A First Draft of History: Week of March 19 – 26
1634 - The first British colonists arrived in Maryland, landing on St. Clement's Island on Maryland's western shore and founding the settlement of St. Mary's.
In 1632, King Charles I of England granted a charter to George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, yielding him proprietary rights to a region east of the Potomac River in exchange for a share of the income derived from the land. The territory was named Maryland in honor of Henrietta Maria, the queen consort of Charles I. Before settlement began, George Calvert died and was succeeded by his son, who sought to establish Maryland as a haven for Roman Catholics persecuted in England. The Calverts were unusual among English aristocrats in that they had remained true to the Catholic faith during the Reformation. In March 1634, the first English settlers – a carefully selected group of Catholics and Protestants – arrived at St. Clement's Island aboard two ships, the Ark and the Dove. The leaders of the colony were primarily Catholics, but from the outset they were outnumbered by Protestant laborers.
The Calverts had an ambitious plan to establish religious tolerance in Maryland, despite persistent Protestant efforts to seize power and outlaw Catholicism. In 1649, Maryland Governor William passed an act ensuring religious liberty and justice, which became known as the “Maryland Toleration Act.” This was the first official statement of religious tolerance in US history and a watershed in the history religious liberty. I should note that the act only extended tolerance to Christians – anyone who denied the Trinity could still face severe punishment, but of course that’s just common sense. In 1654, the Toleration Act was repealed after Puritans seized control of the colony, leading to a brief civil war that ended with Lord Baltimore losing control of propriety rights over Maryland in March 1655. The fate of the Calverts and of the Maryland colony also had a lot to do with the struggles between the king and Parliament in England, in ways that are too complicated to get into here. Control of the colony fluctuated a bit, but in the end the Protestant take-over was solidified, the Church of England was officially established, and Catholics began to face systematic discrimination. Nonetheless, by then Maryland had become the homeland of American Catholicism, and its short-lived attempts at religious pluralism an important part of the legacy of individual freedom.
1839 - On this day in 1839, the initials "O.K." were first published in The Boston Morning Post. Meant as an abbreviation for "oll korrect," a popular slang misspelling of "all correct" at the time, OK steadily made its way into the everyday speech of Americans.
During the late 1830s, young, hip, educated people, people like me in other words, seized on a trend of misspelling words intentionally, then abbreviating them and using them as slang when talking to one another. Just as teenagers today have their own slang based on distortions of common words, young people of the 1830s had a whole host of slang terms they abbreviated. Popular abbreviations included "KY" for "No use" ("know yuse"), "KG" for "No go" ("Know go"), and "OW" for all right ("oll wright"). This is a nice example to refute the argument of cultural declension. Youth culture in particular has always been sophomoric and incomprehensible.
Of all the abbreviations used during the 1830s, OK was propelled into the limelight when it was printed in the Boston Morning Post as part of a joke. Its popularity exploded when it was picked up by contemporary politicians. When the incumbent president Martin Van Buren was up for reelection, his Democratic supporters organized a band of thugs to influence voters. This group was formally called the "O.K. Club," which referred both to Van Buren's nickname "Old Kinderhook" (based on his hometown of Kinderhook, New York), and to the term recently made popular in the papers. At the same time, the opposing Whig Party made use of "OK" to denigrate Van Buren's political mentor Andrew Jackson. According to the Whigs, Jackson invented the abbreviation "OK" to cover up his own misspelling of "all correct."
The man responsible for unraveling the mystery behind "OK" was an American linguist named Allen Walker Read. An English professor, Read dispelled a host of erroneous theories on the origins of "OK," ranging from the name of a popular Army biscuit to the name of a Haitian port famed for its rum to the signature of a Choctaw chief. "OK" has become one of the most ubiquitous terms in the world, and certainly one of America's greatest lingual exports.
I think that might be the most interesting thing I’ve ever reported on this show.
1882 - German scientist Robert Koch announced in Berlin that he had discovered the bacillus responsible for tuberculosis. Koch began his announcement by reminding his audience that in terms of fatalities caused, “tuberculosis must be considered much more important than those most feared infectious diseases, plague, cholera and the like.” He noted that at that time one in seven of all human beings died from tuberculosis.
