Yes, that really is Teddy Roosevelt fighting Bigfoot. Over at the Etsy shop, you’ll also find Lincoln riding a grizzly.
Category: History
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American Cities Before 1950
If you love antique photography, you’ll certainly appreciate these stunning photographs all taken before 1950.
Wrapping up our Valentine’s Day posts, Mental Floss has a great article detailing the strange role the flea once played in romantic poetry:
The most famous of these poems is The Flea, by John Donne. The poet’s narrator, struggling with a woman who wishes to hold on to her virginity, compares its loss to a fleabite: small and insignificant. When a flea actually does bite them both, he notes that their blood has mingled inside it. He just wants to mingle other bodily fluids anyway, so sex should mean neither sin nor shame nor loss of virginity at this point. Other writers imagined themselves as fleas exploring their lovers’ bodies, or bemoaned the fact that they were not fleas able to explore the secrets of a woman’s body without detection.
Fleas were symbols of love outside of poems, too. Some Frenchmen would pluck fleas from their lovers’ flesh and keep the insects as pets—it was a way to have a small piece of their beloved with them always. The fleas lived in tiny gold cages worn around the neck and were fed a daily meal of the man’s blood.
Here’s hoping you don’t get bit by any literal “love bugs” this year.
Image via Scurzuzu [Flickr]
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Stunning Carved Temple Images
The Ajanta Caves are a series of temples carved from rock in India. While it sounds like a cheesy location for a new Indiana Jones movie, the images are simply amazing.
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The Story of The Oregon Trail
The story of the world’s greatest educational game is a lot more interesting than you might have thought.
North Brother Island is a completely abandoned island in the heart of one of the most expensive cities in the world. While it is now off limits due to its critical role as a bird sanctuary, the history of the island is truly fascinating, as are the many photos documenting its current, rundown condition.
Ok, well not all drugs are good for all people, but this article over at Oddee has some interesting ways that illegal drugs may be surprisingly good for some people in terms of medicine.
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8 Awesome Acts of Vaudeville
I, for one, relish the idea of old vaudeville performances. The variety, the strangeness, the kitsch, it all seems like a blast. Mental Floss has a great article detailing some of the strangest vaudeville acts to ever tour, from the painless tooth extractor to the motorcycle performer who carried a lion in her cart to the farting musician to Hellen Keller, these acts are all bizarre and entertaining in a way that modern television just can’t match.
If you’re short on cash this year, making your own presents is a great way to save on money and give a heartfelt gift. Over on my other blog, The Cheapskate’s Handbook, I wrote a great list of great gifts you can make at home, including these delicious candied orange slices seen on The Repressed Pastry Chef.
If you want to do well in sports, the secret is to practice and train hard, but if you aren’t a big fan of doing things the hard way, there are always performance enhancers. Of course, if you can’t get your hands on some ‘roids, you can always try some of these bizarre performance enhancers, including strychnine, guinea pig sperm and arsenic.