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When People Waged War Over Eggs · Ridiculous History

0:23
Speaker 1: This is ridiculous history, a show based in Atlanta, a
0:27
Speaker 1: city that loves brunch. I promise I'm going somewhere with this. Hi.
0:31
Speaker 1: My name is ben my name is nol and ben
0:34
Speaker 1: um egged me up before you go go there we go,
0:37
Speaker 1: There we go. Lego my egg, egg go give me
0:41
Speaker 1: back my eggs? Yes, okay, Well after the show, you'll
0:45
Speaker 1: pry these eggs from my cold dead hands. Eggs. Right,
0:49
Speaker 1: when you think of brunch, or when you think of breakfast,
0:52
Speaker 1: you typically think of a few things, and one of
0:55
Speaker 1: the main stars of the breakfast pantheon is going to
0:58
Speaker 1: be the humble, ubiquitous egg. Are you? Are you an
1:01
Speaker 1: egg fan Benedict Florentine omelets scrambled a poached egg fan
1:08
Speaker 1: of recent times and not like a good old boiled
1:10
Speaker 1: egg myself. So yes, yes, I'm an eggenthusiast. You're an
1:13
Speaker 1: egg enthusiastal Earlier before we hopped on air for this episode,
1:18
Speaker 1: we were talking about the type of food preparation known
1:22
Speaker 1: as deviling right, and we had to look it up
1:25
Speaker 1: because it's strange when you think of deviled eggs or
1:28
Speaker 1: deviled ham, and there's a curious story for that. But
1:31
Speaker 1: that is not the subject of today's episode. Today's episode
1:36
Speaker 1: hinges upon the importance of eggs and you, being enthusiast
1:42
Speaker 1: right bit of an egghead. You've been in situations where
1:46
Speaker 1: you have to wait in line for brunch or something.
1:48
Speaker 1: But you're not the type of guy to fight over
1:50
Speaker 1: an egg, are you. I also very rarely will wait
1:53
Speaker 1: in line for anything if the line is too long.
1:55
Speaker 1: I'm I'm, I'm moving on and that's mine. That's the
1:58
Speaker 1: words I live by. But no, I mean, you know,
2:01
Speaker 1: you notice how whenever there's a storm and here especially
2:04
Speaker 1: or like a snowstorm, what's the first thing to go
2:06
Speaker 1: in the grocery stores? They run through the dairy and
2:10
Speaker 1: the uh and the bakery in the middle, and the bread,
2:13
Speaker 1: eggs in the milk food staples. And back in San Francisco, California,
2:19
Speaker 1: during the gold Rush time in the early eighteen fifties,
2:23
Speaker 1: a really really really important staple food, a very very
2:27
Speaker 1: crucial source of protein during a time where that was
2:31
Speaker 1: very scarce. Because the gold Rush brought out thousands and
2:35
Speaker 1: thousands of prospectors to San Francisco, which at the time
2:39
Speaker 1: was a relatively small city that just did not have
2:42
Speaker 1: the infrastructure or the resources to support those people. Right,
2:46
Speaker 1: Because the forty Niners, as they were often called, these
2:50
Speaker 1: gold rush prospectors were coming from across the country to
2:56
Speaker 1: gamble on the chance of striking it big, but discovered
3:00
Speaker 1: in a vein of gold. And as we know now,
3:03
Speaker 1: it's true that some people did find gold, most did not.
3:07
Speaker 1: We should be very clear about that. But as Noll
3:11
Speaker 1: has begun to paint the picture for us here, what
3:14
Speaker 1: they all found was a very difficult environment to live in.
3:20
Speaker 1: You know, there were a lot of people asking for
3:24
Speaker 1: the same resources, and as we've seen in other historical instances,
3:29
Speaker 1: this triggers inflation, This triggers price gouging. The otherwise humble
3:36
Speaker 1: food stuff known as the egg, available throughout the country
3:40
Speaker 1: everywhere else, became a relatively rare and high priced commodity.
3:46
Speaker 1: It's true, like you say, you know, everyone wasn't gonna
3:49
Speaker 1: strike it rich. In fact, most didn't. In an article
3:52
Speaker 1: from the San Francisco Gate by Gary kim Ya, he
3:55
Speaker 1: describes this phenomenon as that there was more money to
3:59
Speaker 1: be made from vote mining the miners than from actual prospecting. So,
4:04
Speaker 1: you know, to fill that demand, little food huts kind
4:06
Speaker 1: of fly by none operations came up overnight, and all
4:10
Speaker 1: kinds of different businesses sprung up in order to capitalize
4:15
Speaker 1: on this boom. And one thing they needed. We're cooking ingredients,
4:19
Speaker 1: right And there's an excellent article by Emmilin Roude writing
4:24
Speaker 1: over at Time called the Worst that can Happen when
4:26
Speaker 1: egg prices get too high. In this article, she discusses
4:32
Speaker 1: some of the specifics and nuts and bolts of this
4:35
Speaker 1: skyrocketing food situation. One of the primary commodities that shot
4:42
Speaker 1: up in value was the egg, and it rose to
4:46
Speaker 1: the price of a dollar per egg in the eighteen fifties,
4:49
Speaker 1: which is crazy expensive now, but let's consider that in
4:54
Speaker 1: our time that's roughly the equivalent of thirty dollars per
4:58
Speaker 1: an egg. Man, I don't I could ever want an
5:01
Speaker 1: egg that much. No, I don't you know. I don't
5:05
Speaker 1: know what I would do with it. I would feel
5:07
Speaker 1: bad eating it. I would feel like I have to
5:10
Speaker 1: put it in a in a like a box or terrarium.
