Barbie Doll Released
https://youtu.be/9hhjjhYGQtY In March 1959 the Barbie doll was unveiled by the American Toy Fair in New York City. Doll No. 1 was sold by Mattel Toy Company for $3. Source: History.com
Jonas Salk and the Polio Vaccine
The first effective polio vaccine was developed in 1952 by Jonas Salk and his team at the University of Pittsburgh. Shortly thereafter, a key laboratory technique that enabled mass production of the vaccine was invented by Leone N. Farrell and her team...
Mr Potato Head
https://youtu.be/g58CFvquOtE Mr. Potato Head was invented by George Lerner in 1949 and first manufactured and distributed by Hasbro in 1952. The first toy advertised on television, Mr. Potato Head has remained in production since its debut....
Halloween Trick or Treat 1951
Dennis the Menace Comic Strip
eBay Dennis the Menace debuted in 1951 as a daily, syndicated newspaper comic strip that was originally created, written, and illustrated by Hank Ketcham. Today the strip is written and drawn by Ketcham's former assistants, Marcus Hamilton,...
Polio Epidemics
https://youtu.be/PfoxqghXxEs In 1950 Polio was one of the most serious communicable diseases among children in the United States. Thousands of children were infected by the virus, and many were paralyzed or died. Source: Our World in Data Hospitals developed special...
Bazooka Bubble Gum
Packaged in red, white and blue, Bazooka bubble gum was first marketed in 1947 by the Topps Company of New York. In 1953 Bazooka packaging began to include small comic strips featuring a character known as Bazooka Joe (although I remember the boy named...
Race-Based Education USA
In 1946 A US district court case in Orange County, Ca., Mendez vs. Westminster, ruled that race-based public school enrollment was illegal. During the trial, the Mendez family's attorney presented social science evidence that segregation resulted in feelings of...
Dr. Benjamin Spock
The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, published in 1946, sold over 50 million copies by the time of Spock's death in 1998. The book has also been translated into 39 languages. Prior to Spock's book, child care experts recommended rigid...
Allies Occupy Germany
Your Job In Germany was a short film shown to US soldiers embarking on post-war occupation duty in Germany. Produced by the United States War Department in 1945, the film was made by a military film unit directed by Frank Capra and was written...
Burmese Harp / Grave of the Fireflies
Adapted from the novel by Michio Takeyama, this 1956 film directed by Ichikawa Kon, involves a company of Japanese Imperial Army troops who finally surrender in the last desperate stages of the Burma campaign. When their company commander begins to lead them in songs...
Bomb Kills Oregon Picnickers
Radiolab just broadcast an excellent, detailed account of the Japanese balloon bomb incident at Bly, Oregon LISTEN: http://www.radiolab.org/story/war-our-shore/ My history-inspired novel Enemy in the Mirror: Love and Fury in the Pacific War includes a...
Nazi Child Soldiers
In 1936 participation of boys and girls in Nazi youth groups became mandatory. At the onset of WWII older Hitler Jugend (HJ) boys were conscripted into the armed forces while younger boys functioned as air raid wardens and anti-aircraft gun assistants. Also you......
Anne Frank Dies
Anne Frank was a teenage writer who hid in Amsterdam with her family for two years during the Nazi occupation of Holland. She chronicled her feelings and experiences in a diary that became renowned after the war. She was 15 years old when the location of the family...
Momotaro the Sea God Soldier
This scene from Momotaro the Sea God Soldier (桃太郎 海の神兵), the first Japanese feature-length animated film, was directed by Mitsuyo Seo. Commissioned by the Japanese Naval Ministry, the film, released in 1945 by the Shochiku Moving Picture Laboratory, was a sequel to...
Easter in Nazi Germany
In a 1939 census of Nazi Germany (including annexed Austria), 54% of Germans considered themselves Protestant, 40% Catholic, 3.5% gottgläubig (non-sectarian believers in God) and 1.5% as non-religious. In the spring of 1936, Der Angriff, Berlin’s Nazi paper founded by...
Vichy France
Vichy France propaganda cartoon about the allied bombings of France. A Jewish radio announcer in London broadcasts the imminent arrival over France of Allied Liberator aircraft. US planes, flown by Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Popeye, Goofy and Felix the Cat, drop bombs...
Blue Star in the Window
The blue star flag, designed during WWI by U.S. Army Captain Robert Queissner, became the unofficial symbol of a child in service. In January 1942, a newspaper article by Army Captain George Maines requested information regarding children serving in the armed forces –...
Halloween
The Brian Sisters Samhain, celebrated by ancient Celts on October 31st marked the beginning of the cold and bleak part of the year, often associated with death. The Catholic Church later transformed Samhain into a religious event known as All Hallows Eve (the evening...
Angel of Death
Born in 1911, Josef Mengele earned an M.D. and Ph.D. in physical anthropology from the University of Munich in 1935. In 1937, at the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt, he became the assistant of Dr. Otmar von Verschuer, a leading...
Kinderlandverschickung – Evacuation of Children
The term Kinderlandverschickung (KLV) was first used in the late 19th century to describe the foster care relocation of sick and underprivileged children to the countryside. At the outbreak of WWII, although there were no large scale civilian evacuations as in...
WWII Toys
In January 1942, the United States War Production Board (WPB) began rationing food, gasoline and other resources deemed important to the war effort. In addition, many American factories converted to production of war materials. In March 1942, the WPB issued an order...
Welfare Japan
Beginning in the 1920s, the Imperial Japanese government enacted a series of welfare programs, based mainly on European models, to provide medical care and financial support. After the onset of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1938, the Ministry of Health and Welfare...
Winterhilfswerk Welfare
The National Socialist People’s Welfare Organization (Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt) conducted an annual winter drive (Winterhilfswerk) with the slogan "None shall starve nor freeze." Although the program was established before the Nazi's rise to power,...
All the Light We Cannot See
This superbly written, often lyrical, WWII novel about a blind French girl and a young German soldier is excellent reading. “I have been feeling very clearheaded lately and what I want to write about today is the sea. It contains so many colors. Silver at dawn, green...