Here’s a delightful anecdote: A Civil War soldier had his leg amputated, and while he recovered in the hospital, he carved this pin for his sweetheart out of his own leg bone. Who’s this lucky gal Lizzie, you ask? Well, we will never know, because he died of infection before he could tell the nurses…. Read more »
It’s Van Dyck’s self-portrait, from the late 1630s. Now the world’s most expensive selfie is one of its oldest.
The current revival of Cabaret on Broadway is a perfect copy of the revival that opened in 1998. Back then, a mostly unknown actor named Alan Cumming instantly made his career by emerging from darkness to play the Emcee, and Natasha Richardson was his Sally Bowles. The show played in a ruined theatre, the Henry Miller’s,… Read more »
Pioneer people lived in terror of “milk sickness.” They could not figure out why you’d die if you drank some milk but not other milk. It changed American history.
Americans know where the Star-Spangled Banner was written (Baltimore harbor) and where Lincoln was shot (Ford’s Theatre). But where on this planet did the Wicked Witch of the West melt or Bogie say, “Here’s looking at you, kid.” The Alamo happened at the Alamo, but where did Darth Vader say, “Luke, I am your father.”? It happened somewhere.
Time is littered with epochs that were far more alarming and far less hopeful than our own.
A treasure trove of family snapshots from our visits to the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World in 1973 and the mid-1970s. The place has changed so much it’ll blow your mind.
The loss of the glorious Art Deco ceiling of Manhattan’s Lefcourt Clothing Center is just another loss in the rags-to-riches-to-oblivion tale of Lefcourt himself.
“I was very strongly drawn to him and, in spite of the difference in our ages, a great attachment sprang up between us.”
This is the cupboard under the stairs in Down House where Charles Darwin stored the evidence of his explosive theory for nearly two decades.