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Zombie Planes May 3, 2012

Posted by Beachcombing in : Actualite, Contemporary

***Dedicated to Ricardo***

Beach is properly modest about his knowledge of aeronautics – apart from perhaps the prehistory of flight. But he is as moved as the next man to see the spitfire test in First of the Few or (1.37.40)  or, for that matter, Corky sweating in Tales of the Golden Monkey as a zero races out of the sun. And, now, thanks to Ricardo, he has some new images from the annals of aviation archaeology to add to his mental collection.

First up are these beautiful shots of a Kittyhawk that was discovered in the Egyptian desert this March (2012). The plane came down in the WW2 apparently being flown to a repair depot (this still has not been confirmed). What the sands of Egypt did to the pilot is not yet known. But there can be no doubt that, after the initial tussle of landing, they treated the plane well. The colours and the cockpit are happily preserved. And looking at them brings back, with frightening immediacy, the desert war and long distance runs over the heads of Eighth Army against Rommel’s Afrika Corps.

Another 1942 wreck comes from the far north. In that year, a squadron of eight planes (six P-38s and two B-17 bombers) were forced to land in the desolation of east Greenland en route to Iceland. That all eight planes came down on the ice without a death is in itself a small miracle; that the crew members were taken out of Greenland without life-threatening frost-bite and gangrene is also pretty extraordinary. But what needn’t surprise anyone who knows anything about plane nuts is that the plane was retrieved in the 1990s from 250 feet of ice, piece by piece! (see the picture at the head of this post). It was then reconstructed, named Glacier Girl and then finally in 2007 it set off on the the mission it had been sent on 65 years before, attempting to fly to the UK.

Actually it had to end its flight in Newfoundland because of a coolant leak. And Beach can’t help thinking that GG just didn’t want to go anywhere near that bloody ice massif again.

ù

If the desert and tundra are good for preserving planes a league of salt water must be pretty handy too. But Beach hasn’t found that many examples of historic underwater plane wrecks. (There is, of course, the horror in these cases that the pilot is almost certainly still sitting hunched over his instruments.) This final picture of a Japanese fighter (1942?) was taken off of Papua New Guinea. Any other well preserved planes, zombie or otherwise? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com

***

4 May 2012: Southern Man writes in: Beach you forgot one of your earlier posts: the watery grave of Brian Lane. Jonathan Jarret from A Corner confesses: ‘you hit on a child’s interest of mine with this one [always a good sign!]. Deep water appears to be the thing; the Norwegian fjords have turned up a number of German WWII fighters in the last decade, and this YouTube video and its attached links are quite evocative. (The pilot seems to have got out, don’t worry.)   The other place that I wish someone would mount some salvage in is Loch Ryan in south-western Scotland, where there was during the war a flying boat base. At the end of 1946, with the mighty `Flying Porcupine’, the Short Sunderland, leaving service as land-based aircraft finally matched its range and warload, the half-squadron of them that remained on the Loch were scuttled rather than waste time scrapping them, and they’re still down there. Divers report that they’re deep enough that there’s very little oxygen in the water and so their preservation is allegedly marvellous. There are some Sunderlands in museums but no flying ones and I for one would put up more than the usual airshow ticket price if one could be got into the air again. I can’t find any footage of those, but a similar thing occurred at Pembroke Dock and there there is dive video: The other place that has turned out to be surprisingly good for warbird preservation is Siberia: a fair few little Russian warbirds have made their way west ever since the locals realised that mad Westerners would pay for them in sufficiently good condition. I can’t find a good webpage on that process exactly, but if you will take my word for it that this is the story behind this machine. You will see that some of these `zombies’, like the Focke Wulf in first link, may well live twice.     Googling for the Siberian stuff, by the way, also brought me this on abandoned fields which seems as if it might catch your attention.’ Next up is Wade: ‘You may have already seen this, but if not…in recent news, an American has researched and located a dozen to as many as twenty Spitfire Mark XIV planes with the more powerful Rolls Royce Griffon engines, still crated as they were originally shipped to Burma just at the end of WWII. Rather than having them returned to Great Britain, the decision was made to bury them at the Burmese airfield. Tacitus from Debris writes in: Look at this now on display at Chicago OHare and in swell shape.  Remarkable details of preservation, and I like the story of the faux aircraft carriers on Lake Michigan.   Then Invisible: ‘You’ll find many tales of zombie planes  here including the 20 Spitfires found buried in Burma [see Wade above] and the remains of an RAF pilot discovered with his Spitfire 5 metres under a French farm. Here at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, there is a poignant display, with some parts of the plane, about Lady Be Good, a B-24D Liberator (wikipedia), lost in the Libyan desert during the Second World War. Tragically, the crew thought they were bailing out over the Mediterranean instead of the desert and walked in the wrong direction, not knowing that the plane, with a working radio and some supplies, could have been reached. When found, the plane was incredibly well-preserved. The remains of the crew were not recovered until the 1960s. Thanks to Wade, Tacitus, JJ, Invisible and Southern Man!!

