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1812 – British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval  assassinated by John Bellingham in the lobby of the House of Commons, London.

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1894 – Martha Graham born. American modern dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence Picasso had on the modern visual arts,  Stravinsky had on music, or Frank Lloyd Wright had on architecture.

She danced and choreographed for over seventy years -  “I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It’s permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable.”

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1904 – Salvador Dalí born. Spanish surrealist painter,  best known for the striking and bizarre images. Dalí’s expansive artistic repertoire included film, sculpture, and photography, in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media.

Dalí attributed his “love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes” to a self-styled “Arab lineage“, claiming that his ancestors were descended from the Moors.

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1981 – Bob Marley died.  Jamaican singer-songwriter and musician.

He was the rhythm guitarist and lead singer for  The Wailers (1963-1974) and Bob Marley & The Wailers (1974–1981).

 Marley remains the most widely known and the best-selling performer of reggae music, having sold more than 75 million albums worldwide. He is also credited with helping spread both Jamaican music and the Rastafari movement to a worldwide audience.

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• On this day in 1812.  British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval was shot in the lobby of the House of Commons.  Perceval left behind a wife and 12 children.

Please feel free to add your piece of history (something personal or just general history).

The assassination of Prime Minister Spencer Perceval in 1812 in the lobby of the House of Commons (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Portrait of Spencer Perceval, Prime Minister of Great Britain (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Chang and Eng Bunker ,and Sons (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Chang, who had contracted pneumonia, died rather suddenly in his sleep. According to the Travel Channel’s “Mysteries at the Museum“, Chang suffered a stroke the night that he died.

Eng awoke to find his brother dead, and called for his wife and children to attend to him. A doctor was summoned to perform an emergency separation, but he was too late. Eng died three hours later.

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1881 – Harry Price born. British psychic researcher and author, who gained public prominence for his investigations into psychical phenomena and his exposing of fake spiritualists. He is best known for his well-publicized investigation of the purportedly haunted Borley Rectory in Essex, England.

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1927 – Eartha Kitt born. American singer, actress, and cabaret star. She was perhaps best known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 hit recordings of “C’est Si Bon” and the enduring Christmas novelty smash “Santa Baby“.

Orson Welles once called her the “most exciting woman in the world.”

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1977 – Gary Gilmore executed. An American who gained international notoriety for demanding that his own death sentence be fulfilled following two murders he committed in Utah.

Gilmore had requested that, following his execution, his eyes be used for transplant purposes. Within hours of the execution, two people received his corneas, and the seeds of a UK Punk classic were sown…

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A poster advertising Chang and Eng, now housed in the State Archives

On January 17, 1874, Chang and Eng Bunker, the original Siamese twins, died. The Bunkers were born in Thailand (then Siam) in 1811, and amassed a fortune for themselves on the circus and exhibition circuit before retiring to North Carolina in 1839.  They first lived in Wilkes County, where they married sisters Sarah and Adelaide Yates.  With growing families, the brothers purchased land in Surry County and built large homes a little over a mile apart.  For the rest of their lives they spent three nights at one house and then three nights at the other.  Eng and Sarah Bunker eventually had eleven children, while Chang and Adelaide had ten.

After the devastating losses during the Civil War, the twins returned briefly to the circus. They traveled to Europe where, between shows, they searched in vain for a doctor to separate them. In January of 1874, Chang contracted bronchitis and died in his sleep. Eng awakened and, horrified by the sight of his dead twin, quickly fell into paralysis. A doctor was summoned, but did not arrive until after Eng had died. The two were buried in a common grave at the White Plains Baptist Church cemetery in Surry County.

Other related resources:

• Educational resources on Chang and Eng and other conjoined twins from the State Archives
• North Carolina Connections, stories of conjoined twins from the Tar Heel state

For more about North Carolina’s history, arts and culture, visit Cultural Resources online. To receive these updates automatically each day subscribe by email using the box on the right and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

Alice Dreger, preeminent bio-ethicist on all things conjoined twins and Northwestern professor, recently penned this short piece for The Atlantic on the sex lives of conjoined twins. From Chang and Eng Bunker to Daisy and Violet Hilton, Dreger covers our fascination with what goes on behind conjoined twins’ closed door(s).

