Latest news with #Biography
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
The Skull of ‘Scattered Man' Washed Up on a Beach 30 Years Ago. Students Just ID'd the Remains.
Here's what you'll learn when you read this story: A skull washed on up on the shore of a New Jersey beach back in 1995, with further bone fragments appearing in 1999 and 2013. As a result, the set of remains earned the nickname 'Scattered Man John Doe.' Stumped for nearly three decades, local law enforcement recently turned to students at Ramapo College to employ genetic analysis and historical research to try and identify whose bones had washed ashore. The students were able to determine that the remains belonged to Henry Goodsell, the 29-year-old captain of the merchant ship Oriental, who died during a storm alongside his crew in 1844 This story is a collaboration with Imagine it's 1995. You've just had a good time seeing Batman Forever at the movies. You're cracking open an OK soda, strolling along the beach in Longport, New Jersey, rocking out to Shaggy's 'Boombastic,' when all of a sudden you stumble across a shocking sight: a skull has washed up on the shore. Did somebody drown at the beach? Did you stumble across the remnants of a mob hit? Whose skull is this, and how did it get here? You contact the proper authorities and feel certain they'll find the answer soon enough. Now imagine it's 1999. You've just had an O.K. time seeing Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, and have likely forgotten all about that skull on the beach four years ago when, suddenly, news breaks: fragments of bone from the same corpse as the Longport skull have now been found less than two miles away in the nearby town of Margate. Authorities are no closer to identifying the dead man. Now, it's 2013. You just saw Frozen, and as you check your phone on the way out of the theater, you see the news alert: new skeletal remains, likely connected with that 1995 skull, have washed up in Ocean City. Still, law enforcement remains no closer to identifying a body whose skull was first discovered 18 years prior, and they've taken to calling the skeletal remnants 'Scattered Man John Doe.' Well, after 12 more years—a total of 30 since that skull was first discovered Longport, New Jersey—the Scattered Man has finally been identified. Through a combination of genetic analysis and good-old-fashioned historical research—in a collaboration between state law enforcement and the Ramapo College of New Jersey's Investigative Genetic Genealogy Center—the remains have been found to belong to Henry Goodsell, the captain of a merchant ship who died during a storm alongside his crew. Goodsell was only 29 years old when he died, meaning that he spent more years as 'the skull that washed up on the beach' than he ever did as a living, breathing man. But all the more remarkable is how long Goodsell's body had been lost, awaiting discovery: the storm that claimed Goodsell's life occurred in the winter of 1844. Ramapo's search for answers began in the fall of 2023, when they sent a DNA sample from the remains to Intermountain Forensics 'who uploaded the sample to GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA in February of 2024,' per a Ramapo College press release. This allowed the Ramapo undergraduates to trace the genealogy of the deceased. The students found evidence of ancestry 'dating back to the 1600s, with genetic relatives hailing from Litchfield and Fairfield counties in Connecticut.' For a full year, students at Ramapo hit the books, volunteering their time to try and triangulate deceased or missing figures with ties to Connecticut who may have been involved in shipwrecks off of the coast of New Jersey. That's when they discovered two news articles from December of 1844, which spoke of the sad fate of the vessel Oriental: 'The students learned that five crew members were aboard the Oriental, which departed from Connecticut en route to Philadelphia, PA, to deliver 60 tons of marble for use by Girard College, a college preparatory boarding school that opened in 1848. The ship was wrecked off the coast of Brigantine Shoal in 1844. It was reported the ship likely sprung a leak and went down less than one mile from the shoreline, and all crew members died. The captain of the ship was 29-year-old Henry Goodsell.' From there, the students proposed Goodsell as a possible identification to New Jersey State Police, and they in turn (in March of 2025) collected a DNA sample from one of Goodsell's descendants. A match was confirmed by NJSP on April 8, 2025, finally resolving the mystery of the Scattered Man John Doe. 'Identifying human remains is one of the most solemn and challenging responsibilities law enforcement is charged with,' Chief of County Detectives Patrick Snyder at the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office stated in the press release. 'Law enforcement works hard knowing that behind every case is a promise: that no one will be forgotten, and that we will pursue the truth until families have the answers they deserve.' The identification of Goodsell also demonstrates the potential of modern genetic analysis to solve cases that have gone even colder than we ever thought solvable. 'Using modern genealogy testing to identify bone fragments from the 19th century is a powerful reminder of our unwavering commitment to resolving cases no matter how old,' noted Colonel Patrick J. Callahan, NJSP superintendent. 'The ability to bring answers to families—even generations later—shows how far science and dedication can take us.' So now, it's 2025. You just saw the new Mission: Impossible and can't believe it's been 29 years since that first one came out. And you finally have some closure on whose skull it was that washed ashore on the beach all the way back in 1995. Henry Goodsell, age 29, captain of the Oriental. You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life?
