Here Are Some of Enquirer Reporter Lafcadio Hearn's Articles from the 1870s

I've mentioned Lafcadio Hearn before, in this crazy post. Here are the titles of some more of his popular columns:

The Last of the Horse: How he is turned into soap, fertilizer, and Prussian Blue, a flying visit to the Horse-Frying works at Delhi

Within the Bars: How prisoners look, live, and conduct themselves, some glimpses of life in the County Jail

The Aesthetics of Hanging

Dug up. Doctors at work on the body of Bellevile. Post Mortem examination at Spring Grove cemetery

A Naughty Widow

Dame Sidney Augustine: An abortion for twenty-five dollars and the price worked out. Fortune telling and dead babies


A Dish of Soup: How a carpenter falls in love with cookery and then the cook

Free Love in Cincinnati History

Greeks, Jews, and Cannibals

Great American Irony

Even the Clouds are Queer in Northside

Here's a Camel Ad from Exactly 52 Years Ago

Maris, the Yankees "home run hitting right fielder," hit 39 homers in 1960, good enough to win the HR title and beat Mickey Mantle for the AL MVP.

It was the NEXT year, 1961, that Maris hit 61 homers, a stat that would turn out to be the first of several home run records with an asterisk next to it. He beat out Mickey Mantle again for the MVP award.

So a half-century before steroids we had tobacco. And a half century before that, athletes actually used things like nitroglycerine, strychnine, brandy, coffee, and even opium.

I would agree that PEDs are a problem, but considering the next generation will have to figure out what to do with a cyberkinetic athlete who pole vaults 35 feet, I'm not too concerned right now.

An Hitchcockian Morning

Check Out This 1960 UC Student Newspaper Ad

Gosh frosh!

How'd you catch on so quick? Catch on to the fact that Coca-Cola is the hep drink on campus, I mean. Always drink it, you say? Well-- how about dropping over to the dorm and downing a sparkling Coke or two with the boys. The man who's for Coke is the man for us.

From the Dept of Questionable Behavior...

...comes this Fountain Square visitor, whose visage I am mercifully showing from the back. Let's just say her front-- which was prominently showcased-- would readily elicit pop culture references about a certain desert-dwelling ungulate's phalanges.

That's not all. She had a friend. Her friend wore a white shirt with the words "WORKING CLASS HO" in bold black letters. And the two of them had a young girl with them, about 9 or 10 years old.

I have no idea what these two were thinking when they decided an afternoon of children's events on Fountain Square would be a good time for crotch flaunting and trashy fashion with child in tow, but nothing really surprises me anymore.

Golden Gate Bridge Designed by UC Grad

I discovered this interesting factoid while skimming 50-yr old issues of UC's student newspaper, the News Record. Transcription below.

Thanks to the "Parent's Letter," the NR has learned that San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, the world's longest single-span bridge, contains a singular honor for UC.

The bridge was built by UC honor graduate Joseph B. Strauss. As an undergraduate, Strauss tried unsuccessfully to get on the football team. Handicapped by his five foot, 100 pound build, the future engineer was forced to forsake the single wing for the single span.

And, within twelve years of his graduation from UC, Strauss became internationally famous for his development of the trunion bascule bridge. 

Later, when he was chosen to construct the Golden Gate Bridge, he asked for and received a brick from the original building* of UC. He placed it on one of the anchorages of the structure. 

Now, somewhere along the four-fifths of a mile of steel and concrete is a small portion of UC. A tribute to a school from one of its distinguished alumni.


*According to Wikipedia, the "original building" was the demolished McMicken Hall, a brick of which Strauss put in the south anchorage of the bridge before concrete was poured.

Wikipedia also notes that Strauss prioritized worker protection and installed a safety net which saved 19 lives. Strauss died a year after the bridge was finished.

Quasi-Abstract

Sunday Morning Sunshine