This week's Link Dump is, naturally, sponsored by the Cats of Friday the 13th!
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| Life Magazine, 1941 |
Watch out for those fairy vampires!
Watch out for the Monstrous Wyvern!
Watch out for the Donkey Lady of Texas!
How tequila saves endangered species.
A notorious early 19th century murderer.
The Norwood Gypsy.
Some Victorian criminal slang.
In search of a Welsh "lost city."
A condemned murderer's death dance.
Some prominent 19th century theater fires.
The saga of the Minnesota Iceman.
An unusual Egyptian mummy.
The famous painting depicting the death of Marat.
When dogs were kitchen gadgets.
Cat uses sign language to
Iceland's oddly eerie last executions. Oddly eerie, because, well, Iceland.
A tax targeting spinsters and their cats; or, why the 18th century would have left me bankrupt.
One of history's intriguing little mysteries: Was Madame de Genlis Napoleon's spy?
How a Victorian girl escaped her kidnapper.
How one woman went from servant girl to business mogul.
For all of you who are just dying to read about ear maggots.
On a related topic, here is some praise for earwax.
A Greek tomb shows what we don't know about Western civilization.
This week's Advice From Thomas Morris: What not to do with a carving knife.
Medical care for servants, Early Modern style.
The oldest silk.
That time we nearly obliterated Arkansas.
Why a man has spent 40 years in a ghost town.
18th century wig snatching.
An 1870s cat hospital.
Yet another case of adultery leading to the scaffold.
If, like me, you love silent film, here is how they did special effects.
Brighton's Green Man.
In praise of "Green Acres." Damn right.
Agatha Christie and ancient Nimrud.
Persia in WWI.
Witchcraft soup.
That time the Wandering Jew played roulette.
The sounds of Stonehenge.
A Romanov spoiled brat. (Incidentally, "Russia's Lost Princesses" is on YouTube. If you haven't seen it, go take a look; it's great.)
A tragic case of "puerperal insanity."
A princess and her pampered bulldogs.
Norse gods had a great way with insulting repartee.
The White Lady of Crook Hall.
Some disappearances from hospitals.
The girl with six doppelgangers.
The Great Beach Pyjama Scandal of 1933.
An Illinois witch grave.
Victorian French lingerie.
A famous "changeling."
This week in Russian Weird: Come fly with me!
And that's all for this week. See you on Monday, when we'll be looking at a woman's horrific--and extremely strange--death. In the meantime, how about some Morris dances?
The Victorian English criminal slang was very interesting. There are a few I gleaned from my interest in 19th century British police, and one stands out: "hot beef", rhyming slang for 'stop, thief'. I wondered if 'what's your beef?' evolved from that. A policeman, fully cognizant no doubt in criminal slang, may have asked that when hearing someone yell "hot beef". Or it may have no connection at all.
ReplyDeleteAnd the bit on silent film special effects was very interesting. I'd known about Lloyd's clock stunt, and Fairbanks's slide down the sail (I'd read that a real sail's angle would not have allowed anyone to do that) but not the eye trick or Chaplin's skating (which is also an 'eye trick'). That last especially would have to be done by cgi now, and cost $5,000,000.
ReplyDeleteHere's my old blog about the formative experience of seeing the Minnesota Iceman and then the infamous Chesty Morgan at the NC State Fair when I was a kid. As I may have noted before, I can no longer edit this blog, make new entries or respond to comments, due to it have been begun when Blogger was Blogspot and it was linked to an email account that no longer exists.
ReplyDeletehttp://notbloodlylikely.blogspot.com/2007/06/frozen-ape-men-and-giant-boobies-at-nc.html
One good link deserves another . . . I discovered this "Victorian Clerk" blog on the Weekend Link Dump a year or more ago, and I've been following it ever since. I was finally rewarded with this great story about a cat:
ReplyDeletehttps://victorianclerk.wordpress.com/2016/11/28/saturday-28th-november-1846/