The Shrigley Abduction on This Day in History

 

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This day in history: The infamous Shrigley Abduction happened on this day in 1827. 

Edward Gibbon Wakefield was considered a key figure in the establishment of the colonies of South Australia and New Zealand (where he later served as a member of parliament) at the time. He also had significant interests in British North America, being involved in the drafting of Lord Durham's Report and being a member of the Parliament of the Province of Canada for a short time. 

Early in his career, although wealthy by contemporary standards, Wakefield was still not satisfied with this. He wished to acquire an estate and enter Parliament, for which he lacked sufficient capital. To get this capital he needed to marry someone for money, and he set his sights on 15-year-old Ellen Turner. Ellen Turner was the daughter and only child of William Turner, a wealthy resident of Pott Shrigley, Cheshire. He almost managed to wed the wealthy heiress in 1826 when he abducted her, after luring her from school with a false message about her mother's health. The couple were married in Gretna Green, Scotland, and travelled to Calais, France, before Turner's father was able to notify the authorities and intervene. Wakefield was brought to trial for the case known as the Shrigley abduction in 1827 and, along with his brother William, sentenced to three years in Newgate prison; the marriage, which had not been consummated, was dissolved by a special act of parliament.

Despite this, Wakefield was incredibly still able to enjoy a fruitful political career colonizing New Zealand, while his innocent victim would die four years later.

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Gothic Horror Novelist George du Maurier on This Day in History

 

This day in history: George du Maurier was born on this day in 1834. Du Maurier was a cartoonist and writer best known for writing the novel Trilby. You may not have heard of Trilby and it was a huge success in the 1890's when it was released. Trilby tells of a poor artist's model, Trilby O'Ferrall, who was transformed into a diva under the spell of an evil musical genius, Svengali. Soap, songs, dances, toothpaste, and even the city of Trilby, Florida, were named after her, as was the variety of soft felt hat with an indented crown worn in the London stage dramatization of the novel. The plot inspired Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel Phantom of the Opera and innumerable other works derived from it. Du Maurier eventually came to dislike the persistent attention the novel was given. 

The dark figure of Svengali resonated with the public and the word “svengali” has come to refer to a person who, with evil intent, dominates, manipulates and controls another.

In court, the Svengali Defense is a legal tactic that portrays the defendant as a pawn in the scheme of a greater, and more influential, criminal mastermind.

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Nicolaus Copernicus on This Day in History

 

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This day in history: Nicolaus Copernicus's book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres was added to the Index of Forbidden Books on this day in 1616, 73 years after it was first published. This book is the seminal work on the heliocentric theory of the earth which argued that the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun at the center of the Universe. The Ptolemaic model that everything revolved around the earth (geocentrism) was the dominant theory before this for centuries.

The Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Forbidden Books) was a list of publications deemed heretical or contrary to morality by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (a former Dicastery of the Roman Curia), and Catholics were forbidden to read them.

Noteworthy figures on the Index include Simone de Beauvoir, Nicolas Malebranche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel de Montaigne, Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Victor Hugo, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, André Gide, Nikos Kazantzakis, Emanuel Swedenborg, Baruch Spinoza, Desiderius Erasmus, Immanuel Kant, David Hume, René Descartes, Francis Bacon, Thomas Browne, John Milton, John Locke, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Blaise Pascal, and Hugo Grotius. The first woman to be placed on the list was Magdalena Haymairus in 1569, who was listed for her children's book Die sontegliche Episteln über das gantze Jar in gesangsweis gestellt (Sunday Epistles on the whole Year, put to the test). Other women include Anne Askew, Olympia Fulvia Morata, Ursula of Munsterberg (1491–1534), Veronica Franco, and Paola Antonia Negri (1508–1555). Contrary to popular opinion, Charles Darwin's On the Origin of the Species was never included.

There have been cases of reversal with respect to works that were on the Index, such as those of Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei. The Inquisition's ban on reprinting Galileo's works was lifted in 1718 when permission was granted to publish an edition of his works (excluding the condemned Dialogue) in Florence. In 1741 Pope Benedict XIV authorized the publication of an edition of Galileo's complete scientific works which included a mildly censored version of the Dialogue. In 1758 the general prohibition against works advocating heliocentrism was removed from the Index of prohibited books, although the specific ban on uncensored versions of the Dialogue and Copernicus's De Revolutionibus remained. All traces of official opposition to heliocentrism by the church disappeared in 1835 when these works were finally dropped from the Index.

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The S&P 500 on This Day in History

 

This day in history: The S&P 500 stock market index is introduced, replacing the S&P 90 on this day in 1957. The S&P 500 is a stock market index that measures the stock performance of 500 large companies listed on stock exchanges in the United States. It is one of the most commonly followed equity indices. The 10 largest companies in the index are:

Apple Inc. (AAPL) 

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) 

Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN)

Facebook [META], Inc.

Alphabet Inc. Class A (GOOGL)

Alphabet Inc. Class C (GOOG)

Tesla, Inc. (TSLA)

Nvidia Corp. (NVDA)

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.B)

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)

In 1957 the ten largest companies were:

General Motors

Exxon Mobil

Ford Motor

U.S. Steel

General Electric

Mobil

Chrysler

Esmark

AT&T Technologies

Gulf Oil 

In 2000 the ten largest companies were:

General Motors

Wal-Mart

Exxon Mobil

Ford Motor

General Electric

IBM

Citigroup

AT&T

Altria Group

Boeing

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Killed by an Office Chair on This Day in History

This day in history: A 14 year-old boy from Jiaozhou, Shandong, China, was killed when the pneumatic cylinder in his office chair exploded, on this day in 2009. This made for a graphic scene, where the chair exploded and chunks of metal flew into his lower body, and he bled to death.

