Breakfast Links: Week of April 1, 2013

Here's your weekend serving of fresh Breakfast Links: our fav links to other blogs, web sites, videos, articles, and photographs, all gathered for  you weekly from the Twitterverse.
• The 'Spite House': a five-foot wide, four-story house built in NYC in 1882 only to obscure a neighbor's view.
• The ancient Hobbit ring that may have inspired Tolkien is put on display.
• "Avert your eyes, you lustful wretches!" The topless duel between a princess & a countess, 1892.
• Speakeasy cards: a Prohibition-era ticket to drink.
• Drawing of Man in Korean Costume by Peter Paul Rubens has inspired books and questions.
• Long before Rosa Parks: taking on the segregated NY street-car companies, 1854.
• Street-walking in 1920s: not what you think, but the Women's Police Service.
• Arbella Stuart: Cross-dressing, thwarted love, armed pursuits, and a pitiful demise.
• What children in the British Empire were reading in the 1700s - with only one picture of a man being killed in front of his family.
• The Belle Epoque catering extravaganza, 1900.
• Early 20th c. Easter postcards from the collection of the New York Public Library.
• A visit to 18th c. silk designer Anna Maria Garthwaite's Spitalfields house.
• For everyone dreaming of summer: a short history of the bikini.
• In Bloomsbury, an early zoo full of animal curiosities, including a half-rabbit, half-cat.
• "Boxing Among Girls Placed Under Ban", 1911.
• Sneak peak into timeless era of fashion through vintage footage of legendary designer Jeanne Lanvin at work.
• Heaven in a chocolate pot: super-rich18th c. recipe for chocolate cream.
• A beautiful 15th c. alphabet book.
• A selection of silk: 18th c. gowns from the Mint Museum.
• Practical Gothic: a rare corrugated-iron church survives 150 years.
• Feline paw-prints through history.
• Cassiobury, a long-gone house in Hertfordshire, resurrected in bits & pieces in America.
• Great 1890s photo of Buffalo Bill's Wild West troupe visiting...Venice?
• An unusual genre: Country House poetry.
• Anarchist of style (or not?): the cross-dressing 18th c. diplomat Chevalier d'Eon.
• First paintings by fourteen famous artists.
• How to dress (and undress) like a mermaid: examples from 1868 to 1921.
• The remarkable Ignatious Sancho (1729-1780), former slave who became a shop keeper & a man of letters.
• A prim 19th c. rectory in NYC becomes a 1930s nightclub where Hollywood writers start a brawl.
• Was a "parting shot" once a real bullet?
• Oldest surviving aerial photograph was taken from a balloon over Boston, 1860.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily!