by david allan van nostrand | Jul 29, 2024 | Items in the News, The Wayback Machine
29 Things That Happened on July 29th #1. 1566. England executes a woman convicted of witchcraft. Joan, daughter of the widow Agnes Waterhouse, testified that she saw her mother turn a cat into a toad. A four-minute Monty Python skit lampoons the ignorance of the...
by david allan van nostrand | Jul 22, 2024 | Items in the News, The Wayback Machine, The world around us
Today is Pied Piper Day Once upon a time, a town lying between a river and a mountain had an unsurmountable problem with rats. They fought the dogs, and killed the cats, And bit the babies in the cradles, And eat the cheeses out of the vats, And licked the...
by david allan van nostrand | Jul 15, 2024 | Americana, Experiments, Technology, The Wayback Machine
While majoring in English in college, Don Herbert acted in summer playhouse theater. He joined the US Air Force during World War II, became a B-24 pilot, and flew 56 bombing missions over Europe. When the war was over, Herbert came home and got involved in performing...
by david allan van nostrand | Jul 8, 2024 | The iterative process, The Wayback Machine, The world around us
Who Invented the Fire Department? Tontines are investment plans where groups of people commit an agreed-upon amount of money to a dividend-sharing fund. When the first member of the group dies, the survivors’ dividends go up accordingly. This goes on until all have...
by david allan van nostrand | Jul 1, 2024 | Americana, Fourth of July, The Wayback Machine, The world around us
Who Is America’s Uncle Sam? Most of the Uncle Sam origin stories tell of Samuel Wilson, a contractor who supplied the Army with meat during the War of 1812. Wilson shipped his beef and pork to army outposts in large wooden barrels stamped with US, indicating...
