History

Edison Obsessed

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Sixteen months of embarrassingly public false starts and failed attempts led to the rarest of things from Thomas Edison: silence. He was going to allow his results to speak for themselves for once. When he and his invention were ready on December 31, 1879, Thomas Edison invited the public to his lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey, to witness electric lights being turned on and off for the first time.

In September 1878, Edison had convinced himself that he was so close to an electric light that he announced it to the press. “I have it now! When the brilliancy and cheapness of the lights are made known to the public, illumination by carburated hydrogen gas will be discarded,” he told the New York Sun. Gas lamps inside and outside the house, with their many inherent dangers, were about to be a thing of the past.
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A Man Rich in Friends

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

He was going to corner the rice market. There was a shortage of rice in San Francisco and he, well, he knew people.

Unfortunately, the day “his” ship arrived in port with a delivery of rice, every other ship that arrived that day also had a full load of rice. The shortage was suddenly over, but Joshua Norton was the only man waiting for his ship to come in who had invested his entire fortune—possibly as much as a quarter-million dollars—on that one shipment. He declared bankruptcy.

He began to file legal proceedings and lawsuits against every institution that he could think was to be blamed for his misfortune, from banks to the United States of America itself. Finally, he declared himself Emperor of the entire continent, America and Mexico. He had probably gone insane in his frustration and endless effort, but no man found greater riches.
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Today in History: August 12

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“Being desirous of allaying the dissensions of party strife now existing within our realm, I do hereby dissolve and abolish the Democratic and Republican parties, and also do hereby decree the disfranchisement and imprisonment, for not more than 10, nor less than five, years, to all persons leading to any violation of this our imperial decree.”—Emperor Norton I, an Imperial Decree, dated August 12, 1869, and published in the San Francisco Herald the next day

Emperor Norton I (above) outlawed the Democratic Party and Republican National Committee on this date in 1869. Emperor?

Joshua Norton was a San Franciscan who lost his fortune in a wild investment speculation in the 1850s and then began suing any party he could think of—including America—to void the contract that had ruined him. Frustrated, and possibly driven insane by the effort, he proclaimed himself Emperor, or, officially, “Norton 1, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.”
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