William and Marry had a child named Anne. William was not married to Marry and so they were ostracized by their town. So they left their little Irish town and moved to South Carolina. Her mother died when she was 13 and Anne developed a temper. William tried to get Anne married. Anne didn’t listen and got married to a penniless sailor. Anne’s father disowned her and the couple set off to the Caribbean, a Pirate hot spot.
Anne’s husband, John Bonnie, hunted pirate all the time. This left Anne all alone on the shore. She soon came to enjoy the company of pirates. She grew bored of her husband and his absences. She soon met Captain Calico Jack, one of the dashing pirates of the era. Jack asked John to devoiced Anne. John refused and Anne left him anyways for Jack. Anne became a pirate.
After going to Cuba to give birth Jack’s child Anne and Jack stole a ship. Anne had to dress up at as a man as woman were seen as bad luck on a ship at sea. She also killed anyone who raised an objection. Soon another woman Mary Reed, joined the crew. Historians speculated the two were romantically involved.
In 1720 a pirate hunter cornered Calico Jack and the crew. They started to fight but most of the crew as black out drunk. So Anne and Mary fought with Jack. When Jack ordered the crew to surrender Marry and Anne refused to surrender.
Once caught both of the woman were found guilty. However there sentences where delayed due to both of the being pregnant. Mary died of fever in prison but Anne was released later. She gave birth to eight more childern before dying at the age of 80.
You know when you pull up someone’s Wikipedia article and there is an entire section just about their nose that this has to be good. Tycho Brahe born in Sweden in the 1500s but was the heir to several Danish families. Tycho was the last major astronomer to work without a telescope. At the time the heliocentric, the model where the sun is at the center of the solar system, and the Ptolemaic system, where the earth is the center of the solar system, were still being hotly debated. Well, this man, you see he decided that yes everything orbits the sun BUT the sun orbits earth. Kepler actually stole Tycho’s data and later used it to make the three laws of planetary motion. Now that you know who this person is lets talk about all the weird things they did cause it’s weird.
In 1566, while at university, Tycho got in a sword fight. He lost his nose in this duel. This duel was over who was a better mathematician. So Tycho did the reasonable thing and glue a bronze nose to his face.
After publishing some work he received support from the crown. At one point the money the crown was spending on was 1% of the budget. Tycho used this to throw massive parties. He also got a pet elk. The elk died at one of the parties when it got drunk and fell down the stairs. Tycho also hired a dwarf named Jepp (that’s his actually name I kid you not) to be his Jester. Tycho thought that Jepp had psychic powers.
Tycho died in 1601. He died because he refused to get up to pee during a banquet as it would be a a breach of etiquette. This caused his bladder to rupture and he died eleven days later. Words cannot describe how funny I find the astronomer who had a drunk pet moose, a psychic dwarf named Jeff, and died because he was too polite to get up from the dinner table.
Normally I write about funny wacky things that happen in history but I thought today I want to write about one of my favorite stories and one of the first stories known to man, the Epic of Gilgamesh. It’s a tale about how one person can change us for the better, what we do when that person is gone, and coming to terms with the fact that one day, like all living things, we must die too, no matter how invincible we seem.
The story starts out with Gilgamesh, the king of Urk who is 2/3 god, and he is possibly the worst human to ever live. He fight people, he doesn’t care about his people, and he invokes a law that allows him, the king of Urk, to sleep with any lady on her wedding night, whether they want to or not. He is so bad that the gods come together and talk about what to do about him. They decide to make him an equal, Enkidu. Enkidu is part beast and wild. He lived with animals in the forest until he was spotted by trappers. The trappers went to the temple and the temple gave the a prostitute to give to Enkidu. After spending ten days with her he became more man like and was rejected by the animals in the forest. He lived a simple life with people until he heard about the horrible things Gilgamesh was doing. He decided to go to Urk and stop him. There him and Gilgamesh have an epic fight which leads to tie. They agree to be friends and Enkidu seems to keep Gilgamesh out of trouble and Gilgamesh stops hurting his own people and spending more time doing things with Enkidu.
