There are countless social media sites out there for the picking.
And as sure as you'll be able to pick up 87,000 pictures of One Direction in very slightly different poses, you can also find yourself some pretty awesome history posts too. This week, I wanted to share some of the fascinating, emotional and occasionally creepy history posts that I've found on Pinterest.


One in a billion....

From The Meta Picture via Erin McGuire

Not just the Egyptians..

From The Meta Picture via Eizabeth Hough

A US soldier mocks Hitler...

From Flickr.com via Talyn McFarlane

Tallest man and shortest man in the world, with an average lady...

From Buzzfeed.com via Hailea Reign

Graffiti in the Tower on London...

From Flickr.com via Charlie Haynes

Intolerable Cruelty: In 1901 a woman in Poiters, France was found having been confined to her room for 24 years by her mother...

From imigur.com via Bridgette LaShae

Damage to the Ribcage from Corset in 19thc London...

From fuckyeahforensics on Tumblr, via Bridgette LaShae

Horses are for sissies....

From Buzzfeed.com via Erika Cucci

Native American mother and child...

From Nikon David via Melanie Adamd

St.Valentius (Wasselden, Germany). The town's church hold's the world's largest collection of fully articulated and bejewelled skeletons...

From Buzzfeed via NoGames216

Plan of Nippur. Perhaps one of the most ancient urban images at reduced scale. From the mid-2nd millennium BC

From Hilprecht Collection, Friedrich Schiller Universitat, Jena. History of Cartography, Vol.I, fig 6.7, via Marcy Ganow

The Fallen of Mount Everest...

 

From Buzzfeed.com, via Carmen Elliott

"Llullaillaco Maiden": a 15 year old girl who was sacrificed during the Inca Empire. It is thought as a mix of religious rite and social control. She was chosen a year prior to her death, fed a ritualistic diet to help her gain weight, drugged and left at the shine at the Volcano Llullaillaco where she died of exposure. Her body was preserved at 82 ft for 500 years and she is thought to be the best preserved Andean mummy ever found...

From TheLadyGoogle via Rebecca Lacey

1900s Mother and Child...

from Flickr.com via Meredith Moran Coronato

Daredevil...

Via Kris DayVincent

I hope that you've enjoyed this instalment. Needless to say, we've barely even scratched the surface of what you can find on Pinterest, so why not take a look for yourself and share your favourite posts in the comments?

Art has grown and developed over the centuries, but bad art is just bad art.

I'd like to share with you this week a brilliant little tumblr that I found called Ancient Art Fails.Taking a look through the full breadth of our noble ancient history, this blog isn't afraid to call a dud a dud.

For example, check out this bad-boy:

Clearly, heaven has plenty of fermented drinks to enjoy and this cherub was caught a little worse for wears when he sat to pose for this sculpture. Somehow the harlot-red lipstick is just the cherry on the top of the cake.

Now I have a real thing for ecclesiastical art. You want to keep this girl happy? Trot me 'round a Cathedral somewhere and let me gawp at the architecture and try to pick out how many pieces of momento mori and pre-reformation survivors I can get my hands on. So let me say with some conviction that this is not a typical piece of stained glass art. This guy is dodgy as all heck and looks like he's nursing a hangover from the same party the lipstick-cherub went to.

Of course it's not just the Christian entities that get the 'ancient art fails' treatment. For example, it's not entirely clear whether this ancient urn is indeed some sort of sheep/goat god/dess...or just has really goofy ears,

And it's not only the gods. The art failure even trickled down to noble pharaohs. This guy, for example, looks rather like he's about to pass wind. Or he's told a very 'funny' joke that he's just waiting for everyone to get. Either way he does look like someone's fun uncle - maybe the artist got it spot on after all.

"But wait!" I hear you cry. "Old art is just old. You cant judge it's quality based on modern standards!"

Believe me, I hear you. Styles do change. But sometimes bad art is just bad, and always will be.

