The DNA analysis of a large and diverse group of dogs led researchers to determine that the most recent common ancestors of today’s dogs lived in Central Asia.
Tuning into the radio is now an integrated part of our everyday lives. We tune in while we drive, while we work, while we cook in our kitchens. Just 100 years ago, it was a novelty to turn on a radio. The radio emerged at the turn of the twentieth century, the result of decades of scientific experimentation with the theory that information could be transmitted over long distances. Radio as a medium reached its peak—the so-called Radio Golden Age—during the Great Depression and World War II. This was a time when the world was rapidly changing, and for the first time Americans experienced those history-making events as they happened. The
Photograph of a young girl listening to the radio during the Great Depression. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
emergence and popularity of radio shifted not just the way Americans across the country experienced news and entertainment, but also the way they communicated. This exhibition explores the development, rise, and adaptation of the radio, and its impact on American culture.
English: Photograph of the Old Court House, Charlotte, North Carolina, 1888. Image reprinted in “Cotton Mill, Commercial Features,” written by D. A. Tompkins, p. 22, published by the author, Charlotte, N.C., 1899. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“When you think of the history of Thanksgiving, you’d be hard-pressed not to picture funny Pilgrim hats and stereotyped Native Americans. These days, most of us know that the sanitized story we learned in grade school bears little resemblance to the real history of the Plymouth colony. But it might still come as a surprise to hear that, as Anne Blue Wills argues in a 2003 article in Church History, Thanksgiving as we know it was deliberately invented in the 19th Century.”
“Wills traces the holiday’s traditions, the reunions of dispersed families in their childhood homes and the tables groaning under the weight of turkey and stuffing and pie, to the popular magazines that were beginning to give the nation a more unified culture in the mid-1800s. In particular, she writes that Sarah Hale, the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book and Magazine “badgered national leaders” to formally recognize the holiday, which Abraham Lincoln did in 1863.”
English: “The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth” (1914) By Jennie A. Brownscombe (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“Straddling the line between fall and winter, plenty and paucity, life and death, Halloween is a time of celebration and superstition. It is thought to have originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off roaming ghosts. In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as a time to honor all saints and martyrs; the holiday, All Saints’ Day, incorporated some of the traditions of Samhain. The evening before was known as All Hallows’ Eve and later Halloween. Over time, Halloween evolved into a secular, community-based event characterized by child-friendly activities such as trick-or-treating. In a number of countries around the world, as the days grow shorter and the nights get colder, people continue to usher in the winter season with gatherings, costumes and sweet treats.”
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