A new outbreak of David Barton has been noted. The Centers for Disease Control offer no help, but you can find some relief here, at American Creation, in a post by Brad Hart.
Tip of the old scrub brush to Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, “Another Barton Debunking.”
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Accuracy, Bogus history, Education, Historic documents, History, History Revisionism, Hoaxes, Politics, Voodoo history | Tagged: Accuracy, History, Hoaxes, Politics, Voodoo history | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
In continuing efforts to slam environmentalists and Rachel Carson, Instapundit and RWDB complain (whine?) about the European Union’s efforts to block the importation of cotton from Uganda on fears of DDT contamination.
Meanwhile, back in Kampala, the news is that the EU has done the opposite, and is encouraging the use of DDT officially, not blocking its use at all. If DDT is used to fight malaria and not in uncontrolled agricultural use simply to keep products blemish-free, in carefully-controlled sprayings, EU has no complaints.
Is there any western news agency with a stringer in Kampala who could chase this story down? Beck and Reynolds still offer no evidence to back their odd claims, but the story could sure benefit from a solid chunk of reporting from BBC, or Reuters, or Agence France Presse, or someone who could talk with the EU and Uganda officials.
Other resources:
Full text of report, below the fold.
2 Comments | Africa, Business, Business Ethics, DDT, Environmental protection, Health care, Hoaxes, Malaria, Rachel Carson, Science | Tagged: Africa, Business, DDT, Environmental protection, health, Hoaxes, Malaria, Rachel Carson, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
That’s the real headline from the Salt Lake Tribune.
Wedgie killer?
Reality once again demonstrates that hoaxes can’t keep up. Truth is either stranger than fiction, or just better.
You just can’t make this stuff up:
The Utah Supreme Court today threw out the manslaughter conviction of Erik Kurtis Low, who killed a Park City man after the victim gave him a “wedgie.”
Low, now 40, claimed in his 2005 trial he was defending himself when he shot 38-year-old Michael Jon Hirschey following a night of drinking, drug use and horseplay.
Ah, the old drinking, drug use and horseplay excuse.
The Utah Supreme Court said the trial court erred in instructing the jury on possible sentences, giving the jury too many ways to find the man guilty. The conviction was tossed out. Prosecutors cannot retry on the old charges, but new charges are possible.
Watch that space. Accurate history is always better than the hoax stuff.
Other resources:
5 Comments | History, Hoaxes, Jurisprudence, Justice, Law, Travel | Tagged: History, Hoaxes, Justice, Travel, Weird News | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Hoax complaints against presidential candidates are old ideas. In 1796, Alexander Hamilton paid newspaper editors to print stories saying Thomas Jefferson was atheist. It was a minor theme in that campaign, but after John Adams’ political fortunes foundered on the Alien and Sedition Acts, among other missteps, Hamilton stepped up the attacks in the election of 1800.
Jefferson’s great biographer, Dumas Malone, estimates that by election day, fully half the American electorate believed Jefferson was atheist. Jefferson made a perfect target for such a charge — staunch advocate of religious freedom, he thought it beneath the dignity of a politician to answer such charges at all, so he did not bother to deny them publicly. Ministers in New England told their congregations they would have to hide their Bibles because, as president, Jefferson would send troops to confiscate them.
In a warning to hoaxers, we might hope, Americans elected Jefferson anyway.
Such nefariousness plagues campaigns today, still. Boone Pickens, who helped fund the Swiftboat Veterans’ calumny against war hero John Kerry, has an offer to pay $1 million to anyone who can show the charges false. In a replay of Holocaust denial cases, Pickens refuses to accept any evidence to pay the award, last week turning away the affidavits of the men who were present at the events.
At the Bathtub, we’ve already sampled a crude and steady attempt to brand Hillary Clinton a Marxist with creative editing of a few of her speeches.
The assaults on Barack Obama are already the stuff of legend. The comic strip, “Doonesbury,” is running a story line with a volunteer for the internet rumor stopping part of the campaign, FighttheSmears.com. The smears are real.
Matthew Most of the Washington Post wrote a lengthy piece in yesterday’s paper, “An attack that came out of the ether,” on the research done by a woman at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, on the origins of the internet hoax that Barack Obama is a Muslim — a rumor so potent that Georgetown University Prof. Edward Luttwak repeated it in a New York Times op-ed article, without the fact checkers catching it (the Times consulted five scholars of Islam who all agreed the foundation for the claim is incorrect).
