Mulligan Stew, or It's Burgoo to You, Part 1

The worm turns...

The Mckay's review of Ship of Theseus calls the book "a vulgar ouroboros of a novel."  Ourobos, the snake that eats its own tail. According to wikipedia,

The Ouroboros often symbolize self-reflexivity or cyclicality, especially in the sense of something constantly re-creating itself, the eternal return, and other things such as the phoenix which operate in cycles that begin anew as soon as they end. It can also represent the idea of primordial unity related to something existing in or persisting from the beginning with such force or qualities it cannot be extinguished. While first emerging in Ancient Egypt, the Ouroboros has been important in religious and mythological symbolism, but has also been frequently used in alchemical illustrations, where it symbolizes the circular nature of the alchemist's opus. It is also often associated with Gnosticism, and Hermeticism.

Based on what I have found, I suspect that almost everything in S. is a "ship of Theseus."  An unreliable narrator with subterfuge in mind and a reclusive author; both of whom seek to encrypt and misdirect.  The people, the dates, most footnotes appear to be composites of real and literary references and individuals with some intentional misdirection and fictions thrown in to obscure and muddy the waters.

Palimpsests, archaeological strata, literary references that don't quite make sense; pastiches, layers and composites join in to obscure.

The archaeological strata of literature...

That snake that eats its own tale can be a metaphor for literature that takes what came before.  Whether we like it or not, much of what is written, painted or discussed is based in part on something that came previously.  That's not to say the work can't be original and engaging, but it can't exist without history.  Works like Tristram Shandy, The King in Yellow, Finnegans Wake, Ready Player One, The Waste Land and now S. all owe a debt to history.

It's a literary genealogy that Tolkien referred to as the "cauldron of story." Sterne was inspired by Rabelais, Locke, Pope and Swift and their influence is well documented.  The King in Yellow owes a debt to Ambrose Bierce from whom Chambers appropriated Carcosa.  These works went on to inspire the likes of Lovecraft, Goethe, Marx and many, many others.  And it continues to this day, as Mystimus discovered with the Glass Bead Game.

Prehistoric pastiches...

Juan Blas Covarubbias, the Portuguese pirate is fictional. Yet the name Covarubbias is not, nor does it originate from Portugual, but Spain.   It comes from Burgos Province and some of the surrounding areas to describe the red caves found in that area; many of these same caves feature prehistoric art. Don Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, amateur archaeologist, discovered the Altamira cave on his property in nearby Cantabria (which used to be part of Burgos and was in 1590), but it was his young daughter who spotted the drawings on the ceiling.  Cueva de La Pasiega, also in Cantabria has sanctuaries or galleries of cave paintings from different ages not unlike the cave S and Corbeau escape through.  It was officially discovered when researchers were told by villagers in the area of its existence 1911.

The city Burgos of Spain, and located in the province of the same name, has two interesting looking museums, one for books and a museum on evolution (following the monkey, perhaps?).  Both opened in 2010, so it's possible that DD knew of their existence while he was writing S., or it could just be a happy accident.  

I also found in researching Burgos, that the word "karst" as in Karst & Sons, the now defunct publishing company (page v), is a part of a geological term called karst topography which is described as the erosion of a layer or layers of bedrock.

Mulligan Stew, or It's All Burgoo to You, Part 2

Monkey's Marginalia No 11, The B. Traven edition

1.  Remember Luis Bunuel with the strange movie poster for That Obscure Object of Desire?  I found a direct link to him through B. Traven.  Esperanza Lopez Mateos, who was Traven's translator until her death in 1951, was cousin to Gabriel Figueroa, a well-known cinematographer who worked with Luis Bunuel.  I would like to note here that Bunuel was a contemporary and friend of Salvador Dali and the Spanish poet, Federico Garcia Lorca, who was assassinated in 1936 by Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War.

2.  Time magazine did an article on B. Traven and was able to track down Mateos, Traven's translator a few years before her death.  She pretty much scoffed at the idea that she could be Traven, noting that some of the books would have been written when she was a young girl and that she is guilty of the sin of elaboration, something Traven did not do with his writing.  

