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History (Education)

Education

Historian of infant feeding debunks myths about how babies ate in the pre-formula days

Not everyone breastfed before formula was invented.

Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons, Carla Cevasco, PhD/Twitter

Prior to baby formula, breastfeeding was the norm, but that doesn't mean it always worked.

As if the past handful of years weren't challenging enough, one of the most harrowing issues the U.S. dealt with recently was the baby formula crisis in 2022.

Due to a perfect storm of supply chain issues, product recalls, labor shortages, and inflation, manufacturers are struggling to keep up with formula demand and retailers are rationing supplies. As a result, families that rely on formula were scrambling to ensure that their babies get the food they need.

Naturally, people weighed in on the crisis, with some throwing out simplistic advice like, "Why don't you just do what people did before baby formula was invented and just breastfeed?"

That might seem logical, unless you understand how breastfeeding works and know a bit about infant mortality throughout human history.

Rutgers University historian Carla Cevasco, Ph.D. shared some of the history of infant feeding in a viral X (formerly Twitter) thread to set the record straight. (Note: Cevasco provided sources for her facts, which can be viewed at the end of her thread on Twitter.)

"You may be hearing the argument that before the rise of modern commercial infant formula, babies all ate breastmilk and everything was great," she wrote. "As a historian of infant feeding, let me tell you why that’s not true."

First of all, throughout history, people have at times needed to feed infants using foods other than breastmilk. For many reasons:
— Carla Cevasco, PhD (@Carla Cevasco, PhD) 1652312444

Cevasco explained that, throughout history, people have had to feed infants food other than breastmilk for a variety of reasons.

"Sometimes the birthing parent was unable to breastfeed," she wrote, "Because: death in childbirth, or physical/mental health concerns, or need to return to work outside the home right after childbirth, OR their partner or enslaver forced them not to breastfeed so that they could return to fertility ASAP after giving birth.

"Sometimes baby was unable to breastfeed. Because: poor latch, prematurity, cleft palate, other health or disability reasons, etc.

"Sometimes baby was being cared for by carers other than birthing parent, including adoptive parents."

So, feeding baby other people\u2019s breastmilk wasn\u2019t necessarily an ideal situation either, given the power dynamics of race, class, and gender in the past.
— Carla Cevasco, PhD (@Carla Cevasco, PhD) 1652312706

Cevasco went on to explain what babies ate instead of a parent's breast milk in those situations.

"Sometimes someone else would breastfeed the child," she wrote. "This might have been a relative or neighbor doing it for free. Or it might have been a paid or unpaid servant or enslaved person doing it at the expense of their own nursing infant, who might starve to death as a result."

She also explained that some babies thrived on alternative diets, which are not recommended today due to concerns about safety and nutrition.

"Wabanaki women in the 18th century sometimes fed infants a mixture of boiled walnuts, cornmeal, and water; an English colonist, Elizabeth Hanson, reported that her baby thrived on this diet," she wrote. "In early modern Europe, babies often ate pap or panada, mixtures of animal milk or water, bread crumbs or flour. Sometimes these were boiled, sometimes they weren’t."

However, she explained, those milk substitutes weren't always safe or nutritionally complete.

"So before the advent of modern commercial formula (in the 1950s), a lot of babies died of illness or starvation because they couldn’t breastfeed and the alternative foods were not safe or adequate," she wrote. "Let me repeat that: in the absence of modern formula, A LOT OF BABIES DIED OF ILLNESS OR STARVATION DUE TO LACK OF SAFE OR ADEQUATE FOOD."

As Cevasco illustrates, the idea that the pre-formula days were a bastion of infant health due to widespread breastfeeding is simply incorrect. Cevasco explained that better supports such as paid parental leave, free lactation consultation and education, better access to places to pump and so on, would go a long way toward increasing breastfeeding rates. She also pointed out that the greed of the corporate formula industry created the formula shortage crisis.

"But! Let’s not demonize formula because of an imagined past in which everyone breastfed," she wrote. "In the ACTUAL past, babies fucking starved and died of disease. Babies who would have survived today, because they would have had access to safe, nutritionally complete formula. Access that is now, horrifyingly and unjustly, under threat for many babies and their caregivers."

