Woman Takes LSD in 1956: “I’ve Never Seen Such Infinite Beauty in All My Life,” “I Wish I Could Talk in Technicolor”

in History, Life, Science | October 10th, 2014

A decade before tens of thousands turned on, tuned in, and dropped out at the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park, psychiatrist Sidney Cohen was investigating the effects of LSD on human consciousness. If his voluntary subjects at LA’s Veteran’s Administration Hospital found themselves suddenly able to “see the music” a la Lizard Queen Lisa Simpson, they did so in a very respectable-seeming, mid-1950s setting.

Witness this session with the polite young wife of a hospital employee, above. She’s a bit nervous, but not because of any media-fueled preconceptions regarding the trip she’s about to take. It was 1956, and another of Dr. Cohen’s guinea pigs, publisher Henry Luce, had yet to regale the public with some of acid’s more colorful properties via multiple articles in both Time and Life magazines.

As such, our unidentified participant is as pure as the glass of water she’s served at the one minute mark. Purer, actually, given that the drink has been dosed with 1/10th of a milligram Lysergic acid diethylamide.

Three hours further along, she’s tripping her brains out, still seated demurely in the same chair in which her intake interview was conducted. Had it been filmed 20 years later, her revelations would seem trite, but the context renders them endearing. If she’s bummed out about anything, it’s that the nice doctor questioning her about her mind blowing journey isn’t able to see the molecules too.

I’d love to know what became of her.

Cohen continued observing LSD, with subjects as celebrated as writer Aldous Huxley, philosopher Gerald Heard and Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. He published his findings in The Beyond Within: the LSD Story. His ultimate takeaway was that ”beatnik microculture” destroyed LSD’s chances for achieving its potential as a psychotherapy tool.

This may be why we never hear him urging his subject to check out the drapes, which is surely what several young men of my acquaintance would have resorted to, back in the day.

David Lynch-style austerity of the setting aside, perhaps such coaching was unnecessary. Whatever this woman’s brain had her seeing, it made her want to “talk in technicolor.”

May I suggest that we’re just as delusional if we assume that someone who could be described as a 1950s “housewife” must have inhabited a world we can only perceive in black-and-white?

via Reason.com

Watch The Bicycle Trip: An Animation of The World’s First LSD Trip in 1943

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Ayun Halliday is an author, homeschooler, and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Follow her @AyunHalliday

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Ben Franklin’s List of 200 Synonyms for “Drunk”: “Moon-Ey’d,” “Hammerish,” “Stew’d” & More (1737)

in Food & Drink, History | October 8th, 2014

How many Americans could, off the top of their heads, tell you exactly why history remembers Benjamin Franklin? Not many, I suspect, though we all know that he did a great deal worth remembering, even by the standards of a Founding Father. (Something got him on the $100 bill, after all.) Of course, only his biographers could remember the every accomplishment of this “First American,” from helping unite the colonies, to publishing newspapers, to serving as Ambassador to France, to putting US national security at risk, to co-founding the University of Pennsylvania, to inventing bifocals and everything in between. Most Americans can, I suspect, summon to mind the image of Franklin flying a kite with a key on it as well.

It also turns out that Franklin could indulge in a vice as heartily as he could a virtue; the man who wrote Poor Richard’s Almanack knew how to have a good time. In 18th-century America, this seems often as not to have meant to know how to drink — and, in Franklin’s case, also to know how to identify the drunk. His reputation as a bon vivant and a man of letters converged in a January 13, 1737 edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette, wherein he published this “Drinkers Dictionary” consisting of 200 synonyms for wasted, blotto, half in the bag, three sheets to the wind, and others that would emerge over the following centuries. See them all below.

A
He is Addled,
He’s casting up his Accounts,
He’s Afflicted,
He’s in his Airs.

B
He’s Biggy,
Bewitch’d,
Block and Block,
Boozy,
Bowz’d,
Been at Barbadoes,
Piss’d in the Brook,
Drunk as a Wheel-Barrow,
Burdock’d,
Buskey,
Buzzey,
Has Stole a Manchet out of the Brewer’s Basket,
His Head is full of Bees,
Has been in the Bibbing Plot,
Has drank more than he has bled,
He’s Bungey,
As Drunk as a Beggar,
He sees the Bears,
He’s kiss’d black Betty,
He’s had a Thump over the Head with Sampson’s Jawbone,
He’s Bridgey.

