When did Macy's start having balloons in their Thanksgiving Day parade?

Though it can be hard to think about November with the spring weather we’ve been having, the question came up in one of our library book discussions. Brad Ricca, in his book Super Boys: The Amazing Adventures of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster – the Creators of Superman, mentioned the Superman balloon in the 1939 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. One of our patrons wondered how long the big balloons had been part of the parade.

According to Kathleen Curtin and Sandra L. Oliver’s book Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving Recipes and History, from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie, Eliza Berman’s article on Time.com, and Kate Hogan’s article on People.com, the first giant balloons appeared in 1927 – most famously, the cartoon character Felix the Cat.

The Macy’s parade began in 1924, but the custom of Thanksgiving parades in New York dates back to the 1780s, according to Curtin and Oliver. “Fantastical companies,” as they were called, were groups of working-class young men dressing in costume and carousing in the streets on Thanksgiving morning. The Macy’s parade itself may have originated with the company’s employees, immigrants who wanted to celebrate with a European-style parade including clowns, floats, and zoo animals.

In the parade’s early years, officials had no plans for deflating the balloons. They set them free and offered a reward if people could bring them back. This practice ended after a balloon nearly brought down a plane.

For more information, America’s Favorite Holidays by Bruce David Forbes and All around the Year: Holidays and Celebrations in American Life by Jack Santino are available for checkout at the Newton Falls Public Library, along with Melissa Sweet’s picture book biography of Tony Sarg, Balloons over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade.

How many people survived the Titanic sinking?

After a presentation by Carol Starre-Kmiecik, who told the story of the “unsinkable” Margaret “Molly” Brown, a famous Titanic survivor, one of our patrons was curious about how many other people had survived. Ms. Starr-Kmiecik remembered that around 1,500 had died, but no one could remember the number of survivors.

The answer was in Andrew Wilson’s book Shadow of the Titanic: The Extraordinary Stories of Those Who Survived. 705 people survived the sinking. Wilson tells some of their stories, from Jack Thayer, a seventeen year-old who jumped from the rail of the ship in its final moments and managed to swim to an overturned lifeboat, to Dorothy Gibson, an actress who went on to star in Saved from the Titanic, a silent film about the tragedy. 

The website www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/ provides lists of survivors that can be sorted by lifeboat. According to the site, there were twenty-three other people on Margaret Brown’s lifeboat – less than half its full capacity. These other passengers included several other people from first class and their maids, two crew members, an a third-class passenger. One of the women, Mrs. Elizabeth Rothschild, is said to have snuck her Pomeranian aboard and refused to board the rescuing Carpathian without it.

What's the conversion from avoirdupois to troy weight?

One of our patrons has a collection of silver, which, like all precious metals, is traditionally measured in troy weight. The standard weight used for almost everything else is called avoirdupois weight, from the Old French “avoir de peis,” which means “goods of weight,” and the two measurements are not equivalent. A troy ounce is a little larger than an avoirdupois ounce, but, because there are 16 ounces in an avoirdupois pound and only 12 in a troy pound, the troy pound is smaller.

In both units of measurement, the grain is the same: a little less than 65 milligrams (64.79891 to be exact). There are 437.5 grains in an avoirdupois ounce and 480 grains in a troy ounce. 1 troy ounce equals about 1.097 avoirdupois ounces (so, going the other way, 1 avoirdupois ounce equals about 0.911 troy ounces). 1 troy pound is about the same as 0.823 avoirdupois pounds. Reversed, that means that 1 avoirdupois pound equals 1.215 troy pounds.

What kind of ducks were on my pond?

“Can you tell me what kind of ducks were on my pond this morning? One was brown and the other one was darker but it had a big patch of white on its side. Both of them looked like they had white stripes on their beaks.”

We checked the Ohio Division of Wildlife’s waterbird identification guide and, while we weren’t able to precisely identify the ducks, we could narrow it down. Presumably, they were a male and female pair – the female is often drabber in color, so she was probably the brown duck.

They were not canvasbacks. While the female canvasback is brown and the male is black and rusty brown with a white body, they both have dark bills. The redhead is a possibility, but the colors don’t quite match up. Again, the female is brown and the male, like its name indicates, has a rusty red head and a black and grey body. Their bills are a lighter blue-grey, but they are black-tipped rather than white-striped. The lesser scaup also has a blue-grey black-tipped bill with a darker body and grey-white sides. The female is lighter in color but also has grey-white sides. Our patron’s birds could also be ring-necked ducks. Both the male and female ring-necked duck have white rings on their beaks. The female is brown with pale cheeks and the male is black with grey and white sides and a distinctive peaked head. All of these ducks are common across Ohio when they’re migrating.