Enkidu and Gilgamesh go on adventures together and this gets the attention of the goddess of love and war. She asks Gilgamesh to be her love and he tells her no, all the lovers she has had have wound up with nothing but misfortune. She returns to heaven in a rage and asks her father to unleash the bull of heaven on Urk. Her father agrees and they send the bull, that will cause nothing but trouble and 7 years of famine to Urk. Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the bull and the goddess comes down from heaven to yell at them. Enkidu throws part of the bull at her and she asks her father to punish them for kill the bull. Her father agrees and decides to kill Enkidu slowly. Enkidu wastes away on his bed with Gilgamesh by his side. Gilgamesh refuses to believe his friend is dead for days before realizing that he too is mortal and will one day die. Gilgamesh then desperately tries to seek out immortally going through many trials and traveling to the ends of the earth.
After a while he his told about a plant the will regenerate a person at the bottom of the ocean. Gilgamesh rushes to the plant and takes it. Planning it on sharing with the elders of Urk, a far cry from what he would’ve done with the plant in the beginning of the Epic. But wile he is bathing a snake steals and eats the plant. Once Gilgamesh realizes what has happened he is devastated. He returns home and begins to show an elderly man around Urk and while the Epic doesn’t say to the reader he seems more calm, at peace, and understands that one day he must die too.
The issue I will be addressing for my Civic Issues is the use of forensic evidence in the court room and the way it is presented. Over the years many pieces of evidence such as dental analysis were thought to be infallible and proof of guilt. However we now know that dental evidence isn’t bullet proof. Using forensic science improperly or saying it is without error can cause massive problems within the justice system that the jury should be aware of. Up to 24% of exonerees were convicted using improper forensic evidence. Up 23% of homicide cases have used improper or misleading forensic evidence to gain a conviction.
As of 2020 six states have laws that allow people to retrial based on if evidence used to convicted them has been discredited. Those states are Texas, California, Connecticut, Wyoming, Michigan and Nevada. Even then some of theses have time limits such as only allowing the retrial to take place if the conviction happened 2 years ago or less. Now how are people who are innocent that were convicted on discredited forensic evidence a decade ago going to see justice?
I fully believe this is an inadvertent cause. I believe that is an inadvertent cause because as a society we like to believe in science and analysis. For us this is mostly how we make sense of the world, by looking for patterns and causes and effects. So when someone who was murdered has a bite mark and some else says that another person has the same dental pattern it makes sense. Our brains see x and y and link it up. The same goes with finger prints. Finger prints are good for identifying people however they are not accurate enough to be used as good evidence in court. Yet the public perception of it says otherwise. On crime shows finger print evidence is seen as 100% someone was at the crime and committed it.
Now how do we fix this problem? As while finger prints have lead to false convictions they also have lead to people being exonerated. Where do we draw the line for what we can and can’t use in a court as evidence? I think the we should do more in-depth research about evidence types before it can be used in a court and every 5 to 10 years look at every type of evidence allowed in a court room. This way evidence types that are misleading or false (like dental) will be removed and new misleading evidence types will have a harder time or ideally be prevented for being used in court. This would also catch any types of misleading evidence types that slipped through upon first examination.
I also think that we need to use “capacity builders” or educating the public to help this problem. By educating the public about how some forensic analysis might not be all that infallible. I remember when I was younger seeing all these crimes shows looking for finger prints and if they had a finer print lining it up to try and catch the bad guy. They acted like this was the only piece of proof they needed to put someone behind bars. For years I thought this was the case until I learned that finger prints analysis wasn’t great and wasn’t all that accurate. I only learned that cause I had an interest in the criminal justice flied. I think that more people need to be aware of this not only to help prevent false convictions but to help exonerate innocent people currently sitting in jail.
Not everything presented in court is done to find the truth. Some people just want to convict who ever is on the stand for whatever reason is going through their head whether that be through prejudges or just wanting to be done with the case. They might use evidence that generally public thinks is accurate and acceptable to try and convict someone knowing that it has it’s faults. By putting more effort to bar misleading evidence from the court room and by educating the public I believe that we can stop this plague of misleading proof and lies from entering the court room, convicting innocent people, and tainting our justice system.
In the 17th century England had a massive counter fit coin problem. The English mint used hand pressed coins that allowed people to “clip” off the edges of the coin to melt down and make more coins. In an attempt to combat the massive amount of counterfeit coins in 1662 England, they changed to horse powered machines. This made all the coins the same size and gave the coins ridged edges to prevent clipping. However, they never took the old coins out of circulation so even after the machine had been in use for 30 years only 1 in every 200 coins was made on the new machine. This was becoming a problem and in 1697 it was declared high treason to counterfeit coins.
