Description: Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher who became one of the most influential and controversial intellectuals of the Victorian era. Known as the "Sage of Chelsea," his works addressed themes of spiritual despair, heroism, and the social ills of industrial England. Carlyle once wrote, “Labor is life: from the inmost heart of the worker rises his God-given force, the sacred celestial life-essence breathed into him by Almighty God!” This sentence means that work is a fundamental aspect of human existence, a source of vitality and purpose that elevates the worker.
Description: Chesterfield Cigarettes were introduced by the Drummond Tobacco Company of St. Louis, Missouri, in 1873. Chesterfields were a blend of Turkish and Virginia tobacco, something that gave the brand an exotic edge compared to wholly domestic brands. Turkish tobacco is known for its complex, aromatic flavor profile, featuring sweet, tangy, and nutty notes, though it is generally mild and a bit weak on its own, making it best as a flavorful component in blends with stronger tobaccos like those from Virginia. In 1912, the brand was taken over by Liggett & Myers, and production moved to Durham, North Carolina. New campaigns with the taglines "it satisfies" targeting men and "blow some my way" targeting women helped the brand reach new heights.
Description: The Great Grape Ape Show was an American animated television series that ran from September 6 to December 13, 1975, for 16 episodes. The title character is The Great Grape Ape, who is a 40-foot-tall purple gorilla with the mind of a child. His catch phrase is saying his name twice ("Grape Ape, Grape Ape") after anything anyone says, usually as a form of agreement or acknowledgement of what was said. He travels the countryside with his canine pal Beegle Beagle, whom he calls "Beegly Beagly." Grape Ape and Beegle Beagle usually ride around in a small yellow van driven by Beegle Beagle with Grape Ape sitting on the roof. A recurring bit would be for him to "rev up" the tiny vehicle like a child with a friction toy, then hop aboard.
Description: Founded by brothers, Vic and Art Di Pietro, in 1958, INCO Express was a Seattle-based trucking company focused on fresh produce transportation. Named using the first four letters of their mother’s name, Incornado, INCO’s unique baby blue trucks with red frames were a common sight along I-90 and I-5 as they hauled produce out of eastern Washington into Seattle and south into Oregon and California. INCO Express maintained its good reputation with employees and customers alike, and kept its fleet of cool trucks running up until 1999, when the company decided to close its doors and call it a day for good.
Description: Dayglo is the second studio album by the Seattle band Love Battery, which was released in 1992. The band took a more textured, psychedelic approach to modern rock with their second full-length album, adding discernible melody, trance-inducing rhythms, guitar tremolo, and trippy effects. The album is best described as a dense, psychedelic-tinged sound that has more in common with the Brit 'dream pop' movement than the 'Seattle sound.' With just the right mix of '60s garage psychedelia, Dayglo is a '90s masterpiece time capsule that hit on all cylinders. This very '90s design is based on those found on the supporting North American tour.
Description: Promoter Ralph Sanchez brought auto racing to the Miami area in 1983 with the inaugural Grand Prix of Miami. A 1.85-mile circuit was laid out at Bicentennial Park on park roads and Biscayne Boulevard. While the 1983 event was a failure after rain flooded the circuit, Sanchez brought the event back the next year, and it was a huge success. 1985 saw Löwenbräu as the title sponsor, which carried over to 1986 when the event moved to a new layout that featured new purpose-built roads in the park, along with a temporary segment taking it out on Biscayne Boulevard near the entrance to the Port of Miami. The event continued through 1993, when road racing was experiencing a period of decline.
Description: Lavabit was an email service founded in 2004 that employed a combination of asymmetric encryption and SSL/TLS to provide private, secure communication with extreme levels of security for registered users. Lavabit shut down in 2013 after the U.S. government demanded access to its Transport Layer Security (TLS) keys to spy on users by accessing their emails. To avoid complicity in violating customer privacy and the Constitution, Lavabit chose to shut down. The service deleted the keys and joined others to form the Dark Mail Alliance, to develop the Dark Internet Mail Environment (DIME), a secure communication platform for asynchronous secure messaging across the Internet.
Description: Fort Hero, established in 1942 at Montauk Point, Long Island, was a 278-acre military base with the portions visible from the water disguised as a New England fishing village to protect it from German attacks. It housed four 16-inch naval guns in bunkers camouflaged with fake windows and roofs; the gym even resembled a church. Though official military use ended after WWII, government activity continued, fueling conspiracy theories about underground labs, mind control, and time travel. Locals dubbed it "Camp Hero," and after its closure in 1981, it became a state park in 2002, though many areas remain off-limits, including bunkers and the radar tower.