14/May 2011. Judith W (aka Zenobia) writes in: This just appeared, with a wee bit more information and the pilot’s name….: You might well also be interested in some of the extraordinary pictures of the Kittyhawk P-40 crashlanded in the Egyptian desert  (via CassandraVivien).  They were taken by Jakub Perka, the Polish oil worker who discovered the plane.  Sadly, that was a month ago and the plane is now being stripped of its parts by locals for scrap. While this is obviously a remarkable find, I remember horseriding in the desert many years ago, not quite as far as el-Alamien, and the horse kicking up all sorts of army kit, empty food tins, spent ammunition, an amazing collection all lying under a few centimetres of sand.  I’m sure it’s all still there, untarnished by time.’ Thanks Judith!

Singing Enemy Songs: Lili Marleen April 13, 2012

Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary

One of the most moving moments in cinema is the extraordinary ending of Kubrick’s Paths of Glory. A young German girl is pulled in front of a crowd of French soldiers and forced to sing. The poilu mock her but as she nervously begins  the mood changes. The soldiers join in and drown her anxious, uncertain German, humming along. What begins as a musical lynching ends as a moment of unlikely understanding between enemies.

It works in a film, but has music ever really united foes in this way? Sure, there are stories of Silent Night/Stille Nacht being sung on both sides of the trenches at Christmas in the First World War. But these are difficult to document. However, there is one striking example from the Second World War, Lili Marleen, that can be documented by record sales alone.

Lili Marleen had the unlikely trajectory of so many surprise successes. It was written as a soldier’s poem in 1915, published in 1937 (in a very different Germany) and then set to music and recorded in August 1939 just before the Reich knocked rather loudly on the door of the Polish corridor.  The song was a complete failure and would have been entirely forgotten had it not been played by chance in 1941 by Germany’s military Radio Belgrade. There it was particularly picked up by Rommel’s Afrika Corps, listening and dreaming of home on the other side of the Med: Rommel himself is said to have loved the song, though Beach has found no good source for this.

A problem. The song was not very ‘Nazi’. In fact, its popularity infuriated Goebbels who briefly banned it – it did not help that its singer, Lale Andersen, had many Jewish friends. The song describes, after all, not the inevitably tedious march of the master race, but a suffering soldier with a heavy pack recalling a girl back home. And all this sung to a nostalgic, jerky, but catchy Blue Danube type tune! The arms of the swastika were wilting by the time you got to the end of the second verse.

However, it was these qualities that meant that it was able to cross the enemy lines with both the Dominion and British troops in the Eighth Army in Egypt and Libya singing along as they piled up sand bags or carried munitions back and forth.  By then Radio Belgrade, often listened to by the Allies, was using the song as their signature.

The war in the desert was a bloody and unpleasant affair: but it involved a degree of chivalry not found on any other front as combatants (all in a foreign land) found themselves also fighting the dunes and the sun. (Memories of the weather wars). In this unusual situation Lili Marleen became a motif of solidarity between the troops, friends and enemies alike. One British security agent, for example, remembers that whenever he was to debrief a German soldier he would always break the ice by asking what the latest alternative verses to Lili Marleen were: countless parodies and subversive versions were composed.

There was initially resistance to Allied soldiers singing the music: remember that some English-speakers had tried to get Beethoven banned for the duration of the World Wars, so a contemporary German number was bound to be controversial. However, in the end, Lili Marleen’s popularity was such that an English version became a commercial ‘sure thing’. A catastrophic rendering was given by Vera Lynn who is just too strait-laced and, well, English to do it justice. The best version in English is perhaps Marlene Dietrich’s sultry and very enjoyable purring. And from 1941 the song was translated into various languages among the combatant nations. Today it belongs to all of them.

Any other soldiers-brought-together-by-music stories? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com

