From “Artists Are Helping Restore Old Capitol” by Jerry DeLaughter, Jackson Daily News, March 13, 1960:

Giulano, a talkative Italian, takes tremendous pride in his pride-worthy work. He’s set up his studio (“Pliza don’t call him a shop. Itza stoojoh!”) behind the Old Capitol, and there goes through each delicate step to form the pieces to be used. … Another member of the team who deserves to be called an artist is N.L. McGee. This short, soft-spoken gentleman must take the things Giulano produces and see that they are properly painted….McGee takes a brush, sweeps it across his thinning hair a few times to build up static electricity, then lifts the gold leaf magnetically with the brush.

In the span of a few paragraphs Mr. DeLaughter has captured my heart. Not only does he pen the awesome line “takes tremendous pride in his pride-worthy work,” but he points out that Italians talk funny and that N.L. McGee is short and bald. In the accompanying photo, N.L. McGee appears to be a bit chubby, and you know Jerry DeLaughter was pissed he couldn’t work that in, too.

Bonus: in unrelated news, in the same folder I found a picture of someone named Loyal M. Bearss.

I was looking for someone’s obituary this morning and found this gem. I would be offended if I weren’t too busy laughing. (more…)

My dad told me once that when he was a freshman at Mississippi State, some upperclassmen shaved his head into a checkerboard pattern. I thought that was so cool, the essence of college life, and then I went to college one day and no one did anything remotely like that and I thought either he or I made the whole thing up. (more…)

So I was looking through this Ripley’s Believe It or Not! from 1946 (which was originally in the reference section! hilarious!) and while there are many notable and totally made up things, I thought this list of funny names had at least a chance in hell of being maybe 50% true:

LOVE, SUNSHINE, AND BLISS once owned a candy store in Johnstown, Pa.

REPAIR AND GOFORTH are nurses in the Gallinger Municipal Hospital, Washington, DC.

BUYAM AND SWALLUM are druggists in Goldfield, Iowa.

B.A. GENTLEMAN is a lady living in Kendall, Florida.

I. ETTA HAMBURGHER is buried in the Forest Hill Cemetery in Madison, Wisc.

SWEET AND SAUER are business partners in Chico, Cal.

DR. BESICK is a physician in Chicago.

By the by, I. Etta Hamburgher is my new code name, for reals.

(from Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! Two Volumes in One, Garden City Publishing Co., Inc. Garden City, NY, 1946, pp. 300-301.)

UPDATE: I have confirmed the existence of a lady B.A. Gentleman and the presence of many Besicks in the Chicago area in 1930.

(more…)

It’s not that it’s a baby wearing glasses. It’s a baby wearing these glasses. (more…)

From theohreally scanned newspaper archives, volume 1,732: (more…)

• Vanity tags:

TRINITI
HAPK1DO
1QKPONY
SO SOFT
LP LUVJP
BUTGOD1
OBUTGOD
TELLHIM
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So here is how it begins: I’m looking for an article from March 13, 1935 in the New York Times, page 40, column 4. It’s on microfilm, the medium I always dreaded and avoided but have turned out to love. Because newspaper pages are much bigger than my microfilm reader’s display, reading microfilm forces me to examine each page carefully. It’s like reading with a giant magnifying glass; you have to move it over every few inches to get the full story.

This always happens when I’m looking for something particular; along the way to page 40, column 4, I find plenty of tasty items. (more…)