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The Peculiar Game of the Yankee Peddler—Or What Do You Buy?

Part of the utility of the game is how many intersections can be addressed, a Choose Your Own Adventure of lesson planning.
by Rachel Tamar Van via Commonplace on July 4, 2023
Two people playing mahjong in black-and-white photo

White Women and the Mahjong Craze

Travelers brought the Chinese game to American shores in the early 1920s. Why was it such a hit?
by Livia Gershon via JSTOR Daily on February 2, 2021
Christy Mathewson, a pitcher for the New York Giants from 1900-1916.

When New York Made Baseball and Baseball Made New York

The rise of the sport as we know it was centered in Gotham, where big stadiums, heroic characters, and epic sportswriting produced a pastime that bound a city together.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on March 25, 2024
The Sebring patent design, February 4, 1868.

Base Ball Patents

Searching for the first, in the 1860s.
by John Thorn via Medium on January 2, 2024
Potato Head family
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Toys Are Ditching Genders for the Same Reason They First Took Them On

Why the Potato Heads are the latest toys becoming more inclusive.
by Paul Ringel via Made By History on March 2, 2021
Ernest Thompson Seton posing with three citizens of the Blackfeet Nation, ca. 1917.

This Land Is Your Land

Native minstrelsy and the American summer camp movement.
by Asa Seresin via Cabinet on December 15, 2020
Stan and Mardi Timm show off Johnson Smith novelties they’ve collected. Stan wears X-Ray Spex and holds a Tark Electric Razor. Mardi wears a sailor’s hat that says “Kiss Me Honey I Won’t Bite” and holds a Little Gem Lung Tester and Bust Developer.

Fun Delivered: World’s Foremost Experts on Whoopee Cushions and Silly Putty Tell All

The Timms provide the history behind their collection of 20th century mail-order novelty items.
by Lisa Hix via Collectors Weekly on March 17, 2020
Advertisement commemorating 25 years of video games since the release of Oregon Trail.

Playing in the Past

Gameplay can be useful in history classrooms – but manufacturers have to think about how children will be affected by the competition.
by Robert Whitaker via Play Stuff Blog on December 9, 2019
Screenshot from "The Oregon Trail" computer game

The Forgotten History of 'The Oregon Trail,' As Told By Its Creators

You must always caulk the wagon. Never ford the river.
by Paul Dillenberger, Bill Heinemann, Don Rawitsch, Kevin Wong via Vice on February 15, 2017
Pinball machine with a clown face.

A Menace to Society: the War on Pinball in America

Pinball hasn’t always been an all-American game of fun: for decades it was an object of widespread moral outrage.
by Hadley Meares via Aeon on August 15, 2016
Illustrations of a skeleton and an angel in a book.

This 19th-Century ‘Toy Book’ Used Science to Prove That Ghosts Were Simply an Illusion

“Spectropia” demystified the techniques used by mediums who claimed they could speak to the dead, revealing the “absurd follies of Spiritualism.”
by Vanessa Armstrong via Smithsonian on October 29, 2024
Soldiers in combat gear stand by an advertisement for "America's Army," a military strategy game from 2002.

Video Games Are a Key Battleground in the Propaganda War

When video games went mainstream, the Pentagon realized their potential as a promotional tool, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on war-based games.
by Marijam Did via Jacobin on October 13, 2024
John Thorn photographed in front of baseball memorabilia.

How Baseball’s Official Historian Dug Up the Game’s Unknown Origins

A lifelong passion for the national pastime led John Thorn to redefine the sport's relationship with statistics and reveal the truth behind its earliest days.
by Frederic J. Frommer via Smithsonian on March 28, 2024
Collage of poets and scoring.

The Gift of Slam Poetry

A short history of a misunderstood literary genre and the world it created.
by Joshua Bennett via The Nation on April 26, 2023
People outside the entrance to Luna Park on Coney Island, New York, 1890.