5:12
Speaker 1: But I guess we have to remember here too, this
5:14
Speaker 1: was not the price was not that way because it
5:16
Speaker 1: was necessarily a delicacy. There just weren't enough to go around,
5:18
Speaker 1: so it was a scarcity issue, and there was still
5:22
Speaker 1: a good shipping infrastructure in place at the time, so
5:25
Speaker 1: eggs were being shipped in by the millions from across
5:29
Speaker 1: the Pacific, even all the way from the East Coast,
5:31
Speaker 1: and it still was not enough to satiate the teeming
5:36
Speaker 1: mass of people there. And that's why San Francisco eventually
5:41
Speaker 1: turned its eyes west to the islands of the Pacific,
5:46
Speaker 1: to a very specific island. That's right, There is an island,
5:50
Speaker 1: or a system of islands, just about thirty miles outside
5:53
Speaker 1: of the Golden gate Um in San Francisco called the
5:57
Speaker 1: Fair Lawns, and they are actually the site of the
6:01
Speaker 1: largest colony of sea birds anywhere in the contiguous United States.
6:07
Speaker 1: And those birds are the common mures. Yes, the common
6:11
Speaker 1: mures are the star of today's show. The the islands
6:16
Speaker 1: themselves are home to a little less than four hundred
6:21
Speaker 1: different species of birds, and the birds at this time
6:24
Speaker 1: we're doing quite well because during the maritime fur trade,
6:29
Speaker 1: Russian sealers seal hunters got rid of the vast majority
6:35
Speaker 1: of the mammals that would be there, right, that's right,
6:39
Speaker 1: But there's still to this day these islands are home
6:42
Speaker 1: to tons of different marine creatures like sea lions, elephant
6:47
Speaker 1: seal which can grow to be the size of like
6:48
Speaker 1: a van um, and swimming around the edges you got
6:53
Speaker 1: great white sharks, yes, and whales, which I think would
6:57
Speaker 1: be so cool to see in person. There's actually an
6:59
Speaker 1: article the New York Times where Bonnie Suiti um takes
7:03
Speaker 1: a whale uh watching expedition out to these islands and
7:07
Speaker 1: spots all kinds of fantastic wildlife. Um. The islands were
7:12
Speaker 1: called the Devil's Teeth back in the early eighteen fifties
7:18
Speaker 1: UM by sailors, and that's because they were particularly treacherous
7:22
Speaker 1: and they caused quite a few shipwrecks. And it's true
7:25
Speaker 1: these are very intense, jagged looking cliffs. I think the
7:29
Speaker 1: highest point is three hundred feet UM. And they were
7:33
Speaker 1: actually formed uh between eighty two hundred million years ago
7:39
Speaker 1: UM when the Pacific plate collided with the North American plate,
7:43
Speaker 1: and they weren't always islands, they eventually drifted and became
7:48
Speaker 1: islands because of plate tectonic activity. In fact, they were
7:52
Speaker 1: largely responsible for blocking the view of the San Francisco
7:56
Speaker 1: Harbor to Spanish galleons that would sail through there for
8:00
Speaker 1: two hundred years. Yeah, and now, thankfully we'll give you
8:03
Speaker 1: a spoiler alert here, friends and neighbors. Uh. Now, thankfully
8:07
Speaker 1: the marine mammals have made a return to the island.
8:12
Speaker 1: But in the mid eighteen hundreds this population was in
8:17
Speaker 1: serious trouble, which was good in the short term for
8:22
Speaker 1: the birds. Who was literally for the birds. I was
8:26
Speaker 1: waiting on that one. And so Noel, let's let's go
8:28
Speaker 1: back to what you mentioned. Specifically, we're looking at a
8:32
Speaker 1: bird called the common mure m u r r E.
8:36
Speaker 1: It's an arc a u k. This large arc sits
8:40
Speaker 1: upright on sea cliffs and people will describe it as
8:44
Speaker 1: the northern version of a penguin. And we've got some
8:48
Speaker 1: pretty we've got some pretty cool info on it, courtesy
8:51
Speaker 1: of the good folks over at Audubon dot Org. Noel
8:56
Speaker 1: and I and our super producer, Casey Pegram. I can't
9:00
Speaker 1: believe we forgot to shot him out at the beginning. No,
9:03
Speaker 1: it's cool. We saved it. We saved it. We say,
9:05
Speaker 1: it's a cold open. So these these birds, according to
9:09
Speaker 1: this stuff we were watching before we went into the
9:11
Speaker 1: studio today, Uh, they look kind of awkward on land.
9:15
Speaker 1: Not a pun, but it could be. Yeah, there's sort
9:17
Speaker 1: of like these unwieldy penguin like creatures. And they do
9:21
Speaker 1: fly um pretty poorly. Uh, they're much better at swimming
9:25
Speaker 1: and diving to catch fish. And they nest on these
9:30
Speaker 1: really really steep and slippery cliffs on the side of
9:35
Speaker 1: these islands. And it's it's really a thing to behold.
