Favorite Moments in History

I enjoy history quite a lot, especially the really random little tidbits. For example, Andrew Jackson apparently decided to have a cheese party at the White House. Just another reason why Andrew Jackson was a BA president. Maybe I actually did learn something in AP U.S. History...  
Anyway, here's a list of my favorite moments in history in no particular order:

1. The Caning of Charles Sumner  
Charles Sumner was an Antislavery Republican from Massachusetts. He had delivered a speech on whether Kansas should be admitted as a free state or not. Apparently, he decided to mock two of his fellow senators- Stephan Douglas of Illinois and Andrew Butler of South Carolina- basically saying they were jerks and shouldn't senators. Plus, they were Democrats. (That was probably part of his speech). The other senator from South Carolina, Preston Brooks, walked in during Sumner's speech. Brooks was so enraged at what Sumner was saying that he took  out his cane and started beating Sumner so much that he started to bleed profusely. Eventually, Brooks resigned and Sumner recovered from his flesh wound. Sumner went on to be a U.S. senator for the next eighteen years. Makes today's opposition tactics (mainly "threatening" to filibuster; don't threaten to, just do it!) pale in comparison, eh?

2. Andrew Jackson's Cheese Party

OK, first of all, Andrew Jackson liked to party a lot. In 1835, a farmer thought it was a Gouda idea to send the president 1,400 lb cheese wheel. Since President Jackson had no clue what to do with all that brie-licious cheese, he just left in the entrance hall for two whole years. Now our cheese expert of a president thought two years was plenty of time for the cheese to age. So, he did what any party-cheese-loving guy would do, and he opened the door to the public so they could eat some cheese, because having a half-ton of cheese is a grand reason to throw a party, right?. It was gone in two hours, and it left a grease stain the size of the moon on the White House carpet. Imagine how much WD-40 that took to remove the stain.

3. Newsboy Strike of 1899

This picture is actually from the recent Broadway production of Newsies, so what? The musical is based on the 1992 movie of the same name which is based off the newsboy's strike of 1899. It's 1899 and William McKinley is president of the United States of America. The Spanish-American war just ended, and there's been a slump in newspaper sales. So what do newspaper giants William Randolph Hurst and Joesph Pulitzer decide the best course of action is? Raising the prices of The New York Journal and The New York World clearly the best option here. Except, they didn't raise the consumer price, they raised the price the newsies had to buy it at. See, if you were selling newspapers in 1899 and you weren't hired by the newspaper company to do so, you had to buy your papers from the newspaper company and sell it on your own. If you didn't sell all of them, then you were out of luck because the newspaper company wouldn't buy them back. The newsies were poor enough already and thought this price raise was ridiculous in every way. The newsboys of New York banded together to strike against those pesky newspaper giants Pulitzer and Hurst to get them to drive the price back down. Pulitzer and Hurst refused to lower it, but they did agree to buy back any unsold papes the newsies had at the end of the day.

And now, for a musical number from the 1992 musical, Newsies!

4. Martin Luther Burns Papal Bull

Yes, I realize this isn't really a part of American history, but I never said it had to be, did I? Anyway, in Martin Luther's day, the Catholic church was doing things, like selling indulgences and doing church services in Latin. OK, so speaking in Latin isn't bad in and of itself ,but it was already a dead language by the Renaissance period, and only the church officials knew it anyway. Luther wasn't down with many of the practices of the church, so he wrote the 95 Theses and nailed them to the Wartburg Castle, which was a church. This would be the present day equivalent of posting an ad for private tuba lessons at Panera or Coburns, or it wasn't weird at all. Anyway, the pope caught wind of what Luther was up to, and he didn't like it, so he sent him a papal bull. Basically all it said was "Recant your teachings or you'll be excommunicated from the church." What was Luther's response to this? Burn it. It was his way of "sticking it to the man" and saying he wouldn't take back what he said. This is one reason why Luther is BA, because one does not simply burn a papal bull.

Also, here is a rap someone did about Martin Luther. I enjoy it a lot.

      
 Have a Super-Schmawesome Saturday!!