Category Archives: History

TheCivil War was the deadliest of all American wars. No one disagrees with that. But how many died has long been a matter of debate.

For more than a century, the most-accepted estimate was about 620,000 dead. A specific figure of 618,222 is often cited, with 360,222 Union deaths and 258,000 Confederate deaths.

This estimate was not an unreasoned guess, but a number that was established after years of research in the late 19th century by Union veterans William F. Fox, Thomas Leonard Livermore and others. Their work involved an exhaustive examination of army documents, muster rolls, cemetery records, census records, pension records and other resources and documents. In 1900, Livermore published a 171-page book of his work, Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America 1861-1865.

But in 2011, demographic historian Dr. J. David Hacker published A Census-Based Count of Civil War Dead, in the scholarly quarterly, Civil War History, reporting that his in-depth study of recently digitized census data concluded that a more accurate estimate of Civil War deaths is about 750,000, with a range from 650.000 to as many as 850,000 dead.

Hacker, an associate professor of history at the University of Minnesota, believed that a fresh, detailed examination of the numbers from the 1850, 1860 and 1870 U.S. census tabulations might reveal a massive reduction for the young male population in 1870 that would reflect the human toll of the war. And that is what he found. Hackers research concluded that the normal survival pattern for young American men from 1860 to 1870 was far lessby about 750,000than it would have been had no war occurred.

Civil War History called Hackers findings among the most consequential pieces it has ever published. It even further elevates the significance of the Civil War and makes a dramatic statement about how the war is a central moment in American history, said Civil War historian Eric Foner.

The first thing to stress is this is an estimate of the number of men missing in 1870. It is adjusted for possible census undercount and other things, Hacker tells HISTORY. It is not an estimate of the number of people who died on the battlefield. And why are these men missing? I think the only reasonable reason they're missing is because of the Civil War.

A print of a dead soldier at Devil's Den on the battlefield at Gettysburg, by Alexander Gardener (1821-1882) from a negative produced by Timothy H O'Sullivan (1840-1882). The Devil's Den was the scene of bitter fighting during the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg.

SSPL/Getty Images

Many Civil War historians have believed the 620,000 estimate to be too low, especially on the Confederate side, given the lack of written records and the estimates questionable assumption that men in the Confederate army died of disease at the same rate as men in the Union army.

I think that there's been a long, long belief among historians that the numbers that we've been citing for a century or more are not based on solid data but were in fact, crude estimates that were likely to be underreported, Hacker says. And for that reason, I think, the results of my study verified in some people's minds exactly what they had long suspected.

The American Battlefield Trust, however, says it will continue to cite the estimate of 620,000. It praised Hackers initiative, but said his estimated range of 650,000 to 850,000 is very broad, includes civilian casualties, and is not directly linked to the war years of 1861-1865.

They say, How can you publish a number with that big of a possible error range (650,000 to 850,000)? Hacker says. So theyre going to stay with a number that we all know is much more specific. But to me, the 620,000 number has a big error range with it. Its just not published. We shouldnt prefer that number just because it does not include the possible error range.

Hacker's analysis did not break down the estimate for Union and Confederate deaths since the census records did not account for that. However, as a 2011 HISTORY.com story details, his method was able to discern patterns for various regions of birth. For example, the analysis concluded that mortality was significantly higher for white males between the ages of 10 and 44 born in the South (13.1 percent) and in the slave-holding border states of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware (12.7 percent) than for those born in the free states and territories (6.1 percent). The data further suggest that 22.6 percent of Southern men who were between the ages of 20 and 24 in 1860 lost their lives because of the war.

Hacker doubts that further research into national census figures will yield a significantly closer or more accurate estimate of Civil War deaths. At the same time, and he and other quantitative historians are excited about a vast new range of opportunities for census that will be possible with the release in 2022 of a massive, comprehensive digitization of all U.S. census records from 1850 to 1940.

We're looking at a time when there can be some real contributions to historical knowledge using these data that are being released, he said. We not only have complete census data on everybody, we have linked slaves to their owners so you can study slaveholding families. We can link people from census to census, so we can see where people were located, where they moved and observe their transition from, say, single marital status to married, or from married to widowed.

With these new data, were going to be able to get a much more fine-grained picture. So there are some real opportunities for understanding the Civil War generation better than we have in the past. And this is a really exciting time to be a quantitative historian of the Civil War.