***

First on the subject of LM Howard M writes ‘I thought you might enjoy — if enjoy is the right word — this version (attached) of 07 Lilli Marleen recorded by Goebbel’s own propaganda swing band, Charlie and His Orchestra. It’s a bit atypical for Karl Schwendler’s outfit, since this is performed straight and sentimental. Nonetheless, the Reich seemed to feel that a German song popular with Allied soldiers had some propaganda value, or they wouldn’t have recorded it. Note that it’s not the usual English translation, and was probably written by Schwendler himself.  I don’t know if you’re familiar with the music of Charlie and His Orchestra; their best-known recordings are parodies of popular American and British dance numbers, characterized as much by exceptional musicianship as by lyrics full of antisemitism, racism, and frequent boasts of Aryan supremacy. The history of jazz and jazz musicians under the Third Reich is fascinating in and of itself (Jews! Drug addicts! Negermusik!), but I’m a little too steeped in jazz history to know if it qualifies as “strange” for your purposes.’ Katie J writes in ‘After the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862, the Union regimental bands started playing at twilight. They played pro-Union songs, naturally. After a while, Confederate band started playing their songs. Finally, the Confederates started to play, ‘Home, Sweet Home’ and Union bands joined in. It’s recorded that soldiers of both sides joined in. I’m pretty sure that ‘Home, Sweet Home’ was a neutral song, but Fredericksburg was a horrific battle and oddly enough, there are a few well-documented acts of kindness and mercy between the opposing armies. Perhaps the combatants felt the need to reassure themselves of their common humanity.’ On the Civil War there is, as Tacitus points out, that beautiful story about Dixie. Abe Lincoln was said to be rather fond of Dixie Invisible writes in with an example of the Battle of the Bands also from the CW:  See Battle of the Bands and the Battle of the Bands at Stone River. ‘As’ Invisible continues ‘for soldiers being brought together by music, (but not on opposing sides) you can do worse than think of all the regimental pipers who stood their ground in the face of charging cavalry, rallied the wavering when badly wounded, and piped their men over the top or onto the beaches. Here’s the obituary of one, The Mad Piper, Bill Millin JEC writes ‘When I think of incidents of one side singing the enemy’s songs, I’m reminded of a scene from the book Das Boot and the movie of the same name in which the crew of u-boat U-96 lustily sing ‘Its A Long Way To Tipperary’. The book was written in 1973 by former Kriegsmarine propaganda officer Lothar-Günther Buchheim and, while fictionalized, closely follows his mission on the real U-96 in 1941. In the scene, the politically reckless captain clearly enjoys ordering his over-formal First Officer, a committed Nazi, to replace a Berlin propaganda broadcast being played over the p.a. system with the old English music hall song. The crew’s enthusiastic singing tells the reader/viewer that they heartily approve of the little tweak of the young Nazi’s inflated ego. Because the book and film are so well documented as having been heavily autobiographical, I feel safe in submitting this as a real-life incident.’ As a sidenote, the captain of the actual U-96, Korvettenkapitän (Lieutenant Commander) Heinrich Lehmann-Willenbrock, was awarded the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves (Ritterkreuz des Eisernes Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub) for conspicuous and multiple incidents of gallantry, and, although wounded in action, survived the war to serve as a consultant on the masterful 1981 Wolfgang Petersen film based on Buxhheim’s book.’ KMH writes: Music itself does have a particular quality of rising  above national distinctions. Is it possible to imagine a world where German music was appreciated only by the Germans, Russian music only appreciated by the Russians, etc.? Music, as the world’s foremost international language,  seems to have done its share in promoting a global reluctance to indulge in genocidal thoughts and activities. The exception seems to be the Muslims, who have their own music, but non-Muslims aren’t aware of or familiar with it. Problem nations aren’t musical nations. The same goes for problem ideologies. This may be one reason why they inevitably fail to achieve their objectives.’ And to round off perfectly Grand Old Partisan, Michael Zak sent in this video of that famous Cold War Warrior Edward Rowny playing LM on his harmonica. Thanks to MZ, KMH, Invisible,Tacitus, Katie J. and Howard!

30/04/2012: Mike Zak also writes in: ‘Yankee Doodle was originally a British mockery of the American colonials’ Thanks Mike!

Force Feeding Queens April 9, 2012

Posted by Beachcombing in : Modern

One of Beach’s most able students this term did a paper on ‘cultural variance in female beauty’: the fact that what makes a woman attractive varies from society to society. This is rarely truer than with weight. After all, here should we trust the modern American model of the waspish, almost boyish woman or the Mediterranean model of, say, a curvy Calabrian with rotating hips? Beach has not the slightest idea. But he confesses to being intrigued by the extraordinary model offered in nineteenth-century Uganda and described here by a European traveller.

In the afternoon, as I had heard from Musa that the wives of the king and princes were fattened to such an extent that they could not stand upright, I paid my respects to Waze’ze’ru, the king’s eldest brother… with the hope of being able to see for myself the truth of the story. There was no mistake about it. On entering the hut, I found the old man and his chief wife sitting side by side on a bench of earth strewed over with grass, and partitioned like stalls for sleeping apartments, while in front of them were placed numerous wooden pots of milk… I was struck with no small surprise at the way he received me, as well as with the extraordinary dimensions, yet pleasing beauty, of the immoderately fat fair one his wife. She could not rise; and so large were her arms that between the joints the flesh hung down like large, loose-stuffed puddings. Then in came their children, all models of the Abyssinian type of beauty, and as polite in their manners as thorough-bred gentlemen. They had heard of my picture-books from the king, and all wished to see them; which they no sooner did, to their infinite delight, especially when they recognized any of the animals, than the subject was turned by my inquiring what they did with so many milk-pots. This was easily explained by Waze’ze’ru himself, who, pointing to his wife, said, ‘This is all the product of those pots: from early youth upward we keep those pots to their mouths, as it is the fashion at court to have very fat wives.’

Essentially then aristocratic women are force-fed so they attain simply extraordinary dimensions. This next passage comes from the same writer. Here he risked a great deal by going to measure one of these obese beauties and offering his own flesh in payment in a bizarre adult cross-cultural version of you-show-me-and-I’ll-show-you.

After a long and amusing conversation with [the king] in the morning, I called on one of his sisters-in-law, married to an elder brother who was born before Dagara ascended the throne. She was another of those wonders of obesity, unable to stand excepting on all fours. I was desirous to obtain a good view of her, and actually to measure her, and induced her to give me facilities for doing so by offering in return to show her a bit of my naked legs and arms. The bait took as I wished it, and after getting her to sidle and wriggle into the middle of the hut, I did as I promised, and then took her dimensions, as noted below. All of these are exact except the height, and I believe I could have obtained this more accurately if I could have had her laid on the floor. Not knowing what difficulties I should have to contend with in such a piece of engineering, I tried to get her height by raising her up. This, after infinite exertions on the part of us both, was accomplished, when she sank down again, fainting, for her blood had rushed into her head. Meanwhile, the daughter, a lass of sixteen, sat stark-naked before us, sucking at a milk-pot, on which the father kept her at work by holding a rod in his hand; for, as fattening is the first duty of fashionable female life, it must be duly enforced by the rod if necessary. I got up a bit of flirtation with missy, and induced her to rise and shake hands with me. Her features were lively, but her body was as round as a ball.

