From 1985 until the mid-2000s, Blockbuster was the place to be on a Friday night — but the age of mail-order DVDs and streaming services quickly forced the company to declare bankruptcy and close almost all of its stores by 2014.Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, there were three options for watching a movie: catch it in theaters, buy it on VHS, or rent it. There were no streaming services, so if you wanted to see a specific movie, you had to go to a physical store, hope they had a copy, and then return it on time to avoid late fees. Read More...
From baby cages to glowing tires to bicycle roller skates, these weird inventions of decades past simply never made a splash. Blizzard MaskWomen wear plastic headgear intended to protect one from snowstorms in Montreal. 1939.Nationaal Archief/Wikimedia Commons AmphicarPresident Lyndon B. Johnson drives his Amphicar on April 10, 1965. This amphibious land-to-water vehicle of West German origin was produced for several years during the 1960s. Johnson, a practical joker, reportedly enjoyed bringing unsuspecting guests into his Amphicar and exclaiming that the car's brakes had failed as it sped toward, then into, the lake on his Texas ranch. Read More...
Before Times Square was a global attraction, it was home to sex shops and drug dealers, earning a reputation as the sketchiest part of New York City.Today’s Times Square is known as the iconic tourist destination of New York, becoming the most visited place on the globe and attracting over 131 million visitors a year. But before it became home to Broadway shows, chain restaurants, and television studios, it spent the latter half of the 20th century as the symbol of New York’s decay. Read More...
