A Homemade Christmas

Santa on front cover of 1923 Dennison's Christmas BookDo you make your own holiday decorations?  Have you ever wanted to make your own decorations?  Or do you remember making decorations and gifts in school as a child?  This 1923 booklet, Dennison’s Christmas Book, by Dennison Manufacturing Co. includes suggestions for Christmas, New Year, and Twelfth Night parties.  For now, let’s take a look at the Christmas decorations. Continue reading

Veterans Day: We Remember the Bombardier

B-17 G Formation

During World War II, the U.S. Army Air Corps heavy bomber fleets of B-17’s, B-24’s, and B-29’s were examples of some of the most advanced technology of the period. These four-engine aircraft were designed and built to deliver tons of bombs to a target, defend themselves against enemy fighter attacks, and get their 10- or 11-man crews back to base, if possible. According to a postwar study of bombardier training, the first bombardiers in the Air Corps were pilots interested in bombing or enlisted personnel who had shown some interest and skill in bombing. Eighteen men graduated from the first class of bombardier training in February 1941. By September 1945, 47,000 bombardiers had been trained by the Army Air Force Training Command. Continue reading

Not for the faint of heart: De humani corporis fabrica

Today, Halloween, is traditionally marked with bats, pumpkins, ghosts and of course, skeletons. In the 1500′s, one man changed the way the medical world saw the skeletal and muscular systems of the human body. That man, Andreas Vesalius, illustrated anatomical features in his De humani corporis fabrica (On the structure of the human body) in a way never before seen. Although the pages below may seem gruesome (fair warning, gentle readers!), they come from one of the most influential anatomy books of all time. Continue reading