The Most Successful Ad Campaigns of All Time

Dove soap bar

Author Anne T. Donahue

January 25, 2024

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In a world inundated with ads, it’s rare for one to become an indelible part of the cultural landscape. As modern advertising evolved from its 17th-century print origins, it grew into an art form that entrenched itself in popular culture and changed the relationship between company and consumer. Yet amid the sea of print ads, commercials, and social media campaigns that have launched over the years, a few outliers have managed to stand out from the crowd, lodging themselves in the collective consciousness and successfully changing the conversation. These five iconic ads are generally considered among the most successful ad campaigns of all time.

Nike: “Just Do It”

In 1988, the advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy debuted the “Just Do It” campaign, and catapulted Nike into the realm of cultural iconicism. Written by agency co-founder Dan Wieden, the slogan debuted in a TV spot for what was then a relatively small sportswear company. The empowering catchphrase was intentionally open-ended, and sought to capitalize on the decade’s enthusiasm for self-determinization and personal achievement. The idea for those three little words has a darker origin, however. The phrase was adapted from the last words uttered by convicted killer Gary Gilmore, who, shortly before his execution by firing squad, said, “Let’s do it.” Wieden and his collaborators swapped out a word, and the rest is history.

California Milk Processor Board: “Got Milk?”

In response to reports of flagging milk sales, ad agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners held an unconventional focus group. Participants were asked to not consume any milk for a week before convening, and the respondents reported frustration at the absence of the beverage. This inspired an advertising angle that differed from most 1980s campaigns that had focused on dairy’s health benefits. Instead, “Got Milk?” hinged on how people tend not to think about milk at all until they need it and it isn’t there. The first TV commercial, directed by Michael Bay, premiered in 1993. Two years later, Naomi Campbell starred in the first celebrity-fronted “Got Milk?” print ad, sporting the now-iconic milk mustache.

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Volkswagen: “Think Small”

Considered one of the best advertisements of the 20th century, Volkswagen’s “Think Small” ad changed the game by injecting humor and self-awareness into advertising. Developed by DDB (Doyle, Dane, Bernbach) art director Helmut Krone and copywriter Julian Koenig, the print ad was released in 1959 and was the first to shirk the ad industry’s emphasis on mass consumerism. With a focus on the vehicle’s utility and the brand’s acknowledgment of its aesthetic shortcomings, the campaign was a welcome departure from traditional sensationalist car ads. It also marked the start of the ad industry’s creative revolution, ushering in the golden age of advertising (an era beautifully depicted in the 2007 television series Mad Men).

De Beers: “A Diamond Is Forever”

Before the 1930s, diamond engagement rings were reserved for the wealthy. Then in 1938, the ad agency N.W. Ayer was enlisted by De Beers heir Harry Oppenheimer to rebrand the jewel as something worth splurging for. Copywriter Frances Gerety succeeded when she coined the slogan “A Diamond Is Forever” in 1947. The ad likened the diamond to the permanence of marriage and made the ring an engagement staple, effectively increasing demand for the precious gem. The campaign was launched nationally before expanding worldwide, and was so successful that in 1999, Ad Age magazine named it the No. 1 slogan of the century.

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Dove: “Campaign for Real Beauty”

Dove debuted the “Campaign for Real Beauty” in 2004 as a challenge to traditional beauty advertising. The ad was launched in response to the results of “The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report.” The company’s emphasis on diversity stemmed from the report’s findings: Only 2% of women polled described themselves as “beautiful,” yet 80% of participants agreed that all women have something beautiful about them. Led by Joah Santos of the ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, the campaign began as a series of billboards before expanding to TV slots featuring copy such as, “Wrinkled or Wonderful?” and “Grey or Gorgeous?” The shift in narrative made its mark, and within six months, sales of Dove products rose 700%.

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Old Spice: “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like”

A simple statistic inspired the launch of Old Spice’s 2010 “Smell Like a Man” campaign. Wieden+Kennedy learned that 60% of all body wash purchases were made by women, so creative directors Eric Baldwin and Jason Bagley came up with a campaign that appealed directly to them. Enlisting actor Isaiah Mustafa to embody the man “yours” could be, the campaign featured a shirtless hunk addressing the camera directly while navigating a variety of over-the-top situations. Shot in one take and with social media traction in mind, the ads quickly went viral and parlayed Old Spice from a baby boomer relic to a must-have for the 18-to-34 age demographic.

The Story of the Harlem Renaissance, in 6 Facts

Marcus Garvey in Harlem

Author Nicole Villeneuve

January 25, 2024

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Throughout the 1920s, New York City’s Harlem neighborhood served as the vibrant headquarters of a transformative period in African American art, literature, music, and social justice leadership. This movement, known as the Harlem Renaissance, was a catalyst for celebrating African American culture and heritage, giving the Black community newfound ownership of their experiences and pride in how their stories were told. It also sought to challenge racial stereotypes and forge social and political equality, planting ideas that would be meaningful for years to come. Here, told in six facts about the movement, is the story of the Harlem Renaissance.

It Started With the Great Migration

From the 1910s until the 1970s, approximately 6 million Black Americans made their way from the Southern U.S. to Northern, Midwestern, and Western states, fleeing racial discrimination and economic hardships, and seeking better work and education opportunities. Known as the Great Migration, this mass movement transformed the country’s demographic landscape and was a major impetus for the Harlem Renaissance. By the 1920s, some 200,000 newcomers had made the New York City neighborhood of Harlem home; at just 3 square miles in size, the neighborhood had the largest concentration of Black people in the world, with people from all backgrounds, including artists, laborers, scholars, and writers. By the early ’20s, a vibrant cultural community was blossoming in this small corner of Upper Manhattan.

Magazines Were Crucial to the Movement

In March 1924, a dinner party at Harlem’s Civic Club brought together a group of emerging and established writers and publishers. That gathering is now widely regarded as kicking off the Harlem Renaissance. The movement encompassed a wide variety of creative arts, but at its core was the literary scene. Two publications in particular emerged as crucial platforms for burgeoning African American writers at the time. One was The Crisis, founded in 1910 as the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) by renowned civil rights activist and sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois. It initially focused on social and political issues but expanded its content to include a wider representation of African American life and ideas. The magazine provided space for then-unknown writers such as Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer to share their literary works, and by the start of the 1920s, The Crisis was distributing 100,000 copies a month. Another magazine, Opportunity, emerged in the early 1920s, and also amplified creative Black voices, including that of Zora Neale Hurston.

