1. Inside Denmark’s secret nuclear bunker, now open to the public
A top-secret atomic bunker has opened to the public in Denmark. Built to withstand a nuclear attack, it’s now an astonishing subterranean museum that sheds light on Cold War paranoia.
2. In the 1980s there were a line of spy toys called “Spytech”
3. X-Ray Machine
“The 1,4000,000-volt X-ray machine at the high voltage laboratory at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C.” An introduction to electronics. 1946. Prelinger Library. Found here.
4. There’s a charming Bed & Breakfast inside this 1950s Industrial Crane
Crane 29 began its life in the 1950s lifting and loading heavy containers off and on vessels below—just like any other cargo crane in Bristol Harbor. But for summer 2017, its been transformed into something completely alien from to former industrial existence: an utterly charming B&B.
Found on Curbed.
5. The Loneliest Subway Station in China
The mysterious station built, apparently constructed in the middle of nowhere, in 2015 in southwest China’s Chongqing municipality. Only one entry point of three is in regular use, the other two being overgrown with weeds and shubbery. After leaving the metro station, passengers enter a barren wasteland. No main roads are directly linked to the exit.
“It is quite normal to see no passengers here,” a subway employee told Chongqing Morning Post on Monday.
Found via DYT from the Shanghaiist.
6. America’s Last Top Model
Following the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 … the Army Corps would build infrastructure to corral and maneuver the river in order to control it… they wanted a way to test out their building projects to make sure that they would work…. In 1943, the Corps began construction on a model that could test all 1.25 million square miles of the Mississippi River.
It would be a three-dimensional map of nearly half of the continental United States, rendered to a 1/2000 horizontal scale, spanning more than 200 acres. It was so big that the only way to see all of it at once was from a four-story observation tower.
As computer models became more accurate—or accurate enough—the Mississippi Basin Model gradually lost its funding.
By 1993, the model was closed. Today, it is completely derelict. The pipes and pump houses are rusting away. The earth and mud and water have all dried up, leaving a mess of concrete and wire mesh.
Listen to the full story podcast found on 99% Invisible.
7. Drawings of Vintage Matchbooks from a Bygone Hollywood Era
Aaron Kasmin’s pencil drawings offer an escape into a time when smoking was considered chic and various hotels, bars and restaurants flogged their wares via miniature artworks that their patrons could take away with them. Up in Smoke by Aaron Kasmin will be on display at Sims Reed Gallery, London from May 17 – June 9, 2017.
More drawings found on Another Mag.
8. These two, doing 20th Century Swimwear justice
Found on Wrinkles of Time.
9. The Dog Ear Collar
Keeps your nipples toasty warm!
Found on PlaidStallions.com
10. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Sexual Anxiety
There’s a classic story of the homosexual tensions bubbling just beneath the surface between Hemingway and Fitzgerald. It takes place in the men’s room at Michaud’s, at the time an upscale brasserie in Paris. As Hemingway claims in A Moveable Feast—and claims is just the word, because his own sexual insecurities tended to manifest in an unfair emasculation of Fitzgerald—Fitzgerald told him:
“Zelda said that the way I was built I could never make any woman happy and that was what upset her originally. She said it was a matter of measurements. I have never felt the same since she said that and I have to know truly.”
“Come out to the office,” I said.
“Where is the office?”
“Le water,” I said.
Read the full arts & culture essay found on the Paris Review.
11. The Real Neighbourhood that inspired “Gangs of New York”
12. The Ether Dreams of Fin-de-Siècle Paris
Those who sipped or sniffed ether and chloroform in the 19th century experienced a range of effects from these repurposed anaesthetics, including preternatural mental clarity, psychological hauntings, and slippages of space and time. Mike Jay explores how the powerful solvents shaped the writings of Guy de Maupassant and Jean Lorrain — psychonauts who opened the door to an invisible dimension of mind and suffered Promethean consequences.
Full article found on The Public Domain Review.
