If you received a letter that looked like this, would you expect 1) it was written by a person with psychiatric problems, 2) it was written by a penny-pincher who was trying to save paper, or 3) it was sent to you in order to cause grave emotional trauma? All of these are possible, but there is one correct answer — and many letters like this were written and painstakingly deciphered. More inside.
Experience the sheer giddiness of an exclamation-mark-filled 1930 ad for cosmetics, “a whole ensemble of gay toiletries!”
A beautiful machine, a beautiful ad. “Easy to carry — speedy to operate.” See the full ad in the post.
Using living trees as antennas was an important element of inventor Maj.-Gen George O. Squier’s system of telephony, which was developed for use during WWI as a way to intercept enemy messages which had been electrically transmitted, as well as to receive and transmit messages from just anywhere with a living tree nearby. More about Squier’s odd-sounding “tree wireless” inside.
Between 1908 and 1910, the city of Buffalo, New York issued a challenge to the city’s children: collect as many Tussock Moth cocoons as possible, and collect a bounty of ten cents a quart. Kids made lots of money and Buffalo’s trees were saved.
It’s lassoes vs. electric dynamite guns in this thrilling story of a crazy armored vehicle and a battle with masked desperadoes in Texas!
Many of the illustrations from the 16th-century “Shepheards Kalender” show the torments of Hell which await practitioners of the Seven Deadly Sins. Here, let’s take a look at covetousness.
Nigel Bruce and Basil Rathbone cavort poolside with Bruce’s doggies.
In 1922, when radios were introduced to the general public, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — the creator of Sherlock Holmes and a staunch believer in Spiritualism — donned headphones and experienced radio for the first time, in Atlantic City. He speculated that the new technology might be quite efficacious in communing with the dearly departed. More inside.
Check out this crazy prototype — a streamlined aluminum locomotive with a propeller and a BMW V12 engine. The videos are cool.
