Added to mud was general litter, varying from the relatively harmless— “old newspapers, cast-off shoes, and crownless hats”—to broken glass and mouldering food. Lady F.W. Harberton, inveighing against the fashionable “train” in female dress (i.e. a trailing skirt), presented the following gruesome inventory to her… Read more
This book will answer a lot of your questions: https://books.google.com/books/about/Fi… Read more
The article sorta glazes over a really important bit of history - the establishment of Geographic Information Science and Epidemiology by John Snow. He worked out the central source for cholera in Soho by using geographic analysis, going against all prevailing scientific theory of the day. Its a really fascinating…
It’s called a bourdaloue, and you use it like so:
One of the interesting advances in public waste came through the Roman Empire. The advent of the sponge with wine/vinegar to clean oneself at public “potties” to avoid certain disease was one of keen interest: “Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered… Read more
I’m more interested in how a proper woman in Victorian times (think Jane Austen novels era) would use a “bathroom” at a guest’s house. Elizabeth and Jane are visiting the Bingleys for tea and cake. Jane feels a rumble, she has to shit and soon. The carriage ride back home is like 2 hours long on bumpy roads. What do?… Read more
The issue became a great popular obsession, but it took decades to wrangle all the necessary stakeholders, officials and taxpayers for basics like upgraded sewers. Various reformers would emerge and propose grand schemes, but the decentralized nature of local government made it damn near impossible to get anything… Read more
“I love the presidental primaries!”
I LOVE THIS! Sending myself a whole bunch of links to read up tonight...
“In her autobiography, Parks clarified that she wasn’t just some physically exhausted elderly lady, too worn out to move from her seat in the black section of the bus.” Read more
Yes. What annoys me most about this narrative is how it completely ignores the lifetime of activism that she led. In addition to ignoring her decades of work with the NAACP to seek justice for sexual assault victims, she was also interested in anti-authoritarian organizing. In the summer of 1955 she traveled to… Read more
As someone who’s been running a Sci-Fi themed bulletin board for 15 years now, I can safely say that the franchise with the largest number of female fans is Farscape, and it’s not hard to understand why: Women make up half or more of the ensemble cast. It’s a shipper-heavy show with tremendously well written… Read more
It’s a family soap opera. Read more
At least in this case Nefertiti is actually quite closely connected to Tutankhamun (possibly his mother, definitely at least his stepmother), so it’s not so crazy to be mentioning her. Read more
The hell is it with freakin’ Nefertiti all the damn time? Every mummy that pops up, everyone’s convinced it’s Nefertiti, like Ancient Egypt had some kind of crippling queen shortage. Read more
A couple of thoughts on this whole hidden chambers in the tomb of Tutankhamun thing. The tl;dr: this is really exciting and potentially really important, but we need to go carefully. As you were. Read more
I vote that it’s a mummified collection of Tut’s most beloved pets. Read more
I think we should get Geraldo Rivera to televise, live, the opening. (Only the olds here will get this reference.) Read more