Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, prepares to drink a cold one with Carl Luger, of the Peter Luger steakhouse, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 1945. (Via Carol Siri Johnson.)

What I learned today: The hot dog was invented in Coney Island in 1867 at Feltman’s. (Via PBS & the Coney Island History Project.)

Tammany Bank, a mechanical bank crafted c. 1875 that depicts Boss Tweed. Put a coin in Tweed’s hand and he slips it in his pocket. Someone should make these depicting each member of the 112th Congress. (Courtesy the New-York Historical Society.)

thenoobyorker:

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

Pyongyang Overwhelmed with Grief at Demise of comrade Kim Jong Il 

This is too intense.

Crazy-time. Wondering how staged this is — or do people normally mourn world leaders while standing in tidy rows?

fuckyeahlatinamericanhistory:

Virgin of Guadalupe flag carried by Miguel Hidalgo during the Mexican War of Independence.

fuckyeahlatinamericanhistory:

disturbthebookmites:

Ángel Arcabucero (or Angel with Firearm), Unknown Spanish Peruvian, 17th.

An ángel arcabucero (arquebusier angel) is an angel depicted with an arquebus (an early muzzle-loaded firearm) instead of the traditional sword, dressed in clothing inspired by that of Spanish aristocrats. The style arose in the Viceroyalty of Peru in the second half of 17th century and was especially prevalent in the Cuzco School.

In his work Ángeles apócrifos de la América Virreinal (1992), Ramón Mujica Pinilla noted the link between ángeles arcabuceros and certain winged warriors from the pre-Hispanic pantheon. The good reception that these works found among indigenous people of the era may be due in part to the ease with which they could identify these winged warriors with their ancient gods and heroes. According to Kelly Donahue-Wallace, the genre probably originated in the Collao region, near Lake Titicaca, and were actually based on Spanish and Dutch engravings. Some of these European prints depicted apocryphal archangels, condemned by the Church, but apocryphal motifs survived in the Andes. (via)

I want those shoes.

fuckyeahlatinamericanhistory:

Today In Latin American History

Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata was born in the state of Morelos on August 8, 1879.

Now that’s a ‘stache.

César Chávez and his sister, outside their home in Arizona. (Via.)

niborama:

Awe and Shock

From Confucius to Mein Kampf to Kerouac,  New York Public Library puts it all out there for 100th-anniversary show 

One gets the sense that the New York Public Library is hedging its bets by giving the 100th-anniversary exhibition opening on Saturday the blandest title it could, “Celebrating 100 Years.” But then it’s hard to think of an apt phrase to encompass the 250-plus objects in the show, which range from a copy of the Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson (July 4-10, 1776) to a lock of Mary Shelley’s hair to sent to Thomas Jefferson Hogg (1815) to Kiki Smith’s untitled self-portrait made by dragging her inked hair across paper (1990). 

With appearances by St. Augustine, Dante, Columbus, Rembrandt, Confucius, Beethoven, Muybridge, two Marxes (Karl and Groucho), two Eliots (George and T. S.), Houdini, El Lissitzky, Borges, Mao, Jenny Holzer, Vik Muniz, the Gutenberg Bible, Russian propaganda, Jack Kerouac’s rolling papers, Malcolm X’s Koran, along with displays of dance cards, tobacco cards, Beatles cards, and the ballot for the 1994 South African elections, the show is intended to stress the library’s seemingly contradictory roles—as an institution that amasses great treasures, yet one that is scrupulously nonjudgmental of the objects it acquires. “This is collective memory, not collective conscience,” Thomas Mellins, the independent curator who faced down collections of more than 60 million objects to come up with the 250 items in the show, likes to say.

Grouping these objects in four categories—observation, contemplation, creativity, and society—Mellin gamely tries to touch as many bases as possible, including world religions, exploration, colonialism, revolution, capitalism, civil rights, fine art, and popular culture. There will be complaints. Some critics will wonder if it’s really necessary to show porn, or a hood and cape from the Ku Klux Klan, or two anti-Semitic items from Nazi Germany, one being a children’s book and the other Mein Kampf. Others will complain that the show privileges Euro-American culture, and the usual suspects of the western canon (as well as the present-day art scene). Others will argue that it fizzles out when it gets to the 21st century. But there’s something for everything to love, and something for everyone to hate, and that’s kind of the point.

Manuscripts, editions, and ephemera receive equal reverence in the show, which starts with Mesopotamian cuneiforms (3^rd–2^nd millennium BCE) and lovingly chronicles the invention of cyanotypes, the Phonograph, the Xerox, and other devices that aid in the reproduction of images and information. The final work (chronologically speaking) is a lone MacBook streaming a news feed. It’s the sole nod to the digital revolution that is unfolding right now, but the institutional commitment is clear. No matter what society produces and how it is disseminated, this exhibition suggests, the library will find ways to collect and preserve it.

Dime novel from the popular series Ten Cent Claude Duval Novels (ca. 1870s) courtesy New York Public Library

This exhibit sounds damn fascinating.