I was out walking the other day, and it was hot, so I was really feeling the collar. As I rounded the corner onto Kings Lane, I spotted my old crony George. And so I says to him, “I’m headed to the Lion’s Pub, why don’t you come and have a pickle?” Once we got […]
Old Maps Show the Evolution of Wilshire Boulevard
Not finding a satisfactory history of the evolution of Wilshire Boulevard in Kevin Roderick’s Wilshire Boulevard book, I searched for old maps to find the answers (my review of Roderick’s Wilshire Boulevard book). The Los Angeles Past blog led me to the 1897 edition of Maxwell’s Los Angeles City Directory at the California Digital Library […]
Ketchup has Crushed Catsup Since 1980
Preface: For various reasons, the images in this post (which are ’embeds’ from Google’s Ngram Viewer) are not going to look quite right — there will be spillover across the right boundary and spacing will be quirky. To see higher quality versions of the charts, click on the chart and it will appear all by […]
The Golden Age of Whaling
The mid-18th century was the “golden age” of whaling in America, with hundreds of ships making long voyages – often into uncharted parts of the oceans – to kill whales and process them into key ingredients of the Industrial Revolution: oil to illuminate homes, offices, streets and factories at night; and lubrication for machines. Candles […]