by david allan van nostrand | Mar 20, 2023 | Point of view, The Wayback Machine, Wordplay
You Bet Your Life was a 1950s TV quiz show with a studio audience. The real draw was the host, Groucho Marx, who turned interviews with contestants into laughs with his wisecracks. Before the contestants were introduced, Groucho and announcer George Fenneman showed...
by david allan van nostrand | Mar 6, 2023 | Items in the News, The Wayback Machine, The world around us
As most of us understand history, white settlers from Europe considered the native peoples they met in the Americas to be heathens because they didn’t worship the God of the Bible, which was the one and only true word. Heathens dressed crudely, were uncivilized and...
by david allan van nostrand | Jan 9, 2023 | Americana, Items in the News, Social Desirability, The Wayback Machine
Annie Oakley was a television series in the 1950s. The half-hour show was a highly fictionalized account of the legendary sharpshooter (née Phoebe Ann Mosey) who appeared as a star attraction with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. The executive producer was singing...
by david allan van nostrand | Jan 2, 2023 | Americana, The Wayback Machine, The world around us
Change is loose coins, almost always round and made of metal. In the USA, we use pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. We used to use half dollars and real silver dollars, such as the one George Washington is said to have thrown across the Delaware River. A chump is a...
by david allan van nostrand | Nov 7, 2022 | Americana, Anthropology, The Wayback Machine
Say thanks this November 11th to a black veteran of the U.S. military Black soldiers served in the U.S. Army and Navy during the American Revolution and the War of 1812. In 1820, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, acting in his position as United States Secretary of...
by david allan van nostrand | Oct 24, 2022 | The Wayback Machine, The world around us, Trivia
Eric Arthur Blair was born the son of an opium agent in Bengal, India in 1903 and brought up in an atmosphere of impoverished snobbery, what he called lower-upper-middle class. As a child he was known for his intellectual brilliance and for being withdrawn, morose and...