3.  In Gabriel Figuerora's autobiography, Memorias, he says his cousin knew Traven to be the illegimate son of Emil Rathenau.  This comes from second hand information from a website, and since there is no translation available, I would appreciate the help of any Spanish speakers who have access to this book to confirm this information. 

4.  Peter Wood's theory is that Traven was Danish explorer and archaeologist, Frans Blum. 

5.  I did come across the website of Terry Priest whose neighbor was Henry Schnautz, one-time body guard to Trotsky.  Perhaps the most interesting thing about Henry was his love affair with Esperanza Lopez Mateos.  Just as interesting on the site is the small book Esperanza wrote and pictures of Trotsky's room (scroll down) after the assassination attempt. 

Please be polite if you choose to engage Mr. Priest, he assures me below that he is not "in game."   I would hate for him to take down all of his wonderful information because one of us was rude.

Monkey's Marginalia No 10

These are the wagtails, snippets, random thoughts and threads that are too short for their own posts.  

1.  Defenestration occurs on the TV show NCIS last week involving several TVs and a music agent. 

3.  Ambrose Bierce, journalist and author, or Bitter Bierce, as he was dubbed due to his sardonic world view and outspoken criticisms, disappeared under mysterious circumstances as he was following Pancho Villa's army during the Mexican Revolution.   He had joined as an observer after a tour of Civil War battlefields. 

Although Bierce and Samuel Clemens were good friends, Clemens had written the following regarding one of Bierce's short story collections. 

Gentlemen: “Dod Grile” (Mr. Bierce) is a personal friend of mine, & I like him exceedingly — but he knows my opinion of the “Nuggets & Dust,” & so I do not mind exposing it to you. It is the vilest book that exists in print — or very nearly so. If you keep a “reader,” it is charity to believe he never really read that book, but framed his verdict upon hearsay. Bierce has written some admirable things — fugitive pieces — but none of them are among the “Nuggets.” There is humor in Dod Grile, but for every laugh that is in his book there are five blushes, ten shudders and a vomit. The laugh is too expensive. Ys truly Samuel L. Clemens

As you can see from the letter, Bierce was known to use pseudonyms. Bierce was also the originator of Carcosa, later used by Robert W. Chambers in his collection of short stories, The King in Yellow.  Two of Bierces stories, An Occurrence at Owl Creek and An Inhabitant of Carcosa may provide a clue to the fate of S. and maybe even Straka.  There is a Lost connection, too, as a book of An Occurence at Owl Creek appeared in one episode.  Carcosa is probably based on Carcassone, France whose Latin name was Carcaso.

4.  I did find a contemporary Estonian composer who may be an analog for Ragnar Rummo.  Erkki Sven Tuur composed Whistles and Whispers from Uluru for recorder and string orchestra in 2007.  The work was performed by Genevieve Lacey with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and can be listened to at the link connected to her name.  Uluru is the indigenous name for the natural rock formation that was formerly known as Ayer's Rock in Australia.

5.  There is a Castalia, Iowa (see Mystimus' game changing post here) and Doug Dorst was know to have graduated from the Iowa Writer's Workshop.  I'm sure this one is just a wagtail, but still interesting (to me, the Iowan, anyway).

Update 2: Update: Vevoda's Cellar or Events in Time and Space

I have put the events in chronological order and finally remembered to add the drowning referred to by Jen on page 403.  As I stated previously, NV or non-vintage might be a reference through wordplay to look at events current to the writing and publishing of the book; hence the inclusion of events occurring in the 1940's. I also grabbed the wrong date for Straka's death and that has just been corrected. 

