The Record Keepersâ Rave Every month, the archival institutions of this nation unleash tiny particles of the past in a frenzy of online revelry. Students at South Vocational High School in Pittsburghâs South Side neighborhood learning how to roll pastries in 1969.Credit...Pittsburgh Public Schools Photographs/Detre Library & Archives, via Heinz History Center Jan. 7, 2021 Is there room in your mind for unuseful details? Or, would you make some, despite long odds the material could one day prove practicable? For those who find comfort in stockpiling answers to unasked questions, an invitation: Once a month, most months, there happens a happening that rewards compulsive curiosity. For a few hours in the backcountry of social media, miscellaneous facts surge and swirl and billow in unison, like clouds of starlings disappearing and reforming in an empty winter sky.