Grace O'Malley: Irish Pirate Queen of the Seas

Grace O'Malley amassed more than nine tons of treasure, had deep scars on her face from where an eagle had attacked her and gave birth to one of her children while being attacked by Barbary pirates.  She was a legend in her own time.  Born around 1530 she didn't know the meaning of the word "no".  She began her pirate career as a teenager, likely begging her father "Black Oak" O'Malley to go on a trading trip to Spain.  When he told her that her hair would get caught in the ropes, she cut it off and everyone began calling her "Grace the Bald".  She was soon an expert sailor.

The O'Malley's motto was "Powerful by land and by sea." They ate a lot of fish and had better furniture and beer than their neighbors because they stole it from ships that cruised by.  Their three-story castle on the out of the way island of Clare was cold and damp but provided a site from which to hit ships that were on their way to Galway.  They would hide out in secret inlets and raid ships then let it go.  The family would also gamble with dice, have fun with traveling musicians, and gobble down on meats and vegetables and mead while fighting with their neighbors.

There were at least sixty independent Irish tribes ruled by chieftains like Black Oak who were constantly fighting with each other and England who tried to impose its rule. Black Oak was one of the few who never gave into English rule and he taught his spirited daughter the same.

At sixteen she got married to "Donal of the Battles". While he was out battling the neighbors she raised their three children.  While she was supposed to be taking care of the home and kids instead she was out raiding ships.  Donal died when she was in her thirties, his enemies attacking Cock's Castle. Grace sent the enemy running so fast that the castle soon became known as "Hen's Castle".  When the English came to take the castle she would run out of ammunition and she would melt down the roof and pour it on top of the Englishmen's heads. 

When Black Oak died, Grace took control of her father's fleet of ships.  Three and twenty ships at a time raided all the way from Scotland to Spain and she had around two hundred loyal men under her command bringing in salt, wine, silk, and steel.  It's pretty amazing that all those men would follow a woman but perhaps its because she was so successful or because she was the daughter of Big Oak and the wife of Donal.

Grace would marry again for property to a man who wore a coat of mail and was called Iron Richard.  He had a castle called Rockfleet Castle that offered her even more wealth and a haven for her work.  This marriage was what is known as handfasting.  After the year and a day she called it off but kept his castle calling out from it "I dismiss you!"  She may have dismissed him that day, but she wouldn't from her life as the two would keep in touch and have a child, Toby of the Ships together.

Grace considered herself doing the job of "maintenance by land and sea" rather than that of a pirate.  She was caught once and arrested as "director of thieves and murders at sea."  Those arreseted with her were killed but she spent a horrid year and a half in prison before being set free.  Her biggest enemy was provincial governor Rochard Bingham who hated her and felt that she was a "woman who overstepped the part of womanhood."  He killed her son Owen, took lots of her cattle and horses, put her son Toby in prison for a year, and just generally made her life hell, even creating a gallows for her.

After one of her sons sided with Bingham and she killed four of his men she was now sixty-four and had had enough.  She set out for London to meet with the most powerful woman in the world, Queen Elizabeth I.  Queen Elizabeth I sent her a list of eighteen questions about her family and Ireland proved to be interesting enough for the Queen to agree to meet with her.  So the Queen of England and the Queen of the Pirates met and whatever was said must have been interesting enough for the Queen because she decreed that Bingham was to "have pity on the poor aged woman" and allow her "maintenance" to continue.  She also said that Grace "hath at times lived out of order."  Grace returned to a life at sea and outlived many of her enemies.  She died at age seventy-three.

*Those at Howth Castle, north of Dublin still set out an extra chair and place setting at meals, because one day Grace was traveling by needing respite.  The lord of Howth turned her away.  She, in turn, kidnapped his grandson and held him until the Lord promised to always hold a place at his table for travelers.

**Thanks to Kathleen Krull who wrote Lives of the Pirates: Swashbucklers, Scoundrels (Neighbors Beware!)

The Chinese Warrior Nun

In 17th Century China for 250 years the unrivaled Ming Dynasty had ruled over 200 million people. They had built the Forbidden City in the Palace which was the home of the Emperor and the seat of government and built the Great Wall of China.  From one of the powerful families and a general was born a baby girl, Ng Mui.  She learned the things girls of her station learned such as the tea ceremony, horse riding, sword fighting, archery, and self-defense fighting.

