at the time, and then Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover had his eye on the White House for 1928. By promising a major effort for reform and the introduction of civil rights legislation, he was able to keep the story somewhat sub rosa. After he was elected, he weaseled his way out of it and started the grand tradition of the Republican Party losing the black vote -- a tradition which continues to this day.


The aftermath of the flood in the black community is also considered one of the main catalysts for the Great Migration, which eventually saw over 6 million black people pack up their shit and get the hell out of Dixie. It was one of the biggest internal demographic shifts in U.S. History, and it was more or less caused by the rain.


Holy shit.

Holy Shit, the Cadaver Synod!

Pope Stephen VI had a problem. Well, his sponsors had a problem. Stephen's predecessor (not his immediate predecessor, who had a William Henry Harrison-like truncated reign) was both fairly popular and not a huge fan of the current Holy Roman Emperor. Pope Formosus, in his time, actually invited rivals of the Emperor to invade Italy and seize Rome for themselves.

As you might imagine, this made the folks in charge (House Spoleto) a little bit unhappy. Having reaffirmed their claim on Rome by giving up any claim to the rest of Italy, they were finally in a position where they could get back at Formosus. Unfortunately for them, he had died in 896, and it was 897. They wanted to hold a trial and strip him of his title, but he was already dead. What were the Spoletos to do?

If you answered, "Dig up the old Pope's remains, dress him up in his old vestments, and put him on trial anyway," congratulations! You're just as batshit insane as old Pope Steve and company, who did exactly that.

Clint Eastwood later performed a misunderstood stage adaptation of the event at the Republican National Convention.

It's hard not to think that the whole ordeal happened just to give me the surreal pleasure of writing these words: Pope Stephen dug up Pope Formosus' body and had it placed on the witness chair. He asked the corpse such leading questions as, "When you were bishop of Porto, why did you usurp the universal Roman See in such a spirit of ambition?" A deacon loyal to the (living) Pope provided the departed Pope's answers, which were presumably something like, "Probably because I'm such a dick."

The ghost of Formosus was found guilty of perjury, moving his bishopric office (which was super bad in canon law), and holding a bishopric before being ordained. His body was ceremoniously stripped of vestments, three fingers of his right hand were removed (the ones used for blessing), and all acts and ordinations he performed were declared null and void. He was then buried in a graveyard for foreigners. Stephen's faction wasn't satisfied with that, so they dug him back up a short while later and haphazardly tossed him into the Tiber River.

Which they presumably then charged with murder.

Unluckily for Stephen, people in the late 9th Century weren't actually all that stupid. They saw the farcical trial for what it was: petty papal politics. They also saw it as horrifically disrespectful of the dead. Not just any dead, either. The dead Pope. God's literal voice on Earth, according to Catholic doctrine. Treating any body with callous disrespect would have been bad. Treating a pope's body led directly to uprising.

Rumors abounded that the body of Formosus washed up on the shores of the Tiber and began performing miracles. Despite having been dead for some time, the Cadaver Synod made him a martyr. A few months later, an uprising led to Pope Stephen VI being deposed, imprisoned, and later strangled to death in jail. Further trials featuring dead bodies were banned in what I hope was called the "Oh My God, I Can't Believe We Have to Specify This" Edict.

"It's Like Having to Specify That You Shouldn't Rape Altar Boys."

Formosus was post-posthumously acquitted and reburied at St. Peter's Basilica, and the results of the trial were declared dumb as hell and thus void. In 904, Pope Sergius III, who served as a judge at the Synod, more or less said "Nuh uh." While he didn't bother digging up the corpse again, he declared the original trial's result to be legitimate, requiring all the clergy ordained by Formosus to go through the process again.

That was pretty much the end of it. A bit of a compromise. A tit for tat, with the tit being "Everyone has to say I was right all along" and the tat being "I won't subject a corpse to another line of questioning."

Holy shit.

Holy Shit, Rommel!

If I asked you to pick a group of people that you could safely say were the worst people of all time, you would probably give me a funny look and start feeling vaguely uncomfortable. You know, the way you feel in front of your grandma just before you tell your friends you're sorry and she's from a different time. Eventually, after all the confusion was cleared up, we'd settle on the goddamn Nazis. Because fuck those guys, right?

