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HISTORY: unwrapped – February 2007

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February 28, 2007– The Gentle Revolutionaries

Women were not recognized by the government as Revolutionaries or spies during the War for Independence, and they certainly were not admitted to the armed forces as soldiers. The only way for them to join the service was to disguise themselves as men. Deborah Sampson of Massachusetts had been an indentured servant for ten years, helping with housework and working in the fields. During the winter, when her work slowed down, she was able to attend school. When her servitude ended, she was hired as a teacher. In 1782 at the age of 21, Sampson enlisted in the Continental Army as a man. She was tall for a woman and performed her duties well, so she raised no suspicions. Rumors circulated back home about Sampson’s military activities, and she was excommunicated from the Baptist church because of a strong suspicion that she was “dressing in man’s clothes and enlisting as a soldier in the army.”

When Sampson was wounded in the leg in a battle near Tarrytown, she tended her own wounds so that her gender would not be discovered. As a result, her leg never healed properly. However, when she was later hospitalized for fever in Philadelphia, the physician attending her discovered that she was a woman and made discreet arrangements that ended her military career. After being honorably discharged from the army, Sampson gave lecture tours in which she wore her uniform and told of her experiences. When Sampson died, her husband was granted a military pension for her services.

Hoover Dam was named after President Herbert Hoover who was instrumental in its construction. This marvel of engineering began in 1931 and was completed two years ahead of schedule in 1936. Hardhats made of two baseball caps dipped in tar and allowed to harden were used for the first time. A surveyor was one of the first people to die in the dam’s construction. The son of the surveyor was the last person to die thirteen years to the day of his father’s death. When Franklin Roosevelt defeated Hoover in the 1932 presidential election, his Secretary of the Interior removed Hoover’s name from the project and unofficially renamed it Boulder Dam. After Roosevelt’s death, Congress restored the name Hoover Dam. Amazingly, the concrete used in construction of the National Historical Landmark is still curing and gaining strength every day.

John Newton went to sea at the age of 11 and was forced to enlist on a British man-of-war seven years later. He was captured after deserting the intolerable conditions and exchanged to the crew of a slave ship. He began reading a book he found on board— Imitation of Christ—which began to sow the seeds of conversion. Newton eventually gave his life to Christ during a storm which threatened the ship. For the rest of his life he observed May 10, 1748, as the day of his conversion. He was promoted to captain of a slave ship traveling between North Africa and England. Slave ships left England empty and anchored off the African coast. Tribal chiefs would deliver men and women captured in raids and wars to the buyers, who would select the finest specimens. Then the captives would be loaded aboard ship, packed in like sardines below deck and chained to prevent suicides. Those that survived the voyage to the New World were traded for molasses and sugar to make rum, which the ships would take back to England. Then the ships were off to Africa to begin their miserable trade all over again. It took six years for the inhuman aspects of the business to force Newton to leave the sea for good.

Newton studied for the ministry and used the last 43 years of his life to preach the gospel. He wrote over 200 hymns, with “Amazing Grace,” “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken,” and “How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds,” being several of his most loved and sung works.  At 82, Newton said, "My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things, that I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Savior.” Newton truly understood God’s amazing grace, for he had experienced it first hand.

When President Warren G. Harding died unexpectedly of heart disease on August 2, 1923, Vice-President Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as President of the United States. Before long, rumors began to spread that Harding had been poisoned, either by his own hand or by that of his vindictive wife. Within a year, a less sinister but equally bizarre poisoning rumor would attach itself to a tragic death in the Coolidge family as well.

Coolidge's two sons set out to play tennis on the White House tennis court. 16-year-old Calvin Jr. wore tennis shoes but no socks. Young Calvin's sockless exertions raised a blister on one of his toes, which soon became infected. The modern antibiotics that would quickly clear up such an infection today did not exist in 1924. By the time White House physicians were summoned to treat Calvin Jr., it was too late — he died of pathogenic blood poisoning a week later. Before long, a rumor began circulating that Calvin Jr.'s death was caused by the dye from his black socks entering his bloodstream through a cut and poisoning him. The public knew that whatever killed Calvin had something to do with a wound on his foot and blood poisoning, so perhaps the sock rumor got started because it seemed like a logical explanation to those who were not privy to the details of his injury. The rumor certainly seemed plausible because some of the coloring agents commonly used back then to give socks their color did often cause serious inflammations when the unabsorbed chemicals came into contact with a wearer’s skin.

