Recent Articles

Protestant Churches Condemn the KKK (The Literary Digest, 1922)

A couple of years after the membership lists of the Ku Klux Klan had swelled to record levels, and just seven years after a chic Hollywood film director made a movie that ennobled their crimes,the Administrative Committee of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America issued a statement which served to distance the Protestant churches from that hate-filled organization.


From Amazon: Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-1930style=border:none

The English-German Phrase Book for Occupying Forces (U.S. Army, 1943)

Printed years before Germany’s surrender, here is the digitized copy of the English/German phrase book that was printed by the U.S. Army for distribution among those soldiers who would be occupying that country in 1945. It is beautifully illustrated by the cartoonist Milton Caniff and is sixty-seven pages in length.

Dogfight Over Hunland (Vanity Fair, 1918)

British fighter pilot in the Great War, Lieutenant E.M. Roberts, gave this account of the deadly game of Boche-hunting above the clouds:

I noticed he was going down a little, evidently for the purpose of shooting me from underneath. I was not quite sure as yet that such was really his intention; but the man was quick…he put five shots into my machine. But all of them missed me.

I maneuvered into an offensive position as Quickly as I could, and I had my machine gun pelting him…The Hun began to spin earthward.

Father and Son Over Pearl Harbor (Pageant Magazine, 1970)

One morning a 17 year-old boy exclaimed to his amateur aviator father: Let’s fly around the island, Dad! – this article wouldn’t seem worthy of appearing on the internet if they lived on Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard, but the island in question was Honolulu and the morning was December 7, 1941…

Harley Earl on Car Design (Gentry Magazine, 1956)

Few realize that when we applaud the tremendous style that went into so much of the design of 1950s American cars, we are actually praising the fertile mind of Harley J. Earl (1893 – April 10, 1969):


Earl, who served as the Vice-President of Design at General Motors, conceived of so many design elements that are associated with that period, such as wrap-around windshields, tail-fins and two-tone paint styling. In the attached article, written when he was at the top of his game, Harley Earl tells his readers what is involved in automobile design:

Shakespeare has told us ‘neither a borrower nor a lender be’. An automobile stylist must be both. He must borrow his ideas from the creatures and creations of nature which are all about him…

The San Francisco Home Front (Yank Magazine, 1944)

San Francisco played an active roll in World War Two and it was the largest port of embarkation, ferrying millions of American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines off to their unknown fates in the Pacific War. Between 1942 and 1945, the San Francisco population increased by some 150,000 – yet despite the growth, traffic along Market Street was just as heavy as it was before the war. Taxis were fewer and far more dilapidated, trolley car rides were raised to seven cents and despite a government restriction obliging all coffee vendors to charge no more than five cents for each cup, the caffeine-addicted San Franciscans paid twice that amount. U.S.O shows were plentiful throughout San Francisco and with so many of the city’s police officer’s called up, some parts of the city were patrolled by women.

True fans of San Francisco will enjoy this article.


Read about the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake…


From Amazon:


The Bad City in the Good Warstyle=border:none

A Brief History of Women Combatants (Coronet Magazine, 1957)

This article concerns those rare women of the Nineteenth Century who defied the dictates of the patriarchy, scoffed at the feminine traditions of their mothers and donned male attire in order to bare the hardships as soldiers and sailors.


The journalist saw fit to devote greater column space to the story of Madame Loreta Janeta Velazquez, who fought with distinction for the Confederacy during the American Civil War.


Click here to read about Russian combat battalion of women that fought the Germans in the First World War.

The French Hatred of Germany (Literary Digest, 1894)

French hatred of Germany has been looked upon as something of a bugaboo, as being greatly exaggerated, and having little reality except in the writings of the sensationalists. That this hatred is a fact, a very serious fact…

Funny Wills… (Coronet Magazine, 1952)

There just aren’t that many funny wills around that are devised with the intention of rendering the last word in a bad marriage or to dispense petty revenge on those who remained above-ground – that is why we found these two columns so amusing.

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