Sometimes writing the On This Day in History post provides an opportunity to actually think about the past while trying to say something interesting. And sometimes it’s a just chance to think a bit about the connection between history and current events. Then there are days like today.
I have a variety of different sources from which I gather my OTDH ideas. The nature of their content is actually pretty interesting in its own way, if mostly predictable: very heavy on the Revolution, Civil War, and WWII. War is the new black. Almost nothing on women’s history, African-American history (except for the Civil Rights movement), Native American history, or environmental history. There’s one site (this one), that occasionally has a bunch of interesting stuff on the history of science and technology. And the Library of Congress’s American Memory site is amazing, though I’ve found few opportunities to link to it.
Despite having a number of places to trawl (troll?) for entries, occasionally I have a day like today (another example is here), when I can’t find much that captures my fancy. But then, looking around this evening, I found this:
1644 – Perplexed Pilgrims in Boston reported America’s 1st UFO sighting
Such a find elicits a couple of responses. First, Eric, will you please cook me up one of your special history cartoons, this time starring “Perplexed Pilgrims”? With hats? Because I really want to see that. But only if there are hats. And second, is my next book going to be called Perplexed Pilgrims? Why yes, yes it is.
And that’s all I have for you. Oh, also this link, which purports to have more on the subject. Though I have my doubts. Buzzkill, I know.
11 comments
January 18, 2008 at 10:10 pm
bitchphd
Surely there are some chicks in your department, or people who cover, you know, brown folks. Someone’s gotta know some good sites for the histories of everyone else. Not me, though.
January 18, 2008 at 10:41 pm
teofilo
The issue is not so much whether the information is out there as whether anyone has organized it into a convenient list by date, I believe.
January 18, 2008 at 11:09 pm
ari
What teo said.
January 18, 2008 at 11:35 pm
bitchphd
Put one of your graduate students on it.
January 19, 2008 at 12:02 am
Jamie T.
Speaking of UFOs, did anyone hear the NPR story on the UFO in Texas. That’s some really crazy stuff and I can’t believe no one got video of said UFO.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18146244
It would be interesting to hear about pre-1930s UFO sighting and how society and the military/government reacted to them.
January 19, 2008 at 12:20 am
ari
Winthrop, apparently, was nonplussed. But that might be a bit more before 1930 than you had in mind.
January 19, 2008 at 7:21 am
silbey
“Put one of your graduate students on it.”
Better yet, let one of us put one of your graduate students on it.
January 19, 2008 at 7:31 am
historiann
Ari, next week you can post about another UFO sighting in Boston in 1644. According to The Journal of John Winthrop (Dunn, Savage, and Yeandle, 1996), p. 493, there is a follow-up on Winthrop’s January 18 report: “The 18th of this month two lights were seen near Boston, (as is before mentioned,) and a week after the like was seen again.” This time on the 25th, two lights converged, and “sometimes they shot out flames and sometimes sparkles. This was about eight of the clock in the evening, and was seen by many.” Always happy to help out on the early American history beat–I remain, Historiann.
January 19, 2008 at 9:04 am
eric
OK, seriously, we should survey the internets about worthy events, and it would then be trivial to arrange them in a list by date.
January 19, 2008 at 9:09 am
ari
Yeah, Historiann! Thanks for the comment. I saw that and couldn’t help but think of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force terrorist scare. History repeats, and all that. But Winthrop seems to have handled the situation a bit more ably than Tom Menino.
As for you, Silbey: you never write, you never call. My graduate students, I mean. They miss you.
January 19, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Not the first Thanksgiving. With hats. « The Edge of the American West
[…] January 19, 2008 in meta by eric Rare footage from seventeenth-century Massachusetts. Because Kelman tells me I’m writing too much boring historical stuff. […]