There will ALWAYS be people who need formula for a whole hosts of reasons.
— Carla Cevasco, PhD (@Carla Cevasco, PhD) 1652313204

Cevasco pointed out that there are multiple safe and nutritionally complete ways to feed a baby, and making sure babies don't go hungry should be our main goal.

So many misinformed comments could be avoided with a basic understanding of what infant feeding looked like in the past, as well as a basic understanding of how breastfeeding works both physically and logistically. Let's spend more time informing ourselves and sharing facts from experts rather than continuing to perpetuate unhelpful and harmful myths about both breastfeeding and formula feeding.

This article originally appeared three years ago.

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Voice recordings of people who were enslaved offer incredible first-person accounts of U.S. history

"The results of these digitally enhanced recordings are arresting, almost unbelievable. The idea of hearing the voices of actual slaves from the plantations of the Old South is as powerful—as startling, really—as if you could hear Abraham Lincoln or Robert E. Lee speak." - Ted Koppel

Library of Congress

Some history is not as old as we think.

When we think about the era of American slavery, many of us tend to think of it as the far distant past. While slavery doesn't exist as a formal institution today, modern slavery endures at a systemic level worldwide, and there are people living who knew formerly enslaved Black Americans first-hand. In the wide arc of history, the legal enslavement of Black people on U.S. soil is a recent occurrence—so recent, in fact, that we have voice recordings of interviews with people who lived it.

Many of us have read written accounts of enslavement, from Frederick Douglass's autobiography to some of the 2,300 first-person accounts housed in the Library of Congress. But how many of us have heard the actual voices of people who were enslaved telling their own stories?

ABC News' Nightline with Ted Koppel aired a segment in 1999 in which we can hear the first-person accounts of people who had been enslaved taken from interviews conducted in the 1930s and 40s (also housed in the Library of Congress). They include the voice of a man named Fountain Hughes, who was born into slavery in 1848 and whose grandfather had "belonged to" Thomas Jefferson.

As Koppel says in the segment, "The results of these digitally enhanced recordings are arresting, almost unbelievable. The idea of hearing the voices of actual slaves from the plantations of the Old South is as powerful—as startling, really—as if you could hear Abraham Lincoln or Robert E. Lee speak."

Indeed, hearing formerly enslaved people share their experiences of being bought and sold like cattle, sleeping on bare pallets, and witnessing whippings for insubordination is a heartbreaking reminder of how close we are to this ugly chapter of our history. The segment is well worth the watch:

This article originally appeared five years ago.

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Education

The one sign that someone is highly intelligent, according to literary genius Leo Tolstoy

He was a master of understanding the human condition.

en.m.wikipedia.org

File:L.N.Tolstoy Prokudin-Gorsky.jpg - Wikipedia

Leo Tolstoy was a Russian novelist known for epic works such as"War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina.” His life experiences—from witnessing war to spiritual quests—profoundly influenced his writings and gave him profound insights into the human soul. His understanding of emotions, motivations and moral dilemmas has made his work stand the test of time, and it still resonates with people today.

Juan de Medeiros, a TikTokker who shares his thoughts on philosophy, recently shared how Tolstoy knew if someone was highly intelligent, and his observation says something extraordinary about humanity.

“The more intelligent a person is, the more he discovers kindness in others,” Tolstoy once wrote. “For nothing enriches the world more than kindness. It makes mysterious things clear, difficult things easy, and dull things cheerful.”

@julianphilosophy
Intelligent people are kind #intelligent #intelligence #kindness #smart #tolstoy #men #women

De Medeiros boiled down Tolstoy’s thoughts into a simple statement: “Intelligent people are unafraid to be kind.” He then took things a step further by noting that Tolstoy believed in the power of emotional intelligence. "To have emotional intelligence is to see the good in other people, that is what Tolstoy meant, that to be intelligent is to be kind," he added.

It seems that, according to de Medeiros, Tolstoy understood that intelligent people are kind and perceptive of the kindness in others. The intelligent person is conscious of the kindness within themselves and in the world around them.

Through the words of Tolstoy, de Medeiros makes a point that is often overlooked when people talk about intelligence. Truly smart people are as in touch with their hearts as they are with their minds.

This article originally appeared last year.

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The astronomer who discovered what stars are made of almost went unrecognized for her work

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin wrote "the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy" but encountered roadblock after roadblock due to gender bias.

Public Domain

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin was the first to discover that stars were primarily hydrogen and helium.

If you asked an average person to name influential astronomers in history, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin likely wouldn't be among them. But there's an argument to be made that she should be a household name. She's the reason we know what stars are made of, but gender bias nearly kept the astrophysicist from gaining the recognition she deserved.

When 25-year-old Cecilia Payne put forth her thesis saying that stars were mostly hydrogen and helium in 1925, it went against the scientific consensus that stars were composed of the same elements as planets. Her breakthrough research proved that hydrogen, the simplest atom, was one of the most fundamental building blocks of the entire cosmos—a foundational fact that informs space research to this day. So why isn't she more familiar to us?

A gifted scientist from childhood

Payne-Gaposchkin proved to be a gifted scientist from an early age, and her parents made sure she had the best science education they could provide in her home country of England. At 19, she entered University of Cambridge on scholarship and soon fell in love with physics. But women in science were expected to study botany, and she soon found herself being humiliated as the only woman in a physics class taught by Nobel Prize winner Ernest Rutherford, a renowned pioneer in atomic and nuclear studies. “At every lecture [Rutherford] would gaze at me pointedly…and would begin in his stentorian voice: 'Ladies and gentlemen,'" she wrote in her autobiography. "All the boys regularly greeted this witticism with thunderous applause [and] stamping with their feet…at every lecture I wished I could sink into the earth. To this day I instinctively take my place as far back as possible in a lecture room.”

She found a more supportive mentor in astrophysicist Arthur Eddington, but even he told her she wouldn't have opportunities in England as a female astronomer after she finished at Cambridge. He did, however, offer her a glowing recommendation to work with Harlow Shapley, director of the Harvard College Observatory, who was starting up a graduate studies program. In 1923, Payne moved to the U.S. to continue her studies at Harvard.

A brilliant thesis thwarted

However, she faced limitations due to her sex there as well. Women played a significant role at Harvard, largely in the role of human computers. In analyzing spectral data that Harvard computers had painstakingly collected and organized, Payne-Gaposchkin discovered that spectra from ionized atoms, like those in the hot outer atmosphere of stars, differed from neutral atoms of the same kind. Combining what she gleaned from her data analysis with a previously untested theory from Indian physicist Meghnad Saha, she produced her thesis, Stellar Atmospheres.

a group of women working at harvard in 1925 Cecilia Payne (top row, second from the left) with other women working at Harvard in 1925Harvard University Archives

Part of her thesis was well-received, but the part in which she discovered helium was 1000 times more abundant and hydrogen was 1,000,000 times more abundant in the stars than previously thought hit a bump. Princeton Observatory director Henry Russell, an outside examiner of her thesis, thought the idea that the Sun was made almost entirely of hydrogen simply couldn't be true. "It is clearly impossible that hydrogen should be a million times more abundant than the metals,” he wrote to her. She would not be able to have her thesis accepted without Russell signing off on it, so she did was she felt she must. In her final draft, she wrote, “The enormous abundance derived for [hydrogen and helium] is almost certainly not real,” essentially disowning that part of her research result.

Proven right but without recognition

Ironically, Russell himself would prove her right just a few years later. In 1929, Russell published his own research, which had the same conclusion as Payne-Gaposhckin's but by a different method. He cited Payne-Gaposchkin’s work, noting that his results agreed with hers. However, he did not state that he had originally rejected her (correct) thesis. Later, Payne-Gaposhckin expressed regret at waffling on her findings. "I was to blame for not having pressed my point," she wrote in her autobiography. "I had given in to Authority when I believed I was right…I note it here as a warning to the young. If you are sure of your facts, you should defend your position.”

Payne-Gaposhckin continued research work and taught graduate courses, though she wasn't given the title of "professor" or even "instructor." Officially, she was Shapley's "technical assistant." When Shapley approached the dean and president of Harvard to have that changed, both refused. The president, Abbot Lawrence Lowell, said that Miss Payne “would never have a position in the University as long as he was alive."