‘I got up a bit of a flirtation with missy’! For the record the measurements of her mother were as follows: Round the arm, 1 foot 11 inches; chest, 4 feet 4 inches; thigh, 2 feet 7 inches; calf, 1 foot 8 inches; height, 5 feet 8 inches.

Beach wonders how much she weighed? Any other extreme versions of feminine beauty? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com

***

30/4/2012: KHM writes in ‘The preference for the fat female seems to go back far into prehistory as the article below from Wikipedia on venus  figurines indicates. Since  thin females are less likely to conceive than fatter ones, the preference may be rooted in reproductive advantage, perhaps as in the cultural concept of the “earth mother.”The further back we go, the more important the earth mother, matriarchy and polyandry is relative to the male sky or heaven gods controlling the weather. It is quite possible that before the Biblical Fall both culture and religion revolved around the female rather than the male. (Adam was defined as includingboth male and female genders.)  These extremely old traditions die very slowly – I think the Ottoman Turks were one of the last cultures to favor artificially fat females, but not to the same degree as the Ugandans, of course. Now that the biosphere is suffering from extinction of many species, especially those in the wild, the earth as a mother will be unappreciated andunrecognized. Free food derived from hunting, fishing and gathering in the wild will be replaced by human effort and intervention at all stages of the food production process. Expect females to lose much of their distinctive physical appearance as they dress and act more like males in the long-term future.’ Thanks KHM!!





	
The Republic of New Afrika
	April 2, 2012


	Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary	  	


	


The Forgotten Kingdoms series continues with an interesting and ultimately bloody recent experiment in nationhood: the Republic of New Afrika [sic]. Created 31 March 1968 the RNA was a post Malcolm-X attempt to create a homeland for Afro-Americans who could not be, the founders believed, represented or protected by the US government.


The brain-child of several black radicals it resembled other experiments in extremism. Neo-nazis and, more honourably, libertarians have, after all, similar contemporary schemes for taking over a given corner of the North American continent and seceding. Many Texans and a handful of Alaskans harbour, of course, comparable ambitions.


It has to be said though that the RNA went to greater lengths to create their bit of Africa in the northern hemisphere. For one the RNA mapped an area of the south-eastern US where the new country would be based: Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. Beach is tempted to add, ‘good luck with that!’


For seconds, it formed a RNA government in waiting, presumably to negotiate its extraordinary claim for 400 billion dollars as compensation from the US government for slavery: and this in the 1960s when money was still worth something. The plan was that black Americans would be allowed to decide on their citizenship and many could then reverse the Great Migration and return to a new homeland on the Atlantic coast.


The RNA attempted to open negotiations with the Nixon White House: that naturally ignored the ‘peace-feelers’ and so the RNA was forced to make Jackson a provisional centre of their new government. Attempts to go further failed or led to blistering violence. In 1969 at the New Bethel Baptist Church gunfights broke out with the ‘occupying powers’. Then in 1970 the RNA put down their claim to their future territory by taking over a single homestead at Jackson in 1971. A policeman was killed in a raid there and eleven members of the RNA were arrested and charged and tried for murder including the then president Imari Obadele.


The RNA later simmered down to being ‘just’ another pressure group: though the struggle for reparations for slavery was first articulated in the RNA ranks. It is an idea that, while not mainstream, continues to fascinate elements in the Afro-American community to this day. A final echo of the reconstruction promise for  ‘fifty dollars, forty acres, and a mule’ for every freed slave?


Beachcombing is always on the look out for forgotten kingdoms, modern or ancient, failures or, however briefly, successes. Drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com Even shot up buildings in Jackson.


	
From North Carolina to Chad: Families and Food
	March 10, 2012


	Posted by Beachcombing in : Actualite	  	


	


An ‘ill’ day with interesting complications in the throat area  so Beach is going to go off topic with this  extraordinary book he recently stumbled upon: Hungry Planet: What the World Eats (Peter Menzel 2005). This exercise in photo-journalism has a fair bit of manipulation behind it: but the idea itself is an extraordinarily simple and effective one. Turn up in about 30 of the 200 odd countries in the world and then photograph a family with the food that they expect to eat in one week.


Of course – and this is where the manipulation comes in – there is going to be quite a lot of picking and choosing. As you cannot visit every single country how do you decide which countries to choose? And as you are going to have to choose a region within a country how do you choose which part of the country, never mind what family in that region?




In the United States you could pick, as the editor decided to here, a family from North Carolina who seem to live almost without fresh food: there is a solitary bunch of grapes. Or you could choose a wealthy white family from southern California with their vegan chef as the editor did not. Naturally, a junk-food family that can buy lots of cheap but bad food comes closer to the stereotype of American families (Michael Pollin etc) and is perhaps closer to a genuine median?




But if choices are not always scientific the effect is nevertheless striking. This book is an efficient twenty-first century equivalent of parents telling their children ‘Eat that! There are children starving in Africa!’ Of which more below…  Going down the scale we come next to a Polish family with their predictable predominance of root and ground vegetables and reduced processed food.




