Calendar: December 13

A Year: Day to Day Men; 13th of December

Black Leather Sofa with Pillow

On the thirteenth of December in 1577, the English explorer and privateer Francis Drake set sail from England on a mission to circumnavigate the world aboard the “Pelican”.

Born in Tavistock, Devon, Francis Drake was the eldest of twelve sons of Edmund Drake and Mary Mylwaye. As his birth date was not formally recorded, the date of 1540-1541 derives from two portraits painted in his later life. Drake was placed at an early age into the household of sea-captain William Hawkins and began his life as an apprentice sailor on Hawkins’s boats. A purser by the age of eighteen, Drake was given a position with the owner and master of a small trading vessel along the coast of England, France and the Low Countries. Satisfied with Drake’s conduct, the ship’s master, at his death, bequeathed the vessel to Drake.

Beginning in 1562, Drake became involved with the West African slave trade. There is some anecdotal evidence to support his sailing on several slaving voyages with Sir John Hawkins, considered the first English merchant to profit from the Triangle Trade which sailed enslaved people from Africa to the Spanish colonies in the West Indies during the sixteenth-century. It is known that he sailed on a slave voyage under John Lovell’s command, sponsored by Hawkins, in 1566 and, in 1567, accompanied Hawkins on his last voyage around Cape Verde; the voyage was considered unsuccessful as more than ninety enslaved Africans were released without payment. Although not a member of the consortium of investors, Drake was in his twenties and a member of the crew which shared in the ship’s profits, thus being culpable for his participation in the slaving enterprise.

In the period from 1572 to 1573, Francis Drake attacked the Spanish colonies as a privateer under English authority. After a failed attempt in July of 1572 to capture the Spanish town of Nombre de Dios, the storage point for the gold and silver treasure of Peru, Drake raided Spanish galleons along the coast of Panama. He also looted the mule trains that transported the gold, silver and trade goods from Panama City. Drake eventually captured the Spanish silver train at Nombre de Dios in April of 1573 which made him both rich and famous. From the heavily laden mule train, they had captured approximately twenty tons of silver and gold. It was during this expedition that Drake and his lieutenant John Oxenham became the first Englishmen to see the Pacific Ocean from the central mountains of the Isthmus of Panama.

Queen Elizabeth I likely invested in Drake’s 1577 voyage to South America but never issued him a formal commission. This was the first circumnavigation in fifty-eight years, the last one being Garcia Jofre de Loaisa’s Spanish expedition 1525 to1536. Drake and his fleet set out from Plymouth on the fifteenth of November but were forced by bad weather and repairs to return to Plymouth. Drake set sail again on the thirteenth of December aboard the Pelican with four other ships and one hundred sixty-four men.

On the twenty-sixth of September in 1580, the “Golden Hind”, formerly the Pelican, sailed into Plymouth with Drake and a crew of fifty-nine men, along with a rich cargo of spices and captured Spanish treasure. The queen’s half-share of the cargo surpassed the rest of the crown’s income for that entire year. Drake was the first Englishman to circumnavigate the Earth; his voyage was also the second to arrive back home with at least one intact ship. All written records of the voyage were to be become the queen’s secrets of the Realm; Drake and other participants were sworn to secrecy on pain of death. Elizabeth I wanted the voyage kept hidden from Spain, England’s rival.

Calendar: May 22

A Year: Day to Day Men: 22nd of May

Bouyancy and Surface Tension

May 22, 1842 marks the discovery of Howe Caverns in New York state by Lester Howe and Henry Wetsel.

The Howe Caverns is a cave system in Schoharie County, New York. Geologists believe the formation of the cave, which lies 156 feet below ground, began several million years ago. The cavern is composed mainly of two types of limestone from different periods in the Earth’s early history, deposited hundreds of millions of years ago when the Atlantic Ocean stretched far inland. The cave is at a constant temperature of 52 degrees Fahrenheit, irrespective of the outside weather.

The Howe Caverns is named after farmer Lester Howe, who discovered the cave on May 22, 1842. Noticing that his cows frequently gathered near some bushes at the bottom of a hill on hot summer days, Howe decided to investigate. Behind the bushes, Howe found a strong, cool breeze emanating from a hole in the Earth. Howe proceeded to dig out and explore the cave with his friend and neighbor, Henry Wetsel, on whose land the cave entrance was located.

The cavern was open eight hours during the day for public tours in 1843. As the site became popular, a hotel was built over the entrance to the cave. From 1890 until the turn of the century, as visitors steadily decreased, a small community of management, quarry workers and their families sprang up in the hamlet now known as Howes Cave. While the Cave House Hotel had a steady business form 1871 to 1890, it eventually became a boarding house and later office space.

