The History of … “The Sting”

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The movie The Sting came out in the 1970’s.  It is a story about fun loving con artists who successfully fool gangster Doyle Lonnegan with a trick called “the wire.”  What some may not know is that the con in the movie was probably invented by a real person, Joseph Weil. 

Joseph Weil died at the age of 100 in 1976.  He estimated that, over the course of his life, he made about 8 million dollars conning people mostly in and around Chicago, Illinois.  He justified his actions saying that he never conned anyone who was not greedy.  He said about his victims, “Every victim of one of my schemes had larceny in his heart.  An honest man would have had no part of any of my schemes.  They all wanted something for nothing.”

Weil started his career in his early 20s selling Merriweather’s Elixir as a cure-all.  Its chief ingredient was water.  He acted as person in the crowd who would attest falsely to the curative powers of “Doc” Merriweather’s tonic.  Soon after the turn of the century he got his nickname, the Yellow Kid, after a comic that his partner at the time liked.  The Yellow Kid was a goofy sidekick to one of the main characters.   Weil got better and better at swindling people and was able to mostly skirt the law because, at the time, Chicago law was that a swindle could only be done on an innocent person.  He, therefore did a lot of his work in and around racetracks.

His con “the wire” which was the big take down used in The Sting involved setting up a fake gambling house with pretend employees and gamblers.  His mark was convinced it was a real setting and that Joseph had bribed a Western Union operator to slow transmissions of race winners so that Weil could get the results of a race beforehand and place successful bets.

Some of his other big “achievements” allegedly were to take Italian dictator Benito Mussolini for 2 million dollars, sell a talking dog, and convincing people to buy oil-rich land that he did not own.  Over his life time Weil served about six years in jail but kept all of his swindled money.  He died a free man.

The History of … Dieting for Weight Control

New Year, New Year’s resolutions, let the dieting begin!  But first, wouldn’t it be fun to look at The History of … Dieting for Weight Control (maybe while enjoying one last slightly stale Christmas cookie…).

The word diet comes from the Greek word diaita meaning manner of living.  Today a diet is a way of eating either for preference, for health or to lose weight. 

Dieting has occurred throughout history for various religious and health reasons.  Among the elite or rich there was always some interest and writing about diet as an overall way of living.  This included a desire to combat obesity.  However, dieting to specifically lose weight is, for the bulk of humanity, principally a modern phenomenon.

For most of human history the search for food occurred for survival and that was our primary relationship with food.  In fact, often being plump or overweight was a sign of great beauty because it meant a person was healthy.  However, in the 19th century industrialization produced a large middle class.  This had many consequences.  Among them was that as people moved from farms to cities they began eating different kinds of foods and could afford more.  They were no longer living at subsistence levels so weight gain was possible.

During the Victorian Era in the United States (1837-1901), some members of the growing middle class were wealthy enough to allow mothers to stay at home and care for children.  They could also afford mirrors in their homes which were finally being mass-produced at affordable rates and they had some free time for self-reflection.  Additionally, disposable income meant the ability to afford some non-essentials, like pretty clothes.

Outside forces contributed, during this general period, to a widespread ideal of what a person should look like.  With a bit more leisure time and money people could read newspapers which had pictures and women’s magazines with ads and articles promoting the best figure.

Dresses became mass-produced by the turn of the century as opposed to specifically made for one person’s body.  Eventually, by the 1920s, standard dress sizes were introduced.  This also happened with bras as they replaced corsets.  There was now a model of what a person should look like, the implements to evaluate yourself within your home and now standard clothes a person had to fit into that placed an evaluation on that person (i.e. you are a size 8).

Medical advancements contributed to a population more conscious of diet with the discovery of calories in the 1800s and more wide knowledge about the nutritional value of foods.  Additionally, by the early 1900s, weight charts showing average weights based on height were obtained from life insurance companies and published. Several years after that, tables of correct weights for height were created. In the 1870s weighing scale companies began producing machines for people as well as for foods.  Penny scales appeared in public.  Bathroom scales followed after the First World War.

Now being the right weight was medically, as well as visually, important and knowledge existed about how to achieve your appropriate size.  The only thing needed was the right guru to put together the desire to be the correct weight to look good and fit into clothes.

Many such gurus emerged and the modern diet industry was born in the 1800s.  Some of the early notables were Banting, Fletcher, Peters and Hay.

The Banting System was introduced to the world by William Banting in an 1863 book called Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public that he self-published.  It sold worldwide.  It was a precursor diet to the Salisbury Method and then the Atkins diet.  William Banting was an undertaker who needed to lose weight.  His idea, devised by a local ear, nose and throat Doctor, was to reduce the amount of carbohydrates in his diet.  The method was used well into the 1920s, even getting a mention in some of Agatha Christie’s mysteries.  The diet was so popular it became a verb.  Instead of saying you were dieting you would say you were ‘banting.’

Horace Fletcher (1849-1914) was a businessman whose idea for dieting was to chew each bite of your food until it liquefied.  Fletcherism became an activity as well as a diet and was very popular.  Notables such as John D. Rockefeller, Franz Kafka and Henry James were devotees.

In 1918 a Doctor named Lulu Hunt Peters published a best-selling book on dieting and calories.  She was among the first to popularize the use of calories in dieting in the US.  Later she wrote the first calorie counting book for kids.  She was a physician from California who had lost weight herself. 

The Hay Diet was named for Dr. William Hay who came up with a diet that was the precursor to the Beverly Hills Diet of the 1980s.  His 1930s diet involved aspects of Fletcherism, as well as, separating foods (eating protein, fruit, and starches at different meals).  It was practiced by Henry Ford.

