Breakfast Links: Week of February 10, 2014

After a week buried in the snow, the Breakfast Links are back - a super-sized edition of our weekly round-up of fav links to other web sites, blogs, articles, and images, all gathered for you from around the Twitterverse.
• In 1789, eleven-year-old Mary Wade was sentenced to hang for theft; instead she was "mercifully" transported.
• Image: Meet Antoinette Perkins: harmless to cats, a walking death to everyone else.
• Lady Westmoreland's views on acceptable male conduct when peddling gossip, 1827.
• Scenes of everyday life and people in 1790.
• Heart-shaped books from the 15th-16th centuries.
• 1920s-1930s dance cards from the University of Iowa.
• Image: Parasol flirtation, 1891.
• A bill of fare from a Valentine's Day dinner at the St. Nicholas Hotel in NY, 1882.
• Whip it! Early Valentine's Day custom in old New York involved public displays of flirtatious flagellation.
• Elizabeth Bull's 1730s wedding dress.
• I left my heart at Vauxhall Gardens: an 18th c. "missed connections" personal ad.
• Image: London's Bankside, c. 1630. Theatres from left to right are the Swan, the Rose, and the Globe.
• The 19th c. origins of snow removal for all New Yorkers, rich and poor.
• A rare surviving "Volito" - an in-line skate from 1823.
• A colonial milliner's apprentice worries about how to address a duchess.
• The Countess of Kent's Powder, a 17th c. "cure-all."
• Before Rockwell, a wildly successful gay artist defined the perfect American male.
• Unforgettable love letters: top twenty letters from the heart.
• A Persian romance for Valentine's Day in the "Book of Affairs of Love."
• Image: "Waukenphast" is a terrific name for a brand of shoes, 1881.
• "Plague me no more with tears and sighs!" Dealing with an unwanted Valentine, 18th c. style.
• An 18th c. monkey wearing a uniform, a chateau at Chantilly, and the birth of the modern circus.
• Happy Valentine's Day, I hate you: would you send one of these "vinegar Valentines"?
• The tippet and the muff, 1806.
• Early family photographs of Queen Victoria, an early supporter of photographic portraits.
• Printing on ice - a story to mark the 200th anniversary of the last Frost Fair on the Thames.
• News from 1908: tattooing is the new rage among Society folk.
• Famous people in history and their unusual pets.
• Indulgent Georgian comfort food: 18th c. recipe for Baked Marrow Pudding.
• The Isolator, a bizarre helmet for encouraging concentration, 1925.
• A five-second test to determine whether you're a good liar or not.
• "Murder by a midwife at Manchester", 1877.
• The long and colorful history of the f-word.
• The wheel cipher that Thomas Jefferson invented when he was Secretary of State.
• Was Revolutionary War General "Mad Antony" Wayne really mad?
• Pudding Lane in London was once Red Rose Lane; you wouldn't want to eat the puddings it was named for.
• Image: The 15th c. King of France in full armor (though you can still see his blue eyes.)
• The color red, long associated with seduction, sexuality, and love.
• How a 1908 suffrage cartoon became an internet sensation.
• Image: A distressed purple creature from the Luttrell Psalter, England, c 1325-1340.
• The sitting dead: bizarre burials and curious coffins.
• Not a bit of spandex: early ski fashions.
• First English reference to Valentine's Day as a romantic time was part of marriage negotiations, 1477.
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