If you’re looking for a sweet, peaceful tale to help you drift off to slumberland, don’t choose one of the stories from Grimm’s Fairy Tales. The stories collected by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm in the 1800s often paint a cruel life as many generations of central Europeans knew it. In collecting and writing down the Germanic folktales, the brothers were attempting to preserve a part of German history. They had no idea that their stories would entertain so many future generations. Grimm’s Fairy Tales contains over 209 stories including “Cinderella,” “Sleeping Beauty,” “Hansel and Gretel,” and “Rapunzel.”  

When the brothers saw the delight their tales gave young readers, they along with editors began tweaking their stories. The tales became sweeter and moral, but the heart of the stories was never removed. Jakob and Wilhelm studied the law and held university positions. But they will always be remembered for the tales that have produced a few goose bumps in all of us.

February 21, 2007– The Mailman's Daughter

Gladys Aylward was born near London to a mailman and his wife. After her conversion at 18, she wished to be a missionary to China. Rejected by the mission board, Gladys began saving money, determined to go to China on her own. She eventually traveled to China to work as a missionary’s assistant. Gaining the trust of the Chinese, she was appointed to be foot inspector enforcing the law against binding the feet of young girls. As she made her inspections, Gladys shared the gospel. She began taking in orphans and unwanted children and caring for them at her inn. During World War II, she and nearly 100 children lived in a large cave near a remote village. Her heroism and sacrifice won the hearts of the English people, and the movie The Inn of the Sixth Happiness was made about her work.

The role of espionage was crucial during the War for Independence. Spying was made even more irresistible with both sides speaking the same language. When spy Nathan Hale was captured and hung by the British, George Washington was highly motivated to centralize intelligence operations. An American commander, Benjamin Tallmadge, became Washington’s chief of intelligence. Tallmadge ran a network of spies using cipher codes, invisible ink, double agents, and disinformation. Major Tallmadge’s network included men who operated inside enemy-held New York. Ordinary men, farmers, merchants, a newspaper editor, a tailor, and even women were involved in spying. A Quaker mid-wife and undertaker, Lydia Darragh, was one of the most successful of the women spies. She placed paper scraps of information into large buttons and sewed them onto her son’s clothing. The fourteen-year-old met his brother, a lieutenant in the Continental Army, who snipped off the buttons. Soon the British war plans were in Washington’s hands. Many years later, Benjamin Tallmadge wrote that the war had been won through the intervention of divine providence.

February 20, 2007– Washington's Spymaster

The role of espionage was crucial during the War for Independence. Spying was made even more irresistible with both sides speaking the same language. When spy Nathan Hale was captured and hung by the British, George Washington was highly motivated to centralize intelligence operations. An American commander, Benjamin Tallmadge, became Washington’s chief of intelligence. Tallmadge ran a network of spies using cipher codes, invisible ink, double agents, and disinformation. Major Tallmadge’s network included men who operated inside enemy-held New York. Ordinary men, farmers, merchants, a newspaper editor, a tailor, and even women were involved in spying. A Quaker mid-wife and undertaker, Lydia Darragh, was one of the most successful of the women spies. She placed paper scraps of information into large buttons and sewed them onto her son’s clothing. The fourteen-year-old met his brother, a lieutenant in the Continental Army, who snipped off the buttons. Soon the British war plans were in Washington’s hands. Many years later, Benjamin Tallmadge wrote that the war had been won through the intervention of divine providence.

There was a time when wrestling was serious business, deadly serious. Prior to modern Olympic wrestling, combatants often wrestled to the death. Milo of Kroton understood the risks and decided to come out a winner. Born in southern Italy, where Greece had many colonies, Milo won the boys’ wrestling contest in 540 B.C. At more than 40 years old, he continued to wrestle and win titles. In order to gain the advantage over his opponents, he knew that he had to gain weight and strength. There were no Gold’s Gyms, mail order physical fitness programs, barbell companies, or steroids. Weight training—progressive resistance exercise—was not even conceptualized at the time. Even so, Milo understood the principle and applied it in a novel way. Legend has it that he would train in the off years by carrying a newborn calf on his back every day until the Olympics took place. By the time the games were held, he was carrying a four-year-old cow on his back the length of the stadium. The principle is simple. As the calf gained weight, Milo progressively got stronger with each day’s workout. The example of Milo translated into a business venture in the twentieth century with the founding of the Milo Barbell Company in 1902, the first barbell manufacturer in the United States that applied the Milo principle to adjustable barbells. The company was eventually purchased by Bob Hoffman in 1935. Hoffman turned the company into the international fitness conglomerate The York Barbell Company. The principle of steady and incremental persistence over time is a great lesson, but once the goal is achieved, some forget what life was like at the start While the Bible says “power is perfected in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9), Milo let his strength go to his head. Thinking himself to be the mythical Hercules, Milo was wandering through the forest when he found an old tree trunk with wedges inserted into it. The strongman saw this as an opportunity to test his strength. Milo placed his hands into the cleft of the trunk and tried to split apart the wood. All he succeeded in doing was loosening the wedges. When they fell out, the trunk closed on his hands, trapping him. According to legend, he fell prey to wild beasts. The Bible sums up the end of Milo’s life: “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before stumbling” (Prov. 16:18).

