Ann S. Epstein writes novels, short stories, memoir, essays, and poems. Please use the links or site menu to go to the HOME PAGE; learn about her NOVELS, SHORT STORIES, MEMOIR, ESSAYS, and POEMS; find interesting facts in BEHIND THE STORY; read REFLECTIONS on writing; check NEWS for updates on publications and related events; see REVIEWS; learn about her END-OF-LIFE DOULA credentials and services; and CONTACT US to send webmail.
Interesting history tidbits I’ve learned while researching my novels and short stories
Marshall Field & Company, a Chicago landmark, was built 1891-1892. Its signature feature was the Tiffany glass dome. Customers received the royal treatment. Goods were stored behind mahogany counters; models circulated wearing the latest women’s fashions. There was a reading and writing room with popular magazines and tables with pens and free stationary. Read more Chicago history in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).
The 1911 Triangle Waist Company fire killed 146 people, 129 women and 17 men, primarily Jewish and Italian immigrants who spoke little English. Ranging in age from 14-43, most were only 16-23. They died of fire or smoke inhalation, 20 fell 100 feet to their death when a fire escape collapsed, others plunged down an empty elevator shaft after the car’s last descent, and 62, facing their inevitable end, jumped from the 8th, 9th, or 10th floor where the factory was located. Read about one survivor in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).
From 1900 to WWI, 4 million Italians, most from southern rural areas, emigrated to America to escape poverty and sickness (pellagra, cholera). The Commissariat of Emigration, created in 1901, helped them at the point of embarkation and after they arrived, including dealing with U.S. labor laws that discriminated against alien workers. Immigrants sent money home, accounting for as much as 5% of Italy’s economy. Read more about Italian-Americans in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).
At the 1935-36 California-Pacific International Exposition in San Diego, 7.2 million visitors were awed by the Pacific Fleet at the U.S. Naval Base and a new assembly plant, Convair, which built Navy flying boats. Read more San Diego and Navy history in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS), which officially launches tomorrow (05/29/18).
The Spirit of St. Louis, the custom M-1 monoplane that Charles Lindbergh flew on his 1927 cross-Atlantic solo flight, was built in San Diego, California by Ryan Airlines. On May 10, Lindbergh flew 4 hours overnight from Rockwell Field on North Island in San Diego to Lambert Field, St. Louis, Missouri. His historic flight from New York to Paris happened May 20-21. Discover more San Diego history in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).
At midnight on 12/31/1914, President Woodrow Wilson pressed a Western Union telegraph key in Washington, D.C. which turned on the lights and touched off a display of fireworks to open the Panama-California Exposition in San Diego’s Balboa Park. Crowds surged across Cabrillo Bridge to see the exhibits and the park’s Spanish Colonial architecture. Discover more San Diego history in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).
In the early 20th century, the Chicago meat-packing industry used immigrant labor, especially from Eastern Europe. Working conditions and sanitary practices were scandalously bad, as revealed in the Upton Sinclair political novel, The Jungle, published on February 26, 1906. Later that year, Congress passed the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act on the same day, June 30, 1906. Read more Chicago and labor history in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).
In the spring of 1903, flooding on the Kansas River inundated North Topeka, an industrial section with flour mills and lumber yards that lies in a valley. Hundreds were marooned in their homes and 29 drowned. There was high water again in 1908, 1923, and 1935 but the dikes constructed after 1903 flood held. Read more Topeka and Kansas history in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).
San Diego Zoo, conceived by Dr. Harry Wegeforth, grew from the abandoned exotic animal exhibits after the 1915 Panama-California Exposition. A permanent tract of land in Balboa Park was set aside and the zoo opened in 1922. In addition to animals from the Exposition, the zoo acquired a menagerie from the defunct Wonderland Amusement Park. Publication of ZooNooz began in 1925. Belle Benchley, director from 1925-1953, was the only woman in the world to serve in this role. San Diego also was the first “cageless” zoo with moats surrounding the exhibits. Its outdoor avian house boasted the world’s largest bird cage. Discover more San Diego history in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).
The site of the Triangle Waist Company fire (March 25, 1911) is a national historic landmark in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Originally named the Asch Building, now the Brown Building, the ten-story terra cotta structure lies just east of Washington Square Park on the campus of New York University. The fire, on the 8th to 10th floor where the factory was located, killed 146 people, mostly women, Jewish and Italian immigrants. Read about one survivor of the Triangle Waist Company fire in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).
