Ding Dong the Witch is Dead!

No this isn't a post about the anniversary of the Wizard of Oz (which is also this week by the way) but it is another story about a crazy woman in history obsessed with blood. She and Lady Macbeth should have started a club.

Not many people have heard of Hungarian countess Elizabeth Bathory, or as she would have spelled her name "Erzsebet." For some reason, Eastern European royalty doesn't interest a lot of folks but this one is pretty...umm...interesting. Born in 1560, Elizabeth was quite a catch when she reached the ripe old age of 15. Through her mother, she was related to the King of Poland and the Duke of Transylvania. Her husband actually gave her a castle for a wedding present. At that time, Eastern Europe was engulfed in wave after wave of fighting against the Ottoman Turks and Elizabeth was left to run the castle and its 17 surrounding villages while her husband went off to war. She was well educated- even by today's standards- being able to speak at least 4 languages. She even fought for womens' rights. While she was young, people sang songs about how beautiful she was.

So with a pedigree like that why did I call her a witch???

After giving birth to 6 or 7 children and dealing with the stress of constant war with the Turks, a war which took her husband's life, Elizabeth was no longer the teenage beauty she had once been. By the time she was 40, her temper often got the better of her and one day in a fit of rage, Elizabeth backhanded a young servant girl. Blood from the girl's split lip splashed on the countess's hand and for some reason, Elizabeth thought the blood made her skin look younger.

Yep, you guessed it...all of the sudden Countess Elizabeth was hiring younger and younger maids and they kept disappearing. The strangest thing to me is that folks in Hungary didn't question this for a long time. I'm thinking that if I knew that maids kept coming up missing from Elizabeth's employ, I'm not going to let my daughter go to work for her.

Sooner or later, somebody did complain to the higher up nobles in the area and they launched an investigation. When the 1610 version of CSI showed up at Elizabeth's castle, they found one dead maid and one dying maid. Elizabeth was stringing them up by the ankles over a bathtub, slitting their throats and then bathing in their blood, hoping to regain her lost youthful beauty. It is estimated that Elizabeth did this to somewhere between 85 and 650 young girls. Even at the low end, this makes her the most prolific female serial killer in history.

Elizabeth and 4 of her closest maids- I'm guessing the ones to old to be used for bath water- were all found guilty of torturing and killing these young girls and were sentenced to death. Three of the maids had their fingers ripped off with red hot pokers before they were burned at the stake. The fourth's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment because it was determined that she was bullied into all of this by Elizabeth and the other maids.

And Elizabeth? Well, she was noble, remember, and nobility does have its privileges. The chief investigator convinced the king that killing Elizabeth might not be the best thing for public relations for the Hungarian nobility. So it was life imprisonment for her too. Elizabeth was taken to her own bedchambers, the doors and windows bricked over and only a small opening left to pass food and other things to and from the room. For 4 years, this was the countess's fate. In late August 1614, her jailors noticed that she had not made any noise for several days and when they busted into her rooms, they found her dead.

Needless to say, the stories of Elizabeth Bathory never faded away. They became the stories you told your kids to frighten them into acting right. Forget the Boogey Man, Hungary had the Blood Countess. Lump her and Transylvania's Vlad Dracula together and I'm not too sure that I really want to visit Eastern Europe!

And Then There Were None...

To be honest with you, there are actually very, very few true mysteries in American History. One of the most famous and my favorite mystery has to do with what happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke.

In the years following Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World, the other European empires were jealous of the riches Spain got from these new lands. England, under the great Queen Elizabeth I, decided to establish its own foothold in the New World far north of Spain's Central American lands. Queen Liz gave Sir Walter Raleigh a royal charter to build several settlements along the Atlantic coastline in a colony that he called Virginia in her honor (it's modern-day North Carolina but Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, was flattered!). The first of these settlements failed but in July 1857, a group of 150 men and women under the leadership of John White settled onto Roanoke Island and began building their own little village.

Life wasn't easy for these settlers. They had to build everything from scratch. There wasn't a Home Depot nearby so to get lumber for houses and firewood, they had to cut down trees. But thankfully they did have good relations with the neighboring Croatan Indians. And even better, John White's daughter Eleanor White Dare gave birth to a daughter, Virginia, not long after the colony set up shop. Virginia Dare is the first documented Anglo-European baby born in the New World.

Unfortunately less than a year into the settlement, the people realized they needed goods from England. John White agreed to head back to Europe, knowing that it would be several months before he got back. He and the colonists made a deal; if the colonists were attacked or had to move off of Roanoke, they would carve a message in a tree to let White know where to find them. (Wouldn't you love to be the person chosen to carve the message while everybody else was fleeing from marauding Indians???)

Actually, it ended up being nearly 3 years before he was able to return to Roanoke. England was at war with Spain over the New World (and other things) and White was unable to get a ship to carry him and his supplies back to Roanoke. When he finally arrived in the colony, on his granddaughter's 3rd birthday nonetheless, he and the other sailors on the ship were shocked to find the buildings and lands of the settlement in perfect shape but no living soul to be found. To this very day, nobody knows what happened to the colonists. But there are several theories...