9:38
Speaker 1: Ben there are thousands and thousands of them nesting and
9:41
Speaker 1: really close quarters on these super treacherous cliffs. Uh not,
9:46
Speaker 1: it's a very comfortable situation at all, right, right, and
9:50
Speaker 1: not particularly inviting to us humans unless we were driven
9:54
Speaker 1: there out of desperation. In these nests, most importantly, they
10:00
Speaker 1: have eggs. Uh. They typically have one egg, and the
10:06
Speaker 1: incubation period is about thirty seven days. After that, the
10:11
Speaker 1: young when they're born, they leave the nest between fifteen
10:15
Speaker 1: and twenty five days later. The eggs themselves, however, are
10:20
Speaker 1: very interesting and they do not look in any way
10:24
Speaker 1: related to the chicken eggs that were so common and
10:28
Speaker 1: so familiar to the San Franciscans of the time. And
10:31
Speaker 1: first of all, they're about twice as big, and they
10:34
Speaker 1: are oddly pointed on one end. Yes, they are puriform,
10:39
Speaker 1: which is the word we learned for today's episode. Oh
10:42
Speaker 1: my gosh, I don't know that one, Ben, it's what
10:44
Speaker 1: it sounds like on the tin. It's that's slightly rounded,
10:47
Speaker 1: pyramid like top. They look like cone heads. That's what
10:51
Speaker 1: they look like. But they're also quite beautiful. They they
10:54
Speaker 1: are speckle. They can be light blue, and apparently some
10:59
Speaker 1: ornithologists believe that each one had a unique speckled pattern
11:03
Speaker 1: that allowed them to be identified by the parent. Because
11:06
Speaker 1: they're nesting in such close quarters, if they didn't have
11:09
Speaker 1: some distinguishing factor, that might be hard for them to
11:12
Speaker 1: know which which egg belonged to them. Yeah, it looks
11:14
Speaker 1: kind of like a Jackson Pollock painting. And I think
11:18
Speaker 1: a new one on every egg. And I think you
11:20
Speaker 1: and I were both surprised when we learned that there
11:24
Speaker 1: had been intense research into the reasoning behind this this
11:29
Speaker 1: egg shape and design. So originally people believe the shape
11:33
Speaker 1: of the egg was an adaptation to prevent it from
11:35
Speaker 1: rolling off the cliff. That's right, and that sort of
11:38
Speaker 1: evolved over time. UM. It was debunked in the mid
11:41
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds when um naturalists believed that the eggs shape
11:46
Speaker 1: would allow it to roll in a perfect arc that
11:49
Speaker 1: would keep it from tumbling off of the cliffs, like
11:51
Speaker 1: you said. But then a British ornithologist named Tim burkehead
11:55
Speaker 1: Um published a study leaving seen that Um sort of
12:00
Speaker 1: debunked that one. He says, it's a combination of cleanliness
12:04
Speaker 1: and protection because the common mirrors are such horrible, horrible,
12:10
Speaker 1: ghastly flyers. They can crean into other nests. And his
12:16
Speaker 1: theory is that the shape allows it to make better
12:18
Speaker 1: contact with the ground, therefore offering more protection against potential collisions. Yeah,
12:25
Speaker 1: increasing surface area. And we should mention that this ornithologist,
12:30
Speaker 1: Tim burkehead has studied mirrors for forty four years. He
12:34
Speaker 1: knows his mirrors. He's the mirror guy. I always have
12:37
Speaker 1: so much respect for someone who has a specific area
12:40
Speaker 1: of expertise, and he's almost fifty years into the bird game. Man.
12:44
Speaker 1: He also has some great points. I appreciate that you
12:47
Speaker 1: mentioned cleanliness because, as he's quoted in this article from Audubon, UH,
12:52
Speaker 1: the other feature of mirror breeding, Ledges, says Birkhead, is
12:56
Speaker 1: that they are invariably filthy. Sometimes it's like going into
13:01
Speaker 1: a pig sty. It's like a toilet, it's like a
13:03
Speaker 1: mountain toilet. There are a lot of things, but there
13:05
Speaker 1: wouldn't be great roommates these mirrors. He says that the
13:09
Speaker 1: guana and dirt that encrusted and incubating egg can clog
13:12
Speaker 1: up the pores that allow chicks to breathe and also
13:16
Speaker 1: cause infection. And that's when he found that it wasn't
13:19
Speaker 1: just the rough shape of the egg, but it was
13:21
Speaker 1: also the concentration of pores and where they occur. The
13:25
Speaker 1: greatest concentration pours from your egg is around the egg's
13:29
Speaker 1: large blunt end, and it's raised above the ground by
13:32
Speaker 1: that downward angle tip. Okay, we have derailed ourselves with
13:35
Speaker 1: some really fascinating stuff about the science behind these creatures
13:38
Speaker 1: and their eggs, and a little bit about these islands.
13:41
Speaker 1: But what was the deal ben with the situation the
13:44
Speaker 1: scarcity of eggs that caused folks to brave these treacherous
13:48
Speaker 1: waters and these slippery slopes to get those delectable eggs.
14:00
Speaker 1: So this is where the entrepreneurial spirit kicks in. Six
14:05
Speaker 1: men decided to profit from these eggs that were just
14:08
Speaker 1: a little less than thirty miles off the coast. In
14:12
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty one, they sailed to the Fara Lawn Islands.
14:15
Speaker 1: They decided that they owned the islands. They gave themselves ownership.
14:19
Speaker 1: Just you can do that, you could, apparently, I guess
14:24
Speaker 1: you just gotta like defend it, which which we'll get
14:27
Speaker 1: into in a minute, right right. They gave themselves company
14:31
Speaker 1: shares and they started attempting to take these eggs with
14:37
Speaker 1: the with the intention being to sell them in San
14:39
Speaker 1: Francisco despite their strange appearance. Oh and we almost forgot
14:43
Speaker 1: the coolest part about the eggs. The blood red yolk,
14:46
Speaker 1: blood red yoke, and apparently a slight fishy taste. But
14:50
Speaker 1: it it hit like gangbusters because apparently the chickens, what
14:53
Speaker 1: little there were in San Francisco, were eaten, so there
14:57
Speaker 1: were no more hands to lay eggs. So this was
14:59
Speaker 1: a really big deal. They had a source relatively close by,
15:03
Speaker 1: although a treacherous trip to get there and to get
15:06
Speaker 1: him back. Um. And the guy that that that headed
15:08
Speaker 1: up this expedition was a guy by the name of
15:10
Speaker 1: Doc Robinson, and he was a pharmacist and he and
15:14
Speaker 1: his crew made this journey and described it as being
15:18
Speaker 1: a hellish experience. Uh, and decided they were not going
15:21
Speaker 1: to do it again. But they would you know, start
15:23
Speaker 1: a company and hire people to do it for them,
15:26
Speaker 1: And that was the impetus for the Egg Company. It's
15:32
Speaker 1: also been called the Pacific Egg Company um ink Pacific
15:36
Speaker 1: Egg Company Incorporated um but it was the first of
15:41
Speaker 1: its kind and it very quickly bred kind of copycats
15:46
Speaker 1: that were like, hey, you can't own a whole island
15:49
Speaker 1: that's not your island, and where we're gonna, we're gonna
15:52
Speaker 1: come at you, right. Rival firms began to rise to
15:58
Speaker 1: the marketplace. These At the beginning, the Egg Company was
16:03
Speaker 1: doing quite well. As Neal said, they were going like gangbusters.
