All Blog Posts
The World as it Could Be – Part One
May 10, 2012
By Brie Kishel, Contributor It is a topic that is hard to ignore. Not only because it has been prominent on television and in the newspaper, but because of the vast influence of social networking sites within the past decade. Bullying has escalated from being a social injustice that took place mainly on the playground or in graffiti written on the bathroom stall to cyber bullying, a new form of attack which provides an arena for a bully to publicly humiliate their victim to thousands of bystan…
Kryptonite
April 19, 2012
By Douglas Platt, Museum Curator We all probably have a weakness, a soft-spot or Achilles’ heel; something that renders us vulnerable ….it’s our kryptonite. Even Superman, who could change the course of mighty rivers and bend steel in his bare hands, has his….well, kryptonite. The Museum’s collection contains “The Super-Panhandler of Metropolis” (Action Comics No. 396 -1971) which has a futuristic “1990s” storyline that features Superman/Clark Kent “powerless in a wheelchair” and hounded by g…
Home Run for William “Dummy” Hoy
March 8, 2012
By Reid Dunlavey, Contributor
With Major League Baseball clubs reporting for spring training it got me thinking again about William “Dummy” Hoy (1862-1961). He was a baseball player who was deaf and played in four different major leagues from 1886 until 1902. He had a stint with the Cincinnati Reds and a year in Buffalo, New York playing with Hall of Fame catcher Connie Mack.
Some credit Hoy with the development of hand signals for safe and out calls because he couldn’t hear w…
Comics Enter The Fight Against Polio Part 2
January 13, 2012
By David LoTempio, Contributor (With assistance from Steven Bennett for additional research) The 1940s were a dangerous and nervous time in America, and not just because of World War II. The nation experienced cyclical and increasingly widespread epidemics of polio during this period. While most people exposed to the virus would fully recover, the disease’s dramatic ability to paralyze or kill the infected left a profound fear through the country. The National Foundation for Infantile Paralys…
Comics Enter the Fight Against Polio
November 9, 2011
By David LoTempio, Contributor (All images researched and provided by Steven Bennett) Polio—scourge of children and microscopic hidden enemy of parents—was a frequent national health issue in America through the first 50 years of the twentieth century. The virus killed 2000 children in New York City alone during the 1916 epidemic and left thousands more paralyzed across the United States. Epidemics during the summer were an annual event. In response to the epidemics plaguing the country, Pre…