Breakfast Links: Week of March 3, 2014

Our clocks spring ahead this Sunday morning, and although we lose an hour, we're not about to short-change your Breakfast Links – our weekly round-up of fav links to other web sites, blogs, articles, and images, all gathered via Twitter.
• The unexpected allure of the 18th c. castrato.
• "One of the damnedest trampling matches you ever saw": when early 20th c. archaeologists talked trash.
• Antebellum splendor vs. the brutality of slavery: thoughtful article about the narrow interpretations of slavery at Southern Plantation Museums.
• Image: The consequences of war in The Crimea 160 years ago: Florence Nightingale visits the wounded at Scutari Military Hospital.
• "A great many pretty caps in the windows of Cranbourn Alley. I hope when you come we shall both be tempted": Jane Austen writes to her sister Cassandra, 1814.
• 18th c. fencing: the humble petition of Peter Renaud.
• The staircases of Old London, as seen in glass slides once used for magic-lantern shows.
• Irene Castle on how the Tango led the world to dress reform, 1914.
• Image: Dancing on a tumbling world, divided between love and scholarship.
• The intriguing story of Dido Belle, daughter of a slave, at Kenwood in 18th c. England.
• Up in the air, in the margins, on stilts.
• When John met Sarah: convict courtship in 19th c. Australia.
• Image: A male momento mori figure used for spiritual contemplation, c 1800. One half is flesh, the other a skeletal.
• Debunking the myths surrounding Zelda Fitzgerald.
• Cringe or starve: as cold as regimented Victorian charity?
• Fashion myths: the connection between the hobble skirt and Coca-cola.
• Image: Unusually long knitting needles & a large ball of yarn in a fashion plate, c. 1801.
• Among the perils of drinking water in the 17th c.: 255 frogs.
• "Our hero is a sportsman": British domestic interiors in 19th c. India.
• "Successful marriages start in the kitchen": mid 20th c. sexist advertising at its finest.
• Amazing photographs of the murmurations of starlings.
• Intriguing photos from the 1860s show a Paris that no longer exists.
• The poignant story of a 1918 parlour-maid turned munitions-worker, making shells during the Great War.
• Image: "She didn't like seven sample husbands" that commercial Cupid sent, 1914.
• The return of the monocle: one part hipster, one part Mr. Peanut.
• That's a-maze-ing: garden mazes and labyrinths.
• How do you treat a woman in 1715 who thinks she's already dead?
• Scottish poet Robert Burns and 18th c. oatcakes.
• Image: Perhaps the best Penguin ever for World Book Day?
• Traveling for suffrage: two women, a car, a cat, and a mission.
• Chawton House Library appeals for funds to help fight floods that put collection at risk.
• "He called him old Roague and old Pedler and old Pimpe": rough words from 17th c. sailors.
• The tales of Darab, a beautifully illustrated medieval Persian prose romance.
• Photographs of a lovely spring day in London's Hyde Park, 1951.
• A shimmering cream silk dress, 1920s.
• Historical pancake recipes for Shrove Tuesday.
• Cock Lane and Cockspur Street: London streets with interesting histories.
• Wealthy NYC women form the Colony Club in 1900 - not because they wanted a club, but because they wanted a clubhouse.
• Margery Kempe, author of a medieval autobiography.
• Time-traveling celebrities.
• Image: "Plymouth Dockyard", by James Tissot, 1877.
• Why are all these 16th-18th c. ladies dressed as Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt?
• The sad lot of syphilitic whores of Georgian London.
• How the great wheels for spinning survived.
• An awful fire of 1797: thousands of sacks of grain at Albion Mills were destroyed by fire with the smell of burnt toast.
• From the key to the Bastile to George Washington's false teeth: the top ten objects in the collection of Mount Vernon.
• Image: If other professions were paid like writers, artists, & musicians.
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