16:07
Speaker 1: They were climbing up these stiff, sleek cliffs and then
16:11
Speaker 1: they were getting swarmed by all the birds there. Uh.
16:14
Speaker 1: Then they would gather the freshest eggs and really brutal
16:17
Speaker 1: way they would stomp on the ones that were days
16:20
Speaker 1: old so that they would have to lay a new
16:22
Speaker 1: egg because like you were saying, these birds typically only
16:25
Speaker 1: lay one egg per season, but you know, when you
16:28
Speaker 1: smash it, they're gonna lay another. One my favorite part
16:30
Speaker 1: about this, and try to imagine these folks. They had
16:33
Speaker 1: these special shirts called egg shirts with egg pockets, and
16:37
Speaker 1: so you got these pictures of these guys with eggs
16:40
Speaker 1: stuffed in their shirts. And I found a picture actually
16:42
Speaker 1: from a newspaper, from a Richmond, Virginia newspaper from and
16:49
Speaker 1: it shows a man falling to his death while having
16:53
Speaker 1: one of these bizarre looking egg shirts on. He just
16:55
Speaker 1: looks totally I don't know, kind of misshapen and bloated
16:59
Speaker 1: with eggs all a while, while these common mirrors are
17:02
Speaker 1: looking on completely disinterestedly. Yet the demand alone egged them
17:08
Speaker 1: on in this dangerous mission. I do not apologize for
17:12
Speaker 1: I have to someone. You must be stopped too late. Man,
17:15
Speaker 1: I'm holding your hostage. I have all the of all
17:17
Speaker 1: the eggs. So by h by the early eighteen sixties,
17:22
Speaker 1: they did have not just some rival firms, but serious competition.
17:26
Speaker 1: And as we alluded to earlier, the egg companies claim
17:31
Speaker 1: on these islands was pretty dodgy tentative at best, because
17:36
Speaker 1: just four years later, President James Buchanan had solidified the
17:41
Speaker 1: federal government's claim to the land for a lighthouse. So
17:45
Speaker 1: they were going up against the Feds, and it all
17:50
Speaker 1: came to a head on a summer day in eighteen
17:52
Speaker 1: sixty three. Just to add a little point of clarity,
17:54
Speaker 1: that they were kind of little zones in these islands,
17:57
Speaker 1: and some had more of the eggs than others. For
18:00
Speaker 1: northern part was considered far less productive in terms of
18:04
Speaker 1: eggs and was a lot more treacherous, and Dr Robinson's
18:08
Speaker 1: egg company occupied the less treacherous, more productive um part
18:14
Speaker 1: of the island. So uh, there was a group of interlopers,
18:19
Speaker 1: shall we say um, largely Italian in Greek folks, independent
18:24
Speaker 1: Italian eggers, they were originally called exactly, they were independent
18:27
Speaker 1: Italian And there's an interesting political side note on this
18:30
Speaker 1: that we'll get to a second. But they wrote up
18:33
Speaker 1: Dr Robinson's folks yell at them saying, you know, they
18:35
Speaker 1: says something like land at your own peril or something
18:38
Speaker 1: like that, to which the these interlopers respond that they
18:42
Speaker 1: were going to land in spite of hell. And then
18:45
Speaker 1: they returned the next day to give that a shot.
18:49
Speaker 1: And the paper loved this. Uh. The papers were calling
18:53
Speaker 1: it a war in Earnest at the Faro lawns. We
18:56
Speaker 1: have a quote from here at seven o'clock yesterday. More
19:00
Speaker 1: they tried to land, this being the Italians and the Greeks,
19:03
Speaker 1: but we're warned off by the foreman of the egg
19:06
Speaker 1: company and five other employees. The latter say that the
19:09
Speaker 1: Italians then commenced firing on the Americans. Several volleys were exchanged.
19:14
Speaker 1: Edward Perkins, one of the Americans on shore, was shot
19:17
Speaker 1: through the stomach and died in a few minutes. Thereafter
19:20
Speaker 1: a number of Italians were seen to fall into the
19:22
Speaker 1: boat simultaneously with the firing on shore, which is strange
19:26
Speaker 1: because we can feel some racial tension or some ethnic
19:29
Speaker 1: tension that the paper is putting in there. Ultimately, two
19:34
Speaker 1: men were killed in the conflict, one on each side,
19:37
Speaker 1: so one of the egg company members and one of
19:40
Speaker 1: the Italian eggers. Uh, the leader of the independent folks,
19:45
Speaker 1: the one who most probably said we're gonna land here
19:47
Speaker 1: in spite of hell, was ultimately convicted of murder and
19:51
Speaker 1: sent up the river to the state prison for a year,
19:54
Speaker 1: just a year, just a year, which makes you makes
19:57
Speaker 1: you wonder. And this, even this did not stop the
20:01
Speaker 1: demand for these eggs, which were also that yoke was
20:04
Speaker 1: twice the size of a chicken egg. So it was
20:06
Speaker 1: pretty nutritious, a lot of bang for your buck, but
20:08
Speaker 1: but pretty pricey, like you're saying, EARI with the inflation
20:10
Speaker 1: rate putting in about thirty bucks an egg, although you
20:13
Speaker 1: could get a dozen for a dollar in certain circumstances.