C
He’s Cat,
Cagrin’d,
Capable,
Cramp’d,
Cherubimical,
Cherry Merry,
Wamble Crop’d,
Crack’d,
Concern’d,
Half Way to Concord,
Has taken a Chirriping-Glass,
Got Corns in his Head,
A Cup to much,
Coguy,
Copey,
He’s heat his Copper,
He’s Crocus,
Catch’d,
He cuts his Capers,
He’s been in the Cellar,
He’s in his Cups,
Non Compos,
Cock’d,
Curv’d,
Cut,
Chipper,
Chickery,
Loaded his Cart,
He’s been too free with the Creature,
Sir Richard has taken off his Considering Cap,
He’s Chap-fallen,

D
He’s Disguiz’d,
He’s got a Dish,
Kill’d his Dog,
Took his Drops,
It is a Dark Day with him,
He’s a Dead Man,
Has Dipp’d his Bill,
He’s Dagg’d,
He’s seen the Devil,

E
He’s Prince Eugene,
Enter’d,
Wet both Eyes,
Cock Ey’d,
Got the Pole Evil,
Got a brass Eye,
Made an Example,
He’s Eat a Toad & half for Breakfast.
In his Element,

F
He’s Fishey,
Fox’d,
Fuddled,
Sore Footed,
Frozen,
Well in for’t,
Owes no Man a Farthing,
Fears no Man,
Crump Footed,
Been to France,
Flush’d,
Froze his Mouth,
Fetter’d,
Been to a Funeral,
His Flag is out,
Fuzl’d,
Spoke with his Friend,
Been at an Indian Feast.

G
He’s Glad,
Groatable,
Gold-headed,
Glaiz’d,
Generous,
Booz’d the Gage,
As Dizzy as a Goose,
Been before George,
Got the Gout,
Had a Kick in the Guts,
Been with Sir John Goa,
Been at Geneva,
Globular,
Got the Glanders.

H
Half and Half,
Hardy,
Top Heavy,
Got by the Head,
Hiddey,
Got on his little Hat,
Hammerish,
Loose in the Hilts,
Knows not the way Home,
Got the Hornson,
Haunted with Evil Spirits,
Has Taken Hippocrates grand Elixir,

I
He’s Intoxicated,
Jolly,
Jagg’d,
Jambled,
Going to Jerusalem,
Jocular,
Been to Jerico,
Juicy.

K
He’s a King,
Clips the King’s English,
Seen the French King,
The King is his Cousin,
Got Kib’d Heels,
Knapt,
Het his Kettle.

L
He’s in Liquor,
Lordly,
He makes Indentures with his Leggs,
Well to Live,
Light,
Lappy,
Limber,

M
He sees two Moons,
Merry,
Middling,
Moon-Ey’d,
Muddled,
Seen a Flock of Moons,
Maudlin,
Mountous,
Muddy,
Rais’d his Monuments,
Mellow,

N
He’s eat the Cocoa Nut,
Nimptopsical,
Got the Night Mare,

O
He’s Oil’d,
Eat Opium,
Smelt of an Onion,
Oxycrocium,
Overset,

P
He drank till he gave up his Half-Penny,
Pidgeon Ey’d,
Pungey,
Priddy,
As good conditioned as a Puppy,
Has scalt his Head Pan,
Been among the Philistines,
In his Prosperity,
He’s been among the Philippians,
He’s contending with Pharaoh,
Wasted his Paunch,
He’s Polite,
Eat a Pudding Bagg,

Q
He’s Quarrelsome,

R
He’s Rocky,
Raddled,
Rich,
Religious,
Lost his Rudder,
Ragged,
Rais’d,
Been too free with Sir Richard,
Like a Rat in Trouble.

S
He’s Stitch’d,
Seafaring,
In the Sudds,
Strong,
Been in the Sun,
As Drunk as David’s Sow,
Swampt,
His Skin is full,
He’s Steady,
He’s Stiff,
He’s burnt his Shoulder,
He’s got his Top Gallant Sails out,
Seen the yellow Star,
As Stiff as a Ring-bolt,
Half Seas over,
His Shoe pinches him,
Staggerish,
It is Star-light with him,
He carries too much Sail,
Stew’d
Stubb’d,
Soak’d,
Soft,
Been too free with Sir John Strawberry,
He’s right before the Wind with all his Studding Sails out,
Has Sold his Senses.

