Skip to content
katrina gulliver

Katrina Gulliver

Katrina Gulliver is a historian and freelance writer. Her articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and TIME.

ACM Lifting Lives Music Camper sings to and with Recording Artist Wynonna Judd as part of ACM Lifting Lives Music Camp Karaoke with WYNONNA JUDD at Winner's Bar on June 28, 2011 in Nashville, Tennessee.

Carry On, Karaoke

Karaoke became a global phenomenon after its invention in the 1970s, the wide embrace of it exemplifying transnational flows and hybridization.
Woodcut of a badger, 1551

Hooray, Hooray for Badger Day!!

Striped-faced, short-legged badgers appear in folklore and tall tales around the world.
Two poachers with a sack. At their feet their lurcher dogs and the corpses of several hares.

Frederick Gowing, King of Poachers

The cultural construction of poaching meant Gowing’s trespasses were understood differently than other kinds of theft in an industrializing Britain.
Gift for the grangers

The Gift of the Grange

Originally a secret society, the National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry today is an important health and education resource in rural communities.
An image tiled "A strange gathering of Anabaptists and Quakers" depicting a naked woman and Anabaptists and Quakers before a pulpit

The Naked Quakers

Today, the international feminist group FEMEN uses nudity as part of its protests. But appearing naked in public was also a tactic used by early dissenters.
The interior of a Nootka house

Seeing Cannibals in the Enlightenment

The responses British and Spanish explorers had to the Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) people and their alleged cannibalism came down to imperialist goals.
Paul Newman lets a lit cigarette hang from his mouth while lining up a pool shot in a scene from the film 'The Hustler', 1961.

Playing It Straight and Catching a Break

Cue games have had a lingering influence on our language and culture—even before the contributions of “Fast Eddie” Felson.
The game of Jai-Alai and the hall, Havana, Cuba

Hi, Jai Alai

Once popular across the United States, jai alai lives on in American sport culture mostly thanks to its history as a legal option for gambling.
Cricket in the United States, 1920

Endangered: North American Cricket

Cricket was played and cheered in the United States and Canada in the nineteenth century. Why did it fall out of favor with sports fans?
On the right high heeled black leather shoes with a colourful hand sewn design. On the left a patent leather high heeled court shoe with a perforated trim, c. 1925

Who Patented Patent Leather?

This history of patent leather is as murky as its finish is glossy.
A quilt made by Rebecca Davis

From Folkway to Art: The Transformation of Quilts

In the late twentieth century, the image of the American quilt shifted from one of practicality and handicraft to a celebration of modernist abstraction.
A Ford crash test dummy is shown at the Crash Barrier Dearborn Development Center March 10, 2014 in Dearborn, Michigan.

Designing the Dummies

The science behind using crash test dummies to determine the effects of car crashes on the human body only dates to the 1960s.
A young woman stands in the glow of a multicolored Juke box in the late 1960's.

Juke in the Box

The jukebox turned listening to music into a performative act. With a single coin, listeners could share their musical taste with everyone in the place.
A Pattern of Various Shaped Water Drops on A teflon Frying Pan

The Stickiness of Teflon

From excitement about its potential to revelations of its possible toxicity, Teflon has taken a wild ride through American science, manufacturing, and marketing.
A woman gently applying skin cream to her face with the tips of her fingers, circa 1955

The Coldest Cream

Cold cream has been around since ancient Greek times. But what’s it actually for?
Striking women machinists from the Ford plant at Dagenham are interviewed upon their arrival at Rainham for a meeting with the National Union of Vehicle Builders, 18th June 1968.

Ford’s Striking Dagenham Women

The women sewing machinists of the Dagenham plant received a raise after they went on strike against Ford. But was this a victory?
Map of the Bahamas, 1680

Eleutheria: A Lost Utopia in the Caribbean

The Eleutherian Adventurers departed Bermuda for the Bahamas in 1647, hoping to create the first democracy in the Americas.
Sheep are seen while being transported in Fremantle Harbour on June 16, 2020 in Fremantle, Australia.

The Long History of Live Animal Export

The practice of live animal export from Australia is controversial and complex, and it has a longer history than you might realize.
Postcard photo of the lunchroom of the Santa Fe Hotel at Canadian, Texas, 1913

Harvey Houses: Serving the West

In 1875, Fred Harvey had an idea for improving dining on passenger rail lines. He changed the face of food service in the West forever.
An illustration depicting how to write certain characters in cursive from Art of Writing by John Jenkins, 1818

Before Palmer Penmanship

The creation and propagation of standard penmanship in the American education system is almost as old as the United States itself.
The Westinghouse Time Capsule at the 1939 New York World's Fair

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?
Ostrich farm in the desert

Ostrich Bubbles

The birds aren’t the only ones with their heads in the sand.
Three female animals posing for photograph on an alpaca farm in Central Oregon

The Alpaca Racket

Why are alpacas everywhere, and why are they so expensive?
Continental Currency $20 banknote with marbled edge (May 10, 1775)

Marbled Money

Marbled paper was a way to make banknotes and checks unique—a critical characteristic for a nascent American Republic.
An advertisement for Gale Borden Eagle brand condensed milk, 1887

The Sweet Story of Condensed Milk

This nineteenth-century industrial product became a military staple and a critical part of local food culture around the world.