Nearly one hundred years ago, Tet Holiday or Vietnamese Lunar New Year evoked the same excitement and expectations it does today; except, things were very different.
Vietnamese people celebrate the Lunar New Year annually, which is based on a lunisolar calendar (calculating both the motions of Earth around the Sun and of the Moon around Earth). Tet is generally celebrated on the same day as Chinese New Year, except when the one-hour time difference between Vietnam and China results in new moon occurring on different days. It takes place from the first day of the first month of the Vietnamese calendar (around late January or early February) until at least the third day.
Many Vietnamese prepare for Tet by cooking special holiday food and cleaning the house. Many customs are practiced during Tet, such as visiting a person’s house on the first day of the new year (xông nhà), ancestor worship, wishing New Year’s greetings, giving lucky money to children and elderly people, and opening a shop.
Tet is also an occasion for pilgrims and family reunions. They start forgetting about the troubles of the past year and hope for a better upcoming year. They consider Tet to be the first day of spring, and the festival is often called H?i xuân (spring festival).
Here’s an early 20th century Tet celebration in black and white.
People gather at the Dong Xuan Market in Hanoi the day before the Lunar New Year. It was the only “supermarket” around then.On a Hanoi street, Tet paintings are on sale in 1929. Then, too, Chinese characters, parallel sentences, pictures of flowers, carps, dragons and other, more modern subjects were sold as wall hangings to invite luck into a house for the Lunar New Year.A Hanoi family poses for a picture as part of Tet celebrations.Young kids help out and watch as an ong do, a Vietnamese calligrapher, writes Chinese or Han characters on red paper to be used as a house decoration for Tet.A woman sells dong (Phrynium) leaves to wrap banh chung, a traditional Vietnamese glutinous rice cake that is a Tet specialty, at Hanoi’s Dong Xuan Market in 1929.An old man chooses a daffodil as a Tet decoration. Daffodils are believed to awaken one’s hidden potential, including talent and creativity. They also represent rejuvenation, chivalry and generosity. However, they are not so prevalent as a Tet decoration as they once were.A merchant sells paper offerings for Tet in Hanoi’s Dong Xuan Market in 1929. In Vietnam, paper offerings, which imitate common objects like money or clothes, are burned as offerings to ancestors during traditional celebrations, Tet in particular.Children wrestle with each other as a Tet sport in Hanoi, 1929. Wrestling is another traditional Vietnamese game, which tests players’ strength, agility, stamina and quick-thinking, but this is no longer as popular.People pick branches of peach blossoms, for long used in the north as the main Tet adornment for the house. Peach blossoms are believed to repel ghosts and demons, and symbolize youth, fertility and hope brought by spring. In the south, the flowers of choice for Tet is the Ochna integerrima, commonly known as the yellow Mai flower.A Hanoi store sells firecrackers and sticks of incense for Tet in 1929. Firecrackers were burst during Tet to repel ghosts and demons, but they were banned by the Vietnamese government in 1995 because the production and explosions were causing too many accidents, deaths and injuries.Two people fight, using long wooden poles as lances, as part of Tet celebrations in Hanoi, 1929. This sport, known as la lutte à la lance in French and roi truong in Vietnamese, was a traditional one engaged in during festivals in Vietnam. Combatants score points by hitting their opponents with wooden lances wrapped in fabric at one end, in various body parts. Any player who lets go of his lance automatically loses the match.A man lights firecrackers in his family’s yard during Tet.
