by david allan van nostrand | Oct 12, 2026 | Americana, The iterative process, The Wayback Machine
Well, wouldn’t you know it, someone invented the refrigerator, after a dozen men before him invented the bits and pieces it would take to build a device that chilled the air inside an insulated box, using the principles of expansion and contraction of liquids and...
by david allan van nostrand | Sep 28, 2026 | Americana, origin story, The iterative process, The Wayback Machine
Nature makes ice by dropping the temperature. The farther north you go, the thicker the ice that forms naturally on freshwater lakes. Ice farmers harvested huge blocks of frozen lake with huge saws and dragged them to the cool, dark areas where they’d be stored in...
by david allan van nostrand | Sep 21, 2026 | Americana, Human Behavior, The Wayback Machine, The world around us
Eugene O’Neill wrote “The Iceman Cometh.” I only learned this week that his title was inspired by the New Testament book of Matthew, specifically, the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. As the story goes, ten virgins were chosen to be part of a wedding. The...
by david allan van nostrand | Sep 7, 2026 | Americana, Items in the News, origin story, The Wayback Machine
Clarence Birdseye’s nickname was Bugs. A naturalist and adventurer from Brooklyn, New York, he lived for a time among the Inuit at the very tip of Labrador, Canada, inside the Arctic Circle. There, the fishermen’s catches froze quickly in extreme sub-zero...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 10, 2026 | Americana, The Wayback Machine
We all know about hunters and gatherers and how primitive societies tended to be one or the other. You won’t find many gatherers far up above the Arctic Circle where all is ice, snow, and patches of open water. Except for sled dogs, lost birds, and the occasional...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 3, 2026 | Americana, Fads, origin story, The Wayback Machine
Throughout most of the 1880s, men wore hats, suits, and ties every day and everywhere. Called sack suits, they had three pieces. The loose, hanging single-breasted jacket, the matching vest, and trousers. Nearly all the shirt was covered by the jacket and vest, but...
