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We didn't always turn left the way we do now. What changed?

We didn't always turn left the way we do now. What changed?

Unless you're a child, New York City resident, or UPS driver, chances are you've made a left turn in your car at least once this week.

Chances are, you didn't think too much about how you did it or why you did it that way.

You just clicked on your turn signal...

...and turned left.

GIF from United States Auto Club.


The New York State Department of Motor Vehicles instructs drivers to "try to use the left side of the intersection to help make sure that you do not interfere with traffic headed toward you that wants to turn left," as depicted in this thrilling official state government animation:

GIF from New York Department of Motor Vehicles.

Slick, smooth, and — in theory — as safe as can be.

Your Drivers Ed teacher would give you full marks for that beautifully executed maneuver.

GIF from "Baywatch"/NBC.

Your great-grandfather, on the other hand, would be horrified.

GIF from "Are You Afraid of the Dark"/Nickelodeon.

Before 1930, if you wanted to hang a left in a medium-to-large American city, you most likely did it like so:

Photo via Fighting Traffic/Facebook.

Instead of proceeding in an arc across the intersection, drivers carefully proceeded straight out across the center line of the road they were turning on and turned at a near-90-degree angle.

Often, there was a giant cast-iron tower in the middle of the road to make sure drivers didn't cheat.

Some were pretty big. Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images.

These old-timey driving rules transformed busy intersections into informal roundabouts, forcing cars to slow down so that they didn't hit pedestrians from behind.

GIF from "Time After Time"/Warner Bros.

Or so that, if they did, it wasn't too painful.

"There was a real struggle first of all by the urban majority against cars taking over the street, and then a sort of counter-struggle by the people who wanted to sell cars," explains Peter Norton, Associate Professor of History at the University of Virginia and author of "Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City."

Norton posted the vintage left-turn instructional image, originally published in a 1919 St. Louis drivers' manual — to Facebook on July 9. While regulations were laxer in suburban and rural areas, he explains, the sharp right-angle turn was standard in nearly every major American city through the late '20s.

“That left turn rule was a real nuisance if you were a driver, but it was a real blessing if you were a walker," he says.

Early traffic laws focused mainly on protecting pedestrians from cars, which were considered a public menace.

Pedestrians on the Bowery in New York City, 1900. Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

For a few blissful decades after the automobile was invented, the question of how to prevent drivers from mowing down all of midtown every day was front-of-mind for many urban policymakers.

Pedestrians, Norton explains, accounted for a whopping 75 percent of road deaths back then. City-dwellers who, unlike their country counterparts, often walked on streets were predictably pretty pissed about that.

In 1903, New York City implemented one of the first traffic ordinances in the country, which codified the right-angle left. Initially, no one knew or cared, so the following year, the city stuck a bunch of big metal towers in the middle of the intersections, which pretty well spelled things out.

A Traffic Tower keeps watch at the intersection of 42nd Street and 5th Avenue in New York City in 1925. Photo by Topical Press Agency/Getty Images.

Some cities installed unmanned versions, dubbed "silent policemen," which instructed motorists to "keep to the right."

Drivers finally got the message, and soon, the right-angle left turn spread to virtually every city in America.

Things were pretty good for pedestrians — for a while.

In the 1920s, that changed when automobile groups banded together to impose a shiny new left turn on America's drivers.

According to Norton, a sales slump in 1922 to 1923 convinced many automakers that they'd maxed out their market potential in big cities. Few people, it seemed, wanted to drive in urban America. Parking spaces were nonexistent, traffic was slow-moving, and turning left was a time-consuming hassle. Most importantly, there were too many people on the road.

In order to attract more customers, they needed to make cities more hospitable to cars.

Thus began an effort to shift the presumed owner of the road, "from the pedestrian to the driver."

FDR Drive off-ramps in 1955. Photo by Three Lions/Getty Images.

"It was a multi-front campaign," Norton says.

The lobbying started with local groups — taxi cab companies, truck fleet operators, car dealers associations — and eventually grew to include groups like the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce, which represented most major U.S. automakers.

