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Category / Nostalgia

Inside Look: The New York Times Archives

The New York Times have been doing some great things on their website and Tumblr recently, and coming across videos like this is a real treat for me. I would pay good money to spend the day sifting through the newspaper’s old print archives, a department that used to be the heart of most publications…

How to Bury an Entire Museum

When German forces took Athens in April 1941, they expected to find thousands of centuries-old artifacts in the National Archaeological Museum, Greece’s largest museum. Instead, the neo-classical building was totally empty, besides the archaeologists and guardians still on duty. Officers asked them where the relics were hidden and “they answered enigmatically that antiquities are where everybody…

Who was Agent 355? The Mystery of America’s First Female Spy

You probably heard about Mata Hari, the infamous courtesan and female spy who beguiled the men around her into allegedly betraying national secrets to Germany during WWI. She became an icon of feminine seduction, Greta Garbo played her on the silver screen in 1931, and her story has inspired countless tales of romance and espionage.…

The Misunderstood Nomadic Women who Danced Their Way to Liberation

Centuries before Betty Friedan and the sexual revolution challenged social mores in the West, the women of the Ouled Nail in Algeria enjoyed the freedom to earn their own fortunes, choose lovers and engage in sexual relationships outside of marriage in a society that placed no shame on these choices – and indeed valued these…

Postcards from the Old Miramar Hotel, a Crumbling Relic of Venezuela’s Ritzy Riviera

The Miramar Hotel is falling down. Its voluptuous domes and towering spires have crashed to the ground, its red roof tiles have been slipping and the classically-moulded plaster on its walls reduced to dust. This once awe-inspiring piece of architecture lies prostrate, with its dismembered limbs on display in the breeze of the balmy seaside…

A Brief Compendium of Vintage Cocktail Recipe Books

Sometimes, you just strike internet gold – ya know, those obscure little corners of the internet where you can fall blissfully down the rabbit hole. Today’s find is a free online library of unearthed and collected bartender books; rare volumes dating from the 1820s through the 1940s, faithfully digitised – every last page – by…

The Apocalypse came early for the Salton Riviera

There is a place where beaches are made not of sand, but of the skeletons of millions of fish. Luxury yacht clubs are now frequented only by pigeons, vacation homes lay open to the elements and RV camp grounds look more like burial grounds. (c) above Jeremy Engleman & JBennett Fitts below Not 60 miles from the…

The Great Paris Train Wreck

The Gare Montparnasse became famous for the derailment on 22 October 1895 of the Granville–Paris Express, which overran the buffer stop. The engine careered across almost 30 metres (100 ft) of the station concourse, crashed through a 60-centimetre (2 ft) thick wall, shot across a terrace and smashed out of the station, plummeting onto the Place de…

Are you Popular? (circa 1947)

This is an example of post-World War social guidance films and golly jee whizz, is it a hoot! It can only be a positive thing that no one would ever make these instructional videos today. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eqpe7Y_6rmQ&] Favorite moments: “Or if you’d rather go with the gang on a skating party and weenie roast. We’d…

And now, Abandoned Paintings

Leonardo da Vinci‘s ‘The Last Supper’ Here at MessyNessyChic, we’ve looked at abandoned homes, castles, villages, towns, seaside resorts, even an abandoned human zoo! So how about some abandoned art?! This very clever idea comes from a Hungarian media student, Bence Hadju, attending the University of Fine Arts in Hungary. Hadju has taken a handful…

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