In the April 1987 Locus Magazine letters column, author K.W. Jeter coined the term steampunk.…
Archive for the ‘History’ Category
The Day There Were No Cops
Mar
24
On March 22, 1861, Mayor “Long John” Wentworth fired the whole Chicago police force.
To see how this occurred, it’s necessary to review a little history of the Chicago Police Department and the relationship that Wentworth shared with it.
Before …
Chicago Incorporated
Mar
03
Happy birthday to Chicago! Congratulations on being incorporated by the State of Illinois on March 4, 1837.
We could count your years in a few different ways. After all, Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable became known as the first permanent, …
Welcome to The Jungle
Feb
24
Not every novel leads to legislation. Upton Sinclair took an undercover job in the Chicago Stockyards to research his expose of the meatpacking industry, The Jungle. The first installment was published in the newspaper Appeal to Reason on February …
Steampunk Manifested
Feb
17
A spectre is haunting steampunk—the spectre of Marxism! On February 21, 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto. By no means is steampunk a Marxist movement, but as this treatise influenced revolutions and built nations, its …
News from Nowhere
Jan
06
The first installment of William Morris’ Victorian scientific romance News from Nowhere was published in Commonweal on January 11, 1890. Like Rip Van Winkle or Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, the narrator William Guest slept …
The Ragged Ragtime Girls
Dec
30
Not only did Aleister Crowley serve as the Great Beast and the prophet of the Age of Horus, he managed a girl group. The seven women in the Ragged Ragtime Girls played violin and danced. The act was based on …
Burning Bluebeard: The Iroquois Theatre Fire
Dec
23
Theatergoers did not know that when they went to see the musical Mr. Bluebeard on December 30, 1903, the Iroquois Theatre would become a deadly Inferno. Over 600 perished from the blaze. The Ruffians present Burning Bluebeard, a holiday show …
Humbug Billy’s Poison Candy
Oct
28
On October 30, 1858, William “Humbug Billy” Hardaker inadvertently poisoned over 200 people. His peppermint humbugs were laced with arsenic. The incident reflected the state of Victorian pharmacology and led to law reform.
The tainted candy trail began with Bradford, …
