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One-Night Stands with American History: Odd, Amusing, and Little-Know Incidents
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And the best part is, they're all true.
•Women in colonial New England often married in the nude or their underwear because, according to an English tradition, if they did so their husbands would not be responsible for the women's prenuptial debts.
•President U.S. Grant was arrested for speeding in his horse carriage.
•J. Edgar Hoover refused to allow people to walk on his shadow.
•In 1721, France shipped twenty-five prostitutes to Louisiana because women were in short supply there.
•H.L. Hunt won his first oil well in a game of five-card stud.
•Half the students at Harvard were suspended when they rebelled against the lousy food in the dorms—in 1766.
I originally got this book in paperback back in 1978 or '79 at a local bookstore in California. For some reason I really didn't care too much for it back then, and traded it along with other books to a local used book dealer.
30 years later I chanced upon it on a bargain table at a local B&N and began perusing through it, looking through the "Billy Yank and Johnny Reb" and "The Great Barbecue" sections. This was a "different" book than the one I read, uninterested, back then. First off, it was chock full of engravings and newspaper ads from the times. Secondly, revisiting those choice snippets of history I found myself laughing out loud or noting the ironies.
For example there is the meeting between after Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin and South Carolina Senator Wade Hampton, a feared Confederate Cavalry commander during the Civil War. Governor Curtin is mentioning to Senator Hampton how he knew many illustrious men who lived in South Carolina. Hampton, pleased at comment replies you don't say, and who would they be.
Curtin's reposite - "General Sherman, General Kilpatrick..." to which a stunned Hampton chortles "Great Guns"!
Or the story of the horse that Buffalo Bill gave to Chief Sitting Bull, that when the great chief was murdered before Wounded Knee, heard the bullets that killed the chief, and started going through its "trick" routine from the Wild West Shows.
There's much more, including stories about Alfred Packer the Colorado Cannibal who brought the Democratic membership of his Colorado County down to 2 - by eating the other 5 democrats who lived in his county! Or the mean-spiritedness of Calvin Coolidge, who asked a Secret Service agent to bait his fishing hook, then pulled back on it as the agent was doing as he asked. Or the imbecile Senator from Texas who thought Jim Crow was a Realtor!
I am glad I revisited this book a second time, and intend to keep it.
As stated, these stories cannot be made up. They are fascinating and part of our American experience.
Overview
Wild, weird, wacky, and wonderful, the stories One-Night Stands with American History focus on famous, infamous, and unheard-of Americans involved in outlandish incidents that comprise the least-known and most hilarious moments in our national saga.And the best part is, they're all true.
•Women in colonial New England often married in the nude or their underwear because, according to an English tradition, if they did so their husbands would not be responsible for the women's prenuptial debts.
•President U.S. Grant was arrested for speeding in his horse carriage.
•J. Edgar Hoover refused to allow people to walk on his shadow.
•In 1721, France shipped twenty-five prostitutes to Louisiana ...