If our patron happens to hear their ducks make sounds, they may be able to identify them that way. According to the Ohio Division of Wildlife, while the canvasback is usually quiet while it migrates, it can hoot and growl. The ring-necked duck also growls, hisses, and whistles. The redhead has a “low, nasal quack” and the male in spring makes “catlike” sounds. Finally, the scaup makes a sound that’s an onomatopoeia of its name.

EDIT: Sara from The Bridge, a Newton Falls newspaper, suggests that they may be mergansers, which are common across Ohio during their migration. 

Why is my ivy turning yellow?

This was actually a question from one of our librarians, who had received a potted ivy plant which she had been keeping by the library window. The plant was getting lots of sunlight, but the leaves were turning yellow. We checked The House Plant Encyclopedia by Ingrid Jantra and Ursula Krüger, What’s Wrong with My Houseplant? by David Deardorff and Kathryn Wadsworth, and Kristi Waterworth’s “Ivy Turning Yellow” article on GardeningKnowHow.com to find out why.

According to Jantra and Krüger, ivy leaves may turn pale if they’re getting too much light, but, in general, yellow leaves are caused by too little light, a nutrient deficiency, or too much watering. Deardorff and Wadsworth agree. Evidently, it’s difficult to tell exactly what causes yellow leaves – they’re a symptom of some sort of problem, anything from fungus, insects, or a bacterial infection to the issues mentioned above. Waterworth adds that it may be something in the ivy’s environmental stressing it out. Dry air, high levels of salt in the soil (either from tap water or overfertilizing), or a draft can all make an ivy’s leaves go yellow.

Our librarian guessed that it may have been a draft, since her ivy sat in a cold window. She has since moved it and is waiting to see if its condition improves.

What are the rules of cribbage?

There are two games by the name of cribbage, one played with cards and one played with billiards. Our patron was referring to cribbage in the context of billiards, so we checked The New Illustrated Encyclopedia of Billiards by Mike Shamos.

Cribbage in pool is evidently similar to cribbage in cards. While part of the card game is getting combinations that equal fifteen, the point of the pool game is score five “cribbages,” a cribbage in this sense meaning a pair of balls that add up to fifteen. A cribbage must be made either in the same shot or in two consecutive shots, and the fifteen ball can only be pocketed after all the two-ball cribbages (of which there are seven) are gone. At that point, the fifteen ball counts as the only remaining cribbage. When racking the balls before the game, the fifteen must be placed in the center of the third row, and no two of the three corner balls may form a cribbage.

According to Shamos, cribbage is also known as “fifteen points” or “pair pool.”

For more information, we also have David G. Alciatore’s The Illustrated Principles of Pool and Steve Mizerak’s Complete Book of Pool.

Who invented this arched bridge?

“I saw a documentary where the army used made an arched bridge out of notched logs, like big Lincoln Logs. They were able to take it apart and move it when they were finished. Who invented it? Could you find more information about it?”

We were unable to find the documentary that our patron was referring to, but searching “Lincoln log military bridge” in an online search engine brought up images of a small-scale model matching our patron’s description. The image was from a blog called Dick 'n Debbie's Travels. It was a picture the writers had taken on their visit to a museum exhibit on DaVinci machines.

Now that we knew DaVinci was the inventor, and that the bridge was quite a bit older than we originally thought, it was easier to find more information. DaVinci designed a number of bridges, including several that could be easily built “so as to escape or follow the enemy” (according to Leslie Geddes’ translation of his notes in their essay). The bridge that looks like it’s made from Lincoln Logs is particularly special because it’s self-supporting and does not require rope or nails to hold it together.

The bridge was likely designed for Cesare Borgia (an Italian nobleman who inspired Machiavelli’s
The Prince) while DaVinci was employed by him in 1502 and 1503.

For more information, World of Invention, edited by Kimberly A. McGrath, and two books titled simply Leonardo DaVinci, one by Ludwig Goldscheider and one by Jack Wasserman, are available at the Newton Falls Public Library.