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Vintage: Portraits of Fay Wray (1920s)

Vintage: Portraits of Fay Wray (1920s)

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Fay Wray (1907 – 2004) was a Canadian-American actress most noted for starring as Ann Darrow in the 1933 film King Kong. In 1923, Wray appeared in her first film at the age of 16, when she landed a role in a short historical film sponsored by a local newspaper. In the 1920s, Wray landed a major role in the…
Vintage: Historic B&W photos of Barcelona, Spain (1890s)

Vintage: Historic B&W photos of Barcelona, Spain (1890s)

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While Cerdà’s Extension was being built and filled out, the city began to plan how it could host the 1888 Great Exhibition. This event was seen as an opportunity to put Barcelona on the world stage, to show all the other countries of the world that Barcelona could be in the same class as London and Paris. The Exhibitions had…
Vintage: Portraits of Gloria Swanson – Silent Movie Star

Vintage: Portraits of Gloria Swanson – Silent Movie Star

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Gloria Swanson (1899 – 1983) was a star in the silent film era as both an actress and a fashion icon, especially under the direction of Cecil B. DeMille. Throughout the 1920s, Swanson was Hollywood’s top box office magnet. Swanson starred in dozens of silent films and was nominated for the first Academy Award in the Best Actress category. She…
Vintage: Zahra Khanom Tadj es-Saltaneh – Persian princess

Vintage: Zahra Khanom Tadj es-Saltaneh – Persian princess

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Taj Saltaneh (1883 – 1936‎) was a Persian princess and memoirist of the Qajar Dynasty, a daughter of Naser al-Din Shah, the King of Persia from 1843 to May 1896 by his wife Turan es-Saltaneh. She was married to Amir Hussein Khan Shoja’-al Saltaneh and had four children, two daughters and two sons. They later divorced. She was the love…
Vintage: American Actresses Greeting New Year’s Eve

Vintage: American Actresses Greeting New Year’s Eve

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Most nations of Western Europe officially adopted 1 January as New Year’s Day somewhat before they adopted the Gregorian Calendar. In Tudor England, New Year’s Day, along with Christmas Day and Twelfth Night, was celebrated as one of three main festivities among the twelve days of Christmastide. There, until the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar in 1752, the first day…
Vintage: Coney Island, New York City (1900s)

Vintage: Coney Island, New York City (1900s)

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In 1824, the Gravesend and Coney Island Road and Bridge Company built the first bridge across Jamaica Ditch (by now known as Coney Island Creek), connecting the island with the mainland. The company also built a shell road across the island to the beaches. In 1829, the company also built the first hotel on the island: the Coney Island House,…
Vintage: Scotland’s Landscapes (19th Century)

Vintage: Scotland’s Landscapes (19th Century)

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The whole of Scotland was covered by ice sheets during the Pleistocene ice ages and the landscape is much affected by glaciation. From a geological perspective, the country has three main sub-divisions. The Highlands and Islands lie to the north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which runs from Arran to Stonehaven. This part of Scotland largely comprises ancient…
Vintage: Tight Corset (Victorian era)

Vintage: Tight Corset (Victorian era)

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The corset has been attributed to Catherine de’ Medici, wife of King Henry II of France. She enforced a ban on thick waists at court attendance during the 1550s. For nearly 350 years, women’s primary means of support was the corset, with laces and stays made of whalebone or metal. Other researchers have found evidence of the use of corsets…
Vintage: The Bishop’s Wife (1947)

Vintage: The Bishop’s Wife (1947)

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The Bishop’s Wife is a Samuel Goldwyn romantic comedy feature film from 1947, starring Cary Grant, Loretta Young, and David Niven in a story about an angel who helps a bishop with his problems. The film was adapted by Leonardo Bercovici and Robert E. Sherwood from the 1928 novel of the same name by Robert Nathan, and was directed by…
Vintage: A Christmas Carol (1938)

Vintage: A Christmas Carol (1938)