In 1644 when she was eighteen it will save her life.  There was a Little Ice Age where the crops froze and there was a famine within China.  As the people were starving, the Manchu people of the north of China, their enemy, takes advantage and comes to attack.  They exploit a commander into letting them through the wall and begin sacking and slaughtering villages killing soldiers and villagers alike.  Ng Mai escapes but her whole family dies.  The Emperor dies and the Manchu takes over.  The Manchu were viewed by China to be barbarians and they would put a yoke over the superior Chinese.

She heads south where the rebellion is.  She realizes that she must learn to fight someone bigger, stronger, and faster than herself.  She has an ah-ha moment when she watches nature.  She studies the lethal fight between a crane and a snake, a tiger and a deer, and watches a praying mantis pounce. She mimics these movements.  She travels covertly beating up bullies along the way.

She seeks sanctuary at a monastery stronghold for Shoulin warrior monks. They allow her to secretly train with them. She is taught that the best line of defense is an immediate and forceful counterattack.  Sustained rapid counter-attacks rather than big powerful movements can beat any opponent.  "It's not about fighting. It's about winning," says Si Fu Julian Hith a modern-day practitioner of the martial art.  By beating her mentor Lee Pasun she advanced to become one of the Masters.

Now the Manchu had come to take out the monks who had been training the Manchu army.  The monks are ready to fight to the death to protect the monastery.  That night the monastery is set on fire and while they are dealing with the fire, the Manchu enter the building and begin their attack.  The survival of the five Masters is all that matters now.  So the monks form a line and allow the Masters and a few monks to escape with them.  Ng Mui notices that her former mentor Lee Pasun was one of the traitors receiving money for his treachery.  Ma Ning Yee, however, was the main man behind everything.  She vows to get revenge on Lee Pasun.

Ng Mui goes to the Masters and hones her skills at her new marshall arts form and hones her ability to precision attacks to highly valuable targets. Eyes, nose, ears, throat, temple, and spine are the main targets.  That is when Wing Chun is born.  She trains one young woman Yim Wing Chun who it is named after to do this and leaves to fight a duel with Lee Pasun.  They fight on top of poles and sharpened sticks.  Ng Mui beats Lee Pasun and kills him.  Then she goes back to Yim Wing Chun and continues her training.  Yim will teach her husband who will teach someone in the family who will teach someone in the family, etc...  It will remain a secret until the 1940s when it is brought to Hong Kong.  The Manchu will remain in power for centuries but eventually will be driven out of China.  Famous people who practice Wing Chun are Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan.  Actor Stephen Amell on The Arrow uses Wing Chun in his fighting style and when he works out on his Muk Yan Jong (workout dummy).  All of this brought about by a young woman wanting to fight against the enemy that had taken over her country in the only way she knew how.  Ng Mui, the warrior nun who fought the Manchu.         

The Man Behind the March On Washington

Bayard Rustin is not a name made famous when talking about Black History Month.  Could it be because he was an openly gay man who once had ties to the communist party?  Born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, 1912 to a sixteen-year-old girl whom he thought was his sister he was raised by his grandparents who were Quakers and "believed were based on the concept of a single human family and the belief that all members of that family were equal." As a teenager, he staged a sit-in at a restaurant that would serve his white football teammates, but not him.  And when he told his grandmother that he was a homosexual her response was "I suppose that's what you need to do."

In 1937 he moved to New York City where he enrolled in City College and began singing with the Josh White Quartet and in the musical John Henry with Paul Robeson.  This is when he joined the communist party believing at the time in what they were preaching. But he left shortly thereafter when they told him he had to stop demonstrating against desegregating the armed forces.  This opened up a file for him in J. Edgar Hoover's file cabinet.

In 1941 he joined pacifist Revered A. J. Muste's Fellowship of Reconciliation that toured the country speaking out against racial injustice.  In 1944 he was arrested for failing to appear before his draft board and refusing alternative service as a conscientious objector. He was given three years but ended up serving twenty-six months. He so pissed off the authorities with his desegregation protests and his open homosexuality that they sent him to a higher security prison.

After leaving prison he joined CORE's 1947 Journey of Reconciliation which was an early version of the Freedom Rides that were testing the Supreme Court's ruling in Morgan v Virginia (1946) that any state forcing segregation on buses crossing state lines would be in violation of the Commerce Clause.  It would be an extraordinary effort but he would once again find himself in prison--this time on a chain gang in North Carolina.

Continuing his beliefs in nonviolent protest, Rustin traveled to India in 1948 to attend a world pacifist conference. Gandhi had been assassinated earlier that year and his teachings touched Rustin deeply. He wrote "we need in every community a group of troublemakers. The only weapon we have is our bodies and we need to tuck them in places so wheels don't turn."

