Friday Blog

I recently came across a story that I found to be very interesting if not astounding. On June 25,1894 Anna Cohen Kopchovsky, a 5-foot 3-inch, 100-pound mother of three left Boston with the goal of becoming the first woman to bicycle around the world. Annie was a Jewish-Latvian immigrant married to a peddler. She helped her growing family make ends meet by selling advertising space for several newspapers. In the 1880s, British born Thomas Stevens had become the first man to cycle around the world, a journey that took 33 months. Legend has it that two Boston businessmen bet $10,000 on whether a woman could duplicate that feat. The 23-year-old Anna seized on that nebulous story and started publicizing that she was going to take on the (alleged) challenge. She was a masterful promoter as evidenced by a crowd of over 500 gathering at the Massachusetts State House to see her start her trek. The Londonderry Lithia Spring Water Company of New Hampshire’s handed Kopchovsky $100 in sponsorship money. In exchange, she hung an advertising placard on her bike and changed her surname to “Londonderry” for the journey. The first time Annie had ridden a bike was a few days before her departure. The 42-pound bicycle was nearly half of Annie’s weight. For her world-wide trip she only packed a change of underwear and a pearl-handled revolver. Her ambitious goal was to circle the globe in fifteen months. Annie headed west but when she arrived in Chicago, she realized that would be unable to get across the Rockies during the winter. So the adventurer reversed course and headed to New York, thankfully on a much lighter bike. In NYC, she hopped on a steamer ship bound for France. Journeying across France, Annie sent telegrams to local newspapers advising  them of her impending arrival. At each stop, she gave lectures and provided bicycling demonstrations. When she boarded a ship in Marseille bound for Alexandria, a drum and bugle corps played and thousands of well-wishers cheered. Annie rode and sailed across the Mideast and Asia. She claimed that she visited Russia and North Korea and maintained that she had been briefly imprisoned in China during the Sino-Japanese War.  Her final foreign destination was Japan where she boarded a San Francisco bound ship. Annie arrived in California in March 1894 and spent the next six months cycling across the U.S. On her final segment, Londonderry claimed that she was nearly killed by a runaway horse in California and broke her wrist in an encounter with a drove of pigs in Iowa. She reached her final destination, Chicago, on September 12, 1894, fourteen days ahead of schedule. Truth and Fiction In the 1890s, radical innovations in bicycle design transformed cycling from a somewhat perilous enterprise into a pleasurable, less hazardous and even utilitarian recreation. Bicycle sales exploded as did the popularity of the sport. Bicycles became mass produced and men increasingly used them to commute to work. Because of Annie Londonderry’s exploits. many women took up bicycling for the first time. Women’s fashions changed dramatically as ladies followed Annie’s example and abandoned their corsets and billowy skirts in favor of much more comfortable bloomers. Annie Londonderry was a gifted storyteller and shameless self-promoter. Historians have never verified the existence of a $10,000 wager or an alleged $5,000 prize that Annie continually referenced. And was she really ever thrown into a Chinese jail or injured in a confrontation with a herd of swine? Maybe not. But what is undisputed is that she was the first woman to circumnavigate the globe on a bicycle. Annie became a symbol of freedom, and so did the bicycle itself. World-famous suffragist Susan B. Anthony declared “the bicycle has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.” Anna Cohen Kopchovsky AKA Annie Londonderry died of a stroke on Nov. 11,1947. She left behind some amazing accomplishments and a lifetime of service as an inspiration to women across the globe.   Have a great weekend summer and a wonderful summer. I’m taking the summer off from blogging. If you don’t own it already, make sure to order a copy of the ultimate beach read “Get Smarter-Be Amazed” on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.com. See you in September.

