Querying the Hive Mind.
'I am a Sarajevan who lived during the siege with no heat, electricity, water, phone (etc) for the most of a three-year period. What's on the list above is what I was almost always missing. We got "dry" food packages from various sources. These tended to be Truman eggs (good for a little protein, but thats about it), macaroni, rice, powder potatoes, Vietnam-era "biscuits" - supposedly with vitamins, but these were from the late 1960s and of dubious nutritional value.'

Child Slaves in Ghana.

'Over one thousand children are living as slaves on the banks of Ghana's Volta Lake, being used as free labour by local fishermen. '

'The victims, mostly boys aged between 5 and 14, are forced to work from dawn to dusk casting and drawing nets. They live separately in cramped thatched roofed huts, are poorly fed, suffer physical abuse and never get paid. Their diet consists mainly of cassava (manioc) with watery soup. They are never given fish. Because of their poor diet, harsh living and working conditions, many suffer from water-borne illnesses and experience stunted growth...'

Child fishing slave - http://www.flickr.com/photos/freetheslaves/28782358/




British Piers.

'There are currently 55 pleasure piers in existence around the UK coastline. Following are images of these piers.'




Lakehurst Mall of Waukegan, Illinois 1971-2004.

'Opened in 1971, Lakehurst was a sprawling, mixed-use complex which housed a 1.1 million square-foot enclosed shopping mall and numerous freestanding commercial, office, recreational, and residential structures. Lakehurst remained in operation for 30 years, until competition from nearby mega-mall Gurnee Mills and the departure of many of its anchor retailers led to the mall’s demise and eventual closure in 2001. The shuttered Lakehurst Mall spent three years in decaying limbo and was completely demolished in 2004.'




Walk Sydney Streets.

'Alan, 93, walks every street in 261 of the suburbs of Sydney, Australia - 910 unusual photos'.




Catron County Walk.

Chronicling walking the 400 miles of paved road in Catron County, New Mexico.




Geiko of Kyoto.

'A glimpse into the "Flower and Willow World" ：The Geisha (and maiko) of Kyoto.'



Astro Pics.

The Magnificent Tail of Comet McNaught.

A Tale of Comet Holmes.

Alborz Mountains in Moonlight.

Eclipsing the Rings.




Summer of Love Photo Gallery.

'Historically the Sixties was one of the most colorful periods in American history. Photographers had a field day. This initial version of the Summer of Love Photographer's Gallery presents the work of several photographers who were either at the original Summer of Love Celebration in 1967 or who photographed the life and times of the amazing Sixties...'




PostMark Press: Vintage Magazine Images.




A Josephine Baker Photo Gallery.

Josephine Baker biography - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_Baker 'Josephine Baker (or Joséphine Baker in francophone countries) (June 3, 1906 – April 12, 1975) was an American-born French expatriate entertainer and singer. She became a French citizen in 1937. Baker was most noted as a singer, while in her early career she was a celebrated dancer. She was given the nicknames the "Black Venus" or the "Black Pearl", as well as the "Créole Goddess" in anglophone nations, while in France she has always been known in the old theatrical tradition as "La Baker"...'




The Trotsky Archive.

'Lev Davidovich Bronstein. Leader, with V.I. Lenin, of the Russian Revolution. Architect of the Red Army. Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs 1917-1918 and Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs 1918-1924. In 1929, expelled from the Communist Party by the Stalinist faction of the Party and then deported from the USSR. In 1938 he helped found the Fourth International, the World Party of Socialist Revolution. In 1940, murdered by a Stalinist assassin at his home in exile, in Mexico...'

Photo album - http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/photo/index.htm




Weekly Puzzle.

A young woman in Manhattan has two boyfriends - one in the Bronx and one in Brooklyn - both of whom she likes equally well.
To visit the boyfriend in the Bronx she takes the subway from the uptown side of the platform; to visit the boyfriend in Brooklyn she takes the subway from the downtown side of the same platform.
As she likes them both equally well, she simply takes the first train that comes along. Brooklyn and Bronx trains run equally often from this platform - every ten minutes - and are equally reliable. Yet for some reason she finds herself visiting the boyfriend in Brooklyn nine times out of ten. Why?




Quackwatch.

'Your Guide to Quackery, Health Fraud, and Intelligent Decisions'




Essex Church Photographs.




Paradise: The Gardens of Tokyo.





The Abundant Land: Inuit Sculpture.




Vintage Kitchen.

Photo-set.

Netsilik Eskimo Series.

Photographs depicting Eskimo life in the 1960s. 'These films reveal the live reality of traditional Eskimo life before the European acculturation. The Netsilik Eskimos of the Pelly Bay region in the Canadian Arctic had long lived apart from other people and had depended entirely on the land and their own ingenuity to sustain life through the rigors of the Arctic year...'




Small-Town America 1850-1920.

'12,000 photographs of the Mid-Atlantic states New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut from the 1850s to the 1910s, from the Robert N. Dennis Collection of Stereoscopic Views at the New York Public Library. The views show buildings and street scenes in cities, towns, and villages as well as natural landscapes. They also depict agriculture, industry, transportation, homes, businesses, local celebrations, natural disasters, people, and costumes.'




Ethnic Minorities of Vietnam.




Cuban Self-Taught Art.

'The collection gives particular emphasis to the work of artists from the southern Cuban city of Cienfuegos, including Fito (Adolfo Flores Gonzalez), Arnaldo Garcia Rodriguez, José Garcia Montebravo, Jorge Sanfiel and Wayacon (Julian Espinosa). We went to Cienfuegos in search of painter José Garcia Montebravo, whose haunting, spiritual work we exhibited at Indigo Arts the last two years. His work is permeated with images of infantas, orishas and the mysteries of santeria. We were fortunate to meet not only Montebravo but a group of other self-taught artists. Painter Fito was showing his comical paintings on the theme of “erotismo”at a cooperative gallery...'




