John Cox

Blogs · @wyome

Tagged history · everything

www.mentalfloss.com

12 Famous Quotes Everyone Misattributes

This roundup debunks fifty famous "quotations," tracing each back to its real source—showing how lines credited to Gandhi, Twain, Einstein-adjacent figures, Marilyn Monroe, and various movies were actually altered, condensed, or invented by biographers, comedians, and internet users. It covers everything from misremembered movie lines ("Luke, I am your father," "Houston, we have a problem") to garbled historical and literary quotes (Shakespeare, the Bible, Thoreau), revealing how repetition and pithiness trump accuracy. Worth keeping as a handy fact-check reference before sharing any inspirational quote graphic.

Permalink historywriting

medium.com

52 things I learned in 2020 - Magnetic Notes - Medium

This is Tom Whitwell's annual "52 things I learned" roundup, a grab-bag list of curious facts and findings gathered over the year rather than a single argument—covering everything from why municipal trees are planted male, to the hidden Fetal Bovine Serum in lab-grown meat, to attractive criminals getting lighter sentences, to Warsaw's clam-powered water safety system. It's worth keeping as a dense trivia stockpile with sourced links for each claim, useful for dinner-party facts, writing hooks, or spotting patterns across unrelated fields like tech, biology, economics, and history.

Permalink technologyculturehistoryenergy

Photo

theboutiqueadventurer.com

83 European Bucket List Ideas for Travellers - The Boutique Adventurer: Luxury Adventure Travel Blog

This article compiles 83 European bucket list ideas, blending iconic landmarks, natural wonders and immersive experiences across the continent. From chasing the [[Northern Lights]] in [[Iceland]] and cruising a zodiac among icebergs at [[Jökulsárlón]] to exploring ancient amphitheatres like the [[Colosseum]] in [[Rome]], readers are guided through memorable moments: sipping wine in [[Montepulciano]], driving coastal routes on the [[Isle of Skye]] and soaking in sunsets on [[Santorini]]. It highlights architectural marvels such as [[Sagrada Familia]] and the [[Eiffel Tower]], historic mysteries like [[Stonehenge]], and unique cultural rituals from opera in [[Verona]] to spa culture in [[Baden-Baden]]. It also suggests coastal drives on the [[Amalfi Coast]] and climbs like [[Ben Nevis]]. Practical tips on timing, tickets and seasonal considerations are interwoven with evocative descriptions to help travellers plan a once-in-a-lifetime European itinerary.

Permalink foodhistoryarchitecturetravel

boingboing.net

Who was the real Chef Boyardee?

This piece dwells on the small pleasure of unsolved trivia, then breaks its own rule for one nagging case: Chef Boyardee. It reveals that the mascot wasn't a manufactured stereotype like Uncle Ben but an actual Italian-American chef, Ettore Boiardi, whose real career and restaurant success led to the branded canned-food empire bearing his name. Worth keeping as the origin story behind a pantry staple whose "character" turns out to be a real person.

Permalink foodculturehistory

BOOK RIOT

10 of the Best Historical Science Fiction Books

Historical science fiction merges speculative and scientific concepts with historical settings, creating narratives that reimagine the past or explore what might have been—a genre that includes steampunk and retro-futurism alongside alternate histories. The piece provides ten examples spanning different eras and themes: *The Calculating Stars* follows a female mathematician fighting for space exploration after a 1952 meteorite, *The Difference Engine* imagines an early computer revolution during the Industrial Age, *Everfair* reimagines Congo colonialism with socialist and African American resistance, and others like *Phoenix Extravagant*, *Radiance*, and *The Haunting of Tram Car 015* blend historical periods with supernatural or advanced technology elements.

Permalink historybooksrecommendationssci-fi

Atlas Obscura

When Every Ketchup But One Went Extinct

In the early 1900s, Harvey Wiley's crusade against chemical preservatives in ketchup found an unlikely corporate ally in Henry Heinz, who discovered that boiling tomatoes with high amounts of vinegar and sugar could create shelf-stable preservative-free ketchup—a breakthrough that helped Heinz defeat competitors who relied on benzoates and ultimately dominated the American market by 1911. While this victory improved food safety by forcing manufacturers to use better-quality ingredients and sanitation practices, it came at the cost of extinguishing the diverse, complex flavors that had characterized earlier ketchups, which ranged from sour and thin to fermented and varied. Today, craft ketchup makers are attempting to resurrect these lost flavor profiles from old recipes and historical cookbooks.

Permalink foodhistorysciencebusiness

zachholman.com

Only 90s Web Developers Remember This

This is a nostalgic and humorous romp through 1990s web development techniques—blinking marquees, transparent 1x1 GIF spacer files for layout, stacked   entities for spacing, pixel fonts, and DHTML—presented as if these crude hacks were revolutionary innovations worthy of Grammys and Pulitzers. The author celebrates the ingenuity required to work around the technical limitations of the era while gently mocking both the absurdity of these methods and modern developers' dismissal of them, ultimately suggesting that today's layered abstractions are no better than the chaotic creativity that built the early web.

Permalink historynostalgia1990shumor

Boing Boing

Ray Manzarek, founding member of The Doors, dies of cancer at 74 - Boing Boing

Ray Manzarek, the legendary keyboardist and founding member of The Doors, died of bile duct cancer at age 74 at a clinic in Germany. Beyond his iconic work with The Doors, Manzarek was also known for co-producing the first four albums of the late-'70s/early-'80s L.A. punk band X, helping establish some of the earliest vinyl punk records. The piece includes archival footage and monologues from Manzarek reflecting on his life and musical career.