Car advocates initially worked to take control of the traffic engineering profession. The first national firm, the Albert Erskine Bureau for Street Traffic Research, was founded in 1925 at Harvard University, with funds from Studebaker to make recommendations to cities on how to design streets.

Driving fast, they argued, was not inherently dangerous, but something that could be safe with proper road design.

Drivers weren't responsible for road collisions. Pedestrians were.

Therefore, impeding traffic flow to give walkers an advantage at the expense of motor vehicle operators, they argued, is wasteful, inconvenient, and inefficient.

Out went the right-angle left turn.

Industry-led automotive interest groups began producing off-the-shelf traffic ordinances modeled on Los Angeles' driver-friendly 1925 traffic code, including our modern-day left turn, which was adopted by municipalities across the country.

The towering silent policemen were replaced by dome-shaped bumps called "traffic mushrooms," which could be driven over.

A modern "traffic mushroom" in Forbes, New South Wales. Photo by Mattinbgn/Wikimedia Commons.

Eventually the bumps were removed altogether. Barriers and double yellow lines that ended at the beginning of an intersection encouraged drivers to begin their left turns immediately.

The old way of hanging a left was mostly extinct by 1930 as the new, auto-friendly ordinances proved durable.

So ... is the new left turn better?

Yes. Also, no.

It's complicated.

The shift to a "car-dominant status quo," Norton explains, wasn't completely manufactured — nor entirely negative.

An L.A. motorway in 1953. Photo by L.J. Willinger/Getty Images.

As more Americans bought cars, public opinion of who should run the road really did change. The current left turn model is better and more efficient for drivers — who have to cross fewer lanes of traffic — and streets are less chaotic than they were in the early part of the 20th century.

Meanwhile, pedestrian deaths have declined markedly over the years. While walkers made up 75% of all traffic fatalities in the 1920s in some cities, by 2015, just over 5,000 pedestrians were killed by cars on the street, roughly 15% of all vehicle-related deaths.

There's a catch, of course.

While no one factor fully accounts for the decrease in pedestrian deaths, Norton believes the industry's success in making roadways completely inhospitable to walkers helps explain the trend.

Simply put, fewer people are hit because fewer people are crossing the street (or walking at all). The explosion of auto-friendly city ordinances — which, among other things, allowed drivers to make faster, more aggressive left turns — pushed people off the sidewalks and into their own vehicles.

When that happened, the nature of traffic accidents changed.

A man fixes a bent fender, 1953. Photo by Sherman/Three Lions/Getty Images.

"Very often, a person killed in a car in 1960 would have been a pedestrian a couple of decades earlier," Norton says.

We still live with that car-dominant model and the challenges that arise from it. Urban design that prioritizes drivers over walkers contributes to sprawl and, ultimately, to carbon emissions. A system engineered to facilitate auto movement also allows motor vehicle operators to avoid responsibility for sharing the street in subtle ways. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists three tips to prevent injuries and deaths from car-human collisions — all for pedestrians, including "carrying a flashlight when walking," and "wearing retro-reflective clothing."

A Minneapolis Star-Tribune analysis found that, of over 3,000 total collisions with pedestrians (including 95 fatalities) in the Twin Cities area between 2010 and 2014, only 28 drivers were charged and convicted a crime — mostly misdemeanors.

Norton says he's encouraged, however, by recent efforts to reclaim city streets and make them safe for walkers.

Pedestrians walk through New York's Times Square, 2015. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images.

That includes a push by groups like Transportation Alternatives to install pedestrian plazas and bike lanes and to promote bus rapid transit. It also includes Vision Zero, a safety initiative in cities across America, which aims to end traffic fatalities by upgrading road signage, lowering speed limits, and installing more traffic circles, among other things.

As a historian, Norton hopes Americans come to understand that the way we behave on the road isn't static or, necessarily, what we naturally prefer. Often, he explains, it results from hundreds of conscious decisions made over decades.