Dutch Advertising Graphics.

150 years of advertising in the Netherlands.




The Dream: Photographs of Bulgarian Gypsies.

'Beyond Predel Street in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, the road turns from Communist-laid pavement to a magma of mud, animal waste and run-off sludge. Children half-clothed, run with lame dogs, chickens, and over-worked horses through the streets, amidst tangled piles of rusting iron collected from the city's refuse. Very few Bulgarians, including the police, venture behond this unmarked boundry ... Far from the image of wandering, mystical fortune-tellers of the West's collective stereotype, Gypsies are becoming the scapegoats for escalating social and economic problems such as unemployment and climbing crime rates. In this region, beseiged for centuries by ethnic hatred and conflicts, minorities are an easy targets for attacks.'




The Kalender of the Shepherdes.

'The 'Kalender of the Shepherdes' is a late medieval almanac first published in the 1490s in Paris by Guy Marchant and Antoine Vérard. It incorporates writing and illustrations that traverse a number of themes including astrological, feasting and Saints day calendars, farming advice, folk medicine and (most significantly) religious instruction...'




Vintage Air Stewardess Uniforms.




The Goat's Dance: Photographs by Graciela Iturbide.

'This exhibition loosely surveys more than 30 years of Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide's international career by highlighting major series produced in Mexico and the United States. '




Andre Kertesz.

'In a 70-year career, which spanned much of the 20th century, André Kertész (1894–1985) made some of the most deceptively simple yet compelling and poetic photographs that have ever been created. This retrospective of approximately 113 photographs, including some of the most celebrated works in 20th-century photography—such as Chez Mondrian and The Satiric Dancer, both from 1926—will feature images from all periods of Kertész's exceptionally diverse oeuvre, from his early photographs of his native Budapest made in the 1910s and early 1920s, to his studies of Paris in the 1920s and 1930s, and the final series of photographs he took of New York in the 1970s and 1980s, shortly before his death.'



Astro Pics.

Saturn's Ancient Rings.

Earthrise from Moon-Orbiting Kaguya.

Star Trails at Dawn.



Weekly Puzzle.

1/ Make 24 out of 1, 5, 5, and 5.

2/ Make 24 out of 3, 3, 8 and 8.




1000 Places to See Before You Die.

Photographs.




Happy Faces.

Photographs.




Basic Instructions: Your All-Inclusive Guide to a Life Well-Lived.

Nice comic strip on 'How to Give Someone a Gift', 'How to Accept Gratitude', 'How to Destroy Society', 'How to Share a Profound Insight', 'How to Talk to a Sick Person', and other useful topics.




Medical History of British India.




Polar Bears.

Astro Pics.

Spiral Galaxy IC342.

Arp 87: 'A Stunning Pair of Interacting Galaxies'.

Io and Europa Meet.

Vela Supernova Remnant.




Burma Uprising.



Northern Ireland Political Murals.



Roadside Alaska.



Vintage Cookbooks.



Cuba's History through Postal Stamps.




The Cubist Paintings of Diego Rivera.
'Diego María Rivera (1886-1957) is one of the most prominent Mexican artists of the twentieth century. He gained international acclaim as a leader of the Mexican mural movement that sought to bring art to the masses through large-scale works on public walls. In his murals of the 1920s and 1930s Rivera developed a new, modern imagery to express Mexican national identity, which featured stylized representations of the working classes and indigenous cultures and espoused revolutionary ideals...'



'How I Walked Every Block in Manhattan in 10 Weeks.'

'Realizing that I was overweight, and needed to get in shape after a year on the road travelling in foreign countries eating wonderful food and not exercising at all, I decided that this year in my annual November-December getting in shape period, that I would walk every block of every street in Manhattan again as quickly as possible...'



Bob Dylan Ticket Stubs and Concert Posters.

Massive.



The Voice of Hibakusha.

Atom bomb survivors.

'These "Voice of Hibakusha" eyewitness accounts of the bombing of Hiroshima are from the program HIROSHIMA WITNESS produced by the Hiroshima Peace Cultural Center and NHK, the public broadcasting company of Japan. '



Honkawa Elementary School Peace Museum.

'The Honkawa Elementary School Peace Museum (Honkawa Shogakkou Heiwa Shiryokan) is a museum of the Peace in Honkawacho, Naka-ku, Hiroshima, Japan. The school was the closest school to ground zero. They lost about 400 students and more than 10 teachers, and the building took great amounts of damage from the atomic bomb dropped on August 6, 1945...'



Miss America.

'Tracking the country's oldest beauty contest -- from its inception in 1921 as a local seaside pageant to its heyday as one of the country's most popular events -- Miss America paints a vivid picture of an institution that has come to reveal much about a changing nation. The pageant is about commercialism and sexual politics, about big business and small towns. But beyond the symbolism lies a human story -- at once moving, inspiring, infuriating, funny and poignant. Using intimate interviews with former contestants, behind-the-scenes footage, and photographs, the film reveals how the pageant became a battleground and a barometer for the changing position of women in society.'



List of Unusual Deaths.



Celestial Atlas by Alexander Jamieson.

(1822) 'A celestial atlas : comprising a systematic display of the heavens in a series of thirty maps : illustrated by scientific description of their contents and accompanied by catalogues of the stars and astronomical exercises / by Alexander Jamieson. '



Laxton Open Field Survey Map.

'A plat and description of the whole mannor & Lordship of Laxton with Laxton Moorehouse in ye county of Nottingham and also of the mannor & Lordship of Kneesall lying adiacent to ye aforesaid mannor of Laxton', by Mark Pierce, 1635.'



Christmas Texts.



Weekly Puzzle.