Permalink historymusicentertainmentrock

Adapter | Advanced Website and Software Development in Washington DC

Dreams: Timeliner.js - A jQuery plugin for making simple historical timelines

This is a company website for a digital development firm that builds websites, applications, and software tools for mission-driven organizations, nonprofits, and educational institutions. The firm specializes in content-rich websites, data-driven applications, and custom enterprise software, serving clients ranging from major universities and government agencies to community organizations, and their work has been recognized with various design and communications awards. Their technical capabilities span modern web frameworks like React and TypeScript as well as legacy system maintenance and WordPress development, with a team experienced in translating both technical expertise and substantive policy knowledge into digital solutions.

Permalink historypluginsjquery

appcachefacts.info

Appcache Facts

AppCache was introduced in HTML5 as a simple declarative solution for offline web capability, but its rigid design created numerous frustrating problems: cached content wouldn't update until the next page load, a single failed file would invalidate an entire cache, and unlisted files couldn't load even with an active internet connection. These fundamental limitations—particularly documented in Jake Archibald's 2012 critique—taught the web standards community that declarative caching models were too inflexible for real-world needs, leading to the development of Service Workers, which use JavaScript to give developers imperative control over caching and networking logic and now form the basis of Progressive Web Apps.

Permalink historyperformancestandards

The Big Picture

Cheney Admits that He Lied about 9/11 | The Big Picture

Dick Cheney admitted in a Showtime documentary that he unilaterally authorized shooting down the hijacked plane on 9/11, contradicting his previous testimony to the 9/11 Commission that President Bush had pre-authorized such orders—the Commission found no documentary evidence this authorization ever occurred. The article argues Cheney used the 9/11 attacks as justification for numerous policies and military actions that were actually planned beforehand, and falsely linked Iraq to the attacks to support the torture program and other expansions of executive power he championed.

Permalink historysecuritypoliticsnews

the Guardian

www.grantland.com

Alan Sepinwall on the origins of 'Lost' - Grantland

Lloyd Braun, an ABC executive, conceived Lost as a high-concept survival drama after watching Cast Away on a Hawaiian beach, then shepherded it through an impossibly accelerated development process despite widespread skepticism about its viability. J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof, brought in at the last minute with only weeks to produce the pilot, deliberately crafted a show that blended character-driven drama with mystery and sci-fi elements, keeping most of the mythology unmapped so they could focus on making audiences care about the survivors themselves. The result was an 18.6-million-viewer premiere that became one of television's most thrilling dramas, though the writers' decision to withhold answers about the hatch in the season finale provoked backlash that revealed the risk inherent in building a show on accumulated mystery.

Permalink televisionhistorydramaentertainment

Mother Jones

Follow the Dark Money | Mother Jones

# Summary This article traces the century-long battle over campaign finance regulation in American politics, showing a cyclical pattern where scandals prompt reform efforts that are subsequently dismantled through court decisions and legal loopholes. From Watergate's revelations about secret corporate donations funding the break-in, through the post-Watergate reforms of the 1970s that were partially gutted by the Buckley decision, to the soft-money scandals of the Clinton era that led to McCain-Feingold in 2002, the article documents how conservative legal strategists like James Bopp Jr. systematically challenged campaign finance laws—culminating in the Citizens United decision that opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate spending and ushered in the super-PAC era. The author argues that money in politics behaves like water, finding new channels around each regulatory dam, and that we are now back to the pre-Watergate era of massive undisclosed donations despite public demand for stricter controls.

Permalink historypoliticsinvestigation

The Marginalian

The 11 Best History Books of 2011 | Brain Pickings

James Gleick's *The Information* traces humanity's relationship with information from African drum languages through the Morse code and French optical telegraph to the digital age, arguing that understanding information's past is essential to navigating its future. Rather than adopting a pessimistic stance toward information overload, Gleick celebrates our capacity to find meaning within it and positions the information flood as an opportunity for intellectual elevation. The book ultimately presents humanity as creatures engaged in an endless search for patterns and meaning, mirroring Borges' vision of people navigating endless archives in pursuit of understanding.

Permalink historybooksrecommendationsliterature

kottke.org

Boing Boing

September 11: Found artifacts at the 9/11 Museum – Boing Boing

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum, opening in 2012, preserves personal artifacts recovered from the attacks and their aftermath, each carrying stories of both loss and survival—from Chief Joseph Pfeifer's helmet (whose brother Kevin died in the North Tower) to Linda Lopez's blood-stained shoes (worn as she fled the 97th floor of the South Tower) to Gennie Gambale's wallet (found on a nearby rooftop weeks after her death). The collection includes belongings of first responders like firefighters Kevin Prior and Liam Callahan, as well as objects discovered during the nine-month cleanup operation, creating a material record of individual experiences during one of America's greatest tragedies.

Permalink historymuseums

Boing Boing

How the first image of the whole Earth was taken – Boing Boing

Kelly celebrates the remarkable engineering achievement of Lunar Orbiter 1's 1966 photograph—the first image of Earth from space—which required an ingenious analog system with mechanical moving parts to capture, develop, scan, and transmit film across the vacuum of space without any digital technology. The anecdote serves as a counterpoint to modern technological assumptions, highlighting how earlier generations solved complex problems through mechanical ingenuity rather than electronics.

Permalink technologyhistoryphotographyscience