Description: Founded in 1915, Whitman Publishing Company was an American book publisher that started as a subsidiary of the Western Printing & Lithographing Company in Racine, Wisconsin. While Whitman published a wide array of titles, their children's books were probably their most popular line. In 1968, Whitman added the 'Whitman Kid' to their children's titles and launched the 'Happy Helper' line of preschool titles that were both entertaining and instructional, meant to teach young children how to accomplish tasks. From helping mom do laundry to picking up their toys, the 'Happy Helper' books were beloved by children and parents alike.
Description: Dante’s Pizza Palace is a fictional entertainment restaurant featuring arcade games and kiddie amusement rides, in addition to serving pizza and beer. Located in Rancho Cucamonga, California, Dante’s was said to be the premier location for kids' birthday parties. Games and pizza for the kids, and cheap pitchers of beer for the parents, and of course, Dante the rat mascot is the host with the most.
Description: Growing up in a big city like Chicago, kids in scouting didn’t have many hiking opportunities—especially ones that counted toward earning merit badges. In the early 1960s, some local scout leaders set out to change that. They created the Chief Chicagou Trail, a 14-mile urban hike designed to give scouts a meaningful outdoor experience right in the city. The trail was named after Chief Agapit Chicagou, an 18th-century leader of the Mitchigamea people—and the namesake of Chicago itself. The route starts at Jackson Park and follows the Lake Michigan shoreline north, ending at the Academy of Sciences, with stops along the way at landmarks. Every scout who completed the hike earned a merit badge, a medal, and sometimes even a cool t-shirt!
Description: Media Temple was a website hosting provider founded in 1998 in Los Angeles, California, that focused on providing premium services to web designers, developers, and creative agencies. The company was an early innovator in cloud hosting, releasing what they called 'The Grid' in 2006. This early cloud service hosted customer websites across a network of clustered servers rather than a single server, as most hosting was at the time. In 2013, Media Temple was acquired by a much larger national hosting provider and continued operating under the Media Temple banner until early 2023 before the name was finally retired.
Description: Night Owls is a fictional late-night talk show hosted by Jack Delroy in the movie Late Night with the Devil. The movie centers around a special Halloween broadcast of Night Owls, where Jack attempts to revive his struggling show with a paranormal-themed episode featuring a psychic, a hypnotist, and a parapsychologist discussing a young girl allegedly possessed by a demon. The film unfolds in real-time during the taping of the special, with the atmosphere shifting from amusing to sinister as the night progresses through a found footage/documentary style, giving the impression that viewers are watching a recovered tape of the infamous broadcast.
Description: Astounding Stories was created as competition to the first known science-fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, which was founded in 1926. Paying more for stories than Amazing, the upstart magazine attracted better-known pulp authors of the time, although the editor, Harry Bates, was very conservative in his story choices. John W. Campbell became editor in 1937 and published a much wider range of tales. leading to his editorship being referred to as the Golden Age of Science Fiction. The magazine had several title changes, including Astounding Science-Fiction in 1938 and Analog Science Fiction and Fact in 1960, though eventually it just became known as 'Analog.'
Description: As WWII drew to a close, the Canadian government adopted a policy to encourage the design and development of aircraft and engines in Canada. In 1945, Roy Dobson, head of A.V. Roe in Great Britain (which was part of the Hawker Siddeley Group), purchased the Victory Aircraft factory at Malton Airport in Ontario to establish A.V. Roe Canada Limited (Avro Canada). Avro’s Gas Turbine Division was spun off as its own company, Orenda Engines Limited, in 1956, and while Avro Canada folded in 1962, Orenda continued to produce jet engines until the mid-'70s.
Description: The Silver Slipper Gambling Hall & Saloon was a casino on the Las Vegas Strip in Winchester, Nevada, that initially opened on September 1, 1950. It was built just north of the Frontier and shared the same ownership. The Silver Slipper was known for its iconic silver and pink high-heel sign, which stood 12 feet tall and featured more than 900 bulbs. The casino closed on November 28, 1988, amid an ownership change, and was demolished shortly thereafter to provide more parking for the Frontier. Plans to rebuild the Silver Slipper as a high-rise hotel and casino were announced, though they never panned out. The Frontier was demolished in 2007 for another resort project that never came to fruition, and both sites remain vacant as of 2024.
