Breakfast Links: Week of November 19, 2012

With the feasting behind us, we're back with your weekly offering of Breakfast Links. This week's links have a decidedly Thanksgiving flavor, but there's also plenty more gathered from Twitter, including blogs, web sites, photos, and articles you won't want to miss.
• This week in 1603, Sir Walter Ralegh stood trial for treason, & his eloquent defense made him a national hero.
• Evening glamour, 1922.
• What was on the Pilgrims' menu at the first Thanksgiving?
• Fantastic images from the Duke of Wellington's funeral, 1852.
• Revolutionary War General Israel Putnam was upset. His wife was upset. Cambridge officials were conciliatory. But why?
• The woman who became a witch-pricker in Scotland, 1662.
• Every day except Christmas: Covent Garden, London.
• The colorful story of an American locomotive that ended up on Exmoor.
• Six myths about Thanksgiving revealed.
• More about that first Thanksgiving in Texas.
• This 1869 dressing gown is the perfect garment for Thanksgiving (or any) morning.
• The strangeness and splendor of Elizabethan "It" girls.
• NYC's grand Windsor Hotel burns on St. Patrick's Day 1899 in one of the city's most horrific disasters.
• Rich and satisfying Sippet Pudding - 18th c. recipe plus modern version.
• The game board King Charles I carried with him to the scaffold.
• Special bat refuges built into bridge after old roosting places filled in during repairs.
• A serial killer in the regiment? A curious Civil War hanging.
• How to cook a bird like Norma Jeane: Marilyn Monroe's handwritten turkey recipe.
• Early color photographs of Paris, 1914.
• Lady Sarah Archer, definitely not winning "Mother of the Year."
• Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II) on her wedding day, 65 years ago this week.
• The UK's last typewriter produced - and promptly sent to a museum.
• Dog in joyful air - "Lady Londonderry's Dog."
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter at @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily!

Friday Excess: Thanksgiving Dinner, 1900

Isabella reporting,

If you are feeling diner's remorse today, rest assured that whatever you ate at your Thanksgiving dinner can't hold a candle to the quantity that prosperous New Yorkers consumed for Thanksgiving in November, 1900.

This is a menu for the holiday dinner from the Park Avenue Hotel, New York. I hope you'll click on the image and enlarge to read the staggering variety of offerings. The traditional turkey is almost lost amidst the two kinds of oysters, suckling pig, larded tenderloin of beef, boiled Kennebec salmon, sweetbreads with trifles, saddle of lamb, potted quail....

Left: Thanksgiving Day Dinner [held by] Park Avenue Hotel, New York, NY, November, 1900. From the Rare Books Division, New York Public Library.

Thanksgiving Break

Loretta & Isabella reporting,

Americans will be celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday this Thursday, November 22. For many of you the entire week will be devoted to preparations for visiting friends and relatives, shopping and cooking for the dinner, or perhaps making the trek yourself over the river and through the woods to Grandma's house much like these turkeys, motoring off in an 1907 postcard to, we hope, a vegetarian feast.

Since Thanksgiving also always seems to coincide with our deadlines, we'll be keeping one hand on the keyboard and the other on the pumpkin pie. We'll be taking the week off from blogging, too, since we imagine you're all just as busy as we are. But please know that whatever the season, we're endlessly thankful for you, our readers all around the world. You're the best.

Have a wonderful holiday!

Above: Thanksgiving day, postcard published by Raphael Tuck & Sons, 1907. From the Picture Collection of The New York Public Library.

Breakfast Links: Week of November 12, 2012

Fresh off the grill - your weekly offering of Breakfast Links! Our favorite links of the week via Twitter, including other blogs, web sites, photos, and articles you won't want to miss.
• Evocative photographs: the dinners (and dining halls) of Old London.
• Man finds his doppelganger in 16th c. Italian painting.
• Medieval drugs: the drugstore in Paradise.
• Gilding the gingerbread, with 18th c. recipes.
• Fashionable details make the woman, even in the Great Depression.
• Not all First Ladies have been married to the President.
• Secrets of a Hans Holbein portrait revealed after 400 years.
• It's that time of year: 19th c. nutting parties.
• Ebay find: an 18th c. love letter storage facility.
• Who needs the NHL? Ice hockey games held in ancient Roman amphitheater.
• Tricks from The English Horseman, 1607: "If you will have your horse fetch and carry a glove."
• Tick-tock: video of Elizabethan one-fingered lantern clock.
• Wonderful informal street photographs, 1906: An Englishman abroad: Sambourne in Holland.
• The Fox sisters and the rap on Spiritualism: how Spiritualism's founders faked their 'spirits.'
• For all your carrot information: the World Carrot Museum. Continuing the carroty theme: tiny bunny enjoying carrot.
• Apothecaries and druggists in Georgian Birmingham.
• Calligraphic cats.
• Industrial tourism, early 19th c. style: the silk mills of Overton and Whitchurch.
• Follow preparations for an 18th c. style Christmas masquerade at Tryon Palace in New Bern, NC.
• The shifting Lancaster sands & the dangers of 19th c. travel in the Lake Country.
• Abraham Lincoln to Mary Owens: "It's not you, it's me."
• Opulent textiles from the California missions.
• Angry commuter, 1863: "People are so slow getting on and off the train."
• Men who battled boredom in church services by doodling on the pews...in 1575.
• Scandalous love-nest: a comely showgirl receives a New York mansion (or two) from millionaire George Gould.
• The ghost of the Panama Canal, 1908.
• The Drury Lane Theatre riot: the mob and Mr. Garrick.
• Brutal 1920s script rejection letter from company who made many of Chaplin's films.

• Diary of Confederate girl during Civil War: "Death seemed inevitable & I thought it was well to take it coolly."
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter for fresh updates daily!

Shameless Self-Promotion: We've Been Listed

This has been a surprisingly wonderful week for us – surprising because we as writers never expect these kinds of honors, and we're completely, delightfully shocked and grateful when someone else tells us.

On Wednesday, Isabella learned that her newest historical romance, When the Duke Found Love, was named as one of Amazon's Ten Best Romance Books of the Year. This was doubly amazing since the book won't be released until next week, on 11/27. But still - very nice indeed.

And on Thursday, Loretta learned that her historical romance (second in her Dressmakers series) Scandal Wears Satin was named to Library Journal's Best Books of 2012: Romance list. Librarians know their books, so being included on this list is especially rewarding.

Five minutes of celebration before we both dive back into deadline distress....:)