The Pram Museum
posted on Jul 18, 2008 - View this thread

The Heritage of the Great War
posted on May 8, 2008 - View this thread

Atomic Platters :: Cold War Music from the Golden Age of Homeland Security
posted on Feb 15, 2008 - View this thread

The Secret Museum of Mankind :: "Published in 1935, the Secret Museum is a mystery book. It has no author or credits, no copyright, no date, no page numbers, no index ... The tone of the commentary is dated, and uniformly racist in the extreme, often hilariously so. It reads like the patter of a carnival sideshow barker, from a time when the world was divided between "modern" Europeans and "savages" ... Presented here is the Secret Museum in its entirety, all 564 pages scanned and transcribed-- nothing is omitted or censored ... Treat it as entertainment instead of education (don't take it seriously and don't believe a word it says!), adjust for the blatant racial bias of the time, and enjoy."
posted on Feb 14, 2008 - View this thread

British Movietone News - Digital Archives :: Apparently complete archives of the UK Movietone Newsreels from 1929 - 1979. Free registration required. Uses Quicktime. Beware of many lost hours ahead. Via DaddyTypes
posted on Feb 12, 2008 - View this thread

How The Edwardians Spoke :: BBC documentary via Google Video, about an hour
posted on Oct 19, 2007 - View this thread

Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management
posted on Sep 18, 2007 - View this thread

The History of The Discovery of Cinematography
posted on Aug 23, 2007 - View this thread

American Rhetoric :: an online archive
posted on Aug 22, 2007 - View this thread

Aerial Archaeology in Northern France
posted on Aug 17, 2007 - View this thread

The Mystery of Ales :: a new take on the Alger Hiss problem
posted on Jul 19, 2007 - View this thread

How the Other Half Lives :: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (1890)
posted on Jun 1, 2007 - View this thread

The Internet Library of Early Journals :: A digital library of 18th and 19th Century journals
posted on May 31, 2007 - View this thread

The Evolution of Modern Speech balloons (in painting and caricature). One small part of Andy's Early Comics Archive.
posted on May 18, 2007 - View this thread

Ghost Cowboy :: True Tales of Adventure in the American West
posted on Feb 3, 2007 - View this thread

State of the Union Addresses 1790-2006 :: complete texts
posted on Jan 3, 2007 - View this thread

Aesopica: Aesop's Fables in English, Latin & Greek
posted on Oct 25, 2006 - View this thread

The Phrontistery presents A Compendium of Lost Words
posted on Jul 1, 2006 - View this thread

The Illustrated London News :: an archive
posted on Apr 27, 2006 - View this thread

Apple Computer 1984 Newsweek Advertising Insert :: a complete scan of Apple's 16-page advertising insert in Newsweek magazine, introducing the new and revolutionary Macintosh computer.
posted on Apr 26, 2006 - View this thread

Space Suits
posted on Jan 9, 2006 - View this thread

Cat-Scan.com is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their scanners, or why.
posted on Jul 13, 2005 - View this thread

Neckties Through The Ages
posted on May 10, 2005 - View this thread

The Underground History of American Education
You aren't compelled to loan your car to anyone who wants it, but you are compelled to surrender your school-age child to strangers who process children for a livelihood.... If I demanded you give up your television to an anonymous, itinerant repairman who needed work you'd think I was crazy; if I came with a policeman who forced you to pay that repairman even after he broke your set, you would be outraged. Why are you so docile when you give up your child to a government agent called a schoolteacher?
posted on Apr 1, 2005 - View this thread

The Lost Worlds of the Romanovs
posted on Mar 24, 2005 - View this thread

Homosexuality in 18th Century England :: an amazing compilation of primary source material from newspaper reports and other sources.
posted on Mar 3, 2005 - View this thread

The Word on the Street :: A collection of over 1800 broadsides published in Scotland between 1650 and 1910, featuring both digital images of the original Broadsides as well as transcriptons of the texts. You can just review the highlights or search or browse the entire collection.
posted on Feb 20, 2005 - View this thread

A Skeptics View of Fringe Archaeology
posted on Feb 10, 2005 - View this thread

Self-defence with a Walking-stick : The Different Methods of Defending Oneself with a Walking-Stick or Umbrella when Attacked under Unequal Conditions (Part I) (with pictures!) :: via The Journal of Non-Lethal combatives ::
posted on Jan 28, 2005 - View this thread

Vintage Technology :: I like the bric a brac best.
posted on Jan 7, 2005 - View this thread

naval-history.net :: yet another fine example of how the web can help one man or woman with a true passion for a subject go from a hobbist to a published expert. Be sure to read the dedication to his dad at the top of the page.
posted on Jul 16, 2004 - View this thread

The Old Car Manual Project
posted on Jun 1, 2004 - View this thread

How To Make Friends By Telephone :: a useful how-to book from the 1940's
posted on May 27, 2004 - View this thread

