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Category / Obscure history

All Aboard the Doomed Art Deco Floating Palace

Seventy-five years after she lay burning and capsized in the New York harbour, the French SS Normandie still holds the record as the most powerful steam turbo-electric-propelled passenger ship ever built. She is considered one of the greatest of ocean liners in history, a floating palace of Art Deco majesty so dazzling, they nicknamed her the “Ship of Light” similar…

Bridgerton’s Black Presence isn’t Total Fantasy, it’s Hidden History

There’s a reason why Google autofills questions about the authenticity of Black presence in 17th and 18th century Europe – lots of people are asking. The hit Netflix show Bridgerton is Shonda Rimes’ first historical drama, but anyone who enjoys the screenwriter’s work (be it Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, Scandal and many more), knows that…

The Outlawed Secret Masonic Society of Pugs

There was one way only for Europe’s intellectual elite to become a member of what is probably history’s oddest Masonic societies: by puckering up to the rear end of a pug as an expression of total devotion. You read correctly; the mid-18th century was filled with pantaloon-clad ladies and gents lining up to become “Mops,” …

The Curious Case of Miss Mechanical Venus

The summer of July 1932 brought an unexpected guest to Brussels, Belgium. The city had become its usual, ephemeral playground for the oddities, treasures, and inventions of the Foire du midi annual fair, but this time it was joined by the curious Dr. Spitzner and his posse of wax humans. The production of dissectible, anatomical…

A Brief Compendium of Vintage Opium Underworlds

I don’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable, so if you’re reluctant to step inside the world of 19th century junkies, I suggest you close the door and choose something a little lighter and brighter from our menu. I’m not quite sure how I ended up here myself, stockpiling antique photographs that have survived from the Opium Age…

The Forgotten LGBT Queen of Paris and Her Secret Masonic Temple

She was the kind of woman who never belonged to anyone but herself. At least, when it came to love. But for Natalie Clifford Barney, life overflowed with colour, creativity, and passion in Paris’ Left Bank during one of city’s most romantic periods. Think of her as a lesser-known Gertrude Stein, albeit one who curated…

Where the Nazis Hung Out in Occupied Paris

Today I found a photograph of an ordinary German coffee shop circa 1941, with German signage above the windows that read “Soldatenkaffee Madeleine“. What made this photograph of a coffee shop so very unordinary, was that it was not taken in Germany, but on the Place de la Madeleine in Paris during the Nazi occupation. How many other places like…

The X-Rated Paris Grave

In Paris’ city of the dead, where winding cobblestone pathways have their own street signs, graves look like small gothic houses and the likes of Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf and Oscar Wilde have been laid to rest, there is one grave amongst the maze of tombs in Père Lachaise cemetery that’s not quite like the others. And apparently,…

A Decade before the World had the Internet, France was Online & Hooked on Minitel

When the world wide web entered our homes in the mid 90s, the French must have been feeling a distinct sense of dejá vu. After all, anyone in France with a telephone had been online an entire decade before the internet came along. From 1978 to 2012, there was Minitel, one of the most successful pre-World…

Inside the Airtight Time Capsule Room Sealed in 1940, to Open in Six-Thousand Years

With all the Marty McFly “Back to the Future” fever that’s taken over the internet recently, taking a look inside the mother of all time capsules is probably the perfect way to finish up the week. The “Crypt of Civilization”, is an airtight room at Oglethorpe University in Georgia, USA, that was sealed up in 1940, containing a wealth…

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