"We're surrounded by assumptions that are affecting our choices, and we don't know where those assumptions come from because we don't know our own history," he says.

Even something as mindless as hanging a left.

This article was originally published on July 14, 2017.

via James Breakwell/X

All parents have had similar convos with thier kiddos.

Raising kids is tough, but there's a lot of laughs along the way. Especially when actual conversations start, as kids begin trying to make sense out of the world around them, ask questions, and test mommy and daddy's resolve.

Back in 2018, comedy writer and children's book author James Breakwell, with four daughters who were all under the age of eight at the time, shared their hilarious conversations on X. From these tweets, it looks like comedy runs in the family. Here's a sampling of some Breakwell's funniest kid-inspired tweets.

 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

While Breakwell's 7-year-old wasn't as heavily featured, when she was quoted, the sarcasm was palpable. Which makes sense, considering that kiddos begin understanding this mechanism around that age.

 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 

Kids really do say the darnedest things, and we love them for it. It one of the many, many ways then bring so much joy to the world. It almost makes up for the headaches and sleepless nights, doesn't it.

This article originally appeared seven years ago.

Community

30 cheap and delicious meals frugal people swear they never get sick of

"I could eat one every day of my life if I allowed it to happen."

Image via Canva

Frugal people share cheap meals they love.

Groceries are a major expense these days. And grocery prices are continuing to go up in 2025, according to the USDA. Still, making meals at home versus going out to eat is cheaper, and a big way to save money. But getting creative with low-cost ingredients can be a hang-up.

In an online community of frugal people, member samdaz712 posed the question to fellow savers: "What’s the cheapest meal you actually enjoy eating regularly?"

They continued, "We all have that one budget meal that somehow never gets old. For me, it’s rice, eggs, and frozen mixed veggies with soy sauce and chili flakes. Costs next to nothing, takes 10 minutes, and I actually look forward to it."

The post wrapped up with a call-out for others' favorite and frugal meals. "Curious what everyone else’s go-to cheap meals are not the I’ll suffer through this to save money kind, but the ones you genuinely like and would still eat even if you weren’t budgeting. Always looking for new ideas that don’t break the bank," they added.

Frugal people happily shared their cheap (and yummy) go-to meals. Here are 30 cheap meals that they never get sick of.

"PB&J sandwiches. I could eat one every day of my life if I allowed it to happen. If I'm feeling fancy, I'll make a PB, banana, and honey sandwich. Then I'll pan toast with a generous amount of butter on each side until the bread is golden brown and the PB starts to melt. It's so decadent yet so cheap." - Kom4K

"Fried egg sandwich." - Major9000

"Every week-ish we make pinto beans, smash em up into a refried situation, melt some cheese, spread them on toasted torta bread with avocado. Then use leftovers in your eggs the next day or make burritos for lunch. You can never go wrong with a pot of beans." - BoardNo1459

"A pot of pinto beans with a link of kielbasa sausage and corn bread...Absolute baller." - Bigram03

"'Hobo-potatoes,' diced potatoes, onions, salt and pepper, mixed up in a bag of foil with oil and left to cook in the coals of a camp fire. Goes great with any protein and has more potassium per serving than bananas." - BlaqueNight

"Pasta and butter. Sometimes with grated parmesan." - RuthlessLidia

"Quesadilla." - babe_ruthless3

"Toast." - FrauAmarylis

"Pan fried tofu slabs braised in a pan with chopped kimchi, green onion, kimchi liquid or rice vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, bit of water to make it saucy, a tsp of sugar seems to help it meld together. Takes 10-12 min. Served over short grain rice. Optional toppings, toasted sesame seeds, chopped cilantro, sliced green onion. Edit: this was from The NY Times food, from Sue Li for exact proportions." - LavaPoppyJax

"Costco’s $1.50 hot dog and drink." - StarWolf478

"Rice and eggs for me too. It can be enjoyed in so many ways! My favorite is a crispy egg that’s still yolky on sushi rice with seaweed, salt and sesame oil." - theyrejusttoys

