Breakfast Links: Week of March 28, 2011

No April Fools here! Only a fresh serving of our weekly Breakfast Links: miscellaneous blogs, web sites, and news stories gathered from the farthest reaches of the Twitterverse. If you’re on Twitter, please follow us – that little bird in the right-hand column will lead the way.

• Silly Jane Austen video: "I'm reading your favorite novel... to my sister!" JA Old Spice Parody

• Some fierce, over-the-top caps worn with aplomb by late 18th c English & French ladies: http://bit.ly/f6SAMN

• Museum conserves rare Tiffany church windows vital to American cultural history: http://bit.ly/gPuEL4

• Great images of attitudes towards dirt throughout history http://www.historyextra.com/gallery/dirt-filthy-reality-everyday-life

• The royal wedding cake will feature oak leaves, acorns and ivy symbols, but why? The royal icing on the cake: http://bit.ly/fv4aos

• Swooning over these amazing Penguin Classics Threads covers, including Secret Garden! http://bit.ly/hDI2uX

• Interesting thoughts about the Restoration of Charles II & the London mob of 1660: http://bit.ly/e5DPUe

• A Rare and Extensive Archive of Love Letters by Elizabeth Taylor Up for Sale: http://t.co/2PYuN3k

• Our fascination with automata continues: c 1810 jeweled pistols shoot tiny singing birds, not bullets: http://bit.ly/fsiCBX

• The racy fashions in “Some Like It Hot” caused bans and boycotts after its release on this day in 1959: http://bit.ly/f4X5AN

• Restoration of the Duke of Wellington's jacket at the Tower of London: http://bit.ly/iajOjh 

• Three Hundred Years of the Royal Ascot http://bit.ly/fNhtdX

• The little-remembered "Arctic Diana", Louise Arner Boyd; Women at Sea: http://paulinespiratesandprivateers.blogspot.com

• The Fox Sisters & The Davenport Brothers: Victorian spiritualists: Could they speak to the dead? http://bit.ly/ePDYQ0

• On this day two hundred years ago, Jane Austen politely told Rev. James Stanier Clarke to take a shovel and shove it. http://wp.me/6Mf3

• An elaborate bridegroom's shirt c1860, embroidered by his bride. Plus charts, if you're feeling lovesome/ambitious: http://bit.ly/dH05U4

• Royal wedding cartoons show William and Kate are lucky it's 2011 http://t.co/wDXN0

• "Dumb Politically, Blind to the Census, Deaf to the Enumerator." Suffragettes boycot the 1911 census http://tinyurl.com/3dfxsq7

• Handwritten epigram of congratulations from Lady Hamilton to Lord Nelson after Battle of Copenhagen: http://bit.ly/hbbnTo