According to a full-page map of the globe (well, half of it, anyway) in the December 19, 1914 issue of The Graphic, “a series of operations … have swept half the world clear of Germans,” “peace in the Pacific has been attained,” and “the commerce of all nations can proceed with safety throughout the vast expanses from the coasts of Mozambique to those of South America.”

Whew! Sure glad Vice-Admiral Sturdee took care of that!

Check out the battle details below.

Aren’t you glad Germany never gave the world any further trouble?

A few years ago, Irene and I visited Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, and while it was an amazing experience, I don’t remember our meals being anything like the spread shown in this image from the Christmas 1914 issue of The Graphic.

There’s no indication of exactly which “unimportant tomb” was being invaded for lunch.

Considering the dramatic surroundings, I don’t think I’d have had much of an appetite anyway. I’d have been much too awestruck to eat.

Guess these tourists had no sense of wonder.

I shared a 1917 infographic about aviation with you last week that shows how far we’ve come in nearly a century, and now I’ll share an advertisement from an earlier edition of the same newspaper that reflects the passage of time in an entirely different way—for it’s filled with the names of famous people whose patronage is supposed to make us desire a product—and 98 years after their fame, I have no idea who any of these people were!

Time doesn’t always erase the famous. After all, last year I showed you an 1898 ad for Vin Mariani in which the product was touted by the likes of Jules Verne, Emile Zola, and Alexandre Dumas. But as for these famous men and women, who thought that “Peps possess a real germ-killing quality” in the November 7, 1914 issue of The Graphic, I don’t recognize a single name.

Do you? Take a look at the ad below, and then tell me whether—without doing online searches—the names carry any meaning for you.

Give up? I did.

But here’s what I learned from my own Googling. (more…)

Yesterday, as we were moving vast quantities of assorted cheeses from our non-refrigerating refrigerator into ice-filled coolers—we had no power due to the thunderstorm; perhaps you were in the same situation—I remembered an article written more than a century ago in which someone from the U.S. was gobsmacked that the French had more than one kind of cheese. I wanted to reread the piece … but that was easier said than done.

I love reading magazines from the late 1800s and early 1900s to see how things really were back in the day, and whenever I visit a used bookstore, the first thing I check out is whether any bound volumes are for sale. I couldn’t recall which of many old magazines I owned had printed the piece; all I remembered was that it was in a magazine that printed its stories in two columns per page, rather than just one—which left out all those volumes of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly. I started with an 1852 volume of The National (nope, not there), then dove into The Cosmopolitan from 1902 (not there, either), before finding what I was looking for in the October 1878 Harper’s.

In Marie Stevens Howland’s article “Butter Stores in Paris” (strange how I only remembered the cheese, but not the butter), she was amazed that in France, not only did shoppers get to choose more than one kind of cheese, they didn’t have to live in fear that it would be terrible. She wrote:

One thing sure to surprise the American in Paris is the almost endless variety of the cheese. Here, our only idea of that article is generally the huge ‘factory cheese’ of the groceries. It has no special name, cheese to the average citizen meaning this only. He has to taste it before daring to buy it, for the name conveys little notion of its flavor or quality, and it may be mild or strong, rich or poor, though the price is the same. In Paris, no one dreams of tasting cheese when buying it.

More than one kind of cheese? Astonishing! (more…)

I received a package from Paul Di Filippo today containing a CD of ukulele music. I guess he could hear my caterwauling all the way up in Providence and wants me to stop making noises as if someone or something was being tortured. Sure do appreciate it, Paul.

But that’s not the thing Paul’s trying to tell me that’s sending a message I don’t want to hear.

You see, Paul decorated the envelope with clippings from old magazines and newspapers, the way he always does before popping anything in the mail. The front was a humorous collage, but as for the back, well, that was made up of a single large ad (a version of which seems to have been published in the 1947 Johnson Smith & Co. catalogue) which strongly implied there was something lacking about me.

The ad began:

In your business and social affairs—meeting and dealing with other people—have you the cold, “icicle” type of personality that constantly repels others and keeps them at a distance?

And it only went downhill from there …

(more…)

Arnold Gingrich would like you to subscribe to Esquire, Coronet, and Ken, but only if you’re “a responsible person with a proven credit standing in your community.”

If not … nothing to see here. Move along!

Trying to stay as clutter-free as I can, I picked up a stack of back issues of Brooklyn Magazine, and put them to the “How many of these things do I really need?” test.

First off, let me explain that I mean the Brooklyn Magazine which started publishing in 1978, and as far as I know ended in 1979, not the Brooklyn Magazine that’s currently alive and publishing.

As you can see from the first cover of the earlier Brooklyn Magazine and the most current cover I could find for the more recent incarnation, the new publication is a far classier production than we were ever able to put out.

Saying “we” implies I had a lot to do with the mag, but I didn’t. I wrote a book review for each issue, and did an interview with Fred Pohl, since The Way the Future Was was, after all, about growing up in Brooklyn. But other than that, all I ever had to do with the publishing of the magazine was when I’d pop in to say hello while walking from my apartment off Dahill Road in Bensonhurst to my favorite Chinese restaurant on 65th Street, which is how I discovered the magazine existed in the first place.

Yes, that’s right—as I walked from my apartment to pick up Chinese food one day, I noticed a storefront with the Brooklyn Magazine logo, went in and introduced myself to the editor before the first issue was published, and convinced him that he really needed my book reviews to be a part of it all. (more…)

Mystery Monthly was a topnotch digest that published the likes of Ed McBain, Ron Goulart, and Harlan Ellison. But not me.

The first issue came out in 1976, and the last (or so I believe) in 1977, long before I figured out how to create a short story that would get an editor’s attention.

Or get me anything more than an impersonal rejection slip such as this.

Back on February 14, 1972, I sent two poems—one of which I later published in my high school yearbook—to the Poetry Editor of Ramparts. (Hey, I never said this series was going to be devoted only to genre magazines!) Ramparts was known mostly for its political content, but it published poetry, too, so I foolishly figured I’d give it a shot.

I never had a chance. And if you should ever happen to read those poems (which I hope you never will), you’d agree.

Last night, looking to rest my brain after a heavily wired day, I pulled out my bound volume of the July-October 1898 issues of Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly. About as far as you could get from science fiction, right? You’d think so. But mixed in with articles on “The Irish People at Home” and “The Jews of the United States” was an advertisement in which Jules Verne tells us that “Vin Mariani prolongs life, it is wonderful.”

And the father of science fiction isn’t the only notable to urge us to take a sip of “the popular tonic” that is proclaimed to be “nourishing, strengthening, refreshing.” Also recommending the drink are the man who exonerated Dreyfuss (Emile Zola), the author of The Three Musketeers (Alexandre Dumas), the composer of “Ave Maria” (Charles Gounod), and the designer of the Statue of Liberty (Bartholdi)!

Why, so amazing is this beverage that it’s recommended “For Overworked Men, Delicate Women, Sickly Children.”

Since I’d never heard of this miracle elixir before, I decided to learn a bit about Vin Mariani, which turned out to have been created in 1863 and (as I should have expected) was “made from Bordeaux wine treated with coca leaves.”

In fact, at first it contained 6 milligrams of cocaine per fluid ounce of wine, but when exported to the U.S., that was raised to 7.2 milligrams per ounce.

No wonder it is “recommended by all who try it”!