In January 1953 Pasadena, California he was arrested for "lewd conduct" and "vagrancy" stemming from an encounter with two white men in a car.  With that incident and his ever-growing FBI file, the Fellowship of Reconciliation asked for his resignation. He came to believe that "I know now that for me sex must be sublimated if I am to live with myself and in this world longer."

In 1956, after talking to labor leader and activist A. Philip Randolph Rustin went to Alabama to help Dr. King with the Mongomery Bus Boycott. He mainly stayed out of the spotlight but introduced King to Gandhi's teaching while writing publicity materials and organizing carpools.  He also helped King organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1956-57.  His low point came when in 1960 black leader Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr. of New York became enraged that King and Rustin were planning a march outside the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles warned King that if he did not leave Rustin he would tell people that the two of them were lovers.  King canceled the march and put some distance between himself and Rustin, who resigned from the Southern Leadership Conference.  King "lost much moral credit...in the eyes of the young," the writer James Baldwin wrote in Harper's magazine over this. 

The idea for the 1963 March on Washington came from A. Philip Randolph who wondered if younger activists were given the short end of the stick to economic issues as they pushed for desegregation in the South.  In 1962 he got Rustin on board and the two began making plans to commemorate the anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. 

"Birmingham changed everything," John D'Emilio writes in his 2003 biography, Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin. In 1963 as the nation watched in horror as Bull Connor in Birmingham turned fire hoses and attack dogs on children.  This caused Kennedy to get to work on a civil rights bill, and suddenly, D'Emilio explains, "the outlook for a march on Washington" shifted.  "King who had not shown much interest in earlier overtures form Rustin and Rudolph began to talk excitedly about a national mobilization, as if the idea were brand new."

Rustin left for Alamba to see King and expanded the march's focus to "Jobs and Freedom". At the march's headquarters, he looked forward to leading the planning coalition of the "Big Six" civil rights organizations: SNCC, CORE, SCLC, the National Urban League, the NAACP, and Randolph's Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Sadly, his past reared its ugly head and Roy Wilkins of the NAACP refused to allow Rustin to be in charge, so Randolph was put in charge with Rustin as his deputy.

They had many problems facing them. Uniting feuding civil rights leaders, fending off opposition from Southern segregationists who opposed civil rights, fend off opposition from Northern liberals who wanted a more cautious approach and figure out the practicalities of the demonstration itself. On that last point, Rustin later said, "We planned out precisely the number of toilets that would be needed for a quarter of a million people... how many doctors, how many first aid stations, what people should bring with them to eat in their lunches," according to D'Emilio.

But the marchers had to know how to get there. The bus captains helped out there. Rustin wrote manuals that they distributed from New York that covered all the bases from "Who is sponsoring the March; Why we March; Our Demands' How Our Demands Will be Presented in Congress; Who will March; What Are Our Immediate Tasks; How Do I get to Washington; The Schedule in Washington; How Do We Leave Washington; Signs and Banners; Food, Health and Sanitation Facilities; Children and Overnight Accommodation; Captains; Marshals; Transportation Report Form."

The march was a huge success and included a tremendous number of people (They announced at the March 200,000 but Life magazine would put it at 300,000)  Beautiful moments would come when Marian and Mahalia sang and Mrs. Medgar Evers spoke to "Negro Women Freedom Fighters", when John Lewis and Dr. King spoke and when Baynard Rustin read the march's demands.  And there were only four arrests and these were all white people.

While launching the A. Philip Randolph Institute in 1964, Rustin got himself into hot water when he cautioned delegates at the Democratic Convention to back down when Johnson made a deal to seat the state's conservative wing.  He made an attempt to argue his opinion in a 1965 essay in Harper's magazine called "From Protest to Politics" but the damage was done.  "You're a traitor, Baynard!" Mandy Samstein of the SNCC shouted at the convention, according to Taylor Branch in The King Years.

As time passed from the march, things in the movement began to become more militant and Rustin's closeness with the Democratic Party movers and shakers pissed off those for black power.  He also got on the bad side of the antiwar movement by not coming out against the war and the withdrawal of the troops from Vietnam.  He even warned King against coming out against the war.  He was now at odds with a movement that he had helped to start. 