'You have three boxes of fruit. One contains just apples, one contains just oranges, and one contains a mixture of both. Each box is labeled -- one says "apples," one says "oranges," and one says "apples and oranges." However, it is known that none of the boxes are labeled correctly. How can you label the boxes correctly if you are only allowed to take and look at just one piece of fruit from just one of the boxes?'

Today I walked the length of Manhattan - about 13-14 miles!
Read about it at www.sgnywalk.blogspot.com

Chertez Sadiqov is sheep farmer in Azerbaijan.


Farugot Holmuradova sells clothes in a bazaar in Tajikistan.


Dominic Lushinde runs a beef butchery in Tanzania.


Mabinty Koroma is married to a subsistence farmer in Sierra Leone.

Entrepreneurs in the developing world often lack a credit record or the collateral required for a loan.
Kiva: Loans That Change Lives - http://www.kiva.org/ is a website which connects people willing to lend small sums of money to entrepreneurs in developing countries who would otherwise find it difficult to raise the funds.




The Human Marvels: Vindicating Those Once Labelled as Freaks.

A gallery of eccentrics through history.




Picturing Women.

'From an exhibition held last year at Bryn Mawr College, the Picturing Women website was established to display sketches, cartoons, photographs and rare book illustrations of women through history. '




Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.

'In the late 19th century, the Impressionists defied academic tradition in French art with their emphasis on modern subjects, sketchlike technique, and practice of painting in the open air with pure, high-keyed color...'




Illuminated Manuscripts of the Himalayas.




Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio.

'Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, a short novel collection of ancient Chinese including 431 short ones, depicted series of stories of spirit figures such as beautiful and kind-hearted ghosts who change into human shape and marry the poor young scholor to repay his former favor and greedy toists who do every evil things they can to gain their purpose or other spirits based on forklores and legendary stories...'




Weird Tales: The Unique Magazine.

'In 1923, J.C. Henneberger began Weird Tales--The Unique Magazine. Throughout its 30-year history, the obscure pulp published some of the most outré fiction ever issued. The stories were odd, macabre, and completely unique. Weird Tales existed in a void, and the stories published therein reached pinnacles of strangeness never equalled. '




Graffiti.

With a nice little gallery of graffiti from around the world.




In Pictures: Maasai Initiation Ceremony.

'Tanzania's Maasai males become men through the elaborate ritual of the Eunoto ceremony, held just once every 15 years...'



Astro Pics.


Gibbous Europa (Moon of Jupiter).


Mars in View.


Aristarchus Plateau (on the Moon).




Weekly Puzzle.

1/ Make 4 out of 2,5,6 and 8.

2/ Make 40 out of 4,6,8 and 8.




The Lost Border: Photographs of the Iron Curtain.




Night Work.

'This set is simply a collection of all my night shots, gathered together here for those who might only want to see my nocturnal photographic efforts.'




The Adivasis.

'The Adivasis (literally meaning original dwellers) are the indigenous people of India who maintained the early lifestyles of mankind till the 19th century. They are also referred to as "Vanavasis" (meaning forest dwellers), "Girijans" (meaning people of the mountain), and "Mulavasis"...'




India and the African Connection.




American Experience: The Presidents.




Streamliners: America's Lost Trains.

'On the morning of May 26, 1934, a shimmering silver locomotive pulled out of Denver's Union Station bound for Chicago. The Zephyr was unlike any train seen before. Known as a streamliner for its long, sleek look and powered by a revolutionary compact diesel engine, it would cover 1,015 miles in a record 15 hours. By the 1940s, fleets of streamliners crisscrossed the country, making the U.S. passenger rail system the envy of the world...'




Non-Geographic Mapping.

Maps based on the travel time between cities, rather than distance between cities. Nice little Flash animation that lets you choose one of several cities as a hub.




Glaswegian Photo Archive.

'This is the online edition of the Glaswegians Photo Archive. You will find a selection of images from 30,000 photographs taken between 1989 and 1992.'

Definition of 'Glaswegian' in Scots - http://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glaswegian 'Glaswegian is a term for sambodie or samthin that hails frae Glesgae...'



Eye Candy.


Varroa Destructor - Parasite on Bumblebee.


Trithemus Kirbyi (Dragonfly).


Kali on the Battlefield.


A Jersey City Family, 1895.

Fashion Ads from Ebony Magazine 1970-76.




Celestial Atlas (1826).

19th century map of the heavens.




John Speed's 1611 Map of the British Isles.




London: A Life in Maps.




Fast Food Signs.

'I've been interested in the history of fast food in America for some time and have identified some of the classic signs that remain in the American landscape. '




Neon Signs in Baltimore.




Vietnam 1967-68.

'A selection of images as scanned from a batch of slides I've lucked into. The photographer, unknown...until now.'




Our Man in Hanoi.

'Pictures taken between September 2004 and March 2007 while I was doing volunteer work with KOTO (www.koto.com.au)'




Vietnam on Wheels.




Undark and the Radium Girls.

'In 1922, a bank teller named Grace Fryer became concerned when her teeth began to loosen and fall out for no discernible reason. Her troubles were compounded when her jaw became swollen and inflamed, so she sought the assistance of a doctor in diagnosing the inexplicable symptoms...'




Moon over Pigeon Point Lighthouse.




Space Station over the Ionian Sea.




Handpainted Chinese New Year Poetry.




Headdress of the Longhorn Miao.




Historical Maps of the United States.




19th Century Schoolbooks.




'Eternity' and Arthur Stace.

'Arthur Malcolm Stace (1884 - 30 July 1967), otherwise known as Mr. Eternity, was a homeless Australian man who converted to Christianity and spread his form of gospel by writing the word "Eternity" on sidewalks in Sydney, Australia, using chalk.'



