history

Consumerist

• civil war

  Walmart Vs. Historians In Battle Over Civil War Site

  Historians and conservationists have united in Virginia against a common foe: Walmart, which wants to build a 38,000-square-foot Supercenter near near Wilderness Battlefield, a Civil War site and National Park. The groups filed a suit on Wednesday charging local officials with brushing aside concerns about the site when they approved Walmart's plans in August. More »

  9:44 AM on Thu Sep 24 2009
  By Marc Perton
  4,902 views, 93 comments

  Most discussed punkrawka: Northern Virginian here to say that this is ridiculous. NEAR a site does not equal ON a site, especially more »

• credit limits

  Does Living In California Make You A Higher Credit Risk?

  Paul Smith, who lives in San Diego and has a credit score of 751, had his HSBC credit card limit lowered from $7,000 to $1,400 recently for mysterious reasons. He called HSBC to find out why. More »

  10:10 AM on Mon Sep 21 2009
  By Chris Walters
  5,729 views, 31 comments

• spy on yourself

  Seven Free Sites To Track Your Personal Information

  The Consumer Reports Money Adviser has compiled a great list of sites that store your personal information and will provide free copies of their reports to you if you ask. More »

  4:27 PM on Mon Sep 14 2009
  By Alex Chasick
  18,478 views, 28 comments

• target marketing

  A Brief History of Ads Targeting African Americans

  Slate has posted a slideshow documenting ads since the 1970s, when corporations starting heavily targeting African-American consumers. Check it out.

  1:36 PM on Sat Aug 22 2009
  By Carrie McLaren
  11,574 views, 135 comments

• consumer culture

  Top 10 Ironic Ads From History

  Remember when you could buy barbiturates for the baby? Cover your house with asbestos? Or get heroin from the doctor? Okay, probably not, but thanks to the immortal beauty of advertising, you can take a trip back in time. Here's our pick of some of the most ironic ads in American history.
  More »

  

  12:07 PM on Thu Jul 2 2009
  By McLaren and Torchinsky
  239,946 views, 154 comments

  Most discussed Cant_stop_the_rock: Believe it or not, I don't think I'm ready to laugh about the World Trade Center attacks just yet. more »

• new yorker

  Old New Yorker Ad: Our Readers Are So Rich, They STILL Have Slaves

  While perusing old advertising trade journals, I came across this ad for the New Yorker. You win if you can correctly answer what the message is here: New Yorker readers are under-exercised fat cats? That blackface was more common in hotels than we ever thought? That retail stores once secretly conspired with the New Yorker's ad department to divulge customers' sales histories? More »

  1:50 PM on Fri Jun 26 2009
  By McLaren and Torchinsky
  11,126 views, 41 comments

  Most discussed thebluepill: Some things are probably better left buried in the past.. No one (in their right mind) is proud of those days more »

• credit cards

  A Visual History Of Credit Cards From 1951-Today

  Credit cards weren't always the adorable little pocket debt machines that they are today. They weren't even plastic until AmEx decided to class things up in 1959. Travel back to the good old days when credit cards were a "ticket for anyone to spend freely and decide when was best to pay it back" with this revealing photo set from Slate.

  A visual history of the credit card. [The Big Money]

  8:00 AM on Sun Jun 7 2009
  By Carey Alexander
  13,396 views, 70 comments

  Most discussed henwy: "People are picking out a card because they can have a picture of a cat on it rather than looking more »

• history

  Robert Duvall Is Not Cool With Building A Walmart Near A Civil War Battlefield

  Robert Duvall, a descendant of Robert E. Lee, is really just not cool with Walmart's plans to build a Supercenter near the site of an important Civil War battle. More »

  11:54 AM on Tue May 5 2009
  By Meg Marco
  11,189 views, 87 comments

• credit

  General Motors' Greatest Innovation? Not Cars, Credit

  Sorry to disappoint all of you who think that the two-person Segway is the most innovative thing GM has produced in its long history — it seems that the company's most important new idea was consumer credit. More specifically, convincing a nation of thrifty debt-averse tightwads that taking on debt was socially acceptable. Yes, it's true. We weren't always a bunch of debt junkies. More »

  1:10 PM on Mon Apr 20 2009
  By Meg Marco
  9,742 views, 44 comments

  Most discussed T Axel Jones: Rule #3 - Finance through your bank or a credit union, not the same guys trying to sell you the more »

• target

  Animation: Target's Spread Across The U.S.