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The Movement Produced Many Enduring Black Icons

Some of the 20th century’s most important African American creatives and activists emerged during the Harlem Renaissance. In literature, leaders such as Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, as well as Countee Cullen, among others, sought equality while celebrating Black identity and heritage. Meanwhile, jazz and blues maestros such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Bessie Smith became powerful musical voices reflecting the social climate of the time. The Harlem Renaissance was also a battleground for social justice, with activists such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey advocating for equal rights and laying crucial groundwork for the civil rights movement. Today, the era’s vibrancy is immortalized in celebrated visual art from painters Beauford Delaney, Archibald Motley, and sculptor Augusta Savage. The collective impact of these icons continues to reverberate today.

The Harlem Renaissance Music Scene Was Boosted by Prohibition

While jazz music predates the Harlem Renaissance, its popularity soared during the 1920s “Jazz Age” — and one of the genre’s unlikely benefactors was Prohibition. In January 1920, the United States banned the manufacture and sale of “intoxicating liquors,” and the law quickly spurred the creation of underground bars known as speakeasies. By the mid-1920s, thousands of New York speakeasies were competing for business, and to attract more of the predominantly wealthy, white crowds, entertainment was brought in regularly — jazz music legends such as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington were among the most popular performers at the time. Speakeasy culture led to ample and well-paying opportunities for Black musicians, and it introduced jazz music to a broader audience beyond Harlem.

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The Renaissance Reverberated Across the Country

Despite its name, the Harlem Renaissance wasn't confined solely to Upper Manhattan. While Harlem was the symbolic capital, this revival of Black culture resonated as a nationwide movement in urban centers such as Chicago (whose own movement was known as the Chicago Black Renaissance) and Los Angeles, while also finding its way to smaller pockets throughout the country. In Texas, African American poet Bernice Love Wiggins had several works published in local papers, and self-published a poetry collection that has drawn comparisons to some of the era’s literary greats, including Hurston and Hughes. Short story writer and poet Anita Scott Coleman, from New Mexico, was considered one of the American West’s most important Harlem Renaissance contributors. Her work was published in the influential magazine The Crisis, and she eventually published more than 30 short stories in other periodicals. Aaron Douglas, one of the most renowned visual artists of the Harlem Renaissance, began his career in Kansas, but was eventually convinced by Opportunity magazine founder Charles S. Johnson to bring his talents to the movement’s epicenter in Harlem, extending his influence even further.

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It Ended With the Great Depression

The 1929 stock market crash and the onset of the Great Depression plunged the United States into economic turmoil, and as a result, most of the Harlem Renaissance’s patronage and financial support — not to mention its artistic energy — waned. The end of Prohibition in 1933 dealt a final blow to the remaining nightlife scene, and by the mid-1930s, many of the onetime pillars of the community had moved on in search of other work to make ends meet. By 1935, the initial optimism and empowerment fostered by the Harlem Renaissance withered in the face of deep-rooted racial prejudices and inequalities that persisted despite the era’s advancements. In March of that same year, the tensions culminated in a defining event, when rumors about the arrest and police treatment of a Latino teenager accused of shoplifting spread throughout Harlem, sparking a deadly riot that has come to be seen as the official end of the Harlem Renaissance. But while the era was over, its influence lived on. African American thinkers, artists, and activists gained recognition and validation like never before during the Harlem Renaissance, and the consciousness that the movement cultivated helped fuel the Civil Rights Movement throughout the 1950s and ’60s.

What Was the War of 1812?

Military ships at sea

Author Mark DeJoy

January 18, 2024

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The Korean War is nicknamed “the Forgotten War,” but the War of 1812 — fought between the United States and Great Britain just a few decades after America won its independence — certainly rivals it in terms of its lack of place in the collective national memory. Maybe it’s because the war took place two centuries ago; maybe it’s the placement between two major American wars that largely overshadow it (the Revolutionary War and Civil War). Maybe it’s the relatively nondescript name. Whatever the reason, asking the average American for details about the War of 1812 is likely to be met with a shrug. Let’s make some sense of this obscure yet formative conflict.

What Caused the War?

The roots of the War of 1812 were in the Napoleonic Wars between Great Britain and France. The neutral U.S. ended up as a shipping supplier to both warring nations, an economically advantageous position that saw the total U.S. exports increase from $66.5 million in 1803 to $102.2 million by 1807. But later that year, both France and Great Britain enacted trade embargoes in an effort to strain each other’s economies. Since the U.S. was such a shipping hub for both nations, it was included in these embargoes, despite being neutral in the Napoleonic Wars.

The United States responded by placing its own embargo on foreign trade, in an attempt to apply pressure on France and Great Britain to honor its neutrality. The embargo was ineffective, as it weakened the American economy much more than it impacted the European countries. In just one year, U.S. exports fell to $22 million. Attempting to stem the tide in the final months of his presidency, Thomas Jefferson repealed the embargo and replaced it with the Non-Intercourse Act, which allowed trade with all foreign nations except France and Great Britain. The United States was essentially in a trade war.

Meanwhile, Great Britain was suffering from numbers shortages in its navy, and took to stopping American merchant ships in order to check for deserters. Britain also engaged in a practice known as impressment, a bizarre combination of military draft and kidnapping. Impressment was particularly infuriating to the United States, as British ships would capture American merchant ships and force its sailors to join the Royal Navy. U.S. President James Madison made it a core issue stateside and pushed for war, regardless of the fact that by this point in time, the British had already agreed to end the practice.

There was yet another factor in the start of the war, one that largely defined the 19th century for the United States: expansion. Despite its relative manpower shortages, Great Britain’s military strength was largely at sea, so the logical strategy to expand the United States was to invade British-occupied land to the northeast and southeast of the U.S. border at the time. To add further motivation, President Madison accused the British of promoting hostility toward the United States from Indigenous peoples in those territories. With all of these factors converging, Congress declared war against Great Britain on June 17, 1812.

