yesterwire.comBack to search

On the date

Friday, May 2, 1902

From the day

Perspective: The Future Historian · Tactile

I brush the dust from my heavy wool waistcoat, feeling the coarse weave beneath my fingertips as I whistle "Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home." The melody feels jarringly jaunty against the morning headlines of the Bengal devastation, where bodies were tossed like scrap paper into the sky. Gadzooks, the fragile tactile reality of this century is haunting; I find myself clutching a plush, mohair-stuffed Teddy Bear just to ground myself in something solid. It is a strange, soft comfort in an era where the air is beginning to be manufactured by machines and the truth is finally being measured by wires.

Memories from that day

No memories yet. Add yours if you remember this day.

The Headlines

GREAT TORNADO IN INDIA; Four Hundred and Sixteen Persons Killed in Bengal. Dacca and Adjoining Towns Devastated -- People Carried Into the Air Like Paper.

Read in The New York Times →

Best-selling Sheet Music

Bill Bailey, Won't You Please Come Home

Hughie Cannon

The must-have

Teddy Bear

Slang

Slang of the decade

General

bullyfit as a fiddleblockhead

Aristocrat

capitalmy wordbally

Working Class

gadzooksblimeychump

Catchphrases of 1902

  • Teddy Bear

Tech Check

Air Conditioner, Hearing Aids & Lie Detector (Polygraph).

Cost of Living (1900)

Loaf of Bread

$0.05

Gallon of Gas

$0.10

Average Home

$3,200

New Car

$1,000

Time Elapsed

45,325 days ago

(124 years, 65 days)