Even though there were tensions with other black activists, that didn't stop Rustin from fighting for justice.  He participated in the demand for economic justice for sanitation workers.  His focus also went international as he sought to support Israel, promote free elections in Central America and Africa, and aiding refugees as vice chairman of the International Rescue Committee.

During the 1980s he opened up about his homosexuality that he had been "sublimating" since the 1950s. This was in large part to falling in love with Walter Naegle who serves as executor and archivist of his estate.  He worked to bring the AIDS crisis to the attention of the NAACP, since predicting, "Twenty-five, thirty years ago, the barometer of human rights in the United States were black people. That is no longer true. The barometer for judging character of people in regard to human rights is now those who consider themselves gay, homosexual, lesbian."

Baynard Rustin died on August 24, 1987, of appendicitis.   In 2013 President Barak Obama awarded him the Medal of Freedom.  Sadly so much of his good work is not known by people because he had to work from the shadows due to his homosexuality and communists ties.  But for while he was on this earth he worked for justice and freedom across the globe for every man, woman, and child. 

Marvel Vs. D.C.: The Battle Continues, And The Tide Perhaps Turns

In previous posts, I've mentioned that my daughter has confounded me by turning her back on her Marvel roots and going to D.C.  She has refused to have nothing to do with Marvel except for maybe Thor, Captain America, and maybe a bit of Spiderman.  Otherwise, it's D.C. all over the place, with the exception of Wonder Woman, whom she just doesn't seem to like.  Well, some things have changed and some things have stayed the same.

She refused to go see the Wonder Woman movie in the theater, but when it came out on DVD I made her watch it and she tried to hide from me how much she loved the movie. But when she went to stay at her grandparents' house she took it with her.  She took it with her when she went to stay with her dad to show him the movie because he hadn't seen it.

But Wonder Woman isn't the only one she's changed her mind about. I told her before she could watch the Thor: Ragnarok movie she would need to watch Dr. Strange.  She really did not want to watch it.  She hated him before she even saw the movie and was determined to not change her mind.  Then in the mail, a friend of mine sent some goodies for her and one of them was a Dr. Strange figure. At first, she was going to give it to me, but then she changed her mind. At Thanksgiving dinner, she was playing with her younger cousin with the figure and told him that she "kinda liked him [Dr. Strange]" and then looked over at me and said, "I wish I hadn't said that in front of my mommy."  Then at the library, she asked me to check out a Dr. Strange book on tape.  This is step one in my winning her back over to Marvel.

Step two.  We watched Guardians of the Galaxy Volume Two.  She fell in love and became obsessed.  We watched it over and over again. We listen to the soundtrack all the time. She listens to it as she goes to sleep.  We watch the first one, but she doesn't like it as much. Though she does love the first soundtrack as much as the second.  For Christmas, she asked Santa to send her Guardians of the Galaxy figures.  I've checked her out comics and books from the library for her to read and she can't wait to read them.

She refused to see Thor in the theaters because it might be scary and wanted to wait and watch it at home, but she did want to see the Justice League movie in the theaters.  So we went and we were a bit disappointed.  It was OK, we just expected something greater.  We did agree that Wonder Woman kicked ass and Aquaman was really hot and the Flash guy was pretty cool.

I got her to read part of an Avengers X-Men comic called Axis. It got scary and she stopped.  But she read the parts that weren't.  This summer I took her to see Spiderman: Homecoming and she loved it.  She can't wait to see Thor: Ragnarok.  We'll see how she feels about seeing Infinity War when it comes out in May and I know she'll love to see Ant-Man and Wasp because she just loved Ant-Man. We watched that one more than once.  And yes, we'll also see Aquaman too.  I grew up with the cartoon Aquaman of the Justice League who was as useless as teats on a bull.  But Jason Momoa is anything but useless. He is quite capable. So while she is still with D.C. I'm slowly bringing her over to Marvel a bit and showing her that there are things over here worth seeing. 

The Ouija Board

In the late 1880s and early 1890s, spiritualism is sweeping the United States.  There had been huge losses of life during the Civil War and people wanted to get in touch with loved ones who had passed. Also, children died at early ages and they wanted reassurances from beyond the grave.  Around the nation, there was known as a Talking Board among the people where you could draw letters on paper and use a pointer to have spirits move to the letters to spell out the message.

Baltimore Civil War vet, Elijah Bond, wants to take it from rustic to refined and the law school grad sees an opportunity to capitalize on the craze. He designs his own board on polished wood with letters, numbers, and yes and no and a planchette to move across the board.  HIs sister-in-law, an avid spiritualist, has a vision in which she sees the name of this new kind of spectral transmitter: the Ouija board.