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The War of 1812 Lasted More Than One Year

Battles comprising the War of 1812 stretched into 1815, so if the war had a more literal moniker, it would be the War of 1812-15. Though the conflict is not as famous as other American wars, many battles from the war became U.S. military lore. The sight of cannonballs fired at the USS Constitution ricocheting off the ship’s hull during its battle with the HMS Guerriereon August 19, 1812, earned the ship its famous nickname “Old Ironsides.” The June 1, 1813, loss of the USS Chesapeake to the HMS Shannonincluded Captain James Lawrence’s memorable battle cry, “Don’t give up the ship!” And Naval Commander Oliver Hazard Perry’s report of the September 10, 1813, victory at the Battle of Lake Erie contained the classic line, “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.”

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The United States Tried to Invade Canada

In 1812, the United States Navy had only 16 ships, while the Royal Navy had somewhere around 500, an insurmountable advantage. To remedy this, the U.S. moved forward with its strategy to capture British land in Canada, and use that land to negotiate maritime conflicts. Thomas Jefferson called a successful invasion of Canada “a mere matter of marching” in an August 1812 letter. That confidence was misplaced, as a three-pronged invasion in 1812 failed at all three points, ending in surrender at Detroit and Queenston Heights, and retreat from the Canadian border with New York. Another attempt on Lake Erie the next year was more successful (the battle with Oliver Hazard Perry’s famous quote) and led to victory in Upper Canada. But the following year, Great Britain’s victory over France enabled it to shift military resources to North America. Canada was not taken.

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The British Burned Down the White House and Capitol Building

On August 20, 1814, the British sent a convoy of soldiers to the town of Benedict, Maryland, 50 miles outside Washington, D.C. Out on reconnaissance, Secretary of State James Monroe observed the troops' advancement northward and concluded that they were intending to invade the nation’s capital. Monroe sent a message to President Madison, warning, “The enemy are in full march for Washington. Have the materials prepared to destroy the bridges. You had better remove the records.”

Two bridges across the Anacostia River were destroyed in order to force a single rallying point at Bladensburg, 5 miles from Washington, but the British had already advanced too quickly. Though there was strength in numbers to defend the capital, the American troops were poorly organized, deployed too late, or in improper positions. The Battle of Bladensburg ended up a rout, and the British advanced on Washington. Once there, British Major-General Robert Ross ordered his troops to “complete the destruction of the public buildings.” That destruction included “the capitol, including the Senate-house and House of Representation, the Arsenal, the Dock-yard, Treasury, War-office, President's Palace, Ropewalk, and the great bridge across the Potomac.” The estimated damage totaled around $1 million, and it took nearly four years to rebuild the city. In one of the few points of common knowledge about the War of 1812, it was the only time the United States capital was ever captured.

The War Gave Us “The Star-Spangled Banner”

After the British left Washington, they boarded their ships and sailed up Chesapeake Bay in an advance to Baltimore. They expected a similarly quick battle as at Bladensburg, but Baltimore had been fortifying its coast for more than a year, with Fort McHenry guarding the city at the south of the harbor entrance. On September 13, 1814, 16 Royal Navy ships approached the fort and began a bombardment that lasted 25 hours. Watching in detainment on a British ship during the attack was Francis Scott Key, an American attorney. On the morning of September 14, 1814, he saw that the American flag remained flying at Fort McHenry, indicating that the fort stood, and he was inspired to write the poem “Defence of Fort M’Henry.”The poem was later set to music as “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the national anthem of the United States.

The End of the War of 1812

After three years of back-and-forth battles and overall inconclusive results that threatened to render the conflict a war of attrition, the U.S. and Great Britain looked for peace. The two countries signed the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814, marking the end of the war. The terms of the treaty were status quo ante bellum, literally “the state before war.” Any conquered territory was to be returned, and prewar borders restored. In a strange quirk that could only happen in an era of slower communication, one more major battle was fought two weeks after the signing of the treaty: the Battle of New Orleans. Though it was considered a rousing victory for the United States, it didn’t matter due to the treaty and its terms. The War of 1812 was essentially a tie.

5 Key Moments in the History of Rock ’n’ Roll

The Beatles

Author Tony Dunnell

January 18, 2024

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It’s hard to say precisely when rock ’n’ roll began, though the genre has its roots in African American music such as jazz, rhythm and blues, boogie-woogie, and gospel, as well as country music. Ask a room full of music historians what the first rock ’n’ roll record was and you’ll likely receive a number of different answers. Was it Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s “Strange Things Happening Every Day” in 1944? Or perhaps “Rocket 88,” first recorded in Memphis by Jackie Brenston & His Delta Cats in 1951? Or Bill Haley & His Comets’ 1955 single “Rock Around the Clock?” It’s hard to say for sure.

What we do know is that rock ’n’ roll became a defined mainstream genre during the 1950s, when the sound and the image coalesced around one man: Elvis Presley. Elvis took rock music to new and giddy heights, bringing about a seismic shift in popular culture — and causing deep concern among certain sections of society that considered rock the “devil’s music.” Once unleashed, however, there was no going back: Rock ’n’ roll was here to stay. Here are some of the most defining moments in the history of the genre, from the King himself to the rise of MTV.

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Elvis on Ed Sullivan

On September 9, 1956, Elvis Presley made his first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. At this point, Elvis had already put out a number of successful singles, and his debut album, Elvis Presley, released in March 1956, was the first rock ’n’ roll album to make it to the top of the charts. Elvis had yet to cement his status as the “King of Rock ’n’ Roll,” but his first performance on Ed Sullivan can be seen as his coronation. He performed a number of songs — including “Don’t Be Cruel,” “Hound Dog,” and “Love Me Tender” — in front of screaming audience members at the studio and watching from home. Despite ongoing fears that his hip-shaking gyrations would corrupt the nation’s youth, viewers were given full head-to-toe shots of the 21-year-old singer’s performance. The show was a massive success, as 60 million people — 82.6% of the entire television audience at the time — tuned in to watch the then-21-year-old perform.

