Saturday, November 23, 2013

Breakfast Links: Week of November 18, 2013

Saturday, November 23, 2013
Fresh off the griddle! Here's our weekly round-up of favorite links to other web sites, blogs, articles, videos, and images, gathered for your from around the Twitterverse.
• The woman who launched fireworks from a balloon over 19th c. Paris.
• Did Clark Gable really kill the undershirt?
• Historical how-to for home management: The Complete Servant, 1825.
• The thrill of the hunt: rat-hunting keeps dogs of all stripes occupied in 1820s London pubs - and in modern NYC.
• Tattoo history: tattooing in in 19th c. British gaols.
• "My last writing before the battle will be to you...." Nelson's last letter to Emma Hamilton, 1805.
• Evocative photographs of the loneliness of Old London.
• Drilling a hole in the skull to cure stupidity: "some in this case cry up with the wonderful praises of Trepaning."
• Explore the Casey Fashion Plates Collection of the Los Angeles Public Library for style form 1780-1880.
• Seven things Americans used to dress up for - and not that long ago, either.
• Pride and partridges: Jane Austen and food.
• The pleasure gardens of Vauxhall in 1827.
• The politics (and the excesses) of 18th c. English turtle feasts.
• Delia Jarvis and the Battle of Bunker Hill.
• An unusual eulogy on an early 19th c. gravestone in Fulham.
• NORWICH, BURMA, ENGLAND: saucy lovers' acronyms from the 1930s.
Sweet treats from a Georgian kitchen: recipes for caramels and almond clear cakes.
• The weirdest and fiercest helmets from the Age of Armored Combat.
• "The hair on their phizzes": the Yale Class of 1870 proudly catalogues their mustaches, beards, and "hopeful scrags."
• The true history of Richard II - not quite the same as Shakespeare's version
CIA women from the 1960s-70s tell of bugged evening wear, surveillance compact mirrors, and "how to spot an enemy operative by his socks."
Amazons vs. the wife-beater, 1878.
• Cooking Thanksgiving for an army (literally): a World War One pumpkin pie recipe from the first Manual for Army Cooks, 1910.
• Shopping at the Sign of the Oil Jar: a splendidly elaborate 18th c. trade card.
• Refugee heirlooms: what people take when they're forced to leave their homes.
• When knitting becomes a feminist issue (or not.)
• Photos from the glorious but now-abandoned City Hall subway station, NYC.
• An exuberant 19th c. birdcage in the shape of the Rialto Bridge.
• Amazing survivor: a remnant of paper ream wrapper preserved on pasteboard from the late 17th c.
• The lost Proctor Theatre in NYC: when Lillian Russell appeared here in 1905, she earned a staggering $4000 a week.
• British newsreel film from 1953 shows a school with a mock-up flat where girls can practice cooking, cleaning, and making beds.
• End of an era: the last surviving old-fashioned phone booths in NYC.
• In this dramatic 1938 ad, a psychiatrist prescribes...Listerine.
• Cue the Beach Boys! Phenomenal set of vintage photos of Los Angeles - the city has never looked so charming.
• Stuck with a stuck-up sweetheart? Foolproof 17th c. advice on how to bring her down a peg or two.
• Last but certainly not least: there really is an island where cats rule.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.

5 comments:

curator said...

I read the gravestone and was filled with great sentiment and appreciation - then got to the last line and laughed out loud. I'm going to hell.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

I read all about Mrs Blanchard, and Nadar and the brothers Montgolfier after your description of the balloonstone in "Last Night's Scandal". It was a real trigger! And the story of Mrs Blanchard is dramatic history at best. Thank's for writing about it!

Sarah said...

Hate to tell you ladies but you have a typo - you have said 'the true history of Richard III' when you mean Richard II. Who is of great interest for the cook book commissioned in his name 'the forme of cury' as well as being possibly a subject of 'Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight' if one accepts it as a satire and the eponymous knight being associated with John of Gaunt

Isabella Bradford/Susan Holloway Scott said...

Curator - You will have a lot of company - I laughed, too. Didn't expect that ending!

Sarah - Thanks for the catch - corrected. Obviously I just stuttered on those Roman numerals...;)

 
Two Nerdy History Girls. Design by Pocket