Monthly Archives: June 2006

Due to a glitch of unknown origin which resulted in some data loss, there will be a slight delay before the next Damn Interesting article appears. We uttered more vulgarities than you can swing a dead cat at, but it was a fruitless effort. Well, very little fruit.

Sorry for the delay… but in the interim you can always consume a random, cryogenically-stored article from the archives.

Male Passenger PigeonPassenger 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.

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In the late 1600s, the Puritan settlement of Salem in Massachusetts toppled into chaos when accusations of witchcraft began to appear. Two young girls, aged nine and eleven, were said to have fallen victim to fits “beyond the power of Epileptic Fits or natural disease,” including screams, strange contortions, and throwing objects. The village doctor, unable to explain the symptoms, suggested that witchcraft may be afoot in Salem. Others in the settlement began to exhibit similar inexplicable behavior, and shortly the accusations began to fly.

The infamous trials that followed left nineteen people hanged to death, and scores of others imprisoned under suspicion of supernatural wrongdoing. Today, few would suggest that those punished were actually guilty of witchcraft, but the true cause of the errant behavior in Salem’s citizens is still a mystery. One theory– perhaps the most intriguing yet offered– suggests that the community’s rye crop may have been partially to blame. Moreover, such maladjusted rye may have played a role in many of history’s mysterious events.

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X-ray of a deformed frogFor decades we’ve heard of the plight of our environment. After years of chemicals toxins making their way to rivers, and seeping into groundwater there is no doubt some unusual and bad things are arising from human interference in nature, but there is some dispute on just how much human affairs have impacted the eons-old ecology.

In a quest to show the ill effects of humanity’s ill-advised pollution, some environmentalists began trying to show specific problems that these uninvited chemicals were causing. In the late 1970’s, one such example began to gain notoriety: deformed frogs. Because of their thin, permeable skin and the amount of time they spend in still water, the frog is a creature highly influenced by small traces of toxic items in their ecosystem. Pictures of frogs with excessive legs, cysts, or other unusual growths have been used to show the masses what our pollution is costing other occupants of Earth. But are these bizarre deformities the result of the intervention of people, or old Mother Nature pulling one of her sneaky tricks making the frog into easy prey?

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Immediately following the American Civil War, some Confederate southerners were unwilling to live under the rule of the triumphant Union. Reconstruction had gone badly for many of these former Confederates as their pre-war lifestyle was gone and replaced with economic impoverishment. Emperor Dom Pedro II of Brazil seized upon this opportunity by offering an alternative. He sent recruiters into Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina and Texas in search of experienced cotton farmers for his country. Many southerners saw this as their only option for happiness; to build a community with southern values in the jungle of Brazil. They would become known as the Confederados.

Dom Pedro offered the disgruntled Southerners a package of tax breaks and grants if they would immigrate to Brazil. General Robert E. Lee asked Southerners not to accept, but about 10,000 Confederates did take the Emperor up on his offer. Eventually about sixty percent of the Confederados trickled back into the United States, but of those who stayed permanently, most became part of a Confederate-values colony northwest of Sao Paulo that was named Americana.

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