Sign in

Petula Dvorak

@petulawrites.bsky.social
460 followers 27 following 329 posts

Columnist, reporter, Persister, formerly at The Washington Post

PostsRepliesMedia
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
It was 250 years ago that patriots wrote a scathing indictment of King George — we know it as the Declaration of Independence and launch fireworks every year to celebrate it. Here’s another one of the grievances they listed, conditions they refused to live under, why our nation is based on #nokings:
010
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
The Persisters who wrote the Declaration of Independence were pissed about the shit King George was doing and that document was a list of the grievances against him. Check out another one that made it clear we want No Kings:
040
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
More of the grievances the Founding Fathers had when they made that Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, and why they wanted #nokings
010
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
The Declaration of Independence had some catchy one-liners, but most of it was an epic rant against King George. Let’s revisit some of the (many) grievances explaining why the Founding Fathers wanted #nokings
020
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
011
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Bathroom graffiti at National Airport does NOT mess around…
000
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
The new generation of young punks have been speaking out about I.C.E….
000
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
Thousands of guns at a protest? We’ve been there…
010
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
My Giving Tuesday list is back — open.substack.com/pub/petulant...
021
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 19/10/2025
Oct. 19, 1925 — Calvin Coolidge’s progressive speech in Omaha focusing on a post-war America continued to ruffle feathers #100yearsagotoday :
041
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 19/10/2025
Wicked fun to be in Boston today — where true patriots began the “No Kings” movement in 1773! From dancing lobsters and Dunkin’ jokes to a woman standing in silence holding a single lantern — one if by land — high, Boston did it right.
052
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 15/10/2025
October 15, 1925 — After the KKK marched on Washington, Calvin Coolidge hit on the danger of growing intolerance in America during a speech in Omaha. His remarks were highlighted in a full page ad in The Post #100yearsagotoday.
071
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 13/10/2025
October 14, 1925 — The representatives from 24 tribes of the New England region gathered for their third-annual pow-wow in Rhode Island #100yearsagotoday. It was the year after Calvin Coolidge, who claimed to have “a trace of Indian blood”, championed the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924…🧵
160
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
Oct. 10, 1925 — New D.C. police superintendent Edwin B. Hesse made his first address to officers #100yearsagotoday. “Nothing is more important to the police department than the deportment of its individual members,” he said. Their duty is to citizens, he said, asking officers to prioritize courtesy.
021
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
Oct. 8, 1925 - The Post made history #100yearsagotoday by using a motorcycle, airplane and car in a bold race to get readers photos from the 1925 World Series in Pittsburgh. Head to my Substack for more about the (sometimes dodgy) ways newspapers transmitted photos before we all had send buttons.
021
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
🧵…lobotomies, insulin-induced comas and aversion therapy — lead to violence, chaos and federal investigations #100yearsagotoday . The massive campus is now home to the Department of Homeland Security…and some happier things. #history
110
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
October 6, 1925 — St. Elizabeth’s was the first federally-funded asylum in the U.S. It aimed for more humane treatments, like hydrotherapy and views of nature. However, overcrowding — it was packed with Civil War veterans, and LGBTQ people subjected to electroshock therapy.. 🧵
120
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 04/10/2025
Oct. 4, 1925 — Star pitcher Walter Johnson heard about a disappointed D.C. baseball fan who said, upon giving birth to a girl: “Oh, I was wishing for a boy, so he could be a pitcher like Walter Johnson.”Well… 🧵
151
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
September 29, 1925 — Yup, you get cancelled for being ageist #100yearsagotoday. Meyer’s Shop in D.C. ran a cheeky ad telling “old chap(s)” they had more than the wide-leg pants and suits in “ice cream shades” that young guys were wearing. The outcry was enough for an apology in print the next day.
