Category Archives: History

Happy 1,450th Nessie!

According to legend, One Thousand, Four Hundred and Fifty years ago today, Saint Columba, an irish abbot, supposedly banished a ferocious, unidentified, water beast to the depths of the River Ness after it had killed a Pict and then tried to attack Columba’s disciple. This unidentified water beast has been equated with the Loch Ness Monster, affectionately known by the locals as Nessie.

Many believers speculate that Nessie was a plesiosaur, which, if it had a metabolism similar to modern reptiles, could allow it to live for hundreds of years. (Of course, considering how long dinosaurs have supposedly* been extinct, it’s hard to know how long they could have lived.)

 

So maybe we should be saying, Happy Birthday Nessie VII!

* Cryptozoologists have found evidence that certain dinosaur species may have survived in remote places of the planet where the climate has not changed in tens of millions of years up until recent times, at least until the time of the middle Egyptians in one case and until the time of the Aztecs in another. As this is not a blog on cryptozoology, we won’t discuss such evidence here but encourage you to do your own research if interested.

One Hundred and Forty Five Years Ago Today

The world’s first underground tube railway opens in London, England. IN 1869, a 1,340 foot circular tunnel was dug under the River Thames, running from Tower Hill on the north side to Vine Lane (off Tooley Street) on the south. Then a 2 ft 6 in narrow gauge railway was laid in the tunnel and one hundred and forty five years ago today on August 2, 1870, Tower Subway was opened and a cable-hauled wooden carriage conveyed passengers from one end to the other.

And even though the company that was operating the underground carriage went bankrupt the following year (as it was uneconomical), which opened up the tunnel to pedestrian traffic, and even though the tunnel was closed to pedestrian traffic in 1898 (when it was bought by the London Hydraulic Power Company which used it for water mains), as the Tower Bridge (which was built in 1894) negated the need for traffic, it was still the first underground tube railway and laid the foundations for the City and South London Railway , which were built using the same method of construction.

And one hundred and forty five years later the fog still rolls off the River Thames, obscuring the fascinating history beneath.

Two Hundred and Forty Years Ago Today

Benjamin Franklin was named as the First Postmaster General of the United States, during the second continental congress in Philadelphia, an office that is older than tooth the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. In the beginning, the postal system mainly carried communications between Congress and the armies. This was the beginnings of the modern postal system in the US, which was later officially organized as the Post Office Department in 1792, and then replaced by the independent Postal Service in 1971 (by the Postal Reorganization act which was signed into law by Nixon, one of America’s lesser loved Presidents).

Even though the postal system is far older than many essential services we use on a daily basis, it is still a vital service and one we often take for granted. Direct mail, Magazines, and even invoices in and cheques out still flow the mail in the millions on a daily basis. We might be in the digital age, but we still haven’t given up our paper.

Seventeen Hundred and Fifty Years Ago Today

What may have been the deadliest tsunami of all time devastated the city of Alexandria, Egypt. The tsunami, caused by the Crete earthquake (which was estimated to be an 8.0 on the Richter scale), killed over 5,000 people in the city and more than 45,000 outside the city. However, the damage from the tsunami (which was estimated to be more than 100 feet high) was not limited to Alexandria and affected the entire eastern and southern shores of the Mediterranean and also devastated a number of cities (in what is now Libya and Tunisia) and almost wiped out Greco-Roman civilization in North Africa. The death toll is estimated to be somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000!

And yet, way too many people are still surprised when massive tsunamis, such as last year’s Chile Tsunami, 2013’s Solomon’s Tsunami, or significant 2011 Japan Tsunami strike, devastate cities, and cause major disruptions to our supply chains.

These events have been recorded for over 2,441 years, ever since Thucydides described how the tsunami of 426 in the Malian Gulf affected the Peloponnesian War, and we know the exact date for major historical tsunamis all the way back to 79 AD (when the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which buried Pompeii and Herculaneum)! Every time a major earthquake or volcanic eruption occurs along the coast, which is where most occur because that’s where most of the fault lines between tectonic plates are, they happen. And massive damage and disruption results. We should not be surprised and we should be prepared.

And even though SI usually restricts its history lessons for the weekend, this event was so significant, and so overlooked, it had to make an exception.

And while this has little relevance for Supply Management, a very historical event in American history happened 150 years ago today. At 6 pm in the town square of Springfield, Missouri, “Wild” Bill Hickok shot, and killed, Davis Tutt in what is, on record, the first “quick draw gunfight” that is commonly portrayed in western movies. (For this act he was arrested with murder, which was reduced to manslaughter before the trial, which resulted in his acquittal under the unwritten law of the “fair fight”.

One Hundred and Fifteen Years Ago Today

The first line of the Paris Metro, which was only the fifth subway in the world at the time, opens for operation during the Exposition Universelle. And one hundred and fifteen years later it is the second busiest subway system in Europe (after Moscow).

While not critical from the perspective of moving goods in the supply chain, it is important to remember that the information, finance, and physical supply chains all run on people, who have to get to work, get around, and get things done. Something tough to do in a big, dense, city with well over 10 million people.