1. Noir Barkol 1756:  Refers to the Qing Dynasty's annexation of the area formerly controlled by the Zunghar Khanate. In 1756, the Chinese emperor ordered the death of all men in Barkol or Suzhou.  The murdered men's wives and children were given to soldiers in the emperor's army. 
2. Noir Bijapur 1791: Doji Bara famine in South Asia.  An El Nino event caused a drought in the area from 1791-1792.  In one estimate, famine and disease may have contributed to the deaths of 11 million people. 
3. Noir Galway 1831:  This one is interesting doesn't appear to reference an act of violence.  The Wardenship of Galway was dissolved by the Church of Ireland in 1831.  Edmund Ffrench was the last warden.  Galway may also reference the tribes of Galway, a group of a powerful families that ran Galway until the late 19th century.  A magistrate does note that something was happening in Galway in 1831, but the details were not given in The Edinburgh Review. Two sailing vessels, the Cyclops and the Kelly, sank of the coast of County Galway in 1831.  One of the ships was the Cyclops, which might be another clue to James Joyce, especially as Joyce was descended from one of the tribes of Galway.  
4. Noir Dahomey 1840: Dahomey was an African country ruled by a monarchy in what is now Benin.  Dahomey was involved in the profitable slave trade. In 1840, Dahomey attempted to take over Yoruba territory.
5. Black Taranaki 1863:  The Second Taranaki War was a conflict between the Maori and New Zealand government. 
6. Noir Odessa 1871: The Odessa pogrom, one in a series of violence targeting the Jews in Odessa, a city in Ukraine. 
7. Noir Rio Negro 1879:  Basically a state-sponsored land grab from the indigenous populations, in 1878, a massive campaign started to clear the land between the Negro River and the Alsina Trench by armed forces. 
8. Tangier (Jun) 1905:  The First Moroccan Crisis refers to Germany's support of Morocco as an independent state, but the support damaged Germany's relations with France and the U.S.  The crisis reached a peak in June 1905, and is considered a contributing factor to WWI. 
9. B___ (Oct) 1906:  Per jillaggie, potentially related to the MacLaren owned sawmill strike and subsequent killing of two labor leaders in Buckingham, Quebec.
10. Berlin/Danzig 1908:  The line from Berlin to Danzig(Gdansk) is a rough border for the Polish corridor.  The German Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia confiscated land and evicted the ethnic Polish population (although this was reversed in 1925). 
11. Noir Adana 1909: The Adana Massacre occurred in Adana Province of the Ottoman Empire against the Armenian population there.
12. Los Angeles (Dec) 1910:  Llewellyn Iron Works bombing was preceded by a bombing of the Los Angeles Times in October and resulted in the arrest and conviction of labor leaders. 
13. Tripoli (Sep) 1911:  The Italo-Turkish war was Italy's attempt to assert it rights over parts of what is now Libya.  It marked the use of the first aerial bomb dropped from an airplane.
14. Noir Calais 1912: Fictional riot that takes place in 1912 at Calais, France in SOT.  Calais built the monument Le Pluviose in 1912 to commemorate the death of 27 when the steamer Pas de Calaise accidentally cause the submarine, Pluviose, to sink in May 1910, and the monument was not dedicated until 1913.  Per gz: Fourteen people were killed in a coal mine explosion at the Clarence Coal Company at Pas de Calais, France.
15. Salonika (Thessaloniki) (Mar) 1912:  Geekyzen and Jillp have brought it to me that Salonika is an alternate name for Thessaloniki.   And in 1912 Greece sunk an Ottoman ship, the Feth-i_Bülend in the harbor of Thessaloniki.
16. Noir Ypres 1915: Ypres, Belgium. Second battle of Ypres during World War I, notable because the it was the first time that the Germans used poison gas on a mass scale. 
17. Havana 1946 (June 5): Straka's murder in his hotel room. 
18. Marseilles/Cap de Bol (March 19) 1948: Woman who supplied map drowned in Vevoda's wine found at Cap de Bol, Spain and reported in the Marseilles, France newspaper. 
19. New York 1949:  (from the SOT copyright notice) Airplane crash on October 28th in the Azores.  The plane was headed for New York.  Also, the Peekskill riots happened in 1949.
20. Toronto 1949:  (from the SOT copyright notice) The SS Noronic disaster, a fire started in a linen closet and was fueled by the lemon scented furniture polish which led to several fatalities.  

