Saturday, January 4, 2014

Breakfast Links: Week of December 30, 2013

Saturday, January 4, 2014
Happy new year! We're back with a bountiful collection of Breakfast Links for you - links to all our recent fav web sites, blogs, articles, and images, gathered for you from around the Twitterverse.
• Early circulating libraries and Jane Austen.
• Saving face: beauty for women workers during the First World War.
• Is the famous 19th c. painting Washington Crossing the Delaware obscene? Some schools have thought so.
• Rare 18th c. "Incroyable" male fashion doll displayed new styles to gentlemen.
• How humans made squirrels part of the urban environment.
• Another point of view: squirrels as symbols of Satan, of spite, and of saving.
• Michelangelo's handwritten (and illustrated) 16th c. grocery list.
• "You are certainly a very bad woman": the case of Mary Moriarty, a regular of the 1830s magistrates' courts.
• Before drivers' licenses and SSNs, some 19th c. civilians used the equivalent of commercial dog tags for ID.
• Image: Women in the dissection room, Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1892.
• New Years gifts to the "deserving poor" from Queen Victoria, 1853.
• Animal crackers: the long English tradition of keeping exotic animals.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, as translated into Latin and set in plainsong: amazingly beautiful, too.
• Victorian adventures and terrible tales, all part of the Illustrated Police News.
Paws, pee, & mice: cats among medieval manuscripts.
• Making up Hollywood: makeup maven Max Factor, who created the "cupid's bow" lips and made Rudolph Valentino a heartthrob.
• Image: Two stones thrown by Suffragists at Buckingham Palace 100 years ago.
• Here come the brides! Behind-the-scenes blog leading up spring installation at the Victoria & Albert Museum of wedding gowns from 1775-2014.
• The most boring thing on your plate is about to get amazing: parsley, the herb of death.
• Christmas in prison in 1839.
• In the background: art you may never notice in museum dioramas.
Jewish boxes as "enforcers" during the Covent Garden Old Price War of 1809.
Electric corsets, the very thing for ladies c. 1890.
• Image: Sentimental or grotesque? Charles Dickens' letter opener, made from the taxidermied paw of his beloved pet cat, Bob.
• To make Lemon Cheesecakes: 18th c. recipe plus modern version.
• Weeping sailors: British manliness, 1760-1860.
• The snooty Astor Place Opera House in New York City is ruined when a rival secretly rents the house for a dog and monkey show in 1852.
• Be merry and drink perry, a popular 17th c. pear wine - even in Puritan Massachusetts.
• Human trophies: the skull is a familiar memento mori, but during the Second World War, it also became a controversial souvenir.
• New Years' gifts for Queen Elizabeth I, 1599-1600.
• Domestic cats enjoyed village life in China 5,300 years ago.
• Models on 1920s postcards labelled with the names of the real-life lovers who sent cards.
Pitchcocked eels: English tavern dining in the 18th c.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.

4 comments:

Sarah Lynn said...

Oh no, 'Women in the dissection room' is the same link as the stones thrown by Suffragists. Was curious to see that one. Enjoy reading these.

Isabella Bradford/Susan Holloway Scott said...

My apologies, Sarah Lynn - sometimes I get tripped up by all the cutting & pasting. The proper link is now in place for the image of the 19th c. women in the dissecting room. Here it is, too:

https://twitter.com/ChirurgeonsAppr/status/418420407679463424/photo/1

The Gossamer Tearoom said...

Another great list of fun links to lots of interesting things!! Thank you so much, ladies, for all the work you must put into the research of your blog! I am especially interested in the link to "Mille Baisers", the 1920's postcard site! I collect that type of postcard and am very happy to have found someone who blogs on that topic!

Wishing you both a Wonderful New Year!

Betty

Sarah Lynn said...

Thank you!

 
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