The tailors at Colonial Williamsburg made a suit for their cat

Portraits by James Van Der Zee 

Women and children, Lenox (c. 1909)

Harlem (c. 1920)

Alpha Phi Alpha Basketball Team (1926)

Billy (1926)

Untitled (Portrait of a Boy in a Sailor Suit) (1927)

Couple (1930)

Couple in Raccoon Coats (1932)

Sunday Morning (c. 1932)

Her Best Friend (1940)

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1982)

My second grade teacher would scream at us and was generally horrible, but she specifically targeted me for some reason. Every week on Friday, if you didn't get a ticket for bad behavior, you could sit with the rest of the class and get candy and watch a movie. I never got a ticket, not once. Then! Halfway through the year, she swapped it, so if you were good, you'd get a ticket for good behavior, and then I didn't get any tickets at all. I was almost always the only kid left out, almost always. I think I had one week the entire time I was in that class where I got to sit with the others and watch the movie, every other week I was functionally called out in front of the class for being a Bad Kid and kept away from the others. I had ADHD and some form of dyslexia probably, but I was always a people pleaser, there was nothing I would have been doing that warranted this aside from struggling not to talk in class like every other kid. She also scared me so bad that I forgot what ability to read I did have at the time and had to be put in remediation when I changed schools. No one thought to test me for ADHD. She didn't mention behavior issues to my parents much, I think. I did get tested for dyslexia but because I started reading better out of her class, they stopped, so I never actually got any academic support. Last I heard about that teacher, they were considering revoking her license, and I really hope they did because no kid deserves to go through what she did.

Everyone give me the most screwed up thing that has ever happened to you in the american public school system

this is from a real diary by a 13-year-old girl in 1870. teenage girls are awesome and they’ve always been that way.

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If you have any fun fact about Lithuania, please tell us and I'll reblog it!

A wee knitter and friend. Ca. 1939. Shetland Museum and Archives, Scotland.

Newcomerstown, Ohio.

Built 1874.

4 bed, 3 bath.

$445,9000

These were the doodles I did in college in my history classes.

As in like what was the default thing you would draw on the margins when you were in class and had no creative ideas? Personally I was a wings and eyes kid. Usually wings though.

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A treat for you! Happy Halloween.

It shrank and got frozen on it's way here I think but thanks‼‼‼‼‼‼‼‼

Thinking about the werewolf from the hate mail Lemgo council pharmacist David Welman (1595 - 1669) got after being accused of being a werewolf

My dearest Granddaughter.

Na, “Annwyl Wyres”. You’ve asked me to write what I remember for your school project, So I suppose you’ll want me to do it in Welsh.

Cariad bach, Sai'n gwybod beth i ‘weud wrthi ti. Silence is a hard habit to break.

Right from day one, this wasn’t something we talked about. It was a non-subject. Mae'n rhyfedd pan ti'n meddwl am y peth; While the whole world and his wife were talking about us, With their editorials And their news items and so on A tra bod y beirdd yn sgwennu cerddi amdanyn ni   A'r holl eiriau'n golchi droson ni

O'n ni'n dweud dim.

We said nothing.

So how much should you know? It’s part of your history, Our family’s history. But I can’t share my guilt with you For making the child I lost go to school that morning (I wish I’d never shared that with your Bampy even) And that I felt guilty for having A child that lived.

But I wouldn’t have had you otherwise, would I?

None of this makes sense.

There are pictures that you ought to see from afterwards. The photographer came over from America And he was here for weeks after the disaster - Rapoport his name was. ‘Sgwyla di ar ei luniau fe. He took one of the first baby born afterwards The first wedding The first smiles And how many hundreds have there been since then, thank God? Those pictures show us carrying on Because we had to.

But there are things that those photos can’t show.

Like candles in pockets. Your aunty was afraid of the dark. I would light a candle for her in the cemetary - Lots did. It was like a second home to us for a long time afterwards. I would take extra candles in my coat pocket In case somebody else’s Had burnt down to nothing.

These are things I will carry with me ‘til I die.

But Do you have a right to them?

Because it was so terrible, Should you feel like so many before you That it’s your duty To comment To sympathise To identify?

Elli di ddim, cariad bach.

But I don’t want you to forget, either.

I can only give your aunty flowers On be ranna i beth alla i ‘da di. 

I’ll give you all the memories that I can.

- Llythyr Mam-gu, by the bard Ifor ap Glyn.

Written in memory of the Aberfan Disaster, 50 years ago.

A lot of the time when I reblog jewellery on here, it’s art nouveau jewellery, because I really like art nouveau. In general, and in jewellery in particular. And most of that is the aesthetic. I like the natural forms, I like the twisty curly bits, I like the use of materials, I like how a lot of art nouveau jewellery is using metals and stones and other materials to create a specific form, an insect or a plant or a goddess or even sometimes nature scenes. I like …

I feel like a lot of the time with jewellery, it feels like ‘I’m going to use this object to show off the size and value of my pretty rock’. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Some of those rocks are indeed gorgeous. But art nouveau feels more ‘I’m going to use these pretty rocks, and several other things, to create the impact of this object’? I just love the use of materials, glass and enamel and colour, as well as precious stones and metals, to create a form or a scene.

Like, you get a diamond ring, it’s a diamond ring. But you get something like a dragonfly brooch (Louis Acoc):

Or a lilypad hair comb (Rene Lalique):

Or a wisteria branch (Georges Fouquet):

And it’s a whole creation. A little wearable piece of art.

And I don’t want to sound too dismissive. I know the craftmanship and skill and artistry that goes into any kind of jewellery making. That diamond ring took skill I will never have. I just.

I like the emphasis on form more than material that you get with art nouveau. Like normally you hear ‘glass jewellery’, ‘enamel jewellery’, and it’s cheap, it’s frowned upon, but in art nouveau it’s what that glass or enamel was used to make that’s the important part:

(Rene Lalique)

(Eugene Feuillatre)

Anyway. In summary, I really, really, really like art nouveau jewellery?

In 1944 a kitten named George (short for General Electric) was saved from drowning by a U.S. Navy crew member. George was then photographed and given a liberty card and detailed health record. Source.

The Appalachian Mountains, Atlas Mountains, Scottish Highlands and Scandinavian Mountains were all once part of the same “Pangea Central Mountain Range” millions of years ago before Earth’s continents split.

Fun little thing about medieval medicine.

So there’s this old German remedy for getting rid of boils. A mix of eggshells, egg whites, and sulfur rubbed into the boil while reciting the incantation and saying five Paternosters. And according to my prof’s friend (a doctor), it’s all very sensible. The eggshells abrade the skin so the sulfur can sink in and fry the boil. The egg white forms a flexible protective barrier. The incantation and prayers are important because you need to rub it in for a certain amount of time.

It’s easy to take the magic words as superstition, but they’re important.

Oh holy shit they found Silphium alive and growing in the wild.

Gang, I am looking for a photograph I know exists, but I can not find. It is a historic black and white photo of a group of butches/transmen with a sign that say's "Who says there are no boys in Chaigao" (I believe, in reference to the draft)