030
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
Sept 24, 1925 — A mystery illness was killing babies #100yearsagotoday at the Florence Crittenton Home, a refuge for “fallen women” that was also an orphanage. Pictured is a window baby display in 1914, pet shop style…🧵
110
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 16/09/2025
Sept. 16, 1925 — A DC woman met a small alligator outside her Foggy Bottom home #100yearsagotoday. He was captured and sent to the zoo, joining two other gators who also used to lived in that posh area, swimming in Herbert Hoover’s bathtub before he moved to the White House. #history #alligatorpets
141
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
Sept 15, 1925 — A record was set in traffic court #100yearsagotoday. It was 45 days in jail +$165 for a Black man with no permit/registration/tail lights. Meanwhile, a white dude driving drunk who totaled his car after careening around Connecticut Ave. “was released” and charged with drunk driving.
051
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
Sept. 2, 1925 — The listing of everyone’s income taxes were on the front page of The Washington Post #100yearsagotoday! Three times in U.S. history, income taxes were made public …🧵
130
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
A reminder about leaders at war: www.washingtonpost.com/history/2025...
071
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 18/08/2025
August 18, 1925 - A psych professor at George Washington University ran tests #100yearsagotoday to determine “the truth about the woman driver.” Conclusion? “…the woman stacks up higher than the male of the species”. (The first woman to get a license in the U.S. was Anne French — in 1900, in D.C.! )
041
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 17/08/2025
August 17, 1925 — The DC National Guard had a very different assignment #100yearsagotoday — drills and swimming in Virginia Beach. #history
141
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 15/08/2025
August 15, 1925 — As the U.S. faced a growing crime wave #100yearsagotoday, an editorial suggested we look at the U.K.’s precipitous drop in crime and the theory that their prison reform was a factor. It wasn’t ice cream socials and yoga, but they enacted a 1925 version. #historymatters
041
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
August 14, 1925 — “There is no factor more potent in determining the character of a future citizen than play,” a D.C. commissioner said #100yearsagotoday, in a report urging a playground accessible to every child in D.C., supervised and open year-round. #historymatters
052
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
When D.C. made history by giving Black men the right to vote, the federal government moved in and took over. We’ve been here before and it was all about racism…
The federal government took over DC in 1871, after it made history by giving Black men the right to vote. From the March Washington Post story by Petula Dvorak:
“Congress had “to burn down the barn to get rid of the rats … the rats being the negro population and the barn being the government of the District of Columbia,” Sen. John Tyler Morgan, an Alabama Democrat and enslaver, said in explaining the takeover of the capital.
Over the past century, plenty of presidents have criticized the state of affairs in their temporary hometown, including complaints about infrastructure, overcrowding and crime. Most recently, President Donald Trump has painted the District as a “dirty, crime-ridden death trap that must be taken over and properly run.”
052
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
His first year in power, Hitler deployed more and more Nazi troops to German city streets. Berliners were surprised by the array of Nazi uniforms occupying their city. #hitlerhistory
061
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
Aug. 11, 1925 — The federal budget director wanted say over running D.C. #100yearsagotoday. The District has been “neglected” and deserves more money for improvements as it becomes “an ideal residential city” and is “growing even faster than any other front-rank city”. How nice they were…#history
041
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 09/08/2025
August 8-9, 1925 — The nation’s capital was overwhelmed by the massive KKK march #100yearsagotoday. After D.C. mandated that the klansmen march unmasked, thousands lined the parade route in civilian clothes, suspected sympathizers who left their robes at home, but cheered on from the sidelines.
083
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 06/08/2025
🧵…So Gardener insisted her brain be put to the test after her death. Almost two years later, Cornell issued their conclusion that “Noted Suffragette’s Brain as Good as a Man’s.”
041
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 06/08/2025
Aug, 5, 1925 — Helen H. Gardener donated her brain to science #100yearsagotoday. The highest ranking woman in federal government, Gardener furiously refuted the Surgeon General’s assertion that women do not deserve equality because their brains are simply inferior to those of men…🧵
171
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 05/08/2025
Aug. 4, 1925 - The Naval Academy launched its first class of aviators #100yearsagotoday, the start of integrating aeronautics into the curriculum.