T
He’s Top’d,
Tongue-ty’d,
Tann’d,
Tipium Grove,
Double Tongu’d,
Topsy Turvey,
Tipsey,
Has Swallow’d a Tavern Token,
He’s Thaw’d,
He’s in a Trance,
He’s Trammel’d,

V
He makes Virginia Fence,
Valiant,
Got the Indian Vapours,

W
The Malt is above the Water,
He’s Wise,
He’s Wet,
He’s been to the Salt Water,
He’s Water-soaken,
He’s very Weary,
Out of the Way.

Franklin’s glossary also appears in Lists of Note, the brand new, highly recommended book from Letters of Note’s Shaun Usher. Wherever you consult it, bear in mind Franklin’s introductory note that all these terms come “gather’d wholly from the modern Tavern-Conversation of Tiplers. [ … ] I was tempted to add a new one my self under the Letter B, to wit, Brutify’d: But upon Consideration, I fear’d being guilty of Injustice to the Brute Creation, if I represented Drunkenness as a beastly Vice, since, ’tis well-known, that the Brutes are in general a very sober sort of People.” Which brings to mind a few better-known words attributed to the man: “Beer is proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy.” He actually said it about wine, but either way, let’s give Franklin credit: he was Wise — in moderation, of course.

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Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture and writes essays on cities, language, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

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Bruce Springsteen Plays East Berlin in 1988: I’m Not Here For Any Government. I’ve Come to Play Rock

in History, Music, Politics | October 8th, 2014

And you thought Ronald Reagan single-handedly brought down the Berlin Wall and ended the Cold War with his “Tear Down This Wall Speech” in 1987…. Well, a few other things happened before the wall finally came down two years later, including Mikhail Gorbechev’s reforms, the protests of the East German people, and that whole nuclear arms race thing. But if we’re looking for another famous American to credit for reunification, we should look to Bruce Springsteen, who in July of 1988—one year after the aged Gipper issued his famous command to the Soviet President—played an outdoor concert to 300,000 East German fans, “while millions more,” reports The Guardian, “watched the shaky and distorted transmission on state television.”

Springsteen played 32 songs in an epic four-hour performance. But which song was it that sent the Wall crumbling one year later? Was it, perhaps, “Born in the U.S.A.” (top)—the song about a bitter, disenfranchised Vietnam vet that the G.O.P. mistook for a patriotic anthem?

More likely it was his cover of Bob Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom” (above). Before that song, writes The Guardian, Springsteen gives “a passionate speech, delivered in a creaky but understandable German.” “I’m not here for any government,” he says, “I’ve come to play rock ‘n’ roll for you in the hope that one day all the barriers will be torn down.” It could just as well have been “Promised Land” (below) that tore down that wall, or maybe “Cadillac Ranch”….

Sure, I’m being facetious, but the concert did have significant aftereffects. Historian Gerd Dietrich remarks that “Springsteen’s concert and speech certainly contributed in a large sense to the events leading up to the fall of the wall.” Thomas Wilke, an “expert on the impact of rock and pop music in East Germany,” comments, “there was clearly a different feeling and a different sentiment in East Germany after that concert.” The sentiment, says Dietrich, was an even greater desire for change. The Springsteen concert “showed people how locked up they really were.”

In this respect, it had exactly the opposite effect that the East German leadership intended. Evidence from the Stasi archives tells us it was supposed to “assuage the country’s youth,” who were “still reeling” from the beatings they’d received from police the previous year when they’d tried to listen in on David Bowie and the Eurythmics playing just over the Wall in the West. The Springsteen concert, by contrast, was deliberately situated “in the depths of East Berlin,” far from the border, to prevent “an impromptu revolution.” So much for appeasement.

So, were Reagan and Springsteen working together? Unlikely. Reagan’s attempt to co-opt “Born in the U.S.A.” for his 1984 re-election campaign may have, in fact, activated Springsteen’s latent lefty consciousness—or at least that’s what Professor Marc Dolan argues in the short video above and in this Politico essay. But even if the President and the Boss took different routes politically, there were “undeniable similarities” between them.

