Today we celebrate Labor Day. But what are the origins of the day? If you answered people wanted another day to barbecue, you're wrong. If you answered the official end of summer, you're also wrong. The roots of Labor Day grew out of violent clashes between labor and police during the Haymarket Riot in 1886, […]
I usually blog about the Roaring 20s in the U.S., but yesterday I arrived in Japan for two weeks. So, I'm looking at the non-roaring 20s here. In World War I, few people from Japan died. In fact, the country only lost 415 people and all of those were in the military. No civilians died. […]
This is for all you writers who need complete quiet and concentration when you work — provided you don't suffer from claustrophobia. In 1925, editor and publisher Hugo Gernsback proposed an invention to eliminate noise distractions. Gernsback dubbed his creation "The Isolator" helmet. His prototype helmet was made of wood and felt, and included a […]
Food is one of my passions. Cooking perhaps even more than eating. I collect cookbooks and read them for fun. I have a separate Kindle just for e-cookbooks. You get the picture. Recipes from 1920 looked — and probably tasted — a lot different than today. Judging from old cookbooks, many, if not most, recipes […]
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 […]
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 […]
On this day in 1925, Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming became the first female governor in the United States. Ross won a special election to fill a vacancy caused by the death of her husband, the incumbent, even though she had refused to campaign. She would later serve as the first female director of the […]
During the Roaring Twenties, flappers and other "bright young things" invented nonsense expressions — possibly to incense their proper mamas and papas. One of their favorite targets was phrases to replace the word/s "wonderful" or "the best". One of the most widely known of these is 'the bee's knees', as in "I think dinner at […]
Who didn't love reading the Sunday funnies as a kid? My most vivid memory of my paternal grandfather is watching him paste Sunday comic strips into scrapbooks. After he died, my aunt gave me two of them as keepsakes. One is Jiggs and Maggie, the other a strip called The Bungle Family. Jiggs and Maggie […]
During the 1920s motion pictures played a huge role in social life for people of all ages but especially those in their teens and early twenties — probably after they discovered those dark, secluded back theatre rows. The first public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but it would be […]
