History
Talent: Past Preservers
Are you looking for talent? Someone with a passion for history and archaeology? Past Preservers was founded by archaeologist Nigel J. Hetherington to provide historical and archaeological consultancy and professional support to the media industry, and their website has a (small) number of showreels of potential hosts partaking in derring-do. Rich Blundell from Past Preservers [...]
The Not-Quite-Hidden But Too Often Ignored…
U.S. academic Minh-Ha T. Pham has put together “an alternative archive of the not-quite-hidden but too often ignored fashion histories of U.S. women of color’, as a reaction against fashion exhibitions that concentrate solely on the fashions of wealthy white women. Explore some of the photos on Of Another Fashion, such as the photo of [...]
50 Things Internet is Killing Off…
According to The Telegraph the internet is killing off all manner of things, from polite disagreement (No.1) to the lunch-break (No.50) via wedding telegrams (No.23) and the the curiously adjacent dogging (No.24). Read the full list here.
NGO’s ‘Fess Up to Failure
Engineers Without Borders Canada have done what many NGOs have failed to do and that is admit that help given to developing countries isn’t always helpful. In some cases a solution to a perceived problem just brings more problems. But no-one will admit it in case people stop donating their money to charity to help [...]
The Father of Modern Fitness
Jack LaLanne was able to do fingertip push-ups well into his 90s. Never heard of him? If you struggle to the gym before or after work you can thank him because he founded the modern fitness movement in the 1930s, when lifting weights was considered weird (some still do consider it weird…). In 1951 he [...]
A Brief History of Product Placement
A timely reminder to UK producers who are about to be allowed to place products in their TV shows (from 28th February) that it’s not a new thing…
The Nanny Photographs
Vivian Maier, was an eccentric, shy nanny who worked for wealthy families in Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s turns out to have been leading a double life as one of the most talented photographers of the 20th century. But nobody knew this until an author researching a book, John Maloof, bought a job lot [...]
Cass Pennant: Football Hooligan and Gentleman Publisher
A recent article in The Bookseller lamented the demise of a small publishing house, Pennant Books, driven out of business by the cold financial climate. John Blake wrote that the owner, Cass Pennant, paid his authors “decent advances. I heard he was meticulous in paying his royalties.” But look into his back-story (already documented in [...]
Kidnapped Baby Reunited with Parents After 24 Years
When Carlina White, just 19-days old, was snatched by a bogus nurse from Harlem Hospital she disappeared without a trace. Twenty-four years on, her parents might be forgiven for not expecting to ever see her again. But they would have reckoned without Carlina’s tenacity at tracking down her biological family, after having suspicions about the [...]
In Almost Every Picture
Every year, 88-year-old Dutch woman Ria van Dijk visits a fairground shooting gallery ad picks up a gun. And every time she scores a hit a camera flashes and her photo is taken. She’s been visiting the shooting gallery almost every year since 1936, and the series of pictures taken chronicle her life since she [...]