Weeky Puzzle.

A family party included the following people: one grandfather, one grandmother, two fathers, two mothers, four children, three grandchildren, one brother, two sisters, two sons, two daughters, one father-in-law, one mother-in-law, and one daughter-in-law. But there were not as many people in attendance as it sounds. How many were there, and who were they?




The Holy Men of India.




Tombs of the Grand Masters of the Knights of Malta.

Straw Bale House.




Chinese Propaganda Posters.




The American Roadside.

'The American Roadside in all is splendor...and decadence, from classic diners to decrepit signs and urban landscapes, from beautifully perserved movie threatre marquees to struggling cafes.'




Diner City.

'Your online guide to Classic Diners and the American Roadside'.




Vintage Christmas Recipes.




Ethiopian Manuscripts.

"Christianity took root slowly in Ethiopia from the third decade of the 4th century. Some 150 years later, missionaries from Syria translated the Bible into Ethiopic. The Islamic conquest of neighbouring Egypt in 640-641 isolated Ethiopia from other Christian countries for the best part of a millennium. The Ethiopic Church was able to maintain only tenuous links with the rest of Christianity through the Coptic Church in Egypt, which managed to survive under its country’s Islamic rulers..."




Religious Hats of the Himalayas.




A History of the Pregnancy Test Kit.




Gallery of Medical Instruments.




Pulp Gallery.

The Pulp Gallery is a visual reference guide to the wonderful cover art of pulp and pin-up magazines. Primarily the Gallery focuses on pulp cover art from the 1920's through the 1950's and includes some magazines from beyond those date ranges. On display are thousands of magazines covers for those seeking collecting, reference or pure entertainment value. I hope you enjoy! '




British Museum Prints.

'One of the most significant cultural collections of 2-dimensional art (prints, drawings and paintings) in the world made its relatively silent debut online recently. The British Museum has spent more than 15 years gearing up for this moment...'




Ballet Sketches.

'Joseph Paget-Fredericks (1905-1963) inherited his parents love for collecting theatre memorabilia and studied art at the University of California and in Europe. His family had close ties to the elite ballet companies and he was appointed Artistic Director for Anna Pavlova's world tours in the early 1930s...'




Weekly Puzzle.

1/ Make 33 out of 1,2,6 and 7.

2/ Make 34 out of 1,2,6 and 7.




Soviet Matchboxes.

Depicting the Soviet space programme.




Tokyo Street Style.

Street fashion.




Vintage Memorabilia.

'Here you will find vintage advertising items, displays, and packaging!'




Woman's Mysteries of a Primitive People.

'This is an ethnography of the Iboibo, a Nigerian tribe. Written by a pioneering English woman in the early 20th Century, this book focuses on the ritual life of women. Despite the naïve colonialist attitude, it presents a female perspective which was seldom seen in the ethnographic literature of the period. '

China Stories.

Vignettes of life in China.




Historic Maps of Paris.




Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.

'Joshua Abraham Norton (c. 1819 – January 8, 1880), also known as His Imperial Majesty Emperor Norton I, was a celebrated citizen of San Francisco, California who proclaimed himself "Emperor of these United States" and later "Protector of Mexico" in 1859. Born in London, Norton spent most of his early life in South Africa; he emigrated to San Francisco in 1849 after receiving a bequest of $40,000 from his father's estate. Norton initially made a living as a businessman, but he lost his fortune investing in Peruvian rice...'

More here :- http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/norton.html




Vintage Kimono.




The Great Los Angeles Air Raid of 1942.

'On the night and early morning of February 24 and 25, 1942, a singular event unfolded in the skies over Southern California – the continental United States was attacked by an enemy... or was it? The reports of this vary, from a squadron of Japanese bombers, a weather balloon, and even alien spacecraft, and the subsequent government conspiracies that followed. We do know that something happened; too many people witnessed the event to dispute that fact, but what really happened?'




Abandoned Swimming Pools.




Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus.

'Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge...'

More :- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes,_Virginia,_there_is_a_Santa_Claus '“Is There a Santa Claus?” was the headline that appeared over an editorial in the September 21, 1897 edition of the New York Sun. The editorial, which included the response of “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” has become an indelible part of popular Christmas lore in the United States.'




Strike It Lucky.

'A 1929 advertisement for Lucky Strike cigarettes, from The 100 Greatest Advertisements 1852–1958, by Julian Lewis Watkins, p. 66.'




Cigarette Cards: Cricket.




Cigarette Cards: Beauties.

Includes a 1928 series for Sarony Cigarettes on 'national types of beauty'.




Moon and Stars.




Phobos: Doomed Moon of Mars.



Drums and Shadows.

'This collection of oral folklore from coastal Georgia was assembled during the 1930s as part of a WPA writers' program, under the supervision of Mary Granger. The accounts in this book, framed by colorful descriptions of the rural locales where they were collected, were principally from elderly African-Americans, some of them centarians. Most had been slaves. In some cases they had known first generation slaves who had been born in Africa. '




Jamaica Anansi Stories.

Jamaican folklore.




The Kumulipo: A Hawaiian Creation Chant.




Vintage Halloween Cards.




Unfortunate Valentine's Cards.

'"If I had my choice you'd be first," but look at me. Am I ever really likely to have my choice? It doesn't seem likely. My giant hideous eyes are set really far apart, my head is as big and round as a elementary school gym class kickball, I have two nostrils but no nose, and my knees have strange lines on them. I'll be lucky to find any valentine, let alone my first choice. It's a tough life for a pseudo Campbell's soup kid. A tough life indeed. '




Socialist Posters of India.

'This online exhibition features a rarely studied and documented topic on the Socialist Movements in India, during the British rule and subsequent to India's freedom.'




Weekly Puzzle.

1/ Make 17 out of 1,2,6 and 7.