JFK and Jackie in a photobooth, 1953Lauren Bacall on the set of “The African Queen”, 1951.Model Bettie Page, 1950sCary Grant, 1950sHomework, Tallahassee, 1959.Elvis Presley riding a bike, stops to sign autographs for fans in Germany in 1959.Sahr’s Fountain & Restaurant, Portland, Oregon, 1959.Dorothy Malone, 1956.Elizabeth Taylor, 1952.1956 Oldsmobile 98 Holiday four-door hardtopTimes Square, 1955Two cigarette girls at a bar in Tallahassee, Florida, 1956.Portable TV, 1950s.Behind-the-scenes shot of The Monster that Challenged the World (1957).One armed bandit, Las Vegas, 1954.Teens on sidewalk, 1950s.Amsterdam, Summer of 1959.Cabimas, Venezuela, 1958.John Lennon (left, arms spread) enjoys a trip to Isle of Man with his schoolmates, early 1950s.Marilyn Monroe look-a-like competition in Hastings, UK, 1958.Gene Kelly on the streets, 1955.The Rockettes perform in front of thousands of bundled-up onlookers at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1958.Mamie Van Doren in “Untamed Youth”, 1957.Capucine at Cafe de la Paix, Paris, 1952.Acrobat and actor Russ Tamblyn does a flip on the sidewalk while walking with movie actress Venetia Stevenson in Hollywood, CA in 1955.Nesttun, Norway, 1958.Dorothy Adamson, 28, was dining at a cafe when a bomb exploded in a nearby apartment at 1034 Hilldale Avenue, West Hollywood, California, 1958.31st Street off 5th Avenue, NYC, 1955.Cold Beetle, 1959.Grace Kelly in 1954Audrey Hepburn in the 1957 movie “Funny Face.”Pit stop, New York, 1956.Woman in her truck, 1950s.Miss New Zealand collapses under the hot sun of Long Beach, California, 17th July 1954.Women on the boardwalk, Deauville, France, August 1951.Taxi driver, Flin Flon, Manitoba, June 28, 1956.Paris in 1950.Sexy vintage secretary. (She is actually Alice Denham, Playboy Playmate for July 1956)Griffith Park goose, 1959.A woman hikes up her new nylons in Stockholm, Sweden, 1956.Freddie Mercury on his fourth birthday in Zanzibar, 1950.Sgt. 1st Class Owen Marsh of North Hollywood leans out a bus window to pick up his wife, Evelyn, for a kiss before going to Ft. MacArthur, where he was discharged, 1952.Queenie – World’s only water skiing Elephant, 1950s.Marilyn Monroe attending the premiere of Tennessee Williams’ play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” March 1955.Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck on the set of “Roman Holiday,” 1953.Grace Kelly on the set of the 1956 film “The Swan”Three girls on a giant slide at Coney Island, 1953.Queen Elizabeth driving her children Prince Charles and Princess Anne in Windsor, Berkshire, 1957.Strøget, Copenhagen, 1954.Two members of the Bertram Mills Circus walk head-to-head at Hammersmith Broadway in London, 1953.
This is the last known photo of the Space Shuttle Challenger crew boarding the space shuttle on January 28, 1986. Tragedy would strike 73 seconds into launch as the shuttle’s O-ring on it’s right booster failed leading to the separation of the Solid Rocket Booster. Extreme aerodynamic forces then broke up the orbiter. The crew compartment survived the break but the impact with the ocean surface was too violent to be survivable.
Crew members of STS-51L mission walk out of the Operations and Checkout Building on their way to Pad 39B where they will board the Space Shuttle Challenger. From front to back: Commander Francis R. “Dick” Scobee; Mission Specialists Judith A. Resnik and Ronald E. McNair; Pilot Michael J. Smith; Payload specialist Christa McAuliffe; Mission Specialist Ellison Onizuka; and Payload specialist Gregory Jarvis. (NASA)
On January 28, 1986, the NASA shuttle orbiter mission STS-51-L and the tenth flight of Space Shuttle Challenger (OV-99) broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members, which consisted of five NASA astronauts, one payload specialist and a civilian school teacher. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:39 a.m. EST. The disintegration of the vehicle began after a joint in its right solid rocket booster (SRB) failed at liftoff. The failure was caused by the failure of O-ring seals used in the joint that were not designed to handle the unusually cold conditions that existed at this launch. The seals’ failure caused a breach in the SRB joint, allowing pressurized burning gas from within the solid rocket motor to reach the outside and impinge upon the adjacent SRB aft field joint attachment hardware and external fuel tank. This led to the separation of the right-hand SRB’s aft field joint attachment and the structural failure of the external tank. Aerodynamic forces broke up the orbiter.
The crew compartment and many other vehicle fragments were eventually recovered from the ocean floor after a lengthy search and recovery operation. The exact timing of the death of the crew is unknown; several crew members are known to have survived the initial breakup of the spacecraft. The shuttle had no escape system, and the impact of the crew compartment at terminal velocity with the ocean surface was too violent to be survivable.
“The whole country and the whole world were in shock when that happened, because that was the first time the United States had actually lost a space vehicle with crew on board,” said former NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao, who flew three space shuttle missions during his career (in 1994, 1996 and 2000), and also served as commander of the International Space Station from October 2004 through April 2005.
“It was even more shocking because Christa McAuliffe was not a professional astronaut,” Chiao told Space.com. “If you lose military people during a military operation, it’s sad and it’s tragic, but they’re professionals doing a job, and that’s kind of the way I look at professional astronauts. But you’re taking someone who’s not a professional, and it happened to be that mission that got lost — it added to the shock.”