Danielle Allen has tracked the rumor back to its sources, in a failed campaign against Obama in Illinois and a candidate who admittedly was looking for mud, and one constant sniper at FreeRepublic.com. It’s impressive sleuthing, and the article would be a good departure for study of how media affect campaigns in a government or civics class.
The “how to” list is really very short:
According to the Post story: [A] search showed that the first mention of the e-mail on the Internet had come more than a year earlier. A participant on the conservative Web site FreeRepublic.com posted a copy of the e-mail on Jan. 8, 2007, and added this line at the end: “Don’t know who the original author is, but this email should be sent out to family and friends.”
Allen discovered that theories about Obama’s religious background had circulated for many years on the Internet. And that the man who takes credit for posting the first article to assert that the Illinois senator was a Muslim is Andy Martin.
Martin, a former political opponent of Obama’s, is the publisher of an Internet newspaper who sends e-mails to his mailing list almost daily. He said in an interview that he first began questioning Obama’s religious background after hearing his famous keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
The story is well worth reading. It can help educate us to how to avoid being victims of such rumors in the future.
Tip of the old scrub brush to e-mail correspondent MicahBrown.
3 Comments | Accuracy, Barack Obama, Campaigns, Cartoons, Education, Free press, Free speech, History, Hoaxes, Obama 2008, Politics, Technology | Tagged: 2008 campaign, Barack Obama, Campaign Technology, Education, Elections, History, Hoaxes, How to, Media, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
WARNING: Satirical material ahead.
At long last, Sen. McCarthy Little Green Footballs, have you no decency?
One wonders just how much mob activity these guys can provoke before somebody — perhaps someone at LGF, and Michelle Malkin’s blog — wakes up and stands up to stop the madness.
Rachael Ray wore a black and white patterned scarf at a shoot for a Dunkin’ Donuts ad. As a Blood to a blue bandana or a Crip to a red one, LGF pulled out their rhetorical guns and started firing. ‘Aren’t those the colors of Yassir Arafat’s group, Al Fatah?’ LGF wonders.
You couldn’t make up this kind of craziness if it didn’t exist. Well, almost couldn’t make it up.
I expect that, next, Little Green Footballs will hear that some radio stations are suppressing the news about the invasion of Martians.
Next week: Little Green cake pans filmed flying across LGF’s yard, and LGF leads a new dig at the old quarry in Piltdown. How long before Nebraska Man shows up in the credits to Michelle Malkin’s blog, and they start rooting for the Cardiff Giant during the Hall of Fame Game in Cooperstown? Is it true that Michelle Malkin has an interview with Judge Crater set up for later this week?
Barnum’s ghost is tired.
What Michelle Malkin and LGF claimed to see:
What everyone else saw:
Dunkin’ Donuts pulled the ad rather than risk offending anyone. The scarf had a paisley design, a company spokesman told LGF — and no one disputes that.
Does anyone else see the irony of Little Green Footballs complaining about this and inciting a mob? What will they do when they realize that green was Mohammed’s favorite color, and is almost an official color of Islam?
And when the truth comes out, will it be that LGF was mainstreaming terrorism to sell Little Green Footballs — like mob action against a donut shop — occasionally outing one of their friends or some innocent person to avoid suspicion themselves?
Santayana was right. What do you know about Herb Philbrick’s dip into communism double agentry, in I Led Three Lives? What do you remember about Robespierre and the Summer of Terror? What do you remember about Stalin’s installation of terror in the Soviet Union?
Why aren’t Malkin and LGF going after Rev. Moon, or some real threat to something — whooping cough, measles, something really dangerous?
Whose side is Little Green Footballs on, anyway?
Tip of the old scrub brush to Dispatches from the Culture Wars.
Other Resources:
Update: Greater, sadder irony: Rachael Ray’s site today featured a nice tribute to our troops, with recipes.
7 Comments | Accuracy, Business Ethics, Current History, Debunking, Ethics, Hoaxes, Lessons of history, Palestine, Paranoia, Rampant stupidity, Santayana's ghost | Tagged: hoax, Mobs, Politics, Rampant stupidity, Witchhunts | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Much as we’d like to deny it, the evidence to verify Barnum’s Law just keeps piling up.
