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rigmarolling · 4 years

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Historical Holiday Traditions We Really Need To Bring Back

Here comes Santa Claus, and also a bunch of annual holiday Things we do to ensure he commits a truly boggling act of breaking and entering and leaves goods underneath the large plant in the living room.

Because I’ve always got a hankerin’ for the days of yore, here are some historical holiday traditions we really need to bring back:

1. Everything that happened on Saturnalia

Saturnalia was the ancient Roman winter festival held on December 25th--which is why we celebrate Christmas on that day and not on the day historians speculate Jesus was actually born, which was probably in the spring.

Saturnalia was bonkers. As the name suggests, it celebrated the god Saturn, who represented wealth and liberty and generally having a great time.

Above: Their party is way cooler than yours could ever hope to be.

During Saturnalia, masters would serve their slaves, because it was the one day during the year when everybody agreed that freedom for all is great, actually, let’s just do that. Everyone wore a coned hat called the pilleus to denote that they were all bros and equal, and also to disguise the fact that they hadn’t brushed their hair after partying hard all week, probably.

Gambling was allowed on Saturnalia, so all of Rome basically turned into ancient Vegas, complete with Caesar’s Palace, except with the actual Caesar and his palace because he was, you know. Alive.

The most famous part (besides getting drunk off your rocker) was gift-giving--usually gag gifts. Historians have records of people giving each other some truly impressive white elephant gifts for Saturnalia, including: a parrot, balls, toothpicks, a pig, one single sausage, spoons, and deliberately awful books of poetry.

Above: Me, except all the time.

Partygoers also crowned a King of Saturnalia, which was a predecessor to the King of Fools popular in medieval festivals. The king was basically the head idiot who delivered absurd commands to everyone there, like, “Sing naked!” or “run around screaming for an hour,” or “slap your butt cheeks real hard in front of your crush; DO IT, Brutus.”

Oh, wait. Everyone was already doing all that. Hell yes.

(Quick clarification: early celebrations of Saturnalia did feature human sacrifice, so let’s just leave that bit out and instead wear the pointy hats and sing naked, okay? Io Saturnalia, everybody.)

2. Leaving out treats for Sleipnir in the hopes of avoiding Odin’s complete disregard for your property

The whole “leave out cookies and milk for Santa” thing comes from a much older tradition of trying to appease old guys with white beards. In Norse mythology, Odin, who was sort of the head god but preferred to be on a perpetual road trip instead, took an annual nighttime ride through the winter sky called the Wild Hunt.

Above: The holidays, now with 300% more heavy metal.

Variations of the Wild Hunt story exist in a bunch of European folklore--in Odin’s case, he usually brought along a bunch of supernatural buddies, like spirits and other gods and Valkyries and ghost dogs, who, the Vikings said, you could hear howling and barking as the group approached (GOOD DOGGOS).

That was the thing, though; you never actually saw Odin’s hunt--you only heard it. And hearing it did not spark the same sense of childish glee you felt when you thought you heard Santa’s sleigh bells approaching as a kid--instead, the Vikings said, you should be afraid. Be VERY afraid.

Because Odin could be kind of a dick.

Odin was also known as the Allfather, and like any father, he hated asking for directions. GPS who? I’m the Allfather, I’m riding the same way I always ride.

And that was pretty much it: “I took this road last year and I’m taking it again this year.”

“But,” someone would pipe up from the back, “there are houses on the road now--we’re gonna run right into them. We could just take a different path; there’s actually a detour off the--”

“Nope,” Odin would say. “They know the rules. My road, my hunt, my rules. We’re going this way.”

So if you were unlucky enough to have built your house along one of Odin’s favorite road trip sky-ways, he wouldn’t just plow right past you.

He would burn your entire house down--and your family along with it.

Kids playing in the yard? Torch ‘em; they should have known better. Grandma knitting while she waits for her gingerbread Einherjar to finish baking? Sucks to be her; my road, my rules, my beard, I’m the Allfather, bitch.

Above: Santa, but so much worse.

To be fair to Odin, he could be a cool guy sometimes. He just turned into any dad when he was on a road trip and wanted to MAKE GOOD TIME, DAMN IT, I AM NOT STOPPING; YOU SHOULD HAVE PEED BEFORE WE LEFT.

To ensure they didn’t incur Odin’s road trip wrath, the Vikings had a few ways of smoothing things over with Dad.

They would leave Odin offerings on the road, like pieces of steel (??? okay ???) or bread for his dogs, or food for his giant, eight-legged horse, Sleipnir, because the only true way to a man’s heart is through his pet.

People would generally leave veggies and oats and other horse-y things out for Sleipnir, whose eight legs made him the fastest flying horse in the world and also made him the only horse to ever win Asgard’s coveted tap dancing championship.

