THE PESHTIGO FIRE – This piece of neglected history may be one of the most Balladeer’s Blog-ish topics in Balladeer’s Blog’s sixteen-year history. On October 8th, 1871 Peshtigo, Wisconsin burned down in a monumental conflagration that killed OVER FIVE TIMES AS MANY PEOPLE AS THE GREAT CHICAGO FIRE KILLED!
Both fires happened on the same day, but Chicago’s greater renown caused its disaster to overshadow what happened in Wisconsin to this very day.
The Peshtigo Fire is still the deadliest wildfire in known American history. The flames spread throughout the Door Peninsula and even spread to the Upper Peninsula. Roughly 1.2 million to 1.5 million acres were destroyed and estimates of the death toll go as high as 2,500 people. Continue reading
THREE – Aeneas and his fleet of survivors of fallen Troy arrive at Latium in what is now west central Italy. They are made welcome by King Latinus, who offers his daughter Lavinia to Aeneas as a bride per the oracles foreseeing the arrival of strangers possessed of greatness and whose leader he should marry to Lavinia. 
THE SPANISH MAIN (1945) – In the 1600s, Dutch Captain Laurent van Horn (Paul Henreid) is using his ship to transport refugees from the current war in Holland to safety in the Carolina Colonies. Storms and other misfortunes cause the ship to go wildly off course, ultimately wrecking near Cartagena. Spanish Colonial Governor Don Juan Alvarado (Walter Slezak) imprisons Laurent and his crew, sentencing them to hang. 
Captain van Horn and his crew take the Contessa to the port where the Barracuda and other pirate vessels hide out. A very inaccurate rendition of pirate Anne Bonny (Binnie Barnes) is jealous that Francesca has taken her man Laurent. She joins forces with pirate captains who resent van Horn’s leadership to deliver Francesca to Alvarado. 
MACABRA – This hostess of Omaha’s Theatre of the Macabre (1982-1985) has accomplished the seemingly impossible – she has managed to keep her real name a secret all these decades! She was an Omaha businesswoman who beat out over 150 other applicants for the position of WOWT’s Movie Hostess for their new Friday night at 10:30pm Bad Movie show. 
On top of that, Macabra rejected the over-the-top humor that characterized Elvira and her cash-in imitators in favor of a wry, understated approach that put me in mind of a combination of Movie Host legends like Moona Lisa and Fritz the Nite Owl. For an airing of Attack of the Mushroom People (1963) this hostess munched on mushrooms completely deadpan rather than hit the viewers over the head with the joke. 
With Memorial Day Weekend fast approaching, Balladeer’s Blog does a seasonal look at a neglected aspect of American military history. Spare some thoughts today for the men who perished in this action. 
With the World War still raging, the other Allied Nations prevailed on President Woodrow Wilson to divert some American forces intended for the Western Front to Archangel and beyond, joining a combined army of Brits, Poles and White Russians. The fighting in North Russia dragged on past the end of the global conflict in November of 1918 into June of 1919. The fighting in Eastern Russia dragged on until January of 1920. In other words, if the Americans sent to Russia had instead gone to their original destination of France, their combat operations would have ended on November 11th, rather than continuing for more than a year of further bloodshed and loss of limbs from frostbite. All the more reason to remember the often-neglected troops who served there. 
LANCELOT LINK: SECRET CHIMP (1970-1971) – From Sandler-Burns-Marmer Productions came this fun children’s show that presented trained chimps in a spoof of secret agent stories. Dialogue was dubbed in over the usual twitchy mouth movements of chimpanzees to attempt the illusion that the “performers” were speaking. 
Lancelot Link was a secret agent for A.P.E. (Agency to Prevent Evil), the heroic spies who opposed the agents of C.H.U.M.P. (Criminal Headquarters for Underworld Master Plan). Lance’s cover was that he was a guitarist and singer for a bubblegum pop band called the Evolution Revolution. His fellow agent Mata Hairi was also in the band along with other chimps, and novelty songs credited to the group were released in the real world. 
MR. GHIM’S DREAM (1878) – This anonymous work is set in the autumn of 1877. Mr. Ghim is a poor American who dreams of ending the “current” unemployment crisis through a massive construction project that will employ thousands. Ghim tries to enlist some of the most well-known tycoons of his day – William Vanderbilt, Robert Roosevelt, Jay Gould and others – in his scheme. 
TWO – Aeneas and his companions, the survivors of the Fall of Troy, are still lingering in Carthage. Queen Dido, not knowing that the Roman State which Aeneas will spawn will also be the future destroyer of Carthage, remains deeply in love with Aeneas. 
Playing into (or maybe establishing) the enduring cliche about people in a burgeoning romance being driven closer by needing relief from a downpour, Dido and Aeneas start to feel even friskier. Juno manipulates things further by having nature and animal life in the cave behave in ways that parallel a wedding ceremony. 
ASTONISHING TALES Vol 1 #1 (Aug 1970) 
Dr. Doom Title: Unto You is Born … the Doomsman 
Recent movie news about the latest screen adaptation of The Odyssey happened to make me reflect on the lack of a big screen version of the poet Virgil’s epic The Aeneid. For newbies to the tale, I’m posting this very brief synopsis of the story – the first half a mythic voyage like Jason and the Argonauts and The Odyssey and the second half a tale of warfare as Aeneas leads his fellow survivors of fallen Troy in their mythic conquest of what would become Rome. 
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