The crew of the space shuttle Challenger’s STS-51L mission, which ended in tragedy 73 seconds after launch on Jan. 28, 1986. From left to right: Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Judy Resnik, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair, Michael Smith and Ellison Onizuka.(NASA)
The disaster resulted in a 32-month hiatus in the shuttle program and the formation of the Rogers Commission, a special commission appointed by United States President Ronald Reagan to investigate the accident. The Rogers Commission found NASA’s organizational culture and decision-making processes had been key contributing factors to the accident, with the agency violating its own safety rules. NASA managers had known since 1977 that contractor Morton-Thiokol’s design of the SRBs contained a potentially catastrophic flaw in the O-rings, but they had failed to address this problem properly. NASA managers also disregarded warnings from engineers about the dangers of launching posed by the low temperatures of that morning, and failed to adequately report these technical concerns to their superiors.
Approximately 17 percent of Americans witnessed the launch live because of the presence of high school teacher Christa McAuliffe, who would have been the first teacher in space. Media coverage of the accident was extensive: one study reported that 85 percent of Americans surveyed had heard the news within an hour of the accident. The Challenger disaster has been used as a case study in many discussions of engineering safety and workplace ethics.
In this Jan. 27, 1986 file picture, the crew members of space shuttle Challenger flight 51-L, leave their quarters for the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. From foreground are commander Francis Scobee, Mission Spl. Judith Resnik, Mission Spl. Ronald McNair, Payload Spl. Gregory Jarvis, Mission Spl. Ellison Onizuka, teacher Christa McAuliffe and pilot Michael Smith.Four crew members of the space shuttle Challenger leave their quarters Jan. 27, 1986, en route to the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center. The launch was put off until the next day, when faulty O-rings in one of the booster rockets caused the Challenger to explode, killing the full crew of seven. From front are: Payload specialist Greg Jarvis, mission specialist Ellison Onizuka, school teacher Christa McAuliffe and pilot Mike Smith.Christa McAuliffe and Commander Francis Scobee walk to a jet for a test flight at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, Jan. 24, 1986. Scobee is holding his ears as protection against the noise of a jet engine. McAuliffe and Scobee are members of the crew for the Space Shuttle Challenger scheduled for launch on Sunday.Classmates of the son of America’s first school teacher astronaut cheer as the space shuttle Challenger lifts skyward from Pad 39B, Jan. 28, 1986. Their delight soon turned into horror as the shuttle exploded about 70 seconds into flight. The boy in the white hat and glasses at center is not a schoolmate but is Peter Billingsley, spokesman for the young astronaut program.The Space Shuttle Challenger explodes shortly after lifting off from Kennedy Space Center, Fla., Tuesday, Jan. 28, 1986. All seven crew members died in the explosion, which was blamed on faulty o-rings in the shuttle’s booster rockets. The Challenger’s crew was honored with burials at Arlington National Cemetery.In this Jan. 28, 1986 picture, two unidentified spectators at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., react after they witnessed the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger.Young Scott McAuliffe’s third grade teacher comforts one of her charges as another youngster and a young woman, right, react after seeing the Space Shuttle Challenger explode in midair, killing all aboard, Tuesday, Jan. 28, 1986. The teacher and student are from the Kimbell Elementary School in Concord, N.H., where young McAuliffe, son of space school teacher Christa McAuliffe, is a student.Brevard County Sheriff deputies, riding three-wheelers, search the beach for debris from the Space Shuttle Challenger in Cape Canaveral on Wednesday, Jan. 29, 1986. Challenger exploded sporty after liftoff killing the crew of seven.Father Daniel Messier, right, dries the tears of Concord, New Hampshire, sixth grader Tanya Lee at a memorial service for teacher Christa McAuliffe at St. John’s Catholic Church in Concord, Jan. 29, 1986. McAuliffe died on Tuesday in the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger.An unidentified woman hugs a child inside the Kimball School in Concord, N.H., Tuesday, Jan. 29, 1986, after the girl returned from the Kennedy Space Center, Fla., with a group of the classmates of the son of Christa McAuliffe. Christa was killed in the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger. The children had been up at five in the morning for the launch, and were rushed home after the event turned to disaster.An unidentified woman weeps quietly during a memorial service at Brookside Church in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Thursday, Jan. 30, 1986 in honor of the crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger, who were killed in an explosion aboard the spacecraft on Tuesday. Concord, N.H., teacher Christa McAuliffe was among the seven on board.Diana Zeppiene, carrying a model of the Space Shuttle, and Eric Olson, carrying a folded American flag, walk down the aisle of Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Melbourne, Florida on Thursday, Jan. 30, 1986 during a children’s mass celebrated in honor of the Challenger crew. The children presented the model and flag as symbolic offerings.Students attend a children’s mass at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Melbourne, Fla., on Thursday, Jan. 30, 1986, in honor of the seven crew members killed in the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger.Kennedy Space Center workers enroute to Pad 39B were met by the sight of seven small American flags along side the road, Jan. 30, 1986. Seven crew members were killed in the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger on Tuesday which was launched from Pad 39B.
