Breakfast Links: Week of April 28, 2014

Served up fresh for you! Here's a heaping serving of Breakfast Links, our weekly round-up of fav links to other web sites, blogs, articles, & images, all gathered for you via Twitter.

• Coffee à la carte, with a large helping of London history.

• Mata Hari's doomed last lover, who failed to save her from the firing squad & met a tragically appropriate fate.

• Image: European jewel-toned silk velvet and gilt shoes, c 1890. And the stockings!

• All inspiring London streets: pissing alleys, meat markets, and revolting peasants.

• Why we look the way we look now: how the 1930s put the body at the center of fashion.

• Into the garden: esaplier and wall trees in early America.

• The secret libraries of New York City.

• Working icons: Rosie the Riveter.

• Image: Constable's Haywain. Same place, different centuries. 

• "Every man would walk into the sweet meadows": 17th c May Day celebrations.

• Old times: photos of people using the Cincinnati Public Library card catalog, 1950-1970.

• Snapshots taken by pilots while flying biplanes, c 1917.

• For all the fans of Edward Gorey's illustrations: a catalog of an upcoming sale of his art.

• Image: Detail of Henry VIII's armour with the initials of Henry and Katherine of Aragon decoratign the skirt.

• School days in early children's books.

• Racing through France: fabulous set of early motorcycling images.

• Belladonna and beauty sleep.

• Dampening desire and lessening lust in the 17th c. with lettuce (among other foods.)

• Beautiful buttons: Flickr group of photos of elaborate buttons made in Birmingham, UK, 1780-1820.

• Beware of 18th c. bed buggs!

• Girls' & boys' names from medieval London (and not the usual ones, either.)

• Image: Early 20th c. advertisement for ambition pills, the cure-all for weak and nervous men.

• The 225th anniversary of George Washington's inauguration and the 75th anniversary of this odd tribute at the 1939 World's Fair.

• The complicated 18th c life of Elizabeth Sarah Villa Real, better known as Mrs. Gooch.

• How to visit a quaint 19th c. New England fishing village...hiding in The Bronx.

• A status-conscious fruit: pineapple cultivation in Britain, 17th-19th centuries. 

• Image: Developing the perfect Wedgewood blue: 18th c. color experiments for Jasperware.

• Breaking up is hard to do: letter Lord Byron wrote to Lady Caroline Lamb, telling her their relationship must end, 1813.

• "Some things should happen on soft pages, not cold metal": wise words from author Harper Lee.

• Behind the scenes: costume designer Sandy Powell discusses her fantastic 19th c. costumes for Young Victoria.

• A miniature olive pit sculpture masterfully carved in China in 1737.

• An unexpected hold-out: half haunted house, half tacky deli, a Civil War era house survives in NYC's midtown.

• Curling irons for a man's perfect 19th c. moustache.

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