Via The Atlantic.

See also Stuck on You.

Click Below To Hear The Day’s History

Shenandoah Valley farm scene. Image courtesy of Pollinator, Wikimedia Commons.

One of my relatives, a history and genealogy buff, loaned me a diary to read one day. To me, this diary was pretty amazing. It chronicled the life of a Shenandoah Valley man I’ll call Levi.

Levi kept his diary for over 40 years. Much of his diary concerns ordinary things, such as the weather, church news, and other matters pertaining to rural life. Levi was a smart and handy guy — he repaired musical instruments, clocks, sewing machines and even people on occasion.

During his life, Levi witnessed Confederate and Union troops pass through the Valley as well as the aftermath of the Civil War. The Shenandoah Valley was the “breadbasket of the Confederacy,” so it was important strategically because it kept Confederate soldiers supplied with food. The Valley saw several battles fought up and down its length between Confederate and Union soldiers.

The fun thing about this diary is that it contains some unexpected surprises mixed in with the everyday events. I remember one story about how Levi met Chang and Eng Bunker and talked with them. Chang and Eng Bunker were two famous conjoined twins who were born in Siam (now Thailand), came to America, and eventually settled in North Carolina. (The phrase “Siamese twins” is attributed to these two twins.) Chang and Eng appeared in theaters and concert halls while touring in the U.S., which is how Levi got to meet them.

I bet Chang, Eng and Levi had a lot in common. All three knew about farming and living in rural areas. In fact, some of Chang and Eng’s descendants still live in North Carolina today.

Chang and Eng Bunker, the famous Siamese twins. Public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Levi also put modern-day marathoners to shame. In one entry, he describes a 60-mile round trip to get to Harrisonburg, Virginia. He walked almost all of the way there and back — quite a feat, even by current standards. I was impressed and not too surprised that Levi talked about having to rest for a couple of days afterward. (If Levi had had a bicycle, I bet he would have given Lance Armstrong a run for his money in the Tour de France!)

By his account, Levi led a long and productive life. It’s a strange thing — when I go to visit that area of the Shenandoah Valley, I look at the same mountains Levi saw every day and wonder if Levi ever imagined his diary would survive so long past his life. I think he’d be pleased to know that readers from this era are still interested in what he said.

After traveling the world, exhibiting their intertwined bodies, Chang and Eng Bunker settled down in Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina to farm their land and raise families with their wives (sisters to boot). Chang and Eng became quite wealthy — amassing large estates, tended to by some 33 slaves, and large families. In 1865, the throes of the American Civil War, Union General George Stoneman raided the state and set up a lottery to draft all able-bodied men over the age of 18.  Whether Chang and Eng Bunker would be considered “able-bodied” for purposes of the Selective Service System is another question (the regulations require that even disabled men who live at home must register with Selective Service if they can reasonably leavetheir homes and move about independently).

According to Clint Johnson’s 2011 travel companion, Touring the Carolinas’ Civil War Sites, the names of the men were put into a lottery wheel. Eng’s name was chosen for conscription but not that of his brother Chang. Besides the fact that both Chang and Eng were ardent Southern sympathizers, Stoneman would have had a hell of a time trying to enlist one brother without the other due to the fusion of the conjoined twins’ livers.

As Rebekah Brooks concludes the story: “Neither brother ended up fighting in the war although both of their eldest sons, Christopher Wren Bunker and Stephen Bunker, joined and fought for the Confederacy. Both Christopher and Stephen survived the war but Christopher was captured and spent nearly a year as a prisoner of war at Camp Chase in Ohio in August of 1864.”

Via Civil War Days and the Smithsonian.

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The following is the next installment in a series of posts which began with the piece, Half Guilty.

At the end of last year, media outlets around the world lit up with news of the birth of conjoined twins in Brazil. The boys, Jesus and Emanuel, exhibit dicephalic parapagus conjoining, the same union as Americans Brittany and Abigail Hensel. They differ in that the share only one set of vital organs. Doctors credit the Hensel twins’ dual set of organs with their success into adulthood. Questions of separation, as always, abound.

