“Left foot . . . red, right hand . . . yellow”. These familiar words echoed through houses throughout the 60s as children of all…
Browsing: Fads
The Unisex fashion movement largely came and went in one year: 1968. The trend began on the Paris runways, where designers like Pierre Cardin, Andre…
When it happened we can’t say . . . fer sure – All of a sudden everything the ‘Vals’ did or said was blown out…
British furniture maker John Wade began producing products for the textile and wool spinning industries and manufacturing bottles for Staffordshire’s beer breweries in 1810. In…
The technology behind the Sony Walkman – a portable personal device for listening to cassettes – might never have developed without Sony Chairman Akio Morita. Seeking…
In 1968, Charles Prior Hall, a furniture designer in California decided to create the world’s most comfortable chair. Taking his cue from the very popular…
It all began when the producers of the two-year-old Dallas devised a cliff-hanger ending to their popular super soap. “Who shot J R Ewing?” was a…
For eight years, if you were into Northern Soul, there was only one place you wanted to go: Wigan Casino. At 2.00 am on Sunday…
While the first-wave feminism of the 19th and early 20th centuries focused on women’s legal rights, especially the right to vote, the second-wave feminism of…
Brothers Donald and James Herzog developed Wooly Willy in 1955 while working at their father’s toy factory (the Smethport Specialty Company in Smethport, Pennsylvania). The…
World Cup Willie, a roguish little lion with a Union Jack jersey, emerged as one of the leading personalities of the 1966 World Cup competition.…
X-Ray Spex came about in 1964 when Harold von Braunhut (the mastermind behind Sea Monkeys) repackaged an optical effect made popular by a device called…
In addition to debating whether 2000 or 2001 would mark the “real” beginning of the new millennium, the Western World pondered the effect the Y2K…
A playground favourite for millions of schoolchildren the world over, the Yo-Yo is actually, according to some historians, one of the oldest toys around. Museums…
What rich 1980s white-collar workers were called in the decade when the western world revelled in unapologetic materialism. Yuppies (an acronym for “Young Urban Professionals”)…