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6 days ago | 
nowitshistory.com | Richard Galant
A “spirit of revolutionary change” was reshaping the world economy, Pope Leo XIII wrote in 1891.
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1 week ago | 
nowitshistory.com | Richard Galant |Noel Rubinton
As a young commuter, John McPhee would stop by an orange juice stand at New York’s Penn Station. “From late autumn and on through winter and spring,” he wrote, “I noticed a gradual deepening of the color of the expressed juice. December was pale cadmium, April marigold, and June a Persian orange.” That set him to wondering about the different varieties of the fruit. “I didn't linger over the question.
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3 weeks ago | 
nowitshistory.com | Richard Galant
The saying, “Children should be seen and not heard” traces back to a book of sermons compiled by John Mirk in the late 1380s. Mirk was a priest in Shropshire, in western England. His book, titled “Festial,” was so popular it was hand copied more than 40 times and, after Gutenberg’s invention of movable type, printed in more than 20 editions. “In the original form it was specifically young women who were expected to keep quiet,” according to the Phrase Finder.
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3 weeks ago | 
nowitshistory.com | Richard Galant
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1 month ago | 
nowitshistory.com | Richard Galant
On October 15, 1929, economist Irving Fisher spoke to a regular meeting of the Purchasing Agents Association at 2 Park Avenue in Manhattan about gyrations in the stock market. The Dow had climbed by more than 600 percent over the preceding eight years and some forecasters were warning of a coming crash. Traders were getting “yippy, a little bit afraid,” the phrase President Donald Trump used last week to describe anxiety over his tariffs.
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Oct 24, 2024 | 
nowitshistory.com | Richard Galant
Hillary Clinton got nearly three million more votes than Donald Trump in 2016. Why didn’t she become President of the United States? Four years later, Trump’s backers tried to alter the vote counting process in several states when they sought to invalidate Joe Biden’s victory in 2020. And in 2024, if the election is as close as the polls say it is, the popular vote winner may not be elected President. When we think of democracy, we assume that whoever gets the most votes will win an election.
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Sep 29, 2024 | 
nowitshistory.com | Richard Galant
A fresh breeze was blowing in American politics as 1961 began. A relic of that time sits on my desk: a bronze medal showing John F. Kennedy’s profile on the front and the presidential seal on the back. The medal, 2 ¾ inches in diameter, says “Inaugurated January 20, 1961.”Kennedy was “the youngest person ever elected to the presidency, ready to succeed Dwight D.
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Sep 24, 2024 | 
nowitshistory.com | Richard Galant
In a 1954 speech to science writers, Atomic Energy Commission chairman Lewis Strauss forecast an idyllic future. “It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter,” he predicted. Strauss also spoke of the likelihood of high-speed travel “over the seas and under them and through the air,” of famines becoming a thing of the past and of researchers conquering disease to greatly extend lifespans.
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Sep 20, 2024 | 
nowitshistory.com | Richard Galant
Deception and secrecy are underlying themes that run through recent news about everything from covert funding of right-wing influencers in the US to the remotely programmed detonation of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies in Lebanon. The shadow world of spying may conceal the identities of people involved in operations like these for a time but eventually we will likely learn who directed them and more about how they were carried out.
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Sep 11, 2024 | 
nowitshistory.com | Richard Galant
When Taylor Swift capped Kamala Harris’ winning night with a full-throated endorsement Tuesday, the megastar posted on Instagram, “I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice,” wrote Swift. “Your research is all yours to do, and the choice is yours to make.” She signed her post, “With love and hope, Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady,” a dig at Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance. Kamala Harris did her research too. And it showed.