Both men liked to talk a lot to their audiences about freedom, and both tended to define that freedom in terms of the agency of the individual. Both men instinctively distrusted structures and institutions, precisely because they saw them as limiting individual freedom.

In that respect, they were the perfect representatives of the U.S. East Germans imagined, whether trying to hear Michael Jackson through a wall of troops stationed in front of the concrete behemoth that kept the West out, or waving homemade American flags while Max Weinberg pounded out the rousing drumbeat that announces “Born in the U.S.A.” Remembering the concert years later, Springsteen said, “Once in a while […] you play a show that ends up staying inside of you, living with you for the rest of your life. East Berlin in 1988 was certainly one of them.”

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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness.

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Declassified CIA Document Reveals That Ben Franklin (and His Big Ego) Put U.S. National Security at Risk

in History | October 7th, 2014

Benjamin Franklin might have been a brilliant author, publisher, scientist, inventor and statesman, but he was pretty lousy at keeping state secrets. That’s the finding from a recently declassified CIA analysis of Franklin’s critically important diplomatic mission to France during the Revolutionary War.

In September 1776, Franklin was dispatched to Paris to enlist France’s support for the American Revolution. At the time, France was still smarting from losing the Seven Years’ War to Britain and was eager to do anything that could reduce its rival’s power and prestige. Franklin’s Commission ran all kinds of clandestine operations with tacit French aid, including procuring weapons, supplies and money for the American Army; sabotaging the Portsmouth Royal Navy Dockyard; and negotiating a secret treaty between America and France.

And according the CIA’s in-house publication, Studies in Intelligence, the British knew just about everything that was going on. “The British had a complete picture of American-French activities supporting the war in America and of American intentions regarding an alliance with France. The British used this intelligence effectively against the American cause.”

Some of the problems with the Commission seem head-slappingly obvious. “There was no real physical security at the Commission itself. The public had access to the mansion, documents and papers were spread out all over the office, and private discussions were held in public areas.”

One of Franklin’s fellow commissioners, Arthur Lee, was outraged over this lack of security.

[Lee] wrote that a French official “had complained that everything we did was known to the English ambassador, who was always plaguing him with the details. No one will be surprised at this who knows that we have no time or place appropriate to our consultation, but that servants, strangers, and everyone else was at liberty to enter and did constantly enter the room while we were talking about public business and that the papers relating to it lay open in rooms of common and continual resort.

Not surprisingly, the American mission was riddled with British spies; chief among them was Franklin’s long-time friend Edward Bancroft, who, as the Commission’s secretary, had complete access to all of its papers. He was reportedly paid a princely sum of 1000 pounds a year by the British Empire to play the part of an Enlightenment-era James Bond.

Lee suspected Bancroft of being a spy, but Franklin dismissed his concerns largely because he greatly disliked Lee. “[Franklin’s] attitude … is all too familiar among policymakers and statesmen,” writes the CIA. “His ego may have overwhelmed his common sense.”

In the end, the analyst lays the blame on these catastrophic lapses in intelligence on that inflated ego.

“By the time [Franklin] arrived in Paris in late 1776, he was elderly and had little interest in the administrative aspects of the Commission. Franklin was widely recognized as a statesman, scientist, and intellectual. While highly respected, he was also vain, obstinate, and jealous of his prerogatives and reputation. … The Commission was “under protection” of the French Government, and Franklin may have underestimated British capabilities to operate in a third country. In any event, he did nothing to create a security consciousness at the Commission.”

The portrait that the CIA paints is indeed a grim one that in different circumstances could have lost the war. Thankfully, Britain proved wholly unable to use this wealth of information to turn the tide of the war. As the CIA wryly notes: “Perhaps the greatest irony in the whole story of the penetration of the American Commission is that, while British intelligence activities were highly successful, British policy was a total failure.”

Via io9

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Jonathan Crow is a Los Angeles-based writer and filmmaker whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hollywood Reporter, and other publications. You can follow him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veeptopus, featuring vice presidents with octopuses on their heads. The Veeptopus store is here.

