It's Friday and You Should Learn Something

(Jamie Gadette)

March 7 in History

[Save the Date] Because you need something to talk about at the dinner table tonight …

1876: Alexander Graham Bell is awarded the patent for the telephone.
1936: German troops occupy the Rhineland.

1965: The “Bloody Sunday” attack on civil rights marchers in Alabama takes place.

1983: ESPN televises the first live pro football game on cable. It was the USFL, but still …

1994: The U.S. Supreme Court rules that parody is a “fair use” under copyright law, and MAD magazine breathes a sigh of relief.

2004: Gene Robinson becomes the first openly gay bishop of the Episcopal Church. (Scott Renshaw)

Holy C.O.D.!

[Thursday Quiz] Each answer is the name of a religious leader. You are given a brief description and the cause of his or her death.

1. Founded Christianity; crucifixion. [Answer]
2. First Latter-day Saint prophet; gunshot wounds. [Answer]
3. Sci-fi author; stroke. [Answer]
4. Translated the Bible into German; heart attack. [Answer]
5. Thelemic author of The Book of the Law; respiratory infection [Answer]
6. Barely became the first Christian Roman emperor; prolonged illness. [Answer]
7. Christian Science founder; pneumonia. [Answer]
8. Bisexual founder of Wicca; lung cancer. [Answer]
9. Indian prince who achieved Nirvana; mushroom poisoning [Answer]
10. Islamic prophet; head pains [Answer]
11. Jewish prophet; died in Jordan on Mt. Nebo [Answer]
12. First Mormon Utah governor; cholera [Answer]

(Brandon Burt)

Such a Close Family

[Pedigrees] A fascinating new book recently landed in my office mailbox. Presumably, Montreal publisher McGill-Queen's University Press would like a City Weekly review.

This is it.

Some Family: The Mormons and How Humanity Keeps Track of Itself is a Canadian historian's deep examination of the massive genealogical resources of the LDS Church. It's respectful, and thoroughly researched. Author Donald Harman Akenson is understandably impressed--even seems a bit daunted by every devout Mormon's drive to dig up every last ancestor before passing to the great beyond. The church's big, honkin' genealogical database in downtown Salt Lake City currently contains 2 billion names, 2.4 million rolls of microfilm and 278,000 books--give or take a few hundred-thousand, I'm guessing.

As an objective source, a guy who has spent most of his academic life studying the history of the Irish, Akenson exhibits a charming sort of holy shit can you believe these worker bees attitude throughout, as he evaluates the history and effectiveness of the whole Mormon genealogy model.

It turns out, as impressive as this particular church's family tree obsession is, most anyone can track back to the beginnings of great-great-great Aunt Matilda Smith-Young-Kimball.

That's because we humans--Mormon or otherwise--are garden-variety idiots for incest.

According to author Akenson:

"What saves this [genealogy tracking] task from being completely inconceivable is the simple fact that human beings interbreed quite promiscuously. Not just third cousins, or second, but first cousins, uncles and nieces, brothers and sisters, fathers and daughters, nephews and aunts, wives and brothers-in-law, and on and on. Most of the closest inbreedings are covered up by social convention and by skilled lying. Unless your parents come from totally separate populations (say, from Africa and China), you would not have to go back many generations to find some of your mother's people procreating with your father's--would not, that is, if the records were complete and accurate, which they are not. In any case, your mother's people were procreating with each other, as were your father's: the only question if how genetically close the inbreeders were."

Hmm. At least Warren Jeffs had the huevos to live out loud with his inbreeding. (Holly Mullen)