But first, he must patent the device.  on February 10, 1890, along with a spiritualist medium named Helen Peters, presents it to the patent officer and explains what it does. The patent officer is skeptical. He is used to seeing inventions with gears, levers, and currents.  The only way to get the patent was if they could demonstrate how the device works. Since neither Bond nor Peters knew the name of the officer before they met him that day the officer asks that the board spell out his name and it spells out Charles Mitchell--the patent officer's name.  The Ouija board was given a patent and it became a huge success.  However, it started off as a parlor game and did not begin to really be taken seriously as a way to talk to the dead until after World War I when American Spiritualist Pearl Curran popularized its use as a diving tool.

Ouija Trivia Thanks to Wiki:

1.G. K. Chesterton used a Ouija board in his teenage years. Around 1893, he had gone through a crisis of scepticism and depression, and during this period Chesterton experimented with the Ouija board and grew fascinated with the occult.

 2.Early press releases stated that Vincent Furnier's stage and band name "Alice Cooper" was agreed upon after a session with a Ouija board, during which it was revealed that Furnier was the reincarnation of a 17th-century witch with that name. Alice Cooper later revealed that he just thought of the first name that came to his head while discussing a new band name with his band

3.In the murder trial of Joshua Tucker, his mother insisted that he had carried out the murders while possessed by the Devil, who found him when he was using a Ouija board

 4.Bill Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, used a Ouija board and conducted seances in attempts to contact the dead

 5.Much of William Butler Yeats's later poetry was inspired, among other facets of occultism, by the Ouija board. Yeats himself did not use it, but his wife did.

 6.In London in 1994, convicted murderer Stephen Young was granted a retrial after it was learned that four of the jurors had conducted a Ouija board séance and had "contacted" the murdered man, who had named Young as his killer.^[50] Young was convicted for a second time at his retrial and jailed for life.

 7.Aleister Crowley had great admiration for the use of the ouija board and it played a passing role in his magical workings.^[54][55] Jane Wolfe, who lived with Crowley at Abbey of Thelema, also used the Ouija board. She credits some of her greatest spiritual communications to use of this implement. Crowley also discussed the Ouija board with another of his students, and the most ardent of them, Frater Achad (Charles Stansfeld Jones): it is frequently mentioned in their unpublished letters. In 1917 Achad experimented with the board as a means of summoning Angels, as opposed to Elementals. In one letter Crowley told Jones: "Your Ouija board experiment is rather fun. You see how very satisfactory it is, but I believe things improve greatly with practice. I think you should keep to one angel, and make the magical preparations more elaborate." Over the years, both became so fascinated by the board that they discussed marketing their own design. Their discourse culminated in a letter, dated February 21, 1919, in which Crowley tells Jones, "Re: Ouija Board. I offer you the basis of ten percent of my net profit. You are, if you accept this, responsible for the legal protection of the ideas, and the marketing of the copyright designs. I trust that this may be satisfactory to you. I hope to let you have the material in the course of a week." In March, Crowley wrote to Achad to inform him,"I'll think up another name for Ouija." But their business venture never came to fruition and Crowley's new design, along with his name for the board, has not survived. Crowley has stated, of the Ouija Board that,

There is, however, a good way of using this instrument to get what you want, and that is to perform the whole operation in a consecrated circle, so that undesirable aliens cannot interfere with it. You should then employ the proper magical invocation in order to get into your circle just the one spirit you want. It is comparatively easy to do this. A few simple instructions are all that is necessary, and I shall be pleased to give these, free of charge, to any one who cares to apply.

8.E. H. Jones and C. W. Hill, whilst prisoners of the Turks during the First World War, used a Ouija board to convince their captors that they were mediums as part of an escape plan.

Black Cyclone

In the 1890s, America is in love with bicycle racing. It has become more popular than baseball.  As many as 20,000 people would go out to watch a cycling event. Indoor cycling is a death-defying spectacle with packs of cyclists whirling around narrow wooden tracks at breakneck speeds.  Crashes were very common and fights often broke out. It was a very dangerous and deadly. Some riders used cocaine, strychnine, or nitroglycerine to enhance their performance.  It wasn't as safe as it is today.  But those who made it became champions and were rewarded with fame and fortune.  In the days before motor cars, it was the most exciting thing to happen since the horse and buggy.

