Category: History

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Hallucination Caused by Fear?

Sandy and I recently shared cocktail hour with some good friends of ours. Joe grew up in upper New York in a town (Malone) twelve miles from the Canadian border and 58 miles south of Montreal. After World War II had ended, Joe’s father told him about the German U-boat activity in the St. Lawrence River and the effect it had on the Canadians.

Daniel Gallery, Commanding Officer of the Guadalcanal on the Conning Tower of the captured U-505. Photo by USN (June 1944). PD-US Government. Wikimedia Commons.
Daniel Gallery, Commanding Officer of the Guadalcanal on the Conning Tower of the captured U-505. Photo by USN (June 1944). PD-US Government. Wikimedia Commons.

According to Joe’s father, the French Canadians weren’t too worried about the German occupation of France and the collaborationist government known as Vichy. That is until a U-boat was discovered in Montreal Harbor and stories of German spies being off loaded onto Canadian soil. That woke them up.

The Battle of the St. Lawrence

This is the term used today to describe the periods of time when the U-boats actively hunted down convoy boats in the St. Lawrence River. There were two primary periods of activity: May 1942 to September 1943 and then a resumption of activity in the fall of 1944 (due to a new technology on the submarines that allowed them to stay submerged longer). Read More Hallucination Caused by Fear?

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Wallace Fountains

 

Personnes se désaltèrant à une fontaine Wallace à Paris. Photo by unknown (1911). Bibliothèque nationale de France. PD: Domaine Public. PD-US. Wikimedia Commons.
Personnes se désaltèrant à une fontaine Wallace à Paris. Photo by unknown (1911). Bibliothèque nationale de France. PD: Domaine Public. PD-US. Wikimedia Commons.

Throughout the centuries clean and drinkable water in Paris was very difficult to find. Running water didn’t come to certain parts of Paris (e.g., Village of Saint-Paul) until the early 1970s. Well, one person saw to it that the citizens of Paris, in particular the poor, had potable drinking water available to them shortly after the Paris Commune of 1871.

British Assistance

Immediately after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, a little-known charity called the British Charitable Fund (BCF) was established for the purpose of assisting British citizens who had moved to France and became destitute. In other words, they needed financial assistance for food and shelter. One of the largest benefactors (and later, a BCF trustee) was Sir Richard Wallace (1818–1890).

Wallace was a British expat living in Paris who had inherited a large sum of money from his father in 1870. Among his other philanthropic endeavors, he founded a hospital. However, Sir Richard’s legacy to modern day Paris is the Wallace Fountain found throughout Paris (and other parts of the world). Read More Wallace Fountains