Coming up this week on, on May 9th to be exact, this blog will mark its tenth anniversary. Over the course of those ten years, it hasn’t changed much. I still know too little about SEO, don’t use nearly enough bullet points, overuse commas, and usually drone on longer than most readers care to pay attention. Yet here I am plugging away in my little corner of the blogosphere, writing about whatever little historical tidbit has lately taken my fancy, cracking stupid jokes, and sharing inane details about my life.
And you, dear readers, are kind enough to come along for the ride. Some of you have been checking in on what began as “The Practical Historian: Your Guide to Practically True History” since early days. Some of you have stumbled onto it by accident more recently and have chosen to stick around. If you happen to be my mother, then you’ve even read every single post. I appreciate every one of you immensely.
When the blog reached its five-year anniversary I published a little book, ridiculously titled Launching Sheep & Other Stories from the Intersection of History and Nonsense, which contained about eighty or so posts that I considered to be the greatest hits of the first five years. In case you didn’t know, the traditional fifth anniversary symbol is a book.
The tenth anniversary is most often symbolized by aluminum, or aluminium if you must. I thought the most fitting way to celebrate, then, would be to write an amazing post about aluminum in history. It turns out, the earliest mention of alum comes from Herodotus, that famous 5th century BC Greek Father of History who liked to make things up. And that is the most exciting thing I could find about aluminum, because I couldn’t keep my eyes open long enough to read any more.
But what I do happen to know about aluminum is that we’ve gotten pretty good at recycling it, and so, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of this silly little blog, that’s what I am going to do, though this time I limited myself to ten posts rather than eighty or so.
Here are ten posts you can peruse if you so wish, recycled from the second five years of the Practical Historian:
Skinny Pants and Cupcakes: Everything a Young Republic Needs
Tough Questions on the Way to School
The Greatest Shoe-Buying Orgy in History
Gardening for Beer. Beer for Gardening.
WU (What’s Up) With this ARE (Acronym-Rich Environment)?
Author Sarah Angleton 
Great, as always, Sarah. Happy to say, I’ve been around a long time!
Thank you for the support, Phyllis! Sometimes blogging feels like writing into a void. It’s always nice to be reminded that there are people on the other end.
Congrats Sarah on being so long in the tooth. I shall start at the top of your list and work my way down in the coming week. It’s like strawberries and cream; one can have too much of a good thing all at once. (Same for marzipan I find). Promise towards the end of a nude horse acts as motivation.
I don’t know that I’ve ever thanked anyone for referring to me as “long in the tooth,” but I guess there’s a first time for everything. Thank you! I’m not sure my posts hold up to a comparison to strawberries and cream, but I do hope they are more enjoyable than marzipan.
Happy tenth!! 🙂
Thanks!
Yes, congratulations on the 10th Anniversay coming up. I have marked this post to my favourites here, so I will revisit it to read your 10 posts. Cheers Sarah.
Thank you!
Ten years! A rarity in the blogging world. Blog on, Sarah!
Thanks!
Way to go, Sarah! I haven’t commented as often as surely warranted. Just to let you know that your friends in Salem still miss you and your quirky writing.
Good to hear from you, Sam! I hope you are well! I think of my first Willamette Writers critique pals often.
A big congrats Sarah! Thanks for the link shares too. I like them all especially beer gardening. The famous gardener Jim Baker I recall references uses of beer for gardening. Very interesting!
Thank you so much!