The caption from the 1922 newspaper reads: Wilbur Glenn Voliva, leader of the religious sect with headquarters at Zion City, Ill, says the earth is flat and that shortly he will prove it by taking a ship and sailing around the outer crust of the earth. Voliva proposes to captain a ship called the “Zion” […]
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The Grip, 1903
In Guys and Dolls, the song “Adelaide’s Lament” rattles off any number of diseases that Adelaide might be suffering from — one is le grippe. By the fifties, the name was pretty much obsolete: today, we call legrippe “the flu”. Catarrh is another one of those obsolete disease names, too. It mostly just […]
A Hungarian Countship, 1878
Oh, Sergeant de Badal, I hope you have a way to pay your friend back for what you borrowed — from the Bismarck Tri-Weekly Tribune, 3/26/1878: “The reported fortune of 2,000,000 florins that, according to Dame Rumer, has been bequeathed to Sergt. Louis de Badal, U.S.A., caused considerable comment around town yesterday. It was received […]
Sans-Souci Palace, 1900s
A few years ago I bought a small box containing ‘magic lantern‘ slides, small glass plates with photographs on them, at an antique store in Minnesota. They’re essentially for use in the slide-projector of the late 19th century and early 20th century, a way to share photos with an audience. Five plates are in […]
Lightning Jugglers, 1882
After the juvenile amusement at the flowery term “jerking lightning’ that appeared in Dakota Death Trip a few months ago, here’s an equally Zeus-like term from 1882: The Lightning Jugglers Cincinnati, March 16.– The telegraphers’ convention to-day resolved itself into a committee of the whole on the best method of forming a national organization. After […]
The Amsterdam Fortune, 1920s
Norwegian immigrants in the 1920s saw their chance at financial independence: an Amsterdam bank ran ads in newspapers looking for descendants of Elizabeth Sabo, a Manx woman who ended up in Norway after a ill-fated cow milking expedition. The Amsterdam Fortune was her brother’s, bequeathed to the 6th generation of her offspring, to be paid […]
All That Glitters, 1909
One-hundred and five years ago today, a gold miner from California arrived at the doorstep of Herbert Chaffee, the president of the Amenia and Sharon Land Company, in Amenia, ND. This seventy-something, gray-haired man called himself John Armstrong, and he believed Chaffee to be a long-lost uncle. Having established their family trees didn’t cross […]
Barkers and Beagles, 1930s
When the TV show DuckTales debuted in September 1987, twenty-six years ago this month, it brought with it the infamous Beagle Boys and their matriarch, Ma Beagle. These were the main antagonists of Uncle Scrooge McDuck and his wards, Huey, Dewey, and Louie. The whole world that DuckTales existed within was born from the pen of […]
Esperanto in the US, 1910
The 6th World Congress of Esperanto, held in Washington D.C. in August 1910, had reached its peak with an address by the language’s creator, Ludwig Zamenhof, on August 15th. Entitled “Lando de Libereco,” Zamenhof complimented the United States for being a land without tribe or church, a place of freedom and cooperation. A full English […]
Secession And The US
That cool cat up there is “Wild Bill” Langer, voting in the 1940 election that would send Mr. Langer to Washington. Nothing was ever easy for William Langer: when he got to Washington, Congress refused to seat him. They cited a history of lawbreaking, bribery, an attempt to secede from the United States, felonies, and […]