Inevitably, backlash against this new emphasis on dieting for weight control emerged.  Many Doctors spoke out and continue to speak out against fad dieting.  By the 1920s, warnings about dangerous dieting were a part of the Progressive Era’s medical programs.  The American Medical Association’s (AMA) conference on adult weight met in 1926 to determine what healthy weights were and voiced concern about the ‘barber pole figure’ of the 1920s.  While the term anorexia nervosa was first used in the 1800s (and before that existed but was not categorized) it became widely known in the late 1970s and early 1980s, particularly after the singer Karen Carpenter’s death.

However, despite the warnings, dieting for weight control continued and expanded throughout the 1900s and to today.  Cigarettes were advertised in the 20th century as a way to make a person thin.  Cosmetic surgery by ‘beauty surgeons’  also grew in the 20th century.  The first diet foods were introduced in the 1950s.  Weight Watchers was started in 1963.  Today, a popular book website has over 100,000 books for sale on diet and dieting.

The History of … Nasty Presidential Elections

Remember this one from history class?  It is the late 1700s and the secret monarchist President John Adams is scheming to arrange a marriage between one of his sons and one of King George III of England’s daughters.  His maniacal plan is only stopped by the great George Washington, who comes out of retirement to ride to the White House and end Adams’ conniving at the point of a sword.

You do not remember it?  Well this tale did not actually occur.  However, it was a feature of the brutal Election of 1800 between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.  With the 2012 presidential election in full swing and accusations of campaign ugliness unparalleled in US history being thrown about, a look back at previous presidential elections helps to put things in perspective.

The election of 1800, John Adams verses Thomas Jefferson, was a particularly unpleasant election.  The formation of parties had only just occurred during the previous election and candidates still thought it was undignified to campaign.  However, this did not prevent electioneering from going on behind the scenes which allowed for more outrageous charges since it was anonymous.  Jefferson was labeled an atheist and Adams a monarchist.  There was concern that Jefferson’s perceived lack of faith would result in a move away from “the Christian system.”  From the other side there was concern that Adams “had expressed himself in favor of an hereditary President of the United States.”  Whichever side you were on there was genuine concern that the results of the election would destroy the fledgling republic.  Adams wrote that the result of “both the extreme parties which divide us, will be a dissolution of the union and civil war.”

The election of 1828, Andrew Jackson verses John Quincy Adams, featured accusations both true and false that made it one of the most sordid elections in US history.  The false accusations included that General Jackson had ordered soldiers put to death over a simple misunderstanding about terms of enlistment, the accusation that President Adams had provided the czar of Russia female companionship, and the accusation that President Adams had bought ‘gambling apparatus’ (a billiards table) on the public dime.  The true accusations included the revelation that Rachel Jackson cohabitated with Andrew Jackson while still married to her first husband and a rehashing of Jackson’s dueling history and hot temper.  Additionally, there was a nose pulling incident (considered a great insult at the time) by a Jackson supporter perpetrated on John Adams II, who worked for the president.  The tumult continued at the inauguration when President Jackson opened up the White House to his supporters and they trashed the place.  Stewards finally had to put drums of punch outside to get the throngs to leave the White House and then locked the doors behind them.

During the election of 1884, Grover Cleveland verses James G. Blaine, Blaine was accused, most likely accurately, of taking railroad bribes while a Congressman.  Cleveland was also accused, accurately, of fathering a child out of wedlock in 1874.  He admitted it and still won the election.  Republicans for Blaine taunted the Cleveland camp singing, “Ma ma, where’s my pa?” during the campaign.  The victorious Cleveland supporters eventually started chanting back, “Gone to the White House, ha ha ha.!”

The election of 1912, William Howard Taft verses Woodrow Wilson verses Teddy Roosevelt, got very complicated.  Roosevelt did not like the way his hand-picked successor governed and decided to run against him with the Progressive party (nicknamed the Bull Moose party because Roosevelt often said he was as “strong as a bull moose”).  This created a three way race and an avenue for the unlikely candidate, Wilson, to get to the White House.  Other than the nastiness of former friends running against each other, the largest drama came when Roosevelt was shot in the chest during a speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin by John Schrank, who was later found to be insane.  Amazingly enough, Roosevelt finished the speech and then went to the hospital.  The bullet had been slowed by a 50 page speech and Roosevelt’s glasses case which were in his breast pocket.  Roosevelt said of the incident, “It takes more than that to kill a bull moose!”

In the election of 1928, Alfred E. Smith verses Herbert Hoover, Smith was the first Roman Catholic to be nominated by a major political party.  Flyers were sent out that declared if Smith were elected the United States would be ruled by the Pope in Rome.  This tactic worked and was tried again, unsuccessfully, when John F. Kennedy ran for President in 1960.

In the election of 1964, Lyndon Johnson verses Barry Goldwater, Johnson had a spy, who was possibly a CIA agent, working on the Goldwater campaign.  This person would feed the Johnson campaign information about scheduling and send advance copies of speeches so the Johnson campaign could out maneuver Goldwater.  The FBI was used, illegally, to perform security checks on members of Goldwater’s staff.  It is also alleged that President Johnson directed FBI head J. Edgar Hoover to bug the Goldwater campaign plane.

In the election of 1972, Richard Nixon verses George McGovern, Nixon’s campaign operatives famously broke into Democrat National Committee offices in the Watergate complex.  They were trying to get information on the opposition and bug their phones.  They were caught and while Nixon won the election in a landslide, the cover-up of the burglary eventually led to his resignation.

So is 2012 the nastiest presidential election ever?  I will let the reader be the judge.  What do you think the ugliest presidential election in US history was?