Description: Austin, Texas' Channel 42 began broadcasting on December 4, 1983, as KBVO-TV. Owned by Austin Television, a consortium of three groups, it was Austin's first new commercial TV station since 1971 and its first local independent station. Originally emphasizing movies in its schedule, the station affiliated with an upstart network in 1986 and began running more first-run shows. Not quite a decade later, in 1995, Channel 42 was sold and took on new call letters, ending the run of KBVO-TV 42.
Description: Located at the corner of 8th Ave and 46th St. in Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood, Galaxy Video was a true mom and pop shop offering both video tape and VCR rentals. Despite only having a single location, Galaxy Video was a neighborhood favorite, and this over-the-top '80s design reflects the era when VHS tapes were cutting-edge technology. Astronauts! Rainbows! VHS tapes! Space! What more could you ask for?!
Description: Death Race 2000 is a 1975 American dystopian science-fiction action film directed by Paul Bartel and produced by Roger Corman for New World Pictures. Set in a dystopian American society in the year 2000 against the backdrop of social turmoil, political unrest, and rampant anarchy - a now-totalitarian United Provinces of America supports a brutal annual event to pacify the masses: the infamous Annual Transcontinental Road Race. Scoring points simply by running over unsuspecting pedestrians, the national champion driver has to race against a field of brutal contestants. This version of the Death Race 2000 design is based on the Japanese market poster, which is probably the only way this cult classic flick could get any cooler.
Description: Strickland Transportation Company was founded by L. R. Strickland in Houston, Texas, in 1935, eventually relocating its headquarters to Dallas. The company initially focused on routes throughout Texas and Oklahoma, but grew to cover most of the Midwest and a good stretch of the eastern seaboard. Strickland Transportation was purchased by Consolidated Freightways in 1978, and over the next few years, their terminals, trucks, trailers, and equipment were rebranded for CF, leading to the end of the iconic 'Strickland System' brand.
Description: The Sun-n-Sand Motor Hotel was opened by Mississippi businessman Dumas Milner at 401 North Lamar Street in Jackson, Mississippi. Due to its close proximity to the State Capitol, the motel served as the lodging for many politicians and elected officials while the Mississippi Legislature was in session. Additionally, during the 1960s, it became a prominent lodging location for activists in the civil rights movement. The mid-century modern design featured distinctive elements like large plate glass windows and metal screens, as well as an iconic Googie-style sign. The Sun-n-Sand closed down in 2001, and despite two decades of work by preservationists, most of the motel was demolished in 2021.
Description: Skooby’s Hot Dogs was a walk-up hot dog stand that opened its doors in 2002 beneath a movie theater marquee. Located on Hollywood Boulevard, Skooby’s definitely played to the tourist crowd, but was a favorite of locals as well, as they served great dogs that most would say were much better than the more popular spots around town. Unlike a lot of places, Skooby’s didn't try to be everything to everyone, instead choosing to just do a few things really, really well. With a core menu consisting of hot dogs, French fries, and fresh lemonade, Skooby’s had a winning formula that just worked until they closed up shop in 2016.
Description: Mister T is an American animated series produced by Ruby-Spears Enterprises that aired on Saturday morning from 1983 to 1985, featuring the popular actor Mr. T. A total of 30 episodes were produced during all three seasons, with thirteen episodes for Season 1, eleven for Season 2, and six episodes for the third and final season. The cartoon stars Mr. T as a coach to a gymnastics team travelling the world while becoming involved in and solving various mysteries. At the beginning of each episode, a live-action introduction featuring Mr. T himself is shown to explain what is going on. At the end of each episode, Mr. T narrates a moral lesson for the audience.
Description: A+ Magazine began life in November 1983 and met a sudden end in May 1989. Billing themselves as the #1 Apple][ magazine, A+ was probably the only Apple][ magazine. Apple][ personal computer launched in June 1977 and was one of the first successful mass-produced microcomputer products and is widely regarded as one of the most important personal computers of all time due to its role in popularizing home computing and influencing later software development. The model line ran until 1993, over three models, with the 1983 IIe considered to be the most popular version.
Description: Beginning in 1923, the Anaheim Halloween Festival is a century-old tradition that started as a carnival and expanded into a larger festival with a parade that would become a crowd favorite. Initially organized by local merchants to deter Halloween mischief, it grew into a major event with over 20,000 attendees, featuring floats, bands, and costumes. While interest waned in the 70s and 80s, dedicated citizens revived it, and it continues to be a cherished community event to this day. This design is based on the 30th annual event from 1953, which features a witch riding a rocket in reflection of the event's 'out of this world' theme.
