The Monica Bird

todaysdocument:

World War I draft registration card for silent film star and prototypical cowboy actor Tom Mix, born January 6, 1880.

World War I draft registration card for silent film star and prototypical cowboy actor Tom Mix, born January 6, 1880.

fuckyeahhistorycrushes:

that’s a young JRR Tolkien ^ I gotta say that besides being the genius writer of the Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit and the the Silmarillion, a poet, philologist , war veteran and university professor, he was a pretty attractive guy.

Slave Imperialsim Policy of the CSA

brosephstalin:

This thought came to me last night, so bear with me here.

One major similarity in policy remained between the US and the Confederacy (besides not abolishing slavery in their territory) during the Civil War, both were imperialist.

Now, the reasons for the US being imperialist are obvious, they wanted Canada, Monroe Doctrine, etc. That was the big conflict between North and South at the outbreak of the war, this imperialism meant a lot more land that could potentially have slaves. The Northerners and Republican Party wanted to contain slavery within the states it existed already, however the South and many Democrats wanted to expand it into the territories and beyond when there was a beyond.

This slave imperialism vs. slave containment was the defining piece in the Civil War. Sure state’s rights played into this, but this was the basic argument. There were even plans to expand into Mexico and the rest of Latin America by both sides, notably by the Confederates, who attempted to destabilize northern Mexico through the use of filibusters (basic private generals, unaffiliated with any nation).

In fact after the war, over 20,000 Confederates left the South and founded two colonies in Brazil, New Texas and Americana. The descendants of what became the “Confederados” ethnic group are still alive in Brazil today.

So while both sides were in large part racist to some extent, it is the export and spreading of slave racism that the Confederacy wanted.

coolchicksfromhistory:

Woman Member of the Secret Service, Olive H. Doyle

coolchicksfromhistory:

This flag of the Maid of Ghent and a lion was painted by Agnes van den Bossche between 1481 and 1482. Likely a military standard, the flag references a 1388 poem by Bouden van der Loore describing a conflict between the city of Ghent and Louis II of Flanders. The maid represents the city of Ghent and the lion represents the people’s readiness to fight.

Little is known of Agnes. She was listed as a free master artist in 1468, one of the few women listed in the painters guild of Ghent. Like many female painters during this period, Agnes’s father and brother were also painters. She was frequently commissioned by the city of Ghent to paint flags and other decorative items. Agnes received more commissions than her brother and was described by some as the most in demand flag painter of her day. However, flag painting was less prestigious than alter painting and few women were accorded the honor of painting an alterpiece in the Northern Renaissance.

fuckyeahhistorycrushes:

[TW] Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–1652) was an Italian Baroque painter and a completely kickass lady. One of her best known paintings is the gory Giuditta che decapita Oloferne, (Judith Beheading Holofernes), which she painted when she was nineteen years old during the trial of her rapist, Agostino Tassi. The trial was a grueling and humiliating ordeal for Artemisia, who had to undergo a gynecological exam and torture with thumbscrews to determine if she was telling the truth. Tassi was eventually found guilty, but never faced punishment for his crimes. It’s clear from her painting what Artemisia’s feelings on the subject were.

coolchicksfromhistory:

Western Union messenger girls in front of the US Capitol, December 11, 1925

fuckyeahhistorycrushes:

Zelda Fitzgerald at 17.

(1900-1948). Wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, face of the Jazz Age, and the prototype that every flapper modeled themselves after. She was gorgeous!

Heroin found in file at UK National Archives »

nocompromise-noregrets:

…see? Archives are not boring! You never know what you might find… O.O

(closest I’ve ever come to that is finding an envelope stuffed full of locks of hair of various members of the family whose papers I was cataloguing, painstakingly labelled in the hand of one of them - including a packet which turned out to be the only clue I ever got that this woman had had a baby other than the three who survived to adulthood…)

(via librarianista)

coolchicksfromhistory:

“Nicole” a French partisan who captured 25 Nazis in the Chartres area, in addition to liquidating others, poses with the automatic rifle with which she is most proficient.

August 8, 1944

coolchicksfromhistory:

Portrait of Zitkala-Sa by Gertrude Kasebier, about 1898.

Zitkala-Sa was the pen name of writer and activist Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (1876-1938). She exposed the hardships faced by students at Native American boarding schools by writing about her own experiences as a student and as a teacher. Zitkala-Sa also published a book of tribal folklore called Old Indian Legends and composed The Sun Dance Opera with composer William F. Hanson.

In 1930, Zitkala-Sa founded the National Council of American Indians, the first trans-tribal Native American organization to lobby the government for better treatment of Natives.

A selection of Zitkala-Sa’s writings can be read online here.

An analysis of Gertrude Kasebier’s portraits of Zitkala-Sa can be read here.

the-real-sf:

I’m thankful for my intellectual heroes, the people who influenced the way I think more than anyone else: Harlan Ellison, Isaac Asimov, Jim Henson, Carl Sagan, and Theodore Roosevelt.

(Source: sf-reloaded, via reagan-was-a-horrible-president)

mydaguerreotypeboyfriend:

Sir Sandford Fleming. This Scottish-Canadian boyfriend was an inventor of timezones, explorer, engineer, and wearer of fabulous furs.

For more proof, check out this studly Canadian Heritage Moment.

Submitted by JSFMacL3

Men in Tights

fuckyeahhistorycrushes:

This post is dedicated not to a specific figure in history, but rather to the beautiful time period when men proudly bared their legs in a thin layer of silk. Hosen(what a lovely irregular plural) evolved from traditional leg wrappings in the Middle Ages as men began to rock some short and saucy tunics.

Eventually, as the Europeans got sluttier and their doublets got shorter, the garment fused into a single entity instead of two separate pieces, something like modern tights. The development of increasingly provocative doublets also necessitated the wearing of codpieces, an excessively awkward garment now only worn by people with awkward fetishes and the metal band Gwar. Often, the legs were different colors for added stylistic flair.

The 1600s were a bit more sympathetic to pants than the 1500s had been. There were several common styles of hosen, including the trunk hose, a short and puffy form, which were worn over tight over-the-knee cannions. This style is modeled here by the sculpted legs of dashing Sir Walter Raleigh.

By the 1700s, hosen had split into the distinct garments of breeches and stockings. This charming combination was all the rage during the French Revolution, at least for the bourgeois and is responsible for the name Sans-culottes(without silk breeches) for the militant lower class revolutionaries as they wore long pants instead, those barbarians.

Robespierre

The calve-baring style also featured heavily in the American Revolution and was often sported by the Founding Fathers from Thomas Jefferson to Alexander Hamilton.

Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson

Sadly stockings ultimately developed into boring old socks as men got progressively less awesome. This concludes an examination of tights-wearing men through the ages.

coolchicksfromhistory:

Irene Rock, an Assiniboine schoolgirl at Fort Belknap circa 1907

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