Archive for June 2012
Godfather of the Lobotomy: Egas Moniz
In 2010 we saw no big celebrations marking the 75th anniversary of the development of psychiatric surgery — not even in Portugal, where the first brain operations to treat psychiatric disorders,…
Read MoreWhat’s Wrong with the Crazy Horse Monument?
Four years ago, I took my family on a road trip to the Black Hills of South Dakota. Along the way, we toured the Corn Palace in Mitchell, sipped water…
Read More13 Weeks Eating Nothing But White Castle Hamburgers, in the Name of Science
What happens when you take a healthy young man and feed him nothing but hamburgers and water for three months? It sounds like the genesis of an edgy film —…
Read MoreConfessions of an Art Linkletter Kid
Art Linkletter died two years ago, but I still sometimes think about the long black limousine that appeared outside my Los Angeles elementary school one morning during the spring of…
Read MoreE.G. Marshall’s Invented Past
When the actor E.G. Marshall died in 1998 — remember him in the movies Twelve Angry Men and Interiors, as well as a slew of TV shows, including The Defenders? — the world’s media…
Read MoreThe Cherry Sisters: good or bad?
Somehow, 100 years ago, five apparently talentless siblings from Marion, Iowa, reigned as America’s most famous female vaudeville team. For many years I have gathered information on the Cherry Sisters…
Read MoreAbraham Lincoln’s Funeral Car
For the past fifteen years, I’ve often heard from researchers and TV documentarians who want to know something about the railroad car in which Abraham Lincoln’s body traveled to its…
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