“No fear of water can keep the pupil from learning to swim in this apparatus.” This appeared in Popular Science Nov, 1931. It was definitely a perfect device to make kids detest swimming.
Despite its status as a device that defines the modern age, the television has its roots in the 19th century, when scientists found ways to transmit images and sound. Even the word “television,” combining Greek and Latin roots to mean “far-sight,” stems from the 1900 world’s fair.
Perhaps more than any other medium, TV has captured the hearts of people since first becoming available in the late 1920s. And while the power of television has only increased over time, its evolution over the past 80 years clearly illustrates how technology influences consumer behavior, while this change in consumption drives the TV industry to take on new forms that radically alter the way we experience the medium.
Dr E. F. Alexanderson of GE and RCA and inventor of the radio television process where a listener can see as well as listen to the broadcast, operating his 3 inch screen home television set, Schenectady, New York, January 14, 1928.People watching a television set at Waterloo station, London, August 1936.Undated (circa 1940s) early family television time.Early days of television in Sweden, 1953. The aerial is mounted by two men in white coats.A family watching television in their home, circa 1955.A couple watching a portable TV in the living room. USA, circa 1960s.Gina Lollobrigida watches President Kennedy on a television set in her Rome villa, July 23, 1962 during live telecast from the U.S. to Europe via the Telstar satellite. The Italian actress left the set of her present movie to watch the program which included a portion of the President’s news conference, in Washington.The first transmission with six monitors to Europe of television programmes from America via the Telstar satellite. 23rd July 1962.The Telstar satellite, designed by Bell Telephone Laboratories for relaying telephone calls, data messages and television signals, is shown in 1962.With the start of pay television close in California, John Garrott installs a program selector unit on a television set in Los Angeles, California, July 23, 1964.Prototype VCR shown in the U.K. in 1968.The new EVR system which allows the recording of television programmes which can then be watched at the owner’s discretion. The new Teleplayer has been produced in partnership with Rank Bush Murphy Ltd and EVR and has enormous potential. 21st September 1970.Roy H. Pollack, vice president and general manager of RCA Corporation consumer electronics, demonstrates a new video tape machine Introduced in New York, August 23, 1977. The recorder, intended for home use, will be priced at $1,000, and will be capable of handling cassettes that can record up to four hours of television programs. Cassettes now available record up to two hours.Bert Jett proudly stands in the yard of his home near Blue Creek, where he and his two brothers have installed a $7,800 satellite receiving dish so they can get better TV reception in Elkview, W.Va., July 14, 1981. The Jetts said they now can get nearly 60 stations around the globe and have their choice of four separate movie channels, as well as several Christian networks and most of the big city TV stations in this country.
Born 1895 in Chicago, American model and silent film actress Virginia Rappe began working as a commercial and art model at age 14. In 1916, Rappe relocated to San Francisco to pursue her career as an artist’s model, where she met dress designer Robert Moscovitz, to whom she became engaged. However, shortly after the engagement, Moscovitz was killed in a streetcar accident, whereupon Rappe moved to Los Angeles.
In 1919, Rappe began a relationship with director/producer Henry Lehrman. The two eventually became engaged and lived together. Rappe appeared in at least four films for Lehrman: His Musical Sneeze, A Twilight Baby, Punch of the Irish and A Game Lady.
During a party held on Labor Day, September 5, 1921, in Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle’s suite, number 1219, at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, Rappe allegedly suffered a trauma. She died on September 9 from a ruptured bladder and secondary peritonitis. The circumstances of Rappe’s death in 1921 became a Hollywood scandal and were covered widely (and sensationalized) by the media of the time.
It was alleged that Rappe had died as a result of a violent sexual assault by Arbuckle. Arbuckle’s accuser, Bambina Maude Delmont, had accompanied Rappe to the party; she had first met Rappe only a few days earlier (Delmont had a police record for extortion, prostitution and blackmail). Subsequent witnesses testified that Rappe had for some time suffered from cystitis, and that consuming alcohol could aggravate that condition. Witnesses also testified that she had previously suffered from venereal disease, so there were allegations that her death was brought on by her health rather than by an assault.