Whenever conjoined twins come along, it’s interesting to note how  journalist and doctors comment on their individuality. A few examples below:

“A Brazilian baby was born with two heads, named Jesus and Emanuel, but appears to be in good health, according to doctors.” — International Business Times

“Despite all the problems we have as a small interior hospital we managed to save both mother and baby, which was our aim.” — Hospital director Claudionor Assis de Vasconcelos

“They are being monitored by specialists to see how they develop.” — BBC News

In the first two quotes, the commentator refers to the twins in the singular. In the latter quote the writer uses the plural pronoun “they” to signify their duplicative personhood.

The teratologist Saint-Hilaire noted that conjoined twins were given separate names, indicating their individuality, as springing from the practice of baptizing children on their heads. A body with well-formed two heads was therefore baptized once on each head and each received a name.

As science and medicine evolved, so did our longevity. While most conjoined twins would die in infancy 100 years ago, with the advent of modern medicine and an appreciable understanding of conjoinment (Chang and Eng Bunker could have been easily separated), conjoined twins can survive well past infancy and into adulthood. This allows us to appreciate the separate personalities that conjoined twins take on as the grow older, giving credence to the argument that there are in fact two individuals present in one entangled body.

One could argue then that under this logic a person exhibiting multiple personality disorder should be granted personhood for every personality in their brain. Regardless of the fact that multiple personality disorder lacks the physical component of conjoinment, the difference lies in the fact that multiple personality disorder, at least in theory, is curable.

“But wait!” the skeptic shouts, “conjoined twins can be separated!” A brilliant segue indeed.

Simultaneously with the news of Jesus and Emmanuel’s births came the news of the possibility of separation.  ”A lot of work is needed, in terms of scans and tests, before doctors will know if they can separate them or not, and just how organs and blood vessels are shared and linked. It takes quite a while before they can decide how feasible [separation] is.” – Patrick O’Brien, a spokesman for the UK’s Royal College of Obstetrician and Gynaecologists. Later, doctors would reveal that separating the twins is  not an option because they share a set of organs. Attempting to separate them would be to kill one if not both of them (see Jodie and Mary).

Days before the birth of Jesus and Emmanuel, Chilean conjoined twins Maria Paz and Maria Jose (pictured above) made their way into the news. When the girls were 10-months old, doctors assessed their conjoinment and determined that separation was feasible. The 20-hour surgery took place and doctors deemed it a success. A week later on December 18, 2011, the news dropped: “A 10-month-old girl who was surgically separated from her conjoined twin died Sunday after suffering general organ failure, said the director of a Chilean children’s hospital.”

Despite all the science, all the innovation, and all the careful planning, their success became a failure with the death of one of the twins. They “were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.” Alice Dreger is a bio-ethicist who continues to ask the question: should we separate conjoined twins? When conjoined twins come along, doctors’ first instinct is to wonder if they can be separated to give them a better chance at a “normal life.”

The thinking goes that we want people to be able to live the most normal life possible and conjoinment stands inapposite to that goal. But Dreger rebuts this assertion; perhaps conjoinment is what’s normal for them. For all the risk and possible little reward (rendering one as less than the Platonic ideal, reducing mobility in both twins, risking death), why does science encourage dangerous separation procedures? Instead, why not reconsider normal and accept that perhaps their conjoinment, their entanglement is the norm for these twins. If they can live full lives together, why are we so eager to rip them apart?

For Jesus and Emmanuel, separation is not an option. But the fact that doctors talk in terms of separation indicates that there is more than one person contained in these conjoined twins’ body, for it always takes two to tango.

Via MSNBC and BBC News.

In February I spent a week in Bangkok and fell in love with Thailand. The food, the architecture, the hospitality, the weather. I loved it all. For every dog that isn’t in Seoul there are five running feral on the streets on Bangkok. There must have been a table tennis tournament in town, because people kept asking if we wanted to see a ping pong show. My life flashed before my eyes every time I sat in a tuk tuk.

I took a zip line tour through the rain forest which is the single most fun thing I have ever done in my life. Flight of the Gibbon picks you up in Bangkok, drives you out to the forest, you get to see some of the wildlife in a small and very up close and personal zoo, and then you zip line from tree top to tree top.

