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Category / Nostalgia

Tune into the Forgotten Dial-a-DJ Jukeboxes of Yesteryear

Isn’t she a beauty? I had one of those hallelujah moments while browsing the collectible pages of Ebay today when I came across this seldom seen “Empire State Building” jukebox circa 1935. Invented by Ken Shyvers, the same guy who invented pinball machines, the Shyvers Multiphone is about 50cm tall with a 19cm square base and…

Who Was the Love Doctor of Belle Epoque Paris?

Dr. Samuel Pozzi may be a father of modern gynaecology, whose name is still tied to a pair of surgical scissors used to operate on fallopian tubes around the world today (the pozzi forceps), but his story would be much better placed in a steamy romance novel than a medical textbook. The “disgustingly handsome” celebrity…

Murder at the Tiki Palace: When Swinging Went Sour in the 70s

Chattanooga, Tennessee: known for its southern charm, Civil War battlefields and … an infamous swingers palace? Indeed, perched in the hills overlooking the city, Tennessee once had its own Playboy mansion of sorts. The tiki-themed estate was centered around a highly unusual indoor swimming pool, built with underwater canals that disappeared into bedrooms where Chattanooga’s…

A Brief History of the Mom & Pop Business of Public Execution

In Paris, when his father died in 1644, Louis Desmorest inherited his family’s execution business at the age of 10. His mother had been part of an established execution family that had been in business for the past 100 years. Desmorest’s mother’s clan also hatched the most notable of all the execution families, the Sansons,…

The Great Binge: An Unsettling Reality Check of the Drug-Fuelled “Belle Epoque”

Curiously absent from our historical timelines is “The Great Binge”, a more recently-coined but arguably more appropriate term for that famous period at the turn of the century which we typically refer to as the “Belle Epoque” or the “Gilded Age”. This wasn’t just a time when culture and industry flourished however, it was also…

How American Drugstores nearly replaced the Paris Bistro

Legendary pin-up Lana Turner is said to have been discovered perched on a bar stool bound in a tight sweater at the famous Schwab’s Drugstore on LA’s Sunset Strip. The Drugstore was the quintessential, aspirational, all-American immersion, where the cool kids hung out, fell in and out of love, plotted and gossiped behind the soda…

What Became of the Ancient Greek City they Found in Afghanistan

What was once essentially a completely Greek city in the depths of Afghanistan, was lost under the desert sands for almost 2,000 years, hidden from history until its sensational rediscovery in the 1960s. It was christened by archeologists as Ai-Khanoum, or ‘Lady Moon’, after an Uzbek princess who had lived on its rocky summit. But…

A Spiritual Revisiting of the Lost Beatles Ashram

‘Roll up! Roll up! for the mystery tour’… a mystery indeed, given the chaos that subsequently engulfed The Beatles on their return from India to the West in 1968. Following the ground breaking success of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Fab Four plus an entourage of no less than 60 people (including wives,…

Tips, Tricks & Takeaways from a 15th Century Arabic Sex Manual 

Lucky you – today we’re signing you up for some sex ed from the Arab world 600 years ago, courtesy of a 15th century sex manual that, despite most of the general population having never heard of it, once attained status similar to that of The Arabian Nights. Commissioned in present day Tunisia, during what…
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