Enter William Chaloner. He was a counterfeit coin maker. He was sneaky and sly. He would hire people to do illegal things and then turn them in for money. Now Willian decided that he wanted to scam the Warden of the Royal Mint. Now comes our second player on the scene, Sir Isaac Newton, Warden of the Royal Mint. Yep, this dude tried to scam Sir Isaac Newton.
William Chaloner told Parliament that the Mint was the one that creating all the counterfeit currency and that he should have he job to improve the currency. He then gave some suggestions and Parliament ordered Newton to do as William said. Welp they didn’t work and now Newton, the most smartest man alive, was trained on William. Unfortunately Newton has been known to hold extreme grudges and all his time was dedicated to catching William in the act.
Newton found a witiness, John Peers, Newton bribed him and told him to rat on Chaloner. Chaloner found out and tuned Peers in for other crimes. Newton, Infuriated, bailed out Peers. Newton prepared a case and arrested Chaloner. Chaloner then bribed the witnesses for recant or go away. Chaloner then, on the stand accussed Newton of being corrupt and trying to silence Chaloner for what he told Parliament. This made Newton very mad as the Mint was investigated and a committee was founded to investigate the Mint. Nothing was found but Newton was still mad.
Chaloner then decided forge paper currency and lottery tickets. He then proceeded to buy the equipment off the person leading the anti corruption committee that was investigating the Mint. Chaloner was arrested. However, they couldn’t find the equipment which weakened the case against him the wasn’t under Newton jurisdiction. Newton then threw a fit, took people out a jail to testify against Chaloner, and built a case against Chaloner. Newton then prosecuted Chaloner and since counterfeit was treason Chaloner was executed. I don’t know what he expect, Sir Isaac Newton was the smartest man alive at the time.
Colombia is often I place that I personally forgot about the moment my world history class in highschool ended the South America unit. However Enchanto has put it back on my radar and I have been looking over the history of it and one person has caught my eye. Her name, Policarpa, the teenage spy.
Policarpa was neck deep in the revolution. Back in Spain Napoleon had dethroned the Spanish king and put his brother in charge. While the revolutionaries had been working long before the king was dethroned they started saying that they were keeping Colombia safe for when the king comes back. Enter Policarpa.
Policarpa was 13. She ran messages and passed information to rebel groups. She was so good at it she gained a reputation for it. After a few years the local police caught on and she had to skip town. She wound up working in a spy ring in a larger city where she fell in love. There she worked using her sowing skills to get jobs in royalist houses where she would steal documents and pass them along to the rebels.
This didn’t last forever. Policarpa’s boyfriend was caught and had documents incriminating her. She was arrested and for some reason the govern thought executing the a teenager and her boyfriend in a public square would make him more popular. Well obviously it didn’t.
3 years after her death there was a play preformed about her life. Right before the execution scene the crowd rioted attempting to save her and the play had to be cut short. Today Colombia’s woman’s day is on the day of her execution.
Mansa Musa was the richest dude to live. Technically he wasn’t a king but he also was. Mansa was the title for the king of Mali. You see Musa was the chief and most trusted advisor to the king, however the king had an obsession with finding out what was on the other side of the Atlantic ocean and took a trip to find out. He put Musa in charge and never came back.
Mansa Musa was insanely rich. He was very rich to start off with but then he used his smarts to redo the tax system in the Mali Empire and gain even more wealth. He was so wealthy that when he went on the Haji, a Muslim pilgrimage, he brought thousands of slaves and soldiers, each carrying golden rods and dressed in fine silks, his favorite wife brought 300 servants, and brought hundreds of camels each carrying around 300lbs of gold. Every Friday he built a new Mosque to worship.
It is said that his wife told him that he missed her nightly swim in the Niger river. Mansa Musa then BUILT A SWIMMING POOL IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SAHARA DESERT. She used it once.
Mansa Musa then went to Egypt. The Sultan of Egypt invited Mansa Musa to visit him. Mansa Musa then stayed for three months. He gave away SO MUCH GOLD. He spent so much gold that it upended the Economy and reduced the value of gold by about 25%. This is called hyperinflation, hyperinflation is one of the worst things you can do for an economy. Mansa Musa then tried to fix by borrow more gold which fixed it, until he got back home and repaid the debts, which added more gold to the economy and ruined the Egyptian economy, again.
