Unsettling May Have Occurred: Occasionally Uncomfortable Obscure True Stories from Human History

by Damn Interesting Editors, The

  Guiteau's autopsy revealed nothing out of the ordinary apart from an oversized spleen. The doctor found none of the brain lesions that are frequently seen in disturbed minds, but he did note that the flexible dura mater sac enveloping the brain appeared "unhealthy." In retrospect it seems certain that Guiteau and his unhealthy membrane were legitimately insane, however some might argue that a hanging was a more merciful sentence than a lifetime locked in a nineteenth-century insane asylum.

  The National Museum of Health and Medicine received Garfield's bullet-damaged spinal section along with Charles Guiteau's spleen, bones, and brains. The .44 British Bulldog that Guiteau selected for its suitability as a museum piece indeed became part of an exhibit at the Smithsonian, but the pistol has since been misplaced.

  In spite of the national grief at the assassinations of Lincoln and Garfield it would require yet another assassination--William McKinley in 1901--before the Secret Service was finally tasked with protecting US presidents. Curiously, McKinley's assassin Leon Czolgosz was also once a member of the Oneida commune. Today, the Oneida organization has grown to be one of the largest and wealthiest manufacturers of kitchen supplies in the world. Perhaps their selective breeding program paid off after all.

  Originally published 14 June 2012

  http://dam.mn/meddle-metal-mettle/

  The Ice Worm Cometh (1887 AD)

  In 1887, a glacial geologist named George Frederick Wright was hiking across the Muir Glacier in southeast Alaska when something strange caught his eye. Just as the daylight began to fade, the previously uninterrupted expanse of white snow around him began to develop what appeared to be a five o'clock shadow. These wriggling "whiskers" grew rapidly and emerged from the solid ice, leaving the snow crawling with an astonishing number of small black worms. Within approximately an hour there were tens of thousands of them criss-crossing the snow as far as he could see, leaving nary a square inch unwormed. A few hours later they began to slip effortlessly back into the ice, ultimately leaving nothing but pure white snow behind for the morning sun. The ice scientist brought news of these strange ice worms back to polite civilization, yet even over a century later little is known about the intriguing organisms.

  The creatures that Wright observed were Mesenchytraeus solifugus--inch-or-so long ice-dwelling worms that reside exclusively in the coastal glaciers of Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. The ice worms are so married to their home glaciers that even when a glacier is surrounded by a snow field the creatures will not wander more than a few meters from the underlying glacier's edge. Moreover, these unusual organisms thrive only at temperatures near the freezing point of water. If one warms an ice worm to even a few degrees above freezing the worm will melt into goo. During the coldest months of the year the worms do not appear on the surface at all; it is suspected that they creep deep into the ice and suspend their animations for the duration of winter.

  Although the ice worms lack eyes, some unknown mechanism allows them to respond to light and dark. By day the throngs of worms lurk as deep as two meters below the surface, and by night they squirm out to feed. Their preferred foods are bacteria, bits of pollen, and various snow algae including watermelon snow, a pinkish algae which creates swaths of snow that have the hue and aroma of fresh watermelon. Exactly how these worms penetrate the seemingly solid glacier ice is still a mystery. Some researchers hypothesize that the worms use the large pore atop their heads to excrete a lubricant that allows them to slip through minuscule fissures, while others suggest that the same pore might instead secrete an antifreeze agent that melts a path through the ice.

  Although ice worms are usually solitary wanderers in the friscalating dusklight, they do occasionally linger in meltwater pools during the day. There they often intermingle as writhing, knotty groups engaged in what is assumed to be reproductive ice worm orgies.

  In recent years NASA has provided limited funding to reverse-engineer Mesenchytraeus solifugus' cold tolerance to see if it might provide insight into possible life on our icy neighboring planets. More pragmatic scientists are also teasing out the ice worms' secrets in hopes that the cold-resistant proteins might enable long-term cold-storage of human organ and tissues for transplantation. Sadly, our opportunity to exploit the ice worms is shrinking just as rapidly as the glaciers that they inhabit. Sorry ice worms. With warmest personal regards, humanity.

  Originally published 16 November 2011

  http://dam.mn/the-ice-worm-cometh/

  The Tragedy of the Love Canal (1895 AD)

  William T. Love came to 1890s Niagara Falls, New York, with hugely ambitious plans. The landowner and entrepreneur envisioned the creation of an enormous utopian metropolis. His city would be home to enviable industry, and housing for more than a million people. Thousands of acres would become "the most extensive and beautiful [park] in the world". He planned to power the city using hydroelectric dams on a new 11-kilometer canal between the upper and lower Niagara Rivers. Within a year, however, Love's plans failed, and would quickly have been forgotten if it weren't for one problem.

  The one part of Love's city that had been built was a kilometer-long pit that would have been a part of the canal. After a few decades, this pit was purchased by the City of Niagara Falls, which had decided that it would make an ideal location for a needed chemical-dumping site. After the pit was filled with waste, a neighborhood was built directly on top of it. By the 1970s, the Love Canal became the site of one of the worst environmental disasters in American history.