  Last summer, we highlighted an ominous-looking animation that traced the spread of Walmart stores across the American landscape over the past 5 decades. Now the same guy behind that map has put together a new one, this time tracing Target's growth. More »

  11:36 AM on Mon Feb 23 2009
  By Chris Walters
  21,116 views, 74 comments

  Most discussed T Axel Jones: Why is Target "better" than Wal-Mart exactly? Aren't they both pretty much local business destroying multi-national corporations that sell low more »

• badvertising

  Old Cigarette Ads: Doctors, Nurses, And Rock Hudson Say It's Good For You

  Man, cigarettes were awesome in the past, if these old ads collected by Stanford University are to be believed. They calmed your nerves so you'd stop humming nervously! They soothed your throat! They made you a movie star and helped you capture animals on your big game hunt! We don't know what tobacco was made of before the mid-80s, but no wonder everyone smoked. More »

  5:20 PM on Fri Oct 10 2008
  By Chris Walters
  10,014 views, 62 comments

  Most discussed Corporate-Shill: My City has a smoking Ban. Life if good. more »

• advertising

  These Old Ads Remind You To Drug Children And The Elderly

  Sometimes gentleness is required of your toddler. Sometimes ill-tempered old folks get too agitated and threaten you with canes. That's why sometimes the best solution is a good old fashioned thorazine pill, or a barbiturate elixir. Weirdomatic has a collection of bizarre ads like these from the past. Our favorite, aside from the drug ads, is the one showing Olympian speed skater Jack Shea taking a break from his skating to enjoy the rejuvenating effects of a Camel cigarette. So that's how Phelps did it. More »

  12:18 PM on Tue Sep 9 2008
  By Chris Walters
  7,650 views, 26 comments

  Most discussed MayorBee: These girls look like this guy+ Watch video You really have to watch the whole video to get the full effect. more »

• run on the bank

  What Does A Bank Run Look Like In 2008? A Lot Like 1912.

  The FDIC was created in 1933 by the Glass-Steagall Act, and provides $100,000 of deposit insurance to checking and savings deposits. "Bank panics" used to be fairly common, and the FDIC was intended to instill confidence in the banking system after the Great Depression. The most recent big failure, that of California bank IndyMac, will cost the FDIC between $4 and $8 billion, and they estimate that about $1 billion of IndyMac's deposits are "potentially uninsured," meaning that the depositors had more than $100,000 on deposit. So what does a bank run look like these days? More »

  8:38 AM on Thu Jul 17 2008
  By Meg Marco
  14,260 views, 104 comments

  Latest by SOhp101: And just as an addenum, I think my previous comment shows more than enough reason why I don't consider him more »

• news from the swamp

  Senate Committee Votes To Rollback FCC's Media Consolidation Plan

  Poor Kevin Martin. The Senate is well on its way towards killing his proposal to let newspapers get all freaky and consolidate with television and radio stations. Martin shouldn't be too surprised: this is exactly what happened the last time a FCC Chairman tried to ram media consolidation down our throats. More »

  9:20 AM on Sat Apr 26 2008
  By Carey Alexander
  1,287 views, 6 comments

  Latest by bobblack555: Aww - Bush vetoing a bill that protects the public in order to bolster big businesses? That's a surprise. What an asshole. more »

• prepaid

  AT&T Won't Sell Man GoPhone Because It Can't Verify His Credit History

  Nathan's been having trouble this week buying a prepaid GoPhone from AT&T Mobility's website. He finally found out the reason: they couldn't verify his credit history. This is confusing because it's a prepaid GoPhone and because his credit history is superb. "Cheryl refused to transfer me. I asked her if she was in any way motivated to find out what was wrong with their system and help me, and, to her credit, she answered honestly with a simple 'no.'" More »

  8:58 PM on Fri Mar 28 2008
  By Chris Walters
  10,960 views, 65 comments

  Latest by ConsequencesIX: Terrorists use Tracphones, they don't call wireless companies and try to set up accounts. more »

• The Boston Globe profiles the last remaining shoe and boot maker in New England, Alden Shoes. The company's classic footwear has been worn by the likes of John F. Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Indiana Jones... and the Massachusetts state troopers. The shoes will set you back about $350-$500 a pair, but they seem like awfully nice people. "Our shoes don't wear out," says Robert Clark, Alden's vice president. [Boston Globe]

  18 comments

• labels

  Nobody Knows What This Pillow Is Made Of

  I had a pillow that says 'contains textiles of 100% unknown kind' on that tag that says 'Do not remove under penalty of law'. Kind of defeats the purpose of the tag, and I'm wondering what is in my pillow. Used underpants? Human hair? It does say 'all new materials' but that might just be 'new to me.'

  UPDATE: Here Is What This Pillow Is Made Of More »

  10:15 PM on Sat Jan 12 2008
  By Carey Alexander
  59,930 views, 49 comments

  Latest by liptoss: Don't laugh, years ago when my parents bought me a metal toy car... no not the cast Hot Wheels type, more »

• great moments

  January 1st, 1808: Slave Importation Banned In US

  Considering we spend a good deal of time focusing on legislation that protects consumers and/or (usually or) businesses, we thought it appropriate to point out one of the big historical moments of trade law, not to mention human rights—tomorrow marks the "200th anniversary of Jan. 1, 1808, when the importation of slaves into the United States was prohibited." Hey, it didn't stop the madness, but at least it was a start. More »

  6:06 PM on Mon Dec 31 2007
  By Chris Walters
  6,656 views, 41 comments

  Latest by nardo218: Meh. Children of slaves were still born into slavery. more »

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