Well, Egypt was connected to other countries and the crashing the Egyptian economy crashed the economy on Saudi Arabia and in Europe. So yeah, this dude was so rich and spent to so much money that the world had to take a second to process all of it.
I feel like for my groups deliberation on Homeless we did a fairly good job. I wouldn’t say we were prefect or amazing but we completed the assignment and did an effective job with conveying information, giving all of the trade offs, giving multiple solutions for the topic, giving everyone enough time to speak on what they wanted to, getting everyone to understand the facts and each other’s point of view, and asking for new ideas and solutions for the topic. While I can only speak for the section I moderated (hostile approaches to homelessness) I feel as if, to some degree, all these were followed.
We made sure the information was conveyed through the deliberation briefing guide. This section, the hostile approaches, where all on the second page of the guide. The participants were told to read this before hand and before the section of the deliberation started I directed them to this page. I also gave a brief summary of the information at the start of the section to refresh them on this information. I do believe I could’ve done a better job by choosing one hostile approach instead of many but I felt at the time that having only one option to pick from would limit the discussion. When I was a participant most groups also had an brief introduction to the material before discussions.
The participants gave many solutions for the topic. Some of them were just not using this method while others offered allocating the time and resources this method requires elsewhere. While some of these were more bared boned than others the conversation around these ideas was great and provided more discussion material for the rest of the group. I would have definitely liked it if more of the solutions had been something other than “not this”. It would have provided with more discussion material for the group as a whole. When I was participating in discussions this was mostly the same. Some groups had an agree/disagree set up where you either disagreed or agreed with the topic, others had more open ended where you could suggest a solution to the problem, and others just weighed the pros and cons of each solution. While the second one is the best to introduce new ideas into the conversation it was also the one that created the least amount of active discussion within the group.
I felt like everyone got a chance to speak and say what they wanted to say. I lost track of time during the deliberation but since the group was mostly treading on the same topic (hostile architecture) it felt like if someone wanted to say something they would’ve done so. At one point I did bring out the questions as I felt like there needed to be a little prompting to the group but over all there was little pauses and lots of discussion which I was very pleased about. Most of the other groups were either also timed well or had to be cut short. The ones that were cut short were always the most interesting discussions though.
Getting everyone to understand the facts and everyone ese’s point of view was easy. Everyone seemed to be on the same page of moving homeless people around because they aren’t wanted there is bad. Seeing the other side was a little difficult. I thing the group could see the train of thought but just disagreed with it. There were some questions asked that I wasn’t prepared for and didn’t quiet know the answer to but I’m very happy those questions were asked as it shows the group wanted to know more about the topic at hand and understood the material enough to be able to ask more in-depth questions.
Over all I feel like every group did a very good job at the deliberation. I know I feel like I could’ve done somethings about my part of the project better and I’m sure some others feel the same way but overall everyone did a fantastic job. I really enjoyed listening and talking in other people’s discussions as the topics the picked were interesting. Overall everyone did a great job and everything went smoothly.
Louis the XV of France had a large diamond necklace made for his mistress Madame Du Barry. This necklace cost around 15.1 million US dollars today and made from diamonds. Before the necklace could be complete he passed away. Louis’s grandson then banished Madame Du Barry from court. Suddenly there was no one to pay for this very expensive necklace and the jeweler, Boehomer, was starting to panic.
He went to the new king Louis XVI and asked him to buy the necklace. No one in the world could afford a necklace like this and besides, it would look great on Louis’s new wife, Marie Antoinette. Louis refused and when Boehomer tried to sell it to Marie she declined. Mare said the money could be used to better France rather than buy necklaces and Boehomer left, wondering what the fate of this necklace would be.
Enter the biggest idiot and an opportunistic woman, Cardinal Rohan and Jeanne Remy. Cardinal Rohan had fallen into Marie’s mother bad graces and Marie held the same grudge. the Cardinal was desperate to et back in the good graces of the queen and Marie, every the con woman, sensed an opportunity. She told the Cardinal that she and the queen were friends and she might be able to help him get back in her good graces and so the Cardinal began talking to the “queen”. This was in fact not the queen, this was Jeanne.
