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.
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…
Myriad are the clever epigrams that have been attributed to the famed Anglo-Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950) – and attached you’ll find additional chestnuts to add to the list. These particular ones recall the bon mots he tossed out while prattling-on with various assorted glitterati of his day; yapers like Clare Boothe Luce, Orson Welles, Judith Anderson and tennis champ Helen Wills.
More about Shaw can be read here.
During the First World War a popular songster in the United States penned a little diddy that ran just so:
-Though the Army is the clover
T’was the Navy brought them over
And the Navy will bring them back….
In anticipation of this roll, the far-seeing Department of the Navy ordered each and every American battleship to have within its arsenal at least one sewing machine, and a tar who was proficient at tailoring in order to make themselves worthy of the task.
Here are the six who top the FBI list of most dangerous lady criminals-at-large; find one and you may prevent murder…
Kate Douglas Wiggin recalled her childhood train ride in the 1840’s in which she was able to have a chat with one of her favorite authors, Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870), as he traveled the United States on a reading tour.
‘Of course, I do skip some of the very dull parts once and a while; not the short dull parts but the long ones.’ He laughed heartily. ‘Now that is something that I hear very little about’ he said.
A late Forties travel article that simultaneously announced the end of Aspen, Colorado, as a ghost town and the beginning of it’s reign as a ski resort of the first order.
Aspen is a tiny Colorado village tucked away in one corner of a lush green valley ringed by snow-capped peaks rising to altitudes of more than 14,000 feet…
Nasty adjectives fly in this nifty essay concerning the friendship that soured between American writers Mark Twain (1835 – 1910) and Bret Harte (1836 – 1902). The two men were quite close during their younger days as journalists in San Francisco; in 1877 the bond between them was so strong that the two agreed to collaborate on a play, which they titled, Ah, Sin. However, Twain insisted that it was notoriety that killed his friend and it might have been better …if Harte had died in the first flush of his fame:
There was a happy Bret Harte, a contented Bret Harte, an ambitious Bret Harte, a bright, cheerful, easy-laughing Bret Harte to whom it was a bubbling effervescent joy to be alive. That Bret Harte died in San Francisco. It was the corpse of that Bret Harte that swept in splendor across the continent…
Here is a 1929 magazine article that makes clear for us in the digital age just how appealing the fad of flag pole sitting was to the YouTube-starved teenagers of the Twenties. This article tells the tale of Avon Azie Foreman and Jimmy Jones, two courageous flag pole sitting sons of Baltimore who inspired their feminine Maryland counterparts, Ruth McCruden and Dorthy Staylor, to ascend to perch. This journalist was probably not alone in believing that anyone who was capable of placing their keister where the flag should be was a rare and distinct breed of individual – possessing a faultless character and was destined for great things in the future.
Good; they will need such sturdy souls in two months – when the bottom falls out of the N.Y. Stock Exchange and the Great Depression begins – you can read about that here…
We were surprised to learn that even in this multicultural era of unenforced immigration laws – the last name Smith still stands as the most common surname in the United States – and as of 2021 there are 2,627,141 people with this last name living today. This article points out that there is always at any given time a Smith serving in Congress (currently that duty falls on the shoulders of Representative Chris Smith, who hails from the 4th District of New Jersey).
This article is about the chemist Dr. Leo Hendrik Baekeland (1863 – 1944) – who left the world a far more plastic place than when he had found it.
When watching the old newsreel footage from the two world wars you see a fair amount of American sailors going about their business. They wore a uniform that seemed to have its origins in the Nineteenth Century, with bell bottom trousers and an odd shirt called a jumper. The blue jumper of an American sailor is decorated with various white stripes, stars and topped off with a queer little black silk kerchief; this article seeks to explain what the origins behind them all were largely British.
When you examine the 14 images in the attached article about California surfing in the Forties you’re quite likely to come away believing that the stale surfing comedy Beach Blanket Bingo
In 1921 a Kyoto Bible school was challenged by a neighboring Buddhist temple. The confrontation did not involve the finer points of theology (not openly, anyway) but which of the two tribes was superior at baseball. It was a Hell of a game.
The uncredited foreign correspondent made it known within the opening paragraphs that the Kyoto Buddhists were irked by the spread of Christianity in that region of Japan and chose to deploy any means at their disposal to gain some sort of advantage.
Twenty-one years later a Japanese team would play an American team. Read about that game here…
Abuses were all too common in most Southern penitentiaries up until the Fifties. This article chronicles one prison in Florida and their practice of placing the prisoners in 60-gallon barrels when they stepped out of line.
Statistically, Anderson is the the 12th most common surname in the United States and there are 894,704 Americans who bare this last name. The name stems from two sources: Scottish and Scandinavian. Both are derived from the Greek word Andreas, which means strong, manly or courageous.
In America today there are many Andersons high in achievement, some of them still spelling their name Andersen, who were born in Sweden, Norway or Denmark. This article broadly outlines the great and famous Andersons, the ones who have walked the halls of Congress, thrived in business, written the books, preached from the pulpits and fought the wars.
Oddly, very little column space is devoted to the infamous Andersons (ie. Confederate thug Bloody Bill Anderson).
The most common last name in the English speaking world (except Canada) is Smith – read about it…
One writer’s reminiscence of attending a London party and being introduced to Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) and the object of his affection, John Gray. The author insists, as has been documented in other places, that Gray was the model for Wilde’s character Dorian Gray:
Once at a Private View in the New Gallery, as I came downstairs, I came on Wilde, in the midst of his admirers, showing more than ever his gift of versatility. Seeing me he made a gesture, and as I went up he introduced me to John Gray, then in what is called ‘the zenith’ of his youth. The adventure was certainly amusing…
An additional article about Wilde can be seen here.
Click here to read a 1940s article about American sodomy legislation.