Here’s a blogger astounded by the black stuff on the pad on her feet, convinced that it’s toxic stuff magically drained out of her body, through her feet.
Who is going to tell her the facts?
Uh, you haven’t been suckered by that scam, have you?
Update: The blogger in question seems to have gotten the message: The post has been yanked. Smart people change things when their errors are pointed out.
Leave a Comment » | Health care, Hoaxes, Scams, Science, Voodoo science, Woo | Tagged: Health care, Scams, Science, Toxic feet, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Steve Milloy and an entire host of DDT denialists hope you never read any newspaper from Africa. Your ignorance is their best argument.
If you don’t read African newspapers, they can continue to blame environmentalists for any case of malaria that occurs in Africa. They’ll claim, though it’s not true, that environmentalists urged a complete ban on the use of DDT. They’ll argue, falsely, that African governments were bullied into not using DDT by environmentalists, ignoring the fact that some African nations have just never been able to get their kit together to conduct an anti-malaria campaign, while other nations discovered DDT was ineffective — and most of the nations have no love for environmentalists anyway (Idi Amin? Jomo Kenyatta? Who does Milloy think he’s kidding?).
If you don’t read African newspapers, you’ll miss stories like this one, from the Daily Times in Malawi, that say it’s Milloy’s old friends in the tobacco business who stand in the way of modest use of DDT.
If you don’t read African newspapers, you’ll miss stories like this one, from New Vision in Kampala, Uganda, that say it’s the cotton farmers who stand in the way of modest use of DDT.
If Steven Milloy wanted to get DDT used against malaria in Africa, in indoor residual spraying (IRS) campaigns, all he has to do is pick up the phone and ask his friends to allow it to be done.
Someone who will lie to you about their friends’ misdeeds, and try to pin it on a nice old lady like Rachel Carson, will go Charles Colson one better: They’ll walk over your grandmother to do what they want to do. In fact, they’ll go out of their way to walk over your grandmother.
The New Republic seems to have come around to get the story straight. Truth wins in a fair fight — it’s a fight to make sure the fight is fair, though.
John Stossel? Your company doesn’t get tobacco money any more. What’s your excuse? Do you really believe the Bush administration is beholden to environmentalists on this one issue? How long have you been covering politics?
(Texts of news stories below the fold.)
Leave a Comment » | Africa, Business Ethics, Conservation, DDT, Environmental protection, Ethics, Health care, Hoaxes, Junk science, Malaria, Newspapers, Public health, Rachel Carson, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: Africa, DDT, Ethics, health, Junk science, Malaria, Rachel Carson, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Historians, help me out here. I’ve recently become aware that many creationists have swallowed as accurate Richard Weikart’s book making Darwin complicit in the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.
I have always dismissed Weikart. His claims fly in the face of history recorded by too many reputable and trustworthy hands. Others aren’t concerned with what history really shows, or are simply ignorant of history (candidates for Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking” segment). I am working to assemble what I hope will be a short piece showing the error of Weikart’s claims.
It seems to me there are many holes in the history case Weikart tries to make. And the history case needs to be nailed down, accurately.
Scientists already have responded. The American Academy for the Advancement of Science complains that the scientific inaccuracies in the film muddy the waters between science and religion unfairly and unnecessarily (see video here). The Jewish Anti-Defamation League has complained about the unholy Holocaust claims. Movie reviewers have not been kind to the film, with reviews like the New York Times:
One of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” is a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry.
Still there are creationists, and other people of faith out there, who grant credence to Weikart’s claims. So we need a clear rebuttal to Weikart’s claims, from the history viewpoint.
The National Center for Science Education has a brief that touches on these arguments; what other sources do you recommend on these specific claims listed below?
Weikart makes six claims (I’ve borrowed here from an article he wrote for American Spectator):
1. Darwin argued that humans were not qualitatively different from animals. The leading Darwinist in Germany, Ernst Haeckel, attacked the “anthropocentric” view that humans are unique and special.
That seems directly contrary to the view of Darwin presented in the better biographies. I don’t recall Darwin ever arguing this point at all. Is Weikart imagining this?
2. Darwin denied that humans had an immaterial soul. He and other Darwinists believed that all aspects of the human psyche, including reason, morality, aesthetics, and even religion, originated through completely natural processes.