1. The word "Croatan" carved in the tree meant that the settlers had to leave their homes and move in with the neighboring friendly Croatans. This sounds good but when White made contact with the Croatans, none of the English settlers were found there.

2. The Croatan attacked and the settlers fled to other areas in the Virginia colony. Definitely possible. For several generations, other neighboring tribes had blue-eyed babies but when White checked nearby tribes, he found no evidence of the Roanoke settlers.

3. Disease wiped out the whole population. Personally, I don't think so. If an epidemic had hit Roanoke, White would have found graves and possibly even dead bodies in the settlement but he didn't find anything like this.

4. An Indian tribe attacked and massacred all the settlers. Again, I don't think so. White noted that he found no signs of struggle. In some of the homes, there were plates on the table. An Indian attack would not have been that clean. Even if the rest of the settlers fled, the dude carving "Croatan" in the tree would probably be there.

Regardless, the lack of evidence has made this mystery one of the favorites for American historians and students of history.

If you want my personal opinion, I think the answer is simple... the aliens got them! (Just kidding, just kidding!!!)

Out Damned Spot...Out I Say!

Anyone who's been through a halfway decent English class (and I can definitely say that Mrs. White's English class at Richland was so much more than decent) you have heard that particular line. If you are a senior in high school, it's so cool to say the line as Lady Macbeth slides deeper into insanity. Yes, it's cool then because you get to say a cuss word in class and nobody will get onto you for it. But as time passes, you have to wonder if any of the famous Shakespeare play is true.

The answer to that is sort of...

According to Shakespeare, Macbeth was a young Scottish noble who protected the country from an invasion by troops from Norway and Ireland. As a reward, the elderly king Duncan gives the hero a title. Witches tell Macbeth that he will become king at Duncan's death, so strong a ruler that he would only be defeated by a man not of woman born. They also tell Macbeth's friend Banquo that he (Banquo) will father a long line of kings. When Duncan visits Macbeth's castle, Lady Macbeth can't wait for the elderly king to die and make the prophecy come true so she goads her husband into killing the king so he can take the throne. Banquo doesn't quite believe the husband and wife tale that the guards did it so he definitely doesn't trust new King Macbeth. Macbeth doesn't trust Banquo either because of the prophecy and sets out to kill Banquo and his son, Fleance. He halfway accomplishes this because Fleance gets away. Lady Macbeth loses it because she thinks Duncan's blood is on her hands and she dies, most likely by suicide. The Scottish nobles turn against Macbeth and he is ultimately defeated by the young Macduff. How did Macduff win? Well, he wasn't actually "born;" he was delivered by Caesarean section.

Historically, Duncan was a very young man when he was king. So young in fact that he turned to older, more experienced men to help him rule his kingdom. One of these men was a seasoned soldier named Macbeth. Essentially, Macbeth (who already had a title, BTW) was the power behind the throne. Despite this power, Macbeth couldn't keep Duncan from entering into several ill-planned battles, including one in Macbeth's own territory in Scotland. But Macbeth still stood behind Duncan, advising him to the bitter end. Ultimately, Duncan's penchant for bad battles gets him killed in August 1040. This had nothing to do with Gruoch, Lady Macbeth, so she didn't have to wash out any damned spots. Duncan's queen and 2 young sons are forced to flee Scotland when Macbeth is named the new king. Macbeth actually rules for 17 years but it's not an easy rule. He was faced by infighting amongst his own nobles (if you know anything about Scottish history, this shouldn't come as a surprise) and invasions from England and Ireland. 17 years and 2 days after taking the throne, Macbeth loses it when Duncan's son Malcolm invades Scotland and retakes the title for himself, killing Macbeth in battle.

Where does Banquo fit into all of this? According to Scottish history, the witches' prophecy came true because King James VI (the one famous for the King James Version of the Bible) claimed that he was descended from Banquo. Lesson learned- never doubt Shakespeare's witches.

Did Lady Gruoch Macbeth commit suicide like Shakespeare insinuated? Nobody knows because she simply disappears from history once Malcolm took the throne. But you have to admit, the story is cool and even though it's been over 20 years since I was in an English class, it's still fun to wring my hands and say the line, "Out damned spot...out I say!"

Is the third time really the charm?

I've been hearing this phrase a lot lately..."Well just remember, the third time is the charm." I guess if I was British, people would be saying "Three times lucky." But this got me thinking, why is the third time of trying to do something supposed to be that magical time when the Heavens open and rays of light rain down on you as you have one of those epiphany moments when everything just comes together the way you want?

Is the number "3" considered lucky? Well, that depends on where you are. In China, that's a big fat yes. Three is a lucky number. It's a prime number; the Chinese pronounciation of "three" sounds like the pronounciation of the word "life" and since living is lucky, three is lucky; nine is evenly divided into three parts by three; in laying out your home, putting things in threes or in a triangle is very fung shui.

But this saying didn't come from China; it's a British/American saying. In World War I, doing something three times wasn't considered lucky because it might give German snipers time to see you, target you and shoot you. Plus, there was also the belief that deaths came in threes.

