Breakfast Links: Week of August 6, 2012

This week's Breakfast Links may be a day late, but they're still packed with our favorite links of the week via Twitter, including links to other blogs, web sites, photos, and articles you don't want to miss.
• In search of Edgar Allen Poe in NYC.
• The Lady Mayoress of London Mrs. Fanshawe's Spitalfields Silk Dress, 1750.
• Wizards and warriors: the 12th c. chessmen who inspired Harry Potter.
• Video of Henry VIII's foot combat armour for the Field of Cloth of Gold tournament.
• Too big for any museum, quilt in memory of 25 years of AIDS victims goes digital.
• Forgotten stories of thousands of women who fought in the Civil War.
• Food to die for: food preparation in the Georgian Era.
• Top hats and Victorian Speedos at the Brighton Swimming Club, 1863.
• Abigail Adams comments (disapprovingly, of course) on the original Learned Pig, 1785.
• Like a page from Dickens, an 1856 NYC asylum worked children to save them from being "drones & beggars."
• Marilyn Monroe died 50 years ago this week; photos from her last days.
• When paper was scarce, invitations were printed on the backs of old playing cards: 18th c examples.
• "I'd marry the Devil, if he'd £10,000 a year!" Fortune hunting & flirting, 1860s.
• An adventure at Ranelagh: Edwardians dressed as Georgians.
• Earliest known usage of "OMG" in a letter to Winston Churchill, 1917.
• Important sculpture of tragic Dolly Sisters, icons of the Jazz Age.
• Finding the scattered parts of lost London Bridge.
• When octogenarian sex made the papers, 1800.
• Lingerie dresses of the Edwardian Era.
• This week in 1812: Lady Caroline Lamb disappears, and Byron writes his good-bye letter.
• John Gould's hummingbirds: a Victorian obsession.
• Strange tales of a near-naked man in 18th c Leicestershire.
• On the front line of American history: remarkable photos of camp life during the Civil War.
• Archaeologists discover 1000-year-old hyper-caffeinated tea in Illinois.
• Married at age 2, widow at 10, Empress of the Holy Roman Empire at 22: Bianaca Maria Sforza (1472-1510).
• A cat of a different breed: Holly Golightly's costumes in Breakfast at Tiffany's.
• Victorian tradesmen scraps.
• This week in 1711, Royal Ascot racecourse was opened.
• Mourning in England and America.
• Raise your glass to a good, gross king: George IV.
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