Month: June 2010
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How To Get Sleep On Hot Summer Nights
What’s a New Yorker to do when the air conditioner breaks down? How on Earth is anyone supposed to get to sleep? Take some tips from 1910, where sleeping in the heat was the norm. Air conditioners didn’t really become common in public spaces for another ten years. Advice from the article: eat in moderation […]
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Science Measures The Energy Stored In Various Foods
We think about calories as just a number on a food container, and it’s easy to forget that a calorie is actually a unit of energy. It’s the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree. So how did they determine how many calories were in food […]
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Humors Of Golf As Played At Van Cortlandt Park
I’m not a big fan of golf, but I absolutely love the illustrations in this article about people-watching in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. The course opened in 1895, making it the oldest public golf course in America. It’s still in operation, and was recently upgraded. You can get there by subway, so if […]
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A Proposed Plan For An Invariable Calendar
By 1910, most of the world had adopted the Gregorian calendar that we use today, although several major nations still had not (including China, Russia, Greece, Turkey, and others). An international meeting was held in London to consider the possibility of a new calendar. It was meant to solve the problem of not easily knowing […]
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Famous Prima Donna Champions Woman Suffrage Cause
Here we have the story of a famous opera singer, Lillian Nordica, who supports a woman’s right to vote. I found it interesting that this article tries so hard to let the reader know that men have no need to worry about too much change if women are allowed to vote. There is the explicit […]
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Can You Tell An Ear For Music By Looking At It?
For a minute in 2007, the blogosphere was abuzz about a Hungarian plastic surgeon named Dr. Lajos Nagy who claimed that making your ears pointy would allow you to better appreciate music. He said this craze was huge in New York, and would soon be sweeping the globe. On his website, he explains scientifically why […]
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Pot Shooting In Central Park
Wild animals occasionally make their way into Central Park. Just a few months ago, a coyote in the Park seemed to be the talk of the town. In modern times, these animals are taken down by NYPD sharpshooters with tranquilizer guns. But back in 1910, there was one man whose full time job was hunting […]
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“No Centenarian Living,” Says Dr. Woods Hutchinson
Life expectancy is longer than it’s ever been, and there were already hundreds of people claiming to be more than 100 years old in 1910. But Dr. Woods Hutchinson investigated and decided they were all wrong: “I don’t mean that such men and women are wilful liars. I believe they are mistaken. Many of them […]
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A Morning Walk And Talk With Mayor Gaynor
William Jay Gaynor served as mayor of New York City from 1910 – 1913, and walked to CIty Hall from his home in Park Slope every day, enjoying the view of the city as he crossed the Brooklyn Bridge and planned out his day in his head. This brings to mind the present mayor Michael […]
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“The Hobble” Is The Latest Freak In Woman’s Fashions
The headline and illustrations sum up the article pretty well, but my favorite part is the caption of the bottommost image. It reads, “These Are Not Exaggerated at All. The Skirts Really Look Like This.” “THE HOBBLE” IS THE LATEST FREAK IN WOMAN’S FASHIONS: “Skirts Are So Tight Around the Ankle That Locomotion Is Seriously […]
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