Saturday, November 1, 2014

Breakfast Links: Week of October 27, 2014

Saturday, November 1, 2014
For your weekend reading pleasure - our weekly round-up of favorite links to other web sites, blogs, articles, and images, collected via Twitter.
• Maybe it seemed like a good idea at the time: presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt attends a Salem "pageant" to watch witches being hanged in 1932.
• A lovely c. 1900 photograph of young sisters Jessica & Rosalie Wakefield by Horace Warner - and what became of the two girls.
Cocaine wine: Coca Cola's sordid past was the fireball of the Victorian era.
Sarah Bernhardt's aging was front page news.
Image: "A Peep into Brest with a Navel Review": caricature of a late 18th c. fashion statement.
• Could your stuff be haunted? Ghostbusting the creepiest antiques.
• Three brave British Army wives from the American Revolution.
• In 1938, a kindergarten teacher made Los Angeles court room history by wearing slacks to testify in a burglary case; the judge sentenced her to jail for contempt of court.
• After the Boston Tea Party, colonists brewed bergamot and other herbs as substitute teas - try it yourself.
Image: a 1920s printed souvenir fan for a society ball held at Palais Garnier.
• A history of Regency Royal Ascot (starring Wellesley-Pole.)
Robert Fulton (1765-1815), creator of steamboats and submarines - and of paintings like Love's First Interview.
• London street names: ham sandwiches and the Hellfire Club.
• The origins of the Shroud of Turin.
Image: The opening lines of James Boswell's draft of "Life of Samuel Johnson" in the Beinecke's Boswell Collection.
• The "western" techniques hidden in Chinese wallpaper.
• The evolution of women's dress in the workplace from 1900 to 2000.
Video: Georgian delights in Kensington Palace's royal costume storage.
• Beautiful assortment of costumes from historical movies.
Sweet Potato Pudding from 1827: the original recipe, plus modern adaptation for your Thanksgiving table.
• How an African slave helped Boston fight smallpox.
• Interactive map showing legacy of 18th c. landscape designer Capability Brown.
Image: 1920s shoe: olive silk upper and silver and gold leather applique.
• World War One and women doctors: the work of American women's hospitals "over there."
• The tiniest places overseen by the National Trust: the best dolls' houses.
• Scandalous tales of the British Embassy in Paris.
Image: At the end of World War Two, emergency stretchers were used in some districts of London as fences.
• Gallery of the world's most beautiful bookstores.
• When a 12 became a 6: a short history of standardized sizing in American women's clothing.
• The 19th c. Frenchman responsible for a gigantic fraud.
Image: Just for fun: ghost fashions.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.

2 comments:

Hels said...

I love the Capability Brown interactive map but all the sites are marked in the same colour. Thus there is no way of knowing which sites he stayed at and did the work himself, where he was a consultant but someone else did the bulk of the work and where he was merely an inspiration.

Sarah said...

May I ask anyone able to log in to Princetown university to point out a logical inconistency? Robert Fulton, 1765- 1815 is quoted as being established as a miniature painter, by his application and hard work... in 1852.

 
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