Welcome! google3d495549482a90fa.html
I am Ed Darrell. Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub is my weblog.
You may contact me by e-mail at edarrell-AT-sbcglobal-DOT-net.
If you are reading this in Microsoft Internet Explorer, all the sidebar stuff has fallen to the bottom of the page. I do not know what reinforcer failed to let it fall so low, but it’s on your end, and it’s the software — I can’t do anything about it at this end. I’m sorry. I use FireFox to avoid such problems.
Of all the bathtubs in all the bathrooms in the world, and I had to pick Millard Fillmore’s!
Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub started as my way of learning about making blogs work, for my hope to integrate blog usage into the classroom.
This blog focuses on history education, with meanders into all of the social studies: Economics, history, geography, law, political science, and government (have I left something unmentioned? It’s in there). Debunking false, bad, bogus and voodoo history occupied me from at least junior high school; the story of Millard Fillmore’s bathtub, the hoax perpetrated by H. L. Mencken and the inability of historians to straighten out the issue in 90 years, seemed a good jumping off point.
My hope is to help students, their learning partners (especially parents), teachers and administrators make history sing for the students — and other social studies, too.
My experience is broad — political campaigns, legislative staffing, executive agencies, law, private business (airline, wireless telephones, logistics and other management consulting), and education (college, graduate school, secondary).
Please provide comments: What helps you? What sources do you know about that I don’t list, but should?
What do you know about Millard Fillmore’s bathtub that I don’t?
[Well, yes, I do find it irritating that people keep calling me "Tim Pagonos" or "Tim Panogos." It's rather an insult to a beautiful work of rock, don't you think?]
http://alphainventions.com/history.xml
Stumble It!
April 11, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Mr. Bird, if you choose to believe that Millard Fillmore introduced the first plumbed bathtub to the White House in 1853, and that he had to overcome the opposition of medical authorities to do so, please feel free to do so. In your case, Mr. Bird, for such beliefs in untrue things, res ipsa loquitur.
Mencken himself announced it was a hoax. But of course, Mr. Bird would know better what Mr. Mencken knew and thought, than Mr. Mencken would — according to Mr. Bird.
You are a legend in your own closed mind, Mr. Bird. You’re quickly becoming another sort of legend here.
April 11, 2009 at 2:26 pm
” the hoax perpetrated by H. L. Mencken and the inability of historians to straighten out the issue in 90 years, seemed a good jumping off point.”
What hoax was that? My bet is that the hoax is all your own. You’ve proved a nitwit with the DDT-rationing holocaust. No doubt you’ve got this one wrong too.
How about operation keelhaul? You a denier of history in that regard as well?
December 28, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Hi! Just saw that you linked to my course website (HIST128 at KU). I have encouraged my students to check out the blogs on my blogroll, and hopefully some of have come on over here. You have a great site!
December 6, 2008 at 1:13 am
Ed – I’ve really enjoyed reading your blog and would like to invite you to mine, The Third Rail. You’re welcome time to read and comment any time.
Chris
August 12, 2008 at 2:13 am
Darrell, All I know is I like Ezra T’s Talk about the Proper Role of Government. It just seems to me that right now, the central government is just way too big.
Anyway, thanks for the comment on my blog. :)
July 10, 2008 at 3:02 pm
[...] Secondly, Ed showed that he didn’t actually know much about the history of the development of evolutionary theory when he made his claims. He thought that Darwin understood inheritance mechanisms, when every modern evolutionist acknowledges that Darwin and his contemporaries did not understand the mechanisms of heredity at all. Ed also didn’t know anything about the early-20th-century controversies among evolutionists leading to the Modern Synthesis. This is rather distressing, considering that Ed is supposedly a history teacher. [...]
May 21, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Michala,
No, it was William Howard Taft who was reputed to have gotten stuck in a White House Bathtub.
If you want sources on Fillmore, click on the third tab at the top, “Millard Fillmore.”
