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Category / Nostalgia

It took a Hundred Years and Two Gays to Decode Her Diaries

Anne Lister has recently crept out of the shadows of what was her own gothic novel, penned almost two centuries ago. Like all things of the neo-Gothic late 18th century, hers was also a world of shadows, veils, intrigues and most of all, it concealed her obsessional love for other women. British society was at…

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…

An Ode to the Card Catalog

Before books were easily printed and accessible to nearly everyone, before they even took the form of books specifically, there was a different story. Information was scarce in its written form, and so scribes and scholars developed a meticulous system for organizing libraries of tablets. That’s right: the oldest known form of organizing books predates…

Petition to Teach Kids about the Mad Adventures of Nellie Bly in History Class

When Nellie Bly got bored of writing about fashion and gardening, she went undercover as a patient in a mental asylum and faked insanity to expose the institutional abuse. When she read Jules Verne’s book Around the world in 80 Days, she attempted the fictional journey herself, and did it in 72 days, 6 hours,…

A Brief Guide and History of Travelling Experimentally

When you next leave the house, turn right. Then turn left. Then right again, followed by another left. And by Jove, I think you’ve got it! Do this until you’re blocked by an obstacle, whether that’s a dead-end, a river, or a sheer drop. Congratulations, you’ve just completed your first act of travelling experimentally. Alternating…

This is a Formal Request for Wes Anderson to Make his Next Film about Vintage Caravan Culture

Today we were stumbled upon the excellent OldieCaravan.de again, a virtual museum of vintage caravan ephemera. The website is entirely in German and we can’t understand a word of it, but the brochures; the photographs, the diagrams, the colour palette, the typography; it all speaks for itself. And browsing through the digital archive, it suddenly…

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…

Once Upon a Time in Taiwan…

Unless you are Taiwanese, you probably don’t know that Taiwan is inhabited by indigenous Pacific Islanders. Currently, there are 16 recognized tribes on the island, comprising 2.4% of Taiwan’s population of 23 million people, comparable to the native population in the United States (2%). Archeological evidence shows that indigenous people have been on Taiwan for…

At Home and in the Office with America’s First Black Millionairess

There are so many grand Gilded Age homes in New York’s Hudson River Valley, it led one 19th century wit to comment that ‘one couldn’t throw a stone without hitting a millionaire’s mansion’. Walk along the always fascinating Croton Aqueduct Trail and you can catch glimpses of these luxurious mansions that were once homes to…

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