Think the Boston Tea Party made America a coffee-drinking nation? Historian Michelle McDonald reveals the truth: colonists were already choosing coffee over tea because it was cheaper. Michelle Craig McDonald, the Librarian/Director of the Library...
Did you know that many of the food traditions that define cuisine in the United States today have roots in African American culinary history? Diane M. Spivey, a culinary historian and author of three culinary history books, joins us to uncover the...
Can food help us better understand the people and events of the past? Can we better understand a person like Benjamin Franklin and who he was by the foods he ate? Rae Katherine Eighmey, an award-winning food historian, author, and cook, joins us to...
Inns and taverns played prominent roles in early American life. They served the needs of travelers who needed food to eat and places to sleep. They offered local communities a form of poor relief. And they functioned as public spaces where men could...
Have you ever wondered where the Christmas traditions of stockings, presents, and cookies come from? What about jolly, old Saint Nicholas? Who was he and why do we often call him Santa Claus? Peter G. Rose, culinary historian of Dutch foodways in...
Have you ever heard the lines: “Listen my children, and you shall hear; Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere/ On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five/Hardly a man is now alive/Who remembers that famous day and year?” These lines make up the...
Did you know that John Hancock was a smuggler? Smuggling presented a large problem for the imperial governments of Great Britain and France during the colonial period. Dr. Eugene Tesdahl, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of...
“’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house/ Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;/ The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,/ In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.” Undoubtedly, you have heard, or read...