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In honor of all who have served, I am recycling this blog from 2022. On June 6, 1944, the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada invaded Nazi-occupied France. “D-Day” was the most massive military undertaking in history. Here are some interesting facts about that historic day: D-Day was the 20th century’s best-kept secret. The Allies masked their plans with a years-long series of elaborate ruses including false news reports, planted intelligence, and false radio broadcasts designed to be intercepted by the Germans. The allies also created columns of make-believe tanks, fake troop encampments, and inflatable dummy warships. The Germans believed the allies would attack the port of Calais because it was the closest point to Britain. Thus, Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower decided to strike at Normandy. Relying on natural light, the Allies needed a full moon for the invasion. On June 5, Eisenhower ordered the attack for the following morning, the last day of the full moon. Wet weather and brutal high winds would handicap the Allies, but the ominous skies convinced Germany’s military leaders that an attack was not imminent and kept German airplanes grounded. The Nazis’ defense of the coast centered on “The Atlantic Wall,” the most robust military entrenchment ever built. The fortifications stretched from Norway to Spain, passing through Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and France. The wall was financed by the wealth the Germans plundered from the countries they conquered. Labor was provided by the POWs from those countries. 50,000 German soldiers manned the fortifications. The wall was so strategic that Adolph Hitler brought in revered Field Marshall Erwin Rommel to oversee construction. Allied airplane bombardments began at midnight and simultaneously 24,000 paratroopers were dropped behind German lines to support the invading troops. As dramatized in “Saving Private Ryan,” the allied troops suffered horrific carnage on the Normandy beaches. D-Day was just the start of the brutal Battle of Normandy which finally concluded on August 25 with the liberation of Paris. The vaunted Atlantic Wall collapsed on D-Day. It was the beginning of the end for the Nazis. Field Marshal Rommel, convinced that the sea was too rough for an invasion, had left for Germany to celebrate his wife’s birthday. Hitler was the only leader authorized to order a to counterattack but he slept until noon. Nobody dared wake him which cost vital time for sending reinforcements. TRIVIA Yogi Berra participated in the  invasion, as did author J.D. Salinger and civil rights leader Medgar Evers. Golf great Bobby Jones was forty when he successfully petitioned his Army Reserve commander to allow him to participate. British actor David Niven won a U.S. Legion of Merit Medal. Actor Charles Durning who won a Silver Star was among the only survivors from his Omaha Beach landing group. James Doohan, a Royal Canadian Artillery lieutenant survived six bullet wounds and lost his middle finger on Juno Beach. He eventually found fame as Scotty on “Star Trek.” Actor Henry Fonda enlisted at age 37and was a naval quartermaster on D-Day. He went on to star in “The Longest Day,” a D-Day epic. In one of the most notorious episodes in Oscars ‘history, the masterful “Saving Private Ryan” lost to “Shakespeare in Love” for the 1999 Best Picture award. Shakespeare’s loathsome producer Harvey Weinstein employed backroom bullying to win the honor. Heroes  Waverly Woodson was a medic for the only African American battalion to land at Omaha Beach. Despite being wounded during the landing, Woodson found a relatively safe space on the beach to set up a first aid station. He treated scores of black and white soldiers- removing bullets, patching wounds, and even amputating a foot. After 24 hours he collapsed of exhaustion but returned to his unit within three days. He was awarded a Bronze Star but efforts to award Woodson a posthumous Medal of Honor have been unsuccessful.   General Eisenhower drafted a statement in case the landings failed. It read: “I have withdrawn the troops. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.”  Try finding that type of leadership today. Thanks to all the heroes who helped liberate Europe and thanks to all of you who have served. Have a great weekend. If you are looking for a last minute Father’s Day gift, check out my book, “Get Smarter-Be Amazed” online or at The Blue Bunny Bookstore, Dedham.

