Baby parrots, not parakeets.
Race and the White Elephant War of 1884
Feuding impresarios, a white-but-not-white-enough elephant, and racist ads for soap — Ross Bullen on how a bizarre episode in circus history became an unlikely forum for discussing 19th-century theories of race, and inadvertently laid bare the ideological constructions at their heart.
The Civil War Sketches of Adolph Metzner (1861–64)
Remarkable collection of sketches, drawings, and watercolours left to us by Adolph Metzner, during his three years of service with the 1st German, 32nd Regiment Indiana Infantry.
The Wood screw pumps are mechanical marvels, but the turbines that power them are another story.
Source: New Orleans Has Been Using the Same Technology to Drain the City Since the 1910s – Atlas Obscura
“A century before the role of the sun in preventing rickets was established, a doctor testifying before a parliamentary commission investigating night work by children in the factories argued that sunlight was critical to children’s growth. He pointed out that the deformities common in the industrial towns were absent among Mexicans and Peruvians, who were continuously exposed to light. These concerns were brushed aside by Dr. Andrew Ure, who wrote a lengthy defense of the factory system in his 1835 book The Philosophy of Manufactures, and who was certain that the brilliant coal-gas lighting of a cotton mill was more than adequate to meet the developmental needs of the young ‘factory inmates.’ ”
Daily eclectic excerpts by editor Richard Vague |Delanceyplace: Manchester, Children, and Sunlight
Hobo Teenagers — 10/04/17
Today’s selection — from The Great Railroad Revolution by Christian Wolmar. The two predominant eras for hoboes — the common slang term for migrant laborers, especially those who illegally traveled on trains — were the years after the Civil War and the years of the Great Depression:
delanceyplace archive by editor Richard Vague Hobo Teenagers — 10/04/17
The small town of Gordonsville, Virginia, located at an intersection that connected Richmond with the Shenandoah Valley, gained fame for the quality of its fried chicken, sold trackside to passengers by an army of waiter-carriers.
Source: Chicken and Waffles: The Most Complete Expression of Southern Culinary Skills, Part 2