Month: July 2021
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Playing the King
In 1921, as monarchies in several other nations had recently fallen, a New York Times Sunday Magazine article noted the curiosity that the monarchy in England remained. And it still does. Of the surprises that have followed the war, one of the strangest is the fact that, with the three great Emperors of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia […]
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Wall Street’s Heel on the Prodigal Movies
A 1921 article predicted that the era of large movie budgets was over. Let’s just say that didn’t turn out to be the case. The final hour of profligate spending draws near — of million-dollar salaries and two-hundred-thousand-dollar sets. For the motion-picture-producing companies are putting their houses in order for the inspection of the bankers. […]
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An Officially Independent Afghanistan
100 years ago, in 1921, Afghanistan gained its independence from Great Britain. A New York Times Magazine article that year portrayed the newly-independent nation as something akin to Atlantis, a land of mystery, as so few Americans had ever set foot there. Not more than one American in ten years has ever gone up the […]
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Gandhi and British India
By 1921, a New York Times Magazine profile article about Gandhi already described him as a living legend: “In point of personal following, he is far and away the greatest man living in the world today.” Though he’s now primarily pictured bald, as in his later years, at the time the 52-year-old had a full head […]
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College Sports and Motherhood
In 1921, some people argued, letting young women play college sports would make them worse mothers down the line: The Victorian girl was a better mother than our modern feminine athletes. Every girl, it seems, has a large store of vital and nervous energy, upon which to draw in the great crisis of motherhood. If […]