Auto polo was an early 20th-century sport that replaced horses with stripped-down Model Ts. Each car carried a driver and a malletman, who leaned from the side to strike a ball while the vehicles swerved, collided and frequently overturned. Popularized in 1911 by Ford dealer Ralph “Pappy” Hankinson as a sales stunt, it became an attraction at fairs across America and Europe. It was invented to demonstrate the Model T’s durability; the resulting repair bills eventually helped end it.
Dusit Thani was a miniature democratic kingdom built by King Vajiravudh of Siam (the historical name for the country of Thailand) inside his palace grounds. Courtiers purchased tiny plots, elected representatives, joined rival political parties and read two competing newspapers. The king participated as an ordinary citizen under the name “Mr. Rama.” Siam remained an absolute monarchy; democracy was permitted at one-fifteenth scale.
The Carrington Event was an immense solar storm that struck Earth in 1859. Auroras appeared across much of the world, reaching as far south as the Caribbean and illuminating the night brightly enough for people to read newspapers outside. Telegraph networks malfunctioned, machines sparked and several stations caught fire. In Boston and Portland, operators disconnected their batteries to protect the equipment and discovered they could still exchange messages, powered entirely by electrical currents induced in the wires by the storm.
The Bennie Railplane was a propeller-driven train suspended above an ordinary railway. Scottish inventor George Bennie imagined fast passengers travelling overhead while slow freight continued underneath. In 1930, he demonstrated a single Art Deco carriage on a 130-metre track near Glasgow, propelled by enormous blades at either end. Bennie claimed a full-sized system could reach 120 miles per hour, and proposed routes across Britain and beyond. None found funding. He went bankrupt in 1937, and his only Railplane remained beside the tracks until it was scrapped in 1956. For twenty-six years, the future rusted in a field.
The Codex Rotundus is a late-15th-century Book of Hours whose parchment pages and cover were cut into circles just 9.3 centimetres across. Its 266 pages contain prayers in Latin and French, three full-page miniatures and thirty illustrated initials.
The Oso de Salcedo is a carnival figure from Galicia who emerges each year dressed in sheepskins, bells and a bear mask. Accompanied by masked attendants, he chases people through the village and marks them with ash. His appearance traditionally signals the end of winter and the beginning of the agricultural year.
Christopher Street was an American gay-oriented magazine published in New York City by Charles Ortleb. It was founded in 1976 by Ortleb and Michael Denneny, an openly gay editor in book publishing. Known both for its serious discussion of issues within the gay community and its satire of anti-gay criticism, it was one of the two most widely read gay-issues publications in the United States. Christopher Street covered politics and culture and its aim was to become a gay equivalent of The New Yorker.
A Zettelkasten consists of small items of information stored on Zettels, paper slips or cards, that may be linked to each other through subject headings or other metadata such as numbers and tags. It has often been used as a system of note-taking and personal knowledge management for research, study, and writing. In the 1980s, the card file began to be used as metaphor in the interface of some hypertextual personal knowledge base software applications such as NoteCards.[4] In the 1990s, such software inspired the invention of wikis.
Hugo Bernatzik (1904–1953) was an Austrian ethnographer and photographer, renowned for his work documenting indigenous cultures in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Bernatzik studied anthropology and developed a keen interest in the lifestyles, rituals, and traditions of remote and often isolated communities. He is best known for his photographic work, which captured the everyday lives of indigenous peoples with an emphasis on their cultural practices, costumes, and environments. In the 1930s and 1940s, Bernatzik conducted extensive fieldwork in regions such as Papua New Guinea, New Guinea, and Borneo, where he collaborated with local communities and produced a substantial collection of photographs. His images provided valuable insights into the diversity and richness of these cultures, contributing to the academic understanding of anthropology and ethnography at the time.
Princess Charlotte of Belgium was the only daughter of Leopold I and Louise-Marie d’Orléans. Charlotte was born on 7 June 1840 at the Castle of Laeken. She was just ten years old when her mother died of tuberculosis, a sudden death which left a deep mark on the young princess. As a young adult, her beauty and status attracted many suitors. In 1857, she married one of them, the Archduke of Austria Ferdinand Maximilian (1832-1867), a husband who proved to be a disappointment in many respects. The couple moved to Italy where the Archduke's brother was Viceroy of Lombardy and Venice. Maximilian was stripped of his functions because his brother did not like the way in which he governed the Italian territories. Therefore, the couple moved to its second home, Miramare Castle, on the shores of the Adriatic Sea near Trieste. It was an enchanting place which quickly became a golden prison where Charlotte grew bored. The couple found themselves caught up in the political strategies of Napoleon III. Under pressure from the latter, Maximilian accepted the Imperial crown of Mexico in 1864. However, the Mexicans refused to recognise him as their Emperor, instead seeing him as a puppet of Napoleon who was occupying the country by force. Finally, the French Emperor decided to withdraw his troops in order to focus more on Europe. Maximilian was overthrown and was executed in 1867. Charlotte, who had returned to Europe a few months earlier to seek help, found herself up against closed doors. Hearing of the death of her husband and the fall of the Mexican empire, she succumbed to hysteria and paranoia. Her brother Leopold II, who had become King of the Belgians, welcomed her at the Royal Palace. The deposed Empress, prey to persistent bouts of insanity, retired to her home country and died at Bouchout Castle in 1927.