The rebirth and successful commercial development of Howe Caverns, as it is known today, between the years 1927-1929, is in large part attributable to two men, John Mosner of Syracuse and Walter H. Sagendorf of Saranac Lake. Mosner, an engineer, proposed the modern engineering developments that would make the cave easily accessible-even comfortable-to the average visitor. Mosner who was impressed by his visit to Howe’s Cave in 1890, believed that with a shaft for elevators sunk at the opposite end of the cave and the addition of electric lighting, Howe’s Cave would become a leading tourist attraction.

Sagendorf provided the organization for the Mosner plan; his brother John owned most of the land on which today’s Visitor Center is located. Howe Caverns, Inc. was organized as a closed stock corporation on October 11, 1927. Work began the next year under difficult conditions. The 156-foot elevator shaft was built at a cost of $1,100 per foot. A work force of well over 50 men constructed the walks and bridges and the above-ground facilities. The much-awaited grand re-opening of Howe’s Cave as Howe Caverns, Inc. took place on May 27, 1929. On the occasion more than 2,000 visitors toured what was once known as “Blowing Rock,” Lester Howe’s great wonder, down under.

Calendar: February 16

Year: Day to Day Men: February 16

A Daydream Moment

The sixteenth of February in 1923 marks the opening of the sealed door to the burial chamber of the Eighteenth Dynasty Pharaoh, Tutankhamun. During his reign of ten years, Tutankhamun restored the traditional polytheistic form of the ancient Egyptian religion from the religious-political changes enacted by the former pharaoh Akhenaten.

Born in May of 1874, British archaeologist and Egyptologist Howard Carter was from an early age interested in Egyptian artifacts; he would often visit and draw illustrations of specimens in the collection owned by the Amherst family. Impressed by his skills, Lady Amherst made arrangements for seventeen year-old Carter to assist British Egyptologist Percy Newberry in an excavation at Middle Kingdom tombs on the Lower Nile River.

After training under Egyptologists Flinders Petrie and Édouard Naville, Carter was appointed in 1899 as Inspector of Monuments for Upper Egypt by the Egyptian Antiquities Service. Based at Luxor, he oversaw excavations at nearby Thebes and supervised American archaeologist Theodore Davis’s systematic exploration of the Valley of the Kings. During his service, Carter improved the protection and accessibility to existing excavations and developed a grid-block system for tomb searching.

In 1907, Carter began his employment with George Edward Herbert, 5th Lord of Carnarvon, a financial backer for Egyptian antiquities research. Lord Carnarvon received in 1914 the concession to dig in the Valley of the Kings. Carter led a systematic search for any tombs that were missed in previous expeditions, including that of Tutankhamun. The search was halted during the years of the First World War and resumed in 1917. After five years with no major finds, Carnarvon became dissatisfied with the project; howver, after a discussion with Carter, he agreed to fund one more season of work in the Valley of the Kings.

On the fourth of November in 1922, a water boy discovered a buried flight of stairs cut into the bedrock. After partially digging out the steps, a mud-plastered doorway was found stamped with indistinct cartouches. Howard Carter had the staircase refilled and notified Lord Carnarvon of the find by telegram. On November twenty-third, Carnarvon arrived accompanied by his daughter Lady Evelyn Herbert. The full extent of the stairway was cleared on the next day; it revealed Tutankhamun’s cartouche on the outer doorway. The doorway was removed and the corridor behind it was cleared of rubble.

With Lord Carnarvon, Lady Evelyn and Carter’s assistant Arthur Callender present, Howard Carter opened a tiny breach in the door of the tomb and was able to see the many gold and ebony treasures within. Carter had in fact discovered the burial tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. The site was secured until the morning of the twenty-seventh of November, at which time the tomb was officially opened in the presence of a member of the Egyptian Department of Antiquities.

Tutankhamun’s tomb was virtually intact with all its furnishings and shrines, in spite of previous ancient break-ins. Two life-sized statues of Tutankhamun guarded the sealed doorway to the inner burial chamber. Assisted by staff members of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art which included archeologist Arthur Mace and photographer Harry Burton, Howard Carter over the next several months catalogued and preserved the contents of the chambers.

On the sixteenth of February in 1923, Howard Carter opened the sealed inner doorway and confirmed it led to a burial chamber that contained the sarcophagus of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. His tomb was considered the best preserved and most intact pharaonic tomb ever found in the Valley of the Kings. Carter’s meticulous assessing and cataloguing the thousands of objects in the tomb took nearly ten years; the final work was completed in February of 1932.

Despite the significance of the find, Howard Carter received no honors from the British government. In 1926, he received the Order of the Nile, third class, from Egypt’s King Fuad I. Carter was also award an honorary Doctor of Science from Yale University and a honorary membership in Madrid’s Real Academia de la Historia.