one example being the City Restaurant in Elyria OH in 1896 [shown here]. But it wasn’t until the Depression of the 1930s that the all-you-can-eat idea became a newsworthy phenomenon. In response to declining business, restaurants such as Childs in the East and Boos Brothers in the West...
The woman and the kid trying to swallow a Coke bottle were at theBuck Nelson Space Craft Convention,one of the strangest events I ever covered. I’m pretty sure this was the only time I asked someone, “And, what kind of clothes do the people on Mars and Venus wear?” Cairo – a ...
This famous stir fried, rice noodle dish has a fascinating history. Surprisingly, the dish is relatively new. It became particularly popular during the Second World War and has been known from that time as one of Thailand’s national dishes. A man named Plaek Phibunsongkhram (known as Phibun)...
The carrier I ended up buying was identical to the antique brass tiffin carriers made in India 100+ years ago, in every single respect – so I got an antique-quality piece of brassware with the benefit of modern manufacturing – and for a fraction of what it would’ve cost to buy it s...
The St. Louis version, found in unpretentious Chinese chop suey restaurants, consists of egg foo yong with mayonnaise on white bread, with the possible addition of a tomato slice, dill pickle chip, and lettuce. Its unlikely combinations make it ripe for ridicule. And, yet, . . . despite ...
If you aren’t familiar with this one, I recommend the Netflix documentary about a famous heist they had in 1990 where 13 works of art worth 200 million were stolen. To this day, no arrests have been made, no works have been recovered…and that’s with the museum offering a 10 ...
Clay Anderson, who reapplied 15 times before NASA selected him in 1998, is the first astronaut to come from Nebraska. For that distinction (and his time off the planet), he's been praised by the state's officials, had a documentary tell the story of his life by the state's public br...
and Blood, Sweat & Tears couldn’t help looking like government propaganda pawns — which is, more or less, what they were. The band was never able to recover its reputation. Five decades later, they even agreed to participate in a documentary calledWhat the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat ...
Note: In preparing for an interview for a documentary on Automats I looked at new sources I wasn’t aware of when I originally wrote this post in 2010, among them a wonderful German trade publication which pictures European Automats produced by the Sielaff company of Berlin.The booklet, from...