...the British passenger liner Lusitania was torpedoed by a U-boat off the southwest coast of Ireland. The Lusitania, registered as an armed merchant ship, was secretly carrying a manifest of volatile war matériel in her holds. Twelve hundred men, women, and children, many of whom were American, lost their lives, among them, Father, who was going to London with the first shipments for the War Office and the Admiralty of the grenades, depth charges, and puttied nitro that undoubtedly contributed to the monstrous detonations in the ship that preceded its abrupt sinking. The RMS Lusitania was a British ocean liner that was at one point the world's largest passenger ship. Before she left New York on May 1, 1915, the German embassy placed an advertisement in a United States newspaper warning passengers of the dangers of sailing on the Lusitania due to intensifying submarine warfare in the Atlantic between Germany and Britain. A German U-boat torpedoed the RMS Lusitania on May 7, 1915, killing nearly 2,000 of the passengers and crew. After the explosion from the torpedo, another larger explosion from the hundreds of tons of secretly carried war munitions sank the ship in 18 minutes.
Because the Lusitania was a non-military passenger and cargo ship, Germany was accused of breaching the international Cruiser Rules. Germany argued that the secret cargo made the Lusitania a legitimate military target. Of the 1,198 deaths, 126 were American, causing an outbreak of protest in the United States and shifting public opinion against Germany. This was a factor in the United States declaring war on Germany two years later. Even after World War I, successive British governments claimed that there were no munitions aboard the Lusitania, and Germans were not justified in treating the passenger ship as a naval vessel and military target. In 1982, however, the head of the British Foreign Office's North America department consented that there is a significant amount of ammunition in the wreck that might be dangerous to salvage teams.
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After two unsuccessful missions to the North Pole in 1898-1902 and 1905-06, Admiral Robert Peary embarked on his third and final expedition in the summer of 1908. His previous expedition reached 150 miles from the pole, but Peary's elusive dream was still waiting to be fulfilled. Their ship, the SS Roosevelt, captained by Rober Bartlett, set off from New York City with Peary, Henson, and 22 other men in tow on July 6, 1908. Doctorow describes how groups of men would forge the path and stake out camps in advance of Peary himself. When Peary decided he was close enough to set out on his own, he asked Bartlett to stay behind with the ship. With Peary came his assistant Matthew Henson, who had joined Peary for his Greenland expedition in 1891, and four Inuits, Ootah, Egigingwah, Seegloo, and Ooqueah.
On April 6, 1909, the group established Camp Jesup at what Peary believed to be the North Pole. After his highly publicized expedition, Frederick A. Cook came out to challenge Peary's claim to be the first to reach the North Pole. Cook claimed to have reached the pole by dogsled a year prior. Major controversy surrounded Peary's expedition for some time after, but Congress formally recognized Admiral Peary's claim in 1911. Modern studies have revealed that neither Cook nor Peary actually reached the pole, but Peary came closer, falling just about 30 miles short of the pole itself. Peary held his claim until May 3, 1952 when U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher stepped out of a plane and walked to the exact location of the North Pole, becoming the first person to definitively reach the pole. Mother said He is well-spoken and conducts himself as a gentleman. I see nothing wrong with it. When Mr. Roosevelt was in the White House he gave dinner to Booker T. Washington. Surely we can serve tea to Coalhouse Walker Jr.
In October 1901, Theodore Roosevelt invited his adviser, Booker T. Washington, to dinner at the White House with Roosevelt and his family. The day after the dinner, the White House released a statement titled, "Booker T Washington of Tuskegee, Alabama, dined with the President last evening". Southern press and politicians responded viciously, attacking the character of both Washington and Roosevelt. Senator Benjamin Tillman of South Carolina said, "we shall have to kill a thousand n*ggers to get them back in their places". Northern press were more accepting, highlighting the accomplishments of Washington and suggesting that the dinner was Roosevelt's attempt to show he was everybody's president. Even the black community was divided over Washington's appearance at the White House. Some responded positively, while others painted Washington as a hypocrite for agreeing to the dinner in the first place.
After this reaction, no other African American was invited to dine at the White House for nearly thirty years. Legendary ragtime composer, Scott Joplin, wrote his first opera about this polarizing event, entitled A Guest of Honor. To this day, no copy of the score has been found, and it is considered lost. The answer to everything seemed to be Atlantic City. The Breakers Hotel was originally a five story hotel under the name Hotel Rudolf, in existence since 1895. After a few decades of operation, Joel and Julian Hillman purchased and renamed the hotel the Breakers. The hotel underwent an extensive renovation, adding 7 stories, a banquet hall, a bathhouse, a rooftop restaurant, a façade overlooking the beach, and a special dietary kitchen. In 1931, the hotel was repurchased by Emmanuel Katz who made it the first hotel in Atlantic City to observe Kosher dietary laws. It catered mainly to Jewish clientele and was known as the "Aristocrat of Kosher hotels".
Founded in New York in 1905, the Explorers Club is a professional society created with the goal of promoting scientific exploration and field study. The Explorers Club is renowned for a series of Famous Firsts, accomplished by Club members or "those admitted after their achievements":
Around 1909 when Father is preparing for Peary's third expedition to the North Pole, Father says he was a past president of the Explorers Club. Before 1909, there would only have been two past presidents: Adolphus W. Greely, the founding president, and explorer Frederick A. Cook. Cook was expelled from the Club after both his claim that he was the first to reach the summit of Mount McKinley and that he was the first to reach the North Pole were discredited. Cook died in New Rochelle, New York, but other than that, shared little in common with Father, who according to the narrative of Ragtime, would have been president when Cook held the office. The Explorers Club is famous today for the Explorers Club flag, pictured above, which is carried on expeditions of explorers around the globe. However, Peary's expedition took place 9 years before the tradition of the flag began. |
Dramaturgy for the Ragtime musical and novel.© Eliza Pillsbury, 2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Eliza Pillsbury with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Categories
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