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Mel Blanc was known as the “Man of 1000 voices”. While that was somewhat of an exaggeration what else would you call someone who was the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Tweety, Sylvester, Yosemite Sam, and Foghorn Leghorn. Oh, and as the years went on, Blanc added Barney Rubble on The Flintstones. Mr. Spacely on “The Jetsons” and Secret Squirrel on “The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show”. Melvin Jerome Blanc was born May 30, 1908, in San Francisco and was raised in Portland Oregon. After graduating from high school in 1927 he performed in vaudeville shows throughout the Pacific Northwest. After a stint as a radio announcer, he landed a regular job on Jack Benny’s radio show voicing a variety of characters. In 1942 Radio Daily Magazine reported that Blanc “specializes in over fifty-seven voices, dialects, and intricate sound effects”.  By 1946, he was appearing on over fifteen different radio programs. Blanc’s fame from “The Jack Benny Program” led to his own radio show beginning in 1946. During World War II, Mel provided the voice of Private Snafu in Army training films. Some of the films were written by Theodor S. Geisel who would later gain fame as Dr. Seuss. BTW, if you didn’t know already “Snafu” is military slang for ‘Situation Normal All F—-D Up. Mel holds the record for the longest voicing of an animated character, having voiced Daffy Duck from 1937 to 1989. He created the voice of Walter Lance’s Woody Woodpecker but only performed the voice in the first four Woody cartoons. A renegotiated contract with Warner Brothers excluded Mel from working with other studios. Despite being a voice specialist, Mel embraced method acting. It was claimed that when he was voicing a character in a sound booth, observers could tell exactly which character he was doing without hearing the sound. In January,1961 a near-fatal car accident left Blanc in a coma.  He was totally non-responsive for two weeks. Then, one of the doctors decided to address one of his characters instead of Blanc himself. The doctor asked, “How are you feeling today, Bugs Bunny?” After a slight pause, Blanc answered, in a weak voice, “Eh … just fine, Doc. How are you?” The doctor then asked Tweety if he was there, and Blanc replied “I tawt I taw a puddy tat”. Soon, Blanc was performing his Flintstone voices wearing a full body cast in his hospital room with the rest of The Flintstones actors. Blanc filed a $500,000 lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles. His accident was one of twenty-six in a two-year period on what was known as “Dead Man’s Curve”. His lawsuit resulted in the city restructuring the road’s curves. In 1962, Mel and his son Noel formed Blanc Communications Corporation, a media company which produced an astounding 5,000 commercials and public service announcements.  Mel and Noel appeared with many stars including Lucille Ball, Kirk Douglas, Vincent Price, and The Who. Blanc began smoking at least one pack of cigarettes per day at the age of nine. He finally quit in 1985  after being diagnosed with emphysema. He died of heart disease in 1989 at the age of 81. The epitaph on his headstone in Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles reads “That’s all, folks!”. Have a great weekend. Only 15 days until Father’s Day. For a memorable gift, visit www.tedcurtinstories.com and order a copy of my book “Get Smarter-Be Amazed”.

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On May 16, 1975, Junko Ishibashi Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. Tabei only measured 4’9’’ but she was a giant in many ways.   Born in Fukushima, Japan in 1939, Junko Ishibashi’s first mountain climbing experience was on a school trip when she was ten. Although she yearned to do more climbing her family couldn’t fund such an expensive hobby. After completing her studies in English and American literature at Showa Women’s University, Junko joined several men’s climbing clubs. She scaled all of the major mountains in Japan, including Mount Fuji. When she was 27, Ishibashi married fellow mountaineer Masanobu Tabei and the couple had two children. Displeased by the way she was treated by male climbers, Junko founded the first all-female climbing club in Japan. The club morphed into the Japanese Women’s Everest Expedition (JWEE). Tabei constantly flouted the norms in Japan’s traditional male-dominated society but people were still shocked when she headed to Mt. Everest, leaving her husband to care for their young children. Junko personally obtained funding from a daily newspaper and Nippon Television but even those sponsors told her that women should be at home raising children. In addition to the corporate funding, all fifteen team members needed to pay 1.5 million yen (US$5,000) to participate in the expedition. Tabei gave piano lessons to help raise her share. To save money, she made much of her own equipment from