Fallen Sagittarius, Mountain Sparrows and Other Thoughts on Footnote 6 in Chapter 3

It was Gaspard-Serge Coriolis, of course, who first detailed the mathematical principles that govern the function of kinetic energy. Much of Straka’s work evinces an understanding of, and appreciation for, the work of innovative practitioners of the sciences. Straka was particularly impressed by some of the lesser-known of these people, like Wolfgang Spatzberg, Samuel Quinn-Collier, and Sagittario della Caduta. Careful readers of Book V of Coriolis will discover the roles each of these men’s findings play in the development of the narrative.

First there are the names themselves.  I started with Sagittario della Caduta which in Italian means "Fall of Sagittarius."  Sagittarius is the constellation representing a centaur with bow and arrow drawn.  All the imagery is taken directly from Greek mythology, but Sagittarius does not have a clear mythological link to the Greeks.

The Babylonians identified Sagittarius as the god Nergal, a strange centaur-like creature firing an arrow from a bow. It is generally depicted with wings, with two heads, one panther head and one human head, as well as a scorpion's stinger raised above its more conventional horse's tail. The Sumerian name Pabilsag is composed of two elements – Pabil, meaning 'elder paternal kinsman' and Sag, meaning 'chief, head'. The name may thus be translated as the 'Forefather' or 'Chief Ancestor'. The figure is reminiscent of modern depictions of Sagittarius.

In Greek mythology, Sagittarius is usually identified as a centaur: half human, half horse. However, perhaps due to the Greek's adoption of the Sumerian constellation, some confusion surrounds the identity of the archer. Some identify Sagittarius as the centaur Chiron, the son of Philyra and Saturn and tutor to Jason, who was said to have changed himself into a horse to escape his jealous wife, Rhea. However, Chiron is in fact represented by the constellation Centaurus, the other heavenly centaur. An alternative tradition is that Chiron merely invented the constellation Sagittarius to help in guiding the Argonauts in their quest for the Golden Fleece.

It also appears that Sagittario is a common name for airplanes and boats in Italy.  The Italian Destroyer, Sagittario, was involved in Operation Mercury which was the invasion to take Crete by the Axis Powers during World War 2.  The invasion started on May 20, 1941 and ended June 1, 1941 with a German victory.

I think the Sumerian name Pabilsag for the constellation Sagittarius may be meaningful in the context of one of the other names given, Samuel Quinn-Collier.  Samuel means "name of God" or "heard by God."  Quinn is deriviative of Conn, which means "chief, intellect or mind."  Quinn means "son of chief, son of Conn, race of Conn."  Collier is French for ruff or necklace.  It maybe a stretch, but I think that Samuel Quinn-Collier might be a reference to Moses and the golden calf.  Moses was raised by the Pharoah's daughter who claimed Moses as her own son.  The Israelites in Exodus melted down their gold to create the calf while Moses was on Mount Sinai to receive the 10 commandments.

The third and final name is Wolfgang Spatzberg.  Wolfgang roughly means "wolf path or wolf journey" and Spatzberg, I think means in the context of German, "mountain sparrow."  Although so far, I have not found what I felt were any meaningful connections, I did find an interesting poem by Goethe (archive.org) called:

WINTER JOURNEY OVER THE HARTZ* MOUNTAINS.

[The following explanation is necessary, in order to make this
ode in any way intelligible. The Poet is supposed to leave his
companions, who are proceeding on a hunting expedition in winter,
in order himself to pay a visit to a hypochondriacal friend, and
also to see the mining in the Hartz mountains. The ode
alternately describes, in a very fragmentary and peculiar manner,
the naturally happy disposition of the Poet himself and the
unhappiness of his friend; it pictures the wildness of the road
and the dreariness of the prospect, which is relieved at one spot
by the distant sight of a town, a very vague allusion to which is
made in the third strophe; it recalls the hunting party on which
his companions have gone; and after an address to Love, concludes
by a contrast between the unexplored recesses of the highest peak
of the Hartz and the metalliferous veins of its smaller
brethren.]