Dylan Goes Electric

Rock historians aren’t in total agreement as to what precisely went down when Bob Dylan took the stage at the Newport Folk Festival on July 25, 1965. They all agree, however, that it was a hugely significant night for rock music. Dylan was the champion of the folk music revival of the early 1960s — a traditionally all-acoustic movement. So, when he strode onto the stage carrying a Fender Stratocaster rather than his more familiar acoustic guitar, the crowd was not pleased.

At the time, Dylan’s now-classic single “Like a Rolling Stone” was hugely popular on the radio, but folk purists didn’t like the song’s mix of electric blues and rock ’n’ roll. When Dylan and his accompanying backing band — some also wielding electronic instruments — started playing, sections of the crowd began booing. Accounts vary as to the intensity of the crowd’s reaction, but Dylan played only three songs before leaving the stage. When he returned, he performed two songs on acoustic guitar — “Mr. Tambourine Man,” followed by “It's All Over Now, Baby Blue” — and then left for good. It was an edgy night by most accounts, but a pivotal moment in the development of folk rock, expanding the bounds of rock ’n’ roll.

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The Beatles Release “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”

In 1967, Paul McCartney played the Beatles’ latest album, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” to Bob Dylan. Dylan’s response: “Oh, I get it, you don’t want to be cute anymore.” He was right — the Fab Four had turned a creative corner. Deciding that live performances and screaming fans weren’t enough, they wanted to become a serious studio band, and with “Sgt. Pepper’s,” the Beatles announced to the world that they were true artists. The album was revolutionary. Regarded by many as the first concept album, it is bursting with creativity and musical innovation, featuring French horns, tape loops, bass harmonicas, harpsichords, sitars, and more. The album changed not only rock music, but pop culture itself.

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Woodstock

On August 15, 1969, 32 acts and more than 400,000 attendees arrived at Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in Bethel, New York, for three days of peace, love, drugs, and, most importantly, rock ’n’ roll. It was immediately obvious that the festival was going to be big, but no one knew just how iconic Woodstock would become. Despite various technical difficulties, food shortages, and bad weather, the festival became a living embodiment of the 1960s counterculture. As for the lineup, it was quite something: The Who, Carlos Santana, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Sly and the Family Stone, the Grateful Dead, The Band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Joan Baez, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, to name but a few. And then there was Jimi Hendrix, who gave arguably the most iconic performance of the entire festival with his stirring, feedback-fueled rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

The Launch of MTV

Just after midnight on August 1, 1981, MTV — the world’s first television channel devoted to showing music videos — launched with the announcement, “Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll,” as the station went on air. The first video broadcast on the fledgling channel was, fittingly, “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles. Despite some initial hype and interest, MTV struggled in its early years, in part due to a lack of music videos. But as it expanded its programming, MTV took off in a major way. By the mid-1980s, it was having a major cultural impact not only on music and TV but also on movies and advertising. Record companies began noting video’s effect on record sales, and soon the channel was launching the careers of newcomers such as Prince, Cyndi Lauper, and Duran Duran, and turning the likes of Madonna and Michael Jackson into global superstars. Music videos became big business, and MTV’s adoption of grunge and rap in the 1990s brought about a major shift in popular music.

5 of the Strangest Days in History

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Author Sarah Anne Lloyd

January 18, 2024

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There have been 91,310 days in the last 250 years, but only a few of them stand out as singularly odd. Unexplained phenomena, surprising coincidences, and, in some cases, a strange quiet, don’t happen every day — especially on a massive scale.

From the day an entire region thought the apocalypse was coming, to the day apparently nothing of note happened at all, some days really stand out.. Next time you’re having an eerie day, put it in perspective with these five dates.

May 19, 1780: New England’s Dark Day

This Friday in May started out like any other, with the sun rising and bringing daylight with it. But if you happened to be in the northeastern United States or small parts of southeastern Canada, the sky was yellow by midmorning and completely darkened by noon. This would be disorienting at best even today, but in the 18th century, without the benefit of modern science to explain what happened, it was even more harrowing.

People left work and school and flooded into churches and taverns. Some believed it was the second coming of Christ. Others decided to stay put; one state legislator famously said, in response to his colleagues calling for adjournment, “The day of judgment is either approaching, or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause for an adjournment; if it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. I wish therefore that candles may be brought.”

The moon came out around midnight that night, much to the relief of those who thought it was judgment day. Nobody knew what caused the darkness at the time, but the likely culprit, based on reports from the period and physical evidence on older trees, was wildfire smoke blowing in from Canada.

April 18, 1930: The Slowest News Day

A day with no news seems next to impossible in today’s 24-hour news cycle, but one evening in 1930, BBC News reported that there was nothing to report — at least nothing that hit the station’s desk. When it came time for the regular 15-minute radio news bulletin at 8:45 p.m., the broadcast was very short: The announcer simply said, “There is no news.” The remainder of the 15 minutes was filled with piano music before the station returned to what was playing before, a live concert of the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Queen’s Hall in London.

It’s easy now to look back at what actually happened around the world that day, including a typhoon in the Philippines, but communication wasn’t as fast in the 1930s, and journalists relied heavily on wire services and government announcements. Even still, it was pretty rare to not have any news at all to report for the day.

April 11, 1954: The Most Boring Day, According to AI

Almost every day, major events happen somewhere in the world, and someone famous or noteworthy is born or dies on that day. But not always — and one such dull day was April 11, 1954. This is according to the artificial intelligence project True Knowledge, which indexed hundreds of millions of facts and was later sold to Amazon to help develop the Alexa product. In November 2010, computer scientist William Tunstall-Pedoe created a query to determine the single most boring day in history. The answer was April 11, 1954. The program determined that a Turkish academic was born that day — his field is electrical engineering — but reported that nothing else particularly significant happened. The AI clearly wasn’t a fan of water polo — the Hungarian water polo Olympian Attila Sudár was born on April 11, 1954.

