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The many samplers which the V & A has in its collection are remarkable not just for the amazing needle skillz of the very young makers, but the fact that it looks as if these girls had to embroider absolutely everything - not just the standard scenes:
but their family trees:
Geography lessons:
Even science:
Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii travelled all over the Russian Empire between 1909 and 1915 to create a massive collection of photographs which have a very mysterious quality about them - and the meeting of the old glass negatives and the digital colour processes used to recreate the pictures online just adds to it.
For a brief respite from Easter chicks and bunnies, try this vintage cartoon set in hell. What could be better on a bank holiday than this Ub Iwerks classic, which features a dragon being milked for its fire and the best dancing imps you'll ever see.
According to this article in National Geographic, jackdaws are possibly the only animal able to interpret the human gaze, because their eyes are unusually similar to ours.
Bit of an unsettling idea, though I'd feel even more uncomfortable under the stare of, for instance, a goat:
(Pic from here)
Or Snowy the albino gorilla:
Since Bibliodyssey recently did a post on Facebook in the 1750s, I feel justified in pointing at Hans Christian Andersen's Tumblr-like collections of images and words at the Odense museum.
He also had an interesting way with a papercut:
Found via airform archives.
See also:
