Untitled by choice

hellotailor:

hominisaevum:

1. A seventeenth-century pomander and chain
2. A parcel-gilt silver pomander, made in Italy in the 16th century; features a niello inscription
3. Pomander, gold filigree, enclosing a ball of ambergris. 1600-1700
4. Gold and Silver Pomander, 16th Century

***Pomander - a ball made of perfumes, such as ambergris (whence the name),musk, or civet. The pomander was worn or carried in a vase, also known by the same name, as a protection against infection in times of pestilence or merely as a useful article to modify bad smells. The globular cases which contained the pomanders were hung from a neck-chain or belt, or attached to the girdle, and were usually perforated and made of gold or silver. Sometimes they contained several partitions, in each of which was placed a different perfume.

Now I want to read a story about a lady who wields a solid silver pomander ball like a flail:

I feel like this character would go hand in hand with the ancient woman with the gold-plated prosthetic eye. Most badass assassin ever. 

notgoingtosaygoodbye:

combeferret:

combeferret:

who was the roundest knight at king arthur’s round table

sir cumference

get out

(via hellotailor)

stillnotanonymous:

archiemcphee:

Here’s an awesome little piece of history:

Archaeologists in the Burnt City have discovered what appears to be an ancient prosthetic eye. What makes this discovery exceptionally awesome is the striking description of how the owner and her false eye would have appeared while she was still alive and blinking:

[The eye] has a hemispherical form and a diameter of just over 2.5 cm (1 inch). It consists of very light material, probably bitumen paste. The surface of the artificial eye is covered with a thin layer of gold, engraved with a central circle (representing the iris) and gold lines patterned like sun rays. The female remains found with the artificial eye was 1.82 m tall (6 feet), much taller than ordinary women of her time. On both sides of the eye are drilled tiny holes, through which a golden thread could hold the eyeball in place. Since microscopic research has shown that the eye socket showed clear imprints of the golden thread, the eyeball must have been worn during her lifetime. The woman’s skeleton has been dated to between 2900 and 2800 BCE. 

So she was an extraordinarily tall woman walking around wearing an engraved golden eye patterned with rays like a tiny sun. What an awesome sight that must have been.

[via TYWKIWDBI]

This woman should be written about. Like, she needs to have epic books written about!

I want to build an entire plot around her. She sounds SO AMAZING.

archiemcphee:

Here’s an awesome little piece of history:

Archaeologists in the Burnt City have discovered what appears to be an ancient prosthetic eye. What makes this discovery exceptionally awesome is the striking description of how the owner and her false eye would have appeared while she was still alive and blinking:

[The eye] has a hemispherical form and a diameter of just over 2.5 cm (1 inch). It consists of very light material, probably bitumen paste. The surface of the artificial eye is covered with a thin layer of gold, engraved with a central circle (representing the iris) and gold lines patterned like sun rays. The female remains found with the artificial eye was 1.82 m tall (6 feet), much taller than ordinary women of her time. On both sides of the eye are drilled tiny holes, through which a golden thread could hold the eyeball in place. Since microscopic research has shown that the eye socket showed clear imprints of the golden thread, the eyeball must have been worn during her lifetime. The woman’s skeleton has been dated to between 2900 and 2800 BCE. 

So she was an extraordinarily tall woman walking around wearing an engraved golden eye patterned with rays like a tiny sun. What an awesome sight that must have been.

[via TYWKIWDBI]

(via perspi-looks)

hellotailor:

sirmitchell:

The party of “values”. 

holy shit????????????????

robogreifer:

goddessofcheese:

lilpocketninja:

ada-veen:

diacrit:

this might be the funniest thing i’ve ever read

straight people…

all you guys had to do was look over the rainbow, duh. 

Any time I have a bad day, I remember that this is an actual note in actual history, and I have a good long laugh

(via unsuspectingfish)

Sandi Toksvig  (via amenaza, learninglog)

Oh my god.

(via properdead)

(via carrionlaughing)

(via tim-sum)

(via hellotailor)

robogreifer:

goodnamesgone:

Lost 81 years ago, the Baychimo is a real life ghost ship of the Northwest territories and Alaska. In 1931, this Hudson Bay Company steel cargo ship was thoroughly stuck in an ice pack. The crew was ready to wait out the winter in a makeshift camp set up nearby, but on the night of November  24 a violent blizzard hit and there was no sign of the ship when weather cleared. it was assumed the Baychimo had sunk in the storm.

Just a few days later, it was spotted floating over seventy kilometres away. the ship was stripped of its valuables and expected to sink in the winter. But over the following decades, there have been dozens of sightings of the ship still drifting along the Northwest coast, all salvage attempts failed, one of which had a group trapped on-board for over a week due to an unexpected storm.

The last sighting was in1969, and it is unknown what ultimately became of the Baychimo. 

THIS IS MY FAVORITE KIND OF HISTORY.

(via unsuspectingfish)

robogreifer:

gettysburgcollegeallies:

DID YOU KNOW:

The Little Mermaidwas written as a love letter by Hans Christian Anderson to Edvard Collin. Anderson, upon hearing of Collin’s engagement to a young woman, proclaimed his love to him. He told him ”I long for you as though you were a beautiful Calabrian girl.” Edvard Collin turned Anderson down, disgusted. Anderson then wrote The Little Mermaidto symbolize his inability to have Collin just as a mermaid cannot be with a human. He sent it to Collin in 1936 and it goes down in history as one of the most profound love letters ever written.

Most scholars and psychoanalysts concluded that Anderson was bisexual; however, he never acted upon his homosexual drives. 

The Little Mermaid, as it was originally written, did not have a happy ending.

Having read the original in my youth, WOW.

Ok, now I love this even more. (though my favorite version is the anime one that stuck to the original ending. Sorry, Disney.) 

(via unsuspectingfish)

penguinsweaters:

valkyrien:

acutes:

thedevilsguard:

PBY Glister Gunner, 1944.

I got some information on this from here:

Found in the December 2002 issue of B&W magazine, in an article about the man who took the picture, Horace Bristol; he was a member of a Navy unit of photographers, and thus ended up being on the plane the gunner was serving on, which was used to rescue people from Rabaul Bay (New Britain island, Papua New Guinea), when this occurred:

“…we got a call to pick up an airman who was down in the Bay. The Japanese were shooting at him from the island, and when they saw us they started shooting at us. The man who was shot down was temporarily blinded, so one of our crew stripped off his clothes and jumped in to bring him aboard. He couldn’t have swum very well wearing his boots and clothes. As soon as we could, we took off. We weren’t waiting around for anybody to put on formal clothes. We were being shot at and wanted to get the hell out of there. The naked man got back into his position at his gun in the blister of the plane.”

I’m quite certain that no one will mind my reblogging this once more for the information provided above, so that we might properly celebrate this man’s badassery as well as the fineness of his here quite prominently displayed arse.

That will be all. Carry on.

My kind of history lesson.