H. L. Mencken wrote a hoax column once upon a time about how Millard Fillmore’s only worthwhile action had been the installation of the first bathtub at the White House. It was all a hoax. You can find links to that essay on the “About MFB” page. Here’s the story:
http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2006/07/03/hello-world/
May 21, 2008 at 7:57 am
I really don’t get it i’m doing a report on Millard Fillmore and all it says at the top of the screen is Millard Fillmore’s bathtub!!!! I mean seriousley is he the president that got stuck in his bath tub?
TYPE BACK PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
April 23, 2008 at 2:09 am
If this was a blogspot template I’d tell you that your content in the main column is bigger than the column, which pushes it into the sidebar, which then moves down to get out of the way. I solved this by widening the main column and the overall page width. Why they use pixel widths rather than percentages, I dont know, but then I’m not really an html guy, except in the most primitive sense.
February 27, 2008 at 9:25 am
Saw a reference to Mallard Fillmore’s bathtub here on Slate and immediately thought of you.
October 30, 2007 at 11:35 am
I was referred to your blog by your son whom I went to school with. I wanted to leave a note to say that your blog is consistently one of my favorites to read.
September 18, 2007 at 10:42 pm
Many thanks.
September 18, 2007 at 10:41 pm
Post something new :)
(Maybe you might have meant you have reached the WP limits on how many incoming feeds get displayed in the sidebar. I ended up mixing several feeds into one, such as the Tundra Teachers group. I used http://www.rssmix.com/ but only 4 feeds can be mixed. There’s a new one I want to try.)
September 18, 2007 at 10:13 pm
“My limits” means I don’t know how feeds work.
Check it now — I’ve set the thing at full article rather than summary. Does that help?
September 18, 2007 at 10:01 pm
I don’t know what you mean by limit to feeds. WordPress issues your posts in a feed and millions and millions of us (nay, billions and biolliosn) can subscribe.
What happens now is you have probably set set your options for Dashboard | Options | Reading to a low level. Some people set it low, some set it full. My preference is full so I can mark to read later, go to the site for commenting or for checking out the urls of your readers, etc.
It is true that everything after the “more” tag in a post will not be fed out.
September 18, 2007 at 11:15 am
We’re pushing my limits on feeds. As I understand it, you lose anything that I post after a jump, right?
September 18, 2007 at 10:34 am
Any chance you could go to full feeds, please? Sometimes I miss interesting stuff until I read the comments (then I come back to the blog itself, if I have time.)
Well, everything is interesting. It’s just that there is so much interesting to read and so little time…
August 23, 2007 at 10:55 pm
[...] Why Millard Fillmore’s bathtub? [...]
August 22, 2007 at 7:02 pm
Thank you for this site. Here are a few other sites to triangulate with:
http://rtnl.wordpress.com/
http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com/
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/
http://poetry.poetryx.com
http://www.bibliomania.com/0/5/frameset.html
May 3, 2007 at 10:08 am
Mr. Ex-Presidend’s Tub, sir,
Thank you for your kind mention of some great artists, John Starling and Carolina Star. Fans of the artists might be interested in a video interview of Mr. Starling and Emmylou Harris recorded as a companion peice to the new record.
http://www.lotosnile.com/marketing/starlingvideo.php
March 27, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Not sure how that works out. A couple of those are from my visits to your blog. Others should probably show the link through Clio Bluestocking (esp. this one: http://cliobluestockingtales.blogspot.com/2007/03/sea-otter-blogger.html)
Interesting mystery.
(Hey, you, readers! Go talk a look at http://calabazanova.wordpress.com/
It’s worth it.)
March 27, 2007 at 9:40 pm
Ed,
I keep noticing that your blog is referring people to my blog. Thanks, I like traffic. Could you tell me where you’ve linked to me?
Thanks.
December 26, 2006 at 11:42 pm
http://tinyurl.com/uhytn FYI re: history and myth and audiences for same (Tuskegee Airmen)