The Middle of an Era
Sometimes the best place to start is in the middle. By the Spring of 1937, half of this fascinating era had already unfolded and...
Home Front Headache: Rationing
“All RED and BLUE stamps in War Ration Book 4 are Worth 10 POINTS EACH. RED and BLUE TOKENS are WORTH 1 POINT EACH....
Tragic Tale of the Normandie Part 1: Smoke Across the Skyline
Admiral Adolphus Andrews, commander of the U.S. Navy’s Third Naval District, sat behind his desk at 90 Church Street in Manhattan; had he the...
Tragic Tale of the Normandie Part 2: Salvaged in Vain?
Like metals to magnets, are humans to tragedies. On Tuesday, February 10, 1942, the day after the Normandie fire, the New York Times estimated...
How Dry We Were: The Repeal of Prohibition
During a 1928 congressional hearing on national prohibition, Pauline Morton Sabin, niece of the Morton Salt founder and wife of the chairman of the...
The Sound of an Era
On the evening of August 21, 1935, a dilapidated bus carrying the Benny Goodman Band pulled up in front of Los Angeles’s Palomar Ballroom....
The Big BOO!
A man in Pittsburgh opened his front door and heard a sad voice; the voice came from the radio and seemed to be mourning...
The Dark Days of 1942
Both December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001 are forever wrapped in infamy. But the relatively quick reaction of overwhelming military force displayed in...
D-Day USA
In the early hours of Tuesday, June 6, 1944, in New York City’s Times Square, a group of cab drivers, a cop on the...
The Birth of LIFE magazine
In 1936 Henry Luce had the motive, means, and money to publish a national picture magazine; so he did. The first issue hit the...