Roadblock after roadblock simply because she was a woman

The biases against Payne-Gaposhckin as a woman stymied her again and again, but she persevered in her life's work. She technically earned the first Ph.D. in astronomy at Harvard, but it was officially awarded by Radcliffe, the women's college because Harvard's physics department chair refused to accept a woman candidate. She was paid poorly for her work and wasn't given any titles or positions that a man of her ability and qualifications would have been given. When Shapley launched the full department of astronomy at Harvard, he wanted Payne-Gaposchkin—his best researcher—to serve as its first chair, but he knew Lowell wouldn't allow it, so she was passed over for a male astronomer.

Despite teaching and researching, writing books and hundreds of papers, it would be three decades before Payne-Gaposchkin's contributions to astrophysics were recognized. She basically had to wait for the men with strong anti-woman biases to step down or retire and for men who saw and honored her brilliance to give her the recognition she had rightfully earned.

Finally a full professor and department chair

On June 21, 1956, The New York Times reported, “Harvard University announced today the appointment of Dr. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin as Professor of Astronomy. She is the first woman to attain full professorship at Harvard through regular faculty promotion.” A few months later, she also became the first woman to head a department at Harvard as she became chair of the astronomy department. And a few years later, in 1960, distinguished astronomer Otto Struve referred to Payne-Gaposchkin's Stellar Atmospheres as “the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.”

closeup of the sun The sun and other stars are primarily made of hydrogen and helium.Photo credit: Canva

Perhaps most impressive is that, through all of her hard work and continuous road blocks due to her gender, Payne-Gaposchkin managed to marry a fellow astronomer and raise three children. As physicist and author Sidney Perkowitz writes in Physics World writes in Physics World:

"In some sense, one might say she 'had it all' in combining science with family and children, but getting there was unnecessarily difficult and gruelling because of bias against women. She became a full professor only at age 56, much later than a man with similar achievements would have reached that status, and after being passed over for advancement, which must have taken a psychological toll. Only a person with exceptional drive and persistence, along with scientific ability, could have endured until final recognition."

In 1976, three years before she died, the American Astronomical Society awarded Payne-Gaposchkin the prestigious Henry Norris Russell Prize. In her acceptance lecture, she said, “The reward of the young scientist is the emotional thrill of being the first person in the history of the world to see something or to understand something.”

Thank you, Dr. Payne-Gaposchkin, for not only being the first person on Earth to see what stars are made of, but for doing so in the face of all the obstacles unnecessarily placed in your path.

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Education

A teen student delivered a masterclass on the true history of the Confederate flag

Christopher Justice broke it down into incredible details most of us probably weren't even aware of.

SM East/YouTube

Christopher Justice schools his classmates.

Six years ago, a high school student named Christopher Justice eloquently explained the multiple problems with flying the Confederate flag. A video clip of Justice's truth bomb has made the viral rounds a few times since then, and here it is once again getting the attention it deserves.

Justice doesn't just explain why the flag is seen as a symbol of racism. He also explains the history of when the flag originated and why flying a Confederate flag makes no sense for people who claim to be loyal Americans.

This high school student, Christopher Justice, does a great job at explaining the Confederate flag and its problems.pic.twitter.com/CcOXHCB8GQ
— \ud835\udc0b\ud835\udc1a\ud835\udc27\ud835\udc1c\ud835\udc1e \ud83c\udff3\ufe0f\u200d\ud83c\udf08 (@\ud835\udc0b\ud835\udc1a\ud835\udc27\ud835\udc1c\ud835\udc1e \ud83c\udff3\ufe0f\u200d\ud83c\udf08) 1628088843

But that clip, as great as it is, is a small part of the whole story. Knowing how the discussion came about and seeing the full debate in context is even more impressive.

In 2015, a student at Shawnee Mission East High School outside of Kansas City came up with the idea to have student journalists document students engaging in open discussions about various topics. In support of this idea, history teacher David Muhammad helped arrange a debate about the use of the Confederate flag in American society in his classroom.

According to the Shawnee Mission Post, Muhammad had prepared a basic outline and some basic guiding questions for the discussion, but mainly let the students debate freely. The result was one of the most interesting debates about the Confederate flag you'll ever see—one that both reflects the perspectives in American society at large and serves as an example of how to hold a respectful conversation on a controversial topic.