Famous Unsolved Codes and Ciphers
posted on May 18, 2004 - View this thread

The Early Office Museum :: check out communications technologies used by our Grandparents, as well as Punched Card Tabulating Machines and much, much more!
posted on Mar 3, 2004 - View this thread

50's Women and Their World
:: via blort and Madamjjj ::
posted on Jan 21, 2004 - View this thread

50's Women and Their World
:: via blort and Madamjjj ::
posted on Jan 21, 2004 - View this thread

The History of Eating Utensils
posted on Dec 6, 2003 - View this thread

Propaganda Postcards From World War I
posted on Nov 18, 2003 - View this thread

Anima: A fascinating archive of the ways early photography was used to give the illusion of motion, as well as information on the evolution of optical toys and early cinema.
posted on Nov 8, 2003 - View this thread

On October 17, 1815, following The 100 Days and Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte arrived on the Island of St Helena, where he would remain until his death (mysterious or otherwise) in 1821. Discovered by the Portuguese in 1502, St Helena had a long and interesting history before Napoleon arrived, but that history was overshadowed by the story of the Emperor's last years, living in captive exile at the simple yet beautiful Longwood House. Victorians had an insatiable interest for information about the remote island. Today, the picturesque Island is a a tiny bit of England in the South Atlantic, where coffee and tourism (indeed, what some might call pilgrimages) are the main sources of income.
posted on Oct 17, 2003 - View this thread

The story of Fred Harvey and the Harvey Girls is the story of the civilization of the American West. From 1896 to 1945, Harvey House Restaurants and Hotels along the route of the Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe represented first-rate food served in clean, stylish surroundings at reasonable cost. His corps of well-trained waitresses, wearing their distinctive uniforms and bound by a code of hard work and good conduct, provided both adventure and independence to generations of young women. Today, all that is left of the Harvey empire is the remembrances of former employees, beautiful buildings which dot the southwest, some vintage recipes, a 1946 Judy Garland film, and (possibly) the enduring term "Blue-Plate Special".
posted on Oct 1, 2003 - View this thread

The locals simply called it Carville. Known more formally as the The Gillis W. Long Hansen's Disease Center, it was transformed in July 2000 into The National Hansen's Disease Museum. What is Hansen's Disease? You may know it better by its biblical name - Leprosy. From the founding of the National Leprosarium in 1917 until the hospital closed in 1998, The stories of the people of Carville, their isolation, and finally their fight for civil rights combine to make one of the most important stories in American public health history.
posted on Sep 7, 2003 - View this thread

In the house where I grew up, we had a 1950's-era Bomb Shelter in the backyard (a cold war relic inherited from the previous owner). We used our shelter as a playground, but many are now forgotten, repurposed, or restored as museum exhibits. Although such shelters are still for sale (often marketed as Tornado or Storm Shelters), many people today regard these shelters as relics from an earlier time. For some, however, the current terror alerts are reviving cold war shelter memories. As demonstrated by sites like the excellent civildefensemuseum.com, we are clearly still fascinated with this important and revealing part of our history.
posted on Feb 25, 2003 - View this thread

The Gallery of Regrettable Food: "Frizzle slices of cooked ham in hot butter, adding 1 1/2 teaspoons of drained prepared horseradish to each 2 tablespoons of butter or margarine. Add cheese." Advertisements, Strange recipes from "the golden age of butter", and just plain weird stuff. Also, I think this guy used to do my tech support. with thanks to Television Without Pity and cakeman
posted on Feb 12, 2003 - View this thread

The Griffith Institute and Oxford's Ashmolean Museum have recently made the complete records of Howard Carter's excavation of the tomb of Tutankhamun available on the web. You can browse the complete list of objects as well as read all the original handwritten descriptive cards and view any or all of Harry Burton's original photographs (many taken in situ and never before published). You can also read Howard Carter's complete personal field diaries from 1922 and 1923. Although this is still an work in progress, its an easy way to lose a couple of hours for any MeFi Egyptology fans. with thanks to The Daily Grail
posted on Jul 8, 2002 - View this thread

Nearly everyone is familiar with the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Now Swiss adventurer Bernard Weber wants us to think about the new seven wonders - the wonders of the modern world. His website, new7wonders.org, allows you to peruse a list of around two dozen "modern wonders" ("modern" being a relative term - most date back hundreds or thousands of years) and vote on your seven favorites. Even if you don't vote, this is a great way to learn about astonishing places (like the old city of Sana'a in Yemen or Machu Picchu in Peru) that you might not have otherwise heard of.
Note: I found this site via a recent New York Times article about the efforts to rebuild and restore Taliban-destroyed cultural artifacts in Afghanistan. Apparently Mr Weber is also backing a plan to rebuild the Bamiyan Buddhas.
posted on Apr 15, 2002 - View this thread