LIKE the vulture
Who on heavy morning clouds
With gentle wing reposing
Looks for his prey,--
Hover, my song!
For a God hath
Unto each prescribed
His destined path,
Which the happy one
Runs o'er swiftly
To his glad goal:
He whose heart cruel
Fate hath contracted,
Struggles but vainly
Against all the barriers
The brazen thread raises,
But which the harsh shears
Must one day sever.
Through gloomy thickets
Presseth the wild deer on,
And with the sparrows
Long have the wealthy
Settled themselves in the marsh.
Easy 'tis following the chariot
That by Fortune is driven,
Like the baggage that moves
Over well-mended highways
After the train of a prince.
But who stands there apart?
In the thicket, lost is his path;
Behind him the bushes
Are closing together,
The grass springs up again,
The desert engulphs him.
Ah, who'll heal his afflictions,
To whom balsam was poison,
Who, from love's fullness,
Drank in misanthropy only?
First despised, and now a despiser,
He, in secret, wasteth
All that he is worth,
In a selfishness vain.
If there be, on thy psaltery,
Father of Love, but one tone
That to his ear may be pleasing,
Oh, then, quicken his heart!
Clear his cloud-enveloped eyes
Over the thousand fountains
Close by the thirsty one
In the desert.
Thou who createst much joy,
For each a measure o'erflowing,
Bless the sons of the chase
When on the track of the prey,
With a wild thirsting for blood,
Youthful and joyous
Avenging late the injustice
Which the peasant resisted
Vainly for years with his staff.
But the lonely one veil
Within thy gold clouds!
Surround with winter-green,
Until the roses bloom again,
The humid locks,
Oh Love, of thy minstrel!
With thy glimmering torch
Lightest thou him
Through the fords when 'tis night,
Over bottomless places
On desert-like plains;
With the thousand colours of morning
Gladd'nest his bosom;
With the fierce-biting storm
Bearest him proudly on high;
Winter torrents rush from the cliffs,--
Blend with his psalms;
An altar of grateful delight
He finds in the much-dreaded mountain's
Snow-begirded summit,
Which foreboding nations
Crown'd with spirit-dances.
Thou stand'st with breast inscrutable,
Mysteriously disclosed,
High o'er the wondering world,
And look'st from clouds
Upon its realms and its majesty,
Which thou from the veins of thy brethren
Near thee dost water.

*It should be noted that Hartz appears to be a typo or mis-translation as later versions of the poem correctly refer to the Harz Mountains (harz meaning resin in German).

Other blog posts relating to these topics:
http://ladansedusinge.wordpress.com/2014/01/19/jill-aggies-treasure-trove-of-digging/


(8/17/14 edited for clarity and tags added)

What Begins at the Water, the Portugual Edition

I often have thoughts.  Recently a lot of them seem to be about S., as you may have guessed.  And the other day it occurred to me that the phrase "what begins at the water..." might be a variation of the old chestnut, "where the world ends and the sea begins..."  So I started looking.  For a phrase that seems so cliche, it was pretty hard to pin down in literature.  So far I've been only able to find two references, but one has an interesting link.

In Portugual, the westernmost point is called Cabo da Roca.  Formerly known as the Rock of Lisbon, the cape is associated with one of the most important poets in Portugual, Luis de Camoes.

Here, where the land ends and the sea begins...

De Camoes commemorates Portuguese voyages of exploration in The Lusiads from which the line above is taken. Camoes, highly revered in Portugual, spent several years traveling and living abroad.  He is said to have written The Lusiads in a grotto in the Orient.  On the return trip to Portugual, the ship he was on sank and he reputedly swam with his epic above his head to save it from destruction.  De Camoes was able to publish it two years later in 1572.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning had Camoes in mind when she titled her volume of poems, Sonnets from the Portuguese at Robert Browning's suggestion.

According to wikipedia, the Portuguese were the leaders of sea exploration and had mapped the coasts of Africa, Brazil, and Asia, eventually making it to Japan in 1542.  Columbus was probably in part inspired by Portuguese sailing successes.