Then Egypt where processed foods are becoming increasingly a luxury item: indeed, from friends in Egypt Beachcombing knows that the ‘sophisticated’ diet is a modern processed one, that naturally cannot be afforded by most of the population.




From here we come to a very rural family in Ecuador: this, Beachcombing should note, is not how most people in Ecuador eat, nor is it how most people in Ecuador dress!




Then finally and most tragically this image of a refugee family in Chad, a country that has spent most of the last generation as the armpit of the world: the result of a corrupt political class, unstable neighbours and lots of guns.


The American family spends about 250 dollars a week. The fatherless bairns in this picture are, with their mother, all fed on less than 1 dollar a week. They can’t get much more than a thousand calories a day from this mush of beans and grains: there are six of them, five of them in a phase of acute growth.


Beachcombing is always looking for striking and unusual books: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com


	
Witchcraft Murder in Modern London
	March 3, 2012


	Posted by Beachcombing in : Actualite	  	


	


Beachcombing has spent rather more time than is good for him over the last year looking at cases of, what are in legal terms, child abuse. Nineteenth-century Irish families who (to use an inadequate word) ‘punished’ children because they believed that they were fairies or ‘changelings’: the real child had, the families believed, been spirited away. Beach has been primarily interested in the folklore beliefs, but every so often the full horror of the situation seeps through and he recalls that these children were made of flesh and blood and often had to suffer horrendous treatment at the hands of those whom should have protected them.


Of course, as all this was happening one hundred and fifty years ago, the whole cast of stars, abused and abusers are long since in the ground and this does rather take the edge off things. But the indignation of contemporaries is easy to understand, something Beachcombing was able to measure yesterday in himself when this extraordinary news story broke.  The following quotation comes from the Guardian, which had the best coverage of this case:


When 15-year-old Kristy Bamu left his parents in Paris on 16 December 2010, he was looking forward to spending the Christmas holidays with his siblings, visiting their sister and her boyfriend in London. On Christmas Day he was found by paramedics in the bathroom of an east London high-rise flat. His body had been mutilated, teeth were missing and he was covered in deep cuts and bruising. In the last four days of his life he had suffered acts of unspeakable savagery [101 injuries were found on his body] doled out by a man he called ‘uncle’ and one of his own sisters. Why? Because Eric Bikubi, a powerfully built football coach, and Magalie Bamu were convinced the boy was a witch, possessed by spirits who wanted to bring evil into their home. On Thursday they were convicted of murder. They had earlier admitted actual bodily harm against Kristy’s sister Kelly and a younger sister, who cannot be named.


A BBC video report, meanwhile, carried an interview with the Crown Prosecution Service.


The parallel with changeling belief is there for all to see. The children were ‘possessed’ and were expected to confess their role as witches: much as changeling children were expected to confess their fairy nature.


The guilty party – found guilty by a jury of peers – argued ‘diminished responsibility’, a fact that also recalls the tragic circumstances of some changeling cases, including the most infamous, the Bridget Cleary burning of 1895. The defence though seems to have rested their claims on the shape of EB’s brain rather than his beliefs. The jury, in any case, rejected these pleas, though there were, neurologically-speaking, problems with an MRI scan: Bikubi may have suffered a damaging fall in childhood, something often found in the personal history of serial killers.


The belief system is more interesting for our purposes: kindoki is witchcraft in the Congo.


‘Bikubi’s awareness of kindoki… started early. He was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1983. His mother died during childbirth and he lived with his father, a gold trader. But as a child the shadow of kindoki hung over his life. During the trial, the court heard that from a young age he saw rats and other ‘abnormal visions’. Speaking to a forensic psychiatrist, Dr Tim Rogers, in Pentonville prison, four months after Kristy’s death, he explained he was isolated as a child as a result. ‘It seemed to be he was saying that he’d had the experience of seeing rats and other abnormal visions when they weren’t really there’, Rogers told jurors. ‘He was reporting that his family at the time feared that if he went around saying these things he would be labelled as being affected by witchcraft. Aged seven, to escape the chaos of war, Bikubi moved to Dagenham, east London, with several other young relatives and his uncle. The uncle, the only remaining father figure in his life, then died of Aids. But Bikubi appeared to have found a new family when he began an on-off relationship with Magalie Bamu [sister of Kristy] in 2004.’


If Beachcombing ever tracks down the elusive news story of the Irish child burnt as a fairy by an immigrant family in New York then it will be a particularly frightening parallel to the little hell created in this London tenement. The surviving family members must now spend the rest of their lives trying to forget that this ever happened: good luck to them…


Any other modern parallels with changeling belief? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com


	
Cato’s Sword
	February 9, 2012


	Posted by Beachcombing in : Ancient	  	


	


Beachcombing usually plans about two days ahead with his posts. But every so often something emerges from out of the depths of the subconscious and will just not leave him in peace. This morning it was the death of Cato the Younger that tapped like a woodpecker on his inner skull. It had already been a tough night: the Beachcombing’s aupair had taken the car out and had left the radar, leaving to fears of death and coffins back to the US. Beachcombing also made the mistake of watching a 90s noir film to detox from a day of homework marking. He got to bed about 3.00 am and then Cato appeared with his oh-too-serious face and his sharp sword. This morning Beachcombing went and dug up Plutarch 71 (?) where the terrible deed is described.


