I like to think of January 1 as the first page in a new book. A book that I have 365 days to fill with facts, trivia, jokes, new experiences, and random thoughts. Here is some trivia to start your year. Harvard University Library has four books bound in human skin. Iceland tops the world […]
Who among us hasn’t played “follow the leader” on monkey bars? And fallen off with a resounding thud. While many monkey bars are stand-alone units today, they were originally part of a jungle gym. The first jungle gym was invented in 1920 and patented by Chicago lawyer Sebastian Hinton. While the term "monkey bars" was […]
In the Fall of 1920, local Atlantic City, NJ business owners devised a scheme to extend the tourist season into September. They planned to stage an "inter-city" beauty contest where local newspapers would select contestants and pay for their wardrobe. The Atlantic City Businessmen's League would pay for their travel to the contest. Newspapers in […]
The prosperity of the 1920s led to new patterns of consumption for consumer goods like radios, vacuums, beauty products, and clothing. For many, this new pattern included cars. Prosperity, coupled with the expansion of credit, put automobiles within reach of average Americans. Now individuals who could not afford to purchase a car at full price […]
Bessie Coleman is not exactly a byword in most homes, but in some circles she's a glittering star. Born in Atlanta, TX, in 1892, Coleman became the first African-American/Native American woman to hold a pilot license. Her sharecropper father was of Cherokee descent and her mother African-American. She earned her license from the French Fédération […]
School is out, the temperatures are soaring, and the lines at the ice cream stand are out the door. It’s a summer rite of passage. In the first decades of the twentieth century, street ice cream was usually sold from pushcarts. The quality (both of raw ingredients and end product) left a lot to be […]
Disclaimer: This is NOT a political. It is only meant to be historical and informative. Depending on the outcome of an eventual trial, one candidate could be campaigning for the White House from jail. Strangely, it will not be the first time this has happened in the US. Eugene V. Debs, running on the Socialist […]
Closed Room mysteries appear regularly in mystery novels, but what about real-life examples? On June 12, 1920, around 9 a.m., a housekeeper unlocked the front door to the West Seventieth Street apartment of self-made millionaire Joseph B. Elwell. There, inside the living room, she found a body sitting in a chair with a gunshot to […]
The decade of the 1920s saw rapid advances in technology, both in and out of the home. Most Americans were quick to adopt of radio, television, vacuum cleaners, electric blenders and toasters, and telephones. Most, but not all. One small segment of the population began debating the dangers of these new technologies: the Amish. In […]
Just like chop suey, Mah Jong has its roots in China but was adopted in a modified form in the US. The game originated in and around Shanghai in the mid to late 1800s (there is some debate when it exactly began, where, and by whom), but had its US introduction in the mid-1920s through […]
