1. Japan’s Tiny Police Boxes
‘Koban’ are small, architecturally diverse police stations (or ‘boxes’) scattered around Japan.
Found on this Instagram account via Present & Correct.
2. The Heyday of Escolta Street, the oldest street in Manila
One of Manila’s famous streets, the Escolta, could also be the oldest. For the most part, it has lost its gilded edge and glory as Manila’s downtown area. As Manila moved into the 20th century, the Americans influenced the modernized look of the city. With the influx of a large number of American investors, American companies clearly dominated the economy, with most of them establishing their headquarters around the center of business activity, the Escolta.
Escolta street, with it’s many influences, was a melting pot of architectural influences and introduced skyscrapers to the Philippines.
Found on Manila Nostalgia.
3. Westsylvania, the US state that nearly was
A proposed state of the United States located in what is now West Virginia, southwestern Pennsylvania, and small parts of Kentucky, Maryland, and Virginia, first proposed early in the American Revolution, Westsylvania would have been the fourteenth state in the newly formed United States, had it been recognized.
Found on Wikipedia.
4. Life of the World’s Loneliest Man, aka the “Man of the Hole”
The Man of the Hole is a man indigenous to Brazil who lives alone in the Amazon rainforest. He is believed to be the last surviving member of his tribe.
The Brazilian Government body, FUNAI has been monitoring him since, to prove his existence and to renew the restriction order of the land he roams. Until 1998, only a single blurred photo of him was available, which was shot by a filmmaker and briefly included in his documentary Corumbiar.
FUNAI recently released a video of him to create global awareness of the threats to the uncontacted people in Brazil, which quickly went viral.
Found on Medium.
5. This online archive of fans
Found on The Museum of the City of New York online archives.
6. Burlesque dancer Zorita, feeds her pet snake Elmer in New York, 1952
She was an American burlesque dancer. She was best known for a twenty-minute dance which she performed with two boa constrictors called ‘Elmer and Oscar’
Some of her other unique and subversive numbers:
In another act, she emerges from a giant spiderweb dripping in rhinestones. Dark ‘spider’s hands’ slowly peel off her clothes from the rear. Another one was called ‘The Consummation of the Wedding of the Snake”, where she stripped while holding an 8-foot boa constrictor. She described it as: “A gorgeous young maiden is going to be sold into slavery to an ugly old man. Instead, she dances with a snake, gets bitten, and dies.”
She was also known to walk her snakes on leads in public.
Found on Pinterest. She also has a pretty interesting Wikipedia page.
7. The Mechanical Turk that Set Edgar Allan Poe on the Path to Mystery Writing
Known initially as the Automaton Chess Player, the Turk was designed to play chess against any opponent game enough to challenge him. It toured Europe, beating the likes of Benjamin Franklin.
Edgar Allen Poe rightly configured that the champion chess-playing automaton was no “pure machine” at all, but a hollow cabinet with an expert chess player hidden inside. In the essay “Maelzel’s Chess Player” in 1836, Poe made his attempt to debunk the hoax –– his deductive reasoning ended up in a later work.
If the Turk was a “pure machine,” Poe wrote, it would always win, every time. In total, he offered seven criteria reasoning why the Turk had to be a hoax–a model that bears parallels to Poe’s fictional detective C. Auguste Dupin’s method of “ratiocination.”
Full article found on The Smithsonian.
8. Candle Salad
A vintage fruit salad that was popular in America from the 1920s through to the 1960s. The salad is typically composed of lettuce, pineapple, banana, cherry, and either mayonnaise or, according to some recipes, cottage cheese. Whipped cream may also be used.
Found on Wikipedia.
9. Extreme Ironing
An actual extreme sport in which people take ironing boards to remote locations and iron items of clothing. According to the Extreme Ironing Bureau, extreme ironing is “the latest danger sport that combines the thrills of an extreme outdoor activity with the satisfaction of a well-pressed shirt.”
Found on the official Facebook page.
10. On Set of Cabiria, a 1914 Italian epic silent film
Found here.
11. The Original Peaky Blinders
The real Peaky Blinders who operated in Birmingham in the early 1900s. Pictured from left to right are Henry Fowler, Ernest Bayles, Stephen McHickie and Thomas Gilbert. The gang was composed largely of young men of lower to middle-classes. They derived social power from robbery, violence, racketeering, illegal bookmaking and the control of gambling.
The outfit worn by the members of the gang were tailored jackets, lapel overcoats, button waistcoats, silk scarves, bell-bottom trousers, leather boots, and peaked flat caps.
Found on Instagram.
12. The Museum of Endangered Sounds
Save the Sounds launched in January of 2012 as a way to preserve the sounds made famous by favorite old technologies and electronics equipment.
