by david allan van nostrand | Aug 17, 2026 | Behind the curtain, Inventions, The world around us
When we look at maps, what we see is not what we get. In 1569, Gerardus Mercator solved the problem that had forever vexed mapmakers: maps are flat and the Earth is round, more or less (technically, it’s an oblate spheroid). The biggest downside to the Mercator is...
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 29, 2026 | Americana, Inventions, Items in the News, The Wayback Machine
Three very bad man are after the money they think Audrey Hepburn has because her husband stole it from them and he has turned up dead, thrown from a train in his pajamas. The police gave her the small travel bag they found with his body. Inside were a few francs, a...
by david allan van nostrand | Apr 20, 2026 | Inventions, The Guild System, The Wayback Machine, The world around us
Like so many things from the past, the pretzel comes equipped with lots of stories of how it came to be and what it symbolizes. The favorite story of most pretzel historians features a 7th century Italian monk who designed a cracker for his students. As a reward for...
by david allan van nostrand | Jan 27, 2026 | Americana, Inventions, The Wayback Machine
The potato chip (puhleez don’t say iconic) is a symbol of portable snacks, specifically the category the food industry calls salty snacks. American companies turn four million tons of potatoes into chips every year. That’s $10 billion of what most Americans consider...
by david allan van nostrand | Jan 19, 2026 | Human Behavior, Inventions, The Wayback Machine
Look on the top of most better bar counters and you’ll find cherries, oranges, lemons, limes, sliced, wedged, twisted, and impaled upon little plastic swords with sharp points and tiny little hilts. Next to them you’ll see swirled stacks of bevnaps (the portmanteau...
by david allan van nostrand | Jan 12, 2026 | Human Behavior, Inventions, The Wayback Machine
For many, the word woodwind is just what it sounds like: wood wind. It conjures up visions of clarinets and oboes, those slender and hollow wooden tubes with holes drilled along their length. Musicians supply the power by blowing into those tubes, changing the sounds...
