by david allan van nostrand | Sep 4, 2023 | Americana, Social archaelogy, The Wayback Machine
In 1920, Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company broadcast the live returns of the presidential race between Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox, two-term governor and two-term U.S. Congressman from Ohio. Cox’s running mate was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who...
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 12, 2023 | Americana, Conformity, Social archaelogy, The Wayback Machine
In Reno, Nevada, just after the Civil War, a man named Jacob Davis made tents and wagon covers from heavy-duty canvas duck cloth. When the biggest silver deposit anyone had ever seen was discovered, thousands of miners came to work the Comstock Lode. These...
by david allan van nostrand | May 29, 2023 | Americana, The Wayback Machine, The world around us
At the peak of its popularity in the USA, the classic station wagon was a four-door sedan-style automobile with an interior passenger compartment that held nine people. Three rows of bench seats went all the way to the back of the car, as did the roof, so there was no...
by david allan van nostrand | May 22, 2023 | Americana, Items in the News, The world around us
“Find a penny, pick it up; all day long you’ll have good luck.” Some say the origin of this superstition comes from long, long ago when metals were believed to protect against harmful spirits. Others say when metal coins were first used as currency, only the very...
by david allan van nostrand | May 15, 2023 | Americana, Anthropology, Case Study, Human Behavior
After living among them for many years, University of Michigan anthropologist Horace Miner wrote about the exotic habits and magical rituals of a tribe called the Nacirema. His ethnography “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” was first published in 1956 and was such a...
by david allan van nostrand | Apr 10, 2023 | Americana, Organizational Behavior, The world around us
The 1876 World’s Fair was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was there that Americans were introduced to an exotic new fruit. Before that, most Americans had never heard of bananas, much less eaten one. In one of the first recorded co-promotions, United Fruit...