The full discussion is definitely worth a watch. Justice had quite a few Confederacy defenders to contend with, and he skillfully responded to each point with facts and logic. Other students also chimed in, and the discussion is wildly familiar to anyone who has engaged in debate on this topic. For his part, Mr. Muhammad did an excellent job of guiding the students through the debate.

"I had Chris in class, so I knew he was super intelligent and that he read a lot," Muhammad told the Shawnee Mission Post in 2018. "But that really came out of left-field. He was never out there very much socially, so I didn't expect for him to want to speak in front of a crowd like that."

(In case you're wondering, according to his LinkedIn, Christopher Justice graduated from Wichita State University in 2023 with a BS in Political Science and Government. David Muhammad is now Dean of Students at the Barstow School as well as Co-Director of Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity.)

Thanks, SM East, for documenting and sharing such a great discussion.

This article originally appeared three years ago.

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History (Education)

Gen Xers and Boomers share things that used to be 'normal' but are 'boundary crossing' today

Birthday spankings, school paddlings and more.

Photo by lil artsy/Pexels

People used to just light up wherever and whenever they pleased.

How many times have you looked back to things you thought were "normal" from your childhood and thought "Huh, that was actually kinda weird in hindsight"? Times change, and what's considered "normal and acceptable" change with them. That's not automatically good or bad, necessarily, but hopefully humanity is evolving such that we learn from our mistakes and recognize room for improvement.

In that vein, someone asked Gen Xers and Boomers on Reddit, "What are some things that would be considered rude or boundary crossing today but were perfectly normal and acceptable when you were growing up?" and the answers reveal how much has shifted in the past handful of decades.

If you're over 40, enjoy this slightly disturbing trip down memory lane. If you're under 40, yes, all of these things really happened on a regular basis.

Scolding other people's kids (even strangers)

Raising a child was seen as more of a community effort than it is today, which resulted in perfect strangers doling out discipline.

"Scolding someone else's child. I remember getting corrected by strangers."

via GIPHY

"Those were the lessons that stuck the most too for me. When a family friend or stranger corrected me I knew without doubt I done f'd up. I didn't like the trend during the late 80's into 90's of everyone telling each other to mind their own business and not correct a child that wasn't theirs ~ horrible logic that I feel totally contributed to where we are at today with nobody considering other peoples opinions on things."

"OMG yes! in my neighborhood, whoever's house you were at, if you acted up, their mom was expected to let you know, and even send you home! it's just how things were."

"Kids were basically community property."

Showing up or dropping by unannounced

Before cell phones, people didn't always call or text before going to someone's house. Company could just show up at any time. People had snacks on hand specifically for unexpected guests. It was a thing.

"Possibly stopping in at a friend’s house unannounced. That used to be fairly common when everyone didn’t have a phone in his or her pocket."

"You never knew who, or how many, would show up at our house on a Friday night for a game of penny ante poker or Yahtzee in the 60's and 70's."

"I do miss that. We always had extra snacks for guests available because we never knew when someone might just show up."

via GIPHY

"We always had a Pepperidge Farms Coconut cake in the freezer. My mother would take it out to thaw as soon as company showed up."

"A corollary of this was that you were also expected to have your clothes on and be somewhat presentable while you were at home, since you never know who would be dropping by."

"Hell, me and my friends would just walk into each other's house like we lived there. None of the parents seemed to mind either. I often ended up eating meals at their homes and them at mine."

Birthday spankings

Okay, yeah, this one is weird. It was a tradition to get a spanking for every year of your life on your birthday, and it wasn't even just parents who did this. Teachers, your parents' friends, etc.

"All my parents' friends used to give me a spanking for each year on my birthday. Does anyone else remember this? Birthday spankings? So weird."

"And a pinch to grow an inch."

"My 4th grade teacher did this to all of us in front of the whole class. She ended it with a "pinch to grow on" and literally pinched our butts. This was around 2001 in Indianapolis. I don't recall anyone ever having an issue with it at the time, but looking back it was definitely odd. She was a great teacher and I have nothing bad to say about her at all. It was just a different time."

via GIPHY

"Yessssss! I'm in MD and was in elementary school in the 80's. If it was our birthday we would pick another kid to spank us in front of the whole grade, so if turning 9 you would get 9 smacks on your butt and all the kids would shout "ONE! TWO!..." 😂😂😂😂 I can't imagine that happening now!"