  Back in 1892, it seemed inconceivable that Love's plans would fall apart so dramatically. He was a driven and charismatic man, who filled his brochures with wild promises and other hyperbole. The idea of a new city "among the greatest manufacturing cities in the United States" drew many supporters and investors; the following year saw construction begin on the canal. Then Love's ideas were quashed fairly quickly by a combination of factors. The fluctuations of the economy scared off the investors; the discovery of how electricity could be efficiently transmitted over long distances made Love's canal seem unnecessary; and local politicians prohibited the diversion of the rivers' water altogether. And thus Love's ambitions evaporated almost overnight.

  The pit remained, filling with rainwater and becoming a local recreation area: swimming in the summer, skating in the winter. In 1920 the land was sold to nearby Niagara Falls, a growing industrial town that immediately started using the pit as a dumping ground for chemical wastes. This continued for more than twenty years, after which the Hooker Chemical and Plastics Corporation (now a part of Occidental Petroleum or OxyChem) purchased the land for their own chemical disposal. By 1953, the company had buried nearly 22,000 tons of waste, and the pit was virtually full.

  At that time, the dangers of chemical wastes were almost entirely unknown. Far from being alarmed or even wary of living next to a major chemical producer, the city's residents were delighted at the medical and other developments that the chemical industry was bringing in. No one thought that the same companies could engage in any potentially dangerous activities. The Love Canal was lined with clay and covered with dirt to supposedly seal it, and Hooker Chemical's experts declared it safe. Only the occasional scientist recognized the dangers of chemical waste in the 1940s. One, a Dr. Robert Mobbs, had explored the link between insecticides and cancer; he would later strongly denounce Hooker Chemical as not just careless but also aware of the potential for danger in its dumping ground.

  It is not certain whether Hooker suspected the potential effects of its waste products. However, the fact that the company sold the Love Canal land for a single dollar is suspicious. So is the carefully-worded disclaimer that Hooker included with the sale, disclaiming any responsibility for side-effects from chemical exposure.

  Either way, these subtle warnings were not the red flag they should have been. The Niagara Falls Board of Education, which was in urgent need of more classroom space, eagerly purchased the land and began constructing a new el
ementary school. In 1955, four hundred children began attending the school, as about 100 homes were built in the surrounding areas. Although most of the residents of Niagara Falls knew what the land had been previously used for, they were not cautioned about living on it.

  Unsurprisingly, the direct effects of the pit's contents were soon felt. Strange odors and substances were reported by residents, especially those with basements. Pieces of phosphorus made their way to the surface; children in the schoolyard were burned by toxic waste. Local officials were alerted, but took no action.

  In 1976, water from heavy rains and a record-breaking blizzard caused a significant amount of chemical waste to migrate to the surface, where it contaminated the entire neighborhood. In the following years the area was stricken with higher than normal rates of stillborn births and miscarriages, and many babies were born with birth defects. Informal studies at this time noted the frightening trend. One, by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, observed more than 400 types of chemicals in the air, water, and soil, with some of them - such as benzene - already known to be carcinogenic.

  One particular family that was affected was that of local mother Lois Gibbs. After reading about the history of the Love Canal in a local publication, she realized that her young son Michael had been constantly ill since starting at the new school. Gibbs asked for her son to be transferred; when this failed, she went from door to door in her neighborhood with a petition to close the school. The situation turned out to be even worse than she had thought; her rounds made it clear that the entire neighborhood was ill. Gibbs went on to lead the campaign to call attention to the neighborhood; she was joined by many other local parents as well as the editors of the Niagara Falls Gazette.

  Finally, in the spring of 1978, state health commissioner Dr. Robert P. Whalen declared the area around the Love Canal hazardous. The school closed, the land was sectioned off, and more than 200 families in the immediate area were evacuated. By August of that year, the hazardous site was receiving national attention. On 7 August, President Jimmy Carter called upon the Federal Disaster Assistance Agency for its help. In September, Dr. Whalen released an intensive report on the disaster, which read in part:

  The profound and devastating effects of the Love Canal tragedy, in terms of human health and suffering and environmental damage, cannot and probably will never be fully measured...[w]e cannot undo the damage that has been wrought at Love Canal but we can take appropriate preventive measures so that we are better able to anticipate and hopefully prevent future events of this kind.

  Lawsuits were quick to arrive, and Hooker Chemical found itself being sued for more than $11 billion. The corporation denied its involvement through this series, even when faced by the Federal Justice Department in 1979 and New York State in 1989.

  Still, a great deal of damage had been done, and eventually more than 1,000 families had to be moved out of the Love Canal area. An EPA study revealed that of the thirty-six people tested, eleven had chromosomal damage; and that of fifteen Love Canal babies born between January 1979 and January 1980, only two were healthy. Agencies at the state and federal levels spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to clean up the pollution. Of that, Hooker Chemical has eventually been persuaded to contribute about $130 million.

  One good thing that came out of the disaster was the creation of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, more commonly known as the 'Superfund' law. Its aim is to collects taxes from gas and chemical corporations to be used directly to clean up any sites similar to the Love Canal. OxyChem now lists 'making chemical plants safer and more environmentally sound' as one of its goals.