(Side note: EIGHT legs...EIGHT tiny reindeer...eh? Eh? See how we got here? Thanks, nightmare horse!)

Above: An excellent prancer AND dancer.

And if Odin was feeling particularly charitable and not in the mood for horrific acts of arson, children would also leave their shoes out for him--it was said that he’d put gifts in your boots to ring in a happy new year.

If all that didn’t work and the Vikings heard the hunt approaching, they would resort to throwing themselves on the ground and covering their heads while the massive party sped above them like a giant Halloween rager.

So this holiday season, leave your boots out for Odin and some carrots out for his giant spider horse or you and your entire family will die in a fiery inferno, the end.

3. Yule Logs

Speaking of Scandinavia, another Northern European winter solstice tradition was the yule log. Today, if you google “yule log,” something like this will pop up:

...which isn’t an actual log, but is instead log-shaped food that you shove into your mouth along with 500 other cakes at the same time because it’s CHRISTMAS, and I’m having ME TIME; so WHAT if I ate the whole jar of Nutella by myself, alone, in the dark at 3 am?

But that log cake is actually inspired by actual logs of yore that Celtic, Germanic, and Scandinavian peoples decorated with fragrant plants like holly, ivy, pinecones, and other Stuff That Smells Nice before tossing the log into the fire.

This served a few purposes:

It smelled nice, and Bath and Body Works scented candles hadn’t been invented yet.

It had religious and/or spiritual significance as a way to mark the winter solstice.

It was a symbolic way of ringing in the new year and kicking out the old.

Common belief held that the ashes of a yule log could ward off lightning strikes and bad energy.

Winter cold. Fire warm.

Everybody loves to watch things burn. (See: Odin.)

The yule log cakes we eat today got their start in 19th century Paris, when bakers thought it was a cute idea to resurrect an ancient pagan tradition in the form of a delicious dessert, and boy, howdy, were they right.

In any case, I’m 100% down with eating a chocolate yule log while burning an actual yule log in my backyard because everybody loves to watch things burn; winter cold, fire warm; and hnnnngggg pine tree smell hnnnnggg.

(Quick note: The word “yule” is the name of a traditional pagan winter festival, still celebrated culturally or religiously in modern pagan practice. It’s also another name for Odin. He had a bunch of other names, one of the most well-known being jólfaðr, which is Old Norse for “Yule father.” If you would like to royally piss him off, or if you are Loki, feel free to call him “Yule Daddy.”)

4. Upside down Christmas trees

I just found out that apparently, upside down Christmas trees are a hot new trend with HGTV types this year, so I guess this is one historical trend we did bring back, meaning it doesn’t really belong on this list, but I’m gonna talk about it, anyway.

Side note: Oh, my god, that BANNISTER. I NEED.

Historians aren’t actually sure where the inverted Christmas tree thing came from, but we know people were bringing home trees and then hanging them upside down in the living room as early as the 7th century. We have a couple theories as to why people turned trees on their heads:

Logistically, it’s way easier to hang a giant pine tree from your rafters upside down by its trunk and roots. You just hoist that baby up there, wind some rope around the rafter and the trunk, and boom. Start decorating.

A Christian tradition says that one day in the 7th century, a Benedictine monk named Saint Boniface stumbled across a group of pagans worshipping an oak tree. So, instead of minding his own damn business, he cut the tree down and replaced it with a fir tree. While the pagans were like, “Dude, what the hell?” Boniface used the triangular shape of the fir tree to explain the concept of the holy trinity to the pagans. Some versions have him planting it right-side up, others having him displaying a fir tree upside down. Either way, it’s still a triangle that’s a solid but ultimately very rude way of explaining God. Word’s still out on whether anyone was converted or just rightly pissed off that this random guy strolled into their place of worship, chopped down their sacred tree, and plopped HIS tree down instead. Please do not do that this holiday season.

Eastern Europeans lay claim to the upside-down tree phenomenon with a tradition called podłazniczek in Poland--people hung the tree from the ceiling and decorated it with fruits and nuts and seeds and ribbons and other festive doodads.

(God, who lives in these houses? Look at that. That’s like a swanky version of Gaston’s hunting lodge. Where do I get one? Which enchanted castle do I have to stumble into to chill out in a Christmas living room like that?)

Today, at least in the West, upside-down trees are making a comeback because...I don’t know. Chip and Joanna Gaines said so.

Some folks say it’s a surefire way to keep your cats from clawing their way through the tree and then puking up fir needles for weeks afterward, which checks out for me.