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March 12, 1951: Two Dennis the Menaces

If you’re from the United States, you may have a very different idea of the cartoon character Dennis the Menace than someone from the United Kingdom. In America, Dennis is a baby-faced blonde boy, a lovable scamp who gets into trouble but is ultimately endearing. The British Dennis the Menace, on the other hand, is a violent bully with a grumpy expression and a hunched posture.

The weirdest part is that neither Dennis came first: They debuted at the same time, with no coordination, on March 12, 1951. The American Dennis was syndicated to 16 newspapers, while the British Dennis was in a weekly comic book magazine called The Beano. It’s a bizarre coincidence, but rarely causes confusion — when the 1993 American film Dennis the Menace was released across the pond, it was just called Dennis.

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August 15-16, 1977: Aliens and Elvis

On August 15, 1977, the Big Ear radio telescope at the University of Ohio was trained on the cosmos, ready to catch a signal from some kind of extraterrestrial intelligence, should it exist. That day, it picked up what astronomers now know as the “Wow!” signal, a strange radio signal at a frequency and volume they’d been looking for. It’s still the most compelling example of a potential extraterrestrial communication — and while the general consensus now is that it was something other than alien life, nobody knows for sure what that is.

In 1977, SETI researchers were wowed by what they’d picked up, and the astronomy community was buzzing. But it was a busy 24 hours, and the world’s eyes were on a different type of star. On August 16, Elvis Presley died, setting off a firestorm of media coverage and national mourning. While there are many conspiracy theories around the death of the King, surprisingly (given the timing), most of them don’t involve aliens.

Photos of New York City Through the Decades

Manhattan skyline, 1940s

Author Mark DeJoy

January 18, 2024

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The first known inhabitants of what is now New York City were the Lenape (aka Delaware), an Indigenous people native to the northeastern U.S. Their villages were groupings of round-shaped wigwams constructed from bark, some of which were large enough to function as communal housing. The name “Manhattan” comes from the Lenape “Manahatta,” their word for a hilly, forested area, which roughly translates to “the place for gathering wood to make bows.” But when Dutch colonists acquired the land around New York Harbor in 1626, they named it New Amsterdam.

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1600s and 1700s

The Dutch constructed modest red tile-roofed brick and stone buildings, warehouses to support the fur trade, a church, and thatch-roofed wooden homes, in the style of a small European village. They also built a series of walls bordering the settlement in order to protect it against attacks — the street that was originally adjacent to one of the walls is known today as Wall Street.

1800s

In 1811, New York City’s commissioners developed a master plan for urbanization, to order and expand the streets of Manhattan: the now-famous city grid. The plan called for streets to be numbered from 1 to 155, and the commissioners assumed that it would take centuries for the grid to be filled in with development. But between 1810 and 1820, New York City’s population grew by 50% due in large part to immigration. By 1860, the population had surged to 813,669 — up from 33,131 near the turn of the 19th century. Development boomed along with the population growth and approached the end of the grid at 155th street in just 50 years as New York became a preeminent shipping, immigration, and manufacturing hub. Graceful row houses were built along Washington Square in what is now Greenwich Village, making it a desirable destination for the city’s elite. The Upper West Side remained rural, with green pastures, rail fences, and farmhouses. Construction began on Central Park in 1858, and its first section opened that same year.

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The 19th century was marked by a growing division of wealth, however, and in poor areas of the city, tenement housing proliferated in order to meet increased housing needs, numbering more than 15,000 by the end of the Civil War in 1865. Tenements were largely centered in immigrant areas such as the Five Points in Lower Manhattan, near modern-day Chinatown and the Lower East Side. Living conditions in these overcrowded dwellings were often incredibly poor and dangerous, and became a major social issue toward the turn of the 20th century.

1900s and 1910s

In 1898, the “Greater New-York” bill took effect and united New York City, Brooklyn, Long Island City, and the then-sparsely populated Queens and Staten Island (the area that became the Bronx had already been annexed by New York in 1895). In 1904, the Interborough Rapid Transit opened the first line of the electric subway system that would connect the five boroughs. The Industrial Revolution brought a massive amount of wealth to New York City, and industries such as publishing, textiles, advertising, and other manufacturing thrived.

The cityscape began to reflect the influx of wealth, as increasingly opulent structures were built toward the end of the 19th century — America’s “gilded age.” The Washington Square Arch was built in 1895, and skyscrapers became a prominent part of the city, starting with the Tower Building in 1889, and then the Home Life Insurance Building in 1894. At the turn of the century, skyscraper construction increased in both frequency and magnitude, spurred by the City Beautiful movement that cast them as sources of civic pride. The Flatiron Building was built in 1902, followed by the 395-foot original New York Times Building in 1904. When the Singer Building was completed in 1908, it was the tallest building in the world at 612 feet. Just one year later, the 700-foot Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower took the tallest building mantle until 1913, when the Woolworth Building towered over it by nearly 100 feet. The marble or terracotta cladding and ornate neo-Gothic or beaux-arts designs of these buildings gave a cathedral-like sensibility to the emerging NYC skyline.

1920s and 1930s

The 1920s in New York City were marked by the Harlem Renaissance, an era in which Black-owned arts and cultural centers were the hub of American culture at large. Jazz and blues nightclubs, cabarets, and theaters added to the city’s nightlife, especially in the Harlem neighborhood of Upper Manhattan. The prosperity at the turn of the century also resulted in a skyscraper height arms race. The vertical city we know today began to take shape, with the appearance of the street wall — the narrow blocks of Manhattan lined with sky-high buildings. The “jazz moderne” architectural style that became known as art deco emerged spectacularly in two iconic buildings constructed at the beginning of the 1930s: the Chrysler Building and Empire State Building, which were both the tallest in the world at the time they were completed. The first neon sign in the city was installed in Times Square in 1924, and proliferation of neon signs proliferation throughout the 1930s added a colorful glow to nighttime in New York.

