Category: Overseas
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English and American Women in Politics
A 1922 New York Times Magazine column surmised reasons why women had earned a higher share of political seats in the U.K. than the U.S. The same discrepancy holds true today, with women comprising larger shares of Parliament than Congress. In 1922, women had only recently gained the right to vote in both countries: in […]
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Berlin Is Back Again in Touristia
World War I utterly devastated Germany. The war ended in 1918. Four years later, in 1922, the New York Times Magazine reported that tourism could finally be said to have returned to Berlin in earnest. Berlin has managed, after fading completely in 1919, after two hard but discouraging attempts in 1920 and 1921, to reinstate […]
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Vodka or Ruin
Did you know that Russia had a Prohibition Era for alcohol during some of the same years as the U.S. did? In the U.S., Prohibition took effect in 1920. In Russia, it started a few years earlier, during World War I. But during the first half of the 1920s, the country desperately needed the money […]
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Trotzky Explains New Red Capitalism
A 1922 New York Times Magazine profile spelled the Soviet Union revolutionary’s name Leon Trotzky, with a ‘z.’ When did the predominant spelling become Leon Trotsky, with an ‘s’? Google Books’ Ngram Viewer allows you to search for the relative popularity of different words or phrases in books over time. The ‘s’ spelling actually first became more […]
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Politics a l’Italienne
A September 1922 New York Times Magazine article quoted a member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies calling the body “the voice of a democracy.” Future dictator Benito Mussolini would become Prime Minister the next month. In fact, Mussolini would actually abolish the Chamber of Deputies entirely from 1939 to 1943, when he was deposed. The […]
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The Prince, Prize Matrimonial
A 1922 New York Times Magazine article asked whether the 28-year-old Prince of Wales, who would later become King Edward VIII, would ever marry. 14 years later, he would abdicate the throne to marry Wallis Simpson, an American divorcée, making him the shortest-serving monarch in British history. Which makes this excerpt describing the then-28-year-old Edward, […]
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If Wells Went to Parliament
Few remember that British science fiction novelist H.G. Wells, author of The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds, ran for the House of Commons in 1922. Today, this fact doesn’t even merit a mention on Wells’ Wikipedia page. Yet he did run for the lower house of the British Parliament, and for a most unusual […]
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Jazz Latitutde
After jazz first emerged in New Orleans in the early 1910s, it spread across the country. A 1922 New York Times Magazine article documented how the genre had by then gone global, summing it up in a single 242-word sentence: Jazz latitude is marked as indelibly on the globe as the heavy line of the […]
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Soviet Smoke Screen and the Hague
A June 1922 international conference at the Hague aimed to settle Soviet Russia’s economic issues. For example, should the nation be absolved of its WWI debts? Although more than 30 nations participated, primarily from Europe, the U.S. refused: The Russian memorandum of May 11… set forth that Russia of the Soviets was not bound to […]
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The Old Pope and Papal Prestige
In February 1922, there was a new pope: Pius XI. The man born Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti would serve for 17 years and lead Vatican City’s creation as a sovereign state in 1929, separate from Italy. This New York Times Magazine article wrote in February 1922 of the new pope, comparing and contrasting him with […]
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