Sarah Biffen (1784 – 2 October 1850), also known as Sarah Biffin, Sarah Beffin, or by her married name Mrs E. M. Wright, was a Victorian English painter born with no arms and only vestigial legs. She was 94 cm (37 in) tall. She was born in 1784 in Somerset.

Despite her disability she learned to read and write, and to paint using her mouth. She was apprenticed to a man named Dukes, who exhibited her as an attraction throughout England. In the St. Bartholomew's Fair of 1808, she came to the attention of George Douglas,

Mrs Bryant's Pleasure dolls' house made in England between 1860 and 1865. Victoria & Albert Museum.

This house is not a child's plaything. It was made for a lady called Mrs Bryant in the early 1860s, who lived in a house in Surbiton called Oakenshaw. Mrs Bryant wanted to make a miniature record of the interior of her home. The only child-related object is a child's folding chair in the drawing room.

Dolls' house known as May Foster's House made in England, 1800. Victoria & Albert Museum. This house was donated to the museum by the great grand-daughter of the little girl for whom the house was originally made.

Armistice Day is commemorated every year on 11 November to mark the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiègne, France at 5:45 am, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front of World War I which took effect at eleven o'clock in the morning—the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918.

The first photographic record of an actual live medical operation. Daguerrotype portrait by Josiah Johnson Hawes & Albert Southworthlate, 1847. The setting for this daguerreotype is the teaching amphitheater of Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. John Collins Warren, cofounder of the hospital and professor of anatomy, stands with his hands upon the patient’s thigh, explaining the proceedings to a student

A chocolate brownie or simply a brownie is a square or rectangular chocolate baked treat. In 1893, Bertha Palmer asked a pastry chef for a dessert suitable for ladies attending the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition. She requested a confection smaller than a piece of cake that could be included in boxed lunches. The result was the Palmer House Brownie with walnuts and an apricot glaze. The name was given to the dessert sometime after 1893, but was not used by cook books or journals

The Royal Portuguese Cabinet of Reading is a library and lusophone cultural institution, is located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The institution was founded in 1837 by a group of forty-three Portuguese immigrants,political refugees,to promote culture among the Portuguese community The building of the current headquarters,designed by the Portuguese architect Rafael da Silva e Castro,was erected between 1880-87 in Neo-Manueline style. This architectural style evokes the exuberant Gothic-Renaissance style in force at the time of the Portuguese discoveries.

Neapolitan ice cream is a type of ice cream composed of three separate flavors (vanilla, chocolate and strawberry) arranged side by side in the same container. The first recorded recipe was created by head chef of the royal Prussian household Louis Ferdinand Jungius in 1839 It was named in the late 19th century as a reflection of its presumed origins in the cuisine of the Italian city of Naples, and the many Neapolitan immigrants who brought their expertise in frozen desserts with them to the United States.

Sarah Biffen (1784 – 2 October 1850), also known as Sarah Biffin, Sarah Beffin, or by her married name Mrs E. M. Wright, was a Victorian English painter born with no arms and only vestigial legs. She was 94 cm (37 in) tall. She was born in 1784 in Somerset. Despite her disability she learned to read and write, and to paint using her mouth. She was apprenticed to a man named Dukes, who exhibited her as an attraction throughout England. In the St. Bartholomew's Fair of 1808, she came to the attention of George Douglas,

📷🪦 Post-mortem photography: A THREAD 🪦📷

(trigger warning: images of deceased people, death) Post-mortem photography (also known as memorial portraiture or a mourning portrait) is the practice of photographing the recently deceased.

A mortsafe was a construction designed to protect graves from disturbance and used in the United Kingdom. They were placed over the graves of newly deceased people during the 19th century, and were made of varying materials, typically from iron or stone. Resurrectionists had supplied schools of anatomy since the early 18th century. This was due to the necessity for medical students to learn anatomy by attending dissections of human subjects, which was frustrated by the very limited allowance of dead bodies

🦢👑✨ King Ludwig II of Bavaria: A THREAD ✨👑🦢 Ludwig II (Ludwig Otto Friedrich Wilhelm; 25 August 1845 – 13 June 1886) was King of Bavaria from 1864 until his death in 1886. He is sometimes called the Swan King or der Märchenkönig ('the Fairy Tale King').

Silk skirt and blouse dyed with Sir William Henry Perkin's Mauve Aniline Dye, England, 1862-63. Science Museum.

William Henry Perkin discovered the artificial dye mauveine in 1856 by accident. He was trying to synthesise quinine – an expensive natural substance used to treat malaria – by isolating aniline salts from coal tar, a waste product from the gas industry. Perkin’s experiment failed, but he was left with an unfamiliar dark substance which, when dissolved in alcohol, produced a purple solution which could dye silk.

Pears' Blanc de Perle, 1890. Science Museum.

It is a cosmetic product made by the cosmetic company Pears, that was marketed towards everyday women and as theatrical make-up in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
It was applied to the face similarly to modern foundation products. It was advertised as “imparting a delicate and permanent whiteness to face, neck and arms”. Skin whitening has a long history, used since antiquity. Face whitening cream containing toxic substances like arsenic and lead became popular in early modern Europe.

💜✨ The corset, its evolution through time and the cultural value that it had: A THREAD ✨💜 The corset is one of the most controversial items of clothing in the history of fashion. Worn by women through the centuries, the corset was an essential element of fashionable dress.

The Sutro Baths was a large, privately owned public saltwater swimming pool complex in the Lands End area of the Outer Richmond District in western San Francisco, California. Built in 1896, the Sutro Baths was located north of Ocean Beach,the Cliff House,Seal Rocks,and west of Sutro Heights Park.

Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902) was an Austro-German psychiatrist. He published extensively on hypnosis, criminology, and sexual behavior. He is famous for his book Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), a study of “sexual perversity,” and for his coinage of the terms “sadism” (after the name of Marquis de Sade) and “masochism” (using the name of a contemporary writer, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whose partially autobiographical novel Venus in Furs tells of the protagonist's desire to be whipped and enslaved by a beautiful woman).

The Gentleman's Guide to Self-Defense Maneuvers, 1895

The Marble Boat (Chinese: 石舫; pinyin: Shí Fǎng), also known as the Boat of Purity and Ease, is a lakeside pavilion on the grounds of the Summer Palace in Beijing, China. It was first erected in 1755 during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor. The original pavilion was made from a base of large stone blocks which supported a wooden superstructure done in a traditional Chinese design.

Mustaches flourished all throughout the Victorian years. Great gobs of wax were melted and then applied to the mustache to keep the curls intact. And therein lay a problem that cropped up when steaming hot cups of coffee or tea were carried up to the mouth for sipping. The steam melted the wax and sent it right into the cup.

There are many causes for boiler explosions such as poor water treatment causing scaling and over heating of the plates, low water level, a stuck safety valve, or even a furnace explosion that in turn, if severe enough, can cause a boiler explosion. Poor operator training resulting in neglect or other mishandling of the boiler has been a frequent cause of explosions since the beginning of the industrial revolution.