17th century, Samuel Sewall wrote: ‘Meeting with the Sachem (Indian chiefs), they came to an agreement and buried two axes in the ground, which ceremony to them is more significant and binding than all the Articles of Peace, the hatchet being the principal weapon.’
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Bug
ENIAC 1 (first computer)
An engineer trying to power the mainframe could not get enough power to run. there were about 25 technicians trying to figure out the problem, and could not.
Chuck decided to check all the vacuum tubes, and found a moth.
Looked at the supervisor, and said, ‘Hey, there’s a bug in here.’
In mid-18th century England a group of ladies decided to replace evenings of card playing and idle chatter with ‘conversation parties,’ inviting illustrious men of letters to discuss literary and intellectual topics with them. One regular guest was scholar- botanist Benjamin Stillingfleet. His hostesses willingly overlooked his cheap blue worsted stockings (a type disdained by the elite) in order to have the benefit of his lively conversation. Those who considered it inappropriate for women to aspire to learning derisively called the group the ‘Blue Stocking Society.’ The women who were the original bluestockings rose above the attempted put-down and adopted the epithet as a name for members of their society.
Not surprisingly, the first blackmailers were corrupt politicians, 17th century Scottish chieftains who demanded protection money from local farmers, who refused only at the risk of having their crops destroyed. The ‘mail,’ or payment, was said to be ‘black’ probably because the color black had long been associated with darkness and evil, but it might also have been because payment was usually made in livestock, rather than in silver (which was known as ‘white money’).
The ‘give me two cows or I’ll burn down your farm’ kind of blackmail first appeared in English around 1552, but by the early 1800’s we were using ‘blackmail’ to mean just about any sort of extortion, especially using threats to reveal secrets.
Homer Iliad: ‘May his fellow warriors fall round him to the earth and bite the dust.’