For those who don’t know the tale, the news of Caesar’s victory has come through to Cato. And the grand Republican decides, quite sensibly, that he will be better off dead than alive on the charity of that slimy old world-destroyer JC.


Then the sword was sent in, carried by a little child, and Cato took it, drew it from its sheath, and examined it. And when he saw that its point was keen and its edge still sharp, he said: ‘Now I am my own master.’ Then he laid down the sword and resumed his book, and he is said to have read it through twice [Plato’s Phaedro]. Afterwards he fell into so deep a sleep that those outside the chamber heard him. But about midnight he called two of his freedmen, Cleanthes the physician, and Butas, who was his chief agent in public matters. Butas he sent down to the sea, to find out whether all had set sail successfully, and bring him word; while to the physician he gave his hand to bandage, since it was inflamed by the blow that he had given the slave. This made everybody more cheerful, since they thought he had a mind to live. In a little while Butas came with tidings that all had set sail except Crassus, who was detained by some business or other, and he too was on the point of embarking; Butas reported also that a heavy storm and a high wind prevailed at sea. On hearing this, Cato groaned with pity for those in peril on the sea, and sent Butas down again, to find out whether anyone had been driven back by the storm and wanted any necessaries, and to report to him. And now the birds were already beginning to sing, when he fell asleep again for a little while. And when Butas came and told him that the harbours were very quiet, he ordered him to close the door, throwing himself down upon his couch as if he were going to rest there for what still remained of the night. But when Butas had gone out, Cato drew his sword from its sheath and stabbed himself below the breast. His thrust, however, was somewhat feeble, owing to the inflammation in his hand, arid so he did not at once dispatch himself, but in his death struggle fell from the couch and made a loud noise by overturning a geometrical abacus that stood near. His servants heard the noise and cried out, and his son at once ran in, together with his friends. They saw that he was smeared with blood, and that most of his bowels were protruding, but that he still had his eyes open and was alive; and they were terribly shocked. But the physician went to him and tried to replace his bowels, which remained uninjured, and to sew up the wound. Accordingly, when Cato recovered and became aware of this, he pushed the physician away, tore his bowels with his hands, rent the wound still more, and so died.


There is a literature from the end of the empire in the fifth and sixth century about the ‘last of the Romans’: which unlikely provincial fop with a gladium deserves the title of final preserver of a bronze eagle. But Beachcombing likes to think that it was the last Roman Republicans, like Cato, in the first century AD and BC who deserve the laurels, before the Empire rose Darth-Vader-like under Caesar and Augustus and chewed the Mediterranean in its terrible maw. And to those who argue that Rome would never have survived without strong men? They are almost certainly right, but that was because Rome, by then, was not worth saving.


In any case, spare a thought for Cato tearing at his own innards.


A final note and a curiosity: Cato dies reading the Phaidon, Plato’s description of the suicide of Socrates. There is a tradition that Cleombratus of Ambracia threw himself from a high wall ‘screaming farewell sun after having read a book of Plato’, presumably the Phaidon with its promise of the immortality of the soul. It is an obvious book to read before ‘self-murder’: any other examples of it cropping up in the hands of a suicide, ancient or modern? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com Beachcombing feels a related post coming on about the things historical suicides did before putting the knife in or swallowing the hemlock. Personally, Beach would watch an episode of Fawlty Towers, but, as often noted in this place, there’s no accounting for taste .


	
Electrocuting African Tribal Hosts
	January 3, 2012


	Posted by Beachcombing in : Modern	  	


	


One of the great challenges of any nineteenth-century explorers was to make friends with the ‘primitives’ in such out of the way places as an equatorial rain forest, the upper peaks of the Andes and through much of Darkest Africa. And, of course, to do so they brought gifts along with them: a sensible enough precaution. And what gifts! Here is a list from one African-bound American at the end of the nineteenth-century. The following were  an addendum to his goods as things that, though useless in themselves, he could give to the natives to add to his prestige and power over them.


I bought more than 5000 pounds of beads of different sizes and colors, several hundred pieces of cotton goods, some pieces of silk and coats, waistcoats, shirts, 2000 red caps, a few umbrellas, files, knives, bells, fire-steels, flints, looking-glasses, forks, spoons, some stove-pipe hats for the kings near the sea-shore, straw hats, etc., etc. Then, to impress the wild people with what I could do, I bought several large Geneva musical boxes, one powerful electrical battery, several magnets, and six ship clocks, etc, etc.


Two items stand out for Beachcombing on this list. The stove pipe hats – see illustration – and the ‘powerful electric battery’. WtH! Let us imagine for a moment that you have just accidentally trod on the sore toe of a powerful up-river chieftain. How is a ‘powerful electric battery’ going to save your life? Well, read this passage and remember that our hero has already intimidated his hosts with gunfire and – the darkness! – Swiss music boxes.


