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Category / Lost & Found

A Letter of Rejection to Andy Warhol c.1956

One of his artworks is counted amongst the top 10 most expensive paintings ever sold ($100 million for “Eight Elvises”), but in 1956, the director of collections at The Museum of Modern Art in New York rejected Warhol’s submission, a drawing, simply titled, “Shoe”, informing him that it could picked up from the museum at…

The Charming Village with a Billion Dollar Secret

Disguised by two seemingly innocent village homes, none of the locals of Cochem knew that for two decades during the height of the Cold War, 15 Billion German Mark– the vault of West Germany’s central bank– was being stashed below the streets of their sleepy town nestled in the slopes of the Mosel valley. As…

The Secret Locket Ring of Queen Elizabeth I

The secrets of this beautiful locket ring were not discovered until it was removed from Elizabeth I’s finger after she died in 1603. The mother-of-pearl ring with rubies in the band and diamonds on the facade was hiding two miniature enamel portraits, one of Elizabeth herself and the other believed to be her mother, Anne…

The Guy Who Digs up Lost Cities Buried at Sea

For the last thirteen years, he’s been busy digging up a lost underwater civilization the size of Paris off the coast of Egypt. The remarkably well-preserved ruins that were discovered have been sitting at the bottom of the Mediterranean sea for the past 1,200 years, at long last solving the mystery of the lost city of…

The Lost Art of the Cutaway

I could say, that as a kid, I used to love looking at cutaway illustrations, but the thing is: I still think they’re just the greatest thing ever. With cutaway art, you get to examine and explore miniature hidden worlds behind-the-scenes and under an x-ray. The best stuff surely came out of the mid twentieth…

The Forgotten Doughnut Heroines of Wartime

The doughnut– America’s favourite indulgence– has an unexpected heroic history. Despite having been invented in the 1800s, the doughnut wasn’t popularised until WWI, when the ring-shaped pastries brought comfort to thousands of soldiers serving in the trenches during the brutal years far from home. The Salvation Army, a well-known Christian charitable foundation, became the first prominent organisation to…

The 1950s All-Girl Hot Rod Gang

When we think of women in the 1950s, we tend to picture some kind of Stepford housewife or a glamorous Marilyn Monroe type. Rarely does a character like bad girl Betty Rizzo come to mind and you’d be hard pressed to find a female Hollywood equivalent of James Dean’s “Rebel without a Cause”. Today, I think I found the real…

The Lost Photo Collectors

What happens to the photographs taken over a lifetime that no longer have a home in which to be framed on the wall or treasured inside the family albums? Who will appreciate and preserve those anonymous snapshots of moments and strangers in time? “The American Dream” It’s a sort of subculture that exists at garage…

The Forgotten 1950s Girl Gang

You might have heard of the Teddy Boys, a 1950s rebel youth subculture in Britain characterized by an unlikely style of dress inspired by Edwardian dandies fused with American rock’n roll. They formed gangs from East London to North Kensington and became high profile rebels in the media. But an important sub-subculture of the Teddy…

Preserved Moments of Historical Sass (Vol. 9)

sassy: adjective \ˈsa-sē\ impudent, lively, spirited, vigorous, distinctively smart and stylish, showing no respect for people in authority, saucy, pert, confident, chic. I haven’t done one from this series in a while, so this is long overdue. And it’s all thanks to an archive I stumbled upon through Flickr called SimpleInsomnia– a true treasure trove of vintage found photos with…

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