1. Paper Moon photos from the late 19th to early 20th centuries
Connecticut College professor Chris Steiner went deep with his collection of over 1,500 “Paper Moon” photos from the late 19th to early 20th centuries. These photos, taken by professionals at carnivals and tourist attractions, are staples of early souvenir photography and provide an interesting counterpoint to the more staid portraitures of the time.
Found on Anonymous Works.
2. The house from Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ is for sale in California
Alfred Hitchcock fans will recognise the town of Bodega, California as the real-life setting of his cult film, The Birds. Now, the property next door to its iconic schoolhouse has gone on sale for $1.1m via Golden Gate Sotheby’s International Realty.
Found on The Spaces.
3. How Actress Anika Ekberg fended off the paparazzi, 1960
Found on Reddit.
4. Fun fact: The kid from Jaws is now the police chief of the town where it was filmed
Jonathan Searle must now bear the town’s intergenerational shark-hunting burden.
Found on the AV club.
5. The $64,000 question they thought a woman couldn’t answer…
Joyce Diane was a “pop psychologist,” TV personality, advice columnist and writer with a PhD from Columbia who became famous for being the first woman to win a 1955 TV game show called The $64,000 Question.
To escape what Brothers called the “slum-like conditions” of her New York City walkup, she was driven to enter as a contestant on the game show The $64,000 Question. To become a contestant, Brothers had to write a letter describing herself and her hobbies, why she would make a great contestant, and what she would do if she were to carry forth with the winnings. Eventually, the letter landed her an interview with Mert Koplin, the show’s producer. While in her letter she discussed her qualifications in the field of psychology and home economics, she was not allowed to use her expert knowledge for the show, as The $64,000 Question did not allow participants to be quizzed on topics of their expertise or profession. As such, Brothers had to come up with a new topic area for her to be quizzed on for the show.
Koplin thought he could draw in the most viewership by juxtaposing Brothers’ perceived frailty as a woman with the idea that she knew a great deal about a more masculine field. He is credited with saying Brothers should be given a topic on “something that [she] shouldn’t know about… [something like] if it were football or if it were horse racing or boxing….” She chose boxing, and studied rigorously for the weeks leading up to the show. Despite the show’s producers’ efforts to stump her at the $16,000 mark by asking questions involving referees rather than the boxers themselves, she exceeded expectations and won the top prize.
She is often credited as the first to normalise psychological concepts to the American mainstream.
Found on Reddit
6. On Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions, astronauts had to do everything in their seats
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Due to limited space, everything from eating, sleeping, and relieving oneself was done, literally, by the seat of their pants.
Found on Smithsonian
7. The Great Stink
The summer of 1858 made London unbearable and rife with disease as the river Thames was an open sewer of human waste and industrial runoff. Civil engineer Bazalgette designed a sewer system adding over 1,000 miles of pipes that’s still in use today.
Read all about it on Wikipedia.
8. The Secret, Members-Only Wild West Town in England
It started with a cabin. A small, wood cabin with a pot-bellied stove and enough room for a few friends to have a drink after a day’s riding. Then another wood building, grafted it on to it like a tree branch. One by one, other buildings, weather-beaten clapboard painted sober colors, joined it—the bank, the apothecary, the Lonesome Dove Mining Co., the blacksmith’s, a printer’s shop called Epitaph, the dry goods store, the jail, the two-storey saloon and hotel.
Now, 40 years later, Laredo, a border town in the American West from back when it was wild, rises improbably out of a wet, green field in the English countryside.
Read the rest of the story on Atlas Obscura
9. The Exchange Buffet, a Wall Street restaurant that operated on the honour system
A Wall Street restaurant, The Exchange Buffet, operated on the honour system, where customers would tally their own bills. It ran successfully from 1885 to 1963.
Read more about it here.
10. In-N-Out’s biblical wrapping
In-N-Out Burger food containers include Bible verses — since at least 1987, the soda cups, milkshake cups, burger wrappers, and french fry holders all have Bible verses inscribed on the packaging.
Found on Reddit
11. The Lost Art of the illustrated Hotel Postcard
From this archive found on Present & Correct
12. Airbnb quits China
Before the pandemic, Chinese travellers heading abroad had tripled in less than a decade, reaching 155 million journeys in 2019, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation.
But since 2020, China has had some of the toughest Covid restrictions in the world, making travel into and around the country extremely difficult. But a source familiar with the company’s decision said the domestic rental operation for travellers visiting China had been complicated and expensive to run even before the pandemic.
Found on BBC.
13. How Did Cartographers Create World Maps before Airplanes and Satellites? An Introduction
Found via Open Culture
