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The Jeffers Petroglyphs: Historical Treasure in an Unexpected Place

by JackEl-Hai May 9, 2013

by Jack El-Hai, Wonders & Marvels contributor The Upper Midwest of the U.S. is not well known for its archaeological treasures, and it’s easy to see why. The region has utterly transformed over the past 200 years through the loss of 99 percent of its tall grass prairie, the felling of most of its original [...]

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Masturbation and the Dangerous Woman

by Lisa Smith April 30, 2013

By Lisa Smith, W&M Contributor Remember all those playground stories about masturbation causing hairy palms and blindness? Those tales go way back. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, much ink was spilled on the devastation that masturbation would cause. Men’s frequent self-pleasuring would destroy the fibres of their penis, and the masturbator would become effeminate, [...]

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Charles Dawes: Vice President, Nobel Winner and Musical Hit Maker

by JackEl-Hai April 9, 2013

by Jack El-Hai, Wonders & Marvels contributor Barry Manilow, Van Morrison, the Four Tops, Cass Elliot, Isaac Hayes, Bing Crosby and Nat “King” Cole all owe a lot to a now obscure United States vice president and Nobel Peace Prize winner named Charles Dawes. Those musical artists, as well as dozens of others, recorded a [...]

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London’s Lost Dogs

by Lucy Inglis March 14, 2013

Between 1700 and 1800, there are almost 500 advertisements for lost dogs in the central London news-sheets. The abduction of cosseted dogs seems to have been a rather lucrative trade, judging by some of the rewards offered. It suits many modern historians to talk of cock-fighting and the riotous Cambridge students who tortured cats, [...]

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Ruby Stars

by Eric Laursen March 2, 2013

By Eric Laursen (W&M Contributor) In 1935 the tsarist eagles that once perched atop the five towers of the Moscow Kremlin were replaced with massive revolving silver stars cut out of metal, with the design of a hammer and sickle made from semi-precious stones mined in the Urals (around 7000 stones were used in total). [...]

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Valentine’s Day according to The Star, 1791

by Lucy Inglis February 14, 2013

Happy Valentine’s Day! The following are the Valentine’s Day entries from London’s Star newspaper on February 14th, 1791. VALENTINE ———- Arise, arise, sweet VALENTINE, To see the Sun in lustre shine; As liveried clouds around him wait. Arrang’d in more than usual state; Propitious on thy natal day, While surly Winter slinks away With all [...]

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A Short History of Valentine’s Day

by Mary Sharratt February 10, 2013

By Mary Sharratt The origins of Saint Valentine’s Day lie shrouded in obscurity. Saint Valentine himself, a third century Roman martyr, seems to have nothing to do with the romantic traditions that became associated with his feast. Dr. Douce, in his Illustrations of Shakespeare, cited in The Book of Days, writes: It was the practice [...]

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The history of menstruation

by Helen King February 10, 2013

Julia Margaret Cameron’s Hypatia By Helen King (W&M Regular Contributor) Everything has a history. I suppose it was only a matter of time before I wrote about menstruation here; my doctoral thesis was on menstruation in classical Greece. One of the questions I couldn’t answer there was ‘What did women actually do about the [...]

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Friedrich Miescher and DNA

by Holly Tucker September 29, 2012

By Sam Kean As a young man, Friedrich Miesher had trained to practice medicine in his native Switzerland. But a boyhood typhoid infection left him hard of hearing and unable to use a stethoscope or hear an invalid’s bedside bellyaching. Miescher’s father, a prominent gynecologist, suggested a career in research instead. So in 1868 the [...]

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What Color Is Your Habit?

by lizlehfeldt August 16, 2012

By Elizabeth A. Lehfeldt (W&M Regular Contributor) In the early fifteenth century male ecclesiastical visitors to the convent of Santa Clara in Barcelona cited the nuns for wearing an irregular and inappropriate habit. Rather than donning the traditional garb of Franciscan nuns, a gray or brown habit, the nuns wore a black habit more like [...]

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Diana, Callisto and Philip II

by Helen King August 10, 2012

By Helen King Between 1553 and 1562, Titian painted a number of mythological scenes for Philip II. Among these was a painting of Diana and Callisto. In the story, told most famously by the Roman poet Ovid, Callisto is one of the unmarried girls forming the virgin goddess’s entourage. Jupiter catches sight of her, and [...]

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I Need Your Help—Again!

by tracybarrett July 20, 2012

Last month I asked readers of this blog what irritated them when reading historical fiction, to help me prepare for a talk on “The Ten Commandments of Writing Historical Fiction.” I got some great responses, especially Vrmarvin’s dislike of “the over abundance of language describing costuming. Really, does it matter what color they were wearing? [...]

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Who Are You?

by Holly Tucker June 13, 2012

By Holly Tucker (Editor, Wonders & Marvels) As many of you know, my two passions are history and science. Or better yet: History of Science. And when I see a good idea, I have no problem imitating it… Over at Scientific American’s Not Exactly Rocket Science, science writer Ed Yong has turned the microphone [...]

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Midwifery and ventriloquism: did Elizabeth Cellier write her own books?

by Helen King June 10, 2012

By Helen King Possibly my favourite historical figure of all time is Elizabeth Cellier, the ‘Popish Midwife’ who was involved in one of those complicated ‘plots’ of late seventeenth-century England; the ‘meal-tub plot’, in which a list of plotters turned up in her kitchen. Was it genuine, or planted by those who wanted to represent [...]

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Helen King on Gladiators, Midwives, Traveling Vulvas, and Vibrators

by Holly Tucker May 23, 2012

Our very own Helen King did several fantastic interviews for Open University, where she is Professor of Classics. For those of you who are fans of Helen’s work (I’m raising my hand high!), have a look at the videos. And if you haven’t had a chance to look at her most recent–and hilariously fascinating–post [...]

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