11,700 stories by "Trav S.D."
May 8, 1886 was the date on which Dr. John Pemberton (1831-1888) first sold Coca-Cola to a local Atlanta drug store, thus marking its debut on the world stage as a publicly available soft dr…
Friday, May 10, 2024 at 5:30pm EDT Admission FREE75 minutes UNDER St. Mark's Theater94 St. Mark's Place, just east of 1st Avenue, NYC Every theater-lover should know the story of the Astor P…
May 6, 1937 was the day of the Hindenburg disaster. Your correspondent has always been a big fan of the stately majesty of airship travel. I not only love the beauty of it, I love the PACE o…
Happy National Cartoonists Day! A good a time as any to peruse the comics and cartoons section of Travalanche, with its 180 or so posts. It's not our main bailiwick, so be prepared for a bit…
Never mind Star Wars Day, May the 4th is the birthday of Pete Barbutti (b. 1934). How this performer would have throve in vaudeville! Barbutti is a comedy musician, a raconteur who tells lon…
Born 100 years ago today, the great stage director Tom O'Horgan (1924-2009). Few who emerged from what used to be called Off-Off Broadway flew higher than this man, though his work is better…
May 2 was the birthday of Catherine II of Russia (1729-1796), popularly known as Catherine the Great. Catherine is one of history's most storied monarchs, renowned as much for her legend as …
Well, it's May Day! We've visited the topic a few times in the past; see links for related writings on: May Poles, May Baskets, the Green Man, Renn Fests, Robin Hood, and May Day Eve. Today …
Born 100 years ago today: announcer, quiz show host, news anchor, and actor Art Fleming (Arthur Fleming Fazzin, 1925-1995). It was Fleming's bad fortune to have his most notable accomplishme…
I was invited to attend the TCM Festival a few days ago (they screened a bunch of old Vitaphones featuring the original technology) but I wisely opted to pass at the last minute, as I had (a…
Gut Walpurgisnacht! I was shocked " shocked! " to discover that I have never even mentioned this holiday on this blog, despite having gotten AWFULLY close, by writing about May Day, which it…
April 29 is the birthday of Jean-Georges Noverre (1727-1810), considered by many to be one of the principal fathers of modern ballet. Most (if not all) of the 80 ballets he created are lost …
Bert Woodruff (1856-1934) is best known (to some of us anyway), for his iconic role as Pop, New York's last horse-drawn trolley driver, in Harold Lloyd's Speedy (1928). Speedy was one of Woo…
Born 100 years ago this day, Margrethe Blossom Dearie (1924-2009), known professionally as Blossom Dearie. She is not to be confused with Blossom Seeley or Blossom Rock! H'm…I used to thin…
I've just realized a long-standing goal by reading the memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885). I've wanted to do that since reading about them in Mark Twain's own memoirs many decades ago. …
Some 50 episodes after my last appearance (Look at Chicolini), I had the good fortune this week to return as a guest on the Marx Brothers Council Podcast to talk about my new book The Marx B…
Synchronicitously, I learned about Renate Müller (1906-1937) from two trusted sources within days of each other a few months back. One was Eve Golden, who wrote terrific articles about t…
As we wrote in our recent send-off to Robert McNeil, hard journalists are generally outside of our biographical wheelhouse on Travalanche. But celebrity journalism is a horse of a different …
The 20th century produced so many great Southern chroniclers of crackerdom (William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Tennessee Williams, Harper Lee and childhood friend Truman Capote, James Agee, Kat…
With late April and all of May clogged with events, your correspondent has been hard at work trying to get some events on the calendar for June. A couple of new book talks are in the works, …
For obvious reasons, I was going to wait and launch promotion of my newest book at Marxfest next month, but, like a thief in the night, sales have already begun online, and today being World…
April 23, 1896 was a pivotal date in the histories of both live vaudeville and cinematic exhibition. On that day, Koster and Bial's Music Hall topped off their presentation of six variety ac…
Like the man says " that anniversary is today! And I'd love to share a little article about it here with you…but for the fact that I'm presenting a talk on that very topic this Sunday Apri…
True fact: over a period of 16 years, through 8,000 blogposts, I have only used the phrase "bad movie" on Travalanche eight times, and in most of those cases, I either put the phrase in quot…
The title of today's post is to clarify that is not about the excellent recovery sit-com (2017-2020) starring Ron Livingston and my man Mat Fraser. Though it would be very hip to learn that …
