See You In The Colonies

Great Britain in the late seventeenth century had a bit of a problem.  While the whole Industrial Revolution thing had made it one of the most powerful nations in the world, it had also caused rapid urbanization, drawing thousands of people into cities that were basically shit covered freshly shaken bags of cats.  It should come as no surprise that crime was a bit of a problem.  Now for a long time this issue was solved by just hanging anyone who broke pretty much any law you can think of.  Kill a guy.  Hanging.  Make your living as a substantially more selfish Robin Hood.  Hanging.  Steal a gentleman's handkerchief.  Hanging.  Put graffiti on the bridge.  Hanging.  Say something disparaging about the king while taking a dump in the middle of the road.  Most definitely a hanging.  About the only way a person could avoid getting hanged, other than not doing crimes, was if the crime was rather minor, it was their first offense, and they could prove they could read.  In these cases, people instead got a thorough whipping and their thumbs branded.  Now I know this probably all sounds pretty terrible, but it’s probably worth keeping in mind that this state of affairs was actually more humane than the old methods, which mostly involved cutting off heads and beating people to death.   

Regardless, as the crime rate spiked so did the number of hangings, and in the end it turned out that there are only so many hangings a normal person can go to before they begin questioning the whole effectiveness of it as a method to deter crime.  Eventually, people became so disconcerted with the whole policy that Britain's ruling class decided that it would probably be a good idea to find some alternatives.  After much debate, several tea parties, and an acceptable amount of good natured harrumphing, it was decided to start sending convicts to the British colonies in the Americas.  For the British government this was a perfect solution.  Not only were the colonies thousands of miles away, making it totally not their problem, but the colonies also needed more people to help cement the British claim of ownership.  

Of course, not everybody was super happy with this new arrangement.  For instance, the colonists already living there were less than pleased.  These colonists were mostly a strange mix of businessmen, malcontents, and religious fundamentalists, who did not really think highly of the idea of adding convicts into the mix.  Some of the colonies even tried to outlaw the transportation of convicts to their shores, though the British just kind of chuckled to themselves and kept doing it anyways.  Some members of the clergy were also against the transportation of convicts, mostly because they saw the use of indentured servitude as pretty much white slavery, not to be confused with black slavery, which most of them were super a-okay with.  However, given that the only other option at the time seemed to be hanging people again, most clergy members eventually managed to find some religious loophole to better put God's grace on the whole thing.

The whole transportation of convicts to the America's lasted for around 80 years, during which time approximately 120,000 people got shipped over.  However, the whole system came crashing down when thirteen of the largest colonies rose up in rebellion in 1776.  Deciding that it was probably not the best idea to send convicts to a place where people were actively killing British soldiers, the practice was halted.  Unfortunately, by this time the British had pretty well lost their appetite for hanging anybody and everybody, leaving them with a quickly growing prison population with nowhere to go.  Having few other options, at least to the popular thinking of the day, the British started storing these prisoners in old ships anchored out in the harbor, which is every bit as terrible as you can imagine.  This went on for about ten years before the British remembered that they had also recently claimed another whole continent named Australia, which being even farther away and completely devoid of colonists, though not people, was an even better place than the Americas to send their unwanted.  

Over the next eighty years the British sent some 162,000 convicts to Australia.  They became the basis of the original Australian colonies, which over time became prosperous enough to attract non-convicts as well.  Eventually the practice fell out of favor as the idea of just shipping your problems away gave way to actually trying to change criminals via imprisonment and rehabilitation.  The last group of prisoners was transported to Australia in 1868.  Britain didn't stop hanging people until 1964; though to be fair, the last hanging occurred in the U.S. in 1996, and it still remains a valid form of execution in most states.  So you know, try not to be too judgy.         