1940s and 1950s

The postwar era was a new peak for New York City. In 1947, the British writer J.B. Priestley commented, "The New York (of) 40 years ago was an American city, but today's glittering cosmopolis belongs to the world, if the world does not belong to it." New York in the 1940s was a center of broadcasting and media, as well as the world’s largest manufacturing center, wholesale center, and port. It was a global financial pillar and an enormous corporate hub, with 27% of Fortune 500 companies headquartered there. Yet postwar NYC was also more affordable than it is today: Higher-market rents equated to about $2,500 in today’s dollars — nearly $1,000 less than the average market rent today.

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1960s

While the 1950s largely continued the prosperity of 1940s New York City, the 1960s were an era of tumult. The decade began with the passing of the 1961 Zoning Resolution, which encouraged the design of plazas and other open spaces, in order to combat the “street wall” effect that had emerged in the city’s landscape. But construction in the early ’60s didn’t carry the same optimism it once did, and there was a more ominous development that same year: the demolition of Penn Station. The iconic transportation hub had been an architectural marvel, and its destruction (to make room for the latest iteration of Madison Square Garden) was an infamous wound to the civic psyche, so much that it inspired the city’s historic preservation movement. While midcentury New York was a hub for booming creative industries such as TV and pop music, storm clouds of decline were gathering. Socio-cultural and racial tensions rose, and an increasing number of middle-class and affluent families left the city for the ever-growing suburbs. Infrastructure problems such as garbage and transit strikes, as well as power grid failures, also began to cast an ominous shadow by the end of the decade, a product of the city running account deficits since 1961.

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1970s and 1980s

In the 1970s, the financial deficits the city had been running throughout the previous decade reached a boiling point. In 1974, New York City was forced to borrow $2.2 billion for facilities projects and to cover debts. By the end of the year, municipal debt increased to $13.5 billion. The New York of this era reflected the financial strife: Debt meant cost-cutting, and cost-cutting meant a reduction in maintenance services. An estimated 441,963 people left the city between 1970 and 1976, a population loss of 5.6%. Transit and sanitation workers again organized strikes at the beginning of the 1980s. The city took on a dingy griminess that was depicted in such films as Taxi Driver and The Warriors. Graffiti began appearing throughout the boroughs, and though it was condemned by NYC Mayor John Lindsay, its distinctive urban patina was embraced by the city’s punk rock and hip-hop movements as art on its own terms.

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1990s and 2000s

French photographer Gregoire Alessandrini likened 1990s New York to “waking up with a bad hangover from all the past parties and eccentricity.” Yet New York City was beginning to recover financially, and the first signs of gentrification began in the 1980s and ’90s as young professionals returned to the city and crime rates began to drop. The city also saw a cultural renaissance through the rise of hip-hop and other artistic movements, as well as activist movements such as LGBTQ+ rights and racial justice. In the new millennium, the tragic September 11 attacks inspired a widespread reaction of renewed pride in the quintessential American city. Extensive rezoning in the 2000s emphasized residential high-rises, bike lanes, and multipurpose buildings, especially in Brooklyn and Long Island City, spreading gentrification beyond the island of Manhattan.

Vintage Photos of 1960s Air Travel

Airport passenger entry

Author Anne T. Donahue

January 12, 2024

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The 1960s marked an exciting new era in air travel. The inclusion of jet engines on commercial planes led to the emergence of larger, faster vessels such as the Boeing 707, and made flying a more affordable and accessible way to travel. It was also a luxury experience: The golden age of air travel cultivated an in-flight atmosphere akin to a cocktail party as guests dined, drank, and smoked en route to their destination.

These glamorous flights were a far cry from the buslike airplanes of the 21st century. Aircraft interiors in the 1960s were more roomy and colorful, and boasted a cultivated aesthetic that applied to everything from flight attendants’ uniforms to dining utensils. Between 1958 and 1972, almost half of all Americans had taken to the friendly skies. Here’s a glimpse of what they would have experienced.

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Airports Were Bright, Spacious, and a Testament to Midcentury Design

In the middle of the 20th century, airport guests were treated to state-of-the-art architecture. Features such as floating staircases, designer seats, and minimalist accents made terminals warm and comfortable; bars and lounges were bright and capacious. Today, some travelers can still live like it’s the 1960s: In 2019, JFK Airport in New York City opened the TWA Hotel, an homage to the airport’s original TWA terminal. The refurbished terminal was updated to accommodate overnight guests and diners; the retro space incorporates design elements from the terminal’s original rooms and lounges.

Flight Attendants Were at the Forefront of Fashion

In 1964, advertising executive Mary Wells Lawrence worked with Braniff International Airways to launch the airline’s new identity, a rebranding dubbed “End of the Plain Plane.” The stylish campaign started a movement. Airlines quickly began adopting Braniff’s approach to pops of colors and bold prints, and flight attendant uniforms became canvases for fashion designers such as Emilio Pucci and Jean Lewis.

Airlines Encouraged On-Flight Smoking and Served Gourmet Meals

Airline passengers in the 1960s could expect the full restaurant experience, including access to cigarettes. Smoking was only discouraged when on the ground (for fear of igniting refueling fumes), but guests were free to smoke cigarettes, pipes, and cigars while in the air. Gourmet food was just as available: Lobster, ham leg, and caviar were regularly served and even prepared tableside midflight, creating a fine dining experience.

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Many Passengers Passed the Time Drinking

The combination of free alcohol and a lack of smartphones led to an abundance of onboard drinking in the ’60s. Champagne was offered to first-class passengers, and upper-deck lounges were equipped with walk-up bars. In 1964, in-flight movies were introduced using closed-circuit technology, offering a necessary alternative to partying at 30,000 feet.

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Airport Security Was Almost Nonexistent

In the 1960s, there was no need to show up to the airport two hours before a flight, as security was much more lax than it is today. In fact, an ID wasn’t even needed to board an airplane until the early 21st century, and you were basically guaranteed to make a flight if you showed up 30 minutes before departure. Friends and family members could escort departing guests right up to their gate, and security screenings weren’t implemented until 1973, when passengers began submitting to metal detectors and bag searches.

Space and Luxuries Were Plentiful

In the golden age of flight, even passengers in economy experienced today’s business-class legroom and complimentary sustenance. First-class guests, meanwhile, had access to cocktail lounges, reclining seats, six-course meals, and fashion shows put on by flight attendants. Flying in the 1960s was also a much more social experience. Onboard, passengers could schmooze with fellow guests, including celebrities.