The Cardinal became enamored with the queen and asked Jeanne for a meeting. Jeanne agreed and dressed up her husband’s lover to look like the queen. The Cardinal fell for it and the letters continued and “the queen” asked the Cardinal to get the necklace for her and that she would totally pay it back.
Well he got the necklace for her and Jeanne sold it. When time came to pay and the Queen didn’t pay the Cardinal confronted her directly which queen told him that she never ordered the necklace and she had no idea who Jeanne was. Jeanne was arrested and sent to prison but for some reason the public loved her and it made the Queen look bad. Many thought that it was a front and the queen really did order the necklace.
Several parts of this are really funny when you dig into it. For one Jeanne slipped up several times in her letters as “the queen” to the Cardinal. French royalty signed letters with their Baptismal name which is normally a first name, several to a dozen middle names, and last name. Jeanne signed the letters and Queen Marie of France. So yeah, I guess it just takes the world’s dumbass cardinal to steal a king’s necklace.
How often do crimes get solved? That’s a fantastic question and it depends on what your definition of solved is. Is it knowing who did and sending them to jail or is knowing who did it enough. In the Untied States we have something called a Clearance rate when it comes to crimes. Clearance of a crimes is when one of two things happen:
- At least one person has either been arrested, charged with an offense, or turned over the court for prosecution.
- Being closed by “exceptional” means. Like dropping the case or law enforcement being unable to arrest the suspect but they know who did it.
All Index Crimes, that are reported, are sent to the FBI. The FBI then keeps track of these crimes and if a crime is “cleared” the FBI has to mark that down too. Unfortunately some Index crimes have a high rate of solving than others.
Violent Index Crimes
Violent Index crimes are when someone believes or is in danger of bodily harm. This is important to remember as it is the deciding factor of certain crimes like Robbery verse Burglary. Robbery is when you unlawfully enter a building and cause threat to someone within the building while removing property. Verse Burglary is the unlawful entering of a building to steal something. Violent crime over all has a 41.7% rate of clearance in 2020.
Murder
Murder and nonnegligent Homicide has a Clearance Rate of 54.4%, the highest of all index crimes. It’s really unfortunate that only 54.5% of all reported murders not meeting clearance. You think that more of them would cleared with someone being arrested for the crime considering all the technology we have.
Assault
Aggravated Assault has a Clearance rate of 46.4%. This makes sense but also doesn’t make sense. Why it doesn’t make sense to me is because it is Aggravated Assault and not murder or Homicide it implies the victim lived which should help lead to the case being close. It also makes sense though as a victim maybe assaulted by someone and then choose to forgive them for some reason or another.
Sexual Assault
I have some feelings about Clearance rate for Rape. The clearance rate for Rape stands at 30.6%. However, given rape is notoriously under reported (stat from 2000 and another from 2015). 2 of 3 Sexual assaults go unreported and that rate is even lower among college aged students. As such this official statistic is wildly incorrect and only 50 out of every 1,000 people will be arrested or have the case meet the requirements to achieve clearance. Of these 50 that are arrested 28% will actually be convicted (at a felony level) and 25% will receive jail time. Using this the more realistic, including estimated unreported ones, is closer to 5% which would makes it the lowest clearance rate of all index crimes.
Robbery
Robbery is kind of a complicated crime. There is a clear difference between a robbery and a burglary but at the same time the line between the is very blurred. In some cases a preparator might enter a house, not know anyone is there, take something and leave while not knowing another person was inside. In some cases if that person believed they were in bodily harm that is robbery and burglary. However they are still different crimes and they have different clearance rates. The clearance rate for Robbery is 28.8%. This is higher than Burglary’s 14% which makes sense. For there to be Robbery there has to be a victim present and that give law enforcement a way to better identify the perpetrator.
Honestly looking at all these rates for Felony level crimes is really depressing. With the violent crimes having the higher clearance rate of the two types of index crimes (violent and non violent index crimes) it’s kind of depressing that it only goes down hill from here. These aren’t even the conviction rates for that crime, theses are either cases reported that were sent to court or cases that were dropped for some reason or another. These are only crimes on the Felony level which is uplifting but also once again depressing as it has to be objectively worse to be a felony but it’s also pretty bad that murder on a felony level only has a Clearance rate of 54.4%.