• Seeing history: the rise of spectacles in early modern Britian (plus a 17th c. prosthetic eye!)
• Fishscales in a c.1805 staircase by John Nash at Attingham Park.
• Great collection of images of 16th c. chopines, 20" tall platform shoes worn by courtesans & nobles.
• Those fashionable fellows of the 1770s, the Macaronis.
• It's July, 1813, and Lady Caroline Lamb stabs herself over Lord Byron at a party.
• A magnificent souvenir, c 1800-25: a parure to remember.
• The Battle of Gettysburg foretold by a NY clairvoyant and by a Quakeress with a gift of prophecy.
• The art of bathing in Renaissance England.
• Free online course for reading medieval handwriting.
• Faces of the American Revolution: poignant 19th c. photos of the last veterans.
• The opening of the new London Bridge, 1831.
• The Great Gatsby mansions: real-life homes that inspired the book and film.
• What secrets did Queen Charlotte keep inside this beautiful diamond-studded pocket notebook, 1765?
• Bear's grease, bellows, bonnets, biscuits, and Bibles: essential goods sold to Europeans in Bengal, 1851.
• The stonemasons who are keeping Lincoln Cathedral alive.
• The angel of Gettysburg: Elizabeth Thorn, 1863.
• The pointy-stick proliferation, or, how to explore the antiquities of Britain as an 18th c. gentleman.
• Misbehaving Pilgrims: miscellaneous sexual offenses 1653-1683 in the Plymouth Colony Court records.
• 149 years ago today the Confederate army was...buying office supplies.
• Postcard: Edith Wharton writes to Henry James from Italy, 1911.
• America's long (and odd) fascination with yoga.
• Mrs. Perry's 1810 recipe for Volatile Foetid Spirit, to be taken when "low, faint, or helpless, or any way nervous."
• A single gilded picture frame held successively the portrait of the king of Great Britain & the first president of the United States.
• The art of begetting handsome children, 1860.
• Wonderful on-line slide-show of 150 years of Irish crochet lace.
• NYC's lost Metropolitan Hotel: hosting 10,000 guests for the Tom Thumb wedding reception, 1863.
• Macedoine and other eccentric Victorian jellies.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for daily updates!
