Retired Marine Corps General Smedley Butler (1881 – 1940) was well known for his 1935 book, War is a Racket in which he summed-up his military career as one in which he served as “a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers”; he wrote of the importance of removing […]
Smedley Butler on Peace (Liberty Magazine, 1936) Read More »
Lost in wide-eyed wonder, this journalist reported all that he saw during his four-month journey through The Lone Star State, finding, to his astonishment, that everything those annoying men named Tex had told him throughout the years was absolutely true.
Don’t be offended if Texans fail to thank you for compliments about their state; they are weaned on a sublime conviction that everything in Texas is the biggest or best or both… Anything in Texas that isn’t the biggest or best is bound to be the smallest or the worst; there is no mediocrity.
Click here to read about the U.S. Border Patrol in Texas.
1950s Texas (American Magazine, 1952) Read More »
Although much of what Dr. Alfred Kinsey wrote concerning male sex patterns has been debunked in our own age, his conclusions were taken quite seriously in the late Forties and early Fifties. This slender column serves as a summary and review regarding his studies that were published in his 1948 book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948).
From Amazon:
Sexual Behavior in The Human Female and Sexual Behavior in the Human Male Two Volume Set
Mr. Kinsey’s Report (Pathfinder Magazine, 1948) Read More »
An article about Irving Izzy the Eel Cohen, Joseph Socks Lanza, Benjamin Bugsy Siegel, Jake Greasy Thumb Guzik and Albert Tick Tock Tannenbaum (among others) and how they earned such colorful names.
(This article was brought into the digital world by Matt the Mad Scanner Jacobsen)
An Al Capone article can be read here…
Mobsters and Their Nick-Names (Confidential Magazine, 1958) Read More »
Generations before satellite photography, and long before the T.V. cameras were placed on the moon, an American astronomer named V.M. Slipher (1875 – 1969) figured out the predominate color of our planet when seen from afar. Read on…
Discovering the Color of the Earth (Literary Digest, 1933 Read More »
One of the first American magazine articles heralding the November 4, 1922 discovery of the ancient tomb of King Tutankhamen (1341 BC – 1323 BC) by the British archaeologist Howard Carter (1874 – 1939); who was in this article, erroneously sited as an American:
What is thought may prove the greatest archeological discovery of all time has recently been made in Egypt, in the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor. Two chambers of a tomb have been found filled with the funeral paraphernalia of the Egyptian King Tutankhamen, and hopes are entertained that the third chamber, yet unopened, may contain the royal mummy itself.
Discovered: The Tomb of King Tutankhamun (Literary Digest, 1923) Read More »
The Spanish Influenza (February 1918 – April 1920) struck hard in the U.S. Army camps. Every fourth man came down with the flu, every twenty-fourth man caught pneumonia, every sixth man died.
By the time the virus ran its course in the United States 675,000 Americans would succumb (although this article estimated the loss at 500,000).
The Pandemic of 1918 (Scribner’s Magazine, 1938) Read More »
Some time ago we posted an article from 1921 about legislation that the U.S. Congress was considering concerning the prohibition of cigarettes (Click here to read about that) we thought that the cat was out of the bag at that time as to the fact concerning the connection of smoking and cancer. But we were wrong. The 1953 article attached herein concerns four doctors who appeared before Congress in an appeal for federal funding for cancer research. They made it clear that research was indicating that there was a clear link between smoking and cancer, but more exploration was needed.
In 1921 there was talk in Congress of outlawing cigarettes – you can read about it here
Click here to read about one of the greatest innovations by 20th Century chemists: plastic.
Does Smoking Really Cause Cancer? (United States News, 1953) Read More »
American journalist and radio personality Franklin P. Adams (1881 – 1960) recalled the high-water mark of Chicago’s Vaudeville (with some detail) for the editors of STAGE MAGAZINE, a witty and highly glossy magazine that concerned all the goings-on in the American theater of the day:
They were Continuous Variety Shows. They ran – at any rate at the Olympic Theatre, known in Chicago as the Big O – from 12:30 p.m. to 11:00 p.m….While those days are often referred to as the Golden Days of Vaudeville, candor compels the admission that they were brimming with dross; that Vaudeville’s standard in 1896 was no more aureate than musical comedy in 1935 is.
Chicago Vaudeville Remembered (Stage Magazine, 1935) Read More »
A 1937 news column announced the very generous gift to Washington, D.C. and the nation made by billionaire philanthropist Andrew W. Mellon (1855 — 1937): The National Gallery of Art:
A long, low, classic structure, tailored in lines that harmonize with the neighboring white Beaux-Arts buildings, will house the new National Gallery made possible for the nation’s capital by Andrew W. Mellon. The plans, designed by John Russell Pope
(The cost was actually $10,000,000)
Click here to read additional articles from the Twenties and Thirties about art.
Andrew Mellon’s Gift (Art Digest, 1937) Read More »