2/ Make 32 out of 1,2,6 and 7.

Wharram Percy.

A lost medieval village in Yorkshire.




Yale University Library: The Map Collection.

Including historical maps of the world - http://www.library.yale.edu/mapcoll/print_online_world.html




Vietnamese Propaganda Artist.

'Mr Dung started his career during the war and has charted Vietnam's transition to the outward-looking nation it is today. His latest assignment was a poster for this year's Apec summit. '




Flight Attendant Uniform Collection.

'Sometime in 1980 I was given my first uniform by one of my mother's friends. I was so excited and I wanted to have more uniforms. In 1982 I heard that two charter airlines were introducing new uniforms. I wasted no time, I called these airlines and as a result I was invited to pick up a set of old uniforms. Between 1982 and 1993 I didn't do much to obtain any more uniforms, something I really regret now as I could have had many many more! Most of my uniforms were obtained between 1993 and today. At the moment my collection contains almost 600 different uniforms from various airlines worldwide. '




License Plates of the US and Canada Used During 1976.




Photographs of Isolated Buildings.




Photographs of Vintage Actresses.




Selected American Civil War Photographs.

'The Selected Civil War Photographs Collection contains 1,118 photographs. Most of the images were made under the supervision of Mathew B. Brady, and include scenes of military personnel, preparations for battle, and battle after-effects. The collection also includes portraits of both Confederate and Union officers, and a selection of enlisted men. '




Neon Signs Photo Pool.




Danish Posters.

'1100 posters from the Danish Museum of Art & Design ranging from 1911 to 2002. '




The Decorated Letter.

'On the pages of medieval manuscripts, vines and luxuriant leaves twist together to create letter forms. Within the letters, fantastic figures of humans, animals, and mythological beasts clamber through the tangled foliage and occasionally transform into letters themselves. Other letters contain simple author portraits or serve as a frame for scenes of important events in a story. This exhibition examines these different letter types in medieval manuscripts and explores what they reveal about changes in manuscript illumination over the course of many centuries. '




The Russian Revolution: A Gallery of Photos.




Selections from the Poetry of the Afghans (1869).

'This is an anthology of English translations of Pushto poets from the 16th century on. Most, if not all, of these poets are Sufi. They utilize the poetic vocabulary of Sufiism: the tavern, the wine, the flowers, etc., all actually technical terms describing the soul's progression on the mystical path towards God. Raverty's introductory essay, "Remarks on the Mystic Doctrine and Poetry of the Sufis" provides a skeleton key to the symbology.'



Weekly Puzzle.

There are 3 bags. One contains 2 gold coins, another has 2 silver coins and the 3rd has one of each. You pick a bag at random, and without looking inside take out one coin. It's gold. What is the probability that the other coin in that bag is also gold?



Eye Candy.

The Grenville Diptych. 'The Grenville Diptych was produced for Richard Temple-Grenville, Marquess of Chandos the son of the first Duke of Buckingham and Chandos between 1822 and 1839. The diptych shows 719 quarterings of the family. The left hand panel of the diptych lists the quarterings. These include ten variations of the English Royal arms, the arms of Spencer, De Clare, Valence, Mowbray, Mortimer, and De Grey, among others. '

La Catrina. 'In Mexican folk culture, the Catrina, popularized by Jose Guadalupe Posada, is the skeleton of a high society woman and one of the most popular figures of the Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico.'

Etna eruption seen from the International Space Station.

Lost in Time: The Churches of the Norfolk Battle Training Area.
Norfolk villages evacuated and abandoned during World War II. Eerie.




The Underground Railroad.
'The Underground Railroad was neither "underground" nor a "railroad," but was a loose network of aid and assistance to fugitives from bondage. Perhaps as many as one hundred thousand enslaved persons may have escaped in the years between the american Revolution and the Civil War...'




Historic Route 40.
The United States' oldest transcontinental highway, running from Atlantic City, New Jersey to San Francisco.




The First Martian Landing Site in Grover's Mill, New Jersey.
'Located just off a lonely country road, a few miles from Princeton University, in West Windsor Township, New Jersey, a solitary marker on a field of dreams commemorates the first landing site of the Martian Invasion. What Martian Invasion? you might ask. Most people forget that Martian war machines did, in fact, invade our living rooms on October 30th, 1938, through the popular medium of radio, and a young Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre players were responsible.'




Ho Chi Minh Internet Archive.




Stamps Depicting Ethnic Groups of Vietnam.



Weekly Puzzle.
Combining the digits 1,2,7 and 8, form the integers from 1 to 10.
This is possible with the basic operations +, -, * and / .




Jupiter Portrait.




Cassini Approaches Saturn.




Inuit Religion.
'Inuit is the term preferred for speaking of the people commonly known as Eskimo—the word Eskimo being derived from a derogatory term (meaning "eaters of raw flesh") used by the Algonquin people of North America. The Inuit culture is possibly the most geographically extensive of all traditional lifeways, showing an astonishing homogeneity of language, beliefs, and technologies over more than 5000 miles of coastal territory extending from eastern Siberia to Greenland.'




Guide to Kamakura.
'The ancient capital of Japan replete with old temples and shrines accessible in one hour by train from Tokyo Station'




Duke Dress and Heraldry.
'This combined 'hofkleiderbuch' and 'wappenbuch' (Court dress and coats of arms book) was produced in 16th century Bavaria (sometime after 1588, judging by a date visible on one of the manuscript pages)...'




The Bishops.
Lives of the Bishops of Cracow.
'It was written by the Polish historian, Jan Długosz (who also produced the 'Banderia Prutenorum' flag book), in the 15th century. The exquisite illuminations for this version (1531-1535) were painted by Stanislaw Samostrzelnik. Not even such magnificent embellishment using medieval photoshoppery could endow this parade of Bishops with anything approaching a happy or friendly disposition however. Almost all of them appear to be sour old men, utterly without charm.'



