2018

Harvey Washington Wiley’s Poison Squad

A staple of weird history sites, the Poison Squad were a self-selected group of healthy young men who willingly ingested food laced with untested food additives including formaldehyde and Borax. From their brave efforts come the foundations of the US FDA. Stuff You Missed In History Class have an episode about them, usual provisos about …

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Moses B. Cotsworth’s Reformed Calendar

Everyone knows that the calendar we use  makes very little logical sense, but once such a fundamental standard it set, would anyone ever go to the trouble of trying to change it? Well, it turns out that the answer is yes – Moses B. Cotsworth did, and he got surprisingly far too, until the more …

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Beatrix Potter – The Tale of Peter Rabbit

116 years before the combination of uncanny valley CGI and the voice of James Corden, a minor Childrens’ publisher put out a small run of picture books about a naughty rabbit. This book immediately lifted its 32-year-old author out of obscurity and went on to be one of the best-sellers of all time. Before I …

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A 1902 recording session in Tbilisi

From Excavated Shellac, the story of one of the first adventures to record the music of the rest of the world.   Likely the music was baffling to these engineers from America. Up to that time, the normal recording repertoire for the Gramophone Company was what one might expect. It primarily consisted of Western classical …

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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – The Hound of the Baskervilles

When I was four or five years old I somehow acquired a Ladybird Horror Classics edition of ‘The Hound of The Baskervilles’. This one in fact: If that cover, or the equally terrifying illustrations within weren’t enough to scare a young child, the book also came with a cassette. The “horror” theme of this publication …

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Elsewhere in 1902

January 30th – Scott’s Discovery Expedition reaches the Great Ice Barrier in Antarctica March 6th – Real Madrid F.C. are founded April 5th – The Ibrox Stadium stands collapse during an England-Scotland match – 25 are killed, 517 are injured April 11th – The South African Army fights a last, disastrous battle against the British …

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1901 in Art

Gustav Klimt – Judith and the Head of Holofernes Pablo Picasso – The Blue Room Winslow Homer — Searchlight on Harbor Entrance, Santiago de Cuba Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo – The Fourth Estate Akseli Gallen-Kallela – Kullervo Rides to War Joseph Farquharson – The Shortening Winter’s Day is Near a Close Camille Pissarro – Hay …

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