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Street_and_Gin_Lane#/media/File:Beer-street-and-Gin-lane.jpg

A Short Strange History of Modern Japan

It goes without saying that by the mid-nineteenth century most non-European peoples had become pretty wary of any pale faced interlopers just kind of showing up uninvited, which is understandable given the general "nice place you got here, think I'll just take it" attitude of the Europeans of the time.  Given this, it’s really no surprise that many East Asian nations, including Japan, had what were known as closed door policies, which were pretty much like putting up a no soliciting sign for the entire country.  Unfortunately for Japan, the United States was having none of that shit.  In 1853, they kicked in the proverbial door with a fleet of warships and gave Japan an ultimatum of either open trade or an ass whooping.  Japan, its military made up of samurai and some guys with spears, went with the first option.  

Admiral Perry's arrival was a turning point for the Japanese.  They soon after shifted gears from a “stay the fuck out” policy to a “if you can't beat them join them” extravaganza.  In less than fifty years Japan transformed itself from a feudal society to an industrial powerhouse, and like any good industrialized nation of the day, it decided that it wanted in on the whole global empire thing which was so vogue in Europe at the time.  Unsurprisingly, these aspirations got a little out of hand, by which I mean the Japanese went on a conquering tear for forty odd years, beating the shit out of all of their neighbors.  This eventually led to the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the end result of which I'm pretty sure most people are pretty familiar with.  The U.S. nuked Japan, twice, and fire bombed everything that wasn't irradiated.  

Well, as one would expect, one of the most devastating wars in human history and a double nuking did little to help the Japanese economy.  The country was devastated and occupied by American soldiers, and it was from this double combo that most of what we picture as modern Japan today was derived.  One of the more obvious changes was that the Japanese started hunting whales.  This was done on the suggestion of U.S. General Douglas MacArthur, who not really being a big fan of whales, thought it was a perfect way for the country to avoid starvation.  Another obvious change was the introduction of Godzilla movies, which were a pretty non-subtle metaphor for nuclear weapons.  However, there was some less than obvious changes as well.  When you think of Japan do you think of a bunch of businessmen literally working themselves to death.  Well, that’s America’s fault too.  In the 1950’s an American statistician named W. Edwards Deming created a theory that companies should pretty much never be happy with anything because people could always be doing better.  While everyone in the United States thought this was a stupid idea, the desperate Japanese ate that shit up, resulting in a whole generation of men frantically working their asses off.  Sure, it did result in the Japanese economy being reinvigorating at a record pace, but it also resulted in the country having the highest suicide rate in the world.  So you know, a bit of a mixed bag.   

While all the above was kind of weird, perhaps the strangest change forced upon Japan dealt with their views of sex.  You see, historically speaking, Japan was once pretty open and out there with the whole bumping uglies thing.  It was common for Japanese women to stroll around topless and pretty much every family had some porn, classily called shunga, just lying around the house.  Unfortunately, when the country started industrializing the government began cracking down on such things, mostly because nobody wants to be that weird new kid in school.  You know, pretty standard stuff.    

However, things really began to ratchet up a weird notch with the arrival of the American GI's in 1945.  Prior to this time, very few Japanese women wore underwear, but for god only knows what reason, the American GI's preferred Japanese women who did.  As a result, for a time underwear in Japan was only worn by prostitutes, which resulted in it becoming so sexualized that today you can buy used panties in vending machines in downtown Tokyo.  If that wasn't weird enough, the American occupiers, rather disgusted by the still impressively large amounts of Japanese porn just lying around, also forced the Japanese government to outlaw the depiction of any hot genital on genital action, if you know what I mean.  However, some enterprising, and obviously desperate, Japanese artists figured out a loophole by using monster tentacles instead of......never mind, you get the idea.  So yeah, Japan is kind of a weird place, but it's mostly because we made it that way.   

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:140405_Tsu_Castle_Tsu_MIe_pref_Japan01s.jpg

The Adventures of Lincoln's Corpse

On the evening of April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln decided to attend a seven year old play his buddy had told him about, a little number about a hick American going to England to visit his aristocratic cousins.  Not enjoying the play as much as his employer, Lincoln's bodyguard slipped out to a nearby saloon for a drink, giving famed actor John Wilkes Booth the perfect opportunity to shoot the president in the back of the head.  Lincoln died nine hours later, marking the first assassination of a U.S. president and the start of one of the strangest series of events to ever befall a dead body. 