Querying the Hive Mind.
'Is it dangerous to eat a jar of peanut butter?'
'What words do you know which have a strong dissonance between their form and meaning? '
'Fiction series spanning 30+ years?'
'As the title says, how do you find a new best friend?'

Photos of Tibet in the 1940s.




Photographs from the Chicago Daily News 1902-33.




UK Graves.

'UK Graves is a photographic tour of some of England's graveyards, cemeteries and other places of burial.'




Historic Trees of Texas.




18th Century French Geology Maps.




Van Advertisements.




Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh.




Daw Aung San Suu Kyi Under Arrest in Burma, 1995 (Photograph).




Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar.

'In 1943, Ansel Adams (1902-1984), America's best-known photographer, documented the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California and the Japanese Americans interned there during World War II. In "Suffering under a Great Injustice": Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar, the Prints and Photographs Division at the Library of Congress presents for the first time side-by-side digital scans of both Adams's 242 original negatives and his 209 photographic prints (with the print on the left and the negative on the right), allowing viewers to see his darkroom technique and in particular how he cropped his prints. '




Typography of Transportation.

'Images from the Museum of Transport in St. Louis, MO. If only all typography could be used this well...'



Astro Pics.


The Strange Trailing Side of Saturn's Iapetus.


Dust Sculptures in the Trifid Nebula.


Pillars of Creation.




Weekly Puzzle.


You have access to a 5 litre bowl, a 3 litre bowl, a working water tap, and a drain.
How could you measure out exactly 4 litres of water?



Eye Candy.


Saami (Lapp) Family in Norway, 1900.



Querying the Hive Mind.


'OK, so as I understand it, first there was 'Proto-English' which evolved into Old English, which apparently morphed into Middle English and then eventually became Modern English. Here bygynneth my question! How is the written English language likely to change over the next century or so?'


How to prepare mushrooms.

Photos and Neighbourhoods of Northern Manhattan.

'When in 1998 my husband and I moved into the Upper Manhattan neighborhood, I knew next to nothing about the area. In order to address this regrettable shortcoming, I began to read up on the neighborhood in ever-widening circles and became captivated by the richness of its history. As my notes and on-line resources accumulated it occurred to me that others may also be interested, and the idea of sharing information on a web site was born. It is also an effort to counter the fact that too many Manhattan maps show only the part of the island south of 110th Street.'




A Journey through Manhattan's Chinatown.

Photo galleries.




1960s and 1970s Asian Pop Record Covers.

'This gallery contains scans of my ever-growing collection of rare 60's and 70's Asian pop singles. I mainly collect Singaporean titles, but I also have records from Indonesia, Hong Kong, Japan, and Thailand. '




Virtual Tour of Chartres Cathedral.




The Gentleman's Page.

'The Lively Arts History Association presents the Gentleman's Page: a resource for those who wish to look and act like; or perhaps better understand, the 19th Century American man.'




Building the Washington Metro.

'This site tells the story of the Washington Metro, a 103-mile rapid transit system serving Washington, D.C., and the surrounding areas of Maryland and Virginia. Planning for Metro began in the 1950s, construction began in 1969, and the first segment opened for operation in 1976. Metro is one of the largest public-works projects ever built, and it is the second-busiest rail transit system in the United States.'




Nicaraguan Murals 1930-2000.




Flora Brasiliensis.

"Flora brasiliensis was published between 1840 and 1906 by the editors Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, August Wilhelm Eichler, and Ignatz Urban, with the participation of 65 specialists from various countries. It contains taxonomic treatments of 22.767 species of Brazilian angiosperms, held in 15 volumes, divided in 40 parts, with a total of 10.367 pages."



Weekly Puzzle.


'Nora has always been 45 years older than Sid, but now the two digits in Nora's age, both prime, are the reverse of the two in Sid's age. How old is Nora? '



Querying the Hive Mind.


'Can you help solve a somewhat bizarre and mysterious crime?'


'how do you force yourself to go to bed when you're not tired and how do you get up when you are?'



Eye Candy.


Disembodied Eyes.


Tutulemma: Solar Eclipse Analemma.


Iron, Brick, Wood, and Sky.


Windows of the Soul.

Viewing Japanese Prints: Ukiyo-e.




Revolution by Design: Soviet Propaganda Posters.




The Hours of the Women of Leisure.

'This exhibition examines the variety of garments that were appropriate to wear in different surroundings and times of day in the nineteenth century by women who followed fashion and lived a life of leisure...'




The London Tube Map Archive.

London Underground maps from 1908 onwards. Interestingly the earliest Tube maps were drawn to scale.




American Ruins.

'This is a gallery of houses, barns, automobiles and businesses that have become the ruins on the landscape of America. '




The 37 Nats of Burma.

Illustrate Burmese cosmology.
"The nats of Burma make up a structured system of animistic spirits, predating the advent of Theravāda Buddhism but coexisting with it and with other systems of divination and prediction such as astronomy and alchemy."




At Home at Tea Time : Tea Gowns 1870-1920.

'As a new form of genteel undress, tea gowns exhibited early and consistently abundant signs of historicism. By 1873, gowns labeled "robes d'interieurs" appeared with stylistic details that would become characteristic of tea gowns...'




Tupperware!

'In the 1950s, American women discovered they could earn thousands -- even millions -- of dollars from bowls that burped. "Tupperware ladies" fanned out across the nation's living rooms, selling efficiency and convenience to their friends and neighbors through home parties. Bowl by bowl, they built an empire that now spans the globe...'




Peruvian Antiquities.

