Saturday, January 3, 2015

Breakfast Links: Week of December 29, 2014

Saturday, January 3, 2015
We're back from our holiday break with a super-sized serving of our fav links of the week to other web sites, blogs, articles, and images, all collected via Twitter.
• Seriously cool: Dr. May-Britt Moser accepted her Nobel Prize for Physiology & Medicine wearing a gown covered with sequin versions of the neurons that she discovered.
Lost and found: toys, tears, and the Thames.
• A brief history of 17th c. women's make-up.
• A unique early 19th c., double-sided paisley-style shawl, woven in Russia.
• A deceased mother's 1739 brocade wedding dress poignantly repurposed for her daughter's wedding shoes in 1773.
• Gowns, illustrations, and more from Gone with the Wind, one of the most iconic costume movies of all-time.
• What a treasure: Bodelian Libraries receive gift of Charles I's traveling library.
Image: 1860s photo of tollgates, the Old Kent Road, Southwark, London.
• "A festival...held sacred by good eating and drinking": the Christmas season in the 18th c. Lady's Magazine.
• Charles Goss' vanishing London: evocative early 20th c. photographs of a city now gone.
• Autumn comes to Abney Park, one of London's "Magnificent Seven" Victorian cemeteries.
• Burn your corsets: 19th c. anti-corset propaganda and their curious use of "science."
• How the Waterloo Medal came about.
Image: Swedish Queen Kirstina's hat in purple velvet, made in Paris c.1650.
• The smells of a Shakespearean playhouse: early modern recipes for the stage.
• The purpose of perfume in the 18th century.
• Fleeing to Great Dismal Swamp, slaves and other outcasts found freedom.
Nota Bene: the top ten most important notebooks in history.
Image: Unusual early 20th c. composite postcard includes real hair.
• Strong constitutions: phenomenal bar bill run up by George Washington and other Founding Fathers.
• The Kitty-Trot, a 1919 dance sensation.
• Montpelier Hill: the mysterious abandoned home of Ireland's 18th c. Hellfire Club.
• Image: Hush! by James Tissot, 1875, Manchester Art Gallery.
Three-Fingered Jack: the story of Victorian actor Richard John Smith.
• Was Sir Isaac Newton homosexual - and does it matter?
• "Where I See Fashion" tumblr juxtaposes visually striking photographs of art with clothing.
•  Image: According to 1950s magazine, a Man's Life looked pretty terrible.
• Searching for the original color of the Queen's Staircase at Hampton Court Palace.
• Spectacular video links: flying over the Middle Ages.
• Lavishly reimagined interiors in the now-lost NYC house of architect Stanford White.
• Depending on your POV, this is either enlightening, depressing, or confirming all your worst fears: new map reveals Americans' taste in art state by state.
• A long-hidden (and tragic) legacy of the American Civil War: did soldiers 150 years ago suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder?
Image: Gorgeous detail of the bodice of an 1890s ballgown.
Unraveling the mystery of a sampler made by a 10-year-old liberated African slave in 1831.
• Etienne-Gaspard Robertson and the 19th c. phantasmagoria.
• A not-so-brief history of American cheerleading.
Image: So much detail in all those missives! Portrait of a Merchant, by Jan Gossaert, c1530, National Gallery of Art.
• A bestiary of bobs, 1930s.
• "I should apologize...for being absolutely carried home upon a man's shoulders... to be desposited like a dead log": Charles Lamb's unapologetic letter of apology following a night of drunken excess.
• An elegy for London's famed White Hart tavern - seven hundred years of history destroyed for a modern office building.
• The best quotes regarding cats from Mark Twain (who was a fervent cat-lover.)
• Looking for a challenge for 2015? Learn to play the game of piquet - 1892 on-line book: The Laws of Piquet as Adopted by the Portland and Turf Clubs.
• Image: Covent Garden Market by Balthazar Nebot, Tate Gallery.
Anne Brontë's ghost turns up in a house on Long Island looking "pensive....She seems content just going up and down the stairs."
• Just for fun: Congratulations to 16-year-old Jack Magee, U-18 Cartoonist of the Year, for this beauty about Richard III.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.

6 comments:

Hels said...

I loved the post on Charles I's travelling library. I had never seen this set but I have seen others. Gorgeous!! I will create a link to your Bodleian post, many thanks.

Happy 2015
Hels

Anonymous said...

Excellent collection of treasures, with Richard the III cartoon the icing on the cake!

Happy New Year to you both, with hearty thanks for all that you do to keep history so very much alive and interesting on our computers!

Anonymous said...

Your breakfast links is a favorite part of every weekend! Happy New Year to you both and thank you!

destroytheuniverse said...

Thanks to Two Nerdy History Girls for years of both shallow and profound pleasures.
Today's posting is a perfect example of the treasures you've GIVEN us with pretty hats trenchant social observation and SCIENCE!
Feel the gratitude.

Heather said...

Oh what a treasure trove of links! And Emily Bronte on the stairs?! Oh my...

Heather said...

Oops, I mean Anne Bronte!

 
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