Tuberculosis, once called "consumption" and "white plague," is an ancient disease. In fact, evidence of tubercular decay found in the skulls and spines of Egyptian mummies, tell us that TB has been plaguing humans for at least 4,000 years. Hippocrates, the ancient Greek physician, noted that "phthisis" (consumption) was the most widespread and fatal disease of his time. It has been estimated that in the two centuries from 1700 to 1900, tuberculosis was responsible for the deaths of approximately one billion human beings. The annual death rate from TB when Koch made his discovery, was seven million people.
So, needless to say, people were very interested to hear what Koch had to say. He announced his discovery in a lecture, in which he demonstrated how he had invented a new method for identifying the infection in various types of tissue samples, and he actually invited his audience to verify his findings. Koch’s finding was so ground-breaking that when he ended his lecture there was complete silence. No questions, no congratulations, no applause. This lecture, considered by many to be the most important in medical history, was so innovative, inspirational and thorough that it set the stage for the scientific procedures of the twentieth century. One scientist in the audience that day later confessed, "I hold that evening to be the most important experience of my scientific life."
News of Koch's discovery spread rapidly. The results were published in a German medical journal on April 10, in England after a rapid translation in The Times on April 22, and in the US in The New York Times on May 3, 1882. Robert Koch was now a famous scientist and became known as "The Father of Bacteriology." He was presented with the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1905.
After Koch's discovery, many attempts were made over the years to find a compound that could stop the growth of TB bacteria. In 1910, another German scientist named Paul Ehrlich discovered a chemical that could kill the microorganism that causes another disease, syphilis, and effectively treat that disease. This initiated the search for other chemical substances which could destroy disease-causing microorganisms.
In 1935, yet another German scientist named Gerhard Domagk published a report on the use of "Prontosil," an organic compound containing sulfur for treatment of bacterial infections. Domagk was awarded The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery in 1939. Prontosil, and derivatives of it, had some effect on TB bacteria in laboratory studies, but only in concentrations that would be poisonous to humans.
Other ideas were pursued independently. Scientists observed that pathogenic bacteria do not survive for long in enriched soil. It was found that fungi living in the soil were able to suppress their growth. In 1943, an American named Selman Waksman (finally, the Germans decided to let someone else have a turn), together with his co-workers, discovered that a fungus called Streptomyces griseus produced an antibiotic substance which they named "streptomycin." After successful animal tests, the first tuberculosis patient was treated in 1944, and she was cured of her life-threatening disease! Further trials confirmed that streptomycin was indeed effective in the treatment of tuberculosis. Selman Waksman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1952 for his discovery of streptomycin.
Unfortunately, early in the studies, it became evident that the TB bacteria were becoming resistant to streptomycin. As a result, today, the cornerstone for any treatment of tuberculosis is multidrug therapy. At least two drugs are given at the same time to prevent the emergence of drug resistance. Sometimes patients are treated with up to four different antibacterial drugs, and for periods of a minimum of 6 to 24 months. Still, today, more than a century after Koch discovered Mycobacterium tuberculosis, there continue to be many infected individuals and around two million deaths annually resulting from the disease.
1992 - Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev returned to Earth from the Mir space station after a 10-month stay. The most notable aspect of Kirkalev’s trip is that while he was up in space, his native country, the Soviet Union, ceased to exist. Following the collapse of Communism, the USSR formally dissolved on December 25, 1989, spawning 15 independent states. While all this was going on, Krikalev was in orbit. I assume he was made aware of what was going on, but if not he must have been in for quite a shock when he landed.; In 2001, Russia's orbiting Mir space station ended its 15-year odyssey with a fiery plunge into the South Pacific.
Two other anniversaries worth noting briefly this week. I usually don’t mention birthdays of famous individuals, simply because there are so many each week, but I would like to mention that this week marks the birth of two famous Hungarians: March 24, 1874 – Harry Houdini; March 25, 1881 – Bela Bartok.
It was a quiet week in the cosmos, and in the little slice of it we call the state of NC, so let’s just talk about some International and National news from the past week.
International News:
A horrific event in the city of Toulouse in southwest France this week, where a 23-year old Frenchman of North African descent named Mohammed Merah shot dead seven people in a series of brazen attacks. Merah first killed three uniformed French paratroopers, two of them as they waited at an ATM machine. He then attacked a Jewish school, where he shot to death a teacher and three young children. He videotaped both of these attacks.