This is not the only time an office chair exploded. "One office chair explosion took place in 2013. A Chinese woman was injured quite badly as the result of a computer chair exploding. Testimony from her brother states that she was...drying her hair when sitting on the chair and all of a sudden the chair exploded. She was lucky to survive as surgeons saved her [by] removing little fragments of screws and plastic out of her flesh." Source

In 2008 a 65 year-old man was injured when a steel rod from an office chair ejected out of an exploding chair.

It seems though that these incidents happen in places where safety standards are lax. Most office chair manufacturers have strict standards to make sure that you are comfortable as well as safe, especially if you buy from a reputable company. 

Karen Carpenter on This Day in History

This day in history: American singer and drummer Karen Carpenter was born on this day in 1950. Karen and her brother Richard formed The Carpenters, a successful pop/soft-rock duo. Karen had a distinctive three-octave contralto vocal range, and was praised by her peers as one of the greatest singers ever. Her singing had attracted critical praise and influenced several significant musicians and singers, including Madonna, Sheryl Crow, Pat Metheny, Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, Shania Twain, Natalie Imbruglia, and k.d. lang. Paul McCartney has said that she had "the best female voice in the world: melodic, tuneful and distinctive". She has been called "one of the greatest voices of our lifetime" by Elton John. In the BBC documentary Only Yesterday: The Carpenters Story, her friend Nicky Chinn said that John Lennon walked up to her at a Los Angeles restaurant and told her "I want to tell you love, that you've got a fabulous voice." Her drumming has been praised by fellow musicians Hal Blaine, Cubby O'Brien and Buddy Rich and by Modern Drummer magazine. In 1975, she was voted the best rock drummer in a poll of Playboy readers, beating Led Zeppelin's John Bonham.

The manner of her death though garnered as much attention as her musical career. Karen began different types of diets as far back as high school. Carpenter eventually began her own weight-loss program using exercise equipment and counting calories. She lost about 20 pounds in the mid-70's and intended to lose another five pounds. Her eating habits also changed around this time; she would try to remove food from her plate by offering tastes to others with whom she was dining. By September 1975, Carpenter weighed 91 pounds. At live performances, fans reacted with gasps to her gaunt appearance, and many wrote to the pair to ask what was wrong.

She eventually died on February 4 1983 of "emetine cardiotoxicity due to or as a consequence of anorexia nervosa." Carpenter's death brought media attention to anorexia nervosa, a condition that had not been widely known beforehand. Her family started the Karen A. Carpenter Memorial Foundation, which raised money for research on anorexia nervosa and other eating disorders.

On October 12, 1983, shortly after her death, the Carpenters received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1999, VH1 ranked Carpenter at No. 29 on its list of the 100 Greatest Women of Rock and Roll. In 2010, Rolling Stone ranked Carpenter No. 94 on its list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time, calling her voice "impossibly lush and almost shockingly intimate", adding "even the sappiest songs sound like she was staring directly into your eyes".

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An Elevator Death on This Day in History

 

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This day in history: Canadian journalist Benjamin Taylor A Bell died after falling down an elevator shaft to his death on this day in 1904. While taking his habitual shortcut to the Canadian Mining Review offices through an adjacent store, Bell walked through the wrong door in the store and fell 10 feet down an elevator shaft. 

While this is well over a century ago, elevator deaths still occur. 

About 27 people are killed in elevator accidents each year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. "Half of the annual elevator-related fatalities occur in repair or maintenance workers who service elevators, or people who use elevators as part of their employment, such as in an office building. Of those, half of the fatalities result from falls into the shaft. In the occupational-related elevator deaths category, 53 percent occur during installation or repair, 17 percent occur during work in the shaft or car, and 30 percent occur during performance of work adjacent to (but not on board) the elevator." Source

The least safe elevators appear to be at construction sites and mines. The largest number of deaths occurred in South Africa in 1995 where a train crashed through a safety barrier and fell into a mine shaft, hitting an elevator which was carrying 104 workers and causing it to plunge to the bottom of the shaft. All 104 died.

The second deadliest elevator accident also happened in South Africa. In 1987, a methane gas explosion at a St. Helena gold mine severed the cable of a double-deck elevator, causing it to fall 1.4 kilometers to the bottom of the mine shaft, killing all 52 people on board. 10 others who were not in the elevator were killed in the explosion.

A Houston doctor in 2003 was killed after his head was trapped in elevator doors at the hospital where he worked. He was partially decapitated as the elevator ascended, and he also sustained injuries to his ribs and spine.

In 2016, Kristopher Moules, 25, a correctional officer, and Timothy Gilliam Jr., 27, an out-of-county inmate being housed at the Luzerne County Correctional Facility in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, fell to their deaths after an altercation between them caused them to slam into the exterior of the fifth floor elevator doors. Despite the elevator having its up-to-date working credentials, the door popped open on impact, causing the men to fall five flights down the shaft to their deaths. The county declared CO Moules' death a homicide and declared Gilliam's death an accident. 

Hundreds died in the elevators in the World Trade Center on 9/11, and the elevators may have helped spread the fires. "Some people were trapped in elevator cars that stopped working when they were damaged. For those unfortunate people, they either had to wait until the buildings collapsed entirely or until the fires got to them. All told, only about 100 people actually managed to escape from elevators on September 11. In fact, the elevator shafts of the World Trade Center buildings were found by experts to have aided the fires in spreading after the fact. A big elevator shaft is a perfect chimney for drafts that can make fire spread quickly through a large skyscraper." Source

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