Aristotle’s views on science, politics, and ethics had a profound effect on the way Europeans constructed their worldview. The Bible was often read through the lens of Aristotle’s writings. When the structure of the universe was being considered, the church adopted Aristotle’s geocentric—earth-centered—cosmology. The church’s battle with Galileo was a philosophical clash over whether Aristotle was right or wrong on this topic. As it turned out, Aristotle was wrong. Earth revolves around the Sun. In addition to cosmology, Aristotle’s views on ethical matters were also adopted by the church. This is certainly the case when the topic of slavery is considered. He wrote that “the lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master. For he who participates in rational principles enough to apprehend, but not to have, such a principle is a slave by nature. Whereas the lower animals cannot even apprehend a principle; they obey their instincts. And indeed the use made of slaves and of tame animals is not very different; for both with their bodies minister to the needs of life. . . . It is clear, then, that some men are by nature free, and others slaves, and for these latter slavery is both expedient and right.” Aristotle’s views on slavery contributed to harsh working conditions among the indigenous people of the Caribbean and Central and South America.

February 15, 2007– Those Terrible Vikings

The Vikings attacked and plundered because of envy—they wanted what their victims had. They believed that they did not have as much as others because their gods were not as powerful. This envy led to the introduction of Christianity into the Viking world. It was a time when groups of people converted together with their leaders. A personal relationship with Jesus Christ that resulted from a changed heart was a nonexistent concept. In the Viking’s world, the god to worship was often decided by the man left standing. There is debate over whether or not people believed the world was going to end at the close of the first millennium. There is little doubt that for Scandinavia, the end of the world as the Vikings knew it actually happened. Their pagan way of life ended and was replaced with a new Christian world.

February 14, 2007– The Admiral of the Ocean Sea

Columbus might have remained a footnote in history if Washington Irving, the author of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle,” had not published a three-volume biography about him. Although Irving established Columbus’ rightful place in history, he also told a few fibs, the most egregious being that Columbus wanted to prove the Earth was round. Actually, all the scientists and cartographers in the fifteenth century believed the Earth was round. The dispute was how big around the Earth was. On this point, Columbus was wrong and his critics were right. Columbus charted his way to the Indies partly using an ancient map of the world drawn by a Greek astronomer, Claudius Ptolemy from the second century. Although Ptolemy accounted for the world being round, he made the major mistake of leaving out a huge landmass that he did not know was there: North and South America.

The Virginia colony was the first to charter a college at Henrico, Virginia, in 1619, nineteen years before Harvard and seventy-four years before the College of William and Mary. Like all the colonial colleges, Henricus College was to be designed around the precepts of the Christian faith, “for the training and bringing up of infidels’ children to the true knowledge of God and understanding of righteousness.” The college never succeeded, and no further attempts were made to establish a college in Virginia until 1695, when Rev. James Blair, the representative of the Church of England in Virginia, and his superior, the Bishop of London, were granted a charter by King William and Queen Mary. Like all the New England colonial colleges, William and Mary was designed to further the gospel of Christ in all disciplines. The founders of these early educational institutions understood the relationship between a sound education based upon biblical absolutes and the future of the nation. Putting the Bible in the hands of the people was an essential step toward religious and political freedom. “From the very beginnings, the expressed purpose of colonial education had been to preserve society against barbarism, and, so far as possible, against sin. The inculcation of a saving truth was primarily the responsibility of the churches, but schools were necessary to protect the written means of revelation.”

