‘My Pal, Albert Einstein”
(Pageant Magazine)
Eleven years after Einstein’s death, a close friend of his wrote this article and revealed the sorts of details that only the closest of friends would know.
Einstein Comes to America
(Literary Digest, 1921)
Professor Albert Einstein, whose theories on space, light and infinity have made his name familiar throughout the world, thinks this small planet on which we live is suffering from narrowness in its point of view. Too much nationalism – that is Professor Einstein’s definition of the ‘disease from which mankind is suffering today.’
Albert Einstein Magazine Interview
(Literary Digest, 1935)
A year and a half after departing Germany, Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955) vogued it up for the cameras at a meeting for the scientific community in Pennsylvania where he answered three very basic questions concerning his research.
A small, sensitive, and slightly naive refugee from Germany stole the show at the winter meeting of the American Association for Advancement of Science, which closed at Pittsburgh last week. Not only the general public and newspapermen, but even the staid scientists forgot their dignity in a scramble to see and hear the little man, Albert Einstein, whose ideas have worked the greatest revolution in modern scientific thought.
General Grant Recalled Meeting Lincoln
(National Park Service, 1956)
A short paragraph from General Grant’s memoir recalling the the first private interview with President Lincoln, on the occasion in the early spring of 1864 when he was given command of all the Federal armies.
In my first interview with Mr. Lincoln alone he stated to me that he had never professed to be a military man or to know how campaigns should be conducted…
Click here to read about a dream that President Lincoln had, a dream that anticipated his violent death.
When Grant was a Colonel
(Literary Digest, 1908)
This Civil War reminiscence was originally printed in a Missouri newspaper and concerned the Union General U.S. Grant (1822 – 1885) when he was a lowly colonel assigned to guard the railroads along the Salt River in Northeast Missouri and how he got along with the local population:
He talked politely in a calm, dispassionate way, and never with heat or anger. Some of those who visited his camp in those days quote him as saying that if he had considered the war merely to free slaves he would have taken his command and joined the South…
Click here to read about
General Grant’s march on Richmond.
Click here to read about the son of General Grant and his memories of his father at Vicksburg.
F. Scott Fitzgerald at Twenty-Five
(The American Magazine, 1922)
At the peak of his fame, F. Scott Fitzgerald penned this opinion piece for a popular U.S. magazine:
For one thing, I do not like old people – They are always talking about their experience, and very few of them have any! – But it is the old folks that run the world; so they try to hide the fact that only young people are attractive or important.
The American Cemetery at Romagne
(Literary Digest, 1919)
An eye-witness account of the construction of the American Meuse-Argonne Cemetery in Romagne, France:
They are now gathering up the bodies of the 26,000 American boys who were killed on the Argonne-Meuse battlefield, and are burying them in a great cemetery at Romagne, a little town in the heart of the region where the fighting took place. Here and there all over the battlefield are stakes, each marking the grave of an American soldier who was buried where he fell.
In one of the office buildings a large force of clerks is keeping the records of the dead; no banking firm could be more careful of its accounts than are these clerks…and their superiors of their registration of graves.
Nighttime Tank Battle
(PM Tabloid, 1942)
Canadian war correspondent M.H. Halton reported from the Egyptian desert concerning one of modern war’s most dramatic spectacles – [a] battle of tanks in the dark.
American Illiteracy in 1920
(Time Magazine, 1923)
The census-takers of 1920 to the people of America:
Can you read and write?
Five million men and women of America responded:
We cannot!
The Work of J.D. Salinger
(The Hibbert Journal, 1964)
A Literary journal’s review of The Catcher in the Rye as well as the short stories contained in Salinger’s collection Franny and Zooey.
The Great War and It’s Influence on Feminine Fashion
(Vanity Fair, 1918)
The military influence on feminine fashion predates the conflict of 1914-1918 by a long shot and the evidence of this is undeniable. These 1918 fashion illustrations show the influence that the war was having on American designers during the final year of W.W. I.
Click here to read about the fashion legacy of W.W. I…
To read about one of the fashion legacies of W.W. II, click here…
Click here to read about the origins of the T-shirt.
The Creation of the Ghettos
(The Saturday Review, 1948)
The subject addressed in this article pertains to the greatest act of cruelty that was ever thrust upon African-Americans by the white hegemony – for it was the one scheme designed to guarantee their continuing poverty.
Hitler’s Man in Delhi
(Collier’s Magazine, 1944)
Subhas Chandra Bose (1897 – 1945) spent much of the Twenties and Thirties brainstorming with Gandhi and Nehru as to how best they might secure sovereignty for their beloved India. By 1939 Bose broke ranks with his fellows at the Indian National Congress, believing that British rule would end a good deal quicker if the Indians signed on with the Axis.
African-American Stevedores in the U.S. Army
(The Independent, 1919)
An article written by David Le Roy Ferguson (dates unknown), an African-American pastor assigned to minister to the black Doughboys posted to the depot at St. Nazaire, France. The men of his flock were stevedores who were ordered to perform the thankless task of off-loading cargo from the various supply ships arriving daily to support the A.E.F.. Aside from working as cooks or in other service positions, this was a customary assignment given to the African-Americans during the war; only a small percentage were posted to the 92nd and 93rd combat divisions.
Pastor Ferguson’s magazine article salutes the necessary labor of these men while at the same time adhering to the usual simple descriptions of the African-American as cheerful, musical and rather crude.
WPA and the States
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1937)
In early March, numerous governors convened and agreed that the WPA was dropping too many dependents from their rolls who were then becoming burdensome to their respective states. The executives then wrote a telegram to the White House insisting that the Federal program stop this practice.
The Federal Theater Project
(Pathfinder & Literary Digest Magazines, 1939)
The Federal Theater Project (FTP) was a division of President
Roosevelt’s Works Project Administration (WPA). The WPA was organized in order to dream up jobs for the many unemployed Americans during the Great Depression. They employed manual laborers with the Civilian Conservation Corps, musicians with the Federal Music Project and historians with the Federal Records Survey – to name only a few of the agencies within the WPA. The Federal Theater Project was intended to hire the nation’s actors, costumers,directors and stagehands:
At its peak in 1936, FTP employed 12,500 people…it had puppet shows, vaudeville units, circuses and stock companies traveling through every state.
The Art Collection of FDR
(Art Digest, 1936)
A printable paragraph from the 1936 pages of Art Digest explaining the aesthetic tastes of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his art collection.
The Man Who Stopped Rommel
(PM Tabloid, 1942)
– from Amazon:Read more …