Found History

A Year Before is a WordPress plugin allowing users to display titles of articles posted n number of days ago. Its developers suggest using it in a “historical corner” to show “what happened in your blog e.g. 30 days, 6 months or a year before.” Tenspotting. Chock full of “best ever” lists. 28 Weird Al [...]

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More from the grocery check-out. I suppose I understand the pairing of John-John and Diana. But John Lennon and John Ritter?

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So the picture is horrible, but the show was great. Friday night I was fortunate enough to catch The Police in Hershey, PA, and I have to say it was one of the best reunion concerts I have seen. As this cell phone picture of the t-shirt tent attempts to show, both the crowd and [...]

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I was refilling our salt shakers last night when I noticed this little tidbit on the side of the can. It turns out my can is part of a series. In addition to the 1956 Umbrella Girl, Morton’s is printing throwbacks from 1914, 1921, 1933, and 1941. Collect them all at your local supermarket … [...]

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To commemorate 30 years of Star Wars, the United States Postal Service has started painting its blue corner mailboxes to look like R2-D2, the lovable droid who first appeared in 1977. I was three years old when A New Hope premiered, and standing in line for tickets with my parents outside Showcase Cinemas in Worcester, [...]

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Today in Digital History Hacks, Bill Turkel imagines a not-so-distant future of “history appliances”: Imagine wandering into your living room after a day of work. You sit down in your chair and turn a dial to 1973. The stereo adjusts automatically, streaming Bob Marley, Elton John, Stevie Wonder and Jim Croce. LCD panels hanging on [...]

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A couple months ago, my friend Rob sent me a link to a great piece in the Washington Post that I somehow forgot to post. “A Homer’s Odyssey” reports the efforts of Greenbelt, Maryland resident Mark Opasnick to preserve and extend local historical memory in the Washington, DC area. A Montgomery County Income Assistance Specialist [...]

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Last night I stayed out a little too late for a Thursday, but that doesn’t mean I slacked off completely. I spent the evening at the Rock and Roll Hotel listening to No Second Troy, a local band whose guitarist is a friend of my wife. Their name is an allusion to the Yeats poem [...]

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Last night Jeremy mentioned an article from Slate about GM’s use of images of Rosa Parks and other historic persons and events to sell Chevy trucks. Here’s another article from the New York Times. Commentary on the ad—which also features images of Joe Louis, Martin Luther King Jr., Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War, the World [...]

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Jeremy over at ClioWeb has taken a tip from the “Design is …” wallpaper pool at Flickr and started a “History is …” pool for all us digital history geeks. I can’t claim Jeremy’s prodigious design skills, but I want to be supportive, so here’s my contribution. 1024×768 1280×1024 1440×900 1600×1200 It’s the weekend, so [...]

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