Cerebral Bore posted:

hes not wrong

quote:

In early 1922, federal, state and local officials battling the contagion of Texas tick fever had assigned Charles Jeffrey and his co-worker Lee Harper with the tough task of enforcing a livestock quarantine and cattle tick eradication program in rural Independence County. As they and their horses hiked along a dirt road early one March morning to supervise a mandatory pesticide dipping on Hutchinson Mountain, a hidden assassin fired a shotgun from the woods, killing Jeffrey and wounding Harper in the arm. Over the next couple of weeks, as authorities rounded up suspects, defiant nightriders in the area dynamited dipping vats and torched barns to express their vehement opposition to the quarantine order and eradication program.

Some Guy TT posted:

quote:

You may be interested in this paper by Ugo Bardi. While not strictly speaking history, it is an ecological economics study of the history of the whale industry and the process of substitution. Bardi's conclusion is that the end of the whale industry was largely caused by depletion of the whale population which caused whalers to travel further and longer for less reliable catches and less about the birth of the oil industry. There's a few important take aways.

• Peak whale was likely somewhere around 1849. By 1879 Starbuck notes that the whalers are finding catches more difficult and that longer voyages, longer cruise times and more expensive outfittings are the norm in his time.
  
• Looking at inflation adjusted prices for whale products there are huge drops in prices between 1850 and 1860 (Graph on page 3). However, these drops are from all time price highs. The bottom of the price collapse in the mid-1870's is only slightly lower than the highest average yearly price for any year before 1850. As such the price doesn't so much collapse as it does rise as whale depletion starts to affect the price.
  
• Alcohol blends began to dominate the lighting oil market as early as 1830. They were substantially cheaper than whale oil. Whale oil was a premium product which already had lower priced alternatives namely 'Camphene' (a mix of camphor, alcohol and turpentine), lard oil and coal oil. Camphene was the leading lamp oil with something in the area of 200 million gallons per year while whale oil peaked at around 18 million gallons. . "By the late 1830s, alcohol blends had replaced increasingly expensive whale oil in most parts of the country. It “easily took the lead as the illuminant” because it was “a decided improvement on other oils then in use,” (especially lard oils) according to a lamp manufacturer’s “History of Light.” By 1860, thousands of distilleries churned out at least 90 million gallons of alcohol per year for lighting. 22 In the 1850s, camphene (at $.50 per gallon) was cheaper than whale oil ($1.30 to $2.50 per gallon) and lard oil (90 cents per gallon). It was about the same price as coal oil, which was the product first marketed as “kerosene” (literally “sun fuel”)." ( Kovarik, 1998)
  
• Rock oil (kerosene) was only marketed as lamp oil in the 1860's 15 years after the peak in whaling in 1849. Kerosene was more of a direct competitor to Camphene than to whale oil in price and market niche. At this point there are no cost savings between camphene and kerosene as they are priced more or less the same.
  
• In 1862 and 1864 a $2.08 tax on alcohol was implemented raising the price substantially. This raised the costs of Camphene just as the equivalently priced kerosene enters the market. "The imposition of the internal-revenue tax on distilled spirits … increased the cost of this ‘burning fluid’ beyond the possibility of using it in competition with kerosene..,” said Rufus F. Herrick, an engineer with the Edison Electric Testing Laboratory who wrote one of the first books on the use of alcohol fuel." (Kovarik, 1998)
  
• "the American alcohol tax meant that kerosene became the primary fuel virtually overnight, and the distilleries making lamp fuel lost their markets. The tax “had the effect of upsetting [the distilleries] and in some cases destroying them,” said IRS commissioner David A. Wells in 1872. “The manufacture of burning fluid for lighting suddenly ceased; happily, it was replaced by petroleum, which was about to be discovered.” Similarly, C.J. Zintheo, of the US Department of Agriculture, said that 90 million gallons of alcohol per year were used for lighting, cooking, and industry before the tax was imposed. Meanwhile, use of oil shot up from almost nothing in 1860 to over 200 million gallons in 1870. “The effect was disastrous to great industries, which, if [they were to be] saved from ruin, had to be rapidly revolutionized,” according to Irish engineer Robert N. Tweedy. " (Kovarik again)
  

In short the idea that kerosene replaced whale oil is something of a myth. Whaling largely collapsed due to depletion and over hunting. Whale oil was a premium product that was largely replaced by camphene and then kerosene and then the electric light not by kerosene directly. Kerosene enters the market in large part due to a political decision to tax one of it's competitors principle ingredients, alcohol.
the full cite for the camphene element is Bill Kovarik, Automotive History Review, Spring 1998, No. 32, p. 7 – 27.

Chamale posted:

The A/T military history thread has no such division, and tends to rehash WWII a lot. I think having two threads is good.

Doctor Jeep posted:

Some Guy TT posted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/SorayaMcDonald/status/1448458376673959938

Pryor on Fire posted:

This theory that the army would just resupply itself magically as the workers rose up in the Russo-Polish war is hilarious, it's the same delusional line of thought that led to the Japanese sending tens of thousands of soldiers to starve on various islands with no food and no supplies.

Some Guy TT posted:

this cant be right ive been assured by reliable sources that women are inherently antifascist

Some Guy TT posted:

Weka posted:

Yeah I don't think a human can set off a naval mine, at least not easily.

Stairmaster posted:

whats this threads take on anthony beevors book on the battle of berlin

Mycroft Holmes posted:

why

Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:

---- Jeff Davis reading telegrams 1864-5

quote:

In 1904, someone aboard the SS Penguin tried to shoot Pelorus Jack with a rifle.

quote:

SS Penguin was a New Zealand inter-island ferry steamer that sank off Cape Terawhiti after striking a rock near the entrance to Wellington Harbour in poor weather on 12 February 1909. Penguin's sinking caused the deaths of 75 people, leaving only 30 survivors. This was New Zealand's worst maritime disaster of the 20th century.

quote:

Jack was last seen in April 1912.