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Hear the Nazi’s Bizzaro Propaganda Jazz Band, “Charlie and His Orchestra” (1940–1943)

in History, Jazz, Music | October 6th, 2014

As you might expect from a vicious political movement fronted by a frustrated illustrator, the Nazi party had a complicatedly disdainful yet aspirational — and needless to say, unceasingly fascinating — relationship with art. We previously featured their philistine grudge against modernism that led to the “Degenerate Art Exhibition” of 1937, their mega-budget propaganda film on the Titanic disaster that turned into a disaster itself, and their control-freak list of rules for dance orchestras. The Nazis, as you might expect, didn’t much care for jazz, or at least saw some political capital in openly denouncing it. Yet it seems they also saw some in embracing it, turning the quintessentially free art form toward, as always, their own propagandistic purposes. What if they could come up with their own popular jazz band and, using long-distance short- and medium-wave broadcast signals, turn the Allies’ own music against them? Enter, in 1940, Charlie and His Orchestra. Another Joseph Goebbels creation.

“The idea behind the Nazis’ Charlie campaign,” writes the Wall Street Journal’s Will Friedwald, “was that they could undermine Allied morale through musical propaganda, with a specially devised orchestra broadcasting messages in English to British and American troops.” The groups’ featured singer, “Charlie” himself (real name: Karl Schwedler), would sing not just “irresistible” jazz standards but versions with anti-British, ‑American, and ‑Semitic lyrics. You can hear much of their catalog in the clips here, including what Friedwald cites as their “weirdest recordings”: “Irving Berlin’s ‘Slumming on Park Avenue,’ in which Schwedler, portraying a British pilot with a mock-English accent, sings ‘Let’s go bombing!’ ” and “So You Left Me for the Leader of a Swing Band” refashioned as “So You Left Me for the Leader of the Soviets.” Ultimately, not only did the outside world prove to have better taste than the Nazis, their own fighters did too: “Not only did the Charlie project fail to convert any Allies to the other side, but even Germany’s own troops couldn’t bring themselves to take Nazi swing seriously.” It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing, I suppose — and Charlie and his Orchestra definitely didn’t have it. More audio samples can be heard over at WFMU.

via WSJ

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Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture and writes essays on cities, language, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Angeles, A Los Angeles Primer. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.

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Free Download of The History Manifesto: Historians New Call for Big-Picture Thinking

in Books, History | October 6th, 2014

Briefly noted…

Cambridge University Press has just published a new book called The History Manifesto by Jo Guldi (Assistant Professor, Brown University) and David Armitage (Chair of Harvard’s History Department). In a nutshell, the book argues that historians have lost their public relevance by writing histories of the “short term” — essentially “micro-scale” histories — when they could be writing bigger, deeper histories, covering longer periods of time, that help readers put our world into perspective. What Guldi and Armitage are calling for is a return to long, meaningful narratives and big-picture thinking — the kind of thinking that could perhaps pull the historical profession out of crisis. As someone who got his PhD in History during the “micro-scale” era, all I can say is — amen to that.

Print editions of The History Manifesto will come out in November. But you can already read the entire work online in both html and PDF formats. The book has been released under a Creative Commons license.

H/T @NathanVM

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by OC | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

1797 Temperance Thermometer Measures the Moral & Physical Impact of Your Drinking Habits

in Food & Drink, History, Life, Science | September 30th, 2014

Question for the drinkers out there:

Does strong beer taken in moderate quantities at mealtimes make you cheerful?

Yeah, me too!

That gives us a temperature of 10 according to 18th-century physician John Coakley Lettsom’s “moral and physical thermometer,” one of his Hints Designed to Promote Beneficence, Temperance, and Medical Science (1797).

It’s nothing to be ashamed of—anything above zero constitutes a passing score. The founder of the Medical Society of London, Lettsom was a proponent of true temperance, not total abstinence. According to his rubric, a “small beer” has all the virtues of milk and water.

Dip below a zero, though, and you’re in for a bumpy night.

Punch is apparently the gateway to such demon influences as flip, shrub, whiskey and rum. Gosh. You may as well just skip the punch and go straight for the hard stuff, if, as in Lettsom’s view, they all end in the same vices and diseases.

Puking and Tremors of the Hands in the Morning?

Yes, on occasion.

Peevishness, Idleness, and Obscenity?

Yep, that too.

