By Ben Marks — In 1849, when word reached Ohio that gold had been discovered the year before in California, there was little to keep a young ship captain named Matthew Turner (1825-1909) close to the family homestead on the shores of Lake Erie. Eight years earlier, when Turner was just 16, his 36-year-old mother was taken by illness; in 1849, when Turner was a 24-year-old newlywed, his bride died, too. And so, in the winter of 1850, Turner bid adieu to his father, brother, and sisters and caught a...

Attack of the Vintage Toy Robots! Justin Pinchot on Japan’s Coolest Postwar Export

By Lisa Hix — Everyone is always looking for the next big thing. In the 1960s, it was going into space. In the '40s and '50s, the frontier was technology, with a particular focus on "What's going to make our lives easier?" For the very first time, you had cars with automatic-transmissions, automatic washing machines, and perpetually cooling refrigerators. I mean, we were coming out of an era when you scrubbed your clothes on a washboard and cooled your icebox with a big block of ice. Even the first...