5. Incredibly weird Victorian Christmas cards

So back in the 19th century, the Christmas card industry was really getting fired up. Victorians loved their mail, let me tell you. They loved sending it. They loved getting it. They loved writing it. They loved opening it. They loved those sexy wax seals you use to keep all that sweet, sweet mail inside that sizzling envelope. (Those things are incredibly sexy. Have you ever made a wax seal? Oh, man, it’s hot.)

The problem, though, was that while the Victorians arguably helped standardize many of the holiday traditions we know and love today (Christmas trees, caroling, Dickens everything, spending too much money, etc.) back in 1800-whenever, a lot of that Christmas symbolism was, um...still under construction. No one had really agreed on which visual holiday cues worked and which...didn’t.

Meaning everyone just kind of made up their own holiday symbols. Which resulted in monstrous aberrations like this card:

What the hell is that? A beet? Is that a beet? Or a turnip? Why is it...oh, God, why does it have a man’s head? Why does the man beet have insect claws?

What is it that he’s holding? A cookie? Cardboard? A terra cotta planter?

And then there’s this one:

“A Merry Christmas to you,” it says, while depicting a brutal frog murder/mugging.

What are you trying to tell me? Are you threatening me with this card? Is that it? Is this a threat? How the hell am I supposed to interpret this? “Merry Christmas, hide your money or you’re dead, you stupid bitch.”

Also, why is the dead frog naked? Did the other frog steal his clothes after the murder? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS?

Victorian holiday cards also doubled as early absurdist Internet memes, apparently, because how else do I explain this?

Is this some sort of tiny animal Santa? A mouse riding a lobster? Like, the mouse, I get. Mice are fine. Disney built an empire on a mouse. And look, he’s got a little list of things he’s presumably going to bring you: Peace, joy, health, happiness. (In French. Oh, wait, is that that Patton Oswalt rat?)

But a LOBSTER? What’s with the lobster? It’s basically a sea scorpion. Why in the name of all that is good and holy would you saddle up a LOBSTER? I hate it. I hate it so, so much. Just scurrying around the floor with more legs than are strictly necessary, smelling like the seafood section of Smith’s, snapping its giant claws.

This whole card is a health inspector’s worst nightmare. It really is.

I gotta say, though, I am a fan of this one:

Presumably, that polar bear is going in for a hug because nothing stamps out a polar bear’s innate desire to rip your face from your skull than candy canes and Coke and Christmas spirit.

This next one is actually fantastic, but for all the wrong reasons:

I know everyone overuses “same” these days but geez, LOOK at that kid. I can HEAR it. SAME.

If you’ve ever been in a shopping mall stuffed with kids, nothing sums it up better than this card. This is like the perverse version of those Anne Geddes portraits that were everywhere in the late 90s. “Make wee Jacob sit in the tea pot; everyone will--Jacob, STOP, look at Mommy; I said LOOK. AT. MOMMY--everyone will love it.”

Actually, you know what? Every other Christmas card is cancelled. This is the only card we will be using from now on. This is it.

Wait, no. We can also use this one:

Merry Christmas. Here’s a fuckin’...just a dead fuckin’ bird.

#victorian #listory #christmas #holidays #mythtory #norse mythology #odin

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princesskuragina · 4 years

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Gonna make a sideblog called "on this day in Listory" that just posts whatever batshit thing Anne Lister said in her diaries c. 200 years ago

#is 'listery' better #idk it's just for the pun #Who Did Anne Lister Fuck Today?#anne lister #gentleman jack #wlw #lesbian #misc.

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peppypanda-com · 3 years

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#happy news #uplifting news #good news #peppypanda.com

