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…
Category Obscure history
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…
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…
Long-lost Erotica of a Pre-Freudian Sexologist
Forget Freud. Today, we’re snooping around the personal archives of Richard von Krafft-Ebing, a 19th…
All Aboard the Doomed Art Deco Floating Palace
Seventy-five years after she lay burning and capsized in the New York harbour, the French…
Bridgerton’s Black Presence isn’t Total Fantasy, it’s Hidden History
There’s a reason why Google autofills questions about the authenticity of Black presence in 17th…
The Outlawed Secret Masonic Society of Pugs
There was one way only for Europe’s intellectual elite to become a member of what…
The Curious Case of Miss Mechanical Venus
The summer of July 1932 brought an unexpected guest to Brussels, Belgium. The city had…
The Forgotten LGBT Queen of Paris and Her Secret Masonic Temple
She was the kind of woman who never belonged to anyone but herself. At least,…
Where the Nazis Hung Out in Occupied Paris
Today I found a photograph of an ordinary German coffee shop circa 1941, with German signage above the…
The X-Rated Paris Grave
In Paris’ city of the dead, where winding cobblestone pathways have their own street signs, graves look…
A Decade before the World had the Internet, France was Online & Hooked on Minitel
When the world wide web entered our homes in the mid 90s, the French must…