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A Christmas Carol is a 1938 American film adaptation of Charles Dickens’s 1843 novella of the same name, starring Reginald Owen as Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who learns the error of his ways on Christmas Eve after visitations by three spirits. On Christmas Eve in 19th-century London, Fred is sliding on ice on a sidewalk. He meets Peter and…
Vintage: It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

Vintage: It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

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It’s a Wonderful Life is a 1946 American Christmas fantasy comedy-drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra, based on the short story and booklet The Greatest Gift, which Philip Van Doren Stern wrote in 1939 and published privately in 1945. On Christmas Eve 1945, in Bedford Falls, New York, George Bailey contemplates suicide. Prayers for him reach Heaven, where…
Vintage: Historic B&W photos of Monaco (1890s)

Vintage: Historic B&W photos of Monaco (1890s)

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Designated as a protectorate of the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna after Napoleon’s defeat, Monaco’s sovereignty was confirmed by the Franco-Monegasque Treaty of 1861. France accepted the existence of the Principality of Monaco, but annexed 95% of its former territory (the areas of Menton and Roquebrune). Monaco’s military defense since then has been the responsibility…
Vintage: Clémentine Delait – French bearded lady

Vintage: Clémentine Delait – French bearded lady

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Clémentine Delait (1865 – 1939) was a French bearded lady who kept a café. Delait and her husband kept a café in Thaon-les-Vosges, in Lorraine, France. According to later accounts, Clémentine Delait visited a carnival, saw a bearded woman with some stubble and boasted that she could grow a better beard herself. Her husband bet 500 francs to back her.…
Vintage: Christmas Shopping in the past

Vintage: Christmas Shopping in the past

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“Christmas creep” refers to a merchandising phenomenon in which merchants and retailers exploit the commercialized status of Christmas by moving up the start of the holiday shopping season. The term was first used in the mid-1980s, and is associated with a desire of merchants to take advantage of particularly heavy Christmas-related shopping well before Black Friday in the United States…
Vintage: Portraits of Mary Pickford – Silent Movie Star

Vintage: Portraits of Mary Pickford – Silent Movie Star

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Mary Pickford (1892 – 1979) was known in her prime as “America’s Sweetheart” and the “girl with the curls”. She was one of the Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood and a significant figure in the development of film acting. Pickford was one of the earliest stars to be billed under her own name, and was one of the most popular…
Vintage: Christmas Trees in the past

Vintage: Christmas Trees in the past

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The relevance of ancient pre-Christian customs to the 16th-century German initiation of the Christmas tree custom is disputed. Resistance to the custom was often because of its supposed Lutheran origins. Other sources have offered a connection between the first documented Christmas trees in Alsace around 1600 and pre-Christian traditions. For example, according to the Encyclopædia Britannica, “The use of evergreen…
Vintage: Mug-shots of Prisoners (1900s)

Vintage: Mug-shots of Prisoners (1900s)

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“Some years ago I discovered a cache of glass negative mug shots taken in the early 20th century; each negative was inscribed with the man’s name and alleged crime. In order to research the life of each man pictured in the 500 negatives, I spent the next three years traveling back and forth from New York to the small Northern…
Vintage: Portraits of American Ladies by Mathew Brady (1863)

Vintage: Portraits of American Ladies by Mathew Brady (1863)

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During the Civil War, Mathew Brady and his associates traveled throughout the eastern part of the country, capturing the effects of the War through photographs of people, towns, and battlefields. Additionally, Brady kept studios in Washington, DC and New York City, where many influential politicians and war heroes sat for portraits. Brady photographed many subjects in the time of the…
Vintage: Santa Claus in the past

Vintage: Santa Claus in the past

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In 1821, the book A New-year’s present, to the little ones from five to twelve was published in New York. It contained Old Santeclaus with Much Delight, an anonymous poem describing Santeclaus on a reindeer sleigh, bringing presents to children. Some modern ideas of Santa Claus seemingly became canon after the anonymous publication of the poem “A Visit From St.…