Description: Few things are more quintessentially Maryland than blue crabs, and while they can be found in the waters along the entire East Coast, the brackish water of Chesapeake Bay is perfect for blue crabs. In fact, more than a third of America's blue crabs come from the Chesapeake Bay. Maryland crabs are at their most bountiful in the summer and early fall, and a traditional steamed crab feast is best enjoyed outside, accompanied by all the trimmings. This souvenir-style design is perfect for anyone with an affinity for Maryland, a love of crabs, or who may just be a crab.
Description: California's Golden Gate Bridge spans the mile-wide strait known as the Golden Gate that connects San Francisco Bay with the Pacific Ocean. The bridge links San Francisco with Marin County, carrying both U.S. Route 101 and State Route 1 across the strait along with pedestrian and bicycle traffic. Recognized as one of the Wonders of the Modern World, the Golden Gate Bridge is without question the most recognized symbol of San Francisco, and this '70s style souvenir features the city name in stylized rainbow type to form the iconic suspension bridge. If this one looks familiar, it's most likely because it was worn by Arlene in the movie Death Proof, originally released theatrically as part of the Grindhouse double feature.
Description: Established in 1953, Car Craft was a magazine devoted to automobiles, hot rodding, and drag racing. The earliest motto of Car Craft was 'Loud, Fast, Real,' which emphasized its more budget-oriented approach to building performance cars. When compared to similar magazines, Car Craft regularly featured vehicles built on a real-world budget, with an emphasis on functionality over style. The magazine published articles directed at inexperienced and seasoned wrench turners alike, and was a popular read for anyone wanting to improve the performance of their muscle car, hot rod, or drag racer. After 67 years of monthly issues, Car Craft ceased publishing in 2020, ending an amazing run of one of the best car magazines of all time.
Description: Long before the digital camera revolution allowed the instant gratification of viewing the photos you just took, you had to take your film in for processing and hope that you got the shot. Initially, camera shops were the go-to for development, and in the '60s, stand-alone Fotomat drive-throughs offered a more convenient option. The early '80s saw film processing go mainstream as in-store photo labs became ubiquitous, and one such example was Kmart's. With a fun cartoon mascot named 'Freddie Focal,' Kmart developed customer film and also sold their own line of film, cameras, and accessories under their 'Focal' brand. They also offered their 'goof-proof' guarantee that let customers only pay for the prints they liked.
Description: Monkey Shines (also known as Monkey Shines: An Experiment in Fear) is an American science fiction psychological horror film released on July 29, 1988. The story follows an athlete named Allan who becomes quadriplegic after a horrific traffic accident. His friend Geoffrey, who is conducting experiments with monkeys, offers Allan a well-trained monkey named Ella to keep him company and raise his spirits. But the initially healthy bond, which even enables Allan to form a romantic relationship with Ella's trainer, gradually disintegrates once the monkey begins to channel Allan's underlying rage and begins taking it out on his loved ones.
Description: As VCRs became increasingly more popular in the late '70s, so did video rental stores, with the vast majority of them being niche mom-and-pop operations. When VCRs became commonplace in the '80s, major players rose up with the promise of bigger selections, lower rental fees, and more locations. Founded in 1982, Las Vegas-based Major Video was one such player. Starting with a single location in Henderson, Nevada, Major Video grew to be the country's fourth-largest video rental chain by the time they were acquired for $92.5 million in 1989.
Description: Beverly Harrell, a former Broadway performer from Brooklyn, moved to Hollywood, aiming for stardom, but instead built a network of call girls in LA. In 1967, she opened the Cottontail Ranch Club in Nevada, initially leasing land from the Bureau of Land Management for $100 a year. When the Bureau discovered it was a brothel, she relocated to private land nearby. After a fire in 1985, she rebuilt the ranch at Lida Junction, 165 miles northwest of Las Vegas, where she ran it until her death in 1995. Her husband continued operations until its closure in 2004.
Description: Eastern Air Lines was founded in 1926 as a composite of air travel operations, including Florida Airways and Pitcairn Aviation. Eastern was one of the "Big Four" domestic airlines, and had a near monopoly in air travel between New York and Florida from the '30s until the '50s, and continued to dominate these routes for decades afterward. This design is based on Eastern's 1964 rebrand and features their "The Wings of Man" tagline, which came into play in the mid-'70s. This design was in use until the airline's final flights, up until its 1991 closure and subsequent dissolution.