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How Many Died in the American Civil War? - History

All the Colts had to do to make the playoffs was beat the hapless 2-14 Jacksonville Jaguars. They came into the game as 15.5-point favorites ... and they lost. Now their playoff hopes are on life support.

Given the circumstances win and they're in, against the worst team in the league it's fair to ask: Is this the worse season-finale loss in NFL history?

Here are some other possibilities since the NFL went to a 16-game season:

The 2008 Buccaneers came into their season finale against the 4-11 Raiders needing a win tokeep their playoff hopes alive (and they would've made it in, since Dallas beat Philadelphia). They were 10.5-point favorites, but lost at home 31-24. Tampa Bay led 24-14 with 11:27 to go in the game, but the Raiders scored the last 17 points. Coach Jon Gruden, playing his former team, was fired following the season.

Updates: Colts are getting blown out by Jaguars

The 2006 Broncos would've made the playoffs with a win at home against San Francisco (who was 6-9), but lost 26-23 in overtime. Denver tied the game late in the fourth quarter, but the 49ers won with an overtime field goal.

The Lions could have made the playoffs with a win over the 4-11 Bears. Detroitcame into the game as 10-point favorites at home. Detroit led 10-0 in the first quarter and 17-13 in the fourth.The Bears won, 23-20,on a field goal with two seconds left.

The next season, the Lions would go 2-14. They wouldn't have a winning season until 2011.

Follow IndyStar trending sports reporterMatthew VanTryon on Twitter @MVanTryon and email him story ideas at matthew.vantryon@indystar.com.

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Did the Colts just suffer the worst season-finale loss in NFL history? - IndyStar

On this date in baseball history, former Texas Rangers pitchers Ferguson Jenkins and Gaylord Perry were elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Jenkins and Perry became the first two players to wear a Rangers uniform to reach the Hall of Fame, though both wore different caps on their induction plaques. Jenkins wore his Chicago Cubs hat, while Perry settled on the San Francisco Giants.

Jenkins played for the Rangers from 1974-75, and again from 1978-81. He became the franchises first 20-game winner in 1974, during which he was named the American League Comeback Player of the Year and finished second in AL Cy Young voting. That season, Jenkins led the Rangers with 25 wins, 328 innings pitched and 29 complete games, all of which were new team records. In his career with the Rangers, he went 93-72 with a 3.56 ERA in 197 starts, throwing 90 complete games and 17 shutouts. He struck out 895 batters and walked 315.

For his career, Jenkins went 284-226 with a 3.34 ERA, 267 complete games, 49 shutouts, 3,192 strikeouts and 997 walks. He also played for Philadelphia and Boston. He won the National League Cy Young in 1971 with the Cubs.

Perry played 22 seasons and spent time with San Francisco, Cleveland, Texas, San Diego, the New York Yankees, Atlanta, Seattle, and Kansas City. With the Rangers from 1975-77, along with 1980, Perry went 48-43 with a 3.26 ERA, 55 complete games, 12 shutouts, 575 strikeouts, and 190 walks. At the time of his election, his ERA with the Rangers was the second-lowest in club history.

For his career, Perry went 314-265 with a 3.10 ERA, 303 complete games, 50 shutouts, 3,354 strikeouts, and 1,379 walks. Perry won 20 games in a season five times and was one of a handful of pitchers to win 100 games in each league.

Are we missing a moment from this day in Texas Rangers history? Were happy to add it. Hit us up on Twitter @PostinsPostcard and let us know what to add.

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Rangers History Today: Pair of Texas Aces Elected to Hall of Fame - Sports Illustrated

It is dangerous to declare anything related to the Giants these days as the worst ever or the lowest point. This is, after all, a franchise that has repeatedly hit rock bottom only to drill a little deeper, and deeper still, and even ... deeper ... still.

Plus, it is necessary to approach such proclamations with caution given the teams history. What might seem like the nadir for this generation of football fans might seem tame in comparison to the fans who endured the dark ages of the 1970s.

And still, even with all those disclaimers in mind, we feel comfortable declaring what happened in the second quarter of the Giants game against Washington as the most embarrassing moment in the franchises near 100-year history.

Really. This was that bad.