At this point, I'd inject a little more awkwardness into the situation by telling you that one of the most virtuous heroes of World War II was, in fact, a high-ranking Nazi officer.

Erwin Rommel was a Field Marshal and commander of the Afrika Korps, Nazi Germany's colonial occupation of the rest of Europe's colonial occupations of North Africa. Despite belonging to the most comically (and tragically) evil political group of the 21st Century, the Afrika Korps is distinguished by the fact that they were the only division of the Nazi military to not be accused of war crimes.

Way to not be evil, guys. Seriously, well done.

That was pretty much Rommel's doing. In addition to being acknowledged by both Axis and Allied leaders as one of the most brilliant strategic minds of the war, Rommel's humanitarianism in the face of brutal, horrific conflict and genocide is legendary. During the capture of France, Rommel received orders directly from goddamn Hitler to deport the Jewish population of the country and execute all Jewish prisoners, and Rommel just straight up ignored him.

If you paid any attention whatsoever in history class, you know that most people couldn't get away with ignoring the Führer. What's more, he wrote letters to high command protesting the treatment of Jews in the Third Reich. You know, the same Reich that gave the whole "Holocaust" thing the green light. He also wrote letters protesting atrocities committed by the German Army, even seeking permission to punish the 2nd SS Panzer division for massacring a French town. Hitler told him it was none of his business, and historians tend to believe Rommel was lucky his head was still attached after that letter reached Berlin. Hitler wasn't exactly known for being reasonable.

Not pictured: Reason.

He didn't really change his tone. When he was ordered to beef up the security of the Atlantic Wall, he did so using French labor. That was normal, except the part where he absolutely insisted that the workers get paid.

Rommel was most well known for his steadfast (though ultimately doomed) defense of North Africa, for which he earned the nickname "Desert Fox." In addition to personally leading the charge in the hottest (as in violence, not temperature) parts of the battlefield and receiving multiple wounds as a result, he established his relationship in North Africa as one of the most anachronistically chivalrous military leaders in the world.

He was also handy to have around in case of a flat

At one point, he and his staff found themselves suddenly deep behind enemy lines. They came upon a New Zealand Army field hospital, where any rational person would stay out of sight until they could get the hell out of dodge. Instead, he approached the hospital and made light conversation, asking how the soldiers and doctors were faring.

Caught off guard by the surreal nature of the situation, the British and Kiwis told Rommel that things were okay, they guessed, but they could sure use some bandages and medicine. Rommel said he'd see what he could do and drove off unmolested. A few days later, he came back with medical supplies and just gave them away.

Because otherwise they'd just go to Nazis. Like him.

Toward the end of his defensive campaign in Africa, Rommel started noticing some disturbing trends in the communications he shared with Hitler. As it turned out, Hitler didn't assign all that much value on human life, so whenever Rommel would suggest a course of action that favored small losses over tactical gains, he would be rebuffed. The relationship between the two would sour pretty severely when Hitler ordered him to hold his ground on numerous occasions in utterly hopeless battles, causing a tremendous loss of life just to stem the inevitable tide for a few extra hours.

Ultimately, Rommel's loss of respect for history's favorite villain would be his undoing. He got involved in a conspiracy that planned to make a very strong case for Hitler's removal. The planned argument was, "We just blew Hitler up with a briefcase bomb, so he's probably not capable of leading this country anymore. Also, we already took control of the military anyway. QED." The subconscious fidgeting of the officer sitting next to Hitler foiled the plot. He kicked the briefcase under the table, which deflected the blast just enough to avoid killing the Führer.

Personally, I blame Tom Cruise

In the aftermath, almost 5,000 people were killed by the Gestapo for taking part in the failed coup. Not Rommel, though. Rommel was universally praised as a hero by the German people, to such a great extent that Hitler feared they might rise up in support of the conspiracy just because he was involved. Instead of outing him and executing him, Hitler gave Rommel the option to commit suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule in exchange for a guarantee that his family would remain unharmed. Rommel agreed, then Hitler gave him an official state funeral, claiming that he died of old war wounds.

Making someone praise you right after you try to blow them up is really a form of winning.

During the war, Winston Churchill called Erwin Rommel a "daring and skillful opponent." The British Parliament very nearly censured him for praising the enemy, but after the war it became clear that Erwin Rommel was a man well worth praising. Despite being a high ranking Nazi, he was one of the most effective advocates for human rights throughout the war.

