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False facts about fire: Exposing Exposing the Expeditions

The World’s Fairs that were held in the United States were quite the sight to behold, and many were constructed under questionable circumstances. Howdie Mickoski poses many questions about these fairs and entertains unsubstantiated theories to answer those questions in his self-published book, Exposing the Expositions 1851-1915: Revised 2021, or the other title that’s on the book’s spine, Expositions Exposed, or the title on the first page, Exposing the Expositions 1851-1915: Revised 2021 “Fairs, Fables and Fires.”

Rebutting every logical fallacy that Mickoski makes would take up the entirety of a new book; rebutting every uneducated question Mickoski poses with credible sources instead of his method of directly quoting Wikipedia or relying on his unfounded common knowledge would take up the entirety of another book. The “ideas” that Mickoski shares about fires related to several World’s Fairs can be attempted to be addressed and quelled within one short paper.

Mickoski likes to claim that the structures built for the fair weren’t temporary as “standard history” would have one believe, and he points to the fact that they appear to be made of marble, brick, and stone. He also makes a big argument revolving around the major fires that every city in the US had between 1800-1910, and that they were all claimed to have happened because all the buildings were made of wood. This clashes against his observations from photos, and he mentions this several times.

Near the end of the book, Mickoski reiterates his doubts about standard history: “The fires were claimed to have been so bad because all of the buildings were built of wood. But when you look at the photos carefully all I can see is brick and stone. And pulverized brick and stone at that” (Mickoski, 2021, p. 155). This is clearly an example of survivorship bias.

Survivorship bias is “a logical error in which attention is paid only to those entities that have passed through (or ‘survived’) a selective filter, which often leads to incorrect conclusions” (Eldridge, 2023). Mickoski talks a lot about “critical thinking” but doesn’t seem to do any himself. If all buildings burned down because they were made of wood; all of the wood that made up the buildings would be burnt up, leaving the stone and brick as all that remains.

Mickoski notes his observations in photos of cities after fires between 1800-1910, seeing “no char marks, no sign of fire- just ‘battle damaged’ stone buildings” (Mickoski, 2021, p. 155). It is likely that Mickoski failed to do research as to what fire damage does to stone. Sometimes there is no visible effect to the stone (Ryan et al., 2012); igneous rocks like granite do not discolor when heated in a fire, and neither do white rocks which don’t have any iron oxide (Birbhushan et al., 1996, p. 540).

Fire damage makes stone weaker and more prone to breakage and crumbling, resulting in the damage found in the photos Mickoski has in the book, including some types of stone that turn into dust once heated. This aligns with his observations mentioned soon after, where he says to “look at all the brick and stone surviving, and how much of it has in a sense been turned to powder. Stone in many cases has been melted, or sliced in half and what not,” (Mickoski, 2021, p. 156). But Mickoski doesn’t attribute this damage to the fire that was reported from several sources throughout history, because it “doesn’t look like fire damage” to him.

In many of the photos of cities after fires that Mickoski looks at in his book, he seems to take issue with what is still standing. He mentions that “most of the WOODEN utility poles … seem to make it through the fires just fine,” and that after the buildings were reduced to rubble while “trees, electrical poles and even vegetation remain completely in tact” (Mickoski, 2021 pp. 126, 156).

A building that is near a building that is on fire will ignite more quickly than if the building was farther away. If the building has an excess of flammable material near it, the building will ignite more quickly than if it didn’t have that (Knapp et al., 2021). Trees or utility poles can usually escape major fire damage because they are further away from the kindling that feeds the fire, like leaves, pinecones, or pine needles (Knapp et al., 2021).

Items that remained after these massive fires happened to be out of the direction of the wind to avoid indirect ignition, didn’t have an excess of kindling around them, or were far enough away from the buildings to catch ablaze themselves (Knapp et al., 2021).

Throughout the book, Mickoski references conversations with a building contractor friend which were surely apocryphal, and induce doubt that this friend even exists at all. The following paragraph from Mickoski (2021) is one of the more egregious cases:

One of the building contractors I met has seen fire damage to buildings several times. He was very clear when looking at the fire photos of Chicago and several other cities that they were not fires. In fact he asked, “who bombed this city, because this damage is not from a fire. Look all these buildings were stone, not wood, and the stone is flaking off. That is serious damage. A simple fire can not do this to stone. Take the cathedral in Paris that just burned…ya Notre Dame. The ceiling burned because it was made of wood. But the stone structure of the building turned out fine, a bit of soot damage to change the colour but that’s in. Now look at these photos. What has done this to the stone? This really needs to be examined farther.” (p. 155)

What his “friend” mentions in that paragraph follows how fire damage works according to reputable sources cited in this paper. The descriptions and observations from Mickoski writes about the Chicago 1871 fire and other city fires also align with how fire damage works according to reputable sources, however Mickoski’s interpretations and explanations for these fires are complete falsehoods.

