Old Colorized Black and White Photographs

It can be amazing to see dull grey photographs transformed into color. In recent days, I discovered a thread on Reddit and Imgur. This thread shows views of iconic blank and white photographs colored by the digital hand. My favorites are below:

Albert Einstein, 1921:





klassixx posted the colored versions.






















Hindenburg, 1937:















See more colorful pictures at the link above and here.

Fun Fact:

Did you know that J.R. Tolkien would write letters to his children every Christmas?
Yeah, he would write to them as Santa Claus and tell them of what wonderful adventures were happening each year at the North Pole.

I hope you had a great time over the holidays!

20th Century Mugshots Online

Random fun fact
The Justice Police Museum has a archive of 20th century police records that are beautiful centered on the Sydney Living Museum website and on the historic history trust collection.
There you can find police records specifically about the 1920's to 1940's. These are fascinating items of history they are also valuable items of vivid art.

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They are such stories as the true story of a woman who dressed as a man.  The story was this: Eugenia Falleni who dressed as a 'Harry Crawford' since 1899. As Harry she married a widow named Annie Birkett who had a son. After four years of marriage, Annie had told a relative that she had found out 'something amazing about Harry.' Shortly afterwards she disappeared. Later on a body was identified as hers. It was supposed that Harry was the murderer, and Harry's gender was found out, but when it was found Harry's second wife said she had always wondered why he was so shy.


Check out

Prisoners: Murder, Mayhem, and Petit Larceny 

by Arne Svenson          

Bring justice to this link by clicking on the picture.

Sources:
Eugenia Falleni, alias Harry Crawford, special photograph number 234, Central Police Station Sydney, 1920: http://collection.hht.net.au/firsthhtpictures/fullRecordPicture.jsp?recnoListAttr=recnoList&recno=31246

The Reality about 16th Century Marriages

Random Fun Fact about history

What You've Heard

Everybody knows that people in the 16th century married young at the ages of about 14 or 12.....Right?

The Truth

Totally, wrong. It always annoys me when people think of the Renaissance Era in that way. Most people married around 25. If anyone was going to be marrying young it was wealthy people, even then it rarely happened.

Though the age of consent was pretty low: 12 for a girl and 14 for a boy.

Quotes on Marriage from Early Modern Contemporaries

-"A man finds himself seven years older a day after his marriage," --Sir Francis Bacon

-" There are good marriages, but no delightful ones," --Duke of Rochefoucald

-"I believe marriages would in general be happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the lord chancellor, upon a due consideration of the characters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice in the matter,"--Dr. Johnson

Sources:

Forty thousand quotations, prose and poetical by George G. Harrap: http://books.google.com/books?id=mToeAQAAMAAJ&dq=quotations&source=gbs_navlinks_s

The Age of Marriage: http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/society/family/marriage.html

Religious Paintings of the 13th century

Jesus has the body of a man and the head
of a boy.

Random Fun Fact
In the the bridge between the ancient times and middle ages, it seems 13th century artists didn't really care about how church altar paintings maybe interpreted but only if the viewers got the message of what was happening inside of it. This resulted in some awkward paintings.








When I'm really tired and don't feel like writing a post, I hope to write a quick post like this one of a random fun fact about a specific painting or other things.

Rasputin is Superhuman.

Rasputin: he knows what's going on.

Everyone in his life wanted to see him dead after the media showed him as a devil on human earth. He was a monk, healer and a private adviser to the Russian Czar family...who later were also murdered.  Hey, what can they do, when Death comes their way? Death meaning people trying to kill them.

Random fun fact:
He predicted his own death and the Czar's:

“When the bell tolls three times, it will announce that I have been killed. If I am killed by common men, you and your children will rule Russia for centuries to come; if I am killed by one of your stock, you and your family will be killed by the Russian people! Pray Tsar of Russia. Pray.”

The people who plotted to kill bated him by inviting him to tea."Oh, Why don't you come and have so tea with us sometime?" I imagined the plotting murderers said to him. The plotting murderers were Vasily, Vladimir, Prince Felix, Grand Duke Dmitri, Dr. Lizavert, and Lt. Sukhotin, like I said a lot of people wanted to kill Rasputin.

Felix was the one who invited him for tea. When Rasputin arrived the other plotters hid in the other room getting drunk. Felix gave him some cyanide to kill him, which was hidden in his food. But for some reason, when he ate the poison, it did not kill him, it just made him feel unwell. So Felix invited him to pray to the crucifix in the room and Rasputin agreed. As Rasputin knelt to kiss the cross, Felix shot him in the back.

Felix thought he had killed Rasputin so he allowed the other plotters to emerge and Dmitri, Lizavert, and Sukhotin left to burn the monk's possessions. Felix and Vladimir waited for them to return to get rid of the body. As they did, Vladimir left the room to drink more. Then Felix yelled to him "...Shoot him. He is alive! He is running away!" Vladimir chased Rasputin, shot him in the back and head, and when Rasputin was down, he went and hit him hard in the head...just to make sure he died this time (gosh, didn't they know when to give a guy a break!?).

Felix, then, became 'enraged' at the sight of Rasputin's face, I'd like to say he became crazy; He started hitting his face with a dumbbell, even after that Rasputin was still alive so they threw him in a river.  He was dead. May I say Superhuman?

Sources:
Murder of Grigori Rasputin: http://www.omolenko.com/en/rasputin/platonov-murder.htm 
Rasputin Quotes: http://historyofrussia.org/rasputin-quotes/