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Category / Obscure history

How French Fashion Emerged even More Decadently from the Guillotine

Those of us who paid any attention in history class can probably recount a few key details and players of the French Revolution – there was Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI (AKA Louis the Last) and their posse at Versailles who were eating too much cake; the revolutionaries who kicked things off by storming the Bastille…

In 19th Century Paris, She Held a Permit to Wear Pants

A cigarette-smoking, pants-wearing, animal-dissecting painter, Rosa Bonheur spent her life doing exactly as she pleased. 2022 marks the bicentenary of the birth an artist who opened countless doors for female creatives, both in her home country of France and abroad. Born in 1822 in Bordeaux, Rosa Bonheur was the daughter of Sophie Marquis, a piano…

And Now, Let’s Raise a Teacup to Teetotalism

Before the advent of the speakeasy, the ramshackle bar that sprung up and vanished as was required during the Prohibition era (and now turned a trendy locale for your friendly neighbourhood hipster), there was another hangout fast becoming everyone’s new favourite local in the mid 19th century – the temperance tea party. Held in so-called…

Surprise Surprise, a Medieval Feminist Movement Left Out of the History Books

Women have undeniably had a roller-coaster ride throughout the ages. Forever pawns in a power game, the role and image of women have been in constant flux, from being portrayed as the virginal, divine, untouchable ‘Mary Mother of God’ to ‘The Whore of Babylon’. The all-male regime never quite knew whether to love or hate,…

Was the Colosseum Paid for with Pee?

What we know as the famous Roman “Colosseum” might have been paid for with pee, more specifically poor people’s pee. Built under the rule of Emperor Vespasian of the Flavian dynasty, he is one of the only known rulers in history to have imposed a urine tax on the sale and distribution of urine from…

The Bygone Era Of The Hotel Detective

“Saverio Bongiorno had no permanent home and had been living in various midtown hotels. Bongiorno registered at the Edison Hotel on Sunday, with a small beach bag as his only baggage. He was assigned to room 1135 and nothing more was seen or heard of him…James Gerrity, chief house detective of the Hotel Edison, 224…

Stay at the Home of Victorian “Axe Murderess”

“Lizzie Borden took an axe And gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, She gave her father forty-one.” The murders of Andrew J. Borden and his wife Abby on the morning of August 4th, 1892, shocked the citizens of Fall River, Massachusetts and caused an international sensation when Mr. Borden’s 32…

The Forgotten Elephant of the Moulin Rouge Garden Party

It turns out that Nicole Kidman’s fantastical elephant boudoir in Baz Luhrman’s 2001 motion picture, Moulin Rouge, was not a just a Hollywood embellishment added to the iconic cabaret, but in fact, a very real fixture of the Belle Epoque establishment, forgotten in the archives of Parisian history. I found the uncaptioned black and white image, floating around on a Pinterest board…

And Now, a Brief History of Poisoning

Never was there a weapon of more romance than poison. From the tragic double-suicide of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, back to the death of Socrates and even the more recent murky business surrounding the death of several Russian defectors under Putin’s reign, poison has fascinated everyone who has ever encountered it. For those mystified by…

Oh Nothing, Just an 18th Century Masturbation Society

The picture-perfect fishing village of Anstruther is situated in the county of Fife on Scotland’s east coast. The fragments of its ruined castle are still sitting perched on a rock above the harbour, looking across the Dreel Burn, the winding river that washes down to the sea, to the town’s ancient parish church on the…

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