Learned pig
Before television, people had to make their own fun. So they trained pigs to read.
Category: 19th century history
Lincoln’s beard
One month before the 1860 election, Abraham Lincoln was clean shaven. By inauguration day, he had a full beard, and wore it until the day he died. He grew it because a twelve-year-old girl told him to.
Ghost murder
If you kill someone because you think they’re a ghost, is it murder or manslaughter? Or self-defence?
Gender colour coding
Pink for girls, blue for boys. Or is it pink for boys, blue for girls? A persistent myth holds that colour stereotypes flipped some time in the 20th century.
Victorian 360-degree film
The first 360-degree film was recorded for the 1900 Paris Exposition. It recreated the experience of rising in a hot air balloon, but the film probably never played for a real audience because of technical difficulties.
Gotham origin story
Batman lives in Gotham City. Where did the name come from? Its history follows a circuitous route via the 19th century equivalent of Mad magazine, smart idiots who hated public infrastructure, goats, and Robin Hood’s King John.
Roving bridge
Horse-drawn canal boats made up the early British Industrial Revolution’s transportation network. But they presented a tough problem: how to get a horse from one bank of a canal to another, without disconnecting the rope?
One hundred
It’s my 100th post! Read on for a grab-bag of 100-related topics, including the death of the last apostle, the 100th asteroid, 100-handed gods, and the Germanic “long” hundred.
The second eradicated disease
Most people know that smallpox was the first disease that we have completely eradicated in the wild. But what was the second, and what does it have to do with Egyptian plagues, measles, and cattle?
King of the London wigmakers
From 1878 through to his death in 1934, Willy Clarkson was king of the wigmakers of London. He provided disguises to Scotland Yard (and was rumoured to have supplied Jack the Ripper also), theatre actors, and Virginia Woolf.
The Irish invade Canada
1866: the Irish invade Canada. The Irish independence cause spilled over to the rest of the world in interesting ways. In the Battle of Ridgeway, Irish republicans attempted to seize Canada to pressure the UK to leave Ireland.
The Skeleton Army
The Salvation Army is a Protestant church modelled on pseudo-military lines. It was founded in Victorian London and often protested about the evils of alcohol. And another army arose to fight them.
The seven naval toasts
In the officers’ room of a ship of the British Royal Navy, there are seven traditional toasts for the midday meal, one for each day of the week.
The actor’s ring
Since the 19th century, the “most significant and worthy” actor in the German-speaking theatre world carries the Iffland-Ring.
The Generalist Academy 