The saying itself comes even further back from that though. In the late 1800's, West Country sailor John Babbacombe Lee was arrested and convicted of murdering Emma Keyse. He was sentenced to death by hanging. The first time, the rope broke. The second time, the scaffold broke. The third time, I'm not sure how he did it, but bad boy John didn't die. According to English Common Law, the sentence had been carried out so a judge commuted it to life in prison. He did get out years later on parole for good behavior and lived until 1940.

I'm not really sure if I can say that the third time truly is the charm but if I'm ever sentenced to hanging, I certainly hope that the folks acting out my sentence are as good as the ones in charge of John Lee's.

How about you? Have you ever had anything in your life where you could say the third time was the charm? Tell us in the comments.

An August Month

My mom has always said that as you get older, the months of the year fly by faster and faster. When I was young, I rolled my eyes at this but now that I have a little age on me, I have come to realize that she is right (Mama, if you read this, yes, I said you were right about something- relish it, it might not happen again!)

Since the months do seem to fly by, it's easy not to take the time and wonder why July and August don't quite fit in with all the other months. January is named after Janus, the two-faced Roman god of choices, since January's weather can be notoriously two-faced. February comes from Februa, an annual purification ritual held during the month. March through June are named after other Roman gods and goddesses. September through December come from the Latin words for seven, eight, nine and ten respectively because back in the day, the original Roman calendar had ten months.

But July and August are different. They are named after real people- the great Julius Caesar and his nephew Octavian (who is in the pic above). Octavian might not ring a bell to you if you aren't really interested in ancient history but following the assassination of Uncle Julius, young Octavian took the bull by the horns and set out to move himself up from one of three leaders of the Roman Republic to the first leader of the Roman Empire. It wasn't easy- years of fighting big names like Marc Antony and Cleopatra- but ultimately he achieved it. Emperor Octavian just didn't have the right ring to it, so he adopted the new moniker, Augustus, which means "the revered one." Under Augustus, the Roman Empire became the strongest, most dominant entity in history (IMHP).

To honor Uncle Julius, who despite modern popular belief was well-beloved by the people of Rome, Augustus decreed that Quintilis, the month of Julius' birth would forever be renamed July in his honor.

Many years later, the Roman Senate decided that since Augustus was so revered by the people that he was seen as a god amongst men, he also needed a month named in his honor. Popular belief says that Augustus himself chose the month of Sextilis because it fell after July and that he ordered days removed from February to make Sextilis have the same number of days as July (Unc can't have more days than Augie!). However, this is not true. The month of Sextilis has always had 31 days just like July. Sextilis was chosen simply because many of Augustus' greatest victories, especially the fall of Alexandria, Egypt, came in that month. To honor the man and all his accomplishments, Sextilis became August.

So as you spend the next few days battling 100+ degree weather, stay cool by finding an air conditioned spot in your local bookstore and learn a little more about why Julius and Augustus Caesar are such interesting men in history. They are definitely 2 of my faves!

Who is D.B. Cooper?

Conspiracy theorist that I am, it's surprising that I had never heard of the infamous D.B. Cooper until a few years ago when he was a character in Prison Break. The guy playing him (who also played Gibbs' mentor on NCIS btw) piqued my interest enough that I did a little Wiki research back then.

In November 1971, a fairly average looking white guy in a suit and tie boarded a Boeing 727 in Portland, OR, carrying a black briefcase. After take-off, he waved a flight attendant over and handed her a note telling her that the briefcase contained a bomb and he was hijacking the plane. The plane was to land in Seattle, WA, for refueling where he wanted $200,000 in unmarked bills and several parachutes waiting for him. Otherwise, he'd blow up the plane.

The FBI complied with his wishes and Cooper released the planes passengers but took off in the newly refuled plane with the flight crew. Over the Oregon-California border, the plane experienced a pressure loss and was forced to make a quick landing. The plane was searched by the FBI but Cooper, 2 of the parachutes and the bag o' cash were gone. Most likely, the pressure loss occurred because of Cooper opening the door and jumping. I'm assuming that since none of the crew noticed the open door, it shut on its own after he jumped. Either that or they were hitting the little liquor bottles.

Although the FBI thought that Cooper probably got killed during the jump, they did launch a manhunt. The "unmarked" bills weren't quite so unmarked. They all had "L" designations which would allow them to be tracked. Despite all the tips, leads and sightings received over the years, no trace of Cooper or the money has ever turned up. All of the folks (including a woman who had undergone gender reassignment surgery a few years before) suspected to be Cooper were exonerated.

To this day, the D.B. Cooper case is considered to be the only unsolved hijacking in American aviation history and is one of those cases that just keeps investigators scratching their heads, even 40 years after the fact.

Yesterday, the FBI announced that it was reopening the case because new evidence has been discovered, pointing to a completely new suspect. Maybe after all these years, the mystery will be solved.

All I have to say about this is that if the guy from Prison Break really was D.B. Cooper, I'm jealous because he got to spend a lot of quality time with Wentworth Miller ;)