Lost to Time: Unforgettable Stories That History Forgot

by Martin W. Sandler

Excellent Book

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Historical, Short Stories, World History, Collections, Adult

304 pages, Hardcover

Published June 1, 2010

About the author

Martin W. Sandler has written more than seventy books for children and adults and has written and produced seven television series. He has twice been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and has won multiple Emmy Awards. He lives in Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Sesana · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very mixed bag of mostly obscure bits of historical trivia. A few chapters are genuinely interesting, even riveting, in their own right. In particular, the chapter about the amazingly devastating Peshtigo fire, an enormous disaster that has been largely forgotten because it happened at the same time as the Great Chicago Fire. Others were somewhat less interesting, and somewhat less obscure. Those who love historical minutia will find at least one chapter that's worth the price of admission.

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not only is history written by the 'winners' but with so many libraries and books destroyed over the centuries due to disaster or extreme zeal, many stories have been lost completely or mentions of notable and talented individuals are mere footnotes if even mentioned at all. Disasters - unfortunately - happen every day and media across the centuries can focus on one nearby tragedy while another - possibly even more deadly or far-reaching - barely gets mentioned.

So it is with the eleven tales that Martin Sandler presents.
*Ziryab - a black slave in Moorish al-Andalus in the mid-9th century that transformed music, how the people of Moorish Spain dressed, ate, behaved and even personal hygiene. Only one book collected his musical compositions and songs but it was lost over 900 years ago.
*Cahokia - the 12th century American Indian mound-builder city - mount constructions that were bigger than the footprint of the Great Pyramid of Giza - that may have had between 14-18,000 inhabitants. Larger than the City of London at the same time period.
*Gil Eanes - squire to Infant Henry the Navigator of Portugal, he managed to sail past Cape Bojador, the so-called 'Point of No Return' off the coast of Africa where the "waters boiled even as it was shallow with underwater sand dunes and rocky shoals". Once past the Cape, he opened up Sub-Saharan Africa to European exploration.
*Joseph Warren - a Massachusetts physician that was a charismatic speaker and considered by many to have been the true architect of the American Revolution. He was killed at the British attack on Breeds Hill outside Boston but if he had survived the war, the U.S. may have had a different first president.
*Riders who Out-rode Revere - There were two different rides mentioned. Sybil Ludington who at 16 years of age, traveled through the stormy night to help reassemble her father's militiamen in order to protect Danbury, Connecticut from a British sneak attack. The second was Jack Jouett whose warning to Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia legislature enabled them to escape capture by Lt. Colonel Tarleton.
*Elisha Kent Kane - an extensive traveler about the world, he headed not one but two expeditions to search for the fabled Northwest Passage as well as to rescue or at least find some sign of Sir John Franklin. The publication of his first expedition - considered a poetic and haunting description of ice, glaciers, the dangers as well as the beauty of the Arctic - made him a hero to many, especially those that followed his route which eventually led to the discovery of the North Pole.
*The Sultana - April of 1865 was a busy month for the United States. Lee surrendered. Lincoln was assassinated. Booth was killed by Union soldiers attempting to capture him. General Johnston surrendered the last Confederate Army. And the steamboat Sultana was being paid to transport Union soldiers that were former prisoners of war from Vicksburg to Cairo, Illinois. Barrels of sugar, cases of wine, 80 crew members and 2480 soldiers heading home were on a ship designed to carry 376. A patched boiler exploded in the early morning hours which killed and injured hundreds. Those that weren't killed outright, likely died from drowning as the only place to go was into the Mississippi River. The death toll was estimated at over 1,800. And due to all the other happenstances mentioned above was one reason why the story is not well known.
*America's First Subway - as New York City grew, so did traffic congestion so Alfred Beach - who provided the focus for a small weekly journal called Scientific American - moved forward with the idea of a pneumatic tube transportation system under the streets of New York. Demonstrated to the public during the American Institute Fair in 1867, but further plans had to, unfortunately, get past William Marcy "Boss" Tweed who was receiving kickbacks from the above-ground public transportation systems of omnibuses and horse-car companies. Timing was everything and Beach was ahead of his time. It was a number of years before Tweed was removed from power but by that time, an economic recession had his investors back out.
*Peshtigo - the lumbering community in Wisconsin had the dubious timing of a conflagration that basically wiped the town and several others nearby from the face of the earth the same day as the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. It was rebuilt but it never achieved the prosperity that it previously held.
*Gustave Whitehead - looking more like a bird with wings that actually moved, this German-born aeronaut managed to fly his creation at least two years before the Wright Brothers in North Carolina. Several sworn affidavits exist but only one blurry picture in which the pilot could not be positively identified as Whitehead. Even without the confirmation of the first manned flight, he is still a pioneer of aviation with the silk-covered wings, the concrete runway and rubber tires to ease take offs and landing.
* Exercise Tiger - the disastrous D-day rehearsal that went phenomenally wrong what with use of live ammunition to mix-ups regarding radio communications channels and actual German torpedo boats spotting the collection of LST's (landing ship, tank) near Lyme Bay, England to failure to train fully loaded soldiers how to properly put on inflatable life belts nor any abandon ship drills. At least 750 servicemen were killed and their bodies were never accounted for nor returned to their families.

