Have you ever heard the word mimeograph? In the 1940s and 1950s, it was a household word. Advertisement in Life Magazine December 11, 1939 Making a copy of a document is easy today, but it was once a major task. Thomas Edison was only one of many inventors who looked for ways to make duplicates […]
DYK: Did you know? Translated from the old Spanish phrase “sangre azul”, blue blood derives from the Medieval belief in Europe (among other places) that the blood of the royalty and nobility was blue. Since the royal family and aristocrats were wealthy and powerful enough to pay commoners to labor in the fields for […]
The bitter end’ means the very end and comes from a nautical term. Anchor cable was wrapped around posts called bitts. The bitt end (or bitter end) refers to the final part of the anchor rope near to where the rope is fixed to the ship’s deck. Usually marked with coloured rags, the bitter end […]
DYK: Did you know? The fashion for wigs began with the Bourbon kings of France. Louis XIII (1601 – 1643) went prematurely bald and took to wearing a wig. By the middle of the century, and especially during the reign of Louis XIV. The Sun King, wigs were virtually obligatory for all European nobility and […]
LILY LIVERED – Means cowardly. People once believed that your passions came from you liver. If you were lily livered your liver was white (because it did not contain any blood). So you were a coward. The ancient Greeks used to sacrifice an animal before battle. The liver was regarded as a prime omen – if […]
Another forgotten story for women’s history month Webster, Massachusetts seems to be rather forward thinking for the time in allowing a girl to play on a boys’ high school baseball team. And what is amazing is that she was the STAR player. The story about Nellie Twardzik made it all the way to a deep south newspaper, […]
This photograph of Marilyn Monroe when she was posing for photographers while filming the The Seven Year Itch in September 1954 is probably the most shared of all her photographs. However, the film below may have been inspired by the 1901 film at the bottom of this page. Watch a lady get a surprise in this 1901 film. […]
Cotton farming was a major product at the Lake Dick Project in Arkansas but it was hard, grueling and back breaking work as can be seen in these photographs taken by Russell Lee in 1938. Young children often went to the cotton fields with their parents Overseer of Cotton pickers Day Laborers were hired as […]
I Want to Go Back to Michigan is a song by Irving Berlin composed in 1914. It was a moderate commercial success when it was first released and afterward became a staple on vaudeville. Billy Murray, a popular singer during the period when the song was first composed, recorded it for Edison Records in 1914. Its […]
These remarkable photographs taken by Russell Lee show farming equipment, techniques of haying and sorghum making in October 1938. How times have changed! Member of Lake Dick Cooperative Association, Lake Dick Project, Arkansas Cleaning vats used in production of syrup from sorghum, Lake Dick Project, Arkansas Stripping sorghum prior to crushing. Sorghum mill at […]
