via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
New York, 1942
“Street vagrant pushcart”
Who’ll be first to pinpoint the location?
Photo by Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information
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Vigoro, a hybrid sport
via The Patent Search Blog by Stephen van DulkenThe BBC website has a story titled Vigoro: the Edwardian attempt to merge tennis and cricket. It is an entertaining account of a hybrid sport invented by John George Grant, a London commercial traveller, who even took out a trade mark for it. It is rather like playing cricket with a racket. The sport continues to be played in Australia, mainly by women. There is a Wikipedia article on Vigoro. Below is a video showing the sport being played.
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Exposed teeth, bunched cheeks, crinkled eyes: A smile is a peculiar thing, not least because of the spooky similarity between laughter and crying… more
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Scientists track the origins of a ship buried under the World Trade Center
via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker
In 2010, construction crews found the hull of a very old ship, buried at the site of the World Trade Center towers. Using dendrochronology, scientists now know how old the ship is and what city it was made in.
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The fall of Rome to the rise of the Catholic Church, in pictures
via OUP blog by Peter Heather
After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Western world went through a turbulent and dramatic period during which a succession of kingdoms rose, grew, and crumbled in spans of only a few generations. The wars and personalities of the dark ages are the stuff of legend, and all led toward the eventual reunification of Europe under a different kind of Roman rule – this time, that of the Church.
Historian Peter Heather selects ten moments from the period upon which the fate of Europe hinged.
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I found that the slideshow went too fast for me to read the text accompanying each picture.
Maybe that’s the setting on my laptop?
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Reading as addiction: Is Fifty Shades of Grey a gateway drug for literary fiction? Probably not. Yet we cling to the idea… more
When did Star Trek ever *not* violate the Prime Directive?
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder
“The Prime Directive is paramount, the Prime Director is sacrosanct, the... wait, these blissed-out primitives worship a computer inside of a big stone head? Fuck the Prime Directive, it must be destroyed!”
From a Facebook post by Gareth Branwyn
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When the world was black and white...
via An Awfully Big Blog Adventure by Anne Rooney
In the Middle Ages, the world was all in colour.
This is the period I first wrote about, many years ago. The rich brilliance of medieval colours is startling, a feast for the eyes.There is a lot blue, the colour of heaven (and also a relatively common paint pigment - it might not have been an accurate representation of reality.)
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Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Irascible and defiant Beethoven is a cliché, yet it is true that he understood people little and liked them less.Music was his only joy… more
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Millions of Stars in Omega Centauri
via Big Think by Big Think editors
Look at this photograph and it’s easy to feel as though you’re in the cockpit of a spaceship, speeding down a galactic highway.
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