tingilinde

when was the emoticon invented?

Many have suggested a 1881 piece in Puck.

Perhaps it was a bit earlier :)

 

women couldn't be creative in the magic kingdom

A rejection letter from Disney

Of course times have changed ... at least one hopes.

 

 

 

frederick douglass' 'fourth of july' speech

Read by his descendents.

 

on the lost cause

David Blight has studied the Lost Cause as much as any historian.  He has a nice piece in The New Yorker.   Let's hope the myth is finally banished.

snip

...

The statues are being toppled, but the story that built them remains. If Matthias could visit America, one hopes that he would see a country trying to transcend that story—trying, like his son, to capture not just a brighter future but a truer sense of the past. If he were here, I would tell him of a history full of suffering, hypocrisy, and tragedy, along with sublime creativity and advancement. I would tell him how Americans have been rewriting this history for a long time, and we could talk to each other about the link between public memory and the grind of progress. It would be the beginning, I think, of a long conversation. But if this is to be our 1989, we must make the most of it. The whole world may be watching.

...

 

 

at the purchaser's option

an important piece by Rhiannon Giddens

on confederate moderates

A very personal story.

 

darwin + dunning-kruger

John noted this video posted to Twitter ..  crazies in Florida condemning masks wearing - in one case interfering with God's natural way.

It reminded me of a piece on why umbrellas tamper with God's will..  some searching of the NYT's archive found it.

snip

...

According to Katherine Morris Lester and Bess Viola Derke in ''Accessories of Dress'' (Charles A. Bennett Company, 1954), the umbrella was ''perpetually rediscovered'' in England, ''heard of in the 17th century and early in the 18th, and yet Jonas Hanway, who died in 1786, has the reputation of having introduced the umbrella into England,'' which he had seen in the East. He was criticized ''for defying the heavenly purpose of rain, which obviously was to make people wet.''

...

 

(addition:  check Greg's comment)

 

 

 

palle huld

Looking for something else I came across the obituary of the real Tintin - Palle Huld.

snip

...

Mr. Huld’s life in the public eye began in 1928, when the Danish newspaper Politiken held a contest to honor the centennial of Jules Verne. The winner would re-enact Phileas Fogg’s voyage from “Around the World in Eighty Days,” Verne’s celebrated 1873 novel.

There were to be some crucial twists: The contest was open only to teenage boys; the winner would circle the globe unaccompanied; and he had to complete the trip within 46 days, using any conveyance but the airplane.

...

(a link to a Danish paper is broken)

 

 

on the spread of the antics fantasy

It tapped into an established conspiracy belief that's been around for a long time.  Anne Helen Petersen investigates. (note.. she's been doing the best political reporting out of Montana and Idaho for the past five years)

 

 

 

canada and the american civil war

A story you may not have been aware of..  at least not the Confederate effort.