  There is a sad irony in the fact that the site of William T. Love's "most perfect city in existence" became home to such a disaster. In the last fifteen years, however, there has been some gradual resettlement of the Love Canal site. In the early 1990s parts of the area were declared safe again, and now make up a neighborhood known as Black Creek Village. The area was taken off the Superfund list in September 2004 at the announcement that certain clean-up goals had been reached. Much of the Canal itself, however, remains sectioned off by a chain-link fence, which to any local passersby must serve as a poignant reminder of the whole catastrophe.

  Originally published 18 October 2006

  http://dam.mn/the-tragedy-of-the-love-canal/

  Sordid History of the Salton Sea (1905 AD)

  An accident spawned a lake. The lake fed water to millions of acres of farmland, and was a booming tourist trap that whithered and died to leave a ghost town in its wake, all in the course of less than a century.

  In the Sonoran Desert of southern California there is a valley that, like Death Valley, lies far below sea level. Geology suggests that this valley has been flooded and dried multiple times through the eons, but so far as US history goes, the Salton Sea came into being in 1905. It was an accident stemming from a canal that diverted water from the Colorado River to the agricultural area of the Imperial Valley. There was an overflow, an unplanned change of course, and an inland sea was reborn.

  The tributary to the Salton Sea continued fill the fledgling lake, eroding the banks of other nearby lakes, and soon sucking them away, quickly filling the new lake with the liquidy remains. By 1906 it was a fully fledged lake, and surveyors noted that several species of waterfowl and pelicans were nesting in the area. The lake continued to grow until Union Pacific closed the river breach, and cut off the tributary.

  So people had inadvertently created an inland sea. The Imperial Valley was still a nearby farming area with big needs, and a new irrigation/drainage lake was on their wish list. The US government put their stamp of approval on the accident by setting the land aside for use by the agricultural industry.

  Fish were introduced to the lake, and by 1920 it was a major tourist destination. Sport fishing and speed boats were popular uses of the new lake, but its primary purpose was in full swing about the same time. Pumps sent water out to the Imperial Valley for irrigation.

  As with any lake without an outlet, the Salton Sea became salty. The irrigation played a large role, with fresh water pumped up out of the lake, run over the fields where it dissolved salts out of the soil, and then the excess water just flowed downhill, back to the lake to be used again. And salts weren't the worst of it: pesticides such as DDT and Agent Orange, and residues from fertilizers were mixed in too.

  In the 1950s, the Salton Sea was a greater tourist draw than Yosemite National Park. In the same era the water was too saline to support the freshwater fish that had been there, and saltwater fish were introduced instead. More canals were opened to more farmland—which only exacerbated the problem. Come 1960 the Salton Sea even had a yacht club, but at the same time California's Fish and Game Commission announced that they feared the Salton Sea would be dead within fifteen years.

  It wasn't until 1986 that California announced that everyone should restrict the consumption of fish caught in the Salton Sea for fear of their toxicity levels. By then however, the rest was history. The saline levels had spawned an algal bloom—a sudden increase in phytoplankton algae—that had a profound smell … some described it as rotten eggs, or (and this is my favorite) “puke on a hot sidewalk”. By the seventies the resorts and tourists were history, and it was relegated to use only as irrigating and a wildlife preserve—the latter largely because of the population boom that devoured all the wetlands in the Los Angeles area, and left migrating birds no better place to nest. It turned out to be a less than ideal wildlife preserve; in the nineties there were two separate events of mass bird deaths at the lake.

  Presently there are a number of ambitious plans to try to save the Salton Sea. Birds still flock there, unaware of the dangerous chemicals of the water. Most people avoid it. It's become so polluted that it's a danger to eat anything that comes from it, and it's a wildlife preserve.

  And it's only a hundred years old.

  Originally published 22 Febr
uary 2006

  http://dam.mn/sordid-history-of-the-salton-sea/

  Extinction of the Passenger Pigeons (1914 AD)

  Passenger Pigeons (Ectopistes Migratorius) were once so numerous that by some estimates they outnumbered all the rest of the birds in North America combined. The swift birds were capable of flying in excess of 60 miles per hour, and frequently migrated hundreds of miles in search of suitable grounds for nesting and feeding. Yet their speed and mobility were no match for the advancing settlers of 19th-century America. In less than a century, the most numerous bird on the planet was completely eliminated from the wild by a ruthless campaign of eradication.

  The story of the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon is a dark one. It is a tale, like that of the American Bison, of the dangers of uncontrolled hunting and wanton extermination. It also chronicles the expansion of a new nation, the limitless vision of the Victorian Age, and the conquering of the American wilderness. But sadly, it mostly details what happens when a species that is uniquely and exquisitely adapted to its environment meets a predator equally well adapted to slaughter.

  When the first European settlers arrived at St. Augustine, Florida in 1565, it is believed that between 3 and 6 billion Passenger Pigeons darkened the skies over eastern North America. This vast host was supported by nearly continuous chestnut, birch, oak, maple, and pine forests the size of Western Europe. The pigeons feasted on the bountiful nuts of those trees and nested in their thick branches.