From: radioacti...@gmail.com   
      
   Referencing the massive Pestego forest fire up in Wisconsin on Sunday, October   
   8, 1871 whilst a blameless cow was supposedly (AND fictively) knocking over   
   that lantern in Mrs. O'Leary's barn on Chicago's North Side:   
      
   Quite right you are, Louis (as you almost invariably are factually), about how   
   while EVERYONE knows about the Chicago fire, just about no one talks about   
   Pestigo.   
      
   Though it's hard to quantify these things from the perspective of succeeding   
   centuries--both the famed Chicago fire and the still-obscure Pestigo one   
   started were in 1871, for Heaven's sake--by SOME historians' metrics, the   
   disaster up in Wisconsin was    
   actually MORE costly than the Chicago blaze!  (Of course, the Wisconsin   
   catastrophe was rural--even TODAY that area is still sparsely populated--so   
   the toll in human lives was dwarfed by the Chi-town blaze, of course.)  By the   
   way--one late 20th Century    
   theory, FAR from ever proven but fascinating nontheless, is that a streaking   
   meteor--not sure if it was going from over Illinois up to Wisconsin, or vice   
   versa--dropped smouldering remnants over Chicago AND the Wisconsin forest,   
   thus sparking BOTH fires!   
      
   Now while I first heard about the Chicago fire prior even to kindergarten--my   
   older brother AND parents talked about such things from time to time, and I   
   was a good listener even before I turned 6 in 1960--I didn't first learn about   
   the Pestego blaze    
   until an odd headline caught my eye as I paged though a book while in 3rd   
   Grade.  The headline: "The Night of the Great Fires".  My desk was at the rear   
   of Mrs. Bibee's 3rd grade class at Kennerly Elementary in late February   
   1964--while I was still    
   mentally processing what I had witnessed on CBS Television on Sunday night,   
   February 9th and then also the two following Sunday nights, to wit, that   
   fortnight of the three Beatles initial Sullivan show appearances.  But teacher   
   Bibee was talking to the    
   class about something else, and I was tuning her out with my nose in the book.   
      
   Even 60 years later, I remember being STARTLED that I'd never heard of this   
   second, SAME-NIGHT fire only a couple hundred miles north of the Chicago fire,   
   which as I said above, had for years been part of my own body of collected   
   knowledge, if only    
   fragmentary.  I distinctly recall thinking to myself, "Why oh why isn't this   
   mentioned EVERY TIME people cite the Great Chicago fire?!?"  (Mrs. Bibee never   
   noticed I was tuning out whatever she was saying to the rest of the class.)   
      
   As you might imagine, that day after school when I got home, I went straight   
   to the World Book Encyclopedia entry on the Chicago fire, and found only   
   fleeting mention of the Pestigo blaze.   
      
   BUT:  this remarkable incident in my young life taught me a VITAL lesson:    
   EVEN IF it's a reliable source (big "if" THERE, even back then), you simply   
   can't count on what you're reading to always tell you the complete story.    
   (I'm NOT saying that the    
   numerous previous times I'd heard about the Chicago fire from other   
   sources--print, TV or just some talkative adult--that they were SUPPRESSING   
   the vital Pestigo fire story; they were probably ignorant about it THEMSELVES,   
   but SOMEBODY I'd previously    
   heard about the Chicago fire from probably DID know about it, but just assumed   
   a 1st or 2nd grade kid didn't NEED or even WANT to know about it, so it never   
   came up.   
      
   Well, THIS kid ever since late 1957 or so at age 3 ALWAYS had a thirst for   
   factual knowledge (even if I didn't know the word "factual" yet), even if I   
   couldn't understand the nuances of it.  Everyone I encountered in those days   
   seems to have sold me    
   intellectually short, and I'm STILL annoyed by that in 2024.  Of course, I WAS   
   short then --about 4'6" in those days, far from my 5'11" topping out height   
   (long before old age shrunk me to my current 5"9")--but they still for some   
   inexcusable reason    
   always underestimated my even-in-childhood ability to grasp AND retain   
   supposedly "adult" information.   
      
   NOW, and in answer, Louis, to your French Revolution question:   
      
   That week when Captain Bligh was mutinied and Washington was inaugurated at   
   the end of April 1789 was ALSO the week the so-called Estates General   
   legislature was closing in on Paris, from the hinterlands all over France,   
   after having been called (for the    
   first time in well over a century, if memory serves) QUITE reluctantly by   
   Louis XVI, on the persistent advice of his advisors.  By the time Washington   
   raised his hand on Wall Street across the Atlantic, they were already mostly   
   in town, many even already    
   at the Versailles palace about 15 miles to the southwest of Notre Dame.   
      
   Then on Tuesday, May 5th (exactly a week after the mayhem aboard The Bounty in   
   the South Pacific), the Estates General officially convened.  Again, there was   
   much starting and stopping over these weeks, but on Saturday, June 20th the   
   die was finally cast    
   and there was no turning back...for that's the day the commoners locked out   
   the nobles inside the Royal tennis [indoor] tennis court and declared   
   themselves to be the REAL power in France.  And of course on the first   
   Bastille Day (Tuesday, July 14, 1789),   
    after several days of low-level rioting through and beyond the weekend, they   
   stormed prison of The Bastille (only to learn to their dismay that all but six   
   prisoners had already been spirited out during the preceding weeks!).   
      
   And it must always be emphasized:  when the tennis court was commandeered by   
   "the people", EVEN THE MOST RADICAL, revolution-minded participants were NOT   
   just then intending to overthrow Louis XVI, much less ever execute   
   him--rather, there were all about    
   just reforming everything about the monarchy.  (The dismissal of detested   
   Finance Minister Necker would ease things a bit on Saturday, July 11th, but   
   not for long.)  For sure, most of them despised pocket-watch-tinkerer hobbiest   
   [!] King Louis and all he    
   and his numerous Court cronies so royally stood for, yet NO one was just then   
   even dreaming that by Monday, January 21, 1793, they'd be chopping off his   
   head.  (Meanwhile, cake-eating-recommender-NOT [her most infamous quote is one   
   of history's greatest    
   myths]) Queen Marie Antoinette wouldn't lose HER head until Wednesday, October   
   16, 1793.  (And after many months in an 18th Century prison cell, she hardly   
   looked very regal by that bloody day, as contemporary witnesses confirm.)   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)