American History
History on Display: The Jane Addams Hull House Museum
A few days ago, My Own True Love and I took a few hours off to visit a museum that’s been on our list for several years now: the Jane Addams Hull House museum. Jane Addams (1860-1935) and Hull House stand in the center of a Venn diagram of many of our interests: historical women…
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In which I take a side trip in time and space to consider the Mayans, the Aztecs and Chocolate
During our visit to Antica Dolceria Bonajuta, the artisanal chocolate producer in Modica, our guide emphasized the fact that most modern chocolatiers, who use heat based methods such as conching and tempering to create smooth chocolate with a shiny appearance. By contrast, the Bonajuta chocolate makers still used a traditional “cold-processing” method similar to that…
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From the Archives: Orson Welles’ The War of the Worlds and the History of Radio Broadcasting
You’ve probably heard this story before: On October 30, 1938, a 23-year-old theatrical boy-wonder named Orson Welles caused panic among radio listeners with the Halloween episode of his Mercury Theatre on the Air: an adaptation of H.G. Well’s The War of the Worlds.(1) Actors played the roles of correspondents who broke into an on-going [fake]…
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