After a few moments I took the [music] box back into my hut,   and brought out a powerful electric battery. Then I ordered   the forty-three elders and the king to come and   stand in a line. They came, but were evidently awed.   The people dared not say a word. Every thing being  ready, I told them to hold the ninety feet of conducting  wire. ‘Hold hard!’ I cried.  The people looked at the old men with wonder, and could not understand how they dared to hold that charmed string of the Oguizi [a white]. The Ishogos, my guides, were themselves bewildered, for they had not seen this thing in their village. My Commi men did not utter a word, but their faces were as long as if they never had seen anything. ‘Hold on!’ I repeated, ‘do not let the string go out of your hands’. I then gave a powerful continuous shock. The arms of the elders twisted backward against their will, and their bodies bent over; but they still held the wire, which, indeed, now they had not the power to drop. Their mouths were wide open; their bodies trembled from the continuous electric shock; they looked at me and cried ‘Oh! oh! oh! Yo! yo! yo!’ I had really given a too powerful shock. The people fled. In an instant all was over. I stopped the current of electricity. The wire fell from the elders’ hands, and they looked at me in perfect bewilderment. The people came back. The elders explained their electric sensation, and then a wild hurra and a shout went up. ‘There is not another great oguizi like the one in our village,’   was the general exclamation ; and they came and danced around me, and sang mbuiti songs, bending their bodies low, and looking at me in the face as if I had been one of their idols.


He then proceeds to terrify the villagers with a deftly used magnet…


 Any other ‘superiority’ gifts? Drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com


***


5 Jan 2012: Sword&Beast writes in ‘I´ve just read your post on gifts from explorers and it reminded me a passage from the history of Brazil. Bartolomeu Bueno da Silva was an explorer from the 17th century then village of São Paulo, one of many who went deep inland to fetch for natives, gold or diamonds. The 1987 movie The Mission gives a good impression of these slave-hunting expeditions called ‘bandeiras‘. In 1682, Bartolomeu Bueno da Silva run into a tribe where the women were richly adorned with gold. As they refused to tell were the gold came from, the explorer threw the strong Brazilian run called “cachaça” (which today is used for milder uses such as “caipirinha”) into a pound and set it on fire, saying that he would burn all rivers and water sources if he was not taken to the gold sites. Although not as threatening as Swiss music boxes, it worked and the explorer passed into history known as Anhanguera, which means ‘old devil’ in the local amerindian language.’Thanks S&B!


	
The Everliving Child
	December 9, 2011


	Posted by Beachcombing in : Modern	  	


	


Exams are pressing and so a short African post from an early nineteenth-century British adventurer:


In Cromantine [Ghana?] there exists a tradition, or rather a tale, to deceive strangers, that they have still in their possession a male child, who has existed ever since the beginning of the world. This child, they declare, neither eats, drinks, nor partakes of any nourishment, yet still continues in a state of childhood. When I laughed at this absurd tale, it somewhat offended my friend Mr. Brewe, who declared that he himself and his father had actually seen this Infant. I therefore expressed a wish to see this extraordinary child ; and during the half hour which was required to prepare him for the visit, we were admitted into their fetishhouse, or temple, in the corner of which was seated in a chair a little clay figure of the god whom they invoke or threaten, according to circumstances.


Our hero decides to go and see this strange infant Wandering Jew and Flashman that he is he has no hesitation in forcing the issue.


Such is the abject superstition prevalent on this coast. At length I became impatient to see this wonderful dwarf, or child of other days, but was still desired to wait a little longer. However, as we were anxious to proceed on our journey, we set off. Fortunately, our road onwards passed close to the residence of this wonderful child, so that we halted, in the hope of having a peep at him. Being again delayed, I lost all patience, and resolved to enter his dwelling. My African friends and the multitude assembled from all parts of the town, warned me of the destruction that would certainly overtake me, if I ventured to go in without leave. But I showed them my doubled barrelled gun as my fetish, and forced my way through the crowd.


On entering through a very narrow door or gateway, into a circle of about twenty yards diameter, fenced round by a close paling, and covered outside with long grass, about nine feet high, (so that nothing within could be seen,) the first and only thing I saw was an old woman, whom, but for her size and sex, I should have taken for the mysterious being, resident there from the time of the Creation. She certainly was the most disgusting and loathsome being I ever beheld. She had no covering on her person (like all the other natives of this place), with the exception of a small piece of dirty cloth round her loins. Her skin was deeply wrinkled and extremely dirty, with scarcely any flesh on her bones. Her breasts hung half way down her body, and she had all the appearance of extreme old age. This ancient woman was the supposed nurse of the everlasting child. On my entering the yard, this old fetish-woman (for such was her high style and title) stepped before me, making the most hideous gestures ever witnessed, and endeavouring to drive me out, that I might be prevented from entering into the god’s house; but in spite of all her movements I pushed her aside, and forced my way into the house.


Its outward appearance was that of a cone, or extinguisher, standing in the centre of the enclosure. It was formed by long poles placed triangularly, and thatched with long grass. Inside of it I found a clay bench, in the form of a chair. Its tenant was absent, and the old woman pretended that she had, by her magic, caused him to disappear.


Then comes the moral of the story. The wise and courageous sahib returns and discourses to the crowd and teaches them his wisdom.


On my return, I found my friends anxiously waiting for me, dreading lest something awful might have happened to me ; and the townspeople seemed quite in a fury. They did not, however, dare to attack me, for they are great cowards when the lest determination or spirit of resistance is shown. They are so superstitious, that not one individual would venture over the threshold of the holy house, without the permission of the old nurse. When I explained to the multitude the nature of the trick practised by the old woman, they were greatly incensed. There can be no doubt that some neighbour’s child is borrowed whenever strangers wish to see this wonderful infant; and when dressed up and disguised by various colours of clay, it is exhibited as the divine and wonderful child. The natives are so credulous, that a fetish-man or woman has no difficulty in making them believe any thing, however extravagant.