"For me it's an egg foo young - type dish! Stir raw eggs into leftover cooked vegetables (and optional protein, like leftover chicken or whatever you have). Ladle the mixture into a hot pan with a little oil, and fry up into patties. Serve over rice, and top with a drizzle of some kind of Asian sauce and a little hot pepper. You can look up a recipe for Egg Foo Young sauce, but that's not necessary; it tastes great with almost any kind of Asian sauce, or simply soy sauce. The cooked patties last for days in the refrigerator and can be reheated. Bonus: This is a fantastic way to use up any small bits of leftover veggies or meat. And if I have wilted vegetables that are in danger of spoiling, I just chop them up and quickly sauté them together, and freeze them in small containers. Now I have lots of veggies ready to go to make delicious egg foo young." - TIL_eulenspiegel

"For me, it’s instant noodles with a soft-boiled egg, some greens, and a splash of sesame oil. Dirt cheap but feels like comfort food every time!" - Wajid-H-Wajid

"Baked potatoes. So cheap, so good." - killyergawds

"Over-night oats. Eat it every morning before work." - Non_Binary_Goddess

"Nachos for the win." - HappyBear4Ever

"Rice and lentils cooked together." - RichCoast7186

"Potatoes, baked beans, fried eggs. Potatoes, corned beef, fried eggs. Rice (Mexican, Spanish, or Asian), beans, fried eggs. Cottage cheese, bran, frozen blueberries, milk. Home made salsa or pico de gallo on anything. Ground beef, rice, tomato and whatever else I have around. Rotisserie chicken, use the carcass to make soup with rice. Use the chicken that you can get off with tortillas and verde/enchilada sauce. With rice and beans. My advice, get really good at cooking rice, beans, and potatoes. Make sure you have a good selection of spices. Throw whatever extra money you have at whatever meats you can." - himthatspeaks

"Sweet potato black bean burrito a la moosewood. The most basic version is just a sweet potato and a can of black beans (but much better with an upgrade of caramelized onions and some cumin)." - Upbeat-Poetry7672

"Sardines on toast with a over easy egg." - Gandi1200

"Green bean casserole! Takes 10mins and lasts me all week for dinner and lunch." - Kihakiru

"Pan fried Spam, sunny side up egg, over rice. Furikake seasoning to taste." - Cajunsalmon

"I don't make meals I don't enjoy eating, but these are easy, quick, healthy and yummy. 1/2 rice , 1/2 red lentils + cubed veggies (frozen or fresh) eventually crushed tomatoes or coconut milk. Baked savory oats : shredded veggies +oats and eventually eggs or cheese or tomato sauce. Dhal sooooooo delicious. Split pea soup." - sohereiamacrazyalien


Pop Culture

'Wicked' author says one line in 'The Wizard of Oz' inspired Elphaba and Glinda's backstory

Gregory Maguire says he "fell down to the ground" laughing when the idea hit him.

Public domain

The two witches in "The Wizard of Oz" clearly had a history together.

Have you ever watched a movie or read a book or listened to a piece of music and wondered, "How did they come up with that idea?" The creative process is so enigmatic even artists themselves don't always know where their ideas come from, so It's a treat when we get to hear the genesis of a brilliant idea straight from the horse's mouth. If you've watched "Wicked" and wondered where the idea for the friendship between Elphaba (the Wicked Witch) and Glinda (the Good Witch) came from, the author of the book has shared the precise moment it came to him.

The hit movie "Wicked" is based on the 20-year-old hit stage musical, which is based on the novel "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West" written by Gregory Maguire. While the musical is a simplified version of the 1995 book, the basic storyline—the origin story of the two witches from "The Wizard of Oz"—lies at the heart of both. In an interview with BBC, Maguire explained how Elphaba and Glinda's friendship popped into his head.

 

Maguire was visiting Beatrix Potter's farm in Cumbria, England, and thinking about "The Wizard of Oz," which he had loved as a child and thought could be an interesting basis for a story about evil.