'In the 1830s and 1840s, Peruvian museum curator Mariano Eduardo de Rivero and Swiss naturalist Dr Johann Jakob von Tschudi undertook a survey of all known relics, ruins, records, bones, artefacts and artworks relating to the pre-Columbian civilisations of Peru.'

'The resultant 1851 book, 'Antigüedades Peruanas', was a thorough and critical archaeological, ethnographic and anthropological review for its time, although their conclusions about, for instance, racial groupings have been superseded.'



Eye Candy.


Flying Masai.


Still.


Skyscrapers.


Sun in the Night.


Saguaro Moon.


Hole in the Sun.




Weekly Puzzle.

'When Sid Bloggs was murdered, in a rather compromising position, the detective suspected Sid's wife Nora. Nora however, steadfastly maintained that on the evening of the murder she was in a restaurant with a male friend.
The detective had found an entry in Nora's diary for that evening which apparently confirmed her alibi as follows :
TIPS THE BRUSHED CHEFS. However, the detective realised that the message was coded, and that each letter could be moved either one place forwards or one place backwards in the alphabet to reveal a startling confession. What was the hidden confession?'



Querying the Hive Mind.


'What things should I learn how to fix?'


'What is your favorite boardgame?'


'Can you find me obscure things to do in London to help me win my girlfriend back?'


'I'm trying to put together a list of senses other than the big human five...'

Madhubani Painting.

'Hindu women who live in villages near the market town of Madhubani in northern India maintain old traditions and teach them to their daughters. Painting is one of the traditional skills that is passed down from generation to generation in the families of some of the women. They paint figures from nature and myth on household and village walls to mark the seasonal festivals of the religious year, for special events of the life-cycle, and when marriages are being arranged they prepare intricately designed wedding proposals...'




Southwell Union Workhouse 1834-1871.

'You can now search and download documents from Southwell Union Workhouse, the best-preserved workhouse in England. These records are a fantastic resource for researchers. We are fortunate to be able to provide free access to the images because this is a joint project by The National Archives in partnership with the National Trust, with the aid of volunteers in Nottinghamshire. '



American Slave Narratives: An Online Anthology.

From 1936 to 1938, many of the last surviving American slaves were interviewed as part of the Works Progress Administration. 'Their narratives remain a peerless resource for understanding the lives of America's four million slaves. '




Built to Last: Ten Enduring Landmarks of Baltimore's Central Business District.



A Guide to the Historic Covered Bridges of Georgia.



The Andean Chronicle.

'The >1000 page 'Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno' {New Chronicle and Good Government) by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala was written down between about 1612 and 1616. This extraordinary document is part historical chronicle, part legal brief, part illustrated portrait of colonial destruction and part naive plea to the Spanish throne.'
'Guaman Poma was a full-blooded native from southern Peru with noble ancestry which he used as a basis to engage in unsuccessful litigation to wrest back control of lands awarded to his forbears. By contrast, he worked for the colonial administration, was an enthusiastic religious convert, wore spanish clothes, and was virtually fluent in spanish.'




The Berlin Airlift.

'On June 24, 1948, one of the first major crises of the Cold War occurred when the Soviet Union blocked railroad and street access to West Berlin. For nearly a year two million civilians and twenty thousand allied soldiers in the city's western sector were fed and fueled entirely from the air. Former German soldiers built airfields and repaired engines for the enemies they had been shooting out of the sky just three years before. British and American pilots, so recently delivering death, were now angels of mercy, supplying coal and flour, coffee and chocolate to the beleaguered city...'




Auschwitz Through the Lens of the SS.

'In January 2007, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received a donation of a photograph album. The inscription "Auschwitz 21.6.1944" on its first page signaled the uniqueness of the album—there are very few wartime photographs of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, which included Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi killing center. Though his name does not appear anywhere in the album, the dates of the photographs and various decorations including adjutant cords on the uniform of the album's owner, indicate that the album almost certainly belonged to and was created by SS-Obersturmführer Karl Höcker, the adjutant to the commandant of Auschwitz, SS-Sturmbannführer Richard Baer. Höcker was stationed at Auschwitz from May 1944 until the evacuation of the camp in January 1945...'




Zen Eccentrics.

Zen art.
'Soga Shohaku, whose work initially resembled Muromachi-period (1336-1573) ink painting, ultimately devised wild, almost surreal depictions of ghosts, demons, and bizarre Zen-like images ... '





Heroes and Martyrs of the French Resistance: Last Letters.

Collection of last letters of executed members of French Resistance group.




Paris, May 1968 Archive.




The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.




Yorkshire Dales Market Towns.

'At the centre of our regions' commercial, cultural and social heritage for centuries; Yorkshire Dales market towns continue to inspire visitors and provide a focal point for community life as they have down the years.'




Great Wishford, Wiltshire.

'As people in the village of Great Wishford prepare for the Oak Apple day celebrations, a new book aims to reveal the history of this south Wiltshire community.'




Wiltshire's Underground City.

'Burlington: The 35 acre, secret subterranean Cold War City that lies 100 feet beneath Corsham.'




Digital Malham.

'On these pages you will find information on the areas of outstanding natural beauty which surround the Yorkshire Dales village of Malham.
We encourage you to take some time out and discover some of the geological treasures that lie within. '




Phuoc Hue: Vietnamese Buddhist Temple in Sydney.

Photo-essay.




Weekly Puzzle.

'A man lives on the twelfth floor of an apartment building. Every morning he takes the lift down to the lobby and leaves the building. In the evening, he gets into the lift, and, if there is someone else in the elevator he goes back to his floor directly. Otherwise, he goes to the tenth floor and walks up two flights of stairs to his apartment. Why?'



Eye Candy.


Amsterdam.


Harajuku Girls are the New Geisha.


Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur.


Whirlpool Galaxy and NGC 5195.