Any other descriptions of this fetish child? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com


***


11 Dec 2011: First up is James M who writes: ‘I do not know anything further about the African child, but it isn't just uncultured Africans who think such a being exists. Jesus himself may have predicted something of the sort: Luke 9:27, Mark 9:1, Matthew 16:28’. Southern Man also knows nothing but reminds us of the tradition of the Wandering Jew (see above) and also of Taliesin (of British Celtic myth) who existed from the beginning of the world. Thanks James and SM!


It's been a while: updated bh links with thanks to contributors!



	
The Zambian Space Programme of 1962
	December 4, 2011


	Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary	  	


	


***This post is dedicated to Ricardo and Invisible***


One of the problems of looking for the bizarre in history is that, after a while, you’ve read everything before: mermaid funerals in the Hebrides, tick; bats used in bombs against Japan, tick; Roman legionaries in China, tick… But then every so often something comes along that is fresh and that has completely escaped your notice and suddenly life feels worth living again. That, anyway, was the emotion that Beachcombing had when he read last week about Zambia’s attempt in the early 1960s to enter the space race. Beach writes ‘Zambia’ that would be wild enough, but actually this was Edward Makuka Nkoloso, a Zambian high school science teacher who became head of the National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy, an organisation that naturally EMN founded.


His ten Zambian astronauts and a seventeen-year-old African girl are poised for the countdown.  [EMN] said: ‘I’ll have my first Zambian astronaut on the moon by 1965. My spacemen are ready, but we’re having a few difficulties…we are using my own firing system, derived from the catapult.’ Mr. Nkoloso continued: ‘To really get going we need about seven hundred million pounds. It sounds a lot of money, but imagine the prestige value it would earn for Zambia. But I’ve had trouble with my space-men and space-women. They won’t concentrate on space-flight; there’s too much love-making when they should be studying the moon. Matha Mwamba, the seventeen-year-old girl who had been chosen to be the first coloured woman on Mars, has also to feed her ten cats, who will be her companions on the long space flight… I’m getting [the astronauts] acclimatised to space-travel by placing them in my space-capsule every day. It’s a 40-gallon oil drum in which they sit, and I then roll them down a hill. This gives them the feeling of rushing through space. I also make them swing from the end of a long rope. When they reach the highest point, I cut the rope – this produces a feeling of free fall.’


Nkoloso was, in short, one of those wonderful eccentrics who usually only appear after three or four generations of middle class parliamentary democracy, preferably with what Beachcombing likes to think of, with apologies to Weber, as the Protestant Mad Ethic somewhere in the background. And yet here in Africa, in that wonderful glow of colonial freedom, before everything went to hell in the 1970s and the 1980s, was the kind of genius that would not have gone amiss riding through the English shires in the 1700s in a turquoise stage coach, raving about Atlantis and Romish spies.


Nkoloso revealed, for example, that he had been watching Mars from his ‘secret headquarters’ and had discovered that the planet was peopled by a strange race of primitive savages. He guaranteed, however, that he would not force their conversion, which was gracious of him. Perhaps memories of cack-handed Anglican missionaries in his part of Africa?


Enjoy this contemporary video that ends with the unnecessarily cruel words: ‘to most Zambians these people are just a bunch of crackpots and from what I’ve seen today I’m inclined to agree’.


What happened to Nkoloso? Beachcombing has been unable to find out. Edward, if you (or any of your astronauts) are still out there, Beach would love to hear from you: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com. And if you are not he would gladly contribute to a plaque somewhere prominent on the other side of the equator.  


Africa, of course, has since entered the space race: Nigeria has several satellites in orbit. However, there are still, it seems, amateur African attempts. The most recent has appeared in Uganda and has recently been celebrated by the Daily Mail. ‘[Chris NSamba] firmly believes it will launch in the next ‘four to six years’. But given the condition of his project at the moment, he might be advised to buy a gigantic rubber band to help it on its way.’ Etc etc.


Beach cannot find his old file on amateur space launches though he has happy memories of a video of the disastrous launch of Starchaser 3 in 1998 on Dartmoor. Does anyone know where to find this? Invisible has also recently put him onto catastrophic attempts to combine rocket science and the postal service in Scotland in the 1930s: ‘Some letters singed from the blasts were salvaged –  to be posted in the normal way or coveted by collectors (which they are to this day). But little could be salvaged of Zucker’s life. Having been found ‘a threat to the income of the post office and the security of the country’, he was deported –  and immediately arrested by the Germans on suspicion of collaboration with Britain. He was forbidden to make further rocket experiments after release and became a furniture dealer. But before dying in 1985, he managed to dabble again in rocketry –  briefly and fatally, for three people who got in the way of his launcher‘.


Happy times…


***


11/12/2011: David B writes in with this ‘Reading your article on The Zambian Space Programme of 1962 I was reminded of the Idi Amin space program. What sticks in my mind are pictures of a space ship fashioned from garbage cans and the official comment when the projected launch date came and went that ‘The white man has stolen the magic‘.’ Beach would love to know more. Thanks David!!!










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