Toy stores are always pretty happy places, and some of them manage to survive for ages. The oldest toy store in the US (as far as anybody knows; these things aren’t really studied) is F.A.O. Schwarz in New York City. It was opened in 1862 from the man who gave it its name: Frederick August… Continue reading

If you’ve ever piloted an airplane, you may know that the controls and systems differ from one plane to another far more than, say, the controls of modern automobiles. Particularly decades ago, the pre-flight inspection, takeoff procedure, and landing process for every type of aircraft is unique to that airframe. So a single pilot flying… Continue reading

Let’s talk about pseudonyms. Stage names. Monikers that performers might adopt early in their careers for some reason, and then find it difficult or impossible to change because they get well-known and nobody even knows their real names.  Nico, for example, born October 16, 1938 in Germany, was a famous avant-garde rock singer in the… Continue reading

A pretty common trope in modern adolescent storytelling (the X Men is one big example) is the idea of an abrupt leap in evolution based on genetic mutation. Those stories didn’t come out of nowhere; in the early years of the 20th Century, European scientists including Élie Metchnikoff (Nobel-prize-winning immunologist) and Hugo de Vries (botanist)… Continue reading

In the 1930s and 1940s, in New York City, there was a doll shop on Madison Avenue. It was pretty well known, for a doll shop, and customers from around the US would both visit and send their damaged dolls there to be repaired in the “doll hospital.” The customers were generally wealthy women, since… Continue reading

The idea of a Constitution governing the structure and functioning of a national government didn’t originate with the US Constitution. One of the earliest ones was written nearly a century earlier, by Pylyp Orlyk, who was born in what is today Belarus. His Constitution, which he wrote in 1710, was written in Ukrainian. Orlyk himself… Continue reading

In 1906, Fei Mu was born in Shanghai, China. He grew up to be a movie director, and and made the 1948 movie Spring in a Small Town. It’s been declared the greatest Chinese movie ever made.  On Fei Mu’s 18th birthday, Ed Wood was born in Poughkeepsie, New York in the US. He grew… Continue reading

John Lennon was born 83 years ago today in Liverpool, England. His middle name is Winston, after Winston Churchill. His father was in the merchant marine and wasn’t much involved in the family, until when John was 5, his father tried to emigrate to New Zealand, taking his son along. The parents evidently had quite… Continue reading

Science Fiction is a genre that’s getting a great deal of attention of late. There are tons of good science fiction novels to read, and probably more movies in the genre than ever before. But do you know which is the best-selling science-fiction novel of all time? It’s Dune first published in 1965 by Frank… Continue reading

Many centuries ago, there were vibrant civilizations in the Western Hemisphere. When Europeans arrived, they destroyed the cultures — both purposefully and as a result of the new diseases they brought, which the indigenous people had no resistance to. Nowadays those civilizations are not as well remembered as ancient European and Asian cultures, partly because… Continue reading