The Giants, trailing Washington 3-0 late in the second quarter, were pinned at their own 2-yard line when they did something that raised a white flag over MetLife Stadium in an unprecedented way. They ran a quarterback sneak on second down, and when the play gained two yards, they ran another one on third down.

And then they punted.

Run that one back. Let it sink in. The Giants, a 4-12 team with nothing to lose but another meaningless game, refused to let their offense attempt an actual play against a six-win Washington team. They might as well have just punted on second down!

Embarrassing doesnt begin to sufficiently describe it.

Lets remember, the man making this decision is Joe Judge, the head coach that co-owner John Mara is believed to be prepared to bring back for a third season despite a 10-23 overall record. Judge gave an 11-minute sermon about the teams improved culture a week ago, that his former players still dial him and tell him they wish they were still in New Jersey.

It was ridiculous when he said it and that was before Judge added a new term for giving up to footballs modern lexicon.

Surrender Punt? Meet the Surrender Sneak.

The one positive for the Giants: At least there were only a few thousand people inside MetLife Stadium to see it happen. Combine the teams current hopelessness with a bad opponent and a cold, gray January day, and you end up with what might be the lowest home attendance for the team since the stadium opened in 2010 (the NFL does not provide actual attendance numbers, just tickets distributed).

The crowd had to find ways to amuse itself. Everytime the referee made an routine announcement No. 79 is reporting eligible the fans roared with their approval. Judge, during that 11-minute rant, said that every fan has the right to boo my ass out. Somehow, this combination of indifference and scorn was even worse.

Then again, there might be a weird benefit for the fans who braved the cold to watch this lousy, meaningless football game. Theyll be able to tell their kids someday that they saw the most embarrassing moment in Giants history.

MORE FROM STEVE POLITI:

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Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting us with a subscription.

Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com.

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No exaggeration: This might be the most embarrassing moment in Giants history - NJ.com

Just before 6 p.m. on Dec. 28, most of the tenants inside a single family home in Corvallis which had been partitioned into apartments were going about their lives largely unaware except for an out-of-place campfire smell their house was ablaze and everything was about to change.

But the destructive flames that would displace all six units tenants may have been inevitable.

That place was unlivable. It was miserable, said Brian Grant, one of the tenants. He and his housemates had long stories of woe, of questionable wiring, of landlords hard to reach, of poor maintenance and whack-a-mole problems when complaints were finally addressed.

With all that in mind, Im still kind of in shock, Grant said this past week.

Theyre not the only tenants of property owners Kip and Michelle Schoning to relate such stories. Mid-Valley Media has been chronicling allegations against the Schonings, who own rental property throughout the mid-Willamette Valley, for more than a decade.

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Likewise, the city of Corvallis has been fielding complaints and investigating potential code violations since the early aughts at least. AndAlbany has had its share of run-ins as well.

The Schonings did not respond to a reporters four requests for interviews left by voicemail on both office and cellphone numbers.

The probable culprit

As flames ripped through the 96-year-old house at 857 NW Tyler Ave. that Tuesday between Christmas and New Year's, tenants and first responders tried to reach Kip and Michelle Schoning to no avail. The property owners finally showed up to the dilapidated property the morning after to speak with Corvallis Division Chief Fire Marshal Jonathon Jones.

I think the biggest concern is that there were known issues with no repair or no remedy done, Jones said. It does appear that this is strictly a building maintenance issue and that electrical is really a high culprit right now. You have one breaker that is running six different apartments.

Three of the tenants reported trying to fix the breaker themselves multiple times saying that it sparked at them whenever they touched it. One of the tenants, Keanna Estes, moved into the apartment in September and said even in that short time, shes had a history with the breaker slipping.

Ive had electrical problems pretty much since I moved in, she said. Sometimes I could go a week without it tripping. Sometimes it would trip 12 times a day.

She called the Schonings several times, Estes said, adding it took Michelle Schoning a week to return her call.

They do not show up, Estes said. They do not come to their property for anything.

The night of the fire

Estes remembers coming home from the grocery store the evening of Dec. 28 when she noticed her hallway light was out. She went to flip the breaker and it sparked. Not long after, she and her boyfriend smelled smoke; they ran outside to grab a flashlight and realized smoke was coming from the roof.

She called 911 immediately and ran up the three flights of stairs to her unit to grab her animals before evacuating. With the fire alarms silent, her boyfriend, Brendyn Irwin, ran around banging on doors, warning people to get out.

