Month: October 2016
-
Indian No Longer Called a Vanishing Race
Back in 1916 even a publication as respected as the New York Times had no problem calling the demographic “red men.” Even Disney would do so with the Peter Pan song “What Makes the Red Man Red?” in 1953, and Washington’s NFL team still uses a variant on that name to this day. According to the 1916 article, the […]
-
Cause of Seasickness Discovered at Last?
Physicians Dr. Lewis Fisher and Dr. Isaac H. Jones published an article “Vertigo and Seasickness, Their Relation to the Ear” in the New York Medical Journal in 1916, claiming that the condition was related to “a disturbance in the ear.” That is why “Persons in whom the mechanism has been destroyed — deaf-mutes, for instance […]
-
What Can an Actor Do When He Retires?
The famed (at the time) actor E.H. Sothern had recently retired from the stage in 1916, which was of course the only real form of acting for anybody who spoke words, since the first film with sound The Jazz Singer wouldn’t come out until 1927. Sothern penned an essay in which he answered the title question […]
-
Will the Brunette Race Eliminate the Blond?
Hair color was apparently a large enough worry a century ago that some feared an extinction of blonds. That was the worry at the time of Madison Grant, a Trustee of the American Museum of Natural History and Councilor of the American Geographical Society, in his cringeworthy-title-in-retrospect book “The Passing of the Great Race.” Today, […]
-
Spent 22 Years Collecting 15,000 Similes
Lexicographer Frank J. Wilstach Wilstach spent 22 years compiling all the similes he could find. Some of them still hold up a century later: “Cold as an enthusiastic New England audience.” Some of them don’t: “Had about as much chance as a Prohibition candidate in a Democratic ward.” Spent 22 Years Collecting 15,000 Similes: Frank […]
-
George Bernard Shaw On Anglo-American Relations
This passage was interesting: British hypocrisy is not real hypocrisy, because its first condition is that it shall not deceive. In English public life it is is a point of honor, when once the truth is so apparent that there can be no possible deception, to get up and lie about it. A man who […]
-
Italy Proud of Soldier-Poet Killed in Action
After the poet Giosue Borsi was killed during World War I in November 1915, a letter he wrote to his mother in event of his death, his “Letter to his Mother” went around the world and was translated into many languages — the 1916 equivalent of going viral. Much of the letter is reprinted in […]
-
Scenic Surgery for “Old Man of Mountains”
The famed natural formation that many believed look like the silhouette of a man was at risk of collapsing in 1916, so work was done to secure it. The inevitable was delayed by 87 years, with the formation eventually collapsing in 2003. Here are before and after photos, taken by Jim Cole of the Associated Press: […]
-
New System of Physical Training in Schools
Instituting physical education requirements was all the rage around 1916, with 97 percent of four-year universities having a physical education requirement in 1920. By 2013, according to Oregon State University researcher Brad Cardinal, that number had declined to an all-time low of 39 percent. New System of Physical Training in Schools: Not Merely Gymnastics and Athletics, […]
-
New Russia Is Individualistic and Imaginative
In 1916, Russia was being praised as “individualistic.” Only two years later in 1918 the Bolshevik Communists became the ruling party, and instituted a “ban on factions” in 1921. New Russia Is Individualistic and Imaginative: Colonel Golejewski, Military Attache to the Russian Embassy, Tells of the Great Similarities Between His Countrymen and Ours From October […]
SundayMagazine.org 