Zip lining through the Thai rain forest

On a bike tour through the Thai country side with Absolute Explorer, I got to see shrimp, fish, and rice farms, even more wildlife, experience authentic Thai culture and have lunch at the mayor’s house.

Taking a bike ride between rice patties

I met my parent’s foreign exchange student. Irene and her father showed us around for a whole day. We got to see Bangkok with Bangkokians, the Grand Palace, Emerald Buddha, an elephant show, the restaurant inspired by the world-famous Siamese Twins, Chang and Eng Bunker. It was a tornado of hospitality.

The week in Thailand is the happiest I’ve ever seen Doug in our 10 years together. I fell so deeply in love with the Land of Smiles that we are now planning to move there this fall.

Kin, our friend who has been at the Hopyeong branch as long as we have, has finished his contract. After spending a few weeks traveling, he will go back to Colorado on Tuesday. It’s a pretty big bummer.

Saying goodbye to Kin

The teacher who was hired to replace Kin bailed on us leaving us one teacher short at the very last-minute. This means that we’ve all had to pick up the slack. At the same time, our school opened a new kindergarten. So in addition to teaching 40 hours a week (to those of you who don’t teach, that’s a lot of classroom hours) I’m also teaching 3 and 4 year olds who don’t speak a word of English how to stand in a line, how to sit still, and how to sneeze into a tissue.

The good news is this, I prefer being over worked to under-worked. I like just a little stress in my life. It keeps me on my toes, makes me feel accomplished. I’m making good money. I’ve worked 60 hour weeks back home and still only brought home about $600 for that week. Not the case here. I’m working hard and getting paid what I’m worth. That’s a really good feeling. I’m so busy, I don’t have any time to spend any of that money. I only have one more week of this run ragged schedule before a new teacher arrives and takes a few classes off of my hands.

Rabbits

Also, when I do extend myself too far, get sick and miss a class, my students concern is adorable. I received the following note, “to teacher Hellow teacher!! I’m a Jenny. How are you? Are your sick? I’m very worry for you. I’m very sad. Teacher thank you! Beacause you teach me. good bey!” Worth it!

I’ve learned by working with the kindergarten students that while I enjoy and plan to get a degree in early childhood education, I don’t want to teach kindergarten as a career. I don’t want to be the one who has to break them in. I’m also learning that I’m ready to go back to school. I’m on the hunt for programs that will allow me to take some classes on-line, so when my schedule opens up, I can start chipping away at my goal of becoming a really honest to goodness teacher.

If that wasn’t enough to keep a girl’s head spinning, I’ve also joined the Republic of Korea Derby. We practice all the way south in Dague, which means I’m getting a chance to see more of this country that I’m living in. The girls are great and diverse from all over the United States and the U.K. with different reasons for coming to Korea and share a common love of derby. Most of the girls have never skated before but always wanted to join a league back home. My skates are ordered and I am anxiously waiting for them to arrive. I’ll be once again skating as Pippi Longshocking due to the Korean’s insistence that I look an awful lot like “Bibbi.”

My darling husband, who is working really hard to get the most he can out of his own Korea experience, has joined a band in Seoul. He practices every Sunday and is a much happier camper now that he’s a rock star writer once again.

I’m packing as much life as I can into the time that I have. I only get one chance at this and I want to make it a good one.

Birthday: Chang and Eng Bunker (1811), Charles W. Fairbanks (1852), Irving Berlin (1888), Martha Graham (1894), Salvador Dalí (1904), Louis Farrakhan (1933), David Gest (1953), Martha Quinn (1959), Natasha RIchardson (1963), Laetitia Casta (1978)

Standpoint: Nowadays, everyone has an opinion on everything. It’s nearly impossible to share anything of interest with anyone without a follow-up correlation or some other form of one-upping. During the course of any given day, if you were to count the instances you hear a sentence that starts with, “They say that…”, or “I just read about…”, the number could conceivably end up nonsensically high.

In this day and age, the onslaught of information is dwarfed only by the amount of opinion it generates.  

