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Friday, October 23, 2015

Menstruation music videos for kids

Barnkanalen, the Swedish childrens’ TV channel, adds this item, called “Hurra for Mens!” [English translation: “Hurrah for Monthlies!”] to the emerging category of menstruation music videos for children.

In Swedish with English subtitles - behold the dancing tampons:



Here’s a earlier video about dancing tampons, set to the Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker.

Friday links

Some Halloween-related links: history, witches, costumes for animals and people, pumpkin carving (and exploding), and trick or treating origins, candy hierarchy.


Gallery of photos from hot-air balloon festivals.

Guinness record du jour - this 400 ft long baguette smeared with Nutella, with bonus world's largest pizza.

We Used to Recycle Penicillin from Patients’ Urine. Related: A Moldy Cantaloupe & The Dawn of Penicillin.

Photo of the iceberg that may have sunk the Titanic for sale.

ICYMI, Monday's links are here, and include atomic gardens of the 1960s, the history of 20 dog breeds, ATM in Antarctica, how French artists in 1899 envisioned the year 2000.

Thursday, October 22, 2015

Some Halloween-related links

also Hallow-e'en, c. 1745, Scottish shortening of Allhallow-even "Eve of All Saints, last night of October" (1550s), the last night of the year in the old Celtic calendar, where it was Old Year's Night, a night for witches. 
Today I Found Out has an excellent Halloween Facts Roundup, including why witches are use broomsticks, trick or treating origins, and the relationship between Halloween candy and Daylight Saving Time

20 Houses That Are Clearly Winning At Halloween.

Faust, Mephistopheles, Napolean, Oliver Cromwell or a Hugenot: Halloween Ideas From an 1884 Costume Guide, plus 1880's Batgirl costumes and, from 1931, NYC architects dressed as their buildings.

Vintage and Antique Halloween Ephemera.

40,000 people's votes determined this candy hierarchy.

An excellent site for DIY intelligent women's costumes.

25 Easy DIY Halloween Costumes You Can Make Last Minute.

Dave Barry's Halloween column from 1996: Night Of The Living Chocolate.


Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Guinness record du jour - this 400ft long baguette



Via The Guardian:
The baguette was smeared with Nutella and
distributed to the crowd.
A judge from Guinness World Records has certified that a 400ft baguette baked at the Milan Expo 2015 World’s Fair is the longest ever made. Some 60 French and Italian bakers worked for nearly seven hours on Sunday to bake the baguette, moving a specially designed portable oven along its length.
The process was sponsored by Nutella:
The Italian maker of Nutella, Ferrero, backed the enterprise to beat the 111-meter (364-foot) record held by a French supermarket chain. Once certified as a record-breaker, the baguette was cut and smeared with Nutella to share with the hundreds of Expo goers who celebrated the record.
Pizza almost a mile long was made with 1.5 tons of mozzarella and
2 tons of tomato sauce, weighed some 5 tons in all
It was at least the fourth world record declared during the six-month Expo, which closes Oct. 31, including the longest pizza at 1.5954 kilometers, or nearly a mile long.

Monday, October 19, 2015

Monday links



ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include lessons from the Sioux in how to turn a boy Into a man, the history of Oktoberfest, a compilation of Rita Hayworth's dancing scenes set to Stayin' Alive, and photos of a young André, before he became André The Giant.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Faust, Mephistopheles, Napolean, Oliver Cromwell or a Hugenot: Halloween Ideas From an 1884 Costume Guide

From Male Character Costumes, a Guide to Gentlemen's Costume Suitable for Fancy Dress Balls and Private Theatricals, an 1884 costume guide available for free on Google Books. Mental Floss has posted a few more.



“Doublet of velvet, cut square at the throat, and filled in with a plaiting of muslin. The sleeves are full in the upper part, slashed with white silk, and formed into a double puff, fitting close on the forearm. The trunks are of velvet, slashed white. Long hose of lavender silk. Velvet cloak, lined with silk. Soft velvet hat, trimmed with a feather. Velvet sword belt, embroidered with gold.”

“Blue cloth coat faced with wide revers of white, edged round with buttons. The skirt of the coat is cut away from the front. White silk vest and leather breeches. Hugh Leather boots. Gold epaulets. Sword handle and spurs. Brilliant star on the breast.”


“Doublet of scarlet satin, slashed trunks to match. Scarlet silk tights. Scarlet cape, short, with a high collar. Cape forming a point in front, with two scarlet feathers.” Here's everything you need to know about Mephistopheles in case someone asks about your costume.

“Buff jerkin of leather with a deep steel collar. Knickerbockers. Jack boots. Long clock. Wide-brimmed beaver hat. Sword and belt.”


"Leather doublet fastened round the waist with a broad belt. Brown cloth sleeves, and hanging sleeves to match trimmed with braid. Roll epaulet. Trunks of cloth striped with broad braid. High leather boots reaching to the trunks. White linen collar."

For the ladies, here's what Batgirl would've looked like in the 1880s, from the 1887 edition of La mode illustrée, Journal de la Famille and an 1882 copy of the German publication Fliegende Blätter, respectively.





And a 1931 photo of NYC architects dressed up as their buildings. That’s William Van Alen, architect of the Chrysler Building, in the center; Ely Jacques Kahn, who designed the Squibb Building, to the left; and Ralph Walker, designer of One Wall Street, to the right. More photos here.


The above is a detail from this larger photo:


From Architizer: 1931 Beaux Arts Ball
The Beaux Arts Architectural Society has put on some pretty lavish parties—a Napoleonic pageant, a Renaissance romp, "Venice Through the Ages"—but none approached the epic quality of its 1931 spectacle. Located at the Hotel Astor in NYC, "Fête Moderne - a Fantasie in Flame and Silver" included a robot puppet show, ballerinas dancing to the blues, and, according to the New York Times, an orchestra consisting of machines, steam pipes, ocean liner whistles, and sledgehammers, conducted by Kenneth Murchison. Most memorable, however, were the revelers' outfits: The architects wore replicas of buildings they had designed on their heads.
They also supply this:

Oskar Sclemmer’s Triadic Ballet, 1922
 1929 Bauhaus Metallic Festival:
For the Bauhaus, partying was an art. But the school's notorious happenings reached their apex with the Metallic Festival. The guests, dressed in tin foil and adorned with silverware, reached the party rooms through a slide covered with tinplate. The walls were also covered in tinplate, to reflect the revelers as they danced, and silver spheres dangled from the ceiling.