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sumattra3 · 2 years

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เชิญชวนครับ ส่วนตัว เฟรมเป็นวิทยากรในหัวข้อที่ 3 นะครับ 📽 ยินดีต้อนรับทุกท่านสู่โรงภาพยนตร์ LISTORY: Listen to the Story โรงภาพยนตร์ที่จะเปิดโอกาสให้ทุกคนได้พูดคุยเกี่ยวกับภาพยนตร์ 3 เรื่อง 3 สไตล์ที่เกิดขึ้นมาจากประสบการณ์ชีวิตจริงที่ไม่สามารถหาได้จากที่ไหนในโลก 🎞เพราะชีวิตของเราทุกคนก็เปรียบเสมือนภาพยนตร์ มีทั้งสุขและทุกข์ ประสบการณ์ที่แต่ละคนเจอมาในชีวิตล้วนแตกต่างกันและหลากหลาย โดยเราเชื่อว่าในทุก ๆ ครั้งที่ทุกคนรับชมภาพยนตร์นั้น ทุกคนล้วนได้รับข้อคิดหรือแรงบันดาลใจกลับไปทั้งสิ้น เช่นเดียวกับเมื่อทุกคนได้รับฟังประสบการณ์ของผู้อื่น 🎥LISTORY: Listen to the Story จึงเกิดขึ้นมาจากไอเดียที่ต้องการจะสร้าง platform ที่เปิดโอกาสให้ทุกคนสามารถเข้าถึงเรื่องราวและประสบการณ์ที่สนใจได้โดยผ่านการพูดคุย ที่เปรียบเสมือนการเปิดโอกาสให้ทุกคนได้รับชมภาพยนตร์ที่จะสร้างข้อคิด แรงบันดาลใจและสร้างการเรียนรู้ให้แก่ผู้รับชม 🍿อย่าพลาดโอกาสที่จะพูดคุยเกี่ยวกับเรื่องราวประสบการณ์สุดพิเศษจาก LISTORY สามารถรับตั๋วได้แล้ววันนี้ โดยไม่เสียค่าใช้จ่ายที่ https://forms.gle/ZhHpRFyvXAtjptkA8 (at Chulalongkorn University) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cbt49oyJOeuTy9DhdFuegcAnZo01XWyGM-pTB00/?utm_medium=tumblr

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its-zhangjiashuai-us · 3 years

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disney store canada francais

69 cents par action après dilution. Sinon, je vais célébrer le lancement, comme d'habitude avec une sélection de belles images et mises à jour en direct sur les promotions et l'emballage cadeau de la Saint Valentin LE. La chaîne de sécurité dispose d'un design d'argent brut, avec la signature Marque logo présenté sur les deux extrémités de celui ci: Pas de détails sur les prix encore, mais comme il est une conception d'argent clair que je suis sûr que ce sera raisonnablement abordable. Pour les non initiés, Rue La La est un site de commerce des États Unis, qui se spécialise dans l'offre de rabais du concepteur lecteurs products. ''à qui beaucoup est donnée il est beaucoup attendu 'est une idée qui a résonné avec nos lecteurs tout au long de nos 170 ans d'histoire', a déclaré Volandes Stellene, rédacteur en chef de Town & Country Disney Soldes Mode. Nous avons aussi un coup d'oeil à une nouvelle marque Disney Disney Brosse à Cheveux Belle Avec Miroir Couleur unie . roMy CommentSo beaucoup de nouvelles flottant autour. Ici, nous avons une chance très claire des lots de la nouvelle rose / floral / féminin promotion disney paris à venir pour la fête des mères, et je pense qu'il est vraiment excitante line up, surtout en comparaison avec les années précédentes. En avril ainsi, disney princesse ariel sélectionné Net-A-porter comme son partenaire d'ecommerce, permettant Disney Moins Cher exclusif ses bijoux à être vendus sur le site du détaillant pour un temps limité. un orteil dans ce plus facile en jouant avec leurs assortiments. 'Power', 'entreprise joueurs sauveurs' et 'Modern missionnaires'pour la publication 'listorial T&C 50. 'Shiseido est bien placé pour générer une valeur significative de cette opportunité d'acquisition attractif, et nous sommes excités pour utiliser nos ressources aux niveaux régional et mondial de prendre ces marques au niveau suivant et renforcer encore notre position globale sur le marché', dit-il. : Jour 2016 ShotsLa direct de démarque Valentine est le premier nouveau lancement Marque depuis la collection d'hiver est sorti en Octobre, et il est excitant de finalement être en mesure de voir tous les nouveaux morceaux en person. La couverture extérieure arrière a été réservés pour disney. Hudson verges promotion dans Architectural Digest juin. Finally, nous avons cette Bride Disney Moins Cher & Groom (Our Day Special) charme pour finir cette collection. Il dispose d'un mélange de roses, blancs et verts, et il semble tout simplement charmant dans ce plan en magnifiquement. Mise à jour Cela a été confirmé en tant que Jared exclusive. www.officieldisney.com