One problem is many people don’t understand that some (probably most) “information” they’re being fed is based in fact the way that Star Wars was based in fact. Meaning that much of what you’re watching or reading has the potential to be true, but not necessarily right now. Every media outlet, from CNN to The New York Times to Fox News, is working an angle and/or pushing an agenda. Whatever’s behind it, boosting viewer ratings or selling more newspapers or attempting to influence your politics, all of your news stories come with, at the very least, some small degree of slant. 

Another problem is even more people fail to grasp that just because there’s a man on the television screen discussing his thoughts on a particular matter, it doesn’t make him an authority on anything except his own opinion. That goes for Jon Stewart as much as it does Glenn Beck, two individuals who receive equal amounts of  unwarranted credbility. (Although in Stewart’s defense, he understands his show is primarily for entertainment purposes, while Beck seems totally unaware that his show produces just as many laughs.) Television personalities are both charismatic and persuasive. With a viewer-friendly, professional presentation and use of the proper words at the right time, it’s remarkably easy to take in the thoughts of these “experts” and register them as fact.  

From all the reporting we’re led to believe is factual and the infinite amount of commentary that inevitably follows, it’s entirely possible that we’ve come to know so much that we actually know less. The pursuit of the truth has been replaced by the pursuit of who’s right. And it may not be the fault of those presenting the information. It’s likely that, due to the countless variations offered on “what’s really going on,” you are now afforded the opportunity to simply accept whichever version better falls in line with what you truly want to believe, whatever that may be.

For example, in the case of the issue of global warming, you can side with either (a) those who think that the rise of greenhouse gases is manmade or (b) those who think it’s part of the natural cycle of Earth’s ecosystem. There’s no proving the wrong side. Each side employs science, largely assumed to be infallible in terms of fact, to prove its point. In effect, both sides enjoy the satisfaction of knowing they’re right. Therefore, you’re allowed to pick the perspective you’re more comfortable swallowing, and then, you’re also right. One nice perk that stems from such a scenario is that you can switch sides whenever you want, and, like magic, you’re still right. Sounds pretty great, right?

Well. Not entirely. If we’ve created a world where all fact and opinion are simultaneously true, how are we ever going to figure out what’s not working and move forward? We won’t. And, what’s worse, no one really seems to mind. Maybe in those movies about apocalyptic futures, it wasn’t war that destroyed the human race. It might’ve been that we reached a point where we were able to stop one another from doing anything remotely useful.

Quotation: Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible. - Frank Moore Colby

Tune: Only music snobs will argue that Illinois’ Hum is not a “one-hit wonder.” If I was going to have only one song that everyone would remember, I would definitely want it to sound something like “Stars.”

Gallimaufry: Check out oddee.com’s list of 15 Strangest Foods and decide which one you would definitely not eat. Mine’s the dried lizards. ∞ Meet Saya, the world first robotic teacher. Now students won’t even have to use their brains to come up with clever ways to cheat. Sweet. ∞ It’s official. There are no more conversations in which the topics of Facebook and Twitter aren’t breached. Even Pentagon briefings.

Incoming: Tomorrow – I’ll find out if it’s possible to do a Google image search without eventually running into porn. Later in the week – My first interview, Annoying Sayings & Misused Words and much much more.

The Boys from Siam won the The Yale Drama Series’ first David C. Horn Prize, selected by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Edward Albee from more than 500 submissions from the US, UK, Canada, and Republic of Ireland. In addition to the reading, John Austin Connolly was awarded $10,000 and publication of his play by Yale University Press.

Connolly’s The Boys from Siam is based loosely on the lives of Chang and Eng Bunker (1811-1874), the original so-called “Siamese twins,” joined at the sternum.  Much of the action of the play takes place on the day of the twins’ deaths. Under the direction of Yale Repertory’s resident director Liz Diamond, Broadway’s Francis Jue (“Thoroughly Modern Millie”) and Jason Ma (“Miss Saigon”) are set to star as Siamese Twins Pigg and Pegg.

Admission is free on a first-come, first-served basis. Reservations, made by calling 1-800-YSD-CUES (1-800-973-2847) are strongly recommended. Seating is limited.

Click here to listen to a podcast of the The Yale Drama Series ceremony, held earlier this year.