4000 Kilometers Above Saturn's Iapetus.

1960 Iranian Ad for TV Sets.



Soul Candy.

Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter.



Querying the Hive Mind.


'I'm looking for books with quirky storylines or quirky characters doing strange things.'


'What is a Buddhist to do about bullies?


'What is a food processor good for?'


Advice on online dating services.

London Transport Museum Poster Collection.

Tube and bus advertising.




Massive Collection of NYC Photos.




Taoism and the Arts of China.




India: The Path of Devotion.

'To understand the many fascinating aspects of Indian culture and life, one must understand the role of devotion in India. Devotion is perhaps the only thing that binds the people of India, superceding such barriers as languages, caste of birth, religious beliefs, and racial diversity. '




Stone Pages: Web Guide to Megalithic Europe.

'Over the last 14 years we have personally visited and photographed all 529 archæological sites you will find in these pages (117 in the six national sections and 412 in our Tours section), creating the first Web guide to European megaliths and other prehistoric sites, online since February 1996'.



The Old North Trail (1910).
'Walter McClintock went to Montana with a US Forestry Service expedition in 1896. He spent the next four years living on the land with the Blackfeet, one of the most northern of the Great Plains tribes. He was adopted into the tribe by the Chief Mad Dog, and got a chance to learn their traditions firsthand. The book presents Blackfeet folklore and religious traditions in context. The narrative of his gradual adoption into Blackfeet society is a classic Western tale, but it is also a classic of 19th century ethnography.'




The Nine Nations of North America.

'Forget about the United States of America, forget about Canada and about Mexico. North America might be divided into these three states, but the northern half of the American continent is actually made up of nine nations. Those weren’t on any map until 1981, when Joel Garreau published ‘The Nine Nations of North America’...'




Advertising Trade Cards.

Vintage advertising.




Armenian Manuscript.

Medieval manuscript.




Paper Gods.




Weekly Puzzle.

MOSCOW=1100. LONDON = 550. TEL AVIV = 61. PARIS = 1. BERLIN = ?



Querying the Hive Mind.


'Help me stop meeting more acquaintances and start meeting more close friends'


'What is the single best thing you have done to help control your depression?'


'What single book is the best introduction to your field (or specialization within your field) for laypeople?'


'Looking for books about or by female travelers/adventurers/volunteers abroad.'



Eye Candy.

Her.

V-Dub.

Spirograph.

Preppy Sarnie Hell.

Hindu Child.


Fruit Sellers, Ha Long Bay, Vietnam.

To Fly Free in Space.

Iapetus in Black and White.

French Drawings: The Essence of Line.
'Welcome to this database of nineteenth-centuryFrench drawings. From revealing preparatorysketches to exquisite finished watercolors,more than 900 works by artists such as EugéneDelacroix, Honoré Daumier, Paul Cézanne, andEdgar Degas illuminate the range of Frenchart over the course of a century of innovation.'

Aztec Codices.
'Mesoamerican manuscripts, or codices, describedwars, victories, famine, pestilence, religiousevents, and other elements of ancient Mesoamericanculture. The codices often consisted of one longextension or band of paper called amatl, producedfrom the bark of a type of fig tree. Glyphs, orpictorial representations, were used for the text. '

Formosa Streets.
Taiwanese street scenes.

36 Days' Journey in Nippon.
Photographs.

Post Office in Paradise: Missionary Stamps ofHawaii.
'Hawaii's first stamps are known as the MissionaryIssue. Four stamps of three values - 2¢, 5¢ and13¢ - comprise the issue, all printed locally byletterpress at the Government Printing Office.Missionaries are assigned Hawaii Nos. 1-4 by ScottCatalogue. The first three stamps in the issuewere announced for sale on October 1, 1851, atthe Honolulu and Lahaina post offices...'

The George Raper Collection.
Midshipman George Raper was a sailor on the First Fleetthat colonised Australia for the British. This exhibitis about notebooks he kept during the voyage.

1/ Anastasia, Brenda and Cornelia toss a fair coin 15, 16, and 17 times respectively. Which one isleast likely to have tossed more heads than tails?
2/ The same, except the coins are tossed 18, 19 and 20times?

Estonian Illustrators.
'The National Library of Estonia have a largecollection of book scans, prints and originalsketches by illustrators from the last ~70 years. '

Panoramic View of Milwaukee.
Photograph from between 1890 and 1900.

Chilean Gaucho.

Karen Padaung Girl Portrait.

Murerplan Zurich.
1576 city map of Zurich.

Jupiter Unpeeled.

The United Countries of Baseball.
'This map, indicating all teams in theNational and American sub-leagues of MajorLeague Baseball, translates some of the Americanobsession with baseball into a representation ofthe supposed ‘countries’ of baseball. As with manyother team sports, the fan base of baseball teamsis to a large extent regional. Unless you’re of acontrary nature, you support the local team -barring of course that you move, and continueto support your home team as a kind of sentimentallink with your place of origin...'

The Passenger Pigeon.
'The Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) orWild Pigeon was a species of pigeon that wasonce the most common bird in North America.It is estimated that there were as many as fivebillion passenger pigeons in the United Statesat the time Europeans colonized North America.They lived in enormous flocks, and during migration,one could see flocks of them a mile (1.6 km)wide and 300 miles (500 km) long, taking severaldays to pass and probably containing two billionbirds...'

Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collection.
'Known mainly for its infamous collapse in 1940,the Tacoma Narrows Bridge continues to hold aplace in engineering and Pacific Northwest history.This collection contains images and text drawn fromthe University of Washington Special CollectionsDivision and the Museum of History and Industry.They document the creation of the Tacoma NarrowsBridge, its collapse and subsequent studies involvingits aerodynamics, and finally the construction of asecond bridge spanning the Narrows...'

This is for updates to Plep while I am in New York.