#Disney

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030303ly1999 · 3 years

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PERSONNAGES DISNEY

Le coin dédié dans le magasin portent la marque la plus récente collection d'accessoires qui comprend. Les gens qui s'est approché de moi a mentionné la qualité des contenus, tels que les services bancaires privés, des taxes, des fiducies, etc. Les cadeaux qu'elle a reçu et les éléments qu'elle a acheté pour elle-même étaient simples et extravagant. 'pendant la Semaine de la mode de New York et la conduire jusqu'à la mode en Europe semaines, il existe un débat intense autour de mode et style, 'a déclaré Kathleen Ruiz, vice-président principal du marketing et PR. En plus de la vente aux enchères, 950 pièces de la collection de plus de 2. La complète campagne publicitaire inaugurale de Fabergé, Disney Soldes a également tiré par Mario Testino, qui a été introduit en Novembre 2011 la promotion de la gamme de produits de haute joaillerie de la société, Fabergé said. Tout sera une partie de la vente aux enchères. chinois sont les habitudes de dépenses un curieux qui affectent de nombreuses marques. Bien que la demi-page ad est simple, son premier placement dans le listorial causera probablement les lecteurs à enquêter davantage sur ses princesses et princes disney. Le projet de science sur le site mobile qui permet aux utilisateurs de créer leur propre collier de Disney nom de Yeti, personnaliser un flocon de neige et balayez à partir de leur téléphone ou tablette sur écrans dans l'affichage. ‘Je peux sentir Elizabeth dans le piece. depuis les marchés émergents au Brésil et en Amérique latine continuent de s'épanouir et mature, WSJ. Seulement 15 pour cent des répondants ont indiqué que la livraison gratuite n'a pas été particulièrement influente dans leur achat decision. Plusieurs campagnes remis l'appareil photo pour les gens de l'intérieur et à l'extérieur de la marque. Il est prévu de récupérer 2,5 $ million- centré avec une perle en forme de poire 203-grain découvert le nom Nur Jahan, l'épouse de l'empereur moghol Shah Jahangir, ce diamant en forme de coeur est soupçonné Cadeaux De Noël Disneyland d'avoir été un cadeau de la règle à son fils, qui est devenu le grand empereur Shah Jahan aimée, Mumtaz-i-Mahal. Je ne savais pas qu'un jour elle porterait mon creations. Racines équestre et affiche un autre élément de soie, principalement des foulards, dans l'ensemble de la main appelée house. sur le microsite, les consommateurs sont accueillis à l'esquissa les portes dans les La Maison des carrés, Traduit grosso modo comme chambre carrés, se référant à l'foulards de soie dans la maison virtuelle.

www.frsolde.com/

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perfectirishgifts · 3 years

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This Startup Aims To Transform The Way We Consume Content

New Post has been published on https://perfectirishgifts.com/this-startup-aims-to-transform-the-way-we-consume-content-2/

This Startup Aims To Transform The Way We Consume Content

Content consumption has become an all-inclusive activity: a pipeline to knowledge and enjoyment, but one that often requires trimming through a forest of tangents and clickbait. Not long ago, content was consumed at a specific time and place: train rides to and from the office, evenings on the sofa, weekends. Most people read the morning paper and maybe were subscribed to one weekly or monthly magazine. Nowadays, with ever present devices and corporate marketing engines constantly running, the content pipeline has become a floodgate.

Changes in Content Consumption Behavior

A survey by the American Press Institute from 2018 looked into news consumption behaviors and found that 4 in 10 Americans scanned headlines several times a day. We scan. We scroll. We browse. And we do it all the time, filling each available moment with finger and mouse movements. Of course, we sometimes eventually click and read something too. But it’s getting more and more difficult to make this decision: to decide what content is worthy of reading in full. The fact that we are exposed to so much content makes the selection process cumbersome, time-consuming and frustrating.

Curation Is Essential

Online content has reached the point of needing curation, and that’s exactly the premise of Listory, a recently launched “content refinery” app. Listory was founded in March 2020 by Yaniv Gilad (CEO) and Yaron Galai (Active Chairman), veterans of Outbrain, a leading web advertising and content discovery platform. Frustrated by content overload, they set out to create a product focusing on content itself rather than the stickiness it creates. In Gilad’s words, a product that “delights as opposed to trying to keep your attention for as long as possible.”

Listory team. CEO Yaniv Gilad, second from left.

What separates Listory from other curation apps like Flipboard is the extent of the upfront refinement. Listory is powered by human curators sifting through content and refining what’s considered “good” content for each of its users. The app relies on vetted content sources, namely newsletters, that by definition are curated by industry experts—creators and aggregators who spend time consuming content in an area they’re passionate about and include a subset of that content in their newsletters. There are over 1,000 newsletters included on the app covering technology, business, lifestyle, hobbies, and more.

All stories featured in these newsletters are crossed-referenced to check the number of mentions each piece gets. This effectively gauges popularity and forms consensus around the top available content. The result is a highly distilled list of content pieces. Users can set reading goals and tailor how often content is refined. They can also save and share stories, and schedule content to be read at a later time.

Listory prides itself on being the anti-social network feed. As Gilad noted, there’s no infinity feed, no content algorithms, and a general departure from any action that might take attention away from an immersive content experience. Quality is always prioritized over quantity, even if the result is a significantly shorter feed.