Luna Park and the Amusement Park Boom

The fortunes of Coney Island have waxed and waned, but in the early twentieth century, its amusement parks became a major American export.
by Betsy Golden Kellem via JSTOR Daily on March 29, 2023
Patrick Ewing makes a move against Larry Bird and Mark Acres on the basketball court.

The Myth of the Knicks

In Chris Herring’s recent history of the New York basketball team, we get a behind-the-scenes look at the sports commentariat’s fixation on grit and toughness.
by Zito Madu via The Nation on December 7, 2022
Children in costume looking out a window by the light of a jack o' lantern.

Halloween: A Mystic and Eerie Significance

Despite the prevalence of tricks and spooky spirits in earlier years, the American commercial holiday didn’t develop until the middle of the twentieth century.
by Betsy Golden Kellem via JSTOR Daily on October 26, 2022
Illustration of John von Neumann surrounded by mathematical formulas, by Valentin Pavageau

John von Neumann Thought He Had the Answers

The father of game theory helped develop the atom bomb—and thought he could calculate when to use it.
by Samanth Subramanian via The New Republic on March 8, 2022
The full chart of television genres from 1945 to present.

Television Genres Over Time

Here’s how the distribution of genres has changed since 1945 up to present.
by Nathan Yau via FlowingData on October 26, 2021
The original cast of 3-2-1 Contact!

From Sputnik to Virtual Reality, the History of Scicomm

Instead of yesteryear’s dry and dusty lectures, science communicators are creating new and exciting ways to engage with science.
by Reyhaneh Maktoufi via Massive Science on July 16, 2021
Gerd Stern.

Ping Pong of the Abyss

Gerd Stern, the Beats, and the psychiatric institution.
by Gabby Kiser via The Beat Museum on February 9, 2021

Bowling For Suburbia

By adopting middle-class aesthetics, the bar-basement bowling alley became the "poor man's country club."
by Kate Reggev via Contingent on May 8, 2020

Rube Foster Was the Big Man Behind the First Successful Negro Baseball League

100 years ago, it took a combination of salesman and dictator to launch a historic era for black teams.
by John Florio, Ouisie Shapiro via Andscape on February 13, 2020
Drawing of people sitting and standing on crossword boxes while attempting to solve the puzzle

How the Crossword Became an American Pastime

The newspaper standby still rivets our attention a century later.
by Deb Amlen via Smithsonian on December 30, 2019
Three Black men in a field wearing Baltimore Black Sox uniforms.

Bill Bruton’s Fight for the Full Integration of Baseball

Louis Moore discusses Bill Bruton and the erasure of his activism towards integration in Major League Baseball.
by Louis Moore via Black Perspectives on May 9, 2019
"Fleet" Walker (middle row, far left) poses with Oberlin College's first varsity baseball team in 1881. Walker went on to become the first African American major leaguer.

The First African American Major League Baseball Player Isn’t Who You Think

As the country celebrates Jackie Robinson Day, let’s consider the career of Fleet Walker.
by Ronald G. Shafer via Retropolis on April 15, 2019
Photograph of a student using a teletype machine.

How Minnesota Teachers Invented a Proto-Internet More Centered on Community Than Commerce

Civic-minded Midwesterners realized that network access would someday be a necessity, and worked to make it available to everyone, no strings attached.
by Joy Lisi Rankin via Zócalo Public Square on February 21, 2019
The logout screen for "The Cave," the author's 1990s-era bulletin board system.

The Lost Civilization of Dial-Up Bulletin Board Systems

A former systems operator logs back in to the original computer-based social network.
by Benj Edwards via The Atlantic on November 4, 2016
Drawing of two clowns holding a large ring.

Dream Reading

Interpreting dreams for fun and profit. The importance of oneiromancy (dream reading) to American betting culture.
by Ann Fabian via Lapham’s Quarterly on June 1, 2016
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When Dungeons & Dragons Set Off a ‘Moral Panic’

D&D attracted millions of players, along with accusations by some religious figures that the game fostered demon worship and a belief in witchcraft and magic.
by Clyde Haberman via Retro Report on April 17, 2016

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