"Oh god! In a school club we would all line up and the birthday girl to crawl between all our legs as we spanked her on birthdays. What a crazy tradition!"

"The spanking machine! Kids would line up in a row, legs open, and you would crawl through, while kids slapped your butt. Sometimes singing 'today is spankin’ day!'"

Actual spankings. With a paddle. At school.

School principals, vice principals and sometimes teachers kept a paddle at their desk, which would be used to whack kids who misbehaved. Corporal punishment was the gold standard for behavior modification. Hacking, whacking, paddling—so any names for this woefully outdated practice.

"The big paddle that one of the teachers would possess that would be used on your hind quarters at their whim. No parent permission needed."

"The (completely backward) school I attended in 7th grade in 1999-2000 still spanked kids. My math teacher spanked a kid in class at least once a week. This was the deep south and very different from other schools I went to, it was quite the culture shock."

via GIPHY

"I would get the paddle or else my desk kicked over while I was in it, my head would hit that floor HARD! I don’t know which was worse."

"In 1987 my mom walked me into the school office and told everyone including the principle that under NO circumstances is anyone to paddle or spank me for discipline and if I misbehaved they were to simply call her about it. Their jaws dropped. That would not have happened anyways because I was a very well behaved and respectful child."

"I definitely got the big paddle in the vice principal's office."

Smoking indoors everywhere

It's impossible to explain to young people today how ubiquitous smoking used to be. Like, it was considered rude not to have ashtrays in your home. High schools had smoking areas. Restaurants, airplanes, waiting rooms—people smoked everywhere.

"I can recall the nurses at the triage in the hospital in my home town, smoking away while working. The 80s man, crazy time."

"I was born in 82, there’s a picture of my mother holding me shortly after I was born, laying in a hospital bed, and on her bedside table is a pack of reds and an ashtray."

via GIPHY

"And on airplanes and trains. I remember riding the L in Chicago with people smoking on the cars."

"Smoking in class at college."

"Smoking in grocery stores and putting out butts on the floor.

Teachers with ash trays on their desks smoking during class."

"My parents didn't smoke, but they (1970s) kept a guest ashtray in the house in case a visitor wanted to light up. Complained endlessly about the smoke smell once the person was gone, but it would have been rude to tell them to take it outside or wait."

Sexual harassment

Not that this was ever normal or acceptable, but it was tolerated to a disturbing level.

"Until Anita Hill, I had never even heard the term Sexual Harassment. I literally had no idea it was a thing. You were female, you were employed, men could make insistent advances with zero repercussions. One of my co-workers finally slept with the boss just to try to get him to leave her alone. This was NORMAL. We expected it to happen and accepted that it would, we just had to deal with it."

via GIPHY

"I was told to lighten up because it was a compliment."

" I got my first job in 1973 when I was 15. I worked in the restaurant business and waited tables all through college. It was pervasive and customers (men) would say many unwanted things as well. My first adult job was selling pharmaceuticals in 1984 and the first thing my regional manager told me during orientation was if a doctor did or said anything inappropriate handle it anyway you saw fit and then call and tell me about. He made it clear we didn’t have to put up with any BS and were free to slap anyone if we needed to. By the nineties sexual harassment wasn’t gone but was getting called out in a big way. Until there was a name for sexual harassment we knew we were uncomfortable but didn’t really have a way to express it in a meaningful and united manner."

"My friends and I were grabbed constantly in middle school by boys in early 90s. It never occurred to us to tell anyone and I honestly don’t think they would have cared. We just shared our shame amongst ourselves."

"Men would randomly grab and touch women all the time when I was growing up. Boomers were the worst about it, but I’m GenX and even we had it somewhat normalized. We’d gotten a clue that it wasn’t great, but we hadn’t yet realized it was actually sexual assault when someone would fondle your butt or breasts unbidden. Or when someone would grab you and kiss you. If you complained you were told to lighten up."

The drastic policing of what women wore under their clothes

Imagine having all the girls line up in gym class while the teacher runs his finger down each girl's back to make sure she was wearing a bra. Imagine it being unheard of to not wear pantyhose and show bare skin on your legs while wearing a skirt. We still police what women and girls wear in some places, but it's not as bad as it used to be.