20:18
Speaker 1: But because of the work that it took to get
20:20
Speaker 1: these things, and like you know, people did fall to
20:22
Speaker 1: their deaths. It's just the great white shark infested waters.
20:26
Speaker 1: No one was going to part with these things for
20:27
Speaker 1: any less than top dollar. Um. There's a really fantastic
20:31
Speaker 1: comic that a writer and illustrator from San Francisco named
20:35
Speaker 1: Eva chris Anth wrote on her blog farllon egg war
20:38
Speaker 1: dot blogspot dot com. She's got all kinds of really
20:40
Speaker 1: great chronicle or of this whole story, and she talks
20:44
Speaker 1: about that racial tension. Um. She has a panel that
20:47
Speaker 1: describes three different men. Um, what kind of man would
20:50
Speaker 1: risk his life for a sea bird egg? She asks,
20:53
Speaker 1: you want to read a couple, Yeah, let's read a
20:54
Speaker 1: couple of the first one. Um says this. It's got
20:57
Speaker 1: a picture of this man, mustachioed, fair haired man, and
21:01
Speaker 1: this is the speech Bubble says, Like many other Northern
21:04
Speaker 1: Italians in the years before unification, I fled the forced
21:08
Speaker 1: conscription of the Austrian army. Instead, I fought alongside Garibaldi
21:12
Speaker 1: in Brazil democracy. I was a fool. Now I see
21:16
Speaker 1: the democracy is just an illusion, like justice, salvation and gold.
21:19
Speaker 1: For how many men will realize such riches? From Brazil,
21:22
Speaker 1: I took a job on a whaling ship, the most
21:24
Speaker 1: beast you'll work on Earth besides this, and when gold
21:28
Speaker 1: was found in California, our ship came here. And this
21:31
Speaker 1: is coming specifically from a blog in reaction to an
21:35
Speaker 1: earlier in PR piece by the Kitchen Sisters that details
21:40
Speaker 1: the war. Uh. This, this blog piece from August is
21:44
Speaker 1: called what MPR left out because she was actually interviewed
21:47
Speaker 1: in that piece for two hours and feels like the
21:50
Speaker 1: Kitchen Sisters piece, which is really cool and richly sound design,
21:52
Speaker 1: is really really interesting, it does leave out this, uh,
21:55
Speaker 1: this racial angle entirely right right, and it's a very
21:58
Speaker 1: important part of the story. So our second person says
22:01
Speaker 1: he has a a larger mustache, darker hair. He says,
22:05
Speaker 1: I fought for Greek independence from Turkey, and we did
22:08
Speaker 1: free ourselves into hunger, chaos and a corrupt Bavarian monarchy
22:13
Speaker 1: and Athens. If you only knew what a mess Europe
22:16
Speaker 1: is now and all because of man. But now in
22:19
Speaker 1: this strange new land, rich in water, rich in animal
22:22
Speaker 1: life rich impossibility. I finally feel free here, I dream again.
22:28
Speaker 1: Am I wrong to feel hope? And we have one
22:31
Speaker 1: other paneling the last one. Um is a clean shaven man.
22:36
Speaker 1: I'm with a nice pork pie hat kind of situation.
22:38
Speaker 1: He says that this is really sad. He says, the
22:40
Speaker 1: tax collector in Medina tightened up its grip on my
22:43
Speaker 1: farm and my family. They finally seized the land the
22:46
Speaker 1: day after my son died of malaria. My wife went
22:49
Speaker 1: mad and stabbed the tax collector. Then she took her
22:52
Speaker 1: own life. I do not know what will happen to
22:54
Speaker 1: me in California, but I pray that it does not
22:56
Speaker 1: get worse, because trust me, things can always get worse.
23:00
Speaker 1: And what what this comic and and most of the
23:02
Speaker 1: Continental blog is really about is the fact that these
23:06
Speaker 1: men that were uh a working for the egg company
23:10
Speaker 1: in the first place, or going independent, trying to go
23:13
Speaker 1: independent and fight against the egg company and their dominance,
23:16
Speaker 1: their stranglehold over this island, they were just desperate and
23:21
Speaker 1: willing to do the work. Yeah, that's that's the thing.
23:23
Speaker 1: Because you will hear different opinions from various historians and
23:27
Speaker 1: researchers on the nature of these Eggman, these these eggers.
23:33
Speaker 1: As recently as two thousand five, and author named Susan
23:36
Speaker 1: Casey described the eggman as mafioso in her book The
23:40
Speaker 1: Devil's Teeth. This seems like more of a subjective belief
23:46
Speaker 1: rather than something's backed up with primary documentation, because, as
23:50
Speaker 1: chrisanth points out, there was not a mafia presence in
23:54
Speaker 1: California for nearly a century, and in the early eight hundreds,
23:58
Speaker 1: most of the Imma insto San Francisco who came from
24:01
Speaker 1: Italy came from northern Italy, which did not have the mafia.
24:05
Speaker 1: And and the thing is, like this egg war, it's
24:08
Speaker 1: not really referring to this one battle. I mean, the
24:10
Speaker 1: battle was kind of like it bubbled over and there
24:12
Speaker 1: was actual violence, but there was always a little scraps periodically,
24:16
Speaker 1: and there was always that vying for the best real
24:19
Speaker 1: estate on this island because the egg company didn't own
24:21
Speaker 1: the island, right, not really, they can't. They can't go
24:25
Speaker 1: against the Feds with have the more most manpower, I guess.