Darwin never denied the existence of human souls. While Darwin made rather brilliant arguments for how morality could arise through evolution, going so far as to say that morality is necessary for the survival of a social species such as humans, at no point in his arguing for the natural processes does he deny or disavow the supernatural. Descent of Man will offer Darwin’s work on the rise of morals and art — what other sources would you recommend?
3. Darwin and other Darwinists recognized that if morality was the product of mindless evolution, then there is no objective, fixed morality and thus no objective human rights. Darwin stated in his Autobiography that one “can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones.”
Notes from Evil Bender, Creationist quotemining of Darwin: moral relativism edition, has already called out the gross error in Weikart’s claim here — this is quite contrary to what Darwin actually argued and said. But again, there should be a few other sources to rebut Weikart’s claim. Which do you recommend?
4. Since evolution requires variation, Darwin and other early Darwinists believed in human inequality. Haeckel emphasized inequality to such as extent that he even classified human races as twelve distinct species and claimed that the lowest humans were closer to primates than to the highest humans.
Actually, Darwin was a potent advocate of legal equality, for example in his advocacy and support for ending slavery. Weikart’s claim here completely steps away from reality. I admit to not being overly familiar with Haeckel’s work, partly because Haeckel doesn’t represent Darwin, partly because I have just never found the guy’s work particularly interesting or useful. What sources and arguments do you recommend here?
5. Darwin and most Darwinists believe that humans are locked in an ineluctable struggle for existence. Darwin claimed in The Descent of Man that because of this struggle, “[a]t some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.”
That’s a complete distortion of what Darwin wrote, of course — the NCSE site has a short rebuttal. Darwin was writing of the clash between colonists and natives, largely between Europeans and aboriginals, or between Europeans with guns and aboriginals without them. Key case in point: The Tasmanian “Wars,” which led to the almost complete extinction of native Tasmanians, a sad circumstance Darwin saw on his voyage. Got other sources you recommend?
6. Darwinism overturned the Judeo-Christian view of death as an enemy, construing it instead as a beneficial engine of progress. Darwin remarked in The Origin of Species, “Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows.”
This claim is so full of hooey I’m not sure where to start. What do you think? Can you imagine how quickly Darwin would have gotten his shotgun out for some fool who suggests, like Weikart does here, that Darwin was not grieved by the death of Annie? Are you outraged at the butchering of the last paragraph from Origin of Species?
There are a lot of Christians who should know better who have been misled by this claptrap. Will you help me make a brief against Weikart’s claims?
Comments are open. Please chime in.
13 Comments | Accuracy, Charles Darwin, Darwin, Evolution, Genocide, History, History Revisionism, Hoaxes, Holocaust, Rampant stupidity, Santayana's ghost, Science, World War II | Tagged: Creationism, Expelled!, History, History Revisionism, Holocaust | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
One of the ultimate defenses of creationism, once you’ve demonstrated that there is no science and no good theology in it, is the creationist claim “it doesn’t hurt anyone.”
Well, yes, it does. Over the years I’ve noticed that creationism appears to suck the intelligence right out of otherwise smart or educated people. I also note that it tends to make otherwise good and honest people defend academic debauchery and dishonesty.
It’s as if claiming to be creationist hogs all the available RAM in their brains and forces a near-total synapse shutdown.
Cases in point: Creationists are scrambling to the defense of the mockumentary movie “Expelled!” in which Ben Stein trots out almost every creationist canard known to Hollywood in defending some of the greater misdeeds of the intelligent design hoaxers. Otherwise sane, good people, claiming to be Christian, make atrocious defenses of the movie.
I cannot make this up: Go see Mere Orthodoxy and Thinking Christian. Bad enough they defend the movie — but to defend it because, they claim, Darwin and Hitler were brothers in thought? Because evolution urges immoral behavior? I stepped in something over at Thinking Christian, and when I called it to the attention of Tom Gilson in the comments, he deleted the comment. (I’ve reposted, but I wager he’ll delete that one, too, while letting other comments of mine stand; he’s got no answer to any of my complaints.)
The stupid goes past 11, proudly, defiantly. The Constitution specifically protects the right of people to believe any fool claptrap they choose. These defenses of a silly movie come awfully close to abuse of the privilege.
