Have New York’s Grand Central Station all to Yourself

Turns out, even them hardened New Yorkers have a soft spot for romance. This week, Grand Central Terminal announced the impossible: it will be opening its doors for the night to one special, randomly selected couple this Valentine’s Day for a romantic dinner for two beneath that iconic zodiac ceiling in the Main Concourse, all…

Who were the Fasting Girls?

Mollie Fancher spent half a century in her bed. They called her “The Brooklyn Enigma,” but she was born your average, middle class New York gal. That all changed in 1865, when she gained fame from a freak accident in which she fell out of a horse-drawn trolley, and was dragged behind by her scarf.…

The Secret History of Lipstick

Its recipe has taken thousands of years to perfect, and if we follow the forgotten trail, its secret history can lead us from the ancient tombs of antiquity to underground societies that paved the way for freedom of expression. Contrary to popular assumption, lipstick was in fact genderless for most of its existence, and as…

For Over 30 Years, a Tokyo Soba Chef Drew Everything He Ate

Sometimes, it’s the simple stories that stay with us the longest. Like that of Itsuo Kobayashi, a former Japanese soba chef born in 1962 who has recorded his meals in painstakingly detailed, hand-drawn food diaries of sorts for the past 32 years. In addition to recollections about taste, Kobayashi’s pen has accounted for every last…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CDLXXXVIII)

Welcome to a special edition of 13 Things to kick off Black History Month and LGBT History Month… 1. The U.S. Army’s 1st & only ever bicycle division, the 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps in 1897 In June of 1897, the all-black company of the 25th Mobile Infantry, under command of a white lieutenant and accompanied by a…

What Happens After Dark at Amsterdam’s Mystery Manor

You’d have to be searching for something peculiar to stumble across the Mayer Manor. Luckily, it seems you and I are always in search of something peculiar. Originally a 15th century monastery, later occupied by a wealthy tobacco merchant of the 19th century, the four-storey mansion is tucked away behind a canal in the red…

The Secret History of the Conversation Chair

It’s taken many names, shapes and forms over the centuries – the conversation chair, the courting bench, a tête-à-tête, a chaperone chair, the vis-à-vis, gossip chair or the indiscret. Considered the pinnacle of sophistication and style during the Gilded and Victorian age, if you were entertaining the fashionable elite, one simply wasn’t running a home…

Victorian Mansion For Sale, Perfect for Wes Anderson’s remake of the Addams Family

Meet the Victorian gem that rolled right out of our dreams, and into the little city of Abilene, Kansas. The yellow brick mansion – boasting two dozen rooms and five storeys – is the ultimate Addams-Family-meets-Wes-Anderson fantasy. The “Lebold Mansion,” est. 1880, is already renovated – such a rare case for these beauties, which often…

Discovering Hollywood’s Secret “Palm Springs” of Arizona

While everyone and their mother went to Palm Springs during Hollywood’s Golden Age, the real stars snuck away to Scottsdale, Arizona. Basking under the Sonoran Desert sun in America’s Southwest, Scottsdale has long been a hushed hideaway for Hollywood weekend runaways ever since its first hotels quietly rose up from the desert like a mirage…

Meet Mrs. Madge Gill: The Outsider Artist Who Painted through the Spirit World

“Mediumistic Art.” It’s something we’d never heard of, until we uncovered the mysterious world of Mrs. Madge Gill. One of history’s most important outsider artists, Madge tended to her garden, her husband, and her children in what appeared to be the quiet life of a London housewife. But one day, she felt a stirring to…