Lumière, Le Cinéma!
In one of those wonderful coincidences of history, “lumière,” the French word for “light,” was also the surname of brothers Auguste and Louis, whose brilliant invention, the cinematograph, helped to…
Someone Lived Here: Sarah Orne Jewett house in South Berwick, ME
The home, this town, and it’s residents were the inspiration for many of Sarah Orne Jewett’s novels and short stories. Her writing is often described as regionalism, but behind her…
HistoryExtra podcast: How to pull off a Georgian dinner party
A dinner party in a beautifully decorated Georgian dining room might sound sophisticated, even romantic – but planning such events was not for the faint-hearted. Amy Boyington advises Lauren Good…
Inside the house of a lilac inventor
In this episode of Someone Lived Here, Kendra brings you to the Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens in Woodland, Washington. The home was built by Hulda’s family, The Thiel’s in 1889.…
Masterpiece Theatre: The American
Modine is Christopher Newman, a rich American tycoon who has taken a break from America's Gilded Age. He soon finds that his multiple fortunes in soaps, land and railroads count…
Making 200-Year-Old Mayonnaise – How has it changed?
Mayonnaise (or magnonnaise, as Carême calls it in this recipe from 1828), didn’t really become popular until the early 19th century. First popular in France, by the 1850s, cookbooks in…
The Grasshoppers Are Coming!
by Alicia. She was reading a book about Laura Ingalls Wilder, and one chapter was all about this horrendous grasshopper invasion from the 1800s! It shocked AJ so much, and…
How Muslims Influenced Thomas Jefferson and America’s Founders | American Muslims
Did you know that Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of the Qur’an? That George Washington owned enslaved people who were Muslim? And that a Muslim diplomat broke his Ramadan fast…
Cloth and Complicity: Seth Rockman on Plantations, Textiles, and the Art of Weaving
Some people might think this book offers a smoking gun of complicity: Aha, those sanctimonious New Englanders were just as tied to slavery as the Southerners! But complicity seems too…
The Flirtatious Regency Balls Of Pride & Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice was published over 200 years ago in 1813. It's an archetypal love story, but also an acute direction of Regency era society. But what hidden messages are…