For thousands of years alcoholic beverages drastically improved countless holiday parties on every continent in every political and social system. Here is an appropriate illustration from the Life Magazine Archives taken in Leningrad in 1956.

Before:

After:

Caption reads:A party at the home of a so-called “typical Soviet worker”, the Dmitriev family. The father, a skilled metal worker, is actually a member of the Communist Party & does much side work for it, so they live far above working class average. (the line about side work for the Communist Party doesn’t make any sense to me, not sure what it means).

Once, while I was walking somewhere with my Father, we met one of his patients. The guy had a pronounced limp. “He damaged his leg parachuting into Hungary in 1956”, my Dad told me when the guy schlepped away. For a long time this was all I’ve ever heard about the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. Hungarians tried to overthrow the communist regime years before a similar event happened in Czechoslovakia, and were just as brutally run over by the Soviet tanks. Over 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviet troops were killed in the fighting.

Patriots Strike Ferocious Blows to the Tyranny was the title of the report in the Life Magazine in November 1956. (Apparently showing photos of people being shot was still OK then)

For three incredible days in Hungary last week the flames of liberty and revenge against tyranny rose high. It almost seemed as if they could go on burning….Rebel patriots stormed recklessly toward freedom, Communist henchmen reaped the frightful wrath they had sowed. The most hotly hated of the rebels’ targets were the Soviet-controlled Hungarian secret police. These were cut down as ruthlessly as they themselves had murdered countless anti-Communists. Soviet occupation troops felt the national fury. Daredevil teenagers burned up their tanks with “Molotov cocktails” until Soviet columns evacuated Budapest, leaving their dead behind them. Most of the Hungarian army, siding with the rebels, stood off Soviet troops throughout the country. Workers not engaged in the fighting went out on a general strike against communism.

A recent article on a forum based in the Russian city of Yaroslavl attracted my attention. It talks about a time capsule that was sealed in 1960 to be opened 50 years later during the 1,000th birthday of the city.

Recently a set of photos taken at the Kansas City’s Wonderland Arcade in the late 1960’s made rounds on the Internet. These photos are stored at the National Archives in the file “Wonderland Inc. v. United States of America, 1968 – 1968”. The National Archives allows searches but not direct links or bookmarks, so you will have to enter your own search terms.

The Arcade located at 1200 Grand from the 1940’s to the early 1980’s was covered in the press numerous times, like this Billboard Magazine article: Wonderland Arcade Good Model of Well-run Amusement Center published in 1946, when The Billboard was still an amusement industry trade magazine.

Same magazine in 1947 informed about the time when the Wonderland Arcade was robbed of $150 in nickels, some of which was spent on a “new suit, shoes and a tour of the city by taxicab”.

It’s time for my annual Public Service Announcement about checking your eligibility for the Kansas City, Missouri Earnings Tax refund. From the point of view of someone who doesn’t reside in the KCMO but is unfortunate to work there, the Earnings Tax is a way to confiscate 1% of a person’s gross income and hand it over to what what one blog refers to as a “privileged class”, so they can continue to enjoy a tax free lifestyle.