Other useful things:
Update: Holy mother of ostriches! Tom Gilson at “Thinking Christian” has a nifty device that bans people from viewing his blog. Paranoia sticks its head into a whole new depth of sand! Here’s a truism: Creationists who like to claim Darwin was the cause of Stalin and Hitler, which is by itself an extremely insulting and repugnant claim, almost never fail to resort to Stalinist and Hitlerian tactics when their claims are questioned. Call it Darrell’s Law of Evolution History Revisionism.
11 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, Charles Darwin, Darwin, Education, Ethics, Evolution, Free press, History Revisionism, Hoaxes, Holocaust, Intelligent Design, Junk science, Movies, Rampant stupidity, Religion, Science, Voodoo history, Voodoo science, War on Education, War on Science | Tagged: Ben Stein, Creationism, Entertainment, History Revisionism, Moral corruption, Movies, Rampant stupidity, Religion, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
I found such a fantastically wonderful parody of the way denialists think science works . . .
If it’s not parody, the author should stay alert for men in white with nets.
Maybe the author should just stay alert; who can tell parody these days? This thing is so good that I’ll bet it suckers in dozens of denialists.
It’s what you’d expect, after all. Lightning will strike the same lunacy twice, or three times.
5 Comments | Global warming, Hoaxes, Politics, Science, War on Science | Tagged: Al Gore, Climate change, Hoaxes, Humor, Politics, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
With voters going overwhelmingly for Democrats in the past few weeks, Republicans and conservatives seem to be getting desperate for a fix of bad news for Democrats — so desperate they’ll create hoax news if they can’t find any real stuff (as if the wars were not bad enough, not deserving of our attention enough).
Some hoaxers spread the old hoax about Nancy Pelosi asking for new taxes. Not true.
That doesn’t stop more hoaxers from spreading the falsehoods. And spreading them. And spreading them. And spreading the hoaxes. Lying to Vietnam veterans. Spreading the false hoaxes via “answer” boards. And spreading the falsehoods. Lying to gullible political activists. Spreading the hoax to even more, gullible political activists.
Don’t any of these people read newspapers? Haven’t they got the internet, which would link them to Pelosi’s office, or to the Thomas site at the Library of Congress to track the supposed legislation, or to Snopes.com, or Urban Legends? Don’t any of these hoax spreaders have the sense or decency to ask whether the proposal makes any sense?
Critical thinking is more than saying “I think [people I disagree with] are ugly.”
Leave a Comment » | Accuracy, Economics, Hoaxes, Politics | Tagged: hoax, Nancy Pelosi, Politics, windfall taxes | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
On January 28, 1968, Commander Lloyd Bucher and the crew of the U.S.S. Pueblo were confronted by several armed swift boats from North Korea, and after an exchange of gunfire that resulted in the death of one of the Pueblo crew, the North Koreans took the boat and crew captive.
1968 was a dramatic and mostly bad year for the U.S. The 11-month saga of the crew in captivity often gets lost from accounts of the year.
Among other reasons I track these events, the crewman pulled a series of hoaxes on their North Korean captors that, I believe, helped lead to their release.
4 Comments | 1968, Cold War, Heroes, History, Hoaxes, Korea | Tagged: 1968, foreign affairs, History, Korea, USS Pueblo | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
January 28 will be the 40th anniversary of the capture of the U.S.S. Pueblo by gunboats from North Korea (or Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, DPRK), which led to some of the more interesting hoaxes of modern times.
Just watching the calendar in this 40th anniversary of 1968.
Leave a Comment » | 1968, Cold War, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, Hoaxes, Korea, Patriotism | Tagged: 1968, Cold War, History, Hoaxes, USS Pueblo | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Tony Campolo is an evangelical Christian, a sociology professor and preacher who for the past 15 years or so has been a thorn in the side of political conservatives and other evangelicals, for taking generally more liberal stands, against poverty, for tolerance in culture and politics, and so on. His trademark sermon is an upbeat call to action and one of the more plagiarized works in Christendom, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s Coming” (listen to it here).
Rev. Tony Campolo; photo from Berean Research.
Since he’s so close to the mainstream of American political thought, Campolo is marginalized by many of the more conservative evangelists in the U.S. Campolo is not a frequent guest on the Trinity Broadcast Network, on Pat Robertson’s “700 Club,” nor on the white, nominally-Christian, low-budget knock-off of “Sabado Gigante!,” “Praise the Lord” (with purple hair and everything).
