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

Hi there! If you’re not subscribed to our newsletter, you might have been wondering why we skipped a week of 13 Things recently. You’ll notice the website might be a little quieter than usual over the next few weeks as I dedicate the month of August to making a real crack at finishing our next…

Ode to the Ice Man

In his autobiography Timebends, Arthur Miller recalls an occupation lost in time – that of the ice man, who wore “leather vests and a wet piece of sackcloth slung over the right shoulder, and once they had slid the ice into the box, they invariably slipped the sacking off and stood there waiting, dripping, for their money.” From…

History Conveniently Forgot to Tell us about the Transgender Roman Emperor

His reputation has suffered at the pens of historians for centuries – a suspected revisionist attempt to hide the fact that a powerful Roman Emperor was among the first persons in history to seek a sex reassignment surgery. Emperor Elagabalus (or Heliogabalus) came from a prominent Arab family in present-day Syria, where he served as…

Inside the Annual Ernest Hemingway Look-Alike Competition

If you’d gone for a walk around Key West in the 1930s, chances are you might have bumped into Ernest Hemingway. Whether making the short stroll from his house on Whitehead Street to the bars on Duval, one block over and several up, or perhaps on his way to the nearby marina where he moored…

Where America’s Lost Luggage Ends Up

Every traveler has experienced it at some point: that sinking feeling of watching all the other suitcases reunited with their weary owners at baggage claim but not seeing your own slide down the conveyor belt. While you stand there forlornly, wondering where your luggage has gone without you (and how many pairs of underwear you…

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

1. Inside America’s Largest Abandoned Mansion with over 110 rooms 2. What the Leaning Tower of Pisa looks like Inside Totally empty! More found here. 3. Sylvia Plath’s recipe cards for Sale Including Fish Chowder, Cherry & Cottage Cheese Cobbler, Drop Molasses Cookies, Carrot Cake, Beef Stew and a much-coveted recipe: ‘Ted’s Mother’s Scots Porridge…

The Peculiar Flapper Fad of Rouged and Decorated Knees

The infamous nightclub singer and vaudevillian, Velma Kelly, opens the musical Chicago in a sleek bob haircut, slinky black dress and all the glamour and sin of the swinging 1920s. She’s going to “paint the town”, play fast and loose… and “rouge her knees and roll her stockings down”? The last line might seem nonsensical…

A Strange Abandoned Hiking Lodge No One Knew was Designed by Gaudi Himself

The world’s greatest artists aren’t supposed to have their work overlooked or unattributed, but it happens more than you might think. In museums, private collections, and public spaces, there is a myriad of artworks that remain unidentified. It took years for a total of nine Van Gogh ‘fakes’ painted during the last four years of…

This Guy (Almost) Convinces us to Go Freight Train Hopping Around America

Freighthopping or trainhopping, the (usually illegal) act surreptitiously boarding and riding a freight railroad car became a common means of transportation following the American Civil War and continued to be widely used by those unable to afford other transportation, particularly during the Great Depression when the jobless took to the rails to find work. The practice is less common today, but a…

When Injury Killed His Humble Dream, He Built a Whole Miniature World Instead

Death seemed to stalk Michael Zoettl from birth. His mother died when he was a child. He nearly drowned, then almost burned to death. When the Asiatic flu pandemic swept through Europe in 1889, killing 1.5 million worldwide, Michael fell ill and developed permanent heart palpitations. Zoettl was 14 years old when, in 1891, the German…