Tenant Tanner Eldridge was home with his partner, Hayden Kuhman. They didnt know the house was on fire, though they could smell something.

Another tenant came out and said to get the hell out of the building. Thats when we grabbed our stuff, he said.

Eldridge had just moved to Corvallis in December, and his father started a GoFundMe to replace the belongings that were lost. While all the residents, their guests and their pets made it out safely, the same cannot be said for all the other items that make a home.

We all love Tanner and dont know what comes next for him and his friends, his dad, Chuck Eldridge, wrote.

Grant, who moved in in October, was home when he heard someone banging on his door urging him to get out. He panicked, grabbing what he could, but he too lost most of his personal belongings in the fire.

Grant had no lights or heating in the unit for the entire month of December, he said, and only two electrical outlets worked in the living room. Michelle Schoning sent out four different contractors who took everything apart and still did not know how to fix the issue, he said.

I just strung up Christmas lights from Fred Meyer, so I could see, Grant said. It was so janky.

The lights and heating were working consistently a day or two before the fire, he said. But 10 minutes before the smell of smoke permeated, the breaker went out for the last time.

The tenants sat across the street and watched their apartment burn for a couple of hours as they answered questions from the fire inspector. A city bus transported them to Oregon State University, where they had pizza and water at Cascade Hall, home of campus public safety and ironically a building that partially burned in 1992.

The Red Cross showed up and gave the displaced tenants prepaid cards with $500, so they could replace some necessary items and find a temporary place to stay.

Its oddly weird because it feels like it didnt happen at all, Estes said.

Kip and Michelle Schoning

Mid-Valley Media has covered the Schonings many times over the years, in articles informally known as the Red Door Stories. When he operated under the name Bula Enterprises, Kip Schoning was known around the mid-valley for painting the doors of run-down houses red and renting to anyone who had the cash without running a background check. The setup naturally appealed to college students who typically dont stay long enough to become a pain in landlords sides.

With the doors no longer crimson-hued, Schonings property management company has changed names several times in the past decade, from Bula Enterprises to Rising Realty LLC to Buena LLC to YourHouse LLC.

Whatever its name, the company is notorious for not returning tenant phone calls, maintaining its properties or making repairs, according to current tenants and those interviewed throughout the years and appearing in a string of "Red Door Stories."

The city of Corvallis Permitting System indicates 857 NW Tyler Ave. has been the site of 18 code violations. Among them was a 2015 tenant complaint that without a functional furnace, her unit was uninhabitable. The city agreed, posting an order for the Schonings to address the problem.

It took the city nearly five months and a court order to convince the property owners to fix the furnace. The judge called the violation egregious because the landlord had known of the broken furnace since October 2011.

The most recent fire wasnt even the first time 857 NW Tyler Ave. made the papers. In 2010, Alice Sparrow, who lived across the street from the house-turned-apartment complex, complained about an overgrowing pile of stinking trash to her then-city councilor, Mike Beilstein.

The rubbish had accumulated because all six units had to dump their refuse into three 30-gallon garbage cans, two of which did not have lids. At the time, the landlords eschewed the local trash haulers services, preferring to send their own crews occasionally, according to tenants interviewed at the time.

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Citing staffing shortages, the city did not act quickly, but 2 1/2 weeks later, a maintenance crew from what was then Bula Enterprises hauled away the pile. It was at least the city's 11th complaint about trash accumulating at the property since 2003.

Incredibly, even that wasn't the first story about 857 NW Tyler. Another set of tenants described to Mid-Valley Media in 2008 how the ceiling caved in in their 4-year-old granddaughter's room. It was only fixed after the city and a reporter got involved, according to previously published reports.

The Schonings became so infamous for exploiting low-income tenants around the mid-valley that statewide legislation was passed in 2009 to protect renters against abusive fees from landlords.

John VanLandingham, a Eugene attorney with the Oregon Law Center, remembers working with a coalition of both tenants and landlords to support Senate Bill 771, outlawing several types of charges, including an upfront lock-change fee, fees for serving pre-eviction warnings and fees for appearing in court.