Under the Mongol Empire's hegemony over Asia (the Pax Mongolica, or Mongol peace), Europeans had long enjoyed a safe land passage, the Silk Road to China and India, which were sources of valuable goods such as silk, spices, and opiates. With the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the land route to Asia became much more difficult and dangerous.

Portuguese navigators, under the leadership of King John II, sought to reach Asia by sailing around Africa. Major progress in this quest was achieved in 1488, when Bartolomeu Dias reached the Cape of Good Hope, in what is now South Africa. Meanwhile, in the 1480s, the Columbus brothers had developed a different plan to reach the Indies (then construed roughly as all of south and east Asia) by sailing west across the "Ocean Sea", i.e., the Atlantic.

So you might be wondering why I bring up Columbus at this point.  On his return from his first voyage in 1492, storms forced him to stop at Lisbon for a short period before returning home to Spain.  And if you re-arrange the numbers in 1492, you get 19 and you get 42.

De Camoes' poem was the first poem.  The second is by Algernon Charles Swinburne from his volume A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems which brings us back again to the sea.  As I pull threads, there may be more to come on Swinburne, but for now I leave you with the verse by him.

ON THE VERGE.

Here begins the sea that ends not till the world’s end. Where we stand,

Could we know the next high sea-mark set beyond these waves that gleam,

We should know what never man hath known, nor eye of man hath scanned.

Nought beyond these coiling clouds that melt like fume of shrines that steam

Breaks or stays the strength of waters till they pass our bounds of dream.

Where the waste Land’s End leans westward, all the seas it watches roll

32 Find their border fixed beyond them, and a worldwide shore’s control:

These whereby we stand no shore beyond us limits: these are free.

Gazing hence, we see the water that grows iron round the Pole,

From the shore that hath no shore beyond it set in all the sea.

Sail on sail along the sea-line fades and flashes; here on land

Flash and fade the wheeling wings on wings of mews that plunge and scream.

Hour on hour along the line of life and time’s evasive strand

Shines and darkens, wanes and waxes, slays and dies: and scarce they seem

33 More than motes that thronged and trembled in the brief noon’s breath and beam.

Some with crying and wailing, some with notes like sound of bells that toll,

Some with sighing and laughing, some with words that blessed and made us whole,

Passed, and left us, and we know not what they were, nor what were we.

Would we know, being mortal? Never breath of answering whisper stole

From the shore that hath no shore beyond it set in all the sea.

Shadows, would we question darkness? Ere our eyes and brows be fanned

Round with airs of twilight, washed with dews from sleep’s eternal stream,

34 Would we know sleep’s guarded secret? Ere the fire consume the brand,

Would it know if yet its ashes may requicken? yet we deem

Surely man may know, or ever night unyoke her starry team,

What the dawn shall be, or if the dawn shall be not, yea, the scroll

Would we read of sleep’s dark scripture, pledge of peace or doom of dole.

Ah, but here man’s heart leaps, yearning toward the gloom with venturous glee,

Though his pilot eye behold nor bay nor harbour, rock nor shoal,

From the shore that hath no shore beyond it set in all the sea.

35 Friend, who knows if death indeed have life or life have death for goal?

Day nor night can tell us, nor may seas declare nor skies unroll

What has been from everlasting, or if aught shall always be.

Silence answering only strikes response reverberate on the soul

From the shore that hath no shore beyond it set in all the sea.

(8/17/14 edited for grammar and tags added)

Update: Vevoda's Cellar or Events in Time and Space

It just occurred to me that the NV designation which means non-vintage (typically for blended wines) might be a reference through wordplay to look at current events while the book was written and published. So it would make sense to include Havana, 1946 along with the New York and Toronto events that I already included. While B____, 1906 still continues to elude me (although there is a good candidate from jillaggie), I was also able to discover that two sailing vessels sunk off the coast of County Galway, Ireland in 1831. One of the ships was the Cyclops, which might be another clue to James Joyce, especially as Joyce was descended from one of the tribes of Galway.  