Photo credit: Archive Photos via Getty Images

Air Travel Was Even More Expensive

Passengers paid premium prices to experience air travel in the 1960s. Before the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, the federal government controlled ticket rates and set fees high to ensure airlines would prosper. International flights were four to five times more expensive than they are now, and could cost as much as $500, the equivalent of more than $4,000 today. A round-trip flight within the United States was less, but could set passengers back roughly $100 to $400 (the equivalent of about $800 to $3,000), considerably more than a domestic flight today.

5 Facts About the Golden Age of Radio

Tuning a radio

Author Mark DeJoy

January 12, 2024

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It’s easy to take for granted today, but the emergence of broadcast radio was a seismic shift in early 20th-century culture. Born out of ship-to-shore wireless telegraph communication at the turn of the 20th century, broadcast radio represented an entirely new pastime by the time it began to mature in the 1920s. The golden age of radio was the period from the 1920s to the 1950s when the medium was at its absolute peak in both program variety and popularity. Radio grew massively during this era: In 1922, Variety reported that the number of radio sets in use had reached 1 million. By 1947, a C.E. Hooper survey estimated that 82% of Americans were radio listeners.

In addition to the music, news, and sports programming that present-day listeners are familiar with, radio during this period included scripted dramas, action-adventure series such as The Lone Ranger, science fiction shows such as Flash Gordon, soap operas, comedies, and live reads of movie scripts. Major film stars including Orson Welles got their start in radio (Welles became a household name in the wake of the infamous panic sparked by his 1938 broadcast of The War of the Worlds), and correspondents such as Edward R. Murrow established the standard for broadcast journalism. President Franklin D. Roosevelt used the medium to regularly give informal talks, referred to as fireside chats, to Americans listening at home. But radio was also largely influenced by advertisers, who sometimes wielded control of programming right down to casting and the actual name of the program, resulting in some awkward-sounding show titles, such as The Fleischmann’s Yeast Hour. The golden age of radio was a combination of highbrow and lowbrow content, offering both enduring cultural touchstones and popular ephemera — much like the television that eclipsed it. Read on for five more facts from this influential era.

The First Commercial Jingle Aired in 1926

The first known radio advertisement was a real-estate commercial for the Hawthorne Court Apartments in Jackson Heights, Queens, broadcast by New York station WEAF in August 1922. There’s a bit of disagreement over whether the duration of the ad was 10 minutes or 15 minutes, but fortunately for listeners, it wasn’t long before the ad format was pared down considerably. In 1926, when General Mills predecessor Washburn-Crosby was looking for a way to boost the languishing sales of Wheaties, it turned to its company-owned radio station in Minneapolis (WCCO) for what ended up being a much shorter form of commercial. WCCO head of publicity Earl Gammons wrote a song about the cereal called “Have You Tried Wheaties?” and Washburn-Crosby hired a barbershop quartet to sing it, thus creating the first radio jingle.

Due to limited recording capabilities during the first three years of the ad campaign, the Wheaties Quartet (as they were known) performed the jingle live at the station every time the commercial aired. The decidedly manual campaign worked, as it led to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area comprising more than 60% of Wheaties’ total sales. When the ad campaign was expanded nationally, sales of Wheaties increased throughout the country, establishing the effectiveness of the jingle and the influence of advertising on the medium. By 1948, American advertisers were spending more than $100 million per year (around $1.2 billion today) on radio commercials.

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The “Big Three” Networks Were Born in Radio

In 1926, RCA, the Radio Corporation of America, bought the radio station WEAF from AT&T and added the infrastructure to its New York and New Jersey station, WJZ. The combined assets established RCA’s broadcast network, dubbed the National Broadcasting Company, or NBC. On November 1 that same year, NBC officially became two networks: NBC Red (extending from WEAF) and NBC Blue (extending from WJZ). The upstart networks soon had a competitor. In 1927, frustrated talent agents Arthur Judson and George Coats resolved their inability to land a contract to get their clients work with NBC by forming their own radio network, United Independent Broadcasters. The network quickly changed its name to Columbia Phonograph Broadcasting Company after a merger with Columbia Phonograph and Records. Unfortunately for Judson and Coats, they were no more effective as would-be radio network moguls than they were as radio talent agents: The network operated at a loss, and it wasn’t long before Judson sold it to a relative who had been an initial investor, William S. Paley. On January 29, 1929, Paley shortened the network’s name to Columbia Broadcasting Company, or CBS.

The same year, NBC established the country’s first coast-to-coast radio infrastructure, but in 1934, antitrust litigation resulted in the FCC ordering the company to sell either the Red or Blue network. Years of appeals followed, finally resulting in NBC electing to sell the Blue network to Life Savers and Candy Company owner Edward J. Noble. Noble renamed it the American Broadcasting Company, and ABC was born.

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A Ventriloquist Show Was One of Radio’s Biggest Hits

A form as visual and illusion-based as ventriloquism seems like a poor fit for an audio-only medium, but from 1937 to 1957, The Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show was an American radio institution. It was the top-rated show for six years of its run, and in the top seven for all but its final five years. Ventriloquist Edgar Bergen started in vaudeville, and it was his guest appearance on Rudy Vallée’s Royal Gelatin Hourin 1936 that introduced him to the radio audience. The appeal of the show was Bergen’s vaudevillian skill at performing multiple comedic voices, and his quick and salacious wit as Charlie, roasting celebrity guests and using the dummy’s nonhuman innocuousness to get away with censorship-pushing double-entendres. Though the show included a live studio audience, Bergen all but dropped the traditional ventriloquism requirement of not moving his lips while voicing Charlie. As he reasoned, “I played on radio for so many years… it was ridiculous to sacrifice diction for 13 million people when there were only 300 watching in the audience.”