At the time it passed, court records showed Schoning and Bula Enterprises had initiated more than 800 formal eviction cases in the preceding 15 years. A Corvallis City Hall employee served on the coalition and had mentioned the Schonings by name andthe published reports about them as "inspiration" for the changes, VanLandingham said.

A year later, the Schonings were having problems of their own. In 2010, Mid-Valley Media reported that Kip Schoning escaped his own foreclosure after falling more than a year behind on payments on his and Michelles half-million-dollar Timberhill residence. They ultimately moved out.

Fire investigation

While investigation into the Dec. 28 fire is ongoing, preliminary evidence from the building inspection suggests the fire originated between the second and third floors in the ceiling above a light fixture.

With such an old property, Jones said he still has to investigate what type of work has been done throughout the decades.

That place has had electrical issues for years, Jones said. Every time a handyman was sent over, the problem was fixed, and then something else stopped working. When you have buildings this old, things take place over the years, and standards change.

Once complete, the fire investigation will determine whether or not the building was up to code before the fire occurred.

All three tenants interviewed said their units had smoke detectors, six among them. Not one sounded as flames spread, they said. Oregon state laws requires landlords to install functional smoke alarms and maintain them in working order.

Next steps

A few of the tenants from the burned down property are teaming up to seek legal help. Hiring attorneys can be expensive, and as college students, they said they will need to work together to take the matter to court.

I dont really know whats next, Eldridge said. Maybe a class action suit against them because this is ridiculous. Weve told them about this.

In the meantime, they have to live.

Some of the tenants have friends or family they are staying with until they are able to secure another apartment. Others are staying in a hotel and worrying about where to go. Some have said it is difficult to find available units because most are already occupied by college students who moved in the fall.

Im just planning a way forward, Grant said.

Joanna Mann covers education for Mid-Valley Media. She can be contacted at 541-812-6076 or Joanna.Mann@lee.net. Follow her on Twitter via @joanna_mann_.

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Corvallis apartment fire reveals history of complaints against landlords - Corvallis Gazette Times

Jan. 4 marks National Spaghetti Day in the U.S.

Though spaghetti is known as an Italian dish, the pastas origins are actually disputed.

Spaghettis name, according to the website of Miami-based restaurant Mitalia Kitchen, comes from the Italian word "spago," which means string in Italian.

8 LUCKY NEW YEARS FOODS FROM AROUND THE WORLD

The restaurants website reports that some historians believe pasta was invented in Italy while others believe Marco Polo brought pasta back to Italy from his journey to China.

Jan. 4 is National Spaghetti Day in the U.S., the perfect time to learn about the history of spaghetti. (iStock)

However, a recent book by Italian food historian Massimo Montanari claims that neither of those origin stories are true.

WHATS THE STORY WITH STUFFING? A HISTORY OF THE HOLIDAY DINNER SIDE DISH

In "A Short History of Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce," Montanari reveals that pasta was actually invented in the Middle East around 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, per a review by Publishers Weekly.

The first pasta was a "derivation of unleavened bread cut into flattened strips similar to tagliatelle," the Publishers Weekly review reported.

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Meanwhile, the International Pasta Organisation reports that the first version of spaghetti was invented in 1154.

Though spaghetti is known as an Italian dish, the pastas origins are actually disputed, with some historians saying pasta was invented in Italy, while others said the dish was brought to Italy from China by Marco Polo. (iStock)

According to National Today, the oldest known documentation of pasta is from the first century B.C., when Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus wrote about "sheets of dough called lagana."

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Meanwhile, the production of spaghetti started in Sicily in the 12th century, the website reported.

The first written mention of spaghetti and tomato juice is from 1870 in an Italian chefs cookbook, according to National Today.

According to the International Pasta Organisation, Italy is the top country where pasta was consumed in 2019, followed by Tunisia, Venezuela, Greece and Chile.

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National Spaghetti Day: A look at the history of the dish - Fox News

Crews remove the statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond on Sept. 8. Pending city council approval, the statue and eight other Confederate monuments will be moved to Richmond's Black History Museum. Steve Helber/AP hide caption

Crews remove the statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond on Sept. 8. Pending city council approval, the statue and eight other Confederate monuments will be moved to Richmond's Black History Museum.

The massive statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Va., taken down in September, will be moved to the city's Black History Museum, Gov. Ralph Northam and Mayor Levar Stoney announced Thursday.

The Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia will take the 21-foot-tall statue of Lee and the pedestal it stood on, which became a rallying point for protests against police brutality in the summer of 2020. Eight other Confederate statues that were removed around the city will also be moved to the museum.

"Symbols matter, and for too long, Virginia's most prominent symbols celebrated our country's tragic division and the side that fought to keep alive the institution of slavery by any means possible," Northam said in a statement provided to NPR.

"Now it will be up to our thoughtful museums, informed by the people of Virginia, to determine the future of these artifacts, including the base of the Lee Monument which has taken on special significance as protest art."

The museum will partner with The Valentine, the city's oldest museum, to get input from the community on how the statues should be displayed. Before any of that can happen, however, the plan still needs approval from the city council.

The decision on what to do with its statues is part of a larger nationwide conversation on removing, replacing and renaming Confederate symbols and questioning what remembering history looks like in a public space.

Richmond was capital of the Confederacy for most of the Civil War, from 1861 until 1865. And Virginia once had the most Confederate statues in the country.

In Charlottesville, Va., the city council recently decided its statue of Lee the proposed removal of which helped spark the deadly Unite the Right rally in 2017 will be melted down and turned into a public art piece, a project that will be led by the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center in town.

Andrea Douglas, the center's executive director, told NPR she hopes Charlottesville's plans will help guide what other cities do with their Confederate monuments.

"Can we create something that defines the community in the 21st century? What does Charlottesville want to be? We describe ourselves as a city that believes in equity, that believes in social justice, so what does that look like in a public space?" Douglas asked.

"This is really not about erasing history. It's about taking history and moving forward," she said.

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Richmond's Robert E. Lee statue will move to the city's Black History Museum - NPR

New Years Day superstitions: Eating black-eyed peas, sauerkraut and donuts, avoiding laundry

New Years Day traditions and superstitions across the U.S. include eating certain foods, performing certain rituals and avoiding various activities.

While New Years Eve may entail copious amounts of champagne and noisemakers, many around the world celebrate New Years Day with "lucky" dishes traditionally eaten to bring good fortune in the coming year.

And depending on where you live, the food on your plate may vary.

Heres a history of some notable New Years Day food traditions around the world and what they symbolize:

This is a menu staple in the Southern U.S., which usually consists of black-eyed peas, rice and pork. It originated with enslaved Africans brought to the U.S. in the 19th century, food historian and cookbook author John Martin Taylor told the Washington Post.

"In the American South, with both rice and black-eyed peas available, the natives of West Africa could prepare a dish that reminded them of home: a humble combination of rice and beans that eventually became known as hoppin John," the outlet reported.

While it remains unclear among historians exactly how the dish came to symbolize good luck, some believe it might have started during the period between Christmas and New Years Day, when enslaved Africans were given rare time off from harvesting and planting.

Taylor told the outlet that this was a good time to give thanks for past crops and raise expectations for the coming season. Such a ritual may have developed into a good-luck tradition, with hoppin John serving as the centerpiece.

Often served with collard greens and cornbread, some food historians think the origin of the dishs unusual name came from "pois pigeons," which is French for dried peas and pronounced "paw-peejohn." This may have sounded like "hoppin' John" to English speakers, according to History.com.

At the stroke of midnight, you may find Italians eating dishes of lentils as part of multiple courses each year to ring in the new year.

"Lentils, or lenticchie, are believed to bring good luck in Italy and eating them at New Year's shortly after midnight is a tradition thats said to date back to ancient Rome," according to The Local, an English-language news network in Europe.

Ancient Romans would give a pouch full of lentils which are round and coin-shaped as a gift to wish friends luck and prosperity in the new year, the outlet reports.

The tradition was eventually brought to the U.S. in the 16th century by the Portuguese and Spanish, History.com notes.

FILE - New Year's Day pork and sauerkraut dinner in a file image taken on Jan. 1, 2014. (Photo By Reading Eagle: Tim Leedy/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty Images)

Head to parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio and other nearby regions, and youll find that many enjoy pork and sauerkraut on New Years Day.

The dish is said to bring good luck and progress because pigs are known to root forward or move ahead, according to History.com. Sauerkraut is made with cabbage, which is linked to symbolic riches, prosperity and long life due to its long strands.

The history website says this dish was a Germanic tradition was brought to America by the Pennsylvania Dutch.

