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Category / Obscure history

Botany and the Forgotten Sexual Revolution

Sex and botany– two words rarely found in the same sentence, but there was a time when the study of botany was considered so obscene that books on the subject were censored for women; branded dangerous and unsuitable for her delicate sensibilities. Gardens and greenhouses became an enlightened woman’s secret haven of discovery, expression and temptation. While today’s scientific…

Before Disneyland Paris, there was Human Roulette and Drag Balls at the Lost “Magic City”

Dragons curled up under the bridge. Toboggans splashed Parisians in to the Seine, benches twirled, and wine flowed freely. It was a Saturday afternoon like any other at the “Magic City” of Paris, the long lost fun fair that was the nation’s very first parc d’attractions. As such, it was quite literally the gateway to…

The Great African American Escape to Soviet Russia

In pursuit of the African American story abroad, we often look to 1920s Paris, where jazz was first introduced to the French and Black culture was embraced with open arms. It’s a more familiar story than the one about Soviet Russia opening its doors to thousands of Black Americans in the 20th century, where they…

The Town where Unwanted Architecture Found a Home

If you were to take photographs of the most charming villages from around the world and make a collage of their most picture-perfect views, you’d get a pretty good representation of what Portmeirion looks like. An enchanted technicolor mish mash of architecture, built in the 1920s by one wizard of a man, let’s take a…

The Forgotten Firsts: 10 Vintage Versions of Modern Technology

In this age of mobile, wireless, digital and whatchamacallit technology, nothing seems to surprise us nowadays. Unless they’re going to finally show us those flying cars we’ve been waiting for since The Jetsons aired on television, we’re hardly batting an eyelid at some of the latest gadgets. But if we take a look back, we might find some familiar but curious…

The Boy Robot of 1774

It’s hard to imagine that before the United States of America even became a country, a Swiss watchmaker had already created a machine with the capabilities of a modern programmable computer– in the form of a small boy. The 70cm-tall automaton known as “The Writer”, is an extraordinary but often forgotten anomaly of its age.…

Victorians at the Gym

Her raw enthusiasm is what really sells it for me. This photo comes from the exercise bible that was Dr. G. Zander’s Medico-mechanische Gymnastik, published in 1892. While it seemed almost certain that the gym craze was born in the 1980s along with the exercise videos of Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons, alas, it looks like our enthusiasm…

The Tik Tok Generation Needs a Movie about The Abernathy Kids

In 1910, two boys, Louis and Temple Abernathy decided to cross America by horseback without adult supervision, from Oklahoma to Manhattan. They were just 10 and 6 years old. To get back home, they bought a car and drove it while their horses returned by train. This true but forgotten little adventure story struck me…

The Art of Homemaking in a World War Dugout

It all started with one photograph that caught my interest, and then through the course of today, I think I’ve easily gone through about 10,000 photographs, searching through various archives for another glimpse into how soldiers made a home for themselves on the front line. Above: A French WWI dugout called “The Chalet” (c) Denise…

An Ode to what they call “Duck Architecture”

Now I know. Did you? There’s an official name for all those kitschy roadside buildings shaped like the merchandise they’re selling. Most popular in the 1920s and 30s, giant coffee pots, hot dogs, ice cream cones, beer barrels, farm animals and other eye-catching buildings sprang up along the roadside, competing for the attention of passing…

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