Attack of the Giant Negroes.
posted by serazin on Aug 13, 2007 - 34 comments

Design Observer and the New York Times (reg. req'd) on modernism.
posted by Tlogmer on May 16, 2005 - 4 comments

"We came down here for wind and sand, and we have got them."

Today is aviation's 100th birthday. At 10:35am Eastern, the Experimental Aircraft Association will attempt to re-enact the first flight of the Wright Brothers' "marginal" aircraft. (It's apparently very difficult to fly -- for one thing, the pilot must keep the airspeed between 27 and 32 mph, using an engine without a throttle.) Wish I could be there in NC at the Wright Brothers National Memorial. It's utterly astounding that only 66 years -- less than a lifetime -- elapsed between Orville Wright's twelve-second, 120-foot flight and the Apollo 11 moon landing.
posted by Vidiot on Dec 16, 2003 - 16 comments

Hidden Sides, Hushed Ideals of a Civil Rights Strategist
Bayard Rustin - Quaker, former Young Communist cum anti-communist socialist, advocate of non-violence, ''known homosexual'' , architect of the March on Washington and, it goes without saying, great American. A critical socialist take on Rustin. Here, for our resident Malcolm X man, a debate between Rustin and X in 1960--do note the latter's views evolved greatly between then and his assassination--and here is Nat Hentoff on Rustin. A recent P.O.V. fim on Rustin - Brother Outsider.
posted by y2karl on Aug 25, 2003 - 9 comments

Senate Defeats Treaty, Vote 49 to 35; Orders it Returned to the President (NY Times reg. req.) "America Isolated Without Treaty: Its Defeat, Washington Feels, Will Add to Our Unpopularity Abroad" (83 years ago today)
posted by boost ventilator on Mar 19, 2003 - 13 comments

Is Gavin Menzies the Stephen Wolfram of history? That's the question today's New York Times (login: dr_mabuse, pw: mabuse) suggests in a Menzies profile. Menzies has a new book out, 1421, which claims that the Chinese discovered America seven decades before Columbus did. Some people have made similarly precise claims about this planet's developments. Others have seen their amateur claims initially mocked and later proven to be correct. Is Menzies onto something or is he a crank? And how do we place the passionate amateur within the realm of scholarly pursuits?
posted by ed on Jan 5, 2003 - 17 comments

Textbook Publishers Learn to Avoid Messing With Texas. "Out of Many," the work of four respected historians, is one of the biggest sellers among American history college textbooks in the United States, but it is not likely to be available to Texas high school students taking advanced placement history. Conservative groups in Texas objected to two paragraphs in the nearly 1,000-page text that explained that prostitution was rampant in cattle towns during the late 19th century, before the West was fully settled.
posted by ncurley on Jun 30, 2002 - 24 comments

Edison electrocutes an elephant at Coney Island. I never knew this horrifying bit of history until I read about it via rscharm's MeFi post.
posted by grumblebee on Jul 23, 2001 - 17 comments