"...we should pass over all biographies of 'the good and the great,' while we search carefully the slight records of wretches who died in prison, in Bedlam, or upon the gallows."
~Edgar Allan Poe

Friday, March 13, 2015

Weekend Link Dump


Today is Friday the 13th.


May a lucky black cat cross your path.

On to the Links of Good Fortune:

What the hell caused this Martian mushroom cloud?

What the hell is this ancient jawbone?

Who the hell--and we do mean, hell--killed Jeanette DePalma?

Watch out for the Pearce family!

Watch out for those Puritan New Haven hippie ship builders!

Watch out for those Felt Presences!

Watch out for those visits from the Devil!

Watch out for the giant octopus!

Watch out for Poveglia Island!

Watch out for David Icke's shape-shifting reptilians!

Are you a gambler?  Watch out for the Grimaldi Curse!

A sordid soap opera plays out in 19th century Hertfordshire.

Oh, just another fight between a disembodied spirit and a hypothetical messiah.

"For never was a story of more woe/Than this of Juliet the elephant and her ghostly Romeo."

I just love this:  The oldest known film footage of New York City. Annotated!

A book-mauling ghost.

Commemorating the Cat Lady of Spitalfields. 

Death & Taxes, Georgian Style.

James Gillray, dissolute Prince of Caricaturists.

The Duke of Queensbury races against time.  And loses, naturally.

A guide to celebrating Friday the 13th.

How Regency women "improved upon beauty."

Was Silbury Hill an ancient lighthouse?

Our memories trick us more than we like to think.

Cryptids go to war.

Jane Austen's colorful Aunt Philadelphia.

The diary of a two-year-old aristocrat.

Yes, you may laugh at my house full of cats/But it sure beats a couch full of telepathic rats.

Yeah, I'd live here.

The cats of the Algonquin Hotel.

How to hail a Victorian cab.

Rev. Thomas gets a lesson about ghosts.

Getting hairy with Miss Stout.

The ruins of Christ Church Greyfriars.

The bourdaloue:  for the Regency woman who just couldn't wait.

Quote of the week: "We're not anti-fairies but it's in danger of getting out of control."

And, finally, our musical clip of the week:  At the 1930 St. Louis International Aircraft Exposition, a certain Nellie Jay became the first cow to ride in an airplane.  She was milked during the trip, with the moo juice dramatically parachuted back to earth.  The annual dairy festival at Mount Horeb, Wisconsin still celebrates her feat, with oil paintings, poetry ("She flies through the air with the greatest of ease/Dropping her ice cream, yogurt, and cheese,") and an opera, "Madame Butterfat."

Much to my joy, I found an excerpt of this opera on YouTube.  Behold, the Bovine Cantata in Bb Major:




And that's it for this week.  I can't tell you how much fun I had writing next Monday's post about a pioneering female detective.  Murder!  Adultery!  Car chases!  Crooked clairvoyants!  All-women cavalry regiments!

1 comment:

  1. Another good week of stories. I read the article on the murder of Jeanette DePalma but I think that is a murder that was rather ordinary and was blown out of proportion by local 'witnesses' who never got closer to the scene of the crime than the town's bar. The poor girl never received justice, whatever happened to her.

    ReplyDelete

Comments are moderated. Because no one gets to be rude and obnoxious around here except the author of this blog.