Where would we be without the telephone? Who could have imagined more than 150 years ago that one day people would be able to speak to people thousands of miles away without the aid of wires? The invention of the telephone followed the invention of the telegraph and the invention of a special series of short and long symbols called the “Morse Code,” named after its inventor Samuel F. B. Morse (1791–1872). Morse was the son of Jedediah Morse (1761–1826), a pastor who is best known for his textbook Geography Made Easy and his warnings about a world-wide Illuminati conspiracy. At Yale College, the younger Morse was an indifferent student until he heard a series of lectures on the newly-developing subject of electricity. He was also an accomplished painter and the founder of the National Academy of Design. With his inquisitive nature and an artist’s hand, Morse conceived the basic idea of an instrument to send and receive an electrical current over wires that would open and close a circuit to generate short (dots) and long (dashes) sounds. While Morse’s idea was not new, he was the first to develop the theory into a working model with the aid of his two partners, Leonard Gale and Alfred Vail. In 1838, with his new telegraph and simplified code in hand, Morse transmitted ten words per minute at an exhibition in New York. Even with this demonstration there was still skepticism that any message could really be sent from city to city over wires. In 1843, Morse secured funds from Congress to construct the first telegraph line in the United States from Baltimore to Washington D.C. In May of the next year, from the nation’s capital Morse sent a biblical quotation over the newly strung wires, a message that revealed his own sense of wonder that God had chosen him to reveal the use of electricity to man: “What Hath God Wrought” (Num. 23:23). While a great deal of credit is owed to Morse for the telegraph, the code was equally ingenious. Morse believed that God has put us here for a purpose. God’s good creation is designed to be studied and developed to the glory of God and the benefit of man.

When we read about religion in America, most of the attention is placed on the earliest period of settlement—beginning with Jamestown in 1607—and limited to the original 13 colonies. While credit for the settlement of the West “has been given to trappers, explorers, miners, the military, homesteaders and even gunslingers,” history textbooks are nearly silent on the role religion played. Christian History magazine states, “Though history has all but forgotten them, it was Christian preachers and teachers who really tamed the West.” The language used to describe western expansion carried with it religious descriptions such as the “promised land” or “Eden before the fall.” Discovery of gold in California was viewed as a “sign of divine favor.” All of this helps to put journalist Louis O’Sullivan’s words in perspective: “The American claim is by right of our manifest destiny to overspread and possess the whole of the continent, which Providence has given us.” Christianity was not the only religion to make its way west. Of course, there was an indigenous native religion. Led by the Spanish in the sixteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church had settlements in the western frontier before Protestants settled in New England. Historian Ferenc Morton Szasz of the University of New Mexico writes: “The west had no institutions per se—the churches provided the institutions: the hospitals, schools, orphanages, old-age homes and colleges. The state would eventually take them over but at the start, it was the churches. The railroads donated land to the churches because churches meant stability.” Sam Houston’s wife Margaret led him to Christ in 1854. When a friend asked if the baptism he received at Rocky Creek had washed his sins away, Houston said, “I hope so. But if they were all washed away, the Lord help the fish down below.”

In 1777, Congress issued an official resolution instructing the Committee on Commerce to import 20,000 copies of the Bible. With the outbreak of war with England, the sea lanes had been cut off to the colonies. This meant that goods that were once common in the colonies were no longer being imported—including Bibles printed in England. Congress decided to act.

The legislation of Congress on the Bible is a suggestive Christian fact, and one which evinces the faith of the statesmen of that period in its divinity, as well as their purpose to place it as the corner-stone in our republican institutions. The breaking out of the Revolution cut off the supply of "books printed in London." The scarcity of Bibles also came soon to be felt. Dr. Patrick Allison, one of the chaplains to Congress, and other gentlemen, brought the subject before that body in a memorial, in which they urged the printing of an edition of the Scriptures.

The committee approved the importing of 20,000 copies of the Bible from Scotland, Holland, and elsewhere. Congressmen resolved to pass this proposal because they believed that "the use of the Bible is so universal, and its importance so great."2 Even though the resolution passed, action was never taken. Instead, Congress began to put emphasis on the printing of Bibles within the United States. In 1777 Robert Aitken of Philadelphia published a New Testament. Three additional editions were published in 1789, 1779, and 1781. The edition of 1779 was used in schools. Aitken's efforts proved so popular that he announced his desire to publish the whole Bible; he then petitioned Congress for support.

