Category Archives: History

6-Year-Old Snake Charmer – 1949

Leave a reply

Parisian Judge Orders 6-Year-Old To Stop Snake Charming

JUST CHARMER NOW, NO SNAKE
Paris, France – She was “Nita”a snake charmer in a traveling circus, who thrilled the audience with her five foot rose python snake form Brazil. But she was also Nicole Vaissiere, six-year-old. So she’s been taken out of her animal trainer step-father’s side show by a court order. Nicole’s on her way to school where the three R’s aren’t all in the word wriggle. Credit: Acme photo by New York staff correspondent David S. Boyer 12/29/1949

And what else? That’s our usual question to a news story like this.

Checking the news outlets of the time did not yield much more information. United Press International did report some additional facts. Nicole’s snake act Continue reading →

At The First Baseball Hall Of Fame Ceremonies 1939

Leave a reply

Celebrating 100 Years Of Baseball At The Hall Of Fame – 1939

This weekend the National Baseball Hall of Fame will honor this year’s inductees; Dick Allen, Dave Parker, CC Sabathia, Ichiro Suzuki and Billy Wagner.

The Baseball Hall of Fame began in 1936, but  the first ceremony inducting former greats wasn’t until the museum first opened its doors on June 12, 1939. Continue reading →

A Rarity – Summer Vacations In The Late 19th Century

1 Reply

19th Century Summer Vacation?

For Most People There Was No Such Thing.

Congress Hall Hotel, Saratoga Springs, NY ad 1886

Summer is underway. For many people summer vacation plans are in place.

Yet, vacations are something we take for granted and are a relatively modern notion.

What was leisure like in the late 1870s?

Your family lives in the city. Your job as a shipping clerk; pressman; dressmaker; bookkeeper; engineer; blacksmith; engraver or iron worker pays the bills, and you may be able to put a little money aside each month.

New York Sun Help Wanted ads 1872

Your work schedule: 10 hours a day, six days a week.

Days off?

One. Sunday. The Lord’s day of rest. Continue reading →

Old New York In Photos #183 – High Bridge

1 Reply

High Bridge circa 1890s

This magic lantern slide offers a clear view of the oldest existing bridge in New York City, High Bridge which opened in 1848.

High Bridge spans the Harlem River from the Bronx to Manhattan. It was constructed to connect the city with water from the Croton Aqueduct. A pedestrian path was built and became a popular spot for New Yorkers to visit and take in the rural landscape.

Below is the 19th century hand-colored version Continue reading →

Book Review – Of Things That Used To Be, The Bronx In The Early 20th Century

Leave a reply

A Step Up From New York’s Tenements

Nathan (Nat) D. Lobell’s Of Things That Used To Be  A Childhood On Fox Street In The Bronx In The Early Twentieth Century is a memoir concentrating on a striving South Bronx neighborhood full of  immigrants, primarily Jewish, Irish and Italian between World War I and the 1920s. Continue reading →

New Yorker Cartoons From 1970 That Would Now Be Inappropriate

1 Reply

A Dozen 1970 New Yorker Cartoons That Would Not Get Published Today

In 1970 the Women’s Lib movement was in full swing. But it was still de rigueur for the media to portray women as sexual objects.

The New Yorker magazine has always been a mirror of society in the drawings it decides to publish.

Looking back through its cartoons that ran in 1970, reveals what once was considered funny, would now be considered politically incorrect. They may be funny as well. It depends upon your sense of humor.

Many cartoons we display below, involve sexual harassment. But back then these cartoons were a reflection of many men’s behavior and attitudes towards women.

In it’s 100 years of publishing, is there a New Yorker cartoon that was offensive or in bad taste for the time it originally ran? I have seen thousands of their cartoons and have not found one.

What I find offensive is cartoons that are not funny. How did that get published?

Here are cartoons from The New Yorker magazine in 1970, that would probably never appear in The New Yorker today.

Continue reading →

The Nearly Indestructible Pay Phone

Leave a reply

 Even Being Indestructible Did Not Stop The Pay Phone’s Extinction

There are certainly people who have never seen a pay phone before. And people who are familiar with pay phones may have only seen them with push buttons. Rotary dial phones were replaced in the 1970s by push buttons. Whereas pay phones managed to remain ubiquitous until the 1990s.

Pay phones were once everywhere. You could find them in hotels restaurants, gas stations, drug stores, transportation facilities, office and public buildings and on street corners,

The ad above ran in the September 11, 1971 New Yorker magazine.

In 1970 vandals cost American Telephone and Telegraph $12 million Continue reading →

Brooklyn Dodgers Begin 1955 With A Long Winning Streak

Leave a reply

Dodgers Shortstop Pee Wee Reese Counts Down The Wins To A Perfect Season

Brooklyn, NY – The undefeated Brooklyn Dodgers tonight equaled the Major League record of nine consecutive games won at the start of a season, by defeating Philadelphia 3 to 2. The only remaining member of the 1940 Dodger team which also won its first nine games of the season, captain Pee Wee Reese, prepares to draw a line through number 146 after tonight’s win. Looking on is Walt Alston. The mark was first set by the Giants in 1918 and the St. Louis Browns also won their first nine in 1944. photo: International News Photo – Herb Scharfman 4/20/1955

The Brooklyn Dodgers would go on to set a new record winning their tenth consecutive game the following day, beating Philadelphia 14-4. The Dodgers finally lost a game on April 22 to The New York Giants. Continue reading →

Women’s Corsets, Bras, Underwear, Silk Petticoats And Bodices -1919

1 Reply

Undergarments For Women From James McCreery & Co. 1919

The two illustrations seen here are excerpts from a full page ad. This advertisement comes from the April 27, 1919 New York Sun daily newspaper. Shown is an array of intimates of the late teens that a fashionable woman would wear beneath their clothes.

The uptown location of James McCreery & Co. at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street Continue reading →

Baseball’s First Electronic Ball – Strike Machine – 1950

1 Reply

Branch Rickey Inspects An Automatic Umpire, Electronic Ball Strike Indicator

Newest Dodger
Vero Beach, FL –  (L-R) Branch Rickey, Dodger President, Dick Shea, electronics engineer from General Electric, umpire Bill Stewart and Fresco Thompson scout for the Dodger system. They are looking over Rickey’s newest pet – a mechanical umpire that calls balls and strikes and gives speed of pitch over the plate.It is worked by means of a magic eye. It won’t replace the human umpire because it can’t operate at night. photo: Gunther-Keystone 3/15/1950

The machine pictured above was called the “cross-eyed electronic umpire.” It was claimed the machine “could call balls and strikes closer than any normally endowed arbiter.”

Always the innovator, Branch Rickey said, “I expect it to be of definite value in determining the abilities of young pitchers since the machine also will establish the velocity of a fast ball as well as to show beyond question whether the ball is in or outside the strike zone.”

But Rickey also emphasized that he machine was “not intended now or ever to replace manual umpiring in actual games.” Continue reading →