Miscellaneous

Does Smoking Really Cause Cancer?
(United States News, 1953)

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.

SECOND TEST MISC.

Chicago Vaudeville Remembered
(Stage Magazine, 1935)

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.

Andrew Mellon’s Gift
(Art Digest, 1937)

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 Popestyle=border:none have already been accepted by the Fine Arts Commission and construction… will get underway as soon as congressional authorization is made… The cost of the building, which will be borne entirely by Mr. Mellon, is estimated at $9,000,000.


(The cost was actually $10,000,000)


Click here to read additional articles from the Twenties and Thirties about art.

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Milton Caniff: 1940s American Cartoonist

Attached is a profile of Milton Caniff (1907 – 1988), who is remembered as the creator of Terry and the Pirates (1934 – 1946), Mail Call (1942 – 1946) and Steve Canyon (1946 – 1988).


Click here to read an article by G.I. cartoonist Bill Maulden.

‘Why I Live In Los Angeles”
(Pageant Magazine, 1950)

An article written at a time when L.A. was a very different city – with a population of merely ten million, the city’s detractors often called it Iowa by the sea; today they compare it to the Balkans:

The point is that in [1950] Los Angeles the individual leads his own life and plays his own games rather than lose himself vicariously in the capers of professionals.


Click here to read about the San Fernando Valley.

SECOND TEST MISC.

San Francisco: 1906
(Collier’s Magazine, 1956)

These historic pen portraits were compiled and re-worked for publication some fifty years after the San Francisco Earthquake; together they serve to illustrate the collective, yet individual, acts of suffering and heroics that took place April 18, 1906:

On the front steps of an abandoned house she had seen a young Chinese mother nursing a baby. The mother’s face was besmirched, and drawn with weariness. Her own child slept in swaddling blankets beside her. The child on her breast was white.

Comprehending the Afterlife
(Coronet Magazine, 1941)

The attached article is by novelist Richard DeWitt Miller (1910 – 1958) who assembled a number of anecdotes and first-hand accounts from people of various backgrounds who had all experienced singularly unique moments in their lives that were unworldly; happenings that could only serve as evidence that there exists a life after this one.

Secular America on the Rise
(Literary Digest, 1933)

The most fundamental change in the intellectual life of the United States is the apparent shift from Biblical authority and religious sanctions to scientific and factual authority and sanctions.

So, at any rate, Professor Hornell Hart, of Bryn Mawr College reads the signs…Two other investigators find evidence of a decline in dogma and a rise in the ‘social gospel’ as evidence of the humanist form of religion which Professor Hart sees foreshadowed by the morning sun.


In 1900 people wanted to know why men didn’t like going to church…

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