as an exploratory journey through that old party question: if you could have a drink with anyone in history, who would it be? History is full of people you’d love to have a drink with. Let’s meet a few.
as an exploratory journey through that old party question: if you could have a drink with anyone in history, who would it be? History is full of people you’d love to have a drink with. Let’s meet a few.
Have a drink with: John Colt Double-entry bookkeeping and axe murder Ask him about: packing advice You’ve probably heard of Samuel Colt, especially with gun rights so prominently in the news. Not only was Colt one of America’s most well-known gun manufacturers, he used the eager 19th century press to transform gun ownership from a…
Have a drink with: You. Just have a drink. 2021’s off to a start, huh? Talk about: What wine goes with an attempted coup? Yesterday’s breach of the United States Capitol by a shaggy horde of insurrectionists egged on by the President of the United States was a historical anomaly of the worst kind: the…
Have a drink with: Mark Twain & Henry David Thoreau Bring water, though. Ask them about: grilling tips One of the current West Coast wildfires made news recently when investigation revealed it had been started by smoke bombs at a California gender reveal party. The accident (not the first of its kind, following a similar…
Have a drink with: Postal Inspectors Don’t mess with the postal service. Ask them about: Snow, rain, gloom of night, Tommy guns When former Trump adviser Steve Bannon was arrested recently on charges of defrauding donors to an online fundraising campaign known as “We Build the Wall,” it was by agents of the United States…
Have (many) drinks with: Thomas Fitzpatrick Hold my beer. Ask him about: air traffic control Just last month, a small plane made an emergency landing on a busy street in Washington state (apparently even managing, no small feat, to stop for a red light). These sort of landings are not uncommon, as unusual as they may…
Have a drink at: Your College Dining Hall Cabbage: now with extra protein! Discuss: FOOD FIGHT Today, a college’s dining hall is part of its overall outreach in the competition to attract students, and to keep them happy and achieving while they’re on campus. So much is put into the food and the architecture that…
Have a drink with: The Store Detective Enemy of deviant feminist candy thieves! Ask her about: hiding a football field’s worth of fabric in your skirt The modern department store came into its own in the 19th century, as retailers jumped feet-first into the growing Barnumesque sense of spectacle suddenly required to get a consumer’s…
Have a drink with: The Yale Medical School Class of 1824 Did you bring a shovel? Ask them about: Buying your own school supplies On a cold January morning almost 200 years ago in New Haven, Connecticut, someone came knocking on Jonathan Knight’s door. This itself was not necessarily unusual, as Knight had his thumb…
Have a drink with: Daniel Sickles Once I was the King of Spain… Ask him about: What’s the name of his other leg? Daniel Sickles sat weeping in a Washington, D.C. jail in 1859. The young, charismatic New York Congressman was an up-and-coming star in American politics – a favorite of President James Buchanan, in…
Have a drink with: Marie Tussaud Utility, amusement, severed heads. Ask her about: working motherhood Looking forward to Halloween, I’m at Atlas Obscura today writing about Madame Marie Tussaud, the 19th century entertainer and artist who got her start making death masks of decapitated French revolutionaries. Marie left France at forty years old, with her…