Pirates are not just storybook figures. During the early 1700s, there were plenty of them around, attacking ships and stealing their cargo. Many pirates lived in the islands off North Carolina and openly sold their captured goods in port cities like Charleston. The local authorities either were too scared to arrest them or were bribed into protecting these thieving men. The most notorious pirate was an Englishman named Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard. This pirate was a rough one. He would enter battle with bits of smoldering rope tied to strands of his beard, creating the ghastly effect that his body was on fire. Blackbeard was not afraid of hand to hand combat. He captured ships, held passengers hostage, and demanded hefty ransom payments. Blackbeard later bought a house and settled down in North Carolina. The governor even granted Blackbeard an official pardon for his raid on Charleston, even though he continued his life of piracy. Blackbeard's career ended when Virginia’s governor launched two ships on a secret campaign to capture the notorious pirate. Blackbeard was cornered, but he defended himself valiantly, receiving over twenty major wounds before succumbing. The Virginians returned home victorious, proudly displaying Blackbeard's head from their mast.

Over 300 years ago, there was another September 11 when the king of Poland, led Christian armies to the Gates of Vienna. The Ottoman Empire had been expanding into Europe. Cities were plundered, churches turned into mosques, free people made slaves, and thousands of Christians were forced to convert to Islam. The Ottomans wanted Vienna, because it would provide the way into Austria and Germany. The Pope recognized the danger posed by the Ottomans and issued a call to all rulers to unite against this common foe. The Polish king answered the Pope’s call to save Vienna. The Turks were starving the city into submission and had begun tunneling under the city walls. King Sobieski arrived on September 11, just in time to rout the Turks and halt the Ottoman tide, causing its long withdrawal from occupied territory.

The first computer filled an 1800-square-foot room and weighed thirty tons. The ENIAC was built in 1947 for $500,000. It contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 1,500 relays, 6,000 manual switches and 5 million soldered joints. When turned on, its power consumption caused the city of Philadelphia to experience brownouts. The on/off switching was accomplished with manual relays with flat metal surfaces to insure contact. In 1945, Grace Murray Hopper was working on the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator, a primitive computer by today’s standards, when the machine experienced a problem. An investigation showed that a moth had been trapped between the points of a relay. The moth acted as an insulator stopping the flow of electricity. The operators removed the moth and affixed it to the log book. The entry read: “First actual case of bug being found.” The word went out that the computer had been “debugged.” The term “debugging a computer program” was born. Today, debugging refers to lines of electronic code that acts as the brain of the computer.

Early in his campaign for president, Thomas Jefferson was accused of being an atheist by many prominent clergymen. One of Jefferson’s most vocal early critics was Timothy Dwight, the president of Yale College. On July 4, 1798, Dwight delivered a speech urging the voters to defeat the Jeffersonians—“the illuminati, the philosophers, the atheists, and the deists.” Dwight predicted dire consequences if Jefferson and his party were elected: “We may see the Bible cast into a bonfire, the vessels of the sacramental supper borne by an ass in public procession, and our children, either wheedled or terrified, uniting in chanting mockeries against God.”

Rev. William Linn of New York voiced similar concerns over a Jefferson presidency when he proclaimed that “the election of any man avowing the principles of Mr. Jefferson would . . . destroy religion, introduce immorality, and loosen all the bonds of society.” He further warned that “the voice of the nation in calling a deist to the first office must be construed into no less than a rebellion against God.” The New England clergy especially vilified Jefferson, “whom they hated for `disbelief in the deluge and his opposition to Bible reading in the schools.’“ Even the press got into the act. The Federalist Gazette of the United States framed the key question of the election, “to be asked by every American, laying his hand on his heart, as: `Shall I continue in allegiance to God—and a Religious President; Or impiously declare for Jefferson—and No God!!!’”

Robert Boyle (1627–1691) rejected the Aristotelian “science” of his day and showed that a scientific theory should be “proved” by experimentation before considered a scientific law. The ordered consistency of the universe, created by God but showing the effects of the fall, led Boyle to adopt this view of science. A reasonable god created a reasonable universe with consistency in the way the cosmos functioned. An experiment done one day should bring about the same results the next day.

In his last will and testament, Boyle “addressed his fellow members of the Royal Society of London, wishing them all success in ‘their laudable attempts, to discover the true Nature of the Works of God’ and ‘praying that they and all other Searchers into Physical Truths’ may thereby add ‘to the glory of the Great Author of Nature, and to the Comforter of mankind.’” The title of one of Boyle's many books was The Christian Virtuoso, that is, “The Christian Scientist.” Boyle was not a lone Christian voice crying in the wilderness of secular science. The membership of the Royal Society was made up of many Christians who shared Boyle's view that “the world was God's handiwork” and “it was their duty to study and understand this handiwork as a means of glorifying God.”