Category: Learn History Through Fiction

It is said that “an army marches on its stomach,” but what if the food is awful? In WWI (the era of my novel On the Shore), soldiers ate Iron Rations. They pounded the hard tack into chips with rifle butts and soaked bully beef in soup or hot water. To find out how soldiers supplemented this tasteless fare with snacks from the “gedunk stand,” see On the Shore in NOVELS. Learn the more colorful names for military food in BEHIND THE STORY.

My WWII-era novel-in-progress, tentatively titled One Person’s Loss, includes rituals that the protagonists, German Jewish immigrants, use to ward off the “evil eye” when their baby is born. I researched whether their Italian immigrant neighbors might have similar superstitions. Jews tie red ribbons on the carriage, and/or a red string called a roite bindele around the infant’s left wrist, to protect it from the envy of demons. Italians wear a cornicello, a charm resembling a red pepper, to ward off bad luck and tocca ferro (touch iron). Read more about these and other good luck rituals in BEHIND THE STORY.

On the Shore ends in 1925. What was happening on the U.S. cultural scene that year? People were listening and dancing to “Tea for Two”; watching Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush; eating ice cream in cones rolled by a machine; and complaining when Babe Ruth was fined and suspended after showing up late for batting practice following a night on the town. Read more about the era of On the Shore (1917-1925) by clicking on NOVELS.

Discovered while researching a story titled “A Fifth Way” – The Band-Aid was invented 1920 by Johnson & Johnson employee Earle Dickson for his wife Josephine, who frequently cut and burned herself while cooking. The original Band-Aids were handmade and not popular, using resources available at the time which were limited in an era of poverty. By 1924, J & J made a machine that produced sterilized Band-Aids. The first decorative Band-Aids, introduced in 1951, were a commercial success. Not until decades later were colored adhesive bandages and clear ones for all skin colors created. Read more about popular culture in history in BEHIND THE STORY.

My novel On the Shore ends in 1925, an eventful year in media. On March 4, Calvin Coolidge became the first President of the United States to have his inauguration broadcast on radio. The low key Coolidge (dubbed “Silent Cal” by the press) did not want an inaugural ball and the post-inaugural parade lasted under an hour. However, Coolidge’s speech, outlining his plan for a modest and restrained government, was one of the longest inaugural addresses in history. Read more about the public’s receptiveness to radio in On the Shore (NOVELS).

While researching the era of On the Shore. (1917-1925), I read about Annie Oakley, a TV western heroine of my childhood. Born Phoebe Ann Mosey in 1860, the sixth of nine children in a poor Quaker family, this five-foot tall sharpshooter set a record by breaking 100 clay targets in a row on April 16, 1922. Read more about On the Shore in NOVELS and about Oakley’s amazing life as a performer and gun educator in BEHIND THE STORY.

Researching a story about the first U.S. policewoman, who worked on the Los Angeles “purity squad,” I read up on nickelodeons, one of the places she patrolled. The nickelodeon was the first indoor exhibition space dedicated to showing projected motion pictures. The word “Nickelodeon” was concocted from the five-cent coin charged for admission and the ancient Greek word odeion, which was a roofed-over theater. A popular form of entertainment from 1905-1915, as many as 26 million people went every week to watch “the flicks” (so called because the images flickered). Read more about nickelodeons in BEHIND THE STORY.

Researching a novel and several stories with scenes during Prohibition, I wondered: What’s the difference between rum-running and bootlegging? The former is usually applied to illegal shipments of alcohol over water; the latter to transporting booze over land. The term “boot-legging” arose during the Civil War, when soldiers smuggled liquor into camp by concealing pint bottles inside their boots. The word became popular (and lost its hyphen) during Prohibition (1920-1933) when suppliers sold liquor from flasks tucked into their boots. The term “rum-running” most likely originated at the start of Prohibition, when ships from the Caribbean transported rum to Florida speakeasies. Rum’s cheapness made it a low-profit item so smugglers switched to shipping Canadian whisky, French champagne, and English gin to major cities like New York City, Boston, and Chicago, where they could charge more. Ships carried as much as $200,000 in contraband in a single run.

 

Thomas Edison intended to marry images to sound as far back as 1885. The problem was he couldn’t get his phonograph and kinetoscope to synchronize. When others inventors finally did, rather than admit defeat, Edison declared in 1926 that Americans would always prefer silent movies over talkies anyway. Hollywood movie-makers felt the same, with the exception of Warner Bros., who in 1925 were eager to make their popular theaters even more popular. Sam Warner suggested to his brothers Harry, Al, and Jack, that they give sound a try. Read more about the era of silent films and the evolution of talking pictures in BEHIND THE STORY.

 

Penny arcades became popular in the early 1900s. The first were tests of athletic strength, challenging patrons to “prove their manliness,” and marked the beginning of coin-operated vending machines (unless you count the Heron of Alexandria, a coin-operated holy water dispenser made in 215 BCE). For example, lifting machines required pulling on handles. Grip testers involved squeezing handles. Lung testers required blowing into a tube as long as possible. The Mills Submarine model featured four tiny deep sea divers on strings. As you blew, they were raised one-by-one. The Rubberneck model had a mannequin with a neck that stretched. The Hat Blower was just what it sounds like. Electricity testers dispensed electric shocks. To learn about Doctor Vibrator, a machine appealing to women, see BEHIND THE STORY.