Murder, Madness, and Death?

Mercifully, no. At least not yet.

While not entirely free of stigma, alcoholism is now something many view through the lens of AA, a problem best remedied through a system of personal accountability shored up by a network of nonjudgmental, sympathetic support.

Back in Lettsom’s day, when an alcoholic hit rock bottom, it was assumed he or she would stay there, a task made easier when the wages of this particular sin included the poor house, a one way ticket to the Botany Bay penal colony, and the gallows.

Such looming consequences are easily laughed off when you’ve had a snoot, which may be why Lettsom also published the illustrated version of his thermometer below. A picture is worth a thousand words, particularly when depicting the pre-Dickensian misery that awaits the drunkard and his family.

via Rebecca Onion and Slate

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Ayun Halliday is an author, homeschooler, and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Follow her @AyunHalliday

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

A 1932 Illustrated Map of Harlem’s Night Clubs: From the Cotton Club to the Savoy Ballroom

in Comics/Cartoons, History, Maps, Music | September 29th, 2014

Harlem’s undergoing another Renaissance of late. Crime’s down, real estate prices are up, and throngs of pale-faced hipsters are descending to check the area out.

Sure, something’s gained, but something’s lost, too.

For today’s holiday in Harlem, we’re going to climb in the Wayback Machine. Set the dial for 1932. Don’t forget your map. (Click the image above to view a larger version.)

This delirious artifact comes courtesy of Elmer Simms Campbell (1906–1971), an artist whose race proved an impediment to career advancement in his native Midwest. Not long after relocating to New York City, he had the good fortune to be befriended by the great Cab Calloway, star of the Cotton Club. Hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-ho! Check the lower left corner of your map.

You may notice that the compass rose deviates rather drastically from established norms. As you’ve no doubt heard, the Bronx is up, and the Battery’s down, but not in this case. Were you to choose those trees in the upper left corner as your starting point, you’d be at the top of Central Park, basically equidistant from the east and west sides. (Take the 2 or the 3 to 110th St…)

But keep in mind that this map is not drawn to scale. I know it looks like the joints are jumping from the second you step off the curb, but in reality, you’ll need to hoof it 21 blocks from the top of Central Park to 131st street for things to start cookin’. Hopefully, this geographical liberty won’t get you too hot under the collar. And if it does, well, it may be Prohibition, but stress-relieving beverages await you in every location listed, as well as in some 500 speakeasies Campbell allowed to remain on the down low.

If that doesn’t do it for you, there’s a guy selling reefer across the street from Earl “Snakehips” Tucker.

As you stagger back and forth between Seventh Avenue to Lenox (now referred to as Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and Malcolm X), bear in mind that Campbell was the first African-American cartoonist to be nationally published in the New Yorker, Playboy, and Esquire, whose bug-eyed, now retired mascot, Esky, was a Campbell creation.

In the end, he was an extremely successful illustrator, though few of his creations are reflective of his race.

The map above, which did double duty as endpapers for Calloway’s autobiography, Of Minnie the Moocher and Me, is far closer to home.

Right above, see Cab Calloway perform “Hotcha Razz Ma Tazz” at the famous Cotton Club, in Harlem, 1935.

via Big Think

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Ayun Halliday is an author, Hoos-Yorker, homeschooler, and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Follow her @AyunHalliday

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Woman Takes LSD in 1956: “I’ve Never Seen Such Infinite Beauty in All My Life,” “I Wish I Could Talk in Technicolor”

Ben Franklin’s List of 200 Synonyms for “Drunk”: “Moon-Ey’d,” “Hammerish,” “Stew’d” & More (1737)

Bruce Springsteen Plays East Berlin in 1988: I’m Not Here For Any Government. I’ve Come to Play Rock

Declassified CIA Document Reveals That Ben Franklin (and His Big Ego) Put U.S. National Security at Risk

Hear the Nazi’s Bizzaro Propaganda Jazz Band, “Charlie and His Orchestra” (1940–1943)

Free Download of The History Manifesto: Historians New Call for Big-Picture Thinking

1797 Temperance Thermometer Measures the Moral & Physical Impact of Your Drinking Habits

A 1932 Illustrated Map of Harlem’s Night Clubs: From the Cotton Club to the Savoy Ballroom

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