January 2011

Just as diet soda’s multibillion-dollar industry stems from the unassuming Russian Jewish émigré Hyman Kirsch, so the history of artificial sweeteners is an immigrant story, one that begins in a Johns Hopkins University laboratory in 1879. Constantine Fahlberg, a “well-built, handsome, German-American,” according to an article Scientific American published years later, was working there examining the properties of coal tar. Quite by accident, he stumbled upon a chemical that would forever sweeten the course of history.

“One evening I was so interested in my laboratory,” Fahlberg told Scientific American, “that I forgot about supper until quite late, and then rushed off for a meal without stopping to wash my hands. I sat down, broke a piece of bread, and put it to my lips. It tasted unspeakably sweet. I did not ask why it was so, probably because I thought it was some cake or sweetmeat. I rinsed my mouth with water, and dried my mustache with my napkin, when, to my surprise, the napkin tasted sweeter than the bread. Then I was puzzled.”

75 Years Ago

May 1, 1931 The Empire State Building, which will remain the world’s tallest for 40 years, is dedicated in New York City.

150 Years Ago

May 21, 1856 Pro-slavery guerrillas attack the antislavery town of Lawrence, Kansas, looting property and killing one man. On May 24 and 25 a small group led by John Brown, who will later mount an attack on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, retaliates by killing five pro-slavery settlers on Pottawatomie Creek.

May 22, 1856 Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina severely beats Sen. Charles Sumner with a cane on the floor of the Senate. The assault occurs two days after Sumner concluded a fire-breathing antislavery speech in which he insulted Sen. Andrew P. Butler, Brooks’s uncle. Sumner is so badly injured that except for a few brief visits, he will not be able to return to the Senate for more than three years.

200 Years Ago

 

 

On April 7, 1831, President Andrew Jackson accepted the resignation of his Secretary of War, John Eaton. Four days later, he did the same with his Secretary of State, Martin Van Buren. By the end of the month, all but one of Jackson’s cabinet members had resigned. The reasons behind the purge were a stew of political intrigue and conflicting loyalties, but they all came down to one woman: the Secretary of War’s wife, Margaret O’Neale Eaton.

When I was 12 years old, I sewed a Confederate flag onto my jacket. I didn’t intend to make a stand or provoke my classmates, most of them African-American. I just didn’t know any better.

In the 1960s and 1970s, when I grew up there, Richmond, Virginia, was a hundred years past the Civil War, but remnants of the Confederacy still cast long shadows throughout its former capital. As a white Richmonder I saw the flag decorating caps and T-shirts, flying from houses and museums. I never stopped to question its presence, much less consider its meaning. I believed that Gen. Robert E. Lee and the other Confederate leaders whose statues lined cobblestoned Monument Avenue were heroes. Why else would they sit on pedestals?

I was more preoccupied with finding my own place in the city. My family had moved from Chicago when I was seven, right after my father died of a heart attack. Richmond was my mother’s hometown, and she wanted to be near her family as she grieved.

 

 

In 1953, when I was an 18-year-old messenger at the Associated Press and a freelance photographer for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a stroke of luck put me on the inauguration stand in Washington, D.C., with a four-by-five Speed Graphic camera in my hands as Dwight D. Eisenhower was sworn in as 34th president of the United States.

The photo editor at the Daily had assigned me to cover the inauguration and had arranged for me to pick up a press pass in Washington. Officials there told me that most of the passes had been given out, but they would see what was left. I was given a pass making me a member of the inaugural party and another admitting me to the inaugural platform. I arrived early and made my way to the stand.

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Bob, Dick, and Harry Under Two Flags Mind the Gap

Milwaukee’s people retain a warm respect for their community’s roots. There is much to celebrate here, and the citizens often do just that. You can see this impulse in the crowds attracted to the much-heralded ethnic expositions at the Lake Michigan festival grounds and at the Holiday Folk Fair International at Wisconsin State Fair Park. Those seeking a more intimate experience can still discover snug neighborhood taverns such as the unassuming but delightful Wolski’s (414-276-8130).