24:28
Speaker 1: And to show how how tense this situation was, there
24:31
Speaker 1: were also egg pirates, literal egg pirates. There were some
24:36
Speaker 1: there were some folks who said you know, why should
24:39
Speaker 1: we have to go risk our lives on the slopes
24:42
Speaker 1: when we could hang out here on the water and
24:44
Speaker 1: just take eggs from boats that were on the way
24:46
Speaker 1: back to San Francisco. I read, um, I'm trying to
24:49
Speaker 1: find the source. So here it is. It was in
24:51
Speaker 1: the time piece. Um. Apparently one expedition during this nesting
24:55
Speaker 1: season for these birds. Uh, they would get five hundred
24:59
Speaker 1: thousand and eggs, which just goes to show like, how
25:02
Speaker 1: damn many of these things there were. Because again, typically
25:06
Speaker 1: these birds were only laying a single egg per season,
25:11
Speaker 1: and this had and as you might assume, detrimental effect
25:15
Speaker 1: upon the breeding population, this was not a sustainable practice
25:21
Speaker 1: over the long term. Now, the populations dwindled from hundreds
25:25
Speaker 1: of thousands of birds before the egging began in the
25:29
Speaker 1: eighteen fifties to fewer than thirty thousand. Luckily for us,
25:38
Speaker 1: this story of ridiculous history does have a happy ending,
25:42
Speaker 1: because the birds are still around with the hundreds of
25:45
Speaker 1: other seabird species that continue to live and breed on
25:50
Speaker 1: the island. We're gonna go ahead and tell you it's
25:53
Speaker 1: kind of tough to get there. It's really tough to
25:55
Speaker 1: get there. And it has been declared a National Wildlife
25:57
Speaker 1: Refuge site and it is pretty much uninhabited except for
26:02
Speaker 1: a small research station. Um and the birds are protected
26:06
Speaker 1: and you can ask for permission to go to the
26:08
Speaker 1: island that is very rarely granted. Appounting right, you and
26:12
Speaker 1: I would definitely have to put some planning into it.
26:14
Speaker 1: You can see footage of people arriving to the island
26:17
Speaker 1: and one of the things that struck me was after
26:20
Speaker 1: they sail out to the island, they have to get
26:22
Speaker 1: in a different boat and be lifted via crane onto
26:26
Speaker 1: the island. Crane is in a human built crane, not
26:29
Speaker 1: a not a bird. That would be infinitely cooler. That'd
26:31
Speaker 1: be cool of a completely absurd uh. And you know,
26:34
Speaker 1: sweep sweep the leg, sweep sweep the leg. I can't
26:38
Speaker 1: believe did you just cobra kai references? So what we
26:42
Speaker 1: do also want to point out here is that despite
26:46
Speaker 1: their success in re growing the population and recovering the
26:52
Speaker 1: population of the common mure, the fact remains that as
26:55
Speaker 1: we record this, there are fewer common mures on the
27:00
Speaker 1: island then there were before the Gold Rush, more than
27:04
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty years ago. Yeah, and there there
27:06
Speaker 1: had been around four hundred thousand. There's another stat that
27:09
Speaker 1: I saw, and it dwindled down to closer to six
27:12
Speaker 1: thousand because of this just rapacious behavior by these eggers.
27:17
Speaker 1: And I have to say, I don't wanna, I don't
27:20
Speaker 1: want to put you on the spot here, Nol, but
27:22
Speaker 1: it's very interesting to me that your pro egg because
27:25
Speaker 1: you're so anti bird. I am very anti bird. Um.
27:28
Speaker 1: I Also, when I eat chicken, I don't like to
27:31
Speaker 1: think of what it used to be. Yeah, I do
27:34
Speaker 1: like chicken, though, um Ben, do you know what actually
27:36
Speaker 1: finally put a stop to this, uh, this unchecked egging. Well,
27:41
Speaker 1: I hope this isn't a quisters segment. I'm gonna say,
27:45
Speaker 1: chicken farming. You got it, um, Chicken farming became a
27:49
Speaker 1: thing in nearby Petaluma and became a huge industry, and
27:53
Speaker 1: that took the pressure off for getting that sweet, sweet
27:57
Speaker 1: protein thankfully. Yes, And this felt like a too little,
28:01
Speaker 1: too late situation initially because as we said, the population
28:06
Speaker 1: had dropped, but luckily the birds were able to recover.
28:10
Speaker 1: And after this titular event, this this war, which lasted
28:15
Speaker 1: historians guest around twenty minutes, actually still not the shortest
28:19
Speaker 1: war in history, but that's a story for a different day.
28:22
Speaker 1: After this war, the eggers continued to work on the
28:27
Speaker 1: island for another couple of decades, about twenty years, until
28:31
Speaker 1: they were finally evicted in eight eight one. But the
28:35
Speaker 1: trade didn't stop even then. It persisted for a number
28:38
Speaker 1: of years afterward. Yeah, and even today. I mean I've
28:41
Speaker 1: heard of people going, you know, they visit San Francisco
28:44
Speaker 1: or no about like they called summer gull egg season
28:47
Speaker 1: or something like that, so you can get you can
28:49
Speaker 1: get fresh gull egg. It's probably super illegal. It's poaching,
28:52
Speaker 1: I think, right, would you have ever eaten a goal egg?
28:55
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think I think the most exotic
28:57
Speaker 1: egg I've ever eaten was a quail egg. I don't know.
29:01
Speaker 1: I don't see why not they It just seems like
29:03
Speaker 1: they taste weird. I don't know. If it's not an
29:06
Speaker 1: endangered species, I think egg wise, I would generally be okay.