FM Radio Almost Didn’t Take Off

Inventor Edwin H. Armstrong earned prestige for creating the regenerative circuit in 1912, a modification to the vacuum tube that led to the dawn of modern radio. In the late 1920s, he set out to find a way to eliminate static from broadcasts, and received initial support in the endeavor from RCA President David Sarnoff. Sarnoff allowed Armstrong to use the RCA radio tower atop the Empire State Building to conduct experiments, and Armstrong agreed to give RCA first rights to the resulting product. When Armstrong demonstrated his static-free invention in 1935, what he unveiled was an entirely new broadcast technology using frequency modulation (FM) instead of the existing AM band.

Sarnoff, however, had wanted an improvement to AM, and saw FM as a threat to both RCA’s existing AM infrastructure and the emerging television technology RCA was investing in: He feared it would render AM equipment obsolete, and that FM radios would compromise the nascent market for television sets. Instead of embracing FM, RCA withdrew its support of Armstrong. With no support elsewhere in the broadcast industry, Armstrong set up his own fledgling FM station in hopes of promoting high fidelity radio, but he spent years in court mired in a byzantine tangle of regulatory and patent battles. FM eventually caught on, of course, but not until after radio’s golden age had passed: The FCC finally authorized an FM broadcasting standard in 1961.

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The Last Shows of the Golden Age Ended in 1962

On September 30, 1962, the final two remaining scripted radio shows signed off for the last time on CBS. The detective series Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar ended a run that day that began in 1949, and mystery-drama Suspense ended a 20-year run that had begun on June 17, 1942. As evidenced by its longevity, Suspense was particularly venerable; it was a Peabody Award winner whose scripts drew from classical literature, stage plays and screenplays, and entirely original material. Suspense attracted top guest stars such as Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, Cary Grant, Bela Lugosi, Rosalind Russell, and James Stewart. CBS even produced a television adaptation that began airing in 1949, but it was canceled in 1954, outlasted by the original version on the radio.

Where Did the Peace Symbol Come From?

Nuclear disarmament protest

Author Nicole Villeneuve

January 12, 2024

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In 1958, amid growing fears of Cold War nuclear proliferation, thousands of people gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square on Good Friday. The protesters were there to embark on a 50-mile march to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment in Aldermaston, a small village where England carried out weapons research, production, and testing. The demonstration was the work of the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War (DAC) and the newly formed Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), and it featured the debut of an image that became one of the most recognized protest symbols in the world: the peace symbol.

The Rise of Plastic: A History of Credit Cards

Credit card for payment

Author Anne T. Donahue

January 12, 2024

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When the credit card was introduced in 1950, the American public was already well acquainted with buying on credit, through personal loans and store credit accounts. But the introduction of the Diners Club card, the first modern charge card, made spending even more convenient: Customers could use their club cards at a variety of restaurants, and pay the balance at the end of the month. A cashless approach to consumption began.

By the end of the ’50s, most Americans had embraced the concept of buying now and paying later. In 1958, the Bank of America in California launched the BankAmericard, the first general-purpose credit card that could be used wherever it was accepted. It also introduced a key feature of modern credit cards: Unlike with the Diners Club card, customers could carry a balance into the following month, provided they paid the amount of interest accumulated. By 1966, the practice had become commonplace as more states licensed the BankAmericard, which was rebranded as Visa in 1970. Here are five fascinating facts about the history of credit cards.

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Women Couldn’t Have Their Own Credit Cards Until 1974

As late as the mid-1970s, women were put through a demeaning gauntlet when applying for a credit card. Married women were only issued cards under their husband’s name, and single women needed a male family member to act as co-signer. Even if a woman was able to make payments on her sole income, she could still be denied credit, effectively crippling her financial prospects. In a major step toward gender equality, the Supreme Court ruled in 1971 that assigning more financial power to men than women simply on the basis of sex was unconstitutional, violating the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The case laid the groundwork for the Equal Credit Opportunity Act passed in 1974, which stated that people could not be denied credit based on gender, religion, or race.

The Credit Card Was Invented After a Man Forgot His Wallet

In 1949, a New York businessman named Frank McNamara forgot his wallet at dinner and needed his wife to settle their bill. Vowing never to suffer such embarrassment again, McNamara teamed up with partner Ralph Schneider to create a membership card that allowed restaurant guests to settle their bills monthly instead of carrying cash. The card was small and made of cardboard, and charged participating restaurants a 5% to 7% processing fee. Within a year, the Diners Club card accumulated around 42,000 users across the United States, proving credit cards were here to stay.

The BankAmericard Lost Millions of Dollars at First

In September 1958, the Bank of America surprised residents of Fresno, California, by mailing out 60,000 unsolicited BankAmericards. The launch was spearheaded by manager Joe Williams. With no research behind him, he determined that credit limits would arbitrarily range from $300 to $500, with “floor limits” (smaller purchases that didn’t necessitate retailers phoning the bank) ranging from $25 to $100. He also assumed that most customers would pay back their loans on time, which was incorrect: In its first year, and after mailing an additional 20 million cards across California, BankAmericard lost millions of dollars, and Williams resigned. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the easily stolen mail-outs soon led to another financial phenomenon: credit card fraud.

The First Magnetic Stripe Card Arrived in 1969

Magnetic storage, a technology that uses magnetized materials to store data, was developed in the 1930s and improved over the coming decades as a way to store programs and information in early computers. In 1960, IBM engineer Forrest Parry used the technology to melt magnetic tape onto ID cards for CIA officials, which contained agent information. Jerome Svigals, a project manager at IBM, refined the technique and applied it to credit cards. The card’s magnetic stripe could store user information, banking data, and purchase history, making it easier to detect and prevent credit card fraud. In 1970, “magstripe” cards were introduced to the public through a collaboration between American Express, American Airlines, and IBM.

American Express Was the First Rewards Card

American Express pioneered two features that are commonplace in credit cards today. The bank launched its first credit card in 1958, and the following year it became the first major company to use plastic cards instead of cardboard. Decades later in 1991, Amex became the first credit card to reward its customers, launching Membership Miles, a frequent-flyer program. Every dollar spent earned a point toward travel and accommodations at a small number of airlines and hotels. The program also incentivized users: While all American Express members were privy to the program, only Gold and Platinum card members received additional perks.

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