In Indianapolis, Indiana there is one teen who dreams of being a champion bicycle racer.  His name is Marshall Taylor and he spends all his time on his bike.  He earns money delivering papers and in his free time, he tests his speed on back roads.  Taylor excels at short one minute sprints.  He knew he was fast enough to go up against the best, he just needed the opportunity.  There was just tone problem.  Taylor was African-American and the races were only open to whites.  He had to find a way to the races to show them that he could race faster than then they could.

 In August 1896 he learned that the Indianapolis will hold a major racing event for the world's top racers sponsored by the League of American Wheelmen.  He decides to sneak into the venue and compete anyway.  The seventeen-year-old makes plans to wait until the track is empty between races and then dash out on his bike. Then he'll attempt to break the one-minute speed record for the fastest minute. He'll recruit an accomplice to start the timing clock.  He believes that once the crowd sees what he can do he'll be able to race anywhere.

This is a dangerous undertaking as racism is still rampant in America and there could be deadly repercussions.  When he started out, though the crowd was confused because there was no one on the schedule to race.  But when they see that he has broken the world record by eight seconds they are astonished and break out in applause at the amazing feat they had just witnessed.  Taylor's record was not recorded officially, but he the door was opened for him to race.  Over the next decade, he took the racing world by storm. He'd won 29 of the 49 races he'd competed in and held seven world records. In 1899 he won the Track Cycling World Championship one-mile sprint.  He was given the name during his career as the Black Cyclone due to his speed.

Still, it wasn't easy.  He was barred from racing in the South and the races he could race some whites refused to race against him and others would box him in.  The spectators would throw ice and nails at him.  One racer, W.E. Beck put him in a chokehold and strangled him senseless until he was pulled off. Beck was fined $50, but it took a while for Taylor to recover that day.

Taylor refused to go to Europe to race because they raced on Sunday and he was religious. So in 1902, Europe changed the day just so he could come and race and he dominated the European and Australian circuits.  He really did become the greatest cyclist of the world.  He was making $30,000 a year and got married and had a daughter. He retired in 1910 just when his body was giving out and the sport was waning in interest with the advent of the motor car.  Sadly, he made bad investments and lost it all in the crash of '29.  His marriage also fell apart as did his body.  He wrote a book about his life and went door-to-door selling it in Chicago but died at the young age of 53 in 1932. His body lay unclaimed in the morgue so he was buried in a pauper's grave. When the Olde Tymer's Athletic Club of the South Wabash YMCA in Chicago found out they persuaded Frank Swchinn of the bicycle fame to have his remains transferred to the Memorial Garden of the Good Shepherd with a plaque that reads: World championship bicycle racer who came up the hard way--Without hatred in his heart--An honest, Courageous, and God-fearing, clean-living gentlemanly athlete. A credit to his race who always gave out his best--Gone but not forgotten.

How the French Fry Saved France

In 1785 France there were a series of unusually cold winters that destroyed the crops and caused a terrible famine that left the nation on the brink of starvation.  One man thinks he can solve it.  Forty-eight-year-old pharmacist Antoine-Augustin Parmentier was dedicated and passionate about using his knowledge to help France in its time of need.

He learned of a plant hardy enough to survive France's cold winters that grow underground and requires very little water. It also contains most of the nutrients that people require to live.  This miracle plant? The humble potato.  He believed the French needed a basic vegetable to rebuild their diet and the potato was it.

The potato was introduced to Europe by Spanish explorers returning from South America in the 1500s. Since then lots of other countries have added it to their diets--but not everyone.  Parmentier tries to convince the people to eat the potato but they refuse. They believe it to be cursed and evil.  The leaves of the potato resemble those of the deadly nightshade plant which was thought to be used in witchcraft and sorcery.  The potato scared people who thought if you ate one you might fall under the influence of a witch or a devil.

Parmentier published a paper in a medical journal arguing for the potato and posted it everywhere but to no avail.  Then inspiration strikes.  He asks King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette of France to hold a banquette where he would serve them many fine potato dishes.  He offers up potato soup, boiled potatoes, potato casserole. But the most popular was thinly cut slices of potato that had been fried, called pomme fries, or what we today call french fries.  The dinner party was a huge success.  Everybody loved the food served. This would be one of many dinner parties he would have. Some would include such exalted guests as Benjamin Franklin and Antoine Lavoisier.   Cookbooks were published and fields were set aside to grow them and soon the peasants were following the example of their royal counterparts and began eating the potato and France managed to stave off a famine all due to the brilliance of Parmentier and the wonder of the potato and the magic of french fries.