29:11
Speaker 1: But also when we have been traveling, weather for work
29:15
Speaker 1: or weather for fun, anytime we're near a large coastal area,
29:20
Speaker 1: goals are like the roughest characters you're gonna meet. I
29:23
Speaker 1: was actually in San Francisco a little less than a
29:25
Speaker 1: month ago for work and goals. I think are probably
29:29
Speaker 1: the source of my bird phobia. And when my grandfather
29:31
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, my grandfather UM would have
29:34
Speaker 1: the gulls swarm me on the beach. So when I
29:36
Speaker 1: was in San Francisco, I always look askance, Yeah, you
29:38
Speaker 1: could throw bird bread crumbs in the I have this
29:40
Speaker 1: memory of being a little kid and seeing these things
29:42
Speaker 1: die bombing me from the sky. Um, And I think
29:45
Speaker 1: that is the source of my my fear. Um. But
29:48
Speaker 1: when I'm out west, I always look askance at those
29:52
Speaker 1: creepy guys. I feel like they're always trying to come
29:54
Speaker 1: at me, their eyeballing me from the side and plan
29:57
Speaker 1: their attack. That's a harrowing experience. This is the first
30:00
Speaker 1: time you told me that story. I'm glad you're okay.
30:03
Speaker 1: It might all just be coming back to me now,
30:05
Speaker 1: like literally this moment I finally see the source. It's
30:07
Speaker 1: like I'm being flooded with all this emotion and memory.
30:10
Speaker 1: I can tell, I can tell it's it's written in
30:12
Speaker 1: large font on your in your body language. But I
30:15
Speaker 1: promise you this casey and I and hopefully you as
30:18
Speaker 1: well fellow listeners, will protect you and will not throw
30:22
Speaker 1: bread at you. Please don't, um Ben. I really enjoyed
30:25
Speaker 1: this episode. I thought this was a really fascinating story
30:27
Speaker 1: with a lot of fun little side nuggets. UM. So
30:30
Speaker 1: I think we can wrap it up, but I would
30:32
Speaker 1: love it if we could do a couple of listener mails.
30:37
Speaker 1: That sounds like a great idea. You want to do
30:39
Speaker 1: one each? That sounds good, sir. I will go first,
30:41
Speaker 1: Ben to get mine out of the way, because mine
30:43
Speaker 1: is a message of shame. UM. J. Robert Joseph wrote
30:48
Speaker 1: in very kindly, and he mentioned this about our four
30:52
Speaker 1: g T forty Enzo Ferrari versus Ford, the second UM
30:56
Speaker 1: Podcast episode UM, and he had a little correct and
31:00
Speaker 1: for me. He said, quote you mentioned that cars in
31:02
Speaker 1: the twenty four hour lament went around two fifty miles
31:05
Speaker 1: per hour at that time nineteen fifty. Only one car
31:08
Speaker 1: had broken the two hundred mile per hour barrier. It
31:10
Speaker 1: was the Sunbeam one HP back in nineteen seven, but
31:14
Speaker 1: until nineteen eighty seven no other car hit two hundred
31:17
Speaker 1: miles per hour with the Ferrari F forty. UM. The
31:21
Speaker 1: time period you mentioned in the podcast was circuit nineteen fifty.
31:23
Speaker 1: At that time, the average lap times of a Laman's
31:26
Speaker 1: car was eighty nine miles per hour, with the fastest
31:28
Speaker 1: laps being done at hundred and two. Small detail, but
31:32
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit of a petrol head. Thank you,
31:34
Speaker 1: and I'm just gonna read you my response that I
31:35
Speaker 1: wrote to j Robert Hi there. First off, let me
31:38
Speaker 1: put on my best Homer Simpson voice when I say
31:42
Speaker 1: I am admittedly and I even admitted on the podcast
31:44
Speaker 1: not a petrol head, and somehow got that stat utterly wrong.
31:48
Speaker 1: I'll be sure, and mentioned on the next one we record,
31:50
Speaker 1: thanks for listening, and here I am doing that thing,
31:52
Speaker 1: So thank you very much for the correction. You're absolutely right,
31:55
Speaker 1: and yeah I screwed up. Don't beat yourself up, and
32:00
Speaker 1: thanks for checking. I want to okay, Well if you
32:03
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna throw bread at you either way. We
32:06
Speaker 1: had another We had another mentioned that in the two
32:10
Speaker 1: thousand sixteen Lament that we mentioned towards the end of
32:14
Speaker 1: that episode we said Porsha placed first, Porsche placed first
32:18
Speaker 1: in its class, and Ford placed first and third in
32:22
Speaker 1: its class, so it was not all a hard luck story.
32:26
Speaker 1: But thanks so much for writing in, sir. We have
32:29
Speaker 1: one other email that fascinated all three of us, Casey
32:32
Speaker 1: Nolan myself, and it is from a you mean Hello.
32:35
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of the podcast. My name is
32:37
Speaker 1: you Me, and I'm a Japanese American raised in the US,
32:40
Speaker 1: but born and currently living in Japan. I just finished
32:43
Speaker 1: listening to the CAPS episode and I wanted to comment
32:45
Speaker 1: and share some insight into emoji. I'm an English teacher,
32:49
Speaker 1: but a believer in descriptivism over prescriptivism when it comes
32:53
Speaker 1: to language, which I love that point. I completely agree
32:56
Speaker 1: with you you Me continues. As I teach in Anish
33:00
Speaker 1: school that allows non native teachers. We all use the
33:03
Speaker 1: texting app line capital L I N E, which is
33:06
Speaker 1: Japanese and predominant form of texting in Asia. But on
33:09
Speaker 1: top of that, my main source of understanding emoji use
33:12
Speaker 1: actually comes from my experience with dating apps. I used
33:15
Speaker 1: a few internationally popular ones. I live relatively close to Tokyo,
33:18
Speaker 1: so I had a few observations I think you might
33:20
Speaker 1: find interesting. I'm not going to read the whole thing,
33:22
Speaker 1: but I'm going to do some excerpts here. Uh the
33:25
Speaker 1: hands folded together. These are used to mean please by
33:28
Speaker 1: Japanese people, often put at the end of the request.
