by david allan van nostrand | Oct 17, 2022 | Human Behavior, Social archaelogy, Unintended Consequences
On October 19, 1856, someone at the Royal Surrey Gardens Music Hall in London falsely shouted “Fire!” and in the panicked rush to escape, seven were killed. On December 5, 1876, a fire broke out in The Brooklyn Theater. Employees didn’t want to panic people by...
by david allan van nostrand | Oct 10, 2022 | How to tell good research from bad, Human Behavior, Organizational Behavior, Social archaelogy
A pecking order is a social hierarchy. With domestic fowl, it is the social hierarchy of a flock of chickens in which the dominant birds peck the subordinate birds who submit to it as a signal of acceptance of the difference between their social standings. All up and...
by david allan van nostrand | Oct 3, 2022 | Americana, Social archaelogy, The 1960s, The Wayback Machine
Hollywood Squares was a popular game show on television in the 1960s, patterned on the pencil and paper game of tic-tac-toe. The studio set had nine small cubicles, stacked three high and three wide. Within each open-faced square sat a celebrity. The two contestants,...
by david allan van nostrand | Sep 19, 2022 | Human Behavior, Social archaelogy, The world around us
Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, America’s sweethearts, starred in Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail, two well-regarded romantic comedies by Nora Ephron, director and screenwriter. Ephron was not involved in the film Joe Versus the Volcano, where Hanks played Joe, a...
by david allan van nostrand | Sep 12, 2022 | Language, Social archaelogy, The world around us, Wordplay
In the 1800s, street gangs didn’t have guns. They used cloth bags or socks filled with sand as homemade weapons to conk people over the head with so they could steal their money and their goods. The next technological evolution was the blackjack. Also referred to as a...
by david allan van nostrand | Dec 28, 2020 | Human Behavior, Items in the News, Social archaelogy, The world around us
The words to the song millions sing at midnight each December 31st are said to have been written by Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet. Encyclopaedia Britannica says no one knows who wrote the music. Burns refused to take credit for the song, saying it was merely...
