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Daniel Crown

As seen in: Medium, The Washington Post, Gizmodo, IGN, Motherboard, Atlas Obscura, Mental Floss, Foreign Affairs, Literary Hub, National Bureau of Economic Research
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The German-Language Newspaper That Got the Scoop on American Independence

The German-Language Newspaper That Got the Scoop on American Independence

Atlas Obscura — On Thursday, July 4, 1776, Heinrich Miller, a 50-year veteran of the newspaper business and publisher of Heinrich Miller's Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote (Heinrich Miller's Pennsylvania State-Courier), played a familiar game of hurry up and wait. During the American Revolution, news traveled slowly but broke abruptly-nowhere more so than in Philadelphia, where the Second Continental Congress deliberated daily over matters with profound historical consequences.
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Do As Poor Richard Says, Not As He Does

Do As Poor Richard Says, Not As He Does

theawl.com — From whom, how, and why Benjamin Franklin plagiarized his famous proverbs To modern Americans, Benjamin Franklin is one man but many characters. Like the boyfriends of television ingénues, everyone has a favorite. Some prefer the polymath Franklin, the nutty scientist who invented the lightening rod.
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Incorrigible Sin - The Awl - Medium

Incorrigible Sin - The Awl - Medium

Medium — The story of a seventeenth-century fornication trial in Massachusetts Bay One of the worst nights of Sarah Crouch's life began with an innocent request. Her mother asked her to go out into the fields and fetch Thomas Jones for supper.
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The Library of Congress Has an Incredible Collection of Early Baseball Cards

The Library of Congress Has an Incredible Collection of Early Baseball Cards

Atlas Obscura — By any objective standard, Mike Mattimore was a middling professional baseball player. Born three years before the American Civil War, the pitcher-turned-outfielder played parts of four major league seasons between 1887 and 1890. After his final two campaigns with the Kansas City Cowboys and the Brooklyn Gladiators, he finished his career with 26 wins and 27 losses-a respectable but eminently forgettable record.
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On the Eerie Prescience of a Nazi-Era Diarist

On the Eerie Prescience of a Nazi-Era Diarist

Literary Hub — On May 27, 1941, Victor Klemperer found himself ensnared in a familiar paradoxical loop. As the diarist sat down that evening to chronicle the news of the day, he displayed an alarming comfort with discomfiting events. Three days earlier had marked the one-year anniversary of his forced relocation to a Judenhaus in Dresden, Germany.
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The Instant Pot of the 1600s Was Known as 'the Digester of Bones'

The Instant Pot of the 1600s Was Known as 'the Digester of Bones'

Atlas Obscura — From a strictly culinary perspective, food historians will likely remember 2017 as the year of the Instant Pot. The device started the year as a hip-but-obscure cousin to the Crock-Pot and ended it as the central relic in a home-cooking cult.
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The Vikings Took This Board Game Very Seriously

The Vikings Took This Board Game Very Seriously

Atlas Obscura — The Icelandic saga Hervör and Heidrek abounds with tropes instantly familiar to modern fantasy fans. Regarded as a key influence on classic early-20th century works in the genre, the 13th-century tale features dwarves, a tragic curse, a magical sword, and, perhaps most recognizable of all to fans of J.R.R.
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The Day Americans Drank Breweries Dry

The Day Americans Drank Breweries Dry

Atlas Obscura — Like so many of his peers in the hospitality industry, Paul Lake, the manager of Baltimore's Rennert Hotel, spent the early weeks of March 1933 glued to his local newspaper stand. In the months leading up to then, reports out of Washington D.C. had suggested politicians were flirting with a repeal of the 18th Amendment.
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19th-Century Museums Swapped Priceless Artifacts Like Trading Cards

19th-Century Museums Swapped Priceless Artifacts Like Trading Cards

Atlas Obscura — In 1896, New York City's American Museum of Natural History hired Franz Boas, a notable anthropologist and curator, to spruce up its growing-but-inadequate collection of ethnographic materials. At the time, the institution boasted numerous Native American artifacts, but had a limited collection of similar objects from around the world.
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The Unlikely Pulp Fiction Illustrations of Edward Hopper

