Abbott and Costello - Who's on First?

Lou has a chance to play for the New York Yankees, and has trouble finding out the names of players.

Welcome to the Polar Bear Expedition Digital Collections

"The "American Intervention in Northern Russia, 1918-1919," nicknamed the "Polar Bear Expedition," was a U.S. military intervention in northern Russia at the end of World War I. Since many of these soldiers originated from Michigan, the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, an archive documenting Michigan history, has collected materials related to this event since the 1960s. The Bentley has amassed one of the largest groups of materials on this topic, consisting of over sixty individual collections of primary source material as well as numerous published materials."

Here's another little known episode in history, that in my opinion, could be considered as the start, or cause, of the Cold War. I first learned of this years ago, and it brought sense, at least to me, of the claims of the Soviets that the U.S. had been against them from the begining. Not that the Soviets were by any stretch of the imagination "good guys", but our presence and activities on Russian, which had just become "Soviet", territory would lead to the kind of paranoia they exhibited throughout the 'official" Cold War.

Earth's Artificial Ring: Project West Ford

"At the height of the Cold War in the late 1950s, all international communications were either sent through undersea cables or bounced off of the natural ionosphere. The United States military was concerned that the Soviets (or other "Hostile Actors") might cut those cables, forcing the unpredictable ionosphere to be the only means of communication with overseas forces. The Space Age had just begun, and the communications satellites we rely on today existed only in the sketches of futurists."

"Nevertheless, the US Military looked to space to help solve their communications weakness. Their solution was to create an artificial ionosphere. In May 1963, the US Air Force launched 480 million tiny copper needles that briefly created a ring encircling the entire globe. They called it Project West Ford. The engineers behind the project hoped that it would serve as a prototype for two more permanent rings that would forever guarantee their ability to communicate across the globe."

Well here's something I'll bet you didn't know. I didn't. This experiment didn't get too far though, because of opposition to the idea, and the fact that communications satellites weren't too far away. Interesting little story.

Scans of First Superman Comic

From June 1938, here's the introduction to the Man of Steel. Though the website isn't in English, it doesn't matter because the strip is.

Once clicked on, the enlarged scans should be pretty easy to read, unless, like mine, your eyes are getting a little old and and you may need to enlarge them just a wee bit more. Anyway, if you're a fan of Superman, or old comics, you'll enjoy this.

Avengers on the Radio

"These Avengers serials have been painstakingly restored by the webmasters of Avengers on the Radio and are offered to visitors for free. We ask that no financial gain is made from these episodes as this could endanger our ability to offer further serials."

Here's a treat for fans of the old Avengers TV series. A number of the the episodes were done for radio, and are presented here in MP3 format. Each story is broken up into six and seven segments.

I found this site a couple of years ago and only recently remembered about it to post here. It's been a while since I listened to them, but I think that all of them listed here are from the Emma Peel era.

(don't tell anyone, but I always preferred Tara King myself....sigh!!)

Here are just some of the titles:

NOT TO BE SNEEZED AT

FROM VENUS WITH LOVE

A GRAVE CHARGE

ALL DONE BY MIRRORS

If you were a big fan of the series, you'll recognize these when you hear them, even if you've forgotten the titles. Enjoy!

The Haymarket Digital Collection

"Welcome to the Haymarket Affair Digital Collection. The Chicago Historical Society has created this digital collection to provide on-line access to its primary source materials relating to the Haymarket Affair, a controversial moment in Chicago's past and a pivotal event in the early history of the American labor movement."

"The digital collection presents images of key documents and artifacts in their historical context with a minimum of interpretive information. Much like the witness testimony and exhibits introduced during the Haymarket trial, these primary sources are pieces of evidence which enable the user to reconstruct and interpret the historical events to which they relate."

Today we go back to the days when, much like these days, there was another growing international terrorist threat begining to shake the world with bombs and assassinations. In those days they were the anarchists.

This is a story about what happened when police fired into a crowd of unarmed strikers, later to be followed by a clash between police, socialists, anarchists, and workers at a meeting. Someone threw a bomb, and anarchists were blamed, tried, and convicted. These were the early days of the labor movement, as well as that of socialists and anarchists. This site doesn't go into it, but this was the begining of decades of violent activity by anarchists that would reach well into the 20th century.

Vaudeville and Ragtime Show

"For more than a hundred years, vaudeville was America's most popular form of entertainment. The people that sit glued to their TV sets today would have been flocking to their local Palace to see the top stars of the day doing their acts."

"The acrobats, the animal acts, the dancers, the singers and the old-time comedians have taken their final bows and disappeared into the wings of obscurity. For 50 years from 1875 to 1925 - vaudeville was the popular entertainment of the masses. The vaudeville actor roamed the country with a smile and a suitcase. With his brash manner, flashy clothes, capes and cane, and accompanied by his gaudy womenfolk, the vaudevillian brought happiness and excitement to the communities that were visited."

Obviously I wasn't around back then to see vaudville shows, but I certainly grew up being entertained by many performers who continued on into theater, movies, radio, and even TV. Many of the stars I loved as a kid were former vaudville performers that I got to see whenever they made appearances on TV. I remember hearing them talk about how they began in show business back in the old days, when they'd appear on talk shows, and many times they'd perform acts that they did back in vaudville. These were true entertainers who, very early in their careers, learned singing, dancing, acting, doing comedy, and usually knew how to play a musical instrument as well. How many of todays so-called celebrities can walk and chew gum at the same time, very few. They don't make'em like they used to.