"I thought 'alright, what do we know about 'The Wizard of Oz' from our memories,'" he said. "We have the house falling on the witch. What do we know about that witch? All we know about that witch is that she has feet. So I began to think about Glinda and the Wicked Witch of the West…

 glinda, elphaba, wicked,  In "Wicked," the two Oz witches met as students at Shiz University.  Giphy GIF by Wicked 

"There is one scene in the 1939 film where Billie Burke [Glinda the Good Witch] comes down looking all pink and fluffy, and Margaret Hamilton [the Wicked Witch of the West] is all crawed and crabbed and she says something like, 'I might have known you'd be behind this, Glinda!' This was my memory, and I thought, now why is she using Glinda's first name? They have known each other. Maybe they've known each other for a long time. Maybe they went to college together. And I fell down onto the ground in the Lake District laughing at the thought that they had gone to college together."

In "Wicked," Glinda and the Wicked Witch, Elphaba, meet as students at Shiz University, a school of wizardry. They get placed as roommates, loathe each other at first, but eventually become best friends. The story grows a lot more complicated from there (and the novel goes darker than the stage play), but it's the character development of the two witches and their relationship with one another that force us to examine our ideas about good and evil.

  - YouTube  youtu.be  

 

Maguire also shared with the Denver Center for Performing Arts what had inspired him to use the "Wizard of Oz" characters in the first place.

"I was living in London in the early 1990’s during the start of the Gulf War. I was interested to see how my own blood temperature chilled at reading a headline in the usually cautious British newspaper, the Times of London: 'Sadaam Hussein: The New Hitler?' I caught myself ready to have a fully formed political opinion about the Gulf War and the necessity of action against Sadaam Hussein on the basis of how that headline made me feel. The use of the word Hitler – what a word! What it evokes! When a few months later several young schoolboys kidnapped and killed a toddler, the British press paid much attention to the nature of the crime. I became interested in the nature of evil, and whether one really could be born bad. I considered briefly writing a novel about Hitler but discarded the notion due to my general discomfort with the reality of those times. But when I realized that nobody had ever written about the second most evil character in our collective American subconscious, the Wicked Witch of the West, I thought I had experienced a small moment of inspiration. Everybody in America knows who the Wicked Witch of the West is, but nobody really knows anything about her. There is more to her than meets the eye."

 wizard of oz, wicked witch of the west The Wicked Witch of the West has a story of her own.  Giphy  

Authors and artists—and their ideas—help hold a mirror up to humanity for us to see and reflect on who we are, and "Wicked" is one of those stories that makes us take a hard look at what we're seeing in that mirror. Thanks, Gregory Maguire, for launching us on a collective journey that not only entertains but has the potential to change how we see one another.

This story originally appeared last year.

Walt Disney and Ray Bradbury.

The world’s greatest innovators think and behave differently from us mere mortals. They have a unique view of the world and are dedicated to their craft in ways that most would deem obsessive. But without that type of dedication, Steve Jobs could never have given us the Macintosh, Michael Jordan would never have been able to fly, and Michelangelo would have never painted the Sistine Chapel.

It’s hard for the average person to understand what makes a cultural innovator tick, which is why an interview with groundbreaking author Ray Bradbury on Walt Disney is so inspiring. It lifts the veil on what great artists see in one another that most of us can’t. Bradbury is the acclaimed author of classics such as Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, who was a friend of Disney and worked with his legendary company as a creative consultant.

What did Ray Bradbury think of Walt Disney?

In a 2004 interview, Bradbury explained where the incredibly ambitious and creative Disney got his drive and determination.


“If there’s any secret at all, it’s because Walt, like myself, is not an optimist but an optimal behaviorist. Which means that every day of your life, if you behave well, you begin to feel well,” Bradbury said. “So that’s not false, that’s real. You get your work done every day, and at the end of a week, a month, a year, you’ll turn around and say, hey, look what I did. So you feel good. That’s real optimism. Optimal behavior.”

