I really don’t know.
I don’t think this is even shopped
Café de la Paix, Paris c.1911 (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
Paris Olympia, Boulevard des Capucines, 1913 (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
Book recommendations
Anyone know a good book on Mustafa Kemal Ataturk or the late Ottoman Empire?
Someone in a neighboring building abandoned all of their cats. I am trying to take care of two of them, but it is hard because I already own both a cat and a dog and I live in an apartment. I live in Toronto, and though the weather has been bizarrely mild for this time of year, I need to find at least one of these cats a home. I know the cold weather is coming, and my bleeding heart will keep them if necessary but if anyone is looking for a sweet, gentle orange tabby(not fixed) in Toronto, I have the perfect guy for you.
My tumblr messaging doesn’t always work so if you are serious e-mail me at k.a.durette@live.ca
Officially ending this blog
You can find me on http://them-days-was-olden-as-fuck.tumblr.com/ which was previously a medieval-ish blog, but I decided to expand the time frame.
Also, every American or anyone considering moving to the US should keep up with and follow this blog: http://beatyourselfup.com/
okay bye
“If you’ve ever used birth-control pills, or had asthma, arthritis, hemorrhoids, eczema, allergies, chronic lung illness, cancer or weak little baby muscles, you can thank Percy Julian for inventing steroids. It was one of the most crucial advancements in modern medicine — there probably isn’t a single person reading this who hasn’t been treated with a steroid at some point.
Way back in 1940, Julian figured out how to isolate the hormones progesterone, estrogen and testosterone from soybean oil, which was a huge deal. Up until that point, scientists had only taken tiny steps in figuring out what to do with these hormones, since they only had a miniscule amount to work with.
Now Percy Julian was synthesizing $10,000 worth of sex hormones a day, and the effect on the world was profound: Within a few years, one guy figured out how to use cortisone to treat arthritis. A few years later, another guy figured out how to prevent ovulation using progesterone, inventing a little thing most ladies refer to as “the pill.” So, yeah, kind of a big deal. In fact, the arthritis guy got a Nobel Prize for his work.”
(source: cracked.com: 5 Important People Who Were Screwed Out of History Books)
A waterlogged trench on the Western front, a common sight.
‘Between 1864 and 1889 the mean life expectancy of Prussian nuns, declared healthy on entry into the noviciate, was three years as a result of tuberculosis.’
‘Between 1803 and 1810 Britain imported some 4000 Mozambique army volunteers to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) to form new regiments. By 1820, 3640 (91%) of these unfortunates were dead from tuberculosis.’
These are just two of the fascinating facts that Dr Thomas Dormandy has collected in this brilliant history of the effect, investigation, false dawns and ultimately successful treatment of tuberculosis from Roman to modern times. The list of luminaries who died or suffered from tuberculosis is impressive: Keats, Shelley, Chekhov, all of the six Bronte children, Chopin, Paganini, Tsarevitch Nicholas, Robert Louis Stevenson, Kafka, D. H. Lawrence and finally George Orwell—probably England’s finest author of the 20th Century. Even as late as 1967, tuberculosis killed Vivien Leigh, the star of ‘Gone with the Wind’. However, whilst this disease accounted for many of the great and the good, it was, and still is, above all else a disease of the poor. It was a mass killer in England during the first quarter of the 19th Century as the industrial revolution arrived. It is interesting to note that then, as in modern Russia and the USA, prisons, on account of their overcrowding, were an unending source of the disease. Before 1910 no American ‘lifer’ lasted more than 12 years, and between 1890 and 1895 tuberculosis was the assigned cause of death in 75% of the prison population in the state of Massachusetts. The book includes an interesting chapter on the spread of bovine tuberculosis via milk and the different steps taken to counter this threat by authorities in the USA (active) and the UK (inactive). Once again, the interest of the British farmer appeared to outweigh the interests of the health of the British nation. As late as 1938 the government-sponsored Milk Industry Bill, a relatively modest assortment of preventative measures which would have enabled (but not compelled) local authorities to impose pasteurization of milk, was defeated in the House of Commons at its first reading. In 1946, 7–10% of ‘pasteurized’ milk sold in London contained live tubercle bacilli.
(Source: jac.oxfordjournals.org, via radicalwhig-deactivated20130129)
“Page from the journal of Henry Walsh Mahon showing the effects of scurvy, from his time aboard HM Convict Ship Barrosa.” c.1841/2
Scurvy causes lethargy, swollen gums, paleness, and sunken in eyes. Symptoms not to be mistaken with your average British citizen.
Saber, 19th century; Ottoman period
Turkish
Steel, gold, diamonds, emeralds, pearlsIn contrast to the European custom of coronation, the most important ceremony in the inauguration of most Islamic rulers was the investiture with a sword. This extravagantly decorated saber is traditionally said to have been made in 1876 for the investiture of the Ottoman sultan Murad V (r. May 30–August 31, 1876). He suffered a nervous breakdown before the ceremony and was subsequently deposed and kept a prisoner until his death in 1904.
The sword appears to have been fashioned by a court jeweler using a seventeenth-century Iranian blade, an eighteenth-century Indian jade grip, and gem-studded gold mounts of contemporary workmanship. Although of late manufacture, this sword symbolizes the wealth and love of ostentatious display that had been associated with the Ottoman court since the sixteenth century.
Happy birthday, Nikola Tesla!
Born July 10, 1856 in modern-day Croatia (back then it was part of the Austrian Empire), Tesla, an ethnic Serb, was a major contributor to the development of commercial electricity, wireless communication, and radio, among many, many other technologies. The complete file of his patents at the US Patent Office is 499 pages long!
Oops - a day late with the birthday wishes for Nikola Tesla.
(via timetravelteam)