The Listory team is so passionate about their refinement mission that they’ve created the Listory Challenge: if the first story a user sees in the “For You” section of the app is not relevant, Listory will credit the user $0.10 to be redeemed for any newspaper or newsletter subscription.

Scaling Curation

As mentioned above, at the core of Listory’s current content platform are newsletters, specifically free newsletters that are hand-picked. The app functions as a repository and distribution channel for these newsletters. This approach stays true to Listory’s ethos, but can come at the expense of scalability. The team is addressing this with an option for users to submit newsletters, and for curators to curate their newsletters directly in Listory.

On the heels of a recently closed funding round of US$4 million, CEO Yaniv Gilad mentioned a couple of key focus areas for driving adoption and growth. The first strategy surrounds expanding beyond free newsletters to paid newsletters, with Listory as the access point for that premium content. The second focus area involves incorporating social personas into the platform, so that content can be refined not only through newsletter mentions, but also based on what industry experts are sharing on social media. All of this in service of Listory’s vision: to help those who truly care about the content they consume be delighted.

From Entrepreneurs in Perfectirishgifts

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sarkariemployee · 3 years

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Every story in Listory will make you feel that you’re growing and becoming smarter. They help you build healthy habits to keep that momentum.

#s #v #bh

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rigmarolling · 4 years

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Top 5 Things That Will Kill You In the Victorian Era

If you’ve ever spent more than two seconds with me, you know that I live and breathe the fog-choked air of Victorian London. All day. Every day of my life.

See, in many ways, the Victorians were the first version of us--overwhelmed by rapidly-changing technology (and its awful effect on the climate); dealing with incredible wealth gaps; grappling with rising crime and faster travel and out-of-control media and the whole, “God is dead, oh no” thing.

Also, everything was trying to kill you.

Like, literally almost everything.

From your clothes to your doctor to your canned food, here are the top five things that will kill you in the Victorian era.

5. Other Victorians

If the rise of penny dreadfuls (cheap magazines stuffed with horror stories for us morbidly-inclined goth types) was any indication, Victorians loved them some true crime.

And there was no shortage of subject matter to choose from: depending on where you ventured in London, at least, you could be subject to anything from pickpocketing to mugging to violent assault and, of course, murder.

There were a few reasons for this:

For one thing, the population in London alone increased by millions in the 19th century, and approximately no one was prepared for that. So, to accommodate the rapidly-booming population, the wealthy folks in charge reached out and lovingly ensured the masses of the disenfranchised poor were taken care of by redistributing resources and education and access to opportunities that improved lives on a both a personal and social level.

Lol, no, I’m totally kidding; they shoved them into slums and tenement buildings and pretended they didn’t exist.

So of course, there was a rise in crime, because if you have five kids and you can’t find gainful employment and your family will starve if you don’t steal that basket of food over there, or that purse that lady left sitting over THERE, what are you going to do? You’re going to steal the food and the purse to survive, Jean Valjean, I understand, I do.

Except the powers that be did NOT understand, and instead routinely espoused the idea that if people were poor, it was because they were morally bankrupt, or inherently bad, somehow, and the “criminal classes,” as they came to be known by the growing Victorian middle and upper-middle classes, were simply considered genetically bad to the bone and therefore undeserving of assistance.

Basically:

So ANYWAY.

Crime was on the rise and there were multiple efforts to stop it with varying degrees of success, but big city usually = big crime, especially when there’s a massive gap between the one percent-ers and THE REST OF US, WASHINGTON.

Ahem.

All that crime? The booming news industry loved it. The press ate it up and then spit it back out in salacious headlines that never even bothered with journalistic objectivity, like this gem:

I mean. Full disclosure: I, too, agree that cutting off a woman’s head, arms, and legs and then burning them is “awful, inhuman, & barbarous” but just...maybe...maybe tone it down? Just a bit?

No? Okay.

See, here’s the thing: crime sells. It always has. And papers went nuts with full illustrated spreads about the latest brutal murders so you could sit in your parlor and get anxiety poops thinking about how the butcher down the street looked at you funny the other day and oh, God, you’re probably next, oh God.

The most famous murderer of the era, was, of course, Jack the Ripper, which was just the orchestral climax of a hideously corrupted society that had bubbled into naught but a festering carbuncle, an ulcer upon the very soul of man, trussed up as a city of industry, but which is merely Salome, dancing with the Lamb’s head upon a platter and sending us all tumbling into a fiery pit.

....Ahem, again.

Some popular ways your fellow Victorians could kill you included: dueling (with swords but usually with revolvers), stabbing, garroting, and, probably the most popular method of the era, poisoning.

Speaking of which...

4. Anything dyed that hip shade of green

In 1775, a guy named Carl Wilhelm Scheele invented a new shade of green, cleverly called Scheele’s green, and it instantly became a hit. Pretty soon, manufacturers and tailors were dyeing everything this color.

