Marilyn Monroe’s Diet Plan, Lipsticks and her Most Intimate Belongings are Up for Auction

You only have to glance at the range of items in the upcoming sale of the largest collection of Marilyn Monroe ephemera ever offered at auction, to see that her fingerprint can still transform the most prosaic of objects more than 50 years after her tragic death. While it wouldn’t be a true Marilyn Monroe auction without her most iconic dresses, diamonds…

Uncovering the Ghost of an Iconic Department Store, the “Bloomingdales” of Paris

For ten years, one of the world’s most iconic and historic department stores sat empty along the banks of the Seine in Paris; an imposing ghostly shell of former retail splendour, a giant sleeping elephant in the room occupying prime real estate in the heart of the city. When I heard that renovation works were…

Coco Chanel was Definitely a Nazi

That’s quite a statement isn’t it? You may have heard rumblings about this back in August 2011 when author Hal Vaughan released his book Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War. But I don’t think we’ve really heard enough about it. I don’t really think we got a firm grip on the fact that today’s most…

Someone Documented the Smallest, Quirkiest Museums in Australia

I can’t understand why the most popular travel guides aren’t the ones that tell you where the smallest and quirkiest places are in every town and country around the world. The intimate and independent museums are always the most underrated and often the best way to get to know the locals and their story as an outsider. Small Museum, curated by…

The Lost Art of Street Typography

I wonder if in the old days, they found their hand-painted typography and artisanal signs as charming as we do today? Maybe they found it a nuisance; all those different fonts competing for attention as you walked down the street. Personally, I’d love nothing more than to time travel down my local high street and see…

That Time Soviet School Children Bugged the US Ambassador’s Office

Did you hear the one about the Soviet school children who presented a US Ambassador with a wooden plaque of the Seal of the United States as a gesture of friendship in 1945? It hung in his Moscow office for 7 years before discovering it contained a listening device. True story. Man, that’s cold! Get it? Anyway, after…

Colour Photos of the Legendary Parisian Food Market, Les Halles in 1956

It was known as the “Belly of Paris”, as famously christened by the French novelist Émile Zola; Les Halles was the food market of 19th century Paris, the hub of all food distribution in the city and one of the true wonders of working class Paris. These photographs taken by American Life photographer Thomas Mcavoy in 1956 were taken in the…

10 Reasons Why Archeology is the Coolest Job Ever

Indiana Jones may have exaggerated a little bit about the job, but you still get to dress like Alan Grant from Jurassic Park, travel all over the world and uncover some mind-blowing relics of the past. Here’s 10 reminders of why this is the coolest career going. 1. That time they discovered the Easter Island Statues have Bodies There…

The Curiosity Museum with Cocktails, Taxidermy Classes & Cuddly Crawling Chameleons

“I’m so bored of contemporary museums and their desperate attempt to classify and make sense of everything. The world is one big, glorious mess and we should celebrate that.” – Victor Wynd. Oh, I couldn’t agree more Mr. Wynd! This may come as a bit of a surprise, but you’ll rarely find MessyNessy in a…

Buried by Nature: The Dark Colonial Past of Jungle Book Island

It has become one with the jungle since the last human inhabitants abandoned its shores in World War II. Ross Island, or as I’ve come to call it, “Jungle Book Island”, was once referred to as the “Paris of the East”, for its opulent architecture and exciting social life amidst the unlikely setting of a tropical island…