A Neglected Anniversary
A Neglected Anniversary is the title of an article by Henry L. Mencken in which he commemorates the 75th anniversary of the first bathtub in the USA. The content was fictitious, but was not questioned, but spread.
The article appeared in the New York Evening Mail on December 28, 1917 . In it he complained that the public neglected the 75th anniversary of the first bathtub introduced in the USA. This was installed on December 20, 1842 in Cincinnati . It was built there by the dealer Adam Thompson, who met the tub invented by Lord John Russell in England in 1828. Mencken described how the tub models were gradually improved and the difficulties that had arisen during development. The bathtub was initially demonized as decadent and harmful to health, or even banned. The bathtub became more widespread with inexpensive zinc models from 1847 and medical approval in the period that followed. President Millard Fillmore finally brought the breakthrough to the bathtub by having a bathtub set up in the White House in a publicly effective manner.
On May 23, 1926, Mencken's article Melancholy Reflections appeared in the Chicago Tribune . There he admitted the vertigo. He expressed concern that his invention would now be generally taught as truth. He saw historiography in general as being prone to error and manipulation. Despite Mencken's admission, the wrong story was still on. In 1958 Curtis MacDougall listed 55 places where the wrong article had been presented as facts in various media since the denial. Unsuspecting, President Harry S. Truman took up the story in a speech in 1952. In November 2001, the Washington Post reported about Fillmore's bathtub.
Individual evidence
- ^ Henry Mencken: A Neglected Anniversary . In the Museum of Hoaxes.
- ^ Henry L. Mencken: Melancholy Reflections . In the Museum of Hoaxes.
- ^ Museum of Hoaxes: History of the Bathtub
- ^ Millard Fillmore's Bathtub , sniggle.net.