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: Hugh Henry Brackenridge Attorney, nog enthusiast, clothing optional Ask him about: Pork as medicine It’s the holiday season, and that means it’s time for nog. Where did eggnog come from? If you look into it, you get a linguistic soup of suggestions (“nog” being an old word for strong ale, or…
Have a drink with: Anna Jarvis Don’t even get her started on “Candy Day.” Ask her about: Her mother. Anna Jarvis was a public school teacher and devout Methodist, and widely regarded as one of the inventors of the Mother’s Day holiday. She would not seem to be the type of person who would try…
Have a drink with: The Liberty LoansSome drill, some till, and some produce the dollar bill. Ask them about: buying World War I for Christmas This season not only marks the centennial of the Armistice that brought an end to World War I, but also of the massive public investment campaign that made American involvement…
Have a drink with: Single Ladies (Halloween Edition) Burning hair, apples, chicken guts, lead poisoning. Ask her about: Do you know the Heimlich maneuver? For most of American history, Halloween was not a holiday for children. Quite the opposite: to the extent Halloween was celebrated at all, by the 19th century it was known as…
Have a drink with: The West Point Cadets of 1826 Cold cuts, eggnog, muskets. Ask them about: really aggressive wassailing “1408. No cadet shall drink, nor shall bring, or cause to be brought, into either barracks or camp, nor shall have in his rooms or otherwise in his possession, wine, porter, or any other spiritous…
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…
Have a drink with: Thomas Nashe It was the merry month of February… Ask him about: Valentine’s Day plans Though he lived in Elizabethan England, Thomas Nashe was not an unfamiliar figure to modern thinking: in his twenties, Nashe was out of college, short on funds and trying to make it as a writer in…
Have a drink with: Lovestruck 19th C New Yorkers Don’t do it, girls! Ask them about: Victorian-era sexting In 1893, the city of Baltimore got serious about keeping harmful and degenerate behavior out of its city parks. By which it meant it was tired of kids flirting on on public property, and forbade young couples…
Have a drink with: La Befana Auguri. Va bene. Ask her about: Getting stuff done. In Catholicism, January 6 is the feast of the Epiphany: the last of the twelve days of Christmas and the day on which the three visiting kings are said to arrive to meet the baby Jesus. And in Italian legend,…
Have a drink with: Halloween hooligans Trick or treat, smell my feet… Ask them about: Mayhem, outhouses, peanut scramble. It was 1933, and Charles J. Dalthorp had had it. Writing in the Journal of Education in 1937, the superintendent of schools in Aberdeen, South Dakota, bemoaned the Halloween holiday and its attendant juvenile warfare. Describing…