Holy shit.

Edit: The guy was still a Nazi. Keep that in mind.

Holy Shit, Pluto!

Sit down. Look at me. Are you looking? Okay, now listen closely. I know it hurts, I know it betrays the memory of your favorite third grade acrostic, and I know you don't want to hear it, but Pluto is not a planet. It never was. The mistake was calling it a planet in the first place.

It's nothing personal. It's not like we like Pluto any less for being a dwarf planet. Some of my best friends are dwarf planets! It's just that the evidence is all there in support of Pluto's demotion, and the only compelling argument to the contrary is basically just nostalgia.

And what has nostalgia brought us?

Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh, a 23-year-old astronomer from Kansas. Given his youth, he was assigned the arduous task of taking pictures of the sky every two weeks and comparing the two to see if anything had moved. Shortly after he began his work, something moved, and that something was Pluto.

Ladies love the 'scope

Initially, astronomers thought that Pluto was around the size of Earth. Since that time, estimates have been repeatedly revised downwards. The most recent evidence puts the size at about .6% of Earth. That's "zero point six percent," not "six percent." It's really damn small, is what I'm getting at. It's small enough that its satellites have a sufficient gravitational pull to make Pluto sort of revolve around itself.

Pluto...wat are you doing?

Don't worry, though, I'm not just picking on the little guy. That's not the only reason Pluto was begging for the boot. After all, if I learned anything from Star Wars it's that size matters not. Orbit does, though, and Pluto's orbit...well...

Go home, Pluto, you're drunk

Yeah. Pluto's not really being a team player in that regard. It's orbit has more in common with a comet than a planet. In fact, it even weaves its way in and out of Neptune's orbit at different times. Planets don't get all up in one another's grill like that. That's Planetary Etiquette 101. You orbit like a planet and you own the neighborhood. Pluto does neither.

KEEP YOUR HANDS TO YOURSELF, PLUTO.

What really did Pluto in was the fact that we found other objects like it in the Kuiper Belt. The final nail in the coffin was the discovery of Eris. Until that point, the tentative agreement among astronomers was that as long as all those Kuiper Belt objects were smaller than Pluto, we'll keep telling ourselves that it's a planet. Then Eris came along, and it had more mass. By 27%, too, so it's not even close.

If that's not enough to sway you, let me ask you this: Are you upset that Ceres is not a planet? How about Pallas? Juno? Vesta? Are you willing to fight for their inclusion in the planet club? Because they were demoted, too. When they were first discovered, all four of them were considered planets. Then astronomers realized that they were all on the same orbit, and they shared it with a bunch of debris. So they were demoted, and we started calling them asteroids (although some asteroids have actually been promoted to dwarf planet status now).

You can sort of see why we had to be a bit more specific with the "planet" title here.

There are basically two ways of taking this information in. The first is to rage against the astronomers. You grew up thinking Pluto was a planet, so a planet it is and that's that. There's no better way to label that reaction than to call it anti-science. The point of any scientific pursuit is to be willing to challenge previous discoveries. To deny new discoveries because they conflict with your feelings is to deny critical thinking.

The other way to look at it (while still maintaining your love for old Pluto) is to realize that Pluto wasn't the last discovered planet, but the first acknowledged dwarf planet. Being the first, Pluto gets a whole range of benefits, not least of which is the fact that a whole class of dwarf planets are now named plutoids. This isn't the story of Harry Pluto being bullied and shunned by the muggle astronomers, this is Harry Pluto finding his Hogwarts.

And yes, I did go there

Don't cry for Pluto. Give it a pat on the back and a congratulations. While you're at it, keep your eyes peeled. Next summer, for the first time, we'll have actual pictures of Pluto. The New Horizons robotic spacecraft is scheduled to get there sometime in July.

Before you dismiss this whole thing as a silly and pointless argument, give it some real thought. How we categorize the universe will inform how well we understand it. If we get it wrong just because we're used to the wrong answer, we'll never understand the way the universe works, and it'll be our own fault. Denying the recategorization of Pluto is denying critical thinking. It's the same frame of mind that gets people to think vaccines cause autism, which leads to children dying of preventable diseases.

This stuff matters.

Holy shit.