scratch- she created waterproof gloves out of a car cover and sewed climbing trousers from old curtains (inspired by Maria Von Trapp perhaps?). Epic Climb The fifteen intrepid Japanese women followed the same route that Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Nogay had taken on their historic 1953 climb. On May 4,1975 the team was camping at 20,700 ft when an avalanche destroyed their tents. Tabei was knocked unconscious and was buried under the snow. Sherpa guides dug her out but Tabei could barely walk. After recuperating for two days, she resumed the climb. A bout of altitude sickness debilitated the Japanese team and the Sherpa guides. The original plan had been for two women to scale the summit but the remaining Sherpas could only carry enough oxygen bottles for one woman. Tabei was chosen to complete the historic climb. Despite the team’s meticulous planning, Junko was confronted with an unforeseen hazard as she neared the peak. She encountered a thin, treacherous ridge of ice that had not been mentioned in the accounts of previous expeditions. Junko managed to traverse the ridge sideways and later described it as the most dangerous experience in all her years of climbing. Twelve days after the near-fatal  avalanche, Tabei reached the peak with her sherpa guide Ang Tsering. More than 870 women have reached the summit since Junko blazed the trail.   Not content to rest her laurels, in 1980 Junko began her quest to climb the “seven summits”, the highest peaks on each continent. In 1992, she became the first woman to achieve that feat. Indefatigable In her “spare” time, Tabei wrote seven books and organized environmental projects to clean up trash left behind by climbers on Everest, which has become an enormous problem due the growing number of people attempting the climb each year After scaling the seven summits Taibi set a personal goal to climb the highest mountain in every country in the world.  She also led and participated in “clean-up” climbs in Japan and the Himalayas alongside her husband and children. Tabei was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 2012 but continued with many of her mountaineering activities. In July 2016, despite her advancing illness, she led a youth expedition up Mount Fuji. Junko Taibi succumbed to her illness in 2016 but not before scaling the highest mountain in 70 separate countries. As the nuns sang in “Sound of Music”, “Climb every …… Oh, forget it. Have a great weekend. If you are in the Boston area on May 22, I will be hosting the Blue Bunny Book Store’s first ever trivia night. For more information and to reserve a spot at this free event go to: The Blue Bunny Bookstore Trivia Night Tickets, Thu, May 22, 2025 at 6:30 PM | Eventbrite

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On October 7, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe died at Washington College Hospital in Baltimore. The forty-year-old author had been found four days earlier in a delirious condition wearing shabby clothes that were not his own. He never regained enough consciousness to explain what had happened to him. Poe crammed a great deal of living into his short life. Born into a thespian family in Boston, Poe’s alcoholic father abandoned the family soon after Edgar’s birth. The boy’s mother died of tuberculosis when he was three.   An uncle sent Poe to Virginia to live with John Allan, a wealthy merchant.  Edgar took his adoptive parents’ surname as his middle name and spent his youth attending schools in England and Virginia.  Poe enrolled at the University of Virginia where he studied ancient and modern languages. However, Poe claimed that the Allans had not given him sufficient money to support himself at UVA. The eighteen-year-old dropped out and enlisted in the army in 1827.  Within two years he attained the rank of Sergeant Major, the highest rank possible for a non-commissioned officer. Despite his success, the mercurial young man requested a discharge from his five-year commitment. After being discharged, Poe oddly decided to enroll at West Point.  Within six months at the Point, Poe was court martialed, a process he initiated by refusing to attend formations, classes, or church. His fellow cadets raised $170 to help Poe move to New York City where he published his first book of poems in 1831. Literary Life  Throughout the 1830s Poe worked as a magazine editor while making some questionable lifestyle choices. At age 27, Poe married Virginia Clemm who was just 13 years old.  The following year he was fired from his magazine because of his excessive drinking.  He became well known as a literary critic but became estranged from the literary establishment when he publicly accused Henry Wadsworth Longfellow of plagiarism. Longfellow never responded to Poe’s allegations. In 1841, Poe published the short story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, a crime thriller featuring detective C. Auguste Dupin. It was the first story of the detective genre and he followed that successful tale with “The Purloined Letter”. Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes credits Poe as a key influence.  Poe then began producing spellbinding short stories including “The Tell-Tale Heart”, and “The Pit and the Pendulum” that place the reader into the middle of the protagonist’s nightmarish experiences. In 1845, Poe became a household name with the publication of his dark introspective poem “The Raven”. Mysterious Death The iconic author’s mysterious death paralleled the type of macabre stories that made Poe famous. Newspapers at the time reported Poe’s death as “congestion of the brain”, a common euphemism for death from alcoholism. Investigative historians have attributed his death to everything from syphilis to rabies. One popular theory is that Poe was a victim of “cooping”, a fraudulent voting practice where victims were drugged and forced to vote for a specific candidate at multiple polling stations. That hypothesis is certainly possible given that Poe’s alcoholism made him easily manipulated and he was found in another person’s clothing. Legacy Where do we start? Poe was the first author of the detective genre and is considered “the Godfather of Gothic Horror.” Science fiction pioneer Jules Verne credits Poe as an important influence and best-selling horror author H.P. Lovecraft hailed Poe as his “God of Fiction”.  Alfred Hitchcock professed that he began making suspense films because of his love of Poe’s stories.  Perhaps nothing sums up Poe’s influence more than the fact that the Mystery Writers of America name their awards for excellence “Edgars”. And, oh, yeh – Baltimore named its NFL team after Poe’s most famous poem. In 2022, “The Pale Blue Eye”, a mystery starring Christian Bale was released and received mostly favorable reviews. Based on a 2006 novel by Louis Bayard, it is a fictional story about a detective investigating a murder at West Point in 1830. Frustrated by the cadets’ code of silence, the detective calls on cadet Edgar Allen Poe to help solve the mystery. Fittingly, the book was nominated for an Edgar.   Have a great weekend.

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Due to some unexpected time constraints this week I was unable to prepare my weekly blog. Fortunately, I was able to find this humorous list of actual complaints received by Thomas Cook Vacations from dissatisfied customers. Suffice it to say I’m happy to be retired from customer service. “They should not allow topless sunbathing on the beach. It was very distracting for my husband who just wanted to relax.”. “On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don’t like spicy food.” “We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish.” “We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our own swimsuits and towels. We assumed it would be included in the price.” “The beach was too sandy. We had to clean everything when we returned to our room.” “We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as white but it was more yellow.”  “It’s lazy of the local shopkeepers in Puerto Vallarta to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during siesta time — this should be banned.”  “No-one told us there would be fish in the water. The children were scared.” “Although the brochure said that there was a fully equipped kitchen, there was no egg-slicer in the drawers.”  “I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local convenience store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts.” “The roads were uneven and bumpy, so we could not read the local guide- book during the bus ride to the resort. Because of this, we were unaware of many things that would have made our holiday more fun.”  “It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England. It took the Americans only three hours to get home. This seems unfair.” “I compared the size of our one-bedroom suite to our friends’ three-bedroom and ours was significantly smaller.” “When we were in Spain, there were too many Spanish people there. The receptionist spoke Spanish, the food was Spanish. No one told us that there would be so many foreigners.”  “We had to line up outside to catch the boat and there was no air-conditioning.”  “It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel.”  “I was bitten by a mosquito. The brochure did not mention mosquitoes.”  “My fiancée and I requested twin-beds when we booked, but instead we were placed in a room with a king bed. We now hold you responsible and want to be re-reimbursed for the fact that I became pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked.”   BTW, if you live in the Boston area, please mark your calendar for May 22 between 6:30-8;30 PM. I will be hosting the Blue Bunny Bookstore’s first ever trivia night. It will take place at the beautiful new TLC Studios in historic Dedham Square. More information to follow.   Have a great weekend.

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