internet explorers club | what was lost is now found
Quite a bit of once hidden things come to light over the past few weeks! First off: The Brooklyn Museum has this seaweed scrapbook in their collection, and just did a high-resolution scan of the pages!
NYT has the Official Ruling on whether or not Van Gogh cut his entire ear off or just a part: it was the entire ear. Also apparently he sent the ear to a young woman named Gabrielle who promptly fainted upon receipt of it! Understandably!
New evidence that Shakespeare the actor was actually Shakespeare of Stratford (Ed: THIS SHOULD NOT BE UP FOR DEBATE) in that they’ve found Shakespeare’s family crest listed as “Shakespeare the Player.”
A London mansion from 1741 has been restored to its former glory, including a delightful cabinet of curiosities interior comprised of classical busts, religious paintings, a full-size Pietà, and more taxidermy than you can dream about. If anyone wants to go halfsies on this, please let me know.
The Journal of American Revolution put together the ages of the Founding Fathers in 1776, and it’s a shocking reminder of just how young everyone was (Franklin excepted).
A snippet:
Marquis de Lafayette, 18
Aaron Burr, 20
Alexander Hamilton, 21
John Laurens, 21
James Madison, 25
Thomas Jefferson, 33
Hercules Mulligan, 36
King George III, 38
Charles Lee, 44
George Washington, 44
SFGeneaology has put together a map of all the places ships are buried underneath San Francisco! It’s fascinating to see the different coastline and location of wharves where there’s now land:
A candy shop in Florida is making drop candy from Victorian-era plates (and recipes!). This video they’ve made showing the process is compelling, and also talks about how “drop candy” got its name from literally dropping the candy onto a hard platform to remove the extra thin sugar. I also ordered a bag of these candies—in the Victorian “nectar” flavor obviously—and they are pretty darn good!
NASA has released the code that powered the Apollo spacecrafts, and it’s full of little in-jokes from the original coders like calling the Master Ignition Sequence BURN_BABY_BURN--MASTER_IGNITION_ROUTINE. Quartz has even more details on the code itself here!
The Huntington Library has begun digitizing their collection of Civil War-era telegrams and are looking for people to help transcribe and decipher them!
etcetera: A Bird Skull Turntable Playing Bird Songs Is Horrifying. What the world needs now is a dinosaur emoji.
did someone forward you this newsletter? subscribe!
would you like to hire me? drop me a line!
emilyhummel.com | @hummeline