Need proof? Ancient Art Fails provided this little comparison: some gorgeous Roman works of artistic genius.....and the other one.

I guess you get what you pay for.

While the tumblr itself looks quite young, it always welcomes submissions and looks to be something entertaining to keep an eye on. So why not head over there and enjoy our ancestors' less-than-shining moments for yourself?

Sources
http://ancientartfails.tumblr.com/

This week I'd like to bring you some of the most bizarre doppelgängers in history.

You're bound to have seen posts like these floating around the internet in your time, and they're always entertaining.

By KidCossack

The idea of a doppleganger comes from the German 'Double Walker', which is a paranormal double of a person that is normally associated with evil or misfortune. In Norse mythology a Vardoger was a spirit-like double that performed all of a living person's actions in advance. In Egyptian mythology, it was possible to have a 'ka' or spirit double who had the same memories and feelings as the original person.

In modern days, the word doppelgänger is assumed to be more like a 'clone' or 'look-alike'. Of course, there have always been identical twins in the world which are about as naturally similar as humans can get. (Though, it is worth noting, they are not technically clones of one another down at a deep genetic level due to differences in cell replication etc). We have even been manually creating clones through science for over a century! In 1885 through human interaction Sea urchin embryos were split , but it took until 1996 for Dolly the sheep to be created from non-embryonic cells. In 2013 it was believed that Shoukhrat Mitalipov and Colleagues created embryoinc stem cells from the non-embryonic skin cells of a human baby with a rare genetic disorder. Potentially, there is nothing to stop humans from being cloned in the near future.

While much of the superstition and sinister stories of dopplegangers have drifted away from our culture, there are still remnants remaining. Identical twins are often used as a shorthand for the creepiness of the doppelgänger and the idea of 'mirror doubles' of evil still persist in science fiction.

In the end, there is still something equally parts unsettling and fascinating about seeing a look-alike. Below are a whole series of celebrities and their historical dopplegangers...



Tom Cruise and Earnest Hemmingway in 1918
 

By Alixmc

 Eddie Murphy and an old photograph

 Sylvester Stallone and Pope Gregory 9th

Jay Z and 1939 Harlem Man

Huffington Post

Rupert Grint and Sir David Wilkie

 Ellen Degeneres and Henry David Thoreau

 Natalie Cassidy and Catherine of Aragon

George Carlin and Charles Darwin

 Peter Dinklage and 'Dwarf Sitting on the Floor'

Justin Timberlake and an old photograph

David Schwimmer and an 1890s gentleman

Glenn Close and George Washington

Leonardo Dicaprio and A Vintage Housewife

Stephen Fry and Oscar Wilde

...alright, well admittedly this isn't fair. he did play the writer after all.

Alexander Serverus and Eminem

 Barack Obama and Malcolm X

Marc Ghali

Micheal Cera and a Victorian Woman

Micheal Phelps and Civil War Soldier

Maggie Gyllenhaal and Roser Wilder Lane

Keaneu Reeve, a pirate Painting and Paul Mounet (1847-1922)

Hank Azaria and Rudolf Steiner

 Jack Black and the Barber of Seville

 John Travolta and 1860s Man

 
 Bruce Willis and General Douglas MacArthur

 Queen Latifah and Zoe Neale Hurston

Bill Nye and Abraham Lincoln

Philip 4th and Mark Zuckerberg

Nicholas Cage and...Everyone
Nicholas Cage has become a whole meme unto himself and, as a result, he seems to have a small army of doppelgängers in his arsenal.

Civil-War Era Tenessee Man

 The Virgin Mary

George Chandler

An old baseball player

Miley Cyrus

I hope this goofy post set you up for enjoying your bank holiday. Have a good one :)



Sources
history of cloning

Findmydoppleganger
humorsharing
jinxdragon
mirrorspockimage
Huffington Post
Tom cruise doppleganger
Totallylookslike
Memebase
zerowoes
Hunted history of the tri star state
buzzfed
the daily mail morph
boredmbash
The daily beast