A Day in the Life of Mrs. Grim Reaper

She only comes around once in a lifetime. Travel to any small village in Sardinia, and you may still hear hushed tales of the accabadora; “angel of death”; the women chosen by their community to live out their days veiled in black, and charged with the task of ending the lives of others at the mercy of their cudgel.…

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Your Dream Fairytale Library is Hiding in Midtown Manhattan

A miniature palace of rare books is hiding in one of the busiest parts of Manhattan. All you have to do to enter is walk past the foyer of 225 Madison Ave and push a button deep in the back right corner. A door will swing open into a space that feels like it rolled right out…

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Forget Route 66: Get Your Road Trip Kicks on Route 62

Sun-bleached buildings, a hot convertible, and the smell of a dusty roadside town. There’s nothing more American than a stretch of quiet highway, and photographer Ashley Noelle has been on a quest to capture its old haunts before time and decay beat her to it. “I started at the beginning of route 62 and the…

A Brief Compendium of Medical Quackery

The rise of accessibility to medicine in the 19th century was a beautiful thing, but it also opened the gates to a deluge of medical scams and quackery. If you were lucky, they were harmless scams. But more often than not, treatments included addictive and life threatening ingredients. Today, we’re diving into a brief compendium…

The Toilet Duty Dukes and Duchesses of England

Those precious moments of alone time in the bathroom are priceless to many of us, and yet strangely enough, it was one of the few luxuries the King and Queen of England could not afford. Until as recently as the 20th century, the British monarchy appointed what was known as the “Groom of the Stool”, a courtier responsible for…

The Forgotten Power of the Parlour Palm

We forget that once upon a time, social status had a lot to do with the common houseplant. We’re talking about the parlour palm, one of the most significant decorative features in a Victorian home, which referred to any number of varieties of palms, ferns, and other hardy perennials that were native to South America,…

The Gender Fluid Secret Soldiers of the American Civil War

Today’s subject choice originated by stumbling across a photograph of Albert D.J. Cashier, born Jennie Hodgers in 1843. He served for a full 3 year term after enlisting in the Union army at the age of 19 and fought in over 40 battles against the Confederate Army. When the war was over, Albert continued to live as a man in…

London’s Lost Department Store of the Swinging Sixties

If you thought that Harvey Nichols or Harrods were the epitome of a London fashion department store, it’s time to re-introduce you to Big Biba, a fallen icon of the Swinging Sixties that redefined the High Street shopping experience… It all started in 1964, when a small-time mail order business called Biba’s Postal Boutique advertised…

He Found an Entire House in his Attic

I’m not scared, you’re scared! We were casually scrolling through Reddit the other day when we stumbled upon the most interesting if not creepiest thing we’ve ever seen posted on the platform… A Redditor who goes by the username “Mr Griff” shared photographs over the weekend of a recent excursion up to his attic where…

Fearless Photographs of the First Tornado Chasers

I must have watched the movie Twister nearly 30 times. You could say I was slightly obsessed with the critically-panned 90s blockbuster about storm-chasing starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton. Tornados are just one of those things that both terrify and fascinate me at the same time, like sharks, religious cults or the history of the bubonic plague. I may have also developed…