“He could look back at the end of each year and see his behavior, and it made him want to go on. A lot of people are pessimists because they’ve never done anything,” Bradbury continued. “If you go to bed every night having not done anything, you’re going to wake up unhappy, aren’t you? So the answer to that is do something every day. Be busy, for God’s sake, be busy.”

 walt disney, disney world, mickey mouse, disney company, disney theme parks, A statue of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse.via Paul Beattie/Flickr

What is a behavioral optimist?

Although “behavioral optimist” isn’t an official psychological term, it’s one that Bradbury often used to describe himself. “I’ve learned that by doing things, things get done. I’m not an optimist; I’m an optimal behaviorist. We ensure the future by doing it,” he said. “Optimists and pessimists are blind. But I’m not either. I’m an optimal behaviorist. In other words, I behave at the top of my lungs every day. There’s no guarantee, but you’re going to have a heck of a lot of fun. You’ll come to the end of your life with the secure knowledge that you tried everything.”

There are just two critical things in life, he said, “Being in love with your wife or husband and being in love with your work. And then everything’s fine.”

If you’ve always dreamed of living a life like Walt Disney, using your imagination to entertain and uplift humanity, you can start by looking at life in the same way. Big goals can often seem too lofty when we think about the finished product. Instead, take small, consistent steps every day towards achieving your goal. Writing a 300-page book may seem like too much work, but if you write a page a day, you’ll have a book before the end of the year. The key is to stay focused and consistent, just like Uncle Walt.

What an amazingly kind gesture.

Closed adoptions—meaning adoptions with no contact between the biological parents and adoptive families—offer privacy, protection and emotional closure. However, it can understandably still be incredibly difficult for biological mothers to instantly and drastically remove their biological child from their life, even if they know they are doing what's best.

This was the case for Alicia Mae Holloway’s biological mom. In a video shared to her TikTok account, the dancer and television personality shared that her adoptive mother, Evelyn, “saw how hard it was” for her birth mom to give Holloway up for adoption. So Evelyn came up with a kind gesture that Holloway dubbed “the sweetest thing.”

“She was like, ‘okay, I’ll make you a deal. Every six months, I’ll send you a picture of Alicia and a little update in a written card of how she’s doing.’”

Getting those biannual letters out wasn’t as simple as dropping them off in the mail either.

As Holloway explained, she had been conceived during an affair her birth mother—a white woman, married to a white man, with three white children—had with a Black man. Not only could Holloway’s birth mom not afford a fourth kid, she feared what her “racist” family might do upon seeing a biracial baby, and told everyone that it was a stillborn.

All this to say, Holloway’s birth mom didn’t want the letters arriving at her home, potentially risking anyone from her family seeing it. Evelyn would therefore need to send the letters to a friend’s house.

But sure enough, Evelyn kept good on that promise. For 17 years, Holloways' birth mom got to celebrate milestones in her daughter’s life. Meanwhile, Holloway had no idea this exchange was happening.

“I get chills when I think about how she was watching me grow up and I had no idea,” Holloway told Today. “She knew I was a dancer and that I was doing beauty pageants and that I was a good kid.”

Holloway added that just before her 18th birthday, she was made aware of her adoptive mom’s kind gesture. And they even went to meet Holloway’s birth mom, an event Holloway that noted was in many ways more emotional for her two moms than it was for her, recalling that both women “had a long, long, long embrace and were both bawling their eyes out.”

As for Holloway, she told Today that she feels no ill will towards her biological mom. Rather, she sees the decision as “an act of love," that set her up for a truly “amazing life.” At the end of their meeting, after the important questions pertaining to family health history and whatnot, all she had to say was “thank you.”

And from the looks of it, she is as happy as ever living life with her adopted parents, who honestly could pass for her biological parents any day.

It's interesting to think about how none of us know our full life story, how many things both bigs and small remain mysteries. But when we are lucky enough to discover hidden truths, we unlock yet another part of ourselves.

This article originally appeared last year.