Saturday, September 21, 2013

Breakfast Links: Week of September 20, 2013

Saturday, September 21, 2013
Served up fresh - our round up of this week's fav links to other web sites, blogs, articles, and images, gathered for you from around the Twitterverse.
• Resplendent gentleman's dressing gown with repeating pattern of foliage and mytical beasts, c. 1905-15.
• "The true and beloved lady of the English": Ealhswith, Wife of King Alfred the Great.
• "My Sweetheart Went Down with the Ship": Titanic related piano music.
• These 19th c. women helped map the universe - yet still couldn't get any respect and were dubbed the "Harvard Harem."
• September 15, 1813: Jane Austen writes from London to her older sister Cassandra.
• The evil of beans - just ask any ghost or vampire.
• Prince Albert's cultural legacy: Albertopolis.
• The last of a once-princely 18th c. Anglo-Mughal dynasty: a peasant farmer in Northern India, heir to an English barony.
Fanny Campbell: or, The Female Pirate Captain, 1844.
* The top ten restaurants in London - in the 1890s.
• "The true Arte of Defence": Elizabethan fencing and a video demonstrating Renaissance combat from the !595 Club.
• An East India Company merchant's belongings in 1618: pistol, teapot, soap, and a satin doublet.
• A short history of the birthing chair.
• Did that historical costume look familiar in the last film you saw? It's most likely recycled - over and over and over.
• Georgians had to pay tax on their hair powder - and now the tax certificates are a historical research tool.
• The very practical "yard" in the design of Early American gardens and landscapes.
• The spoil of mariners: in 1780 alone, scurvy killed 1,600 men in a fleet of 12,000 while enemy action killed only sixty.
• A 1903 undertaker muses about the curious garb and strange shrouds his clients choose to be buried in.
• Young, smart, & brave - and possibly the worst spy ever: Nathan Hale, captured this week in 1775.
• Did Hollywood give the 1920s a boob job in latest The Great Gatsby remake?
• The serious and the smirk: the smile in portraiture through history.
• OK, so this is silly: Ikea instructions for Stonehenge.
• Nineteen famous Thomas Jefferson "quotes" that he actually never said at all.
• Long-gone houses of a millionaire's family: the lost George J. Gould Mansions at 857 Fifth Avenue, New York.
• Shopping on the move: the street traders of Georgian London.
• Godey's Lady's Book outlined exactly how to make a dress in 1851.
• Jane Mecom writes to her brother Benjamin Franklin about the beginning of the American Revolution in 1775.
• Fascinating site devoted to forgotten bookmarks - the things discovered tucked inside used books.
• A landmark Victorian Temple of Relief in Birmingham.
• "Take middling rabbits, neither too young nor old": 18th c. recipe for Ragoo of Rabbits.
• Hogwarts in Manhattan! The 1,000+ weird and wonderful gargoyles of City College.
• Late-medieval recipes for making ink.
• A sad victim of eighteenth-century debauchery: "The Ruined Girl", 1786.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.

4 comments:

Elizabeth Varadan, Author said...

As always, an enjoyable collections of historical posts to read. I especially liked the one on the restaurants of 1890s London.

Anonymous said...

Loved the Ikea Henj directions. We thought you would also enjoy these ninth-century Ikea directions:

http://peabodyslament.wordpress.com/2013/05/14/ninth-century-ikea-directions/

T.H.Gray, Director-Curator
American Hysterical Society

nightsmusic said...

Great links this week. Loved the Henge instructions. If I won the lottery, I'd build one in my backyard. But the best was on the how to sew a dress link, that dark green damask took my breath away! Oh boy, do I want one of those!

Anonymous said...

Another take on being 'ruined' at http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/hardy/poems/ruinedmaid.html

I've seen this in several anthologies, this was the first place I found it on a web search.

 
Two Nerdy History Girls. Design by Pocket