Look at it. Bright, airy. Calls to mind a fresh, spring meadow. (What’s that, you ask? Well, before the Industrial Revolution belched out black smoke onto absolutely everything, there were these things called plants and grass and they were all over the place and you could frolic through them and it was very nice for your serotonin levels.)

I mean, listen, this isn’t really my color because anything vaguely yellow-ish makes my already yellow-ish skin look especially jaundiced, but it’s a lovely shade:

Besides using it to create beautiful dresses and tasteful waistcoats, they used it inside book covers:

And it was a super popular wallpaper color:

They had green candles and green cups and green kitchenwares and green paint.

But while Carl Wilhelm Scheele didn’t exactly murder anyone (even though he has three names like every serial killer ever), he sort of, accidentally, indirectly, kinda...did.

Because that springy dye contained every Victorian black widow’s favorite method to dispose of a troublesome husband: arsenic.

Scheele, of course, had no idea--no one did--so I’m fully exonerating him here, but the poison nonetheless started to take its toll.

Reports began to surface of kids getting sicker and sicker and then dying in their green wallpapered rooms; of fashionable ladies rocking those green dresses at balls and then ALSO getting sicker and sicker and breaking out in horrible sores before dying.

They even used this stuff to dye food green, so of course, anybody who tucked into Victorian green eggs and ham also, you know. Died.

And if they DIDN’T die, they got cancer, because if arsenic doesn’t kill you, it will give you cancer. And then kill you.

Eventually, as science advanced and went, “HEYO, there’s literal poison in this stuff,” consumers were like, “Well, shoot, this summer’s hottest beach shade just killed an entire boarding school,” and Scheele’s green finally fell out of favor.

It was, however, used as a pesticide up through the 1930s, so...way to use the...leftovers? I guess?

3. Your canned food

Hey, now that we’re on the topic of deadly chemicals being where they absolutely should not be, let’s talk about canned food.

In the Victorian era, it was the new Hot Thing (next to arsenic green). You mean I can can my food now? Like? Forever? Oh, only for a few months. Okay, cool. Still cool.

Above: Road trip snax.

Food preservation methods had existed long before canned meats and veggies and soups, but canned everything really started to gain traction around the middle of the 19th century, and people were stoked. Remember, the population exploded; people needed new methods of obtaining cheap food that didn’t spoil immediately. So: cans to the rescue!

Recycling hadn’t really been invented, though, so today, archaeologists constantly find giant Victorian trash pits filled with empty cans.

You know what also hadn’t been invented? Consumer health and safety boards.

So guess what was in the tin cans themselves?

No, no, don’t worry, it wasn’t arsenic.

It was lead.

Which, in case you weren’t aware, is also very, very bad for you.

So bad, in fact, that today, scientists are pretty sure lead-lined tins of canned food were partially responsible for the deaths on the disastrous Franklin Expedition, an ultimately futile trip to discover the Northwest Passage lead by Sir John Franklin in 1845. Every single man on board the two ships stranded in the Arctic died, and in the 1980s, when scientists discovered perfectly mummified bodies (GRAPHIC, if you don’t like that sort of thing, but awesome if you do) of some of the sailors, one of the mummies contained insane amounts of lead. They later tested the cans found scattered across the wreck site and whoops, they also contained insane amounts of lead.

Above: Some of the tin cans from the Franklin Expedition, which contained items like salted beef, vegetables, tea, lethal amounts of lead, and Chicken of the Sea.

Granted, other factors contributed to the Franklin deaths, like, you know, being stranded in the Arctic and starving to death, and also tuberculosis, but lead-lined canned food certainly didn’t help things along.

2. Your doctor

Here’s my advice if you’re in the Victorian era and you’re starting to feel sick: do not get sick. Just don’t. Because then that means you’ll have to go to the doctor. Which probably means you will die.

Hospitals in the 19th century were deadly. Often even more deadly than just staying at home, according to Dr. Lindsey Fitzharris, author of The Butchering Art. Nobody knew how to treat anything, really, because medical understanding of biology was in its infancy and antibiotics didn’t exist yet, so you were absolutely, definitely going to get some kind of infection the second you stepped foot in a Victorian hospital.

Above: The surgery, where nobody has any idea what they are doing, ever.

Doctors weren’t trying to kill you on purpose--they just didn’t know any better. And it super duper didn’t help that common treatments for everything from the common cold to tuberculosis included taking mercury (which kills you) and blood-letting, (which can also kill you) the tools for which are shown below:

Those might look like fun doodads for your astronomy class at Hogwarts, but they’re actually vials and a really, really sharp needle that pricks you until you bleed out a critically dangerous amount of blood into those vials.

The (ancient) school of thought behind blood-letting was that draining patients of “bad” blood would rebalance their “humours” and get rid of the icky thing that was making them sick. We might laugh at it now, but if you don’t know any better, logically, it makes sense.

Medically, oh my God, it’s the worst.

So if Doc didn’t bleed you to death, he might try surgery--done without anesthesia or antibiotics (until good old Dr. Lister came along--read The Butchering Art!), and then ship you and your amputated stump leg off to the hospital ward where, instead of healing, you’d get wheeled through hallways stained with every bodily fluid imaginable into rooms filled with people coughing up every bodily fluid imaginable, some of which would get into your leg stump, infect it, and then kill you dead.

“But what about medicine?” you ask. “Can’t I just take medicine?”

Sure! Just be aware that it definitely contains morphine and probably contains cocaine, or mercury, or arsenic, or sulfur, or pulverized bits of ancient Egyptian mummies (I am not kidding. True, the latter had started to fall out of favor in the 19th century, but, like. Stop).

Above: Hard drugs, but just for you.

You think I’m joking?

Above: PARTY TIME.

Sometimes, a doctor would just advise that you move to a “more temperate climate” like Rome or Spain if you were feeling chronically ill, which might help you get a tan and COULD help if you had sucky lungs, but eventually, you’d just die anyway, because what you really needed was a strong antibiotic or antiviral medication and the closest you were gonna get was Mrs. Hopplebopple’s Temperance Tonic, which was probably filled with ground up baby bones and just so much heroin.

And don’t even get me started on Victorian surgical tools:

Open wide.

1. Water

There are three rules in this life: don’t watch any Adam Sandler movies except for maybe Anger Management, don’t eat the yellow snow, and do not, ever, for any reason, ever drink water in Victorian England.

That’s because it was about as clean as a Victorian hospital.

Meaning it wasn’t. At all.

Victorian water--of the Thames variety--contained:

Cholera, one of the deadliest killers of the era and bad water’s favorite roommate.

Poop, human and otherwise, because a functioning sewer system? I don’t know her. (At least, not until the 1860s.)

Pee, human and otherwise, because nothing says, “Jolly Old England” like an open trench of piss rolling through the city.

Dead things, like animals, fish (which are animals, so why am I listing them as a separate thing?), and, occasionally, humans.

Chemicals, which spewed forth from the great factories in billowing, bubbling, belching rivers of sludge. (Ha! Omg, yes, I was an English major!)

The Thames was so filthy that Londoners called it “Monster Soup.”

Above: Same.

In 1855, scientist Michael Faraday (who was also kind of hot; tell me I’m wrong), wrote a letter to the Times about the disgusting state of the river:

"Near the bridges the feculence rolled up in clouds so dense that they were visible at the surface, even in water of this kind. ... The smell was very bad, and common to the whole of the water; it was the same as that which now comes up from the gully-holes in the streets; the whole river was for the time a real sewer."

Tl;dr: “It smelled like ass.”

In fact, it got so bad, so putrid, so horrifically clogged with every disgusting thing your mind and your butthole can possibly conjure up, that it lead to one of my favorite things to read about in the world: The Great Stink of 1858.

Yes, that’s the real name. I did not make that up. History is incredible.

Above: Summer vacation, 1858.

The summer of 1858 was miserably hot in London. And the Thames was miserably clogged with poop, and pee, and chemicals, and dead things, and, uh oh, cholera. During July and August that year, the smell wafting from the river was so offensive that Parliament was actually adjourned because everybody kept throwing up. Cholera devastated the city. The water was killing London.

Faced with either the prospect of living with a city-wide vomit-and-diarrhea smell for the rest of forever OR finally cleaning things up, the government actually did something right and chose the latter. They contracted civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette to overhaul the city’s sewer, to which Bazalgette, pinching his nose, responded, “FINALLY.”

Above: Joesph Bazalgette, savior of the London sewers and purveyor of a truly beautiful mustache.

Bazalgette proceeded to build the London sewer system still in use today. His efforts greatly reduced the number of cholera deaths, cleared the Thames of its Cronenberg-esque muck, and ensured that poop goes where it’s supposed to: way the hell out of HERE and way the hell under THERE.

Water sanitation still had a long way to go, though, which meant you either had to boil your water to kill the bacteria in it, or you could just drink alcohol instead, which was the safer option but which would also leave you very dehydrated and also, if imbibed excessively, would leave you very dead.

So really, you were doomed in some way no matter what you did, and if that isn’t the moral of the entire Victorian story, then I don’t know what is.

#victorian #listory

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