Breakfast Links: Week of August 13, 2012

Here's your weekly offering of Breakfast Links – our favorite links of the week via Twitter, including links to other blogs, web sites, photos, and articles you don't want to miss.

• Vintage covers from Vogue magazine.

• The original advertisement for The Great Gatsby, found in a 1925 issue of Princetonian.

• The birth of a Romanov heir, August 12, 1904.

• A treasure trove of Edward Gorey.

• The 50 most scandalous dresses in history.

• Losing one's head: the frustrating search for the truth about decapitation.

• Venison was a fail-safe gift option in the 18th c., but pickled salmon might have been the Enlightenment's fruitcake. 

• Caroline of Brunswick's life and death in Hammersmith.

• It's the lady's glittering diamond eyes inside the mask that make this 18th c snuffbox so unsettling.

• Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) paints his wife. 

• Investigating the allure of Chanel No. 5 perfume, and the differences between real & counterfeit versions.

• What was John Ruskin thinking on his unhappy wedding night? 

• Take a look inside Sherlock's 221B Baker Street home with this detailed rendering from 1948.

• Libby Hall, collector of vintage dog photography.

• The married poet Percy Shelley writes a letter about love, seduction, and the evils of marriage.

• History truth or myth: The word "Mayday" comes from the French for "Help me!"

• Corn on the cob as street food, 1808.

• "I placed my hands before my face for very shame. But I looked through my fingers." Mark Twain & the Cancan.

• What the French in 1900 thought 2000 would look like.

• Gilded dolphin decoration.

• Romance novelist Sir Walter Scott wrote for 19th c men.

• An indecent woman, 1799.

• The unlovely & murderous Laurence Shirley, Earl Ferrers.

• More mysterious paintings from the equally mysterious artist Mrs. Rush.

• An increasingly popular George Washington quote on veterans - which he seems to have never said.

• Witchcraft in Tudor England.

• The story of Civil War veteran Sergeant Duckett's hat.

• "So now what?" Julia Child copes with rejection letters for Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

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