"Fresh pork was the star of Christmas and New Year's meals for early settlers because of its timing with winter hog butchering, and sauerkraut was served as a side dish because winter was also cabbage harvesting season," it says.

Ringing in the year with toshikoshi soba, a soup with buckwheat "year-crossing noodles," is meant to symbolize moving from one year into the next with good wishes ahead.

The dish is a longtime New Year's Eve tradition in Japan and is now practiced in many parts of the world, including the U.S.

The word toshikoshi means "to climb or jump from the old year to the new," according to The Japan Times. The long, thin noodles represent a long, healthy life and date back to the 13th or 14th century, "when either a temple or a wealthy lord decided to treat the hungry populace to soba noodles on the last day of the year."

FILE - A woman and her family prepare tamales, traditional Mexican food cooked over the holiday season, on Jan. 16, 2021, in Tepoztlan, Mexico. (Photo credit: Carlos Tischler / Eyepix Group/Barcroft Media via Getty Images)

Tamales, which are bundles of masa stuffed with meats and cheeses, wrapped in corn husks and steamed, have come to represent a staple throughout the holiday season for many in Mexico, Central America, South America and the southwestern U.S.

In Mexico, this food dish is enjoyed from Dec. 12, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, to Jan. 6, Three Kings' Day, according to History.com. Tamales date back to Mesoamerican culture, as early as 8000 to 5000 BC.

And tamales symbolize much more than food.

"They bring the entire family together. It is part art, part hard work, part repetitive labor but all family bonding," explains Bashas, a family-owned grocery store chain based in Arizona. "This is a very special time that brings generations together, an event families look forward to each year, making it a joyous and meaningful gathering special."

In Spain and parts of Latin America, a tradition of scarfing down 12 grapes at the stroke of midnight one for each chime of the clock will bring good luck in the coming year, according to History.com.

Some trace the tradition of the 12 lucky grapes, or uvas de la suerte, to grape farmers in Alicante, Spain, who suggested the idea when they had a surplus harvest to unload in the early 1900s, Atlas Obscura reports.

However, newspaper articles about the tradition from the 1880s suggest it also may have developed from Madrids bourgeoisie copying the French custom of drinking champagne and eating grapes on New Years Eve, according to food writer Jeff Koehler.

RELATED: New Years Day superstitions: Eating black-eyed peas, donuts, avoiding laundry

This story was reported from Cincinnati.

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Pork and sauerkraut, hoppin' John on New Year's: History of lucky food traditions - FOX 29 Philadelphia

For decades, the Indian city of Mumbai operated under multiple time zones. In the Middle Ages, pilgrims wore bawdy badges to ward off the plague. In ancient Georgia, spring was ushered in with whips, wine, and mud. WWII houses of horrors trained American spies for combat using cardboard Nazis. Here at Atlas Obscura, its no secret that we like to explore the unexpected side of history. So as one more year drifts into the historical record, were here to celebrate some of our most fascinating history stories from 2021.

At 11 a.m. on a March morning, masked figures descend upon a rural Georgian street. Mud-streaked, screaming, and armed with whips, the berikas, as they are known in Georgia, are not there to stir up fear. Their arrival marks the start of the ancient spring festival of Berikaoba, a tradition that may go back 8,000 years but almost disappeareduntil one woman made it her mission to revive the ancient event.

Inside, it was pitch black. Creeping along hallways, Herbert Brucker clutched a Colt .45-caliber automatic pistol. Thats when he heard the unmistakable cadence of a man speaking German. A Nazi guard popped up. Brucker fired twice. The guard dropped. He fired ten more times before he was out of the house of horrors and all the cardboard Nazis were bullet-ridden.

William Dangerous Dan Fairbairn built the pistol house to train a new class of American spies during World War II. These were the early days of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor of todays Central Intelligence Agency.

Jersey, a tiny island in the English Channel, was once nearly covered with skyscraper cabbages, as botanist Edgar Anderson described the massive 12-foot-tall kale. The leaves were used to make Jersey cabbage loaf, and the stalks were turned into elegant walking sticks. Tourists even posed in front of the humongous plants. But by the 1970s, Jersey kale was dying off. Today, only a few Jersey farmers grow the epic vegetable.

