Power Driven Articulated Dummy - a hydraulically powered 230-pound robot that NASA engineers designed to test space suits - 1965

This man:

* Built 15 miles of tunnels so he didn't have to see anyone when he went out and about

* Painted all his rooms pink - I don't know if it's just the rooms he lived in, or ALL the rooms.

* Shooed people away with his umbrella

Amazing.

Girls don’t want boys, girls want a facsimile edition of the “Birds’ Head Haggadah” (Southern Germany, c. 1300)

Image from the Israel Museum: https://www.imj.org.il/en/collections/199815-0

For #NationalTeaDay 🫖☕️:

Teapot with Fossil Decoration British, Staffordshire, c. 1760–65 Salt-glazed stoneware with enamel decoration 4 1/4 × 7 1/4 in. (10.8 × 18.4 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 37.22.6a,b

“Though it's got a surprisingly modern look, this teapot was made in the 18th-century in Staffordshire—the heart of Britain's pottery industry. The area’s limestone yielded prehistoric fossils, and potters often turned them into whimsical motifs for teapots.”

Sealed plaster phrenological bust by James DeVille (1777-1846), 367 Strand, London, England, 1821. Marked with 35 organs according to Johann Gaspar Spurzheim’s (1776-1832) arrangement with the numbers of the organs impressed and some of their names written on in ink.

Divided according to the system of German phrenologist Johann Spurzheim (1776-1832), this plaster phrenological head has 35 different ‘organs’. Phrenologists believed that different parts, or ‘organs’, of the brain had different qualities. They further believed that an individual’s personality could be read from the lumps and bumps in the skull. The head was made by James DeVille (1777-1846), a phrenologist based in the Strand, London. DeVille had over five thousand phrenological heads at his premises.

Science Museum

Wooden case containing set of 60 small phrenological heads, by William Bally, Manchester or Dublin, 1831

Full set of sixty miniature heads designed for learning the positions of the phrenological organs in a wide variety of differently shaped heads with each head displaying one or more well-developed and/or deficient organs. The set was endorsed by Bally's friend Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776-1832) the co-founder of phrenology who also wrote the notes for each head in the accompanying booklet.

Science Museum

Mark Twain died #onthisday in 1910. The best known of his books is Huckleberry Finn, not so well known is Jap Herron which, according to a woman named Emily Grant Hutchings, he dictated from beyond the grave via a ouija board… https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/jap-herron-a-novel-written-from-the-ouija-board-1917 #OTD

Popular Science Monthly, February 1918

Naval flintlock Duck Foot Pistol with Silver Inlay by Bunney of London, 1770-1780

These types of pistols were designed for Naval officers during the 18th century when a sailor's life was very hard and far from happy. These fearsome pistols were meant to deter mutiny which history tells was a far too common event at the time. Eventually, in the late 1790s, the entire British Fleet committed mutiny at Spithead bringing sweeping changes to the daily life of a British sailor aboard a ship.

A flintlock rifle with a twisted barrel and heart shaped bore from 1765, formerly owned by George IV, now part of the Royal Collection Trust

More: https://bio.link/museumofartifacts

The Tingel-Tangel girls · 1931

Vaudeville show: The Tingel-Tangel cabaret in Berlin / the Tingel-Tangel girls with Grit and Ina von Elben, 1931 | src getty images view on wordPress

Mickey and Minnie hang out at Disneyland in 1958.

via eBay seller samantha_2413

Candle Light, Moonlight, Lantern Light, Sun Light and Electric Light from “The Illuminants” - Ziegfeld Follies Midnight Frolic (c. Early 1920s)

Harry Price waiting to confirm if a goat can turn into a handsome young man, through a maiden pure in heart, during a full moon night, Brocken, Germany, 1932 Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-13579 / CC-BY-SA 3.0

never let anyone tell you that trawling through mediocre victorian poetry isn't worth it. we just happened upon an absolute BANGER of a worm poem. go read it or else 🪱🪱🪱

Bomb Shelter Mart, Los Angeles CA, 1951 (via Michael Ryerson)

Two styles of bomb shelters are for sale at Bomb Shelter Mart, Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, Calif., shown March 23, 1951. It is typical of such markets which have sprung up in and around Los Angeles. Crowds stop by every day to inspect the shelter, a small circular one (foreground) and a larger one which can be furnished with a stove, radio and other equipment. Both can be used as storage areas. With Federal Housing Authority financing for home owners, they are expected to sell for $795 each. The shelters were built by the U.S. Bomb Shelter Company of Los Angeles.