Word: sunning
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Britannia rules an empire on which the sun never sets. And Western powers rule almost every other part of the world. Japan emulates Europe and the U.S. and joins Britain, Russia, France and Germany in contemplating the dismemberment of the decrepit Chinese Empire. Nationalism sows the seeds of two world wars...
Technology, in turn, has led to our obsession with ultraprecise timekeeping and time management. Before the Industrial Revolution, the exact time of day or year mattered only to those in specialized jobs, such as astrologers and sailors. For the rest, the day began at dawn, noon was when the sun was highest in the sky, and sunset wrapped things up. Says Carleen Stephens, who curated the Smithsonian show, in 1790 fewer than 10% of Americans had a clock of any kind in their homes, and most of those had no minute hand...
Then came trains and factories, and with them the need to coordinate the schedules of hundreds and even thousands of people. It was the railroad companies that invented time zones, in 1883. Because of the earth's rotation, the sun was highest at different times in New York City and, say, Washington, which lay a bit farther west. The 11-min. difference in local noon could lead to disaster at intersections...
...made to be sent abroad to the relevant ambassadors, in the hope of arranging a suitable marriage. In due course, in the year that Velazquez died, 1660, the infanta was betrothed to Louis XIV of France, and thus embarked on more than two decades of wretchedness with her faithless Sun King; perhaps this small, pictorially sublime icon helped seal her fate...
...favor and rent Miracle on 34th Street. (The original 1947 movie, starring a very young Natalie Wood, is wonderful.) Another great source of inspiration for parents and kids is the original "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus," an editorial written by Francis P. Church for the New York Sun in 1897, in response to a doubting letter from Virginia O'Hanlon, 8. The essay is available at www.about.com and in an illustrated book version published by Delacorte Press...