33:31
Speaker 1: It's the suggested emoji when I type please into the
33:33
Speaker 1: line app, the eggplant emoji, which is infamous here in
33:38
Speaker 1: the States, by the way, was says, you mean universally
33:41
Speaker 1: used by creeps outside of Japan, as well as mixed
33:44
Speaker 1: Japanese people. But Japanese nationals have no understanding of the
33:48
Speaker 1: racing meaning unless they have friends overseas. Same with the peach,
33:53
Speaker 1: and she goes on to talk about how the tear
33:56
Speaker 1: or splash emoji in Japan is used when someone is
34:00
Speaker 1: feeling awkward, much like other sweat drop emoji. That's an
34:03
Speaker 1: anime all the time to do. Whenever you see someone
34:05
Speaker 1: that's struggling with something or stressed out, they'll have little
34:09
Speaker 1: sweat lines coming out of there. Yes, exactly, and uh
34:13
Speaker 1: Umi ends by saying another important note, not everyone uses
34:16
Speaker 1: standard emoji anymore. For example, users of Line will use
34:20
Speaker 1: their own emoji set called stamps or stickers. There are
34:23
Speaker 1: tons of them, and users can even purchase special large
34:26
Speaker 1: one specific to shows and games they like. I've attached
34:30
Speaker 1: screenshots of my own apps showing just the original set
34:34
Speaker 1: which we checked out, and uh Umi ends up by saying,
34:37
Speaker 1: I hope you have a great day regards. Thanks so
34:40
Speaker 1: much for writing to us. I I find the evolution
34:43
Speaker 1: of language, especially in the realm of emoji, endlessly fascinating. Oh. Absolutely,
34:47
Speaker 1: And I think too, it's interesting that the set that
34:50
Speaker 1: comes stock on you know, most phones, um iPhones at
34:54
Speaker 1: least um are you know, there are some characters in
34:58
Speaker 1: there that are pretty intensely Japanese and that I am
35:02
Speaker 1: still not. Like, there's a couple of food items that
35:04
Speaker 1: I don't even think I've ever seen before. One thing
35:06
Speaker 1: that's funny, and I've probably experienced this to. My girlfriend
35:09
Speaker 1: has an Android and I have an iPhone. Are emoji
35:11
Speaker 1: sets do not match? When I send her something that
35:14
Speaker 1: looks a certain way for me, it does not look
35:16
Speaker 1: the same for her. And there are a few that
35:18
Speaker 1: have problematic differences. Yes, yeah, I agree. Like there's one
35:23
Speaker 1: that's sort of the Spanish dancer lady doing doing like
35:26
Speaker 1: a move and on her end it's a little like
35:30
Speaker 1: a little boy doing like like a b boy doing
35:32
Speaker 1: hip hop dance moves, um like breakdancing. It's so strange
35:36
Speaker 1: because I used to have an Android too, and I
35:38
Speaker 1: would notice this and when we were in group chats
35:41
Speaker 1: or something, or when I was texting someone or I
35:44
Speaker 1: would receive a text and I think, what the what
35:47
Speaker 1: the hell is this is this? What story are you
35:49
Speaker 1: telling me? I thought we were going to meet at
35:51
Speaker 1: the barbecue place. There's another one that like, when it
35:54
Speaker 1: comes on my end, it looks like an I roll.
35:56
Speaker 1: And I said something to her about something that happened
35:58
Speaker 1: with my daughter that I was just talking about, you know,
36:00
Speaker 1: being a dad and saying something dorky, and she sent
36:02
Speaker 1: me this eye roll and I'm like, that's so mean,
36:05
Speaker 1: But it was not. That didn't look that way on
36:07
Speaker 1: her end. It looked like a wide eyed or happy
36:09
Speaker 1: face or something like that. So you know, careful, uh,
36:12
Speaker 1: Android versus iPhone users, Um, you might be sending mixed
36:16
Speaker 1: messages and not even know it. And give somebody the
36:19
Speaker 1: benefit of the doubt if they send you something that
36:22
Speaker 1: you think is crazy town. That's true. Elephant's in the
36:25
Speaker 1: screenshot of what it looks like on my phone back
36:28
Speaker 1: to her, so that we're on the same page. We've
36:30
Speaker 1: kind of learned to do that. That's a good policy,
36:32
Speaker 1: and that's where we're going to end our listener mail,
36:36
Speaker 1: but not our show. We of course want to thank
36:38
Speaker 1: Casey Pegru and we want to thank Alex Williams for
36:41
Speaker 1: composing that fan favorite theme, and regular contributor Laurie L. Dove,
36:46
Speaker 1: who wrote a hundred and fifty years ago Men Killed
36:48
Speaker 1: for the eggs of these birds on how stuff works.
36:52
Speaker 1: And most importantly, you, specifically you, not a general, yes,
36:57
Speaker 1: you and you listeners for tuning into a another episode
37:01
Speaker 1: of ridiculous history. I really hope that you enjoyed this
37:05
Speaker 1: episode about the egg war, because in our very next episode,
37:09
Speaker 1: we're going to be diving into another bit of food
37:13
Speaker 1: crime history. Yeah, with the sorted tale of bootleg Margarine.
37:20
Speaker 1: I wanted to use remember we're talking about this, I
37:23
Speaker 1: wanted to use the phrase butter smuggler just because it
37:25
Speaker 1: sounded cool. I like it, but it's Margarine. It's okay,
37:29
Speaker 1: I just still say it. Butter comes up. Yeah. Yeah,
37:32
Speaker 1: I'm gonna spoiler. We're gonna be waiting to slip that
37:35
Speaker 1: one in there, and we might even have a surprise
37:37
Speaker 1: guest who you may ask, will this guest be Well,
37:40
Speaker 1: there's one way to find out. Come hang out with us.
37:43
Speaker 1: Thanks guys,