Breakfast Links: Week of December 5, 2011

Served up fresh: our weekly offering of Breakfast Links!  Our favorite links to other blogs, web sites, pictures, and articles, collected from around the Twitterverse.

• A 19^th c Manhattan landmark destroyed "by stealth": http://bit.ly/vIXqBr

• What a costume says: Mildred Pierce's 1930s waitress uniform: http://bit.ly/vfjKbN

• Civil War cool: Three young officers of the 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery, hanging out by a tree: http://bit.ly/rqvuK1

• Check out the festive pug! 19th c chromolithographed Christmas cards from Am. Antiquarian Society : http://bit.ly/uAhqNL

• 'Beyond the Grave: Concepts of Death in Early Modern England' - http://wp.me/p14Gvd-u9

• Grafffiti at the Tower of London: http://bit.ly/tw6W1g 

• Sometime in late 41 BC, Marc Antony and Cleopatra had Cleopatra's sister and rival Arsinoe executed http://ow.ly/7FAys

• On-line book:  'Street Life in London', 1877: Rare descriptions & photographs of ordinary working people:http://tinyurl.com/cyffsy8

• The myth of Krampus, the bad guy of #Christmas out to punish bad children: http://bit.ly/vsZe5w

• If you haven't already discovered the tumblr of smoldering gentlemen in cravats from, you should. Really. :http://bit.ly/jQIVHk

• Modern realities of maintaining British estates: http://on.wsj.com/sFUmoT

• Looking at the work by Betty Ratcliffe, eighteenth-century artist and lady's maid: http://bit.ly/vcWDU4

• Floating Worlds: The Letters of Edward Gorey and Peter F. Neumeyer: http://bit.ly/u4EMTD

• The Vindication of Christmas, 1652, shows how Father Christmas was perceived in Cromwell’s England: http://bit.ly/uEEsH4

• 'Parting the veil of Faery', 1890s -http://bit.ly/ty9T5z

• Extraordinary pair of ivory, steel, & brass wheellock pistols, c 1655-65 from Metropolitan Museum of Art: http://bit.ly/sFwvy4 

• Illegal marriage, an escape attempt in men's clothing, & finally death by starvation: the life of Arabella Stuarthttp://bit.ly/uKRCTJ

• A history of the 'gin palaces' in Regency England: http://bit.ly/vzt7AQ

• Exploding cuffs: how 1740s women's fashions widened: http://bit.ly/roOtMt

• 18th c horse racing: http://bit.ly/vLy3Ys

• Anyone for a full baron? Roasting the Christmas Beef:http://bit.ly/tfZDhx

• Birds of Paradise http://bit.ly/shmGxP(*gorgeous* hand-coloured engravings)

• Looks like a high old time: Vintage (and embarrassing!) photos from1948 Christmas office party in NYC: http://bit.ly/uQzKSA

Above: At Breakfast, by Laurits Andersen Ring, 1898