After reading about today's unveiling of the old Clifton's Cafeteria facade in downtown Los Angeles, I thought I'd share this photo from the amazing book Orange Roofs, Golden Arches by Philip Langdon. 

There were actually six cafeterias opened by Clifford E. Clinton, starting with his first in downtown Los Angeles in 1931 (Clifton's is an amalgam of his first and last names).

The Clifton's Cafeteria pictured above is the "Pacific Seas" themed Clifton's, which was opened after Clinton's 1939 vacation in Hawaii. Clinton returned to Los Angeles with the idea for a tropical paradise themed restaurant. It was located at 618 S. Olive Street in Los Angeles but sadly closed its doors on June 17, 1960. A photo of the interior of the cafeteria is below.

The Clifton's that remains in downtown Los Angeles was purchased by a new owner in 2010 and is currently undergoing renovations.

The ad touts Profile Bread as a way for women to control their appetites:

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Profile Bread is being gobbled up so fast, your grocer may be sold out -- so place an order to be sure you get this wonderful new kind of bread or shop early before the mobs have taken it all away.

January 15, 1952 ice melting contest at the Los Angeles airport (USC Libraries)

This morning I found these photos of two people participating in what the USC Libraries describes as an "ice melting contest." Wondering what the hell an ice melting contest was, I did a little digging.

Apparently in January of 1952 four cities in the American Southwest squared off to determine who had the most sunshine. The cities of Carlsbad, New Mexico; Phoenix, Arizona; El Paso, Texas and Los Angeles, California all agreed to put out a one-ton block of ice. Whichever city's ice melted first was to be declared the winner.

Well, as you can see from these photos, Los Angeles was hit with rain. And though the rain seemed to do the trick in helping to melt the ice, it disqualified Los Angeles from the contest.

January 15, 1952 ice melting contest at the Los Angeles airport (USC Libraries)

The woman in the photo is French actress Corinne Calvet, who was in a string of films in the 1950s like What Price Glory? and The Far Country. 

The man on the right is A. K. Showalter, a meteorologist who according to his obituary in the L.A. Times, "apologized in verse" for inaccurate weather forecasts. A July 5, 1953 story in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune quoted Showalter as saying that Los Angeles was the worst city in the country to be a weatherman. "The less weather you have, the more likely it is to affect people," he said.

January 15, 1952 ice melting contest at the Los Angeles airport (USC Libraries)

According to the January 17, 1952 issue of the El Paso Herald-Post, El Paso was the eventual winner of the ice melting contest when its ice melted in 36 hours, 41 minutes and 52 seconds, beating Carlsbad by 5 hours and 12 minutes.

The funny twist to all of this is that cities in the Southeast wanted in on the action, but were told to stick it where the sun was not, in fact, shining. Apparently Galveston and Corpus Christi in Texas, as well as St. Petersburg, New Smyrna Beach and Sebring in Florida wanted to participate.

But Frank Kindel, the manager of the Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce who came up with the ice melting stunt said that those cities couldn't play because they weren't in the Southwest. Kindel said that the cities were "swampy jungle towns" and was quoted as saying "we were testing sunshine, not steam heat from swamps."

This, as you can imagine, didn't go over well in the Southeast. The excerpt below is from the January 17, 1952 El Paso Herald-Post.

C.E. McCleland, editor of the Galveston News, was shocked when he heard his town classified as a "swampy, jungle town" by Mr. Kindel.

Mr. McClelland challenged Mr. Kindel to a duel with ice tongs at 50 paces.

"Let's make it ice picks," Mr. Kindel said.

[UPDATE: To be clear, Mark Twain was a rather notorious believer in infinite copyright. Just read his testimony for yourself, as linked below.]

Mark Twain testified before Congress in 1906. The bill he was testifying about was to extend the term of copyright in the United States to the life of the author plus fifty years. He said that this would satisfy any reasonable author because it would satisfy his own children. "Let the grandchildren take care of themselves," he said. An excerpt from his testimony is below.

My copyrights produce to me annually a good deal more money than I have any use for. But those children of mine have use for that. I can take care of myself as long as I live. I know half a dozen trades, and I can invent a half a dozen more. I can get along. But I like the fifty years' extension, because that benefits my two daughters, who are not as competent to earn a living as I am, because I have carefully raised them as young ladies, who don't know anything and can't do anything. So I hope Congress will extend to them that charity which they have failed to get from me.

This story about talking watches appeared in an 1895 issue of the Dutch journal De Natuur and was found in the book Victorian Inventions.

In the first reports on the phonograph invented by Edison in 1877, it was remarked that it would now be possible to produce timepieces capable of calling out the hours instead of indicating them by chimes. Instead of giving twelve successive peals or even saying 'cuckoo' twelve times in succession, the clock would call 'twelve o'clock,' 'quarter past twelve' and 'half past twelve,' etc. at the appropriate moments of the day.

Mr Sivan, a watchmaker of Geneva, appears to have succeeded in giving this temporary power of speech to an ordinary pocket-watch. It contains a phonograph disc made of vulcanised rubber having forty-eight grooves which correspond to the twelve hours and thirty-six quarters. If the button -- which is similar to that of a repeating-watch -- is pressed, the rubber disc starts rotating and a stylus, following the mounds and dales of the grooves, starts vibrating. It then transfers these vibrations to a membrane which converts them into sounds: 'twelve o'clock,' 'quarter past twelve,' and 'half past twelve' and so on, says the watch, reproducing the human voice.

A device such as this can be fitted to any clock. Indeed, Sivan has already manufactured alarm-clocks containing a talking disc which, at a specific time, calls out: 'Wake up!,' 'Get up!,' or, 'It is now time to get up!'

[UPDATE: I obviously read the story wrong initially. It's just The Outer Space Connection, not Chariot of the Gods? that cites that date.]

From the December 24, 1968 Delaware County Daily Times (Chester, PA):

SPACE AGE SANTA -- Art students at Indian Lane Junior High School, Middletown, man a computer to help Santa Claus decide who's been band and who's been good. The eighth and ninth grade students and their instructor, Ronald Beasom, built the computer as part of the school's annual Christmas lobby decorations. The students are Tony James, 13, of Media (left) and Pete Byar, 14, of Middletown.

Mitt Romney is getting some flak for his use of the phrase, "Keep America American." Out of curiosity, I did a little search to find the earliest use of the phrase. The excerpt below, quoting Jack Kirby Jr., is from the May 20, 1909 New York Times. Some blogs point to the fact that the KKK used the phrase in the 1920s, but Kirby Jr.'s anti-union message in 1909 appears to be more in line with Romney's intent.

The article was titled "Kirby Challenges Unionism" and is quoting John Kirby, Jr. of the Dayton Manufacturing Company in Dayton, Ohio after he had just been elected President of the National Association of Manufacturers.

"The Labor question involves a great principle, which should not be fooled with if we are going to keep America American. The life of the American Federation of Labor is hanging by a thread, but by a well-devised plan they are seeking the aid of the women's clubs and every philanthropic and religious organization they can stick their wicked heads into to sow the seeds of socialism and anarchy."