You know about the Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne — all of them were talented novelists. But they had a brother, too, Patrick Branwell. He went by his middle name, Branwell, and while he was probably just as talented as his sisters, lived a short and troubled life.  Branwell Brontë was the only boy… Continue reading

One of the unique things introduced in the 20th century was “the popular fad introduced by comic characters.” Two of that century’s biggest such fads are connected by at least one coincidence: their creators shared a birthday.  The first such fad, in the US, was Kewpie Dolls. Kewpies were stylized babies with a topknot of… Continue reading

One of the small, ubiquitous objects we take for granted these days is the thumbtack. They’re such a good way to temporarily attach papers, posters, notices, and the like to a vertical surface that many offices are designed with walls to accommodate thumbtacks. They’re everywhere, and so vanishingly inexpensive that I’ll bet you can’t even… Continue reading

In the US, carbonated soft drinks loaded with sugar (or more likely corn syrup) have been in a marketing competition for decades. Coca-Cola almost always wins, and until recently Pepsi-Cola has been in second place. But earlier this very month, there was a new #2: Dr Pepper.  Dr Pepper is always pronounced “Doctor Pepper,” even… Continue reading

If you remember your European history from middle or high school (or both), you’ll know that the “Age of Enlightenment” was not about dieting and weight loss, it was an intellectual movement in the 17th and 18th centuries. It focused on rationalism and gaining knowledge empircally. Although the Enlightenment applies to Europe overall, the movement… Continue reading

In the 1800s in the US, women were evidently getting fed up with well-off white men hogging all the power and authority and refusing to share their privileges, such as education and voting. But a group that doesn’t have any formal power often faces significant hurdles in trying to change the status quo. The women… Continue reading

I’m sure you’re familiar with the terms hypertext and hypermedia. They’re older than you might expect; they were both coined in 1963 by Theodor (Ted) Nelson, whose 87th birthday is today.  Nelson came up with the terms in connection with Project Xanadu, his plan for a networked computer-based writing system that would enable connecting (linking)… Continue reading

The Box Tunnel is a railroad tunnel in England. It was designed by the famous engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel and constructed between 1838 and 1841. It’s nearly two miles long, which made it the world’s longest railway tunnel when it opened. It was originally a controversial project, partly because the rock inside Box Hill wasn’t… Continue reading

Remember high school physics, the electricity unit, where you (possibly) learned about the coulomb, the unit of electric charge? Well today is Couloumb’s birthday, but he did had nothing to do with establishing the coulomb unit.  Charles-Augustin de Coulomb was born June 14, 1736 in France. When he was little, his family moved to Paris,… Continue reading

Some people avoid publicity, but Trevanian took it to an extreme. Trevanian was a best selling writer — at least five of his books sold over a million copies — and he also published as Nicholas Seare, Beñat Le Cagot, and Edoard Moran. He even published one nonfiction book, The Language of Film, under the… Continue reading