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Category / Obscure history

The Fateful Lovers’ Suicide that put the World at War

On the morning of January 30, 1889, three friends of Rudolf, the Crown Prince of Austria, broke down On the morning of January 30, 1889, three friends of Rudolf, the Crown Prince of Austria, broke down the bedroom door at his hunting lodge to find him dead, sitting by the naked corpse of his teenage…

Remember that time the Motion Picture was Invented (and Everyone was Naked)?

One of my favourite things about Eadweard Muybridge, the man who gave us the moving image, aside from the vast array of exotic spellings he adopted for his birth name (Edward Muggeridge), is the idea of him travelling around the American wild west in a 19th century carriage which he converted into his very own…

Never thought of it like that: Versailles, a Giant Nightmarish Hotel

The Palace of Versailles, famously opulent and vast, is often celebrated for its architectural grandeur and the lavish ceremonies that took place within its walls. But at its core, it was essentially a giant overcrowded hotel of horrors for the entire French nobility, who were given their own room and key that symbolised both privilege…

If the Flintstones Vacationed in France: A Guide to the Cave Villages

If a French chateau is a little out of your vacation budget, why not consider a cave house? Unforgettably unique and even more historic, the “troglodyte” homes of France; those ancient rocks dwellings dotted along quiet country roads of the Loire, or deep in the basin of Dordogne; were built 100 millions years ago by…

Who were the Fasting Girls?

Mollie Fancher spent half a century in her bed. They called her “The Brooklyn Enigma,” but she was born your average, middle class New York gal. That all changed in 1865, when she gained fame from a freak accident in which she fell out of a horse-drawn trolley, and was dragged behind by her scarf.…

Seeing Double: The Titanic’s Ghostly Twin Sister

What if we told you that history’s most infamous ocean liner had a twin sister? What’s more, one that lived (almost) happily ever after? As we mark 112 years since the Titanic sunk to the bottom of the ocean, we’re hopping aboard the “Olympic,” the identical ship that was made in tandem with its ill-fated sister.…

Doomsday Prepping in the Belle Epoque

Ah, to have planned for a comet apocalypse in the Belle Epoque! Looks like a wild time, according to all the 19th and 20th century postcards with folks soaring through the skies, bum over noggin, towards a starry death. Out of all the (ultimately) anti-climactic close comet calls, the 1910 approach of Halley’s Comet takes…

Human Computer: The Forgotten Women’s Profession

For hundreds of years, the term “computer” was a job title for a human before machines took over the job, and in the late 19th century, computers weren’t just human, they were mostly women. An English Countess and Victorian mathematician, Ada Lovelace, is regarded as the first computer programmer and by World War II, American…

There’s a 55-Year-Old Whiskey Treasure Hunt That’s Still Going On

Our dream treasure hunt? One that involves an international quest for free whiskey and a $10,000 prize, which was precisely the case in the Summer of 1967. In one of cleverest marketing ploys of advertising’s golden age, Canadian Club Whiskey hid 25 crates of its liquid gold around the globe, and adventurous consumers (of a…

The Real Ice Queens: Women Who Conquered the Cold Wearing Corsets

Can’t bear the winter cold anymore? Consider for a moment, this photograph of a woman climbing a glacier in a billowing Victorian skirt. As it turns out, there were more than a few females who braved the ice in petticoats and traversed the world’s harshest environments at a time when wearing trousers was still a serious…

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