You may already have heard the inception myth of the teddy bear. Teddy Roosevelt, the definitive POTUS and all round man’s man, out on one of his regular hunting trips, refuses to kill a female bear as it has a young cub. A political cartoonist uses the story to illustrate Roosevelt’s humanity and sense of …
1. Though it is undeniably the driving force behind the adoption of automation in industry, the Model T wasn’t the first car made on a production line – that was the Oldsmobile Curved Dash, beginning in 1901. 2. Famously the Model T was available in “any color as long as it’s black” – however for …
Eight things you might not know about the Ford Model T Read More »
A truism that bears continual restating; the Edwardian / “progressive” era was really, truly racist. Even the most diehard bigots these days would be unlikely to begrudge a black man his boxing career, but it took the best part of a decade of being the best boxer in the world, and two years of stalking …
The visibility of stagnant and trenchant attitudes in the “progressive era” mean that reference to it in 2018 almost requires the use of those scare quotes. There really was a lot of progress happening in some areas, however, and this conservatism was in large part a reaction to genuine radicalism being pushed into mainstream consciousness …
As Hurricane Florence bears down on the East coast of the USA, it would be amiss not to mention what happened across on the other side of the continent 112 years ago. The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 remains vivid in a culture that has built (and built fairly high) on the ruins left behind …
Even if it isn’t the most well-known war in the west, overshadowed by the events of a decade later, the Russo-Japanese war nevertheless led to the abortive 1905 revolution in Russia, the takeover of Korea by Japan, gave Theodore Roosevelt a Nobel Peace Prize, and laid some of the groundwork for the worldwide complications of …
In 1905 the tail-end of the Belle Époque in Paris, home to Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. denis found a new star – a Javanese princess, of princely Hindu birth, immersed in the traditions of sacred Indian dance since childhood, newly arrived in France to demonstrate exotic stripteases where she removed a series of veils …
He hadn’t made his rubber quota for the day so the Belgian-appointed overseers had cut off his daughter’s hand and foot. Her name was Boali. She was five years old. Then they killed her. But they weren’t finished. Then they killed his wife too. And because that didn’t seem quite cruel enough, quite strong enough …
The third modern olympiad, despite the dropping of such noble sports as kite flying, pigeon racing, cannon shooting and fire fighting, is still talked about as one of the strangest and most misguided sporting events in history. A few reasons: The games was moved from the fairly reasonable location of Chicago to the comparative backwater …
Strychnine, Egg Whites, Brandy and a Human Zoo: The Terrible 1904 Olympics Read More »
A man, a plan, a canal; Panama! Not just a palindrome, but a rejected heading for this blog post. 1904 saw the apex of Theodore Roosevelt’s super-sized presidency with work finally beginning on the digging of a canal between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans – a project whose scale remains impressive in 2018. Here is …