Immediately after old Honest Abe's death, his wife Mary took to her bed for five weeks, barely even able to speak in her grief.  The absence of Mary left no family member to plan a funeral, leaving the task to the members of Lincoln's cabinet.  Being politicians, they of course decided to make the biggest spectacle out of it as possible.  Lincoln had left orders for his body to buried in Springfield, Illinois, but rather than just take the body directly there, it was decided to send it on a 1,600 mile, two week, 40 stop, grieving tour across seven states.  Upon hearing of the idea, Mary tried to stop them, but since plans had already been made, she was completely ignored.  Nine days after his death, Lincoln's body left Washington D.C. aboard a funeral train, accompanied by the unearthed body of his eleven year old son who had died three years previously.  However, after a week of being jostled around and left exposed for up to 23 hours at a time, the dead president's body began to show definitive signs of rot.  Now one might think that a rotting body would hurry the whole tour thing along, but you would be wrong.  The tour kept right on schedule, leaving Lincoln’s body a much less than appetizing sight by the time it was finally deposited into its waiting opulent tomb.    

Only a few weeks after her husband's burial, the grieving Mary Lincoln was booted out of the White House to make room for President Johnson and his family.  Not having much money, she lived in a rather poor state of affairs until 1870, when Congress finally got around to granting her a pension of what amounted to $58,000 a year in today’s money.  Mary really never got over her husband's death, by which I mean she walked around in black all the time and met with every kook she could find that claimed they could talk to the dead.  This behavior only intensified following the death of another one of her sons, which in turn led to some crazy ass levels of paranoia, including a belief that a wandering Jew was trying to poison her.  Eventually her one surviving son, Robert, was forced to have her committed to an insane asylum in 1875.  Mary responded to this turn of events by quite reasonably trying to commit suicide. 

It was around this time that a group of counterfeiters came up with a rather audacious plan.  Hoping to counterfeit up some sweet fake hundred dollar bills, the crooks ran into a bit of a jam when the most skilled member of their clique got himself thrown into prison for being a drunken idiot.  Rather than just give up on a life of crime, the remaining members of the gang came up with a convoluted plan to kidnap Lincoln’s corpse in order to hold it for ransom until their imprisoned compatriot was freed and they were paid what amounted to $4.4 million in today’s money.  Unfortunately for the would be conspirators, one of their number decided to spill the whole plot to a woman at a bar in an ill-conceived attempt to get laid.  Rather than sleeping with him, the woman instead alerted the authorities, which resulted in the whole group getting arrested, but not until after they had managed to break into the dead president's tomb.  Worried about future grave robbing attempts, the body was then secretly reburied in a shallow grave nearby.  The arrest was carried out by the Secret Service, which at the time was in charge of hunting down counterfeiters.  However, after managing to protect Lincoln’s dead body, somebody got the bright idea that they should totally protect living presidents as well.  Thus was born the Secret Service as we know it today.

In the meantime, Mary Lincoln managed to get herself out of the insane asylum after proving that she was just quirky insane rather than dangerous to herself and others insane.  For whatever reason, she never talked to her son again, preferring to spend her time touring Europe and demanding a larger pension from the government.  Mary died in 1882 and was buried in the Lincoln tomb, in which again, her husband was no longer actually buried.  As for Robert Lincoln, he apparently shared some of his mother’s paranoia, for in 1901 he decided it would probably be best to rebury his father's body in a steel cage encased in ten feet concrete, you know, because someone tried to steal it once 25 years ago.  During this procedure, for god only knows what reason, someone got the bright idea of opening up the casket to get one last look at the long dead president.  Unsurprisingly, old Honest Abe stank terribly, you know, like a dead body.  With the crowd happy enough that it was indeed Abraham Lincoln, the body was buried again for the final time.  

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_assassination_of_Abraham_Lincoln_(1865)_(14763568501).jpg