Campolo came closest to real national fame when he counseled President Bill Clinton on moral and spiritual issues during the Lewinsky scandal.
His opposite-editorial piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday, “The real danger in Darwin is not evolution, but racism,” is out of character for Campolo as a non-conservative evangelistic thinker — far from what most Christians expect from Campolo either from the pulpit or in the college classroom. The piece looks as though it was lifted wholesale from Jerry Falwell or D. James Kennedy, showing little familiarity with the science or history of evolution, and repeating canards that careful Christians shouldn’t repeat.
Campolo’s piece is inaccurate in several places, and grossly misleading where it’s not just wrong. He pulls out several old creationist hoaxes, cites junk science as if it were golden, and generally gets the issue exactly wrong.
Evolution science is a block to racism. It has always stood against racism, in the science that undergirds the theory and in its applications by those scientists and policy makers who were not racists prior to their discovery of evolution theory. Darwin himself was anti-racist. One of the chief reasons the theory has been so despised throughout the American south is its scientific basis for saying whites and blacks are so closely related. This history should not be ignored, or distorted.
Shame on you, Tony Campolo.
18 Comments | Accuracy, Biology, Charles Darwin, Darwin, Evolution, History Revisionism, Hoaxes, Human Rights, Junk science, Racism, Religion | Tagged: Civil Rights, Darwin, Evolution, History, Human Rights, Junk science, Politics, Racism, Religion, Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Is this the information which confirms Mencken’s writing was really a hoax? Can we confirm there was a bathtub in the White House before Millard Fillmore got there?
America’s premier building historian, William Seale, lists a timeline at the White House Historical Association that shows showers and baths installed in the White House about 15 years before Millard Fillmore could have the chance:
Caption from Smithsonian: An 1830s hand pump shower similar to those once used in the White House bathing room. Smithsonian Institution
Running water was introduced into the White House in 1833. Initially its purpose was to supply the house with drinking water and to fill reservoirs for protection against fire. An engineer named Robert Leckie built the system of reservoirs, pumps, and pipes that supplied the White House, and the Treasury, State, War, and Navy buildings with water. Very soon, a “bathing room” was established in the east wing to take advantage of the
fine water supply. The room featured a cold bath, a shower, and a hot bath heated by coal fires under large copper boilers.Source: William Seale, The President’s House, 199-200. (Photo: Hand pump shower, similar to those installed in the 1830s White House; from the Smithsonian’s collection)
In 1833, Andrew Jackson started his second term. Regardless when in 1833 that plumbing work was done, Jackson was the president.
Seale also has Franklin Pierce improving the plumbing upstairs, in the family quarters (which may be the source of Scholastic’s claim that Pierce put the first tub in):
The 1850s saw many improvements and expansions to the mansion’s existing conveniences. By this time many Americans who had gaslight wondered how they had ever lived without it. President Zachary Taylor ordered an enlargement of the gas system into the White House’s offices, family quarters, and basement. Millard Fillmore determined that the house should be comfortable in any season and had the heating system improved. The White House of Franklin Pierce came to represent the best domestic technology of its time (1853). The heating plant was modified again with the addition of a hot-water furnace that was more efficient and healthful because the air was warmed directly by coils rather than “cooked” from outside the air chamber. Pierce also made significant improvements to the plumbing and toilet facilities, including the installation of a bathroom on the second floor with the first permanent bathing facilities. The new bathroom was luxurious in having both hot and cold water piped in. Before 1853 bathing on the second floor required portable bathtubs, and kettles of hot water had to be hauled up from the existing east wing bathing room.
Source: William Seale, The President’s House, 283, 291, 315-16; and William Seale, The White House: The History of an American Idea, 90.
And wouldn’t you know it: Seale is a native of Beaumont, Texas. It takes a Texan to get the details to dispel these hoaxes.
2 Comments | H. L. Mencken, History, Hoaxes, Humor, Millard Fillmore, Presidents, White House | Tagged: bathtub, H. L. Mencken, History, hoax, Humor, Millard Fillmore, White House, White House Historical Association, William Seale | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
You are currently browsing the archives for the Hoaxes category.
Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
