Breakfast Links: Week of July 1, 2012

• More wonderful Linley Sambourne photos: travel to the English seaside during the hot summer of 1906.
• Knitting in the Royal Navy.
• Jane Austen's "Best Literary Sex Scene."
• 18th c recipe for making "hedgehogs" from almond paste.
• Very funny: long jump for horses & other (wisely) discontinued Olympic sports.
• Stern Notice of Indecent Dress in the Village of Lake George, NY.
• Scandal at Court: the Death of Lady Flora Hastings.
• Behold the book-reader of the future, c 1935 - though it might not make it as carry-on.
• Fabulous Renaissance portrait heads by Arcimboldo made of fruit, flora, and fauna.
• What happened to this preservationist's house in NYC will make you sad, and angry, too.
• A 19th c Englishwoman encountering Italy: Countess Evelyn Martinengo Cesaresco.
• Teenaged girls threaten crusade for right to wear curls to school in 1910.
• Old images of Jane Austen's bookshop.
• Bathing with sheeps' heads: nursing the sick child in 17th c England.
• Explore two Gilded Age menus: ten courses that inclue terrapin, chaufroid, ices & wine.
• The mysterious coffins of Arthur's Seat, Scotland.
• Not a good time to be a Loyalist in Philadelphia, 1781: "A mob...broke the shutters & the glass of the windows."
• As complicated then as now (though much more beautifully written): agreement for altering & repairing a house in Hanover Square, 1786.
• Evocative early color photos of Brighton Beach, June, 1906.
• A Regency gentleman's wardrobe: Thomas Coutts, Banker.
• Rabies in the 18th c.
• Oil on copper miniature with 27 mica overlays, a 17th c version of the paper dress-up doll.
• Favorite photo of a favorite author: Edith Wharton with her pet dogs.
• The power of the purse: John Hancock's elegant canvas-work billfold.
• Too strange even for PT Barnum's audiences: Astronomer Joseph Faber's Talking Euphonia.
• Top history-myths regarding the Fourth of July.
• BBC sadly reports: No evidence of mermaids, says US government.

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