1. Paris traffic jams
Found from a series on Live Journal.
2. Night at the Museum in Paris
Airbnb has launched its latest competition for the Olympics at the Musée d’Orsay. A perfect opportunity for Thomas Crown, surely. Find out more on Airbnb.
3. Aphrodite, Stuck in the mud
Found on Arkeonews and ART news.
4. Sarah Biffen, a Victorian painter born with no arms and only vestigial legs. This is a self-portrait.
She taught herself to write, paint, sew and use scissors with her mouth. Found on Wikipedia.
5. The haircutting ghosts of Japanese folklore
In Japanese folklore there are ghosts that came and cut your hair in the middle of the night. They usually gave you a really bad haircut. They can sometimes do this as a warning that you’re about to get married to a demon and they’re protecting you.
Found on Wikipedia.
6. The untold story of three women who took down the Castano-Ochoa drug cartel’s money laundering scheme
On every sting, the female agents were told a secret code-word, like ‘Disneyland’ or ‘daycare’, to summon armed agents if a deal went south.
Read the full article (found via Present & Correct) on The Financial Times (this one is open to non subscribers).
7. Portable videorecorder ad, 1967
Found on Reddit.
8. Bell Telephone Launched a Mobile Phone During the 1940s
9. Wind phones
There’s a non-working phone booth in Japan, created by a gardener to help deal with the death of his cousin. It was opened to the public after the 2011 tsunami and has since received over 30,000 visitors who come to have a one way conversation with their loved ones. A number of replicas have been constructed around the world, and it has served as the inspiration for several novels and films.
Found on Wikipedia.
10. Mars on the left, earth on the right
Same exact natural process. It certainly appears that there was once surface water on Mars. Found on Reddit.
11. Auto wash bowl 100 years ago at 25 cents per car
Photo taken in Chicago, IL. The concept originated in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was patented in 1921 by inventor CP Bohland, who opened two branches in St. Paul. He invented the bowl as an easy way to remove mud from the bottom of cars. During this time, roads were often unpaved and muddy and the mud would get stuck on the bottom and wheels. A spin in the Auto Wash Bowl removed the mud from the bottom of the car.
The 24-meter-wide, ribbed concrete bowl was approximately 16 inch at its deepest point. Customers paid 25 cents to a clerk who tied a protective rubber cover over the radiator. The cars entered the bowl via a ramp and then drove in circles in the basin at a speed of approximately 10 mph per hour. The ridges in the concrete would vibrate the car and the water, creating a sloshing motion that helped wash all the mud off the chassis and wheels. The process took about 5 minutes. After leaving the bowl, customers could opt for a complete wash. In one of the bays (similar to a wash box) the rest of the car was cleaned. On a busy Saturday, about 75 cars per hour went through the wash basin.
Also found on Reddit.
12. Mappa Mundi: The greatest map of the medieval world
13. Queen Victoria’s Little-Known Art from her Journals
More on Flashbak.
