Thread: let's take a look at some bizarre exercise equipment created by Gustav Zander in the Victorian Era. If you want to try these, suits and corsets are mandatory.
First: This will train your balance and pelvis at the same time as counteracting constipation and haemorrhoids.
"Come and get your stomach kneaded!"
"For those who are unable – or who don’t dare – to get up on horseback, this apparatus vibrates the rider’s body."
Thread: A list of "don’ts" for women riding bicycles published in 1895 in the newspaper New York World.
- Don’t be a fright.
- Don’t faint on the road.
- Don’t wear a man’s cap.
- Don’t wear tight garters.
- Don’t forget your toolbag
- Don’t attempt a “century.”
1.
- Don’t coast. It is dangerous.
- Don’t boast of your long rides.
- Don’t criticize people’s “legs.”
- Don’t wear loud hued leggings.
- Don’t cultivate a “bicycle face.”
- Don’t refuse assistance up a hill.
- Don’t wear clothes that don’t fit.
2.
- Don’t neglect a “light’s out” cry.
- Don’t wear jewelry while on a tour.
- Don’t race. Leave that to the scorchers.
- Don’t wear laced boots. They are tiresome.
- Don’t imagine everybody is looking at you.
- Don’t go to church in your bicycle costume.
Pliny the Younger was governor of Pontus/Bithynia from 111-113 AD. In one of the letters sent to Emperor Trajan, he wrote:
"It is my practice, my lord [Trajan], to refer to you all matters concerning which I am in doubt... I have never participated in trials of Christians. /1
I therefore do not know what offenses it is the practice to punish or investigate, and to what extent. And I have been not a little hesitant as to whether there should be any distinction on account of age or no difference between the very young and the more mature...
whether pardon is to be granted for repentance, or, if a man has once been a Christian... I have interrogated these as to whether they were Christians; those who confessed a second and a third time; threatening them with punishment; those who persisted I ordered executed."
"I awake all filled with you. Your image and the intoxicating pleasures of last night, allow my senses no rest. Sweet and matchless Josephine, how strangely you work upon my heart.
Are you angry with me? Are you unhappy?
/1
Are you upset?
My soul is broken with grief and my love for you forbids repose. But how can I rest any more, when I yield to the feeling that masters my inmost self, when I quaff from your lips and from your heart a scorching flame?
/2
Yes! One night has taught me how far your portrait falls short of yourself!
You start at midday: in three hours I shall see you again.
Till then, a thousand kisses, mio dolce amor! But give me none back for they set my blood on fire."
Apicius' De Re Coquinaria - a Roman cookbook written c. the 4th century. Let's take a look:
- Make a paste of stewed brains [calf's, pig's, etc], season with pepper, cumin, laser, broth, thickened wine, milk and eggs. Poach it over a weak fire or in a hot water bath.
To make salt meat sweet: you can make salt meats [i.e. meat preserved by salting] sweet by first boiling them in milk and then finishing them in water.
To keep oysters: fumigate a vinegar barrel with pitch, wash it out with vinegar and stack the oysters in it.
Spoiled honey made good: how bad honey may be turned into a saleable article is to mix one part of the spoiled honey with two parts of good honey.
To keep all vegetables green: all vegetables will remain green if boiled with cooking soda.
Pliny the Younger was invited to a dinner party in Rome in 97-8 AD. He then wrote a letter to tell his friend Avitus all about it:
"It would be a long story, and of no great importance, to tell you by what accident I found myself dining the other day with an individual... /1
... with whom I am by no means intimate, and who, in his own opinion, does things in good style and economically as well, but according to mine, with meanness and extravagance combined. /2
Some very elegant dishes were served up to himself and a few more of us, whilst those placed before the rest of the company consisted simply of cheap dishes and scraps.
There were, in small bottles, three different kinds of wine... /3