Way before businesswomen wore shoulder pads in the 1980s to shove their way into the male-dominated business world, 18th-century Empress Elizabeth of Russia and her niece-in-law Catherine the Great were already pushing sartorial gender norms. The Empress [Elizabeth] had a fancy to have all men appear at the Court balls dressed as women and the women as men, without masks, Catherine wrote in her memoirs. These metamorphosis balls became a weekly occurrence at the Russian courtand in fact, functioned as a way for empresses to remind their male courtiers who was boss.

Looking for a plague repellant this holiday season? Well, medieval pilgrims had a bit of a hack. In the Middle Ages, brooch-like badges were believed to ward off disease. While many of these talismans sport religious motifs or scenes from saints lives, a significant number are sexual in nature, including depictions of human genitalia. Its not as odd as it might sound: Across cultures, human genitalia have long been ascribed evil-vanquishing power.

In March 1519, guests arrived at Lorenzo di Filippo Strozzis home in Rome to attend the bankers lavish Carnival feast. They expected decadent spreads of wine, meat, and sweets. Instead, the table held a giant skull surrounded by bones. The terrified guests eventually learned that the skull and bones were filled with roast pheasant and sausages. While alarming, this event wasnt uniqueit was a black banquet, also known as a hell banquet, with settings designed to evoke funeral services at the least, or afflictions of Hell itself at worst. Nailed it.

Starting in the 1880s, time in the Indian city of Mumbai got weird. For centuries, local timekeepers tied the time of day to the rising and setting of the sun, forging Bombay Time. That all changed in the late 19th century as British colonial powers worked to put all of India on a single uniform time zone, Madras Time or Railway Time. Indians were having none of it. Colonial resistance and city pride upheld the tradition of Bombay Timea commitment that would lead to mass protests and vandalism.

Did you hear that the Thirteenth Amendment went missing? No? Good. Because it hasnt, but for decades right-wing conspiracy theorists thought it had. While the American government has never been able to bestow titles of nobility, a handful of fringe theory enthusiasts believed that the missing Thirteenth Amendment went further, stripping citizenship from any American who accepted a title of nobility, and banning such individuals from running for office. Then, in 1983, a researcher named David Dodge claimed that this alleged amendment also applied to lawyers who used the title Esquire. Given that many of our presidents and other politicians have been lawyers, Dodge argued that this amendment essentially turned the American government into a giant sham. To understand the absurdity of his claim, we take a deep dive into the origins of the contentious title.

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A Year in Wacky History, from Renaissance Hell Banquets to Georgias Muddy Spring Rites - Atlas Obscura

In this segment of "The Morning Show" on Motley Fool Live, recorded on Dec. 13, Fool senior analyst Jim Gillies and advisor Jim Mueller examine the best months for market returns over the past 70 years.

Jim Gillies: I had a chance to go through and look at monthly returns, just break up the month of the year, and I went back, it was 70 years, went from 1950-2020. I can share this because if I can pull it up here. But basically, I made this chart so I'm allowed to share. We'll just try to hopefully make this work. You guys can tell me if this gets shown. We're good? Seventy years and the average return over the 70 Januarys, over the 70 Februarys. It was written to show a lot of people think that the worst month for market returns is October because of course we remember Black Monday and Black Tuesday and whatever other black days they refer to.

But the markets in 1929, crashed in October and the markets in 1987 crashed in October and October 2008 was no party I'm going to tell you that although the worst was in September, but this chart here shows the averages.

The ones in red are negatives and the ones in green are the ones that are over 1%. You can see how November, December historically have been the best months for the market, and when I wrote it, it's like Fools, this is just what history tells us. It doesn't mean this year is going to be similar. They could just be down. The market could go down in November, December. 2021 November was bad, December is bad, so we're bucking those trends. But again, if you look out over the averages.

Jim Mueller: The S&P for November is actually pretty close to flat.

Gillies: Did it actually go flat? Well, that then gets me to and I can't share this one because it's not my chart. But I think Bill, you may have shared it as well or I might be misremembering. Have you guys seen the market breadth? The Nasdaq, S&P are barely down for the year. But the average name is 35% off it's high. That says the MANAMANA companies are doing yeoman's work because they are about 25 to 28% of the S&P, they're about for 45-50% of the Nasdaq. Without MANAMANA.

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History Says These Are the Market's Best Months - Motley Fool