More strange news from the past

There was no follow-up to the giant skeleton story. If there was in fact a real skeleton uncovered, I would say that it was probably the skeleton of a Giant Sloth. Standing on its hind legs, the Giant Sloth was about 20 feet tall. The skeleton of the Giant Sloth could be mistaken for a human skeleton, but the skull is drastically different from that of a human.

I have another strange story from the news, this time from the Savannah Republic, dated April 2, 1850:

Later From the Sea Serpent.

By a letter, which we find in the Charleston Courier, from Beaufort, S.C., it appears that "the monster of the deep" which was seen by Capt. Blakenship and his passengers a few days since, and positively asserted to be the real Simon Pure Sea Serpent of Nahant notoriety, turns out to be a Whale! Or rather several of those animals. The sportsmen of Beaufort, hearing that his snakeship was in Broad River, "floating many a rood[?]," equipped a flat boat, and having mounted a six-pounder, set off in pursuit of him. Arriving at the seat of war, they made the above discovery. After firing several times at the whales, and wounding one of them, the roughness of the water forced them to desist from any further attempt to capture them. Captain Barnwell struck one with a harpoon, but after a few minutes the harpoon tore out, and they left the whales to enjoy a short tranquility until they could return to Beaufort and prepare themselves better for the encounter. It is said that if the whales remained a day longer in the river their fate would be sealed and they would suffer the penalty of their boldness in venturing so rashly into the neighborhood of Beaufort.

The correspondent of the Courier says: "After this, I must behold a Sea Serpent, with my own eyes, and hear him hiss, before I will believe in his existence." Since writing the above we have received the Savannah Georgian of the 19th, which says:

Further - Passengers by the Metamora state that the Serpent has been really caught, for true. He is a species of the whale family. With several protuberances on his back. The head of a whale and a snake's body. His captors have drawn him on the beach, and covered him over for security.

Strange news from the past

As I am presently engaged in reading Southern newspapers from the 1840s for a professor, I have taken it upon myself to save some of the more intriguing (or downright strange) articles and present them here to you. Today's article comes from the Nashville Orthopolitan, dated June 20, 1846. The original spellings and punctuation are preserved.

The Giant Skeleton. - The skeleton discovered in Williamson county in this State, and supposed to be that of a human being, has frequently been referred to, within a few days past, in the House of Representatives. Notwithstanding the the description given of it, as Wouter Van Twiller would say, "we have our doubts abut the matter." This skeleton was found about sixty feet beneath the surface of the earth, embedded in a stratum of the hardest kind of clay. The bones are said to be in a perfect state of preservation, and weigh in the aggregate fifteen hundred pounds. All the large and characteristic bones are entire, and the skull, arms, and thighbones, knee-pans, shoulder-sockets, and collar bones remove all doubts, and the animal to whom they belong has been decided "to belong to the genus homo." This gentleman, when he walked the earth, was about eighteen feet high, and when clothed in flesh, must have weighed no less than 3000 pounds. - "The bones of the thigh and leg measure six feet six inches, his skull is said to be about two-thirds of the size of a flour barrel, and capable of holding in its cavities near two bushels. (He must have had a goodly quantity of brains, and if intellect to be in proportion to the size of the brain, he must have possessed extraordinary intellectual powers.) The description further states, that "a coffee cup of good size could be put in the eye-sockets." The jaw teeth weigh from 3 1/2 to 6 pounds. It is stated that an eminent physician and anatomist is putting the skeleton together, and that it will shortly be ready for public examination.

How high's the water papa?

The blog with the most unfortunate name on the internet returns!

First and foremost is the small matter of where I've been these past couple of months. As those of you who still read this blog may have gathered (and I know some of you still do because I've got the Site Meter), I'm in grad school now. Soul-crushing grad school. The first couple of weeks were pretty hectic, but now I'm rather settled in and living according to the dictates of routine. Since I'm taking 9 hours of classes, acting as a graduate assistant in a class on Nazi Germany, and doing ten hours of research per week, I don't have much free time to blog. And when I did have free time these past couple months, I just didn't have the wherewithal to sit down and drone on about how things were going.

If you're curious here is my schedule:

Monday: Not a terribly busy day, class-wise. I GA for a class on German history in the morning. The rest of the day is usually taken up with reading.

Tuesday: Not a terribly busy day, either, class-wise. I have an evening class on the 20th century South. The rest of the day is dedicated to reading, writing, research.

Wednesday: Busy day. Morning GA class (the aforementioned German history course) and an evening course on presenting Southern history to the public. The rest of the day is taken up with reading, writing, research.

Thursday: The "free" day. By "free" I mean free to work on classwork for Friday or to research.

Friday: Another fairly busy day. Morning GA class followed immediately by a colloqium in American history. Generally in the afternoons on Fridays I either go home and attempt to relax or stay at school and look at 1840s newspapers for a few hours.

In addition to classes I have 10 hours of research and 10 hours of GA work per week.

Sigh. So, there it is. Say an "Ave" for me.