Mickoski also takes note of that “every city in North America had a great fire between 1800-1910” (p. 154). He calls attention to the four fires that happened around the Great Lakes, saying that “four great fires on the same day in the same general location is too co-incidental” (Mickoski, 2021, p. 155). There was an “unparalleled drought” that year, starting with a winter with little to no snow, and swamps so dry one could walk on them (“History of the Peshtigo Fire,” 1921). These conditions provided ample fuel for potential fires throughout the Midwest.

There were a few fires from controlled hack and slash agriculture in the area, as it was a common way to prepare land. However, a cold front with a difference of around 40 degrees came sweeping through the Midwest, resulting in powerful winds that greatly expanded all the small fires and combined them into one large fire storm (Hemphill, 2002). The situation in Peshtigo, Wisconsin was described as a “fire tornado” (“Wisconsin SP Peshtigo Fire Cemetery,” 1970).

Mickoski mentions that “at the Peshtigo fire a local priest was quoted as suggesting that ‘things came from the sky causing the fires’” (Mickoski, 2021, p. 155). Mickoski doesn’t cite his source, but judging by the rest of his book, it’s likely ripped straight from Wikipedia. It’s entirely likely that the high winds carried the other fires in the area over to Peshtigo; wildfires can spread due to wind-blown embers (Knapp et al., 2021).

The claimed “real” reason that caused the four Great Lakes fires to happen at the same time is supposedly a meteor. Mickoski states that “Ignatius Donnely, author and scientist, suggested in the 1880s that the fires must have been caused my a meteor strike” (Mickoski, 2021, p. 155). Ignoring the spelling mistake that doesn’t greatly impact the readability of the sentence, this claim is dubious at best and flat out incorrect at worse.

The meteor that many “researchers” point to would be Biela’s Comet, however Mickoski incorrectly refers to it as “Bela’s Comet” (Mickoski, 2021, p. 155). This comet was observed to break apart in 1846, both fragments were observed in 1852 as twin comets and never seen again. When the Earth was in the path of Biela’s known orbit in 1872 and 1885, meteor showers were observed (“Biela’s comet,” 2018). If one wanted to believe that a fragment of Biela’s Comet ignited the dry forests surrounding Lake Michigan, they would need to come up with an explanation as to why the four fires happened in October 1871, and not when Earth was in the path of the comet’s orbit.

If there was a meteor impact in 1871, no fragments were found. In fact, it’s unlikely or incorrect that a meteor would cause fires upon impact. The outer layer of a meteorite is ablated away – the friction between the surface and the atmosphere is so great that it burns the edges of the meteorite and shielding the cooler inner portion (“Meteorites don’t pop corn,” 2001). The outer layers flake away due to the heat, reducing the mass of the meteorite the further it travels through the atmosphere; the flaming trail of a comet in the sky is gone by the time it reaches earth’s surface. A freshly fallen meteorite is not hot, sometimes they are cold to the touch or even have frost on them (“Meteorites don’t pop corn,” 2001; Calfee, 2003).

In order for a meteoroid to be remotely warm enough to cause a fire upon impact, it would have to be at least 50 meters in size (Calfee, 2003). Other meteorites have fallen in America that are big enough to leave craters, like that of Odessa Texas, which is about 160 meters in diameter and happened during the Pleistocene era, around 63,000 years ago (Holliday et al., 2005).

Craters around the Great Lakes are well documented, and all date back thousands if not millions of years (Lee, 2017). If a stray bit of Biela’s Comet was large enough to ignite the dry forests, it would need to be 50 meters wide. And it would have happened in 1871, which is dramatically closer to the present than other craters in the United States; the creator would be well defined because it has had less time for the edges to erode away. A crater that matches this description is not found in the Great Lakes region.

If the meteor theory that Mickoski entertains is true, it cannot be substantiated. There is no crater and no mentions of craters in any newspapers in the areas affected by the fires. The fires of October 8, 1871, happened in Chicago Illinois, Peshtigo Wisconsin, Holland Michigan, and Port Huron Michigan. Port Huron and Peshtigo are 300 miles (almost 500 kilometers) apart. No meteor that could have gone undetected could have ignited fires that far apart.

All it takes is Occam’s razor: “interpreted as the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities” to undermine the entire meteor theory (“Occam’s razor,” n.d.). The commonly accepted account of events that the weather was dry, controlled agricultural fires got out of hand and were picked up by unusually strong winds is back up by numerous sources that all agree with each other. A stray meteor that nobody saw and there is no record of is unbelievable, requires too many additional explanations to become believable, and thus the theory should cease to be entertained.

The amount of cherry-picking of sources and evidence that Mickoski presents in his book is astonishing. These two claims about fires that only take up a fraction of the text can be rebutted using relatively basic tools taught in entry level communications and arguments class. The few sources that Mickoski cites are far from reputable and can’t stand any scrutiny. Taking the time to find credible sources to back up counterclaims to his nonsense took hardly any time at all, and it’s a wonder anyone would whole heartedly believe anything Mickoski wrote.

Works Cited