"I’ve been told that women were expected to wear 'foundation garments' at work, and if they didn’t, then they might get reprimanded. I’m talking about longline bras and girdles."

via GIPHY

"In the 80s, one of my friends got sent to the office for not wearing a bra to high school."

"Until 1999, I was required to wear pantyhose at work. Nuts! And they dictated 'suntan' color!"

"Not sure what I spent more $ on - pantyhose or clear nail polish to stop the runs."

"I remember being a kid in the 90s my mom going from store to store looking for slips to put under my dresses, she had a whole section of her closet devoted to them. I hated them and didn't understand their purpose. Still don't. I'm so glad those are in the past."

People shared other things as well, such as how common it was to touch total strangers or to cut through people's yards to get to where you were going, and it's a wild ride through shifting social norms. Some things are definitely best left in the past, but some lend themselves to a stronger sense of community and might be worth revisiting. It does make you wonder what things from today will show up on a list like this decades from now.

You can see more on the r/AskOldPeople thread here.

This article originally appeared in September.

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Ever heard of 'The Tiffany Problem'? Why people think historically accurate things are wrong.

It's a strange but real dilemma for storytellers.

Ali Shaker/VOA, Tylwyth Eldar /Wikimedia Commons

The name Tiffany goes way back to Tiphaine Raguenel, who lived in Mont Saint Michel in the 1300s.

Depending on what generation you belong to, when you hear the name Tiffany, you might think of the famous jewelry store, the teen singer from the 80s or the less-in-the-spotlight daughter of the former president. Most likely, you don't think of a woman who lived in the Middle Ages.

In fact, if you were listening to an audiobook set in medieval times and the narrator introduced a character named Tiffany, you'd probably get yanked right out of the story as your brain would say, "Wait, why is there a Tiffany in this story? Isn't that a much more modern name?"

It's actually not, which is exactly why The Tiffany Problem is called The Tiffany Problem.

The Tiffany Problem refers to the fact that people in modern times will sometimes see something as anachronistic when it's not. It's something writers, filmmakers and other storytellers have to be aware of, as it can feel like there's a historical problem even if there isn't an actual historical problem.

Abraham Piper explains the dilemma and how it was coined:

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As Piper shares, fantasy author Jo Walton coined the term "The Tiffany Problem" and explained it:

"Your readers are modern people and know what they know, which is fine except when what they know isn’t actually right. For instance, the name Tiffany sounds extremely modern to us. It feels jarring when we read it as a character name in a historical setting, where we’d be quite happy with names like Anna and Jane. But our instinct is wrong, because Tiffany is a form of Theophania, and it was fairly common in medieval England and France. It went out of fashion later, and it’s because we don’t have seventeenth to nineteenth century examples that it feels modern. But you still can’t use it in a fantasy novel set in the exact time and place when the name would have been historically accurate, because it will jerk the reader out of their reading trance. They know it’s wrong and you can’t tell them that what they know is wrong."

Piper had also shared that "ha ha," which seems like a casual, modern colloquialism, is actually very old, with the first known use coming from a monk 1,000 years ago. He also mentions "OMG," which was used by a World War I admiral in a letter to Winston Churchill in 1917. And "hubby" as a slang term for husband? That goes way back to the 1680s. Who knew?

It's a bit ironic that writers who strive to ensure their historical fiction works are historically accurate can find themselves stymied by people being just flat-out wrong about what's accurate and what's not. Humans are interesting creatures, aren't we?

For more info about the name Tiffany than you ever thought you wanted to know but will be delighted to learn, CGP Grey created a whole video about the name that has 4.7 million views. Tiffany exploded the 1980s, but CGP Grey goes all the way back to the year 300 to uncover the origins of the name. It's genuinely entertaining. Watch:

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

If you're still here and want to take an even deeper dive into the history of Tiffany, this other video from CGP Grey is an incredible rabbit hole that will make you appreciate the work historians do and marvel at how much digging Grey actually did to provide the original Tiffany history video. We're talking trips to the deep dark corners of The British Library, the largest library in the world, and hours and hours of paging through books just to find the original source of this one poem that includes the name "Tiffany." It's a journey, but a fascinating one.

Enjoy "Someone Dead Ruined My Life… Again":

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

This article originally appeared in August

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