Recently Added Articles

Illustrated with 27 pictures, this article lists a number of historic and semi-historic events that were captured by the early TV cameras and seen by millions of souls who otherwise would have only had to read about them in their respective newspapers, if they cared to.

The Smiths in America (Pageant Magazine, 1959)

We were surprised to learn that even in this multicultural era of unenforced immigration laws - the last name "Smith" still stands as the most common surname in the United States - and as of 2013 there are 2,788,558 people with this last name living today. This article points out that there is always at any given time a Smith serving in Congress (currently that duty falls on the shoulders of Representative Chris Smith, who hails from the 4th District of New Jersey). This article rambles on for seven pages with just these sort of charming factoids:

• During W.W. II there were nearly 76,000 Smiths in uniform
• Roughly eighty Smiths die in the United States every day, only to be replaced by an equal number of newborn Smiths
•A quarter of a million Smiths are arrested annually, etc., etc., etc....

"Anderson" is the twelfth most common name, read about it here...

Read about the time when the Bob Smiths of America were united...


A World War II Prayer Story (Reader's Digest, 1944)

"A psychologist, in discussing some of the widely publicized 'miracles' of the war, puts it this way: 'God may be likened to an electric dynamo. We can receive the power of this dynamo by attaching ourselves to it by prayer; or we can prove it has no influence in our lives by refusing to attach ourselves to it by prayer. The choice is ours...' Today indisputable proof of the power of prayer are pouring in from every quarter of the globe. The only surprising thing is that we think it surprising. These praying soldiers, sailors and aviators of ours are merely following the example of Washington who knelt to ask for aid in the snows of Valley Forge and of Lincoln who, in the darkest days of the Civil War, declared: 'Without the assistance of That Divine Being Who attends me I cannot succeed; with that assistance I cannot fail.'"

Click here to read about one of the most famous prayers of the Second World War...

Chicago Vaudeville Remembered (Stage Magazine, 1935)

American journalist and radio personality Franklin P. Adams (1881 - 1960) recalled the high-water mark of Chicago's Vaudeville (with some detail) for the editors of STAGE MAGAZINE, a witty and highly glossy magazine that concerned all the goings-on in the American theater of the day:

"They were Continuous Variety Shows. They ran - at any rate at the Olympic Theatre, known in Chicago as the Big O - from 12:30 p.m. to 11:00 p.m....While those days are often referred to as the Golden Days of Vaudeville, candor compels the admission that they were brimming with dross; that Vaudeville's standard in 1896 was no more aureate than musical comedy in 1935 is."

Click here to read about a 1949 plan to bring Vaudeville back (it didn't work).

The Book Burnings (Literary Digest, 1933)

"Numbers hardly count in estimating the book-burning festival in Germany on May 10 [1933]....Reports range from an estimate of hundreds to tens of thousands of books burned."

American columnist Walter Lippmann of the NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE wrote:

"They symbolize the moral and intellectual character of the Nazi regime. For these bonfires are not the work of schoolboys or mobs but of the present German Government acting through its Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment."

CLICK HERE to read an article from 1923 about the abitious Adolf Hitler.

Read about the American reporter who became a Nazi...


The Coeds of the Cold War (Quick Magazine, 1953)

The original "Generation X" was that group of babies born in the late Twenties/early Thirties: they were the younger brothers and sisters of the W.W. II generation. There seemed to have been some talk in the early Fifties that this group of Americans were becoming sardonic and cynical - raised on the W.W. II home front, only to find that when they came of age they were also expected to sacrifice their numbers in a foreign war:

"How can you help being pessimistic when you hear that the boy you sat next to in high school English was killed last week in Korea?"

- opined one of the nine college women interviewed on the attached pages. These Cold War women were asked what was on their minds as they prepared for jobs, marriage and family.


The Deep Regrets (Pageant Magazine, 1958)

A young wife gets swept up in the whirlwind of blind compliance that was the condition of her marriage. Her husband forces her onto the abortionist's gurney and she awakens an hour later with profound regret:

"It was a great psychological and spiritual emptiness - as though she'd lost something of immense meaning that could never be replaced. Part of her womanhood, her reason for being alive, had been taken from her, and she felt a vast sense of deprivation."

"I had degraded myself and betrayed my baby..."

Click here to read more abortion articles.


Prohibition Era Prisons Filled with Women (American Legion Weekly, 1924)

Four and a half years into Prohibition, journalist Jack O'Donnell reported that there were as many as 25,000 women who had run-afoul of the law in an effort to earn a quick buck working for bootleggers:

"They range in age from six to sixty. They are recruited from all ranks and stations of life - from the slums of New York's lower East Side, exclusive homes of California, the pine clad hills of Tennessee, the wind-swept plains of Texas, the sacred precincts of exclusive Washington... Women in the bootleg game are becoming a great problem to law enforcement officials. Prohibition agents, state troopers and city police - gallant gentlemen all - hesitate to embarrass women by stopping their cars to inquire if they are carrying hooch. The bootleggers and smugglers are aware of this fact and take advantage of it."

Verily, so numerous were these lush lassies - the Federal Government saw fit to construct a prison compound in which to incarcerate them; you can read about that here...