The Unlikely Pulp Fiction Illustrations of Edward Hopper

Literary Hub — In the winter of 1956, Alexander Eliot, art critic for Time magazine, interviewed Edward Hopper for a cover feature on the painter's roundabout path to fame. Intended to familiarize general audiences with the man behind classic paintings like Nighthawks and Early Sunday Morning, the resultant profile reads today like a paean to an American master.
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Meet Hercules, One of America's Early Celebrity Chefs

Meet Hercules, One of America's Early Celebrity Chefs

Atlas Obscura — After a long day in president George Washington's executive kitchen, chef Hercules hit the streets of Philadelphia with sartorial flair and a keen eye for late-18th century fashion. Atop his head, the enslaved cook wore a voguish tricorn hat.
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The Surprisingly High-Tech Super Bowl I Broadcast

The Surprisingly High-Tech Super Bowl I Broadcast

Gizmodo — When footage of CBS's 1967 coverage of Super Bowl I first emerged from the ashes seven years ago, sports historians reacted with glee. Long considered one of the Holy Grails of sportscasting history, the footage, found on a set of two-inch Quadruplex video tapes in a dusty Pennsylvania attic, provided a rare glimpse at an event once held exclusively in the memories of the nearly 62,000 attendees that January afternoon at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
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How a Thirst for Portuguese Wine Fueled the American Revolution

How a Thirst for Portuguese Wine Fueled the American Revolution

Atlas Obscura — In the summer of 1775, as General George Washington outfitted his first mobile headquarters for the newly formed Continental Army, he seems to have intuited the importance of creature comforts.
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The Battle Between Baseball and Cricket for American Sporting Supremacy

The Battle Between Baseball and Cricket for American Sporting Supremacy

Atlas Obscura — In early summer 1859, St. George's Cricket Club found itself at an existential crossroads. Established in 1838, the Manhattan-based organization had for decades worked assiduously to, in the words of an 1859 club pamphlet, " see Cricket more generally established, better understood, and more regularly practiced " in America.
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How Dictionary Editors Find Meaning in the Age of Internet Speak

How Dictionary Editors Find Meaning in the Age of Internet Speak

Motherboard — Image: Chris Kindred In September 2011, the Oxford English Dictionary, in publication since the 1880s, unceremoniously added a new sense to the definition of a once uncontroversial word: literally. "adv. 1c. colloq.," it read. "Used to indicate that some (freq. conventional) metaphorical or hyperbolical expression is to be taken in the strongest admissible sense."
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The Curious Case of Thomas Hogg

The Curious Case of Thomas Hogg

theawl.com — How Margaret Lamberton came to accuse Thomas Hogg of defiling her pig begins with a scene fit for an early David Cronenberg film. One day, during the winter of 1645-1646, Lamberton, wife to a prominent sea captain in the nascent colony of New Haven, ventured out into her property to check on the health of a pregnant sow.
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Analysis | Voter suppression is ingrained in our national DNA

Analysis | Voter suppression is ingrained in our national DNA

The Washington Post — This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court is finally set to determine the constitutionality of "partisan gerrymandering." The stakes in Gill vs. Whitford are monumental for both parties. After the same court invalidated Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, conservative state legislatures took mere hours to dust off numerous discriminatory voting laws, resulting in documented cases of voter suppression nationwide.
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Historians Are Calling Out Trump Online Whenever He Misreads the Past

Historians Are Calling Out Trump Online Whenever He Misreads the Past

Motherboard — Trump under a portrait of populist President Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office, February 1, 2017. Image: Michael Reynolds-Pool/Getty A new wrinkle seems to have developed this year in the relentless news cycle.
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The Price of Suffering: William Pynchon and The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption

The Price of Suffering: William Pynchon and The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption

publicdomainreview.org — William Pynchon, earliest colonial ancestor of the novelist Thomas Pynchon, was a key figure in the early settlement of New England. He also wrote a book which became, at the hands of the Puritans it riled against, one of the first to be banned and burned on American soil.
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