021
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
July 29, 1925 — Giving up an $8 job to become a bootlegger was grounds for divorce #100yearsagotoday . The divorce column was long, detailed and daily. #retropolis
021
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 20/07/2025
July 19, 1925 — Don’t worry, folks! A USC study done #100yearsagotoday showed that a college education didn’t steer women away from marriage! #retropolis
051
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
July 18, 1925 - A new trend in bootlegging was discovered beneath a Maryland cabin’s trap door #100yearsagotoday — underground stills. The culprit? A former Baltimore cop. #retropolis
021
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
July 17, 1925 — That name, though! A hero story #100yearsagotoday honored a girl who saved a dozen head of cattle when the Virginia barn caught fire, common during these hot summers when tightly packed wheat spontaneously combusted. #retropolis
021
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 16/07/2025
July 16, 1925 - Those of us who had to square dance in grammar school may blame Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic campaign against what he called “Jewish Jazz — Moron Music” #100yearsagotoday . Ford built stages to hold lessons in traditional dances as the rest of America did the Charleston. #retropolis
071
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 12/07/2025
🧵He was an Italian immigrant who worked as a translator, immigrant smuggler and mining company nurse before his most notorious scheme. While a nurse, a co-worker he didn’t know personally was severely burned in an accident and he donated 122 square inches of his own skin to her. #retropolis
041
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 12/07/2025
July 12, 1925 — Charles Ponzi, the creator of the Ponzi Scheme (it’s in the dictionary) got 7 more years in prison #100yearsagotoday, adding to time served for the 1920 scam that cost investors the equivalent of $250 million today (Bernie Madoff, for comparison, did $65 BILLION damage)…🧵
141
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 10/07/2025
July 10, 1925 - Texas’s first female governor fascinated America #100yearsagotoday. After her husband was impeached, Miriam Ferguson was elected in his place. She served two terms, pardoning thousands of prohibition violators and unmasking the Ku Klux Klan. (Courts overturned her no mask law).
021
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 09/07/2025
July 9, 1925 — Women were a part of “hobo culture” #100yearsagotoday. Some dressed like men to find work among other itinerant workers. Others worked as cooks and cleaners at “hobo jungles”, the encampments where folks riding the rails stopped over. #Retropolis
041
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 07/07/2025
July 7, 1925 — Masked bandits who held up the D.C. taxicab office #100yearsagotoday proved that the nation’s capital was no longer immune to this nationwide crime wave familiar in other cities. Residents asked police to guard against bandits instead of chasing bootleggers. #retropolis
031
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
Newspapers across the US carried this wire story in July 1933 about Dachau, the camp Hitler created to imprison his opponents — less than 100 days after taking power. That summer, there was a saying in Germany: “Please, God, make me dumb, So I won’t to Dachau come” #hitler #dachau #historymatters
083
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
June 26, 1925 - Pet monkeys were fashionable #100YearsAgoToday. Still, it was a little random to see a matter-of -fact, monkey attack in Georgetown, questioning the boy’s behavior over the monkey’s running a monk. Also funny that the monkey hideout is now a new, boutique ice cream shop. #retropolis
021
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
Have you seen all the stunning, deep space photos coming in from the Vera C Rubin Observatory? Here’s the remarkable story behind the name…
073
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
🧵…charging up to $150 (about $2,700 today) to see them. He sold them to P.T. Barnum, who displayed them as “cannibals” in his circus, for a small fortune. That’s the money Gardenshire used to eventually build this small town. #retropolis
031
Petula Dvorak @petulawrites.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
June 25, 1925 — The world was watching Dayton, Tenn. #100yearsagotoday as the Scopes trial - over a teacher who tried to teach evolution - unfolded. This sidebar gave the disturbing history of the town’s founding. Salesman W. C. Gardenshire kidnapped 4 people from Fiji and toured America with them🧵
140