French authorities finally caught up with Merah after he barricaded himself in an apartment building, triggering a 31-hour standoff with hundreds of anti-terror police. The confrontation finally ended on Thursday when Merah opened fire on police, and apparently jumped out a window. Authorities reported that he was killed by a sniper shot to the head. Before his death, Merah had reportedly claimed sympathies for al-Qaida and to have trained in jihadi camps on at least two previous trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan, most recently in 2011. Merah’s brother was also charged over the weekend with complicity in the attacks.
It’s unclear whether these terrorist attacks will have any impact on the upcoming French presidential election, the first round of which is scheduled for April 23. French president Nicolas Sarkozy, running for reelection, may worry that fears over security could shift some of his support to Marine Le Pen of the National Front Party.
And lastly on this topic, at the risk of sounding repetitive, I think it’s worth noting again the contrast between the media narrative around this atrocity and the narrative around the recent mass-killing in Norway and the murder of a couple of African immigrants in Italy a few months ago. In those cases, the media linked the killings to a broad current of racism and xenophobia in Europe. In fact, some in the international media initially speculated that these attacks in France were the work of neo-Nazis, as if right-wing extremists are really the greatest threat facing Europe. But when yet another Muslim immigrant goes on a killing spree, the media treats it as an isolated incident; a case of a single disturbed individual. I guess it’s not politically-correct to ask whether this raises questions about the place of Islam in Europe and the challenges of Islamic immigration and assimilation (or the lack thereof). It’s probably also not very politically-correct to point out that the leaders of France’s Muslim community have been, let’s say, very subdued in their denunciations of this atrocity.
And in more depressing international news…
Violence continued to rage in Syria this week as year two of clashes between opponents and supporters of dictator Bashar al-Assad continued to unfold. In fact, the violence reached the heart of Damascus, where rebels fought gun battles with government forces in the most violent clashes Syria's capital has seen thus far. The clashes in Damascus on Monday came just two days after two car bombs killed at least 27 people in the heart of the city. The fighting near the center of Assad's power base appeared to be an attempt by rebels to show they still pose a serious challenge after being forced out of strongholds in recent weeks. Nonetheless, on Tuesday, rebel fighters were forced to flee the eastern Syrian city of Deir al-Zor in the face of a fierce army assault. Government troops also shelled residential areas in the cities of Hama and Homs, and the nearby town of Rastan. After failing to hold significant stretches of land, some analysts say the rebels appear to be switching to insurgency tactics, including sabotaging an important rail line. The Free Syria Army has proved little match for Assad's well-armed security apparatus, and some experts say it made a mistake in trying to hold territory and take on the Syrian Army.
In response to the violence, the international community continued its inept pattering. France this week circulated a Western-drafted statement for the U.N. Security Council deploring the turmoil and backing peace efforts by U.N.-Arab League envoy. The statement circulated at the Security Council would not be a formal resolution, which carries legal weight, but rather a "presidential statement", which is generally non-binding but still needs unanimous backing. It’s amazing how many ways the UN can find to be ineffectual.
There may be some positive movement by the international community though. This week, Syria’s long-time ally Russia also urged Assad and his foes to agree to daily truces. This might be significant because Moscow has twice vetoed U.N. Security Council resolutions that condemned Syria's year-long assault on rebels. So, if even the Russians start to pressure the regime, it could lead to significant changes.
However, we probably shouldn’t get our hopes up just yet. There was more news this week which indicated that Russia may actually be increasing its support for Assad. Reports circulated this week that Russian troops are on the ground in Syria, raising new concerns about whether Russia's policies are indirectly, or even directly, enabling the brutal crackdown on protesters. Russia's Defense Ministry acknowledged Monday that a naval oil tanker arrived at the Syrian port of Tartus in order to “demonstrate the Russian presence in the turbulent region.” The Russian news agency Interfax reported the tanker carried with it an anti-terror squad from the Russian Marines. Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov denied reports that special forces were inside Syria, although he said there are military and technical advisers in the Syria.
Either way, the Russian presence is surely bad news for the rebels.
