Month: October 2014

Today marks an anniversary that should please America’s power shoppers. On this date in 1868, the first full-line department store in the U.S. was organized in Salt Lake City. Called “Zion’s Cooperative Mercantile Institution,” it opened the next year. The idea of the department store soon spread around the country, hailed for the convenience such retail powerhouses offered consumers and becoming points of civic pride. The era of the classic, high-rise downtown department store has been eclipsed, but modern equivalents …

October is National Seafood Month, celebrating a nutrient rich food that is a good source of protein, vitamins and minerals. Because it really does turn out to be brain food, government and health organizations recommend eating two seafood meals each week. Seafood used to be mostly confined to the coastal regions, but with advances in frozen food and the speed of distribution, just about every kind of fish and shellfish is available all through the country. Americans eat an average …

This is National School Lunch Week — a name that probably conjures up visions of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and other, more mysterious substances. But it’s time to note the wholesome lunches being served every day to schoolchildren across the nation and to thank the many patient people who prepare and serve them. There is a recognized link between having a good meal and the ability of a child to learn. This led to the National School Lunch Act …

With the national median age being 37 years, a bare majority of the country’s population can remember life in what might strike young people as a bleak, dark and difficult age. Practically unimaginable today, there was a time when the ubiquitous cell phone didn’t exist. Around 45 years ago, Amtrak offered a version of cellular technology, using payphones on its Metroliners. The first modern cell phone was introduced on this date in 1983 in Chicago. It was demonstrated in a …