I knew of two of those people/occurrences so there is obviously some gaps that need to be filled. That's what I truly enjoy about this type of book is that it gives the reader some new pathways to explore in the halls of history. And Mr. Sandler made a varied selection for his presentation even though there seemed to be a strong lean towards Americans.

2021-067

[Karl Rove]

Eleven short tales of now largely forgotten people, events or places from throughout history, from the Moorish slave turned scholar to the botched practice for D-Day that cost more lives than were lost in the actual landings the first day on Utah Beach. A quick read, this volume will probably only find favor with the historically obsessed.

[Glenda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surprising, informative, interesting stories of real events !!!

So interesting, unforgettable, and surprisingly unknown stories of courageous and inventive heroes that have been forgotten !! Yet, we owe a debt to them in many ways. Among them are explorers, inventors, adventurers and even hush-hush military secrets !!! Highly recommend!!

[Ted Hinkle · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOST TO TIME is an notable compilation of historical events which parallel similar significant events which garnered more attention. Interesting read for history enthusiasts.

[Chris Demer · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are amazing true stories from history. Several are virtually unknown, and others were skimmed over in history class for various reasons. I will mention each briefly.

ZIRYAB - a Moorish slave in the 8th century who rose to international fame as an artist, musician, designer. He had a huge influence on fashion, cuisine and personal hygiene.

CAHOKIA - A large (30,000 inhabitants) complex city and worship center in the Mississippi Valley. It reached its peak in the 12th century and is the only large city complex unearthed in the Americas north of Mexico.

GIL EANES - A Portuguese man who became a navigator in the 1400s, and after a couple of tries, was the first European to sail beyond the "point of non return" on the route south around the West Coast of Africa. He bravely coaxed his frightened sailors beyond Cape Bajador, beyond which sea monsters were said to exist. Unfortunately this breakthrough, long with Columbus's resulted in centuries of slave trade.

JOSEPH WARREN - Warren County PA is named for him due to his very significant contributions to the American War of Independence as a General. He studied medicine and practiced in Boston-among his patients were John and Sam Adams and John Hancock. He became a vocal patriot and wrote the "resolves" to boycott British imports. He seems to have been left out of most textbooks, unfortunately.

FORGOTTEN RIDERS - Everyone knows the story of Paul Revere's ride, but two other riders, including a 16 year old girl, rode farther and over rougher terrain at night in the rain to warn citizens of British movements and helping to raise the militia. Unfortunately for Sybil Luddington and Jack Jouett, only Paul Revere is remembered because ha had the benefit of being the subject of a poem by Longfellow.

ELISHA KENT KANE- 1820-1857; Although suffering a weak heart from rheumatic fever, he had a life of travel and adventure - including: practicing medicine on a ship in China, travel through Egypt, India, Athens and Paris and other distant lands. He performed heroics in the war with Mexico and served as medical officer on an expedition to the Arctic in search of John Franklin. He wrote brilliantly and enthusiastically about this exploration that was widely read. He was in the party that discovered some graves of Franklin's sailors. On his second arctic expedition, he was forced to winter on the ship snared in ice and endured a horrendous winter-one of the coldest in arctic history. Ahead of his time, he forced the crew to eat potatoes, sauerkraut and llime jouce, thereby avoiding deadly scurvy.Finally returning home in 1853, he embarked on yet another polar journey, spending the winter farther north than any previous expedition. He discovered the largest glacier in the world and survived two yrs in the arctic. He was an inspiration to later exploreres including Amundsen and Peary.

THE SULTANA - A riverboat conveying 2400 Union soldiers back to the north from Vicksburg in 1865, exploded and sank, killing more than 1700. The boat was grossly overloaded (to increase payments to the owner) and the boiler exploded causing the boat to burn uncontrollably. Most of the dead were released from Confederate prisons and were malnourished, weak and injured. They had no chance of survival.
This awful event, unfortunately, was overshadowed in the press due to the assassination of President Lincoln, which happened the same week.