1. Havana 1946: The date of Straka's apparent murder.
2. Noir Calais 1912: Fictional riot that takes place in 1912 at Calais, France in SOT.  Calais built the monument Le Pluviose in 1912 to commemorate the death of 27 when the steamer Pas de Calaise accidentally cause the submarine, Pluviose, to sink in May 1910, and the monument was not dedicated until 1913.  Per gz: Fourteen people were killed in a coal mine explosion at the Clarence Coal Company at Pas de Calais, France.
3. Noir Ypres 1915: Ypres, Belgium. Second battle of Ypres during World War I, notable because the it was the first time that the Germans used poison gas on a mass scale. 
4. Black Taranaki 1863:  The Second Taranaki War was a conflict between the Maori and New Zealand government. 
5. Noir Odessa 1871: The Odessa pogrom, one in a series of violence targeting the Jews in Odessa, a city in Ukraine. 
6. Noir Dahomey 1840: Dahomey was an African country ruled by a monarchy in what is now Benin.  Dahomey was involved in the profitable slave trade. In 1840, Dahomey attempted to take over Yoruba territory.
7. Noir Galway 1831:  This one is interesting doesn't appear to reference an act of violence.  The Wardenship of Galway was dissolved by the Church of Ireland in 1831.  Edmund Ffrench was the last warden.  Galway may also reference the tribes of Galway, a group of a powerful families that ran Galway until the late 19th century.  A magistrate does note that something was happening in Galway in 1831, but the details were not given in The Edinburgh Review. Two sailing vessels, the Cyclops and the Kelly, sank of the coast of County Galway in 1831.
8. Noir Bijapur 1791: Doji Bara famine in South Asia.  An El Nino event caused a drought in the area from 1791-1792.  In one estimate, famine and disease may have contributed to the deaths of 11 million people. 
9. Noir Adana 1909: The Adana Massacre occurred in Adana Province of the Ottoman Empire against the Armenian population there.
10. Noir Rio Negro 1879:  Basically a state-sponsored land grab from the indigenous populations, in 1878, a massive campaign started to clear the land between the Negro River and the Alsina Trench by armed forces. 
11. Noir Barkol 1756:  Refers to the Qing Dynasty's annexation of the area formerly controlled by the Zunghar Khanate. In 1756, the Chinese emperor ordered the death of all men in Barkol or Suzhou.  The murdered men's wives and children were given to soldiers in the emperor's army. 
12. Tangier (Jun) 1905:  The First Moroccan Crisis refers to Germany's support of Morocco as an independent state, but the support damaged Germany's relations with France and the U.S.  The crisis reached a peak in June 1905, and is considered a contributing factor to WWI. 
13. B___ (Oct) 1906:  Per jillaggie, potentially related to the MacLaren owned sawmill strike and subsequent killing of two labor leaders in Buckingham, Quebec.
14. Los Angeles (Dec) 1910:  Llewellyn Iron Works bombing was preceded by a bombing of the Los Angeles Times in October and resulted in the arrest and conviction of labor leaders. 
15. Tripoli (Sep) 1911:  The Italo-Turkish war was Italy's attempt to assert it rights over parts of what is now Libya.  It marked the use of the first aerial bomb dropped from an airplane. 
16. Salonika (Thessaloniki) (Mar) 1912:  Geekyzen and Jillp have brought it to me that Salonika is an alternate name for Thessaloniki.   And in 1912 Greece sunk an Ottoman ship, the Feth-i_Bülend in the harbor of Thessaloniki.
17. Berlin/Danzig 1908:  The line from Berlin to Danzig(Gdansk) is a rough border for the Polish corridor.  The German Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia confiscated land and evicted the ethnic Polish population (although this was reversed in 1925). 
18. New York 1949:  (from the SOT copyright notice) Airplane crash on October 28th in the Azores.  The plane was headed for New York.  Also, the Peekskill riots happened in 1949.
19. Toronto 1949:  (from the SOT copyright notice) The SS Noronic disaster, a fire started in a linen closet and was fueled by the lemon scented furniture polish which led to several fatalities.