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The Fire Record, 1887
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Fire was recently in the news for taking a terrible toll on a city with the unthinkable destruction of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. But it was a loss of property and history only, not of life. Fire was once a much, much more pressing concern for cities. We’ve written briefly before on…
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Perhaps the Boys Will Be Inspired
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Permit us a rare excursion from our pretty strict focus on the history of the Capital District of New York to note an odd little bit that we ran across while doing some research on General Electric in Schenectady. In 1933, Owen D. Young was the Chairman of the General Electric Corporation. Young was…
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Hoxsie by Email!
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Hoxsie has a new way to annoy you – the miracle of email! We get hundreds of potentially legitimate hits per day (and thousands of Russian spambots), but up ’til now the only way you could find out if Hoxsie had anything new to say about anything old was through our RSS feed (which,…
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Governor Calls for Health Insurance for Workers
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While scouting around for useless information in the journal of the Elevator Constructors union, we ran across this story on Governor Alfred E. Smith’s call for compulsory health insurance for workers, a call that was well ahead of its time and one based on sound reasoning that we seem to have forgotten nearly a…
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Amelia Earhart Flies for Beech-Nut Gum
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Her lecture tour in 1935 wasn’t the only connection between Amelia Earhart and the Capital District, as evidenced by this May 29, 1931 edition of the Gloversville/Johnstown Morning Herald, which proclaimed “Miss Amelia Earhart Will Make Series of Tests for Beech-Nut Packing Company.” The sub-head said that the only woman to fly across the…
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Maps to Swear By, Not At
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Hoxsie is at the age where he has probably forgotten more than he currently knows. And then he’ll run across an old article and the light will go off: “Hey, I used to know that!” For instance, this article from the Schenectady Gazette in 1970 was a reminder that local television personality Jim Fisk,…
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Vacation
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Hoxsie’s on vacation. Will be back next week refreshed and full of . . . . well, no, we’ll probably still be randomly throwing up posts about whatever catches our fancy the night before, with minimal research and plenty of typos. In the meantime, click the archive link on the right and find something…
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Geology is Destiny
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Our views of history are, to be certain, shaped by our perspectives. Whatever background we come from, whatever origin stories we tell about ourselves and our families inform our understanding of the events the past. And to an extent, even our training and careers can inform what we learn, and create interesting perspectives to…
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The Rise of the Individual Cup
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This has nothing to do with Capital District history, but having run across this 1911 article from Municipal Journal & Public Works, I thought I should share this vision of a world that wasn’t filled with plastic bottles: Portland Urges Using Individual Cups Portland, Ore. – Individual drinking cups not only are becoming popular,…