What was the Triangle Trade?
A. One of the most profitable international business arrangements involving Europe, the Caribbean, and North America, the Triangle Trade of rum, slaves, molasses, and goods played an important role in the early growth of this country.
The name comes from the triangular pattern of shipping routes used to transport products unavailable in one part of the world to another. While the direction of shipping could begin at any point of the triangle, the cargo remained fairly consistent.
Holland, Portugal, Spain, France, and England shipped textiles and other manufactured goods to Africa, where they were traded for slaves. The slaves were, in turn, shipped to the West Indies and put to work on British sugar cane plantations. Sugar and molasses were shipped to the Colonies, where they were traded for tobacco, fish, lumber, and rum, which was then shipped to Europe or the West Indies.
Rum was big business in the Colonies. In the 1760s there were 22 distilleries in Rhode Island and 63 in Massachusetts. Medford became especially known for its rum, an industry begun in the early 1700s by John Hall and carried into the 20th century by the Lawrence family.
The British outlawed slavery in 1772 and banned the Atlantic slave trade in 1807. The importation of slaves was declared illegal in the United States in 1808. However, the institution of slavery, and the Triangle Trade, persisted well into the 19th century.

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Why Do Suburbs Feature Grand Lawns? (posted 8-22-03)

Sam Allis, writing in the Boston Globe (August 17, 2003):

Welcome to the insanity of lawns. Our national lawn pathology, always severe, is exacerbated this summer by the monsoons that have produced our very own elephant grass. Mowing is now an even more obnoxious activity than usual, if that is possible.
So why mow? More to the point, why have lawns at all? Give me that ground cover that requires little more than a nod every morning. What does it say about us that the two neighbors in a TV ad - Scotts, I think - spend most of their waking hours competing for the better lawn? Guys, get a grip....
No other country in the world shares our lawn obsession. Lawn historians say the whole thing started when 18th-century Brit aristocrats favored manicured sweeps at their country homes, and these, in turn, spawned our particular lawn disorder. But then we've aped the Brits about almost everything, badly. (Remember our national genuflection at "Masterpiece Theatre"? Forget lawns, what the Brits are justifiably lionized for are their magnificent country gardens - confections of loose beauty, designed precisely to reject the strictures of the formal continental gardens of old, where everything looked like an Escher print.
Contrast the inspired Brit package with the stark uniformity of a suburban street around Boston, where you grow clover at your peril. Where you'd best change the locks if you don't get rid of your dandelions before the fluff blows across neighbors' lawns like pollution from a Midwest power plant. Where lawns without walls that are designed to be open affairs are, in fact, fiercely held turf.
Face it, lawns define the suburban ethos more than book groups and Fluffernutters combined.

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House-Senate Conference Committees: A Tempestuous Past (posted 8-22-03)

Bill Walsh, writing in the Times-Picayune (August 18, 2003) about the conflicts that arise between Senate and House conferees:

No one disputes that the majority party holds sway in conference. But there is a long-running debate on Capitol Hill and in academia about whether the House or Senate has an advantage. That rivalry has sometimes boiled over into petty disputes, such as on which side of the Capitol the conference committee should meet.
Things got so tense concerning the location of a spending bill conference in the early 1960s, according to Associate Senate Historian Don Ritchie, that deliberations on all federal appropriations stopped. Neither side thought its members should have to walk the length of the Capitol to meet on the "turf" of the other body.
Fortunately, Ritchie said, a new room being constructed as part of a Capitol expansion happened to fall dead center between the House and Senate. The room, EF-100, served as neutral ground for House and Senate conferees.

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Road Accidents ... Are Cars to Blame? (posted 8-21-03)

Bob Montgomery, writing in the Irish Times (August 20, 2003):

THE GOOD OLD DAYS: Road accidents, however regrettable, are by no means a peculiarity of the motor vehicle. They have been happening as long as there have been roads.
Deaths on the roads of France in 1899, the first year for which comprehensive records are available, numbered the surprising total of 876 - two were the result of motors while the rest involved horse-drawn traffic. In the same year, an incredible 8,700 were injured in horse-related accidents on France's roads.

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Has a UN Official Ever Been Specifically Targeted for Assassination? (posted 8-21-03)

Steven Edwards, writing in the Montreal Gazette (August 20, 2003), about the death of Vieira de Mello, the UN representative in Iraq:

If personally targeted in yesterday's attack, Vieira de Mello, 55, would be the first UN official assassinated since 1948, though some historians have speculated Soviet operatives were responsible for causing the 1961 plane crash in Africa that killed Dag Hammarskjold, then secretary-general.

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When Did World War II End? (posted 8-14-03)

Stroube Smith, writing in the Washington Times (August 14, 2003):

There is some confusion over when we should say this cataclysmic conflict ended. The AP Stylebook says Aug. 15, the day Japanese Emperor Hirohito broadcast the news to his people. Because of that notation, that is the date most often used by newspapers. Others insist on Sept. 2, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur presided over the formal surrender signing aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
To me, though, it will always be that evening of Aug. 14 and the wild celebrations Truman's announcement set off on South Lee Street in Alexandria, in the rest of the city and across the nation. It is also the day the killing, for the most part, came to an end.

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What Is the Baath Party (posted 8-11-03)

Cam