Anyway, just to drop a few names of some of my favorites; Jack Benny (of course), Bobe Hope, Milton Berle, George Burns and Gracie Allen, W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, well, you get the picture, unfortunately you won't find any of them here. Unless you're a fan of the era, you probably won't recognize many (if any) names mentioned on this site. It does have a number of Real Audio files for you to listen to, so, enjoy.

Mae West Quotes

1. When I'm good I'm very good, but when I'm bad I'm better.


2. A hard man... is good to find


3. It's not the men in my life that counts -- it's the life in my men.


4. He who hesitates is last.


5. I go for two kinds of men. The kind with muscles, and the kind without.


6. So many men... so little time


7. Too much of a good thing... can be wonderful


8. Why don't you come on up and see me sometime.. when I've got nothin' on but the radio.


9. I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.

There are about a couple dozen more on the page. It's hard to believe that she got away with saying things like this back in those days, thought it did catch up to her, and got her banned from radio for several years.

When Books Burn

"In Berlin, on May 10, 1933, the newly-elected Nazi party carefully orchestrated an event that would announce to Germans and the world some of the aims and the reach of the Nazi party."

"Beginning at nightfall, trucks laden with thousands of books taken from Berlin-area public, state and university libraries converged on the Opernplatz. Members of Nazi student groups and the Sturm Abteilung (Nazi Party private police) tossed the books onto waiting wooden biers and set them afire in a huge "funeral pyre of the intellect." Other members paraded with torches chanting the Feuersprüche, the declarations of the cultural and intellectual war they intended to wage. Against this backdrop, Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels gave a short speech announcing the end of Jewish intellectual influence and proclaiming that a new Germany would rise from the ashes: a Germany remade in the Nazi's image."

Victorian and Edwardian Photographs

"Welcome to my site - Victorian and Edwardian Photographs from my own collection of antique photographs - I have many sites, and all of them are accessable from the links on this page. Those not on this site will open in a new window. The photographs are known as Carte-de-visite (CDV): 1859 - 1906 (small ones), Cabinet Card Photographs: 1870s to 1906 (large ones), and early 20th Century Portrait Postcards, see Types of Photograph."

Data Junkie

"Cultural siftings from the land beyond beyond. Weird stuff. Strange stuff. Cool stuff. Hot stuff. "What-the-hell-were-they-thinking-when-they-did-this?" stuff. Gee they don't make 'em like that anymore kinda stuff. Stuff and more stuff."

That's the self-description of another blogger who also posts a lot of stuff from days-gone-by. What I like best, are his posts of Old Time Radio shows. He's got a ton on his page right now, and if you're a fan too, get over there and grab some soon, as he hosts them on a free file hosting server that removes files when they haven't been download for 30 days. As a result, most of the files from his older posts have already been removed.

If you like his offerings, be sure and visit no less than twice a month, or you might just miss out on that one OTR show you've been dying to find.

The Great Toronto Fire of 1904

"Exactly how the fire started has never been solved. Early reports suggested that faulty electrical wiring was to blame. Others thought that a stove left burning at the end of the work day was the cause. Whatever the source, by the time a watchman saw flames and sounded the alarm at 8:04 pm on that icy night of April 19, 1904, the Wellington Street building in which it had started was already a loss, and the fire was spreading to its neighbours."

Homer's Iliad

"The Trojan War took place sometime between 1300 and 1200 BCE. About 800 BCE, Homer translated the cycle of songs, which existed in native oral narrative and tradition, to an epic composition called, The Iliad. Although it covers only a few days in the history of that war, all the elements are woven together in a complex story of the life and the ethos of an Heroic Age."

The Dead Sea Scrolls

"The story of the Dead Sea Scrolls begins in 1947, when – so the tale goes – a Bedouin shepherd found a collection of apparently ancient scrolls in a cave above Khirbet Qumran, near the north end of the Dead Sea. Over the course of the next year, seven scrolls from the cave reached scholarly hands. When examined by experts, the importance and antiquity of the find was quickly understood. For starters, included among these first seven scrolls was a fairly well-preserved copy of the biblical book of Isaiah, soon determined to be the oldest complete manuscript of a Hebrew scripture yet discovered and dating to before 100 BCE."

Ad*Access

"The Ad*Access Project, funded by the Duke Endowment "Library 2000" Fund, presents images and database information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955. Ad*Access concentrates on five main subject areas: Radio, Television, Transportation, Beauty and Hygiene, and World War II, providing a coherent view of a number of major campaigns and companies through images preserved in one particular advertising collection available at Duke University."

Collection of Native American Photographs, 1890-1938

These are ordinary photos of natives as they actually were, and very, very few of them are in "traditional" native dress. If you've seen photos of the poor during the depression era and earlier, then those are the types of photos you'll find here. The one above isn't really typical of most, as the dwellings aren't as "native" as the one shown here.

The Great Hurricane of 1938

"Except for Charlie Pierce, a junior forecaster in the U.S. Weather Bureau who predicted the storm but was overruled by the chief forecaster, the Weather Bureau experts and the general public never saw it coming. Later that day, the greatest weather disaster ever to hit Long Island and New England struck in the form of a category 3 hurricane. Long Island, New York and New England were changed forever by the Long Island Express."