In 1929, at a Women’s Exposition, the Brooklyn Borough Gas Company unveiled a new kitchen. Lillian Gilbreth had designed it. Everything sat in a tidy L, with counters at heights that didn’t wreck anyone’s back. To prove it worked, testers made a strawberry shortcake in an ordinary kitchen and then in hers. The number of … Read more
In the fall of 1936, The Literary Digest mailed ten million ballots to American voters and announced that it would settle the presidential election before Election Day. The magazine had correctly predicted the previous five elections. This time, it promised to be accurate within a fraction of one percent. About 2.4 million people mailed back … Read more
On December 18, 1933, a man calling himself B. Virdot placed an advertisement in the Canton Repository in Ohio. He offered money to families struggling through the Depression. All they had to do was write and describe their circumstances. He promised to keep their identities private, along with his own. He had set aside $750, … Read more
In 1879, James Murray signed a contract with Oxford University Press to edit a new English-language dictionary. He estimated the work to take ten years. After five years, the first installment of Murray’s work appeared. It covered A to Ant. Murray worked in a corrugated-iron shed in his garden in Oxford. He called it the … Read more