Saturday, November 16, 2013

Breakfast Links: Week of November 11, 2013

Saturday, November 16, 2013
Here's your fresh serving of Breakfast Links – our weekly round-up of favorite links to other web sites, blogs, images, and articles, gathered for you from around the Twitterverse.
• "Hot spiced gingerbread!" 18th c. recipe for Georgian street vendor's favorite.
• A medieval world 1000 feet underground, carved entirely from salt.
• How to fight like a Victorian gentleman: a guide to bartitsu, the Sherlock Holmes art of self-defense.
• Some historical fashion objects simply cannot be displayed: Jacqueline Kennedy's pink Chanel suit.
• More Austen on the block - a Jane Austen portrait, first editions, and more.
• The marvelous story of the Hotel Theresa, Harlem's hottest hotel in the 1940s and '50s.
• The Oldest Student in France & the Champion of the World: early 20th c. French calling cards.
• The tignon – a kind of turban – and why 19th c. African American women wore them in Louisiana.
• Simple yet ornate drawing of a dragon fills in the line in 15th c. Prayer Book of Charles the Bold.
• From wreathes to jewelry, Queen Victoria to Michael Jackson: web site for the world's only museum devoted entirely to hair.
• The heroic, harrowing life of American colonial artist Henrietta Johnston (1674-1729).
• The circus animals that helped Britain in World War One.
• According to lurid 18th c. newspaper advertisements, Northampton was the home of broken families and the criminally insane.
Punqua Wingchong just wanted to return to his home in China in 1808 – or at least that's what Thomas Jefferson thought.
• A tale from 3rd c. BCE Egypt: the lentil-cook and the pumpkin-seller went to market....
• Group portraits of 19th c. American families in their Victorian-style homes.
• The painstaking process behind creating Mughal paintings and calligraphy.
• The cat and the diplomat, 1860: "A cat comes down the chimney, stares at me in amazement, secures one of my slippers in full flight and disappears."
• A captivating (and zoomable) panoramic display of 1920s bathing beauties.
• Of hedgehogs, whale vomit, and fire-breathing peacocks (and the 17th c. recipes that mention them.)
• Renaissance rhinoplasty: the 16th c. nose job.
• A new theory to an ancient mystery: did the teenaged King Tut die in a chariot crash?
• Myra Howard, shoplifter, apprehended in Chicago, 1900.
• "My face is tattooed and my ears are pierced. What will those Spaniards say of me if they see me like this?"
• A brief & tortured history of caffeine "addiction."
• Seven myths and seven truths about the Boston Tea Party.
• A walking stick and 100 other objects that tell the story of America.
• When a diamond really is a girl's best friend: the allure of a cursed diamond.
• How drunk were late-Victorian train drivers?
• Fall fashion trend for 19th c. ladies: leaves (plus recipes for preserving them.)
• The life of Edward III, one of England's most successful kings, born at Windsor Castle in 1312.
• The fashionable, coy single women of 1920s fantasy postcards.
• The coroner and the corset, 1874.
• How slang and swear words helped soldiers survive World War One.
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1 comments:

Elizabeth Varadan, Author said...

These were great! I especially liked reading about bartitsu, the lovely Victorian Era paintings, and the article about the pink diamond. But actually I browsed a lot of them and enjoyed them (the Boston Tea Party, the animals who helped in WWI, among others.) But those two were standouts for me. Probably because I have such an interest in the Victorian Era.

 
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