On the morning of September 5, 1882, a small crowd of workers gathered at City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan, unsure if anyone else was going to show up. There was no federal holiday. No paid day off. No expectation that a factory worker or a stonecutter could simply walk away from a twelve-hour shiftContinue reading “The First Labor Day Almost Didn’t Happen: How New York Workers Created a Holiday”
Tag Archives: #American food history
How Thomas Jefferson Preserved Food Before Refrigerators — And His Actual Ice Cream Recipe
In the summer of 1802, guests at Thomas Jefferson’s table were served something almost nobody in Virginia had access to: ice cream, in July, in a state with no electricity and 95-degree heat. The refrigerator wouldn’t be patented for another twenty years. So how did a house on a Virginia mountaintop keep dessert frozen throughContinue reading “How Thomas Jefferson Preserved Food Before Refrigerators — And His Actual Ice Cream Recipe”