Forbes
16 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Meet The Fashion Designer Who Popularized Ballet Flats, Wrap Dresses, Denim, Leggings And Pockets For Women—Yet Many Have Never Heard Of Before
Claire McCardell Courtesy of the Maryland Center for History and Culture There is a designer that defined American fashion—who brought pockets into womenswear (thank you for that), popularized ballet flats (also this) and ushered wrap dresses, mix and match separates, denim, leggings and even hoodies into the fashion conversation. Unfortunately, at least until a new book comes out on June 17, most have probably never heard of her. Claire McCardell is the titular subject of Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson's new biography, with the compelling subtitle The Designer Who Set Women Free ('That's how she thought of herself,' Evitts Dickinson tells me on Zoom). McCardell epitomized the 'American look' in fashion, was the first woman to have a Seventh Avenue manufacturer label and the first to be given full control over her designs. As Evitts Dickinson writes in Claire McCardell, 'Much of what hangs in our closet is Claire McCardell, but it's Dior we remember.' 'I had no idea that Claire McCardell was responsible, effectively, for most of the clothes in my closet,' Evitts Dickinson tells me. After discovering her designs in the late 1990s, 'I'd always wondered why I'd never heard of her, and I never forgot her.' Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson Courtesy of Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson After writing a feature story about her for The Washington Post Magazine, Evitts Dickinson realized that there was a book here. 'I realized there was so much more to her story than even I appreciated,' she says. 'She was so revolutionary, and I don't think we appreciate how revolutionary she was because we take for granted that we can wear the clothes that we wear today. But back then, she was a visionary. She was forging new ground.' Evitts Dickinson was captivated by how a young woman from Frederick, Maryland went to New York City 'and in a few short years became one of the most important fashion designers in America,' she says. 'And so I wanted to understand how she did that. That was my desire to write this story.' A graduate of Parsons (then known as the New York School of Fine and Applied Art), McCardell got her start in the 1930s during a 'forgotten moment of time between the wars [World War I and World War II] where women were breaking new ground in a lot of arenas,' Evitts Dickinson says. 'I think that there is this forgotten feminism that was happening back then, a level of career advancement and advocacy for one another. And in New York, it was a fascinating moment in the '30s and '40s. I mean, you had the [Great] Depression and the world war sort of bookending her professional career, so she's working under these extreme circumstances.' There was a group of women who pulled together to 'effectively invent the fashion industry,' Evitts Dickinson says, and 'McCardell was at the center of it. She was a star, but she wasn't alone.' While McCardell's name and photograph are on the front cover of the book, it was important to Evitts Dickinson to write a story about women working together to build an industry. The pioneer of American sportswear, McCardell was Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Tory Burch before any were even born. When McCardell's 1956 book What Shall I Wear?: The What, Where, When, and How Much of Fashion came back in print in 2022, Burch—whose Spring/Summer collection from the same year was inspired by McCardell—wrote the foreward. 'So many of McCardell's ideas and innovations are taken for granted now,' she wrote. 'While other designers looked to Paris couture for inspiration, McCardell elevated the practical needs of American women. It isn't an exaggeration to say she has inspired every designer, and I think she deserves far more recognition.' McCardell 'wasn't Dior making singular, exquisitely handmade pieces that only a handful of women in the world could wear,' Evitts Dickinson says. 'She was dressing every woman.' McCardell questioned haute couture fashion, theorizing that that didn't really work for a woman like her 'who was working, who was taking the subway, who didn't have a ton of money to spend on clothes,' Evitts Dickinson says. 'And so really what she did was pioneer a new kind of unstructured, body-friendly, pragmatic but also elegant style of clothing that allowed you to live in what you were wearing. And it wasn't precious and it wasn't something that she thought about material and whether it wrinkled—she thought about if you could wash it.' The 'American look' stepped away from mimicking Parisian fashion and became its own entity. McCardell put her name on her own label and was the first multihyphenate designer—not just designing dresses or coats but also sunglasses, scarves, jewelry. 'She really created, effectively, what is and what we understand to be the fashion brand today,' Evitts Dickinson says. 'So many not only admire her design chops, they also really admire her business acumen and the way she was able to effectively create what we still know today as the American designer.' McCardell wanted to make her own designs, not just copy others. She had an "ingenious, rebellious mind,' Evitts Dickinson writes, adding that for McCardell, it was 'always about far more than clothes.' McCardell's fingerprints are still felt all over modern fashion today, and even Betty Friedan once wrote that McCardell 'changed the world's meaning of fashion.' Growing up in Frederick, McCardell's grandfather owned his own candymaking factory, so business came more naturally to her than it might to someone else. McCardell's family largely supported her dreams—her desire to go to college, and her desire to go into business for herself. She married in 1943, but 'she also kept her private life very private,' Evitts Dickinson tells me. 'And so for me, it was a little bit of a challenge getting to know her as a private citizen.' She forged a path for herself as a woman entrepreneur when said path did not exist. 'She had to really imagine a business model that didn't exist yet,' Evitts Dickinson says. 'It didn't exist. There were no women at the upper levels. Women did not own the forms. They were not partners in the business. She eventually—and through a lot of hard work—got her name on the label and got a higher stake in the business. And then the other smart thing that she did, which I hadn't appreciated until researching this book, is she also created her own Claire McCardell Enterprises.' She trademarked her name. She protected her designs. She safeguarded her brand. She eschewed the male gaze while designing in favor of the woman's own experience in her clothes—fashionable, yet practical. She subverted the rules—and enjoyed doing it. She encouraged women to not so much worry about fashion, but to find their own style. 'She really emphasized that difference between fashion is what comes out every season—style is what is yours,' Evitts Dickinson says. McCardell's name likely got lost to history because of her sudden death at just 52 years old on March 22, 1958, only one year after she received a diagnosis of terminal colon cancer. There were no succession plans for her business, and the Claire McCardell label closed. 'Claire, again, was a few steps ahead of the curve,' Evitts Dickinson says. 'And if she had lived a little longer, I wonder if we would remember her name.' During her short life, 'Claire was the most famous fashion designer in America when she was alive, arguably, and well-known around the world,' says Evitts Dickinson, whose book—rightfully so—puts McCardell back in the conversation.. 'And her message was, 'You don't have to listen to fashion designers. Take your cues and let us help you. But it's your life. Live your life.''
