Paul Revere -- Yet another thing we learned from Bill Bryson

In a previous post I made a remark about M. Gladwell's book Tipping point. In his book, Gladwell also writes about the inspiration that Paul Revere created by his night ride (warning about the colonial forces arriving and calling men on arms, presumably). In fact, the myth about Revere's ride was created by Longfellow in 1863, and his impact to the revolution was more or less unknown before Longfellow's semi-fictional account (Bryson: Made in America, p. 48).

Our stormy (last) century

J.M. Roberts: The Penguin History of the Twentieth Century
Unfortunately this history book was not about penguins, but it's very memorable anyway. A couple of nice points about changes between 1901 and 2000:

• Electric washing machine 1907.
• Fridge 1926.
• "Plastic fibre" 1920, Nylon 1938.
• Hospitals that actually cure patients, not just nurse them.
• Drugs in moderns sense. Salvarsan 1909 (for syphilis), penicillin first trials 1941.
• Ford Model T 1907, unit price $950. Though "cheap", the same amount would buy a house, too. 1915 Ford produced 1000000 cars per year. The car changed the consumer behaviour and industry structure quite a bit.
• Regular radio broadcasts (by the BBC) 1936.
• Tabloid newspapers, created for literate (but not highly cultured) new city dwellers around 1900. Of these, the Daily Mail 1896 and the Daily Mirror 1903 still survive.

Incidentally, Roberts finds electronic computers an innovation that eclipses most others, since they give unprecedented powers of simulating systems like DNA structures and climate patterns.