Friday links

Fashion Ads From The 1970s. Warning - once you see these, they can't be unseen.

When Halloween Was All Tricks and No Treats.

When George Soros Broke the British Pound.

Three major battles took place on October 25th - Agincourt, the charge of the Light Brigade and Leyte Gulf.

The Valley of the Cheese of the Dead - in this remote Swiss town, residents spent a lifetime aging a wheel for their own funeral.

Why Do Pigeons Bob Their Heads?

ICYMI, most recent links are here, and include the physics of juggling, scientists investigating the secrets of smelly cat butts, a 1918 prostate warmer to restore your manly vigor (or radium suppositories if that doesn't work), and the history of toilet paper. 

Fashion Ads From The 1970s

There's approximately a gazillion of these available on the interwebs, and I've probably posted way too many of them - once I started I had a hard time stopping! The vast majority of what I've included here are ads for men's clothing, because they're so many standard deviations from the current norm - the women's versions look (relatively) normal.

I have to say, too, that I lived through the 70's, and although this stuff was, obviously, advertised, I don't remember actually seeing much of it. On the other hand, I don't remember an awful lot about that time period.

The only person who pulled this fashion statement off, sort of, was John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, and I'll bet it's been waaay to long since you watched it  (watch full screen):

This ad seems to be patterned after Travolta:

I don't know what to make of this:

I'm pretty sure I never heard of Flagg Brothers, but I love the pimp style and the women hanging onto their legs:

A couple for the ladies:

And for the whole family:

Tuesday links

June 18 is the anniversary of the 1815 Battle of Waterloo: history, quotes and video (including a Lego re-enactment).

5 Terrifyingly Huge Spiders.

When Express Delivery to California Meant 100 Grueling Days at Sea.

"Your smile is a naughty goblin": Foolproof pick up lines, per Chinese scientists

The next big thing in fashion? Not washing your clothes.

The Sticky History of Adhesives.

ICYMI, most recent links are here, and include the physics of the (im)possibility of lightsabers, Flag Day and Father's Day links (with lots of Homer Simpson advice), a map of the literal translation of every country's name, and the time when foster care was synonymous with farm labor.

Monday links

July 9th is Nikola Tesla's birthday: bio, Tesla coil music, Tesla vs Edison rap battle, history, videos and links.

How Alcohol and Caffeine Helped Create Civilization.

Making the World’s Largest Lemon Battery for a Lemon-Powered Car.

Fashion Ads From The 1970s. Be warned - you can't unsee these.

Science: U.S. women have a significantly larger mean breast volume than women born in other countries.

Why the U.S. Navy Once Had a Concrete Ice Cream Barge

ICYMI, most recent links are here, and are all Independence Day-related: Lincoln's 1858 speech on the eternal meaning of Independence Day plus speeches from Coolidge (1926) and Reagan (1986), the text of the Declaration of Independence, founding fathers stories, how the breaking news spread in 1776, the science of fireworks and of barbecue, and Independence Days from science fiction.

Friday links

March 10th is Chuck Norris' 78th birthday: his 5 most badass movies and a bunch of Norris "facts" plus a supercut of Norris's best kicks. Related: UK scientists recreated Neanderthal man, who looks just like Chuck Norris.

Check out this Street-Legal Jet Powered Volkswagen Beetle.

How Knot Analysis Can Reveal the Perpetrator of a Crime.

Daylight Saving Time starts this weekend: here's some DST history (including Ben Franklin's proposal), stories and video. Related: How daylight saving time works and why these states want to ditch it.

The Unlikely Friendship Between Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin.

The golden age of false rumps.

ICYMI, Tuesday's links are here, and include a map of how butterflies are related to each other, a roundup of funny colonoscopy videos, when you grow up never realizing you're on the run from the Mob, and, for Michelangelo's birthday, his illustrated grocery list.

Thursday links

It's St. Bartholomew's Day - some history (including the massacre), a brief documentary, and Monty Python.

Women's fashion in every year from 1784-1970.

The Amazing Sutherland Sisters And Their 37 Feet Of Hair.

August 24 is the anniversary of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and destruction of Pompeii in A.D. 79.

Movie Roles That Were Only Ever Offered To One Actor.

The Stanford Professor Who Fought the Tax Lobby.

ICYMI. Wednesday's links are here, and include some of the dumbest inventions of the 20th Century, Gene Kelly's birthday, NASA's plan to save the earth from a supervolcano, and a 1957 film on how grocery stores work.

Do you want to see a men's romper with a giant Kim Jong Un face on it? Of course you do!

A romper featuring a gigantic image of Kim Jong-un's face is the latest sartorial trend to stir up men's fashion.

The bizarre onesie was unsurprisingly on sale for $79.99 – reduced from its original price of $99.99 - despite winning five star reviews on the website where it is advertised. Surprisingly, there are several other rompers on the website that are out-selling Kim (they have a LOT of them), although, actually, they all appear to be pre-orders. 

This pineapple romper is their top-seller:

I like this one:

And this:

Bacon!:

And, if you're the patriotic type:

I'd tend to go a bit cheaper, assuming that this will, after all, be a joke gift - Amazon has these starting at $7.99, so you can get 10 of them for the price of one of those above:

h/t Daily Mail

Friday links

The anniversary of Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain speech

Weird and Fascinating Ways Animals Use Poop.

The Origins of 10 Great Insults.

Beefcake alert from 1970's Spain.

