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The Amsterdam Fortune, 1920s
Norwegian immigrants in the 1920s saw their chance at financial independence: an Amsterdam bank ran ads in newspapers looking for descendants of Elizabeth Sabo, a Manx woman who ended up in Norway...
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Lightning Jugglers, 1882
After the juvenile amusement at the flowery term “jerking lightning’ that appeared in Dakota Death Trip a few months ago, here’s an equally Zeus-like term from 1882: The Lightning Jugglers Cincinnati,...
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Sans-Souci Palace, 1900s
A few years ago I bought a small box containing ‘magic lantern‘ slides, small glass plates with photographs on them, at an antique store in Minnesota. They’re essentially for use in the...
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A Hungarian Countship, 1878
Oh, Sergeant de Badal, I hope you have a way to pay your friend back for what you borrowed — from the Bismarck Tri-Weekly Tribune, 3/26/1878: “The reported fortune of 2,000,000 florins that, according...
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The Grip, 1903
In Guys and Dolls, the song “Adelaide’s Lament” rattles off any number of diseases that Adelaide might be suffering from — one is le grippe. By the fifties, the name was pretty much obsolete: today,...
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A Flat World, 1922
The caption from the 1922 newspaper reads: Wilbur Glenn Voliva, leader of the religious sect with headquarters at Zion City, Ill, says the earth is flat and that shortly he will prove it by taking a...
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Vienna General Hospital, 1900s
Alongside the glass plate of Sanssouci Palace is this ambulatory image: The plate is marked “Hospital Yard, Vienna”. I’m sure there have been many different hospitals in Vienna over the years, but...
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Rushmore In Progress, 1930s.
We’ve got a lot of old photos – almost more than we know what to do with. This one is so over-saturated, so light, that I had to really darken it in Photoshop just to see anything, and I didn’t...
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Fargo Tornado, 1957.
If you’re even somewhat familiar with the Fargo tornado of 1957, you recognize this photo – it’s been in newspapers, it’s part of the Fujita report on the tornado, and it even appears on the NOAA...
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Where’s Ward? 1881.
Click on this map to see a bigger version. In 1881, eight years before statehood, this is how the county lines were drawn in north-central North Dakota: Your first question if you’re familiar with...
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21st Century Aeroplanists, 1906.
The promise of flying cars and jetpacks in the 21st century has been around a long, long time: here is a comic from the french journal Le Pele-Mele: IN THE YEAR 2006 Aeroplanist to friend: “Just look...
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Glassless Goggles, 1907
Scientific, automotive, and news publications announced this marvel of modern design in 1907: Can you guess what they are? Yes, they’re goggles, but what doesn’t come across in these images is that...
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Reposts and Aliases, 1884
One thing the internet both rewards and hates at the same time is when someone reposts something, without crediting the source, as their own fresh content, under an alias. Reddit has an entire culture...
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American Pikelhaube, 1890s
Today’s Dakota Death Trip has a striking soldier in uniform for the Sunday photo; he may seem like the wrong sort of image to post for Memorial Day weekend. Thick mustache, guns stacked to the side,...
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Requiem For the KKK, 1930s
In the archives for State Senator William Martin — remember him? He suggested North Dakota secede from the US — is this unique image, so unique it bears a mention in the state archives indexes: It’s...
View Article1904: Predicting Skype
It only took a hundred years for this technology to truly take hold for the average person, but they sure understood what it would mean: DEVICE NOT IN DEMAND Some Objections to Proposed Telephone...
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