AMERICA'S FIRST SUBWAY - In the 1870s there was a huge problem with traffic in New York. With the city expanding rapidly and thousands of new immigrants, the streets were clogged with horse and various horse-drawn vehicles. The streets were dirty, muddy, and full of manure. Travel was very slow. One man who had a plan to improve conditions of travel in the city was ALFRED ELY BEACH. With wealth from his father he began the journal Scientific American -still a respected scientific journal - and built a prototype subway for two blocks using pneumatic tube technology.
He worked in secret with teams of diggers and technical help-primarily because of the politics of trying to get an approval from Boss Tweed and other politicians. It opened with a successful ride by many who were enthralled.
However, current events and politics prevented a wider application. After a huge snow storm in 1904, New York opened a subway system.
Meanwhile, Beach developed a printing machine for the blind which led to the development of the typewriter - an instrument that changed the way offices around the world operated!

THE PESHTIGO FIRE-of 1871. In Northern Wisconsin there was a thriving town called Peshtigo, the main stay of which was the lumber business. Surrounded by forests, the town grew up on a riverside and had a booming lumber mill, floating loge down the river and processing them for sale.
the town was very prosperous, until the summer of 1871, when a severs drought hit the area. As the underbrush dried out,as never before, west winds swept through the area. The town caught fire fed by the wooden buildings, the lumber and sawdust and dry underbrush. The entire town was destroyed along with hundreds of lives. This disaster, though was overshadowed by the great Chicago fire that occurred at roughly he same time and received most of the press.

GUSTAVE WHITEHEAD - there is much evidence that he, and not the wright brothers was the first to fly an airplane. Probably in 1901.

EXERCISE TIGER- This was supposed to be a practice for the invasion of Normandy. But many things went terribly wrong. There were communication gaps, live ammunition that was not supposed to have been used, and most seriously, attacks by German boats that no one expected. Hundreds were killed in the "exercise", and the event was highly classified. No one was to mention it and the medical facilities where the injured were taken were basically locked down. The details have only recently come to light.

[Sherry Sharpnack · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an informative, quick read . The “Titanic” wasn’t the worst loss of life in American maritime history; the “Sultana” was. Read about Zayrab, who brought music and music theory from Baghdad to the Moors of the Iberian peninsula. Read about the folks who rode further than Paul Revere—one was a woman! And the most riveting read was about the Peshtigo Fire: we don’t know about about it, b/c the “great” Chicago Fire occurred on the same day.

As I said, an informative book filled w/ some history we didn’t know.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it. It was an ambitious project to take on in finding stories that hadn't been heard of and yet had enough information about it to write a chapter. Some of the choices seemed random and there was definitely a male focus but it was interesting to learn about as the only story I knew about was the Sultana sinking.

[Dave Franz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic tidbits from history. Can be read out of chapter order. A quick read. Demonstrates how easily real events are lost when no one cares to retell the story.

[Zoe Jean · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's an interesting book, but, since I already knew most of the unknown history in the book, I gave it only 3 stars.

[Brittney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent little tidbits of history written in small chapters of people or events that have been lost in time.

[Selena]

The first couple chapters were interesting. Then it went on about white people so I started skimming before I stopped reading.

[Gregory Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book of short articles about events most of us never knew before. The first was about a former slave from Baghdad, who was forced to leave and went up to the Iberian Peninsula, where he worked for the Emirate of Cordoba. He eventually became a linguist, geographer, poet, chemist, musician, singer, astronomer, etiquette and fashion expert.

The second was about a large native American city called Cahokia, in an area just outside present-day St. Louis, Missouri, in what is now Collinsville, Illinois. Between approximately 1050-1350 AD/CE, between 15-20,000 people lived in this city. There is now a Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site where around a hundred earthen mounds or pyramids were constructed, considered to be the largest and most complex archaeological site north of Mexico.

In April 1865, the steamboat Sultana, designed for a capacity of 376, yet filled with nearly 2,500 soldiers returning home from the Civil War, exploded and sank, killing over 1,800 people - more deaths than in the later Titanic disaster of 1912. Yet in the shadow of the war’s end, this happened within weeks of President Lincoln’s assassination and the killing of his assassin, so it became overshadowed by other news.

Overall, the book delivered on what its title promised.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

We selected 900s for our latest Read-Around-the-Library and this book appealed to me because there were people and events that I had never heard of before. Each chapter has a different subject beginning with Ziryab the tastemaker Arab in 800s Andalusia and ending with Operation Tiger a secret trial run for the D-Day Normandy Invasion. Some of the people and events were lost to common knowledge because other events had more media coverage or were just lost to time. Two American heroes of the Revolutionary War were forgotten because of the PR value of poetry. Sybil Ludington and Jack Jouett both had longer and more difficult rides than Paul Revere, but they didn't have a Longfellow poem. This book was highly readable, narrative non-fiction and quite interesting. Highly recommended for history fans looking for something more.

