The soft elk skin, deerskin or buffalo skin slippers worn by Native Americans and known widely as moccasins were a fashion of shoe shared by many different tribes over time. The seemingly simple design of moccasins, however, was actually so nuanced that Native Americans could attribute moccasin footprints to different tribes and identify one another accordingly. Subtle variations in stitching or fringe detailing or the finishing of the heel could distinguish one pair of footprints from another. Beyond this, the decorative detailing in beadwork or quill design on the front tab, or vamp, of the moccasin would also signal origins or affiliation.
The shoes are remarkably efficient in design and would have been well-suited to different geographical and climate conditions. They were also extremely well crafted in supple leather with careful stitching to allow for ease of wear as much as for sensitivity to the landscape, something that would have been essential to Native Americans so skilled at traversing the land and tracking things on foot. Those tribes to the west that lived in drier, more rugged terrain would have had shoes made of tougher leather with soles to match and would be constructed of two or more pieces of leather for sole and upper. Tribes further east would have relied on soft-soled moccasins, typically constructed of one piece of hide and sewn with seams at the sides or at the top.
The word moccasin in association with Native American footwear has been adopted by the greater American public but it was never a universally understood word within the different Native American tribes. Moccasin was the word for shoe in the Virginia Algonquian language and was passed into English as a generalization through the encounters early English settlers had with the native community. Captain John Smith of the Jamestown settlement is attributed with noting the translation in his 1612 glossary, ‘mockasins: shoes.’ In actuality, each tribe used words in their own language or dialect to signify shoe/slipper and it is coincidence that has made ‘moccasin’ the lasting word in English. It is more than coincidence and surely a tribute to the beauty of the design and image of the moccasin that it has been preserved as a style of shoe until today and continues to permeate the broader fashion market.
To many of us SPAM refers to junk emails or unwanted communication. Many people are more familiar with this connotation than the canned meat for which it was named that was developed in 1926 by Jay Hormel, son of company founder George Hormel. His first canned ham was Hormel Flavor-Sealed Ham and eleven years later he further developed the product so it did not need refrigeration. It was a chopped pork shoulder and ham combination and was marketed as Hormel Spiced Ham which was not a catchy name, especially for a product that would be integral in the worlds diets and wars.
The Spiced Ham got a lot of competition from other companies who introduced their own canned meats. Hormel devised a plan to give their product a catchy name and offered a cash prize to the best name and the winner was SPAM. It was promoted heavily during 1937 and was offered as an anytime product not just for lunch. They were a sponsor of the George Burns and Gracie Allen radio program and created the character Spammy the Pig. But sales really took off during WWII since it was great for the military because it required no refrigeration. It also was not rationed as beef products were so it became a popular meal staple. Russian Premier Nikita Kruschev actually credited SPAM with helping his armies survive during WWII.
During the 1950s SPAM was marketed by a group of Hormel Girls who distributed the product door to door and performed on the radio as well and as at events around the country. SPAM was sold in 12 ounce cans but was introduced as a smaller 7 ounce can in 1960 and they began to offer a variety of different flavors. In 1970 they introduced Smoke Flavored SPAM and offered a low sodium version in the mid-1980s. Other versions include SPAM-lite, SPAM Breakfast Strips, and Turkey SPAM.
The next time you receive an email or unwanted internet pop-up and refer to it as spam, remember that it was named after one of the most versatile canned meat products in the world that was instrumental in American life as we know it.
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A brief history of eyeglasses from 1000 C.E. through the Middle Ages and to the Present. At about the turn of the first millenium, a Muslim scientist referred to in Latin as Alhazen, wrote a treatise titled The Book of Optics which became a foundational text in the study of, among several things, optics and experimental physics. He is thought to be the first person to have written about the use of a magnifying tool for improving vision through the convex shaping of glass. The use of glass or crystals to improve clarity of vision existed in various rudimentary forms from earlier points in history but was only documented and described in a more technical manner in the early part of the 11th century.
By the end of the 13th century this early evidence of corrective glass called a reading stone (often held at a distance from the eye, for example pressed directly against text to be enlarged) gave way to the first spectacles to be used on the face. These first quartz crystal lenses would be set in frames linked by a bridge to hold on the nose but did not have framing to hold the spectacles to the face so that ribbon or some other make-shift device would be devised to keep them in place. 
At the tender age of 10, the boy who would become known as Peter the Great was made to watch as rampaging soldiers of the Moscow garrison, the Streltsy, hunted down and murdered some 40 of his relatives, friends and advisors inside the walls of the Kremlin. The year was 1682 and Peter’s eldest half-brother, Tsar Fedor II, had recently passed away without leaving a clear line of succession. Although Peter was the preferred choice of many within the Russian political elite, the men of the Streltsy, in league with the family of Peter’s other half-brother, Ivan, conspired to protect the rights of their candidate. While their actions proved successful in this particular episode, this event would never be forgotten by the man who would one day be their tsar.
The Streltsy were royal musketeers whose origins dated back to the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the mid-sixteenth century. Serving as the ceremonial palace guard of the Russian tsars and the core of their standing army, the Streltsy had acquired many privileges over the decades. Conservative, traditional and deeply suspicious of all things foreign, their resentment over Peter’s affinity for western ways in his early reign caused them to recoil in paranoia and fear when Peter embarked on his Great Embassy in 1697 to visit the kingdoms of Western Europe. They took it as an ill omen that Peter was the first Russian tsar to leave the country during his reign and many expected that their ruler would become hopelessly corrupted in his absence.
Peter had been gone from Russia for almost 18 months when news reached him in Vienna that four regiments of the Moscow Streltsy had risen in revolt. Hastily settling his affairs in the Austrian capital, Peter rushed home to find that the poorly organized uprising had already been crushed. However, unconvinced that the sedition had been fully squelched, Peter proceeded to have all of the rebellious Streltsy transferred to one of his suburban palaces for further interrogation. Fire and knout (a thick, hard leather whip) were the preferred instruments for compelling testimony in what became an orgy of violence and punishment.