Just How Much Pee Is In That Pool?

When Bowling Was a Sport Reserved for Royalty.

ICYMI, Thursday's links are here, and include the history of washing machines, a roundup of recommendations for beer, wine and whiskey pairings to drink with Girl Scout cookies, why some animals kill each other after sex, and Dr. Seuss's little-known book of nudes.

Tuesday links

February 29, 1504: Columbus tricked Jamaicans using knowledge of upcoming lunar eclipse.

How long would it take for a single person to fill up an entire swimming pool with their own saliva?

Competitive Eating in the 17th Century. 

Watch an Ambush of Tigers Rip a Drone Out of the Sky and Then Eat It.

Where Nature is Most Likely to Kill You.

How Cows Mooved Through Manhattan.

The Holocaust’s Great Escape. how the Burning Brigade tunneled out of an extermination camp.

Beefcake alert from 1970's Spain

1970's American fashions were truly awful, but at least the models were better looking.

Related:

Fashion Ads From The 1970s

Fashion Advice from a 1980s East German Stasi disguise seminar

via

Friday links

Heineken's Lost Plan To Build Houses Out Of Beer Bottles, plus more bottle houses and a bottle brick tutorial.

Paul McCartney Shows You How to Make Mashed Potatoes.

Your kids will like this: Back to School Fashion circa 1939.

Physiognomy of eyebrows: everything you wanted to know about eyebrow interpretation from the 16th century.

The 29 most stressful jobs in America.

Unusual cloud formations.

ICYMI, Wednesday's links are here, and include the history of ice cream truck jingles, the little-known lyrics from the Star Trek theme song, the anniversary of the Battle of Borodino (on which War and Peace and the 1812 Overture are based), and political maps of the United States from 1850 and 1880.

Monday links

Fashion Ads From The 1970s.

Widow takes dead husband on road trip in Alaska.

This Ingenious Car From 1923 Turned Into a Boat

Compilation: 100 Greatest Action Movie Punchlines (NSFW language), with bonus Conan The Barbarian, The Musical.

Finally, Russia Lifts the Ban on a WWII Donald Duck Cartoon.

Diagnosing Hitler's flatulance.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include why old men have big ears, illustrated travel books of the Edwardian era, calculating how many fireflies it would take to match the brightness of the sun, a set of child labor photos from the Library of Congress, and the universal law of urination in mammals - everything pees for (approximately) 21 seconds.

Fashion Advice from a 1980s East German Stasi disguise seminar

The pictures below are from official papers examined by author Simon Menner in the course of research for his book, Top Secret: Images from the Stasi Archives, and are now housed at the Stasi Archives. Documents included a dress code for undercover agents, since they were supposed to blend in and look like everybody else. From the book's synopsis at Amazon:

Almost 300,000 people worked for the STASI (wiki), the East German secret police--per capita, far more than are or were employed by agencies such as the CIA or the Soviet Union's KGB. Once top secret, and now preposterous, these images are both comical and sinister.

Flashbak has more numbers:

In 1989, 91,015 comrades worked directly for the Stasi (short for Staatssicherheitsdienst, or State Security Service), East Germany’s not-so-secret secret police (1950-1990). That’s from a population – and let’s be precise here – of 16,586,490. To keep the people watched at all times, the Stasi employed a further 173,081 part-time informants. In East Germany it was reasonable to assume you were being watched, your movements held on file.

At its apogee, the Stasi had a staff three times that of the Gestapo. “They offered incentives, made it clear people should cooperate, recruited informal helpers to infiltrate the entire society,” says Konrad Jarausch, of University of North Carolina. “They beat people up less often, sure, but they psychologically trampled people.”

Mustache-application lessons

More at Flashbak, The Verge, and Simon Menner's site.

Monday links

800 years ago today, Magna Carta was signed: history, quotes, Monty Python's explanation and the Horrible Histories song version. Related: The Field Where Liberty Was Sown, on re-learning that lesson.

The science behind why the return-trip always feels shorter than the trip there.

What Determines “Party Cloudy” vs. “Mostly Sunny”? (And Other Weather Terms Explained).

Sir Christopher Lee (aka Saruman  and Dracula, among many others) died last week: here’s a supercut of his death scenes.

1970s Men’s Fashion Ads You Won’t Be Able To Unsee. This is an open list, so you can add your own.

Synthetic Street USA was a fake, part of the camouflage that covered the B17 Bomber factory in Seattle during WWII.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, and include the surprisingly interesting history of air conditioning, some killer animal-plant mash-ups, 18 awesome things invented by mistake, my favorite Father's Day story, and some extremely muscular dogs.

Friday links

Gallery: Pizza in the Wild

The other Captain America movie - this 1973 Turkish version in which he teams up with a Mexican wrestler and fights evil Spiderman.

Vintage creepy Easter Bunny Photos, videos of violence done against marshmallow peeps, including peeps vs. .50 Caliber Rifle, Parts 1 and 2, and 16 Delicious Facts About Marshmallow Peeps.

This photoessay wins my vote for blog post of the week: Victorian Prudes and their Bizarre Beachside Bathing Machines.

Excellent Rube-Goldberg-esque engineering: the ultimate wine bottle opener and pourer.

Fashions of the Future as Imagined in 1893.

ICYMI, Tuesday's links are here, and include dissecting the timeline of Paul Revere’s ride, the McDonald's Monopoly Fraud, and a gallery of extremely happy animals.