[Tom Darrow · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are looking for a book that has odd stories, compartmentalized into 20ish page chapters, this is the book for you.

The author makes the argument that many of these "lost to time" figures or stories should be remembered or taught more than others. For example, the Sultana disaster resulted in more deaths than the Titanic and Gustave Whitehead may have flown an airplane before the Wright Brothers.

There is some compelling evidence here.

The book, though, has a bit of an identity crisis. The first chapter is about a ninth century Muslim slave, and the second chapter about 12th century Cahokia. The other 8 chapters are about 1770s and later US history. The previous two chapters, though informative, seem very out of place both is place and time.

[Duarte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ziryab's story is fascinating: he managed to transform the guitar into a more evolved musical instrument with new sounds and scales. He also transformed and evolved the whole concept of beauty and personal care.
The next story tells of Gil Eanes. The crossing of the Cape of Storms and the expansion of the Portuguese discoveries.
This is something that English-language history books usually fail to address, in an omission and lack of recognition for the Portuguese discoverers that I still don't understand.
All the other stories are interesting too, but I'd particularly like to highlight the first two chapters, which deal with Spain and Portugal.

[Carlos Dragonné · Rating 4 out of 5]

A veces parece uno de esos libros que podría llevarte por el camino de la conspiración, pero en realidad lo que tiene es una serie de momentos históricos que se han quedado perdidos en otros espacios, en el olvido o, incluso, como decía alguien: "La historia la escribe el bando ganador". Hay muchos momentos que de plano no conocía, un par de los que sí había escuchado pero no mucho. Pero desde el primero de los capítulos es un recorrido por cómo pequeños momentos y personajes han cambiado la historia aunque no se les reconozca o, en otro caso, historias que se perdieron en el ruido de otras más escandalosas.

Vale la pena, sin duda. Y se lo echan en dos sentadas.

[Macayla Fryc · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best randomly spotted library books ever. Who knew that D-Day had a rehearsal in which over 700 troops were killed, one where the government went to extraordinary lengths to cover up? Or that the Great Chicago Fire isn’t so “great” in comparison to the even worse same-day forest fire that killed 7 times as many people? Or that not one, but two other people outdid Paul Revere in the most influential and life-saving warning rides of the Revolution? Or that the Wright brothers actually weren’t the first to fly?
Do yourself a favor and read it.

[Jeremy Osman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Small but Mighty

This short read is so full of "uncommon" history it is absolutely enthralling. If you are a history fan, this connects events to real people you've probably never heard of....but should have. If you are not a fan of history,....you will be after this read. Highly recommend for the inquisitive reader.

[Sarah Haman · Rating 3 out of 5]

These stories are a must read. They are perfect for a trip since you can come to a stopping place easily. These talk about many inventors and events that took place before the accepted and are fascinating.

[Amanda Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book by chance and I must say this is a fascinating read. From intriguing people and events that never get mentioned in our history books to things that make you think. My favorite stories were Ziryab and Joseph Warren.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some very interesting stories - none of which I had heard before, I’ll admit - but they were all so tragic, or the author focused primarily on the tragic features in them that I found the book quite depressing.

[David Reaney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting events lost

Each story provided insight into past events I was never aware of. Easy to read and makes you wonder what other significant events have been lost that have impacted your own life.

[Carmi Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Must for Any History Buff!

I love history and had only heard the story of the Sultana. None of these should have been forgotten. All are well researched and each is amazing. If you enjoy history you will enjoy this book.

[Cassie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazon randomly recommended this to me and I took a chance on since I enjoy history. If you're an extreme history buff, you probably already know a lot of these - but most were new to me. It's well-sourced, from what I can tell. Writing is fine enough. 3.75/4

[Verity Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting but tabloid-ish

The stories in this book are interesting enough, but the tone is sensationalized, and the author's preferred take on each story (particularly regarding Gustav Whitehead) is the one that is told. The book would have benefitted a lot from maps.

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

A tolerable description of eleven historical episodes. The author considers that these events have been forgotten by general histories.

[Darryl Bortolot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting tidbits of (largely) American history. A pleasant read.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some stories were a little hard at the beginning to get into, and the first 2 were odd, but after that each chapter was more intriguing then the last.
A very thought provoking read.

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting bits of little-known history. I'm sure there are a lot more such stories, impossible to compile in a single book.