If you’re doing an Advent calendar this month, you’re just over halfway finished opening up those little windows to see what’s inside. So let’s open up a few windows into where they came from.
Today in 1986, a newspaper column by film critic Gene Siskel helped to turn a local snack favorite in Chicago into a signature of the city.
Today in 1972, Apollo 17 landed on the moon. So far, it’s the last mission that put human beings on the lunar surface. And it was the only Apollo mission where the dust all over that surface gave an astronaut a strong allergic reaction.
Kids in the US have been writing letters to Santa for well over a century. Those letters are a fascinating, hilarious and sometimes jaw-dropping window into our own history.
Today in 1965, CBS broadcast “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” It's one of the iconic TV holiday specials today, but pretty much everyone who put the TV special together thought it was going to be a failure.
Nothing says the holidays like a creepy devil creature hitting you with sticks! In some European countries, there are parades focused on Father Christmas's evil counterpart, Krampus.
This month in 1893, the formal start of an effort to build a new kind of seagoing vessel: a ship with rolling wheels.
Today in 2023, a news report on the end of an era: a pastry chef in Anchorage, Alaska was, for the last time, building his massive and renowned holiday village out of gingerbread.
Today in 1976, Pink Floyd was trying to take a photo of an inflatable pig flying over a power plant for one of its iconic album covers… only the situation literally got out of hand.
During National Car Donation Month, some drivers may trade out gas-powered cars and trucks for electric ones. But EVs aren't the only alternative: for decades, people have built and driven cars powered by firewood.
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Brady Carlson is a writer and radio host from Madison, Wisconsin. more
