Month: May 2021
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Democracy by Lot — A College Experiment
In 1921, Knox College in Illinois attempted a new way to break students out of their social comfort zones: randomly selecting the seating arrangements at the dining hall. Here, in a dining hall seating 200 men, they come together three times a day, as a part of a deliberate plan for developing democratic spirit and avoiding […]
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Mortal Actors and Immortal Film Faces
In theater, if a cast member dies, every actor or actress has an understudy who can substitute in the next night. In the early years of the movie business, though, a new concern emerged: what if a cast member dies in the middle of filming? That exact situation happened for the 1922 movie Foolish Wives, […]
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The Future of the Novel
A 1921 article predicted novels would move towards action and adventure. That happened… eventually. While the biggest novels of recent decades have been action-heavy, perhaps the least action-heavy classic ever — Ulysses by James Joyce — was published only the next year. This is the age of the airplane, the wireless telegraph, of radium, of […]
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Enjoying the Presidency
A few months into office in 1921, Warren Harding had returned fun to the White House, resurrecting the Easter Egg Roll, the presidential tradition of throwing the baseball season’s opening pitch, and corresponding with letter writers on apolitical topics. The Easter Egg Roll had been cancelled in 1918 due to wartime egg shortages, but President […]
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