The Extraordinary Guests of Charles Babbage’s Saturday Night Soirées

Forget your standard 19th-century dinner parties, where everyone sat around sipping sherry and discussing the weather. If you were lucky enough to snag an invite to Charles Babbage’s Saturday night scientific soirées, you were in for a wild ride through the brainiest and most bizarre conversations that Victorian London had to offer. Picture a mad…

The Mystery of Salem’s Great Misery Island

Whilst looking recently at an old nautical map of the North Shore coastline of Massachusetts, one tiny island caught our eye because of its mysterious sounding name: Great Misery Island! Further inspection of the map showed that the island had no towns, roads or any other topographical features apart from in the south west corner,…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 714)

1. Meet one of the world’s most prolific chair collectors: How Noritsugu Oda found himself sitting on 1,400 chairs. Over 50 years, the Japanese illustrator has accumulated a world-class archive. Now he has to decide what to do with it. “He still remembers the day in 1972 when he spotted a 4 Chaise Longue (then…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 713)

1. An antique railway car miniature made by a retired French postman A wooden-framed railway car is finished with tinted straw in decorative manner to create wall murals, carpets, inlay furnishings, and walls in the interior, and slatted boards and window frames on the exterior. When opened, the interior room has built-in furnishings including table,…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 712)

1. Photographing the Williamsburg Bridge Riders A few of my favourite shots from the Instagram account of Adam DiCarlo found via Kottke. 2. How Kodak invented the “snapshot” 3. Taking Baths, Drinking Alcohol & Other Strange Ways Famous Writers Got Inspiration Journalist Blythe Roberson copied her favorite writers’ schedules to see if they would offer the…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 711)

1. Just a Female Street fight duel with sand-filled socks Published in “Le Petit Journal” November 1st 1902: There are Apaches of both sexes as seen recently in the rue du Général-Morin. Louise Henin, a beautiful girl of twenty, became mortally angered by Andrée Merle, twenty-three years, for reasons difficult to specify. They resolved to meet in a…

True Collectors Know the Secret Charm of Antique Faux Gold

Every Thursday, Spitalfields antique market in London spans a historic covered marketplace that transforms itself into a maze of stalls bearing jewellery, clothing, housewares, and more. At the jewellery stalls, a shrewd buyer can find gold, silver, gemstones, and more. And, if they are lucky, and know what they’re looking for, they can find something…

The 27 Inch Dolls that Saved Fashion in Post-War Paris

Even Hitler couldn’t rob Paris of its style. In 1945, the end of the war was in sight, the French capital had already been liberated of the Nazi occupation and it was time for Paris to relaunch its fashion industry. There was just one problem– the industry couldn’t afford enough fabric to actually create new fashion.…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. 710)

1. This delightful collector of tiny things Jane Housham is a collector, sorter, cutter-outer, writer, artist. 2. This charming 1950s menu When French restaurateur Andre Frelier and his wife Yvonne opened L’Omelette bistro in 1932, it quickly became a favorite spot for Stanford University students because of its cozy lounge, open fireplace, reasonably priced drinks…

The Ocean is Full of Wonders We Barely Understand. Sponges are one of them.

Did you know that a glass sponge could live as long as 15,000 years? They could probably live up to 40,000 years if changing sea levels weren’t a factor, and are thought by many to have the longest life span of any animal on Earth, in fact, sponges are probably the closest to what the…