After three manslaughter trials, Arbuckle was formally acquitted; his acquittal in the third trial was accompanied by an unprecedented statement of apology from the jury stating, in part, that, “Acquittal is not enough for Roscoe Arbuckle. We feel that a great injustice has been done him… there was not the slightest proof adduced to connect him in any way with the commission of a crime.” Nevertheless, Arbuckle’s reputation and career were ruined because of the scandal.
The case has been examined by scholars and historians over the years and is still speculated about today, and a number of detailed books about the case have analyzed the incident and subsequent trials.
Take a look at these photos to see the beauty of Virginia Rappe in the late 1910s and early 1920s.
There is no formal definition of a house car but in the early 1900s, Americans want to take to the roads and explore. Some creative Tin Can tourists decided that they’d rather bring their home with them rather than have the tent attachments on the sides of their Model T’s, so they built larger structures that resembled houses onto the frames and off they went. It really is the earliest example of what we commonly call a mobile home.
Mobile homes often look blocky and sterile, but these wooden houses look like gingerbread Victorian houses on wheels. Check out how people have hammered and sawed their own homes onto cars.
The superb bus of Ray Conklin, president of the New York Motorbus Company in 1915.Gospel Car No. 1, built by William Downer in Glassboro, New Jersey, late 1910sDr. A. A. Foster and his family in an auto tourist camp, ca. 1920.A Ford Model T from the early 1920s.On a Ford TT chassis.A cute German country house on wheels in 1922.A traveling minister with a tiny church car, with a tiny organ inside and a foldable rooftop steeple, 1922.A fancy homebuilt motorhome, built on a Ford Model TT truck chassis in Ohio, 1924.W. M. O’Donnell and his family in their “bungalow auto”, 1926.The Burn Family (June and Farrar) and their moving house, 1929.The homebuilt car of Charles Miller with a nice bit of lawn, 1930.Ford Model A Traveler, 1931.
Woodstock is widely regarded as one of the most important events in music history. The festival, which took place in August 1969, drew about half a million people and was headlined by now-legendary acts like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead, Joe Cocker, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Many of the sets have since gone on to not only become classic moments in those artists’ respective careers, but also representative snapshots of America’s counterculture during that time.
It makes you wonder, then, how much a concert of that magnitude and influence would cost, right? As the monetary breakdown shows, Hendrix earned the most money from the festival, pulling in about $18,000 (or more than $125,000 in today’s money). Blood, Sweat and Tears ($15,000), Joan Baez ($10,000), Creedence Clearwater Revival ($10,000), and The Band ($7,500) rounded out the Top 5 earners.
Other A-listers such as The Who and Joe Cocker took home $6,250 and $1,375, respectively. There was a lot of cash to go around, to be sure, but the event wasn’t as steep as some of today’s big-budget productions. Here’s the entire list of artists and their earnings:
The role of women in society had taken a massive leap forward In 1920 when all women were given the right to vote. The roles of American Women in the 1920s varied considerably between the ‘New Woman’, the Traditionalists and the older generation. The ‘New Woman’, including the young Flappers, embraced new fashions, personal freedom and new ideas that challenged the traditional role of women. The Traditionalists feared that the ‘ New Morality’ of the era was threatening family values and the conventional role of women in the home. The lives of Black American Women in the 1920s were also subject to change due to the influence of the Harlem Renaissance and the change from rural to urban life in the cities.
The Harlem Renaissance was a rebirth of African American culture and art in the wake of slavery, which had ended just 50 years prior. Occurring from 1918 through the 1930s and first coined the New Negro Movement, the Harlem Renaissance focused on self-definition of black people and the black experience. Black women were an integral part of the Harlem Renaissance, from dancer Josephine Baker to writer Zora Neale Hurston. But much like today, the identity of the “new black woman” was a hotly debated topic.
The origins of the Speed Bag as we know it today are shrouded in mystery. Certain historical artifacts depict ancient boxers of Greece and Rome hitting a bag like object probably filled with some material or water. These were almost certainly animal skins or some other material, for the modern rubber air bladders of today came after the vulcanization of rubber in the 1840s. Judging by these historical depictions it is fair to say that man has been creating different size punching bags and used various methods of hanging them, for as long as he could make a fist.
The speed bag (also called “striking bag” and “speed ball”) as has been seen in various styles and shapes, hung from various types of hangers, wood or metal, and with various types of swivels. Our own research has found several links to this past and colorful history.
On particularly interesting book, entitled BOXING AND HOW TO TRAIN written by Sam C. Austin, sporting editor of the Police Gazette was published by Richard K. Fox in 1904. It features a whole section on BAG PUNCHING, using the speed bag. Here, some images from the book:
