Breakfast Links: Week of November 2, 2015

It's time for Breakfast Links - our weekly round-up of fav links to other articles, images, blogs, and websites via Twitter.
• First letter composed on a typewriter (that "new-fangled writing machine") by Mark Twain.
• Marie-Antoinette: a life in seven objects.
• What new immigrants looked like when they arrived on Ellis Island.
• The New Woman meets the Old Witch.
• Answering the tight-laced corset debate: modern scientist counters with an MRI of corset-wearer.
• The mystique of the cursed figurehead.
• Rapper's delight: P.T. Barnnum exposes a supernatural swindler.
• Image: lovely 1820 fashion plate for a purple pelisse.
• New Romney, a thriving English medieval port changed forever by a devastating storm.
• How intrepid women overcame an East India Company ban on them traveling to India in the early 17thc.
• This letter written in October 1780 by Abigail Adams to her husband John described the shocking betrayal of Benedict Arnold.
• Slashing throats for 130 years: the "read" Sweeney Todd.
• Henry VIII's break with the Pope and London's largest property transfer: the dissolution of the monasteries.
• Recreating the make-up of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 C.E.)
• Image: Advertisement for Electric Corsets.
• "Bedazzling the eyes... like an angel of the sun": Shem Drowne's early 18thc. Indian archer weathervane.
• Beautiful color photographs of England in the 1920s.
• Observations on 18thc textiles in the correspondence of John and Abigail Adams.
• Object of intrigue: the prosthetic iron hand of a 16thc. knight.
• Behind the scenes in pictures at a 19thc. American illustrated newspaper.
• The medical powers of pumpkins.
• Alexander Hamilton's last letter, 1804.
• Image: A set of wooden play blocks depicting Nelson's funeral procession, 1806.
• James Ince & Sons, the oldest umbrella makers in England.
• The World War One munitions workers called "canary girls" - and the deadly hazard they faced.
• The spice that built Venice.
• A remedy for witchcraft and demonic possession from 17thc. Ireland.
• Lessons of the brain: how railway worker Phineas Gage survived a horrific work accident to his skull and brain - in 1848.
• Not just a Victorian fashion: the earliest known mourning ring dates from the late 15thc.
• Image: Just for fun: the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood vs. One Direction.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.
Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection.