Search results for

Since the end of World War II, the omnipresence of the atomic bomb’s towering purple, orange, and gray mushroom cloud – permeated the nation’s consciousness. How we integrated and synthesized deeply ambivalent, often dichotomous, emotions about the bomb’s extraordinary power shaped early Cold War culture.

“But why, some say, the moon? John F. Kennedy pondered in September 1962. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade, and do other things,” the President answered in that unmistakable, Irish American brogue, “not because they are easy but because they are hard.”

“It’s got a good beat, and you can dance to it.” Magic Words that once upon time transformed boys from Philadelphia’s Italian neighborhoods into Fabian or Frankie Avalon, Teen Idols; transported modest tunes like “At the Hop” all the way to #1 on Billboard’s Top 40, hit records; and conjured up rhythmic rituals whereby seemingly ordinary adolescents flailed about like a Mashed Potato, dance crazes.

After the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, a veritable war toy boom swept the country, dominating the toy industry among Baby Boom boys. Leading that charge was G.I. Joe, a costumed, plastic soldier marketed by Hasbro as “America’s Moveable Fighting Man.” Yet by decade’s end, the Vietnam War claimed G.I. Joe as just another of America’s casualties.

If you ever huffed and puffed climbing a rope to a school gym ceiling in the sixties or strained, red-faced to chin up on the playground in the seventies hoping to win the coveted President’s Council on Physical Fitness award, those words from the “Youth Fitness Song” are probably making you break out in a spontaneous sweat as I speak.

The 1970s are the “golden age” of Saturday Morning Children’s Television. You see, adults had it all backwards. Their Saturday Night Fever never held a candle to our Saturday Morning Fever.

Ladies and Gentlemen… the Beatles! And with those words Ed Sullivan – America’s unofficial Minister of Culture – introduced us to four exuberant Englishmen, unleashing a musical and cultural revolution.

“Roger,” astronaut Jim Lovell radioed to mission control in Houston on Christmas morning 1968, “please be informed there is a Santa Claus.” Lovell’s revelation confirmed Apollo 8’s departure from lunar orbit. The night before on Christmas Eve, he, Frank Borman, and Bill Anders – the first humans to orbit the moon – enthralled a global primetime television audience with extraordinary celestial footage, before sending us off to bed by taking turns narrating the Bible’s depiction of creation.

In early 1873, the state created a third district normal school for southeast Missouri, joining district one in Kirksville and district two in Warrensburg.

Professor Harry Albert, a dedicated faculty member, wept openly at the sight of what remained of Old Normal’s ornamental towers after an overnight fire destroyed the school’s lone building and all its contents on April 8, 1902.