Making History Blog
Book Reviews: Spring 2016
The Forgotten Flapper: A Novel of Olive Thomas By Laini Giles Sepia Stories Publishing, 2015 412 pp. Paperback, $15.99 Laini Giles’ “The Forgotten Flapper: A Novel of Olive Thomas” is…
Mr. Potato Head Funny-Face Kit
This Mr. Potato Head kit belonged to George Lerner, who invented the popular toy. Lerner had trouble interesting toy companies in his invention in the late 1940s as war rationing…
Clothing the Royal Americans: Part Two
Part One | Part Two | Part Three Galfridius Mann, whose family ran a prominent army contracting business and who received the first contract for clothing for the Royal American…
Tools of Oppression: Cotton Cards
Mary Ann Carlton (1839-1921), a former slave, used cotton cards to contribute to the sharecropping of her family. In the late 18th century, American citizens knew that the road to…
Clothing the Royal Americans: Part One
Part One | Part Two | Part Three The Royal American Regiment was founded on James Prevost’s idea that a corps of foreign-speaking immigrants already in America could be raised.…
Camp James Weldon Johnson
Page from a Camp Johnson pamphlet, 1953. Camp Johnson Records, 1939-1995, MSS 229, Detre Library & Archives, Heinz History Center. In the early 20th century, “fresh air” camps began sprouting…
Wheat in Washington County
Aug. 12, 1947: Miller photographed Dean Fullerton holding a sheaf of wheat waiting to be threshed. Photo Albert Miller Photographs, Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Historic Village, Heinz History Center. Meadowcroft founder…
New Pittsburghese Guide Helps Yinz with Local Speech
One of the most distinctive features of Western Pennsylvania is the widespread use of a dialect that we have come to call Pittsburghese. Not just the exaggerated slang heard in…
Cleaning the Fort Pitt Diorama
The model of Fort Pitt at the Fort Pitt Museum is an original museum fixture dating to the 1960s. The museum commissioned the local Pittsburgh business Holiday Displays to create…
The Mystery of Pittsburgh’s “Ghost Bomber”
Illustration of the B-25 bomber over the Monongahela River. Courtesy of the B-25 Recovery Group. Sixty years ago, at the height of our nation’s Cold War frenzy, an American military…