Douglas Unchained

August 11, 1841 - Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, spoke before an audience in the North for the first time. During an anti-slavery convention on Nantucket Island, he gave a powerful, emotional account of his life as a slave. 

What language do they speak in Massachusetts!

Frederick Douglas, the John Shaft of Ex Slaves. A man who not only escaped slavery, but spent a large number of years within the reaches of slavers telling audiences how wrong it was. See there was still a fugitive slave law on the books that said that slave catchers could travel into northern states to reclaim the property which had escaped. Even though at one point he changed his last name to Johnson  to be safe, he still gave a speech about his life to the anti slavery society. It probably wasn't hard to piece together who he was after that.

Some of the highlights included learning to read in secret, teaching other slaves to read in secret which was totally illegal. He even beat the stuffing out of a man known as a slave breaker he was sold to for trying to escape, who whipped him every day until the day Frederick went Django all over him. The man never whipped Douglas again.

You don't even wanna know where I'm gonna put this.

So on August 11^th 1841 he spoke before an audience in the North, during an Ani-Slavery Convention. It wasn't an informal book club in the basement of the Barnes and Noble, is was the comic-con of Anti-slavery Conventions. He gave such an amazing speech about the terrible lives of those in slavery and his daring escape that he was immediately asked to become the Full Time lecturer for the Massachusetts Antislavery Society. 

Slavery is wrong, did I stutter?

The Voyage of the Kon-Tiki

Just when giant fish monsters thought it was safe for them to go back in the water

This Week In History

August 7^th, 1947 The Voyage of the Kon-Tiki ends after is struck a reef and was beached on an uninhabited islet. Explorer Thor Heyerdahl and a crew of six ended their Pacific Ocean Rafting Trip when the raft struck the reef after traveling a mere 3,770 Nautical miles.

Heyerdahl believe that ancient peoples from south America could have settled the Polynesian islands. So he built a raft out of period materials and which means “Things I found on the ground that float for 500 Alex” and went further than I've ever gone in my whole adult life. I've turned down sex from women because they lived in a Geographically inconvenient part of Brooklyn I LIVE IN BROOKLYN, and honestly do I look like I can afford to turn down sex?

If she's in the yellow, Ima let her mellow

Most people would write an academic paper and let it ride. But Thor Hyerdahl did the equivalent of Galileo building a giant slingshot to launch himself to the moon just to make sure his lunar calculations were correct. Or Gregor mendel breeding terrible half man-beasts like some kind of Island of Dr Morue to prove that his gene theory was correct.

No wonder he was interested in genetics, he looks like a cat person in a wig

The best of this story was that he FLOATED ACROSS A PORTION OF THE PACIFIC THAT WASN'T EVEN MAPPED. Remember the old maps that said Thar be monsters here, because we hadn't explored that part yet? In 1947 he floated across Poseidon's taint. It's often forgotten but still important part of the eco system.

Yeah, thats right, sail your boat riiiiiiiight there

The o Kon-Tiki  is now on display in the Kon-Tiki museum in Bygdøy, near Oslo, alongside Thor's Giant Bronzed balls.

Hey did I just name the best cover band ever? 

Move over King Oscar, 

Slavery Free Jamaica

August 1, 1838 - Slavery was abolished in Jamaica. 

But there's a price for every party

Jamaica didn't just politely cough and motion towards the chains on their wrists and hope the british got the hint, well they may have in the beginning but that clearly wasn't working. And the british are far too polite let on that, yes, they understand your subtlety, but they are just going to pretend they don't.

 Tea's not going to make itself. Wait I have slaves, so yes, yes it is.

Thus began the Baptist War, the 16th Slave revolt in Jamaica. After rudely revolting 15 times before the Jamaicans decided that 16th times the charm. Yet the plantation owners were still like "Hey what is in this sandwich? Ah nevermind I trust you completely, you whom I've enslaved like your father, and his father before him son on and such, now I've got to take a nap on the veranda, please remember to lock up the sharp farm implements after you've finished creating my fortune."

The rebellion was planned as more of an extended christmas vacation where the slaves would refuse to work until paid or the sugar crop was lost. But sometimes you tell yourself "I'll just have one piece of cake, but then before you know it you've mobilized 60,000 slaves, attacked 200 plantations and 1million british Lbs worth of sugar cane.

If there were memes in 1838 they would have featured a side by side comparison of America's rebellion where peaceful patriots waited in line to courteously throw tea into the river while Jamaica's rebellion showed overturned horses and the charred remains of several Jamaican Walgreens locations.

White people were so classy they even dressed up as another race to avoid those awkward questions at dinner

When the rebellion finally ended the final death score came out to a baker's dozen for the british and Jesus wept for the rebels. The rebel leader Samuel Sharpe's final words before his execution were "I'd rather die upon yonder gallows than live in slavery". This was the first and saddest recorded version of the game Would You Rather in history.

May I still choose yon gallows?

The fears of another slave revolt were a major concern since they were becoming as regular as Jamie Lee Curtis in an Activia commercial. So the british decided that perhaps it was best to give in to abolition with an eventual transfer to a Sandals Resort and Casino based economy rather that suffer more economic losses.

Wait, why does everything feel the same?

So on August 1st, 1838 Slavery was finally abolished in Jamaica...sorta.

 

The Bonus Army

On July 28^th 1932 U.S. Army troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, Dwight D. Eisenhower and George S. Patton (The Harlem Globetrotters of American War Generals) attacked and burned an encampment of unemployed WWI Veterans Camped out around the capital. And just like the Harlem Globetrotters they proceeded to win while showboating all kinds of fancy shots and pulling down the pants of their opponents.  

The Unemployed soldiers called themselves the Bonus Army because they were demanding the war bonuses promised to them and because America was short on money during the depression, but not on ironic names and reasons to be unemployed.

I guess it's hard to get a job in the private sector when your last job lasted from 1914-1918 and job description included Avenging the Lusitania and trench foot. 

The eviction of the encamped soldiers was ordered by President Hoover, a president so terrible they renamed shanty towns after him and a Vacuum. I'm assuming the inventors were like “Hey this thing really sucks, what can we call it? Oh remember the president that inspired the Grapes of Wrath and gave us the Dust Bowl? Yeah lets name it after that guy. So we he used the new army to attack the old army because, hey when you've got two armies one of them is just at...BONUS!

July 24th 1945 Postdam Conference

"Stalin is a Devil like Tyrant leading a vile system"-Winston Churchill

"I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of man and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him, in return he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for world peace and democracy"-Franklin Delanore Roosevelt

"I trust no one, not even myself"-Joseph Stalin

July 24, 1945 - At the conclusion of the Potsdam Conference in Germany, Winston Churchill (shadowed by Clement Atlee the soon to be Prime Minister of England), Harry Truman and China's representatives issued a demand for unconditional Japanese surrender. The Japanese, unaware the demand was backed up by an Atomic bomb, rejected the Potsdam Declaration on July 26.

Clearly Roosevelt and Stalin had gone through some sort of John Woo style face off scenario before Roosevelt was killed in a knife fight with the fake FDR on a speed boat while churchill was drunk and not really invited back.When the Postdam conference sent Japan the ultimatum of "Surrender or meet prompt and utter destruction" the Japanese turned off all the lights and closed the blinds in hopes that the other nations would think that no one was home. But china had clearly seen them through the kitchen window and Japan was Bombed so hard they went forward in time and would later destroy the US auto industry with their robots from the future.
  Thus leaving Harry S. Truman, Clement Attlee and Stalin who clearly told them that "the paperwork must have been lost in the shuffle but I swear the other dudes said I could have most of Europe". And that's this week in history.