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Category / People / Icons / Muses

No Animals were Harmed in the Making of this Film, 70 People Were.

Three years ago, I published an article about a photo story I’d found hiding away deep in the LIFE archives. I saw it spread like wildfire on the internet; jaw-dropping photographs of Tippi Hedren and her family living with full-grown lions, including her daughter, a young Melanie Griffith who is the little girl pictured lying in bed with a…

The Secret Playboy Mansion Tunnels that led to the Hollywood Homes of Celebrity Casanovas

The editorial staff at Playboy.com recently revealed that they have discovered a bunch of dusty old blueprints, plans and photographs in an unfinished basement area of the Playboy Mansion, which unveil a network of underground tunnels that allegedly once linked Hefner’s notorious bachelor’s pad to the homes of “Mr. J. Nicholson,” “Mr. W. Beatty,” “Mr. K. Douglas” and “Mr.…

The Victorian Daredevil Dame who threw herself off the Niagara Falls in a Barrel

She was a fragile-looking 63 year-old widow, barely getting by as a school teacher at the turn of the century, but Annie Edson Taylor didn’t sit around feeling sorry for herself. This is the outlandish story of a woman who took a barrel ride down the Niagara Falls in 1901 and became the first daredevil to survive…

Ass-Whooping Women in Skirts in the 1930s

Just in time for the weekend (in case us damsels happen to lose our way down a dark alley), here’s some footage from British Pathé archives of a young woman in 1933 giving a real vintage ass-whooping using some Judo and Jujitsu moves. The video titled “The Weaker Sex! (Sayest Thou!) Who said “weaker sex?”, sees a highly entertaining Miss May…

The Reindeer Riders

If the descendants of ancient legends truly exist among us today, these are they. Despite the odds, the nomads of Outer Mongolia are a people seemingly immune from degeneration, still living in such proximity to wild animals with a certain spiritual wisdom, sense of healing and well-being lost to our notions of time and laws…

Spotting Cute French Guys on the Paris Metro

I have a friend who used to leave her house for work at the exact same time everyday to make sure she caught the same train as her Paris metro crush. She never mustered the courage to speak to him and one day he just stopped taking the same train and she never saw him again. It…

Saving Pie Town: The Last Pie-O-Neers of the American Dessert

As the legend goes, PieTown, New Mexico was founded in the early 1920s by a man called Norman, who had filed a mining claim in the area and opened a general store at the desert crossroads where he liked to bake pies made from scratch and serve them to his family or passing travellers. Word spread about…

Circus Girl University, Class of ’52

Did you know that there are currently two collegiate circuses in the United States that have year-round programs to teach students how to become circus performers? Maybe if you had known you might have given another thought to your list of college applications… The Florida State University circus program has been going since 1947 and although it…

Inside the Deserted Mansions of an American Heiress

She had three sprawling luxury homes at her disposal, but Huguette Clark chose to spend the last 20 years of her life holed up in a New York hospital room. Her father became as rich as Rockefeller from mining copper and founded the city of Las Vegas, but Huguette wasn’t your average American heiress. No one…

The Rotting Underwater Ballroom of a Victorian Bernie Madoff

Beneath the lake of a once lavish Victorian estate built by a flamboyant mining tycoon, a secret awaits… (c) Forgotten Heritage At murkey water’s edge, a stone structure being overtaken by greenery hides a locked door. If you happen to have the right key, it will lead you down a spiral staircase and underneath the lake…

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