"...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, August 26, 2016

Weekend Link Dump



This week's Link Dump is sponsored by the Ancient Religious Order of Cats.



via Rob Kroenert



via Telegraph


via Flickr



Where the hell is Henry VIII buried?

Why the hell were these Salem girls hiccuping?

What the hell are these ancient tracks?

Watch out for those mummy curses!

Watch out for those totem pole curses!

Watch out for those meteorite curses!

Watch out for those hotel tablet curses!

Early Modern exercise routines.

Photos of a 1920s road trip through Death Valley.

In which Samuel Wilberforce talks to a ghost.

The kindness of fairy children.

The birth of the sewer crocodile.

So now I know who to blame for Daylight Saving Time.  Curses be on your head, William Willett.

Killer bagpipes!

18th century poisoner cheats the hangman, is gibbeted anyway.

The story of the Wright Sister.

A vision of seven moons.

A well-publicized murder trial in 1890 Indiana.

Traditional games of the British Isles.

Spotted Stones and Trance Girls.

Henry Tufts, colonial bad boy.

London landmarks that are thankfully extinct.

The disappearing burial mounds of Bahrain.

A mysterious ancient structure has been discovered near Scotland.  Yeah, nothing at all ominous abut that sentence.

Mars likes big buttes, and it cannot lie.

Nero as depicted in artwork.

The father of paleontology.

How JFK got the goat vote.

A Polish UFO.

Elizabeth Crofts and the Voice in the Wall.

Gone for a soldier.

A Mayan mathematical genius.

Walking in a dead man's bones.

That most enigmatic of punctuation marks, "..."

The Real Housewives of 19th Century Westminster.

A clock whisperer.

The philosophy of "As if."

Mysterious "final phone calls."

A look at that delightful early Hollywood performer, Ann Pennington.  I had no idea she came to such a sad end.

The birth of "folklore."

A look at one of my favorite writers, H.H. Munro, aka "Saki."  (His "Sredni Vashtar" is one of the most perfect short stories ever written.)

The murder of the Duchess de Praslin.  (My take on that story is here.)

Anglo-Saxon culture as revealed by their artwork.

Investigating female Civil War soldiers.

Investigating the strange case of "Patience Worth."

Investigating chairs.

The original Siamese Twins.

More on Jim of the Union Square Theater.

So now you know where the Devil takes his vacations.

A remarkable recovery from a double arm transplant.

This week's Advice From Thomas Morris consists of two words:  Birth control.

A life-saving World's Fair attraction.

Welsh "mine spirits."

The Eiffel Tower's secret apartment.

A major Polish painter.

Napoleon's snowball fight.

The Prophecy of the Six Kings.

Lethal North Carolina.

Victorian cat houses.  It's not what you think.

"What is more appealing to the eye than a hand-painted knee?"  Ah, life in the 1920s.

Soccer's con man.

I love clips like this: just another day in 1901 Manchester, England.



And, finally, this week in Russian Weird:  Watch out for those sewage trucks.

Also beware of the Nooscope.

And let's not even discuss their fashion shows.

The needles are pretty weird, too.

Their windows are terrific, though.

That's a wrap for this week!  See you on Monday, when I'll be hiding the gin bottles.  Never mind, you'll see why.  In the meantime, let's dance like it's 1965!

5 comments:

  1. Okay, I have never read Saki, but now I have downloaded the complete works for 99 cents from Amazon Kindle. I look forward to the ferret story . . .

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh, you're in for a treat. Strange company of the best kind.

      Delete
  2. Daylight Saving Time... It's time we saved it no more. It made sense during the wars, but it unnecessary now. And annoying.

    And aren't all bagpipes killers?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Confession time: I love bagpipes. And I'm not even Scottish, so there's no excuse.

      Delete
    2. I read a story about a member of the Russian Imperial Family, possibly the Tsar himself (Alexander II?), visiting Britain and being at one point entertained in the mess of a Scottish regiment. After dinner, the pipers came in and played around the table. The Tsar was at first startled, then bemused; he then seemed to be thinking and at last banged his hand on the table and, smiling, cried, "They're playing a tune!"

      Delete

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