Pimm's Cup: An English Cocktail with a French Quarter Address
An English Cocktail with a French Quarter AddressThe Pimm's Cup started its life in England, invented by James Pimm in the nineteenth century as a gin-based digestif served at his London oyster bar...
Snowballs: Not a Snow Cone — A New Orleans Summer Survival Tool
Not a Snow Cone — A SnowballLet us get one thing clear from the start: a New Orleans snowball is not a snow cone. A snow cone is crunchy, icy, and sad — the kind of thing they sell at county fairs ...
John James Audubon: The Bird Man Who Found His Wings in New Orleans
The Bird Man of New OrleansJohn James Audubon arrived in New Orleans in 1821, broke, desperate, and carrying a portfolio of bird paintings that nobody wanted to buy. He was 36 years old, his busine...
Alton Ochsner: The New Orleans Doctor Who Took On Big Tobacco
The Doctor Who Knew Cigarettes Were Killing PeopleIn 1939, a surgeon at Tulane University named Alton Ochsner noticed something alarming. He was seeing more and more patients with lung cancer — a d...
Sal Khan: The Metairie Kid Who Gave the World Free Education
The Man Who Put a Classroom in Every PocketSal Khan was born in Metairie, Louisiana, in 1976, the son of Bangladeshi and Indian immigrants. He grew up in the suburbs of New Orleans, attended public...
Michael DeBakey: The New Orleans Med Student Who Saved a Million Hearts
The Man Who Fixed the Human HeartMichael Ellis DeBakey was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, in 1908, the son of Lebanese immigrants who had settled in the Cajun prairie. He came to New Orleans for ...
Brené Brown: New Orleans Raised the Queen of Vulnerability
The Vulnerability Researcher Who Became a PhenomenonBrené Brown grew up in New Orleans — a city that, if you think about it, is the perfect incubator for someone who would spend her career studying...
Stephen Ambrose: The Historian Who Gave New Orleans Its Greatest Museum
The Historian Who Made History Feel Like a StoryStephen Ambrose arrived at the University of New Orleans in 1971 and spent the next three decades turning the city into a headquarters for popular Am...
The Language of New Orleans: How a City Built Its Own Dictionary
You Can Hear New Orleans Before You See ItEvery city has an accent. New York has one. Boston has one. But New Orleans has something else entirely — a whole language system that exists nowhere else ...
Mr. Bingle: The Snowman Who Owns Christmas in New Orleans
Meet Mr. Bingle, the beloved New Orleans Christmas icon born at Maison Blanche in 1947. His story is pure NOLA magic.
The Sazerac: New Orleans' Official Cocktail
There is a moment in every good New Orleans evening when someone slides a glass across a bar and says, "You ever had a real Sazerac?" Not the version you got at that hotel bar in Chicago. Not the ...
Louis Armstrong New Orleans: Beyond the Horn
There is a statue of Louis Armstrong in New Orleans that stands in the park bearing his name, just steps from the French Quarter and right at the edge of Treme. He is holding his trumpet, naturally...
Earl King: New Orleans' Best Kept Musical Secret
If you have ever heard a brass band rolling down the street playing "Big Chief," or caught Jimi Hendrix tearing into "Come On," or watched Professor Longhair do his thing at the keys, you have been...
Sidney Bechet: The New Orleans Genius Who Invented the Solo
How Sidney Bechet, born in 1897 to a Creole family in New Orleans, became jazz's first great soloist and recorded before Louis Armstrong.
Satchmo: The Many Lives of Louis Armstrong
Most people know Louis Armstrong as the man with the trumpet and the gravel voice. They know "What a Wonderful World" and maybe "Hello, Dolly!" and that is where their Satchmo education ends. But ...
Earl King: The Songwriter Who Gave New Orleans Its Groove
If you have ever heard a brass band blow through "Big Chief" on a secondline Sunday, or caught a guitar player lean into "Come On" at a late night set on Frenchmen Street, you have been touched by ...
Peychaud's Bitters: The Secret Ingredient in America's First Cocktail
The Secret Ingredient in America's First CocktailAntoine Amédé Peychaud was a Creole apothecary who immigrated to New Orleans from Haiti in the early nineteenth century and, from his pharmacy on Ro...
The Go-Cup: Take Your Drink with You in New Orleans
Take It with YouIn most American cities, walking down the street with an alcoholic beverage will earn you a citation. In New Orleans, it will earn you a nod of recognition and possibly a recommenda...
Dutch Morial: The Man Who Was First in Everything
First in EverythingErnest Nathan "Dutch" Morial was born in New Orleans on October 9, 1929, into a Creole family in the Seventh Ward — the neighborhood that has been the heart of Black Creole cultu...
Donna Brazile: The Kenner Kid Who Ran a Presidential Campaign
The Girl Who Organized Her First Campaign at Nine Years OldDonna Lease Brazile was born on December 15, 1959, in New Orleans, the third of nine children in a working-class family in Kenner. She gre...
