Time in a Box
Humans like to seal collections of ephemera in containers that they then hide in soon-to-be-forgotten places. Whither the time capsule?
Colorful Lights to Cure What Ails You
Between 1920 and the 1960s, tens of thousands of people received treatment with a Spectro-Chrome to address various ailments.
Mother’s—and Others’—Milk
Said to bestow strength and beauty, to purify body and soul, and to yield success and happiness, milk’s image is as adulterated as the liquid itself.
Putting an End to Obscene Quackery
When medical professionals joined anti-vice campaigners to censor publications about sex in the 1800s, they found themselves wielding a double-edged sword.
Class and Superstition in Britain
Believing in ghosts wasn’t a class marker until the 1820s, when suddenly the educated classes tried to convince the masses that these apparitions were delusions.
Shine On You Eagle Diamond
The year 1893 was a big one for Eagle, Wisconsin. Workers found a huge diamond on the Devereaux farm: sixteen carats, uncut, and now, all these years later, missing.
Who and What Was a Knocker-Upper?
Pour one out for the people paid to rouse the workers of industrial Britain.
Ireland’s Upper Sea
In medieval Ireland, ships that sailed across the sky were both marvelous and mundane.
The Gruesome History of Ohio’s “Fingers in the Jar”
Three of Mary Bach’s fingers, hacked off by her murderous husband in 1881, were displayed in a jar for more than a century in Bowling Green, Ohio.