And in another blow to the rebel cause, the international organization Human Rights Watch this week accused rebels of committing torture and arbitrary executions during the 12-month uprising - charges previously only leveled at the state security apparatus. This is a good reminder that we mustn’t be naïve and think that this conflict is simply a matter of “good guys” vs. “bad guys.”The United Nations, Syrian activists and groups such as Human Rights Watch have documented widespread human rights violations by Syrian government forces, including the rampant use of torture, arbitrary detentions and indiscriminate shelling of neighborhoods. But abuses by anti-government forces have been documented as well.
Human Rights Watch says the protest movement had been "overwhelmingly peaceful" until September, when reports emerged of military defectors and residents taking up arms to defend themselves against government raids and to strike checkpoints and security sites.
"The intensity of the fighting has increased since early February 2012, when the government began large-scale military attacks against opposition strongholds throughout the country," the group said.
Human Rights Watch said many of the anti-government groups reported to be carrying out abuses do not appear to belong to an organized command structure or to be following Syrian National Council orders.
Well, let’s end this week’s international news on a slightly happier note – Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Mexico on Friday for a six-day visit to the New World, which will also include a stop in Cuba. The Pontiff strongly denounced the drug-trafficking violence plaguing Mexico and renewed the Church’s commitment to social justice and to “unmasking evil and the idolatry of money.” Speaking of Cuba, he noted that Marxism “no longer responds to reality” and he expressed the hope that the Cuban people would soon reach a “new epoch…of development, freedom, and reconciliation,” in the words of a spokesman. Let’s hope.
National News:
A big win for Mitt Romney this week in the marathon for the Republican presidential nomination. Romney won the Illinois primary decisively – 47% to Rick Santorum’s 35%. Ron Paul was 3rd with 9%, while Newt Gingrich, who apparently just can’t take a hint, was 4th with 8%. Romney won about 40 of the 54 delegates up for grabs in the state, giving him a total of 562. Santorum is second with 249. And again, the magic number is 1,144 – that’s the total number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination.
There was some consolation for Santorum this week though. He won the Louisiana primary on Saturday, with Romney coming in second. So that’s good for Santorum, but Louisiana only has forty-some delegates, and he won only about 20 of those, because in Louisiana the primary only determines the allocation of about half the candidates.
There was also big news from the Supreme Court this week. The Court is of course gearing up to hear challenges to the Obama health care law, but as a sort of warm-up it ruled this week on a case involving legal advice in plea bargains. In a pair of 5-4 decisions, the Court ruled that criminal defendants have a constitutional right to effective lawyers during plea negotiations, rulings that vastly expanded judges’ supervision of the criminal justice system.The decisions mean that what used to be informal and unregulated deal-making is now subject to new constraints when bad legal advice leads defendants to reject favorable plea offers. The logic behind the majority opinion was that most criminal cases today are decided by plea bargains, not trials, so the right to adequate counsel must cover such cases as well. In fact, about 97 percent of convictions in federal courts are the result of guilty pleas.
In the context of trials, the Supreme Court has long established that defendants were entitled to new trials if they could show that incompetent work by their lawyers probably affected the outcome. The Supreme Court has also required lawyers to offer competent advice in urging defendants to give up their right to a trial by accepting a guilty plea. Those cases hinged on the right to a fair trial guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. The cases decided this week answered a harder question: What is to be done in cases in which a lawyer’s incompetence caused the client to reject a favorable plea bargain? Well, now we know what is to be done, although it is far from clear how it is to be done.
Justice Anthony Kennedy was the swing vote in this decision, siding with the court’s four more liberal members. Kennedy tends to be the deciding vote these days; in fact, in that respect, his is the only vote that really matters.
The consequences of these two decisions are hard to predict. Challenges to plea agreements based on misconduct by defense lawyers will presumably proliferate, given how many more convictions follow guilty pleas and the fluid nature of plea negotiations. Even the majority conceded that allowing the possibility of do-overs in cases involving foregone pleas followed by convictions presented all sorts of knotty problems. We can expect that there are going to be a lot of defendants who say after they’re convicted that they really would have taken the plea.
Andrew Stern is, among other things, an historian, an Ocracoke resident, and a board member at Ocracoke’s community radio station, WOVV 90.1FM where you can hear his weekly broadcast of “A First Draft of History” every Monday morning at 9am.
