A Naughty Pool Party, circa 1939

This is another one of those gems that I found digging deep in the LIFE photo archives with very little information to go with it. Photographed in 1939 by David E. Scherman and simply titled, “Too Many Girls swimming party”, I’m going to take a wild guess and say this might have been some sort…

The Not-So-Fairytale Castle of New York

Bannerman’s Castle might look like a medieval European storybook setting, but these American ruins have seen their fair share of disaster. The only real occupants of the castle were weapons of war and temperamental explosives, housed in this elaborate military surplus warehouse built in 1901. Just 50 miles North from New York City, located on…

Stop Everything. It’s a Teeny Tiny Trailer

Just stop what you’re damn well doing and look at this tiny pink vintage trailer. Just look at it! It’s basically better than the real thing. Because, cupcakes. That’s it. I want tiny balloons for my birthday and will not accept anything less. So who is the tiny magical leprechaun behind all this? A talented little…

Oh, just a Miniature Global Village in China

Hey, you know what’s better than actually travelling the world and seeing its wonders and historic sights first hand? Hitting up a Chinese miniature theme park, of course … ‘Windows of the World’ is a 480,000 square-meter global village theme park in Shenzhen, China, accommodating over a hundred miniature replicas of world famous historical sights. A fantasy…

Blondie, the Living Room Lion

In 1955, LIFE photographer Joseph Scherschel spent a day shooting a rather unusual subject for a spread in the magazine entitled, “Living Room Lion – Blondie, A Docile 200-Pound Texan, Becomes A Member of the Family.” The oversized house cat belonged to Charles Hipp, an oil businessman based in Graham, Texas. You’re probably thinking, ‘another bored…

The Kowloon Walled City Replica: Historical Accident turned Amusement Park!

If you’ve been following this blog for a while or have had the chance to dig through the archives, you might remember we looked at Kowloon “Anarchy” City, the most densely populated place on Earth for most of the 20th century that belonged to no country and where law had no place; an interconnected urban enclave that was for…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. XL)

1. An Abandoned Victorian Treehouse A two-story, child-size replica of a Victorian-style home photographed by Florida-based photographer Drew Perlmutter. The article, found on Huffington Post Home, does not reveal the exact location or a story as to why the treehouse was abandoned. The photographer will only reveal that the treehouse is in South East Florida, to…

The Real Jessica Rabbit

What I remember most about Jessica Rabbit is how she was always wearing that provocative red dress, cut oh so inappropriately low at the back, even just to run around town. Meet the real-life Jessica Rabbit, Miss Vikki Dougan, the 1950s ‘It girl’ who inspired the iconic cartoon sex bomb… Photographs by Ralph Crane for…

The Most Quoted Man in News (who is now Banned from Newspapers)

With no special skill or expertise, Greg Parker’s campaign to be the most quoted man in news has been so successful that the Associated Press sent its staff a memo that essentially banned interviews with him. That hasn’t stopped Greg’s “career.” Individually, his quotes are utterly unremarkable, but, considered as a whole, they add up to…

My Little Secret Montmartre

This is not Montmartre, the cupcake hilltop village of Paris where Miss Amélie Poulain resides. Today we escape to a different corner of the city in the 20th arrondissement with just as much charm and just as many steps. Upon first discovering it, my faithful walking companion duly declared, “It’s like a little Montmartre!” So…