Footage of London filmed in the late 1920s by British cinematographer Claude Friese-Greene. There’s even a snippet of the fifth and final Ashes cricket test, played between England and Australia, at the Oval, in 1926.

We don’t buy coffee like we used to… for a period during the seventeenth century, coffee houses in England were issuing their own coffee tokens, as small change was in short supply.

Via Brain Pickings.

An interactive record of observed meteorite strikes since 861. The numbers really pick up from around about 1800, but I’d say, or at least hope, that this is on account of increased reporting of strikes, rather than Earth being hit by more objects from space.

A collection of personal ads dating from the nineteenth century, as put together by Rutgers University history professor Pam Epstein.

Is there anything those looking for love in the twenty-first century can learn from our ancestors? Probably what not to do, rather than what to do, I’d say.

When it comes to travelling to other planets in the solar system, there’s little doubt that Mars is firmly in everyone’s sights. Baltimore scientist Robert Condit however had other ideas. In 1928 he built a rocket that he planned to fly to Venus in.

The Baltimore rocket was fueled with 50 gallons of gasoline with eight steel pipes for engines. The several layers of sailcloth that covered the rocket were impregnated with varnish making an airtight shell “as brittle as glass.” The nose section unscrewed to allow the rocket’s single passenger ingress. Inside was a large tank of oxygen, a supply of concentrated food tablets and water in 1.5-inch pipes that lined the interior to save space. There were also a “couple [of] flashlights and a first aid kit, and that was it.” There were two glass portholes, though there was no way to steer the rocket. He planned to hit Venus by taking very careful aim at takeoff. In the nose was a 25-foot silk parachute that the pilot could push out in order for the rocket to make a safe descent.

It was a bold undertaking to say the least, though from what I can gather Condit’s vessel lacked two vital features. One was the ability to steer, or guide, the craft, as Venus could only be reached “by taking very careful aim at takeoff”. There also appeared to be no way to return to Earth, an equally crucial point, if you ask me.

Perhaps though Condit was hoping to get the jump on Mars One?

Time travellers for one ought to swot up on their “ultraconserved words”, a collection of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, that have endured the changes that living languages are subject to, least they need to form sentences that will be understood, should they find themselves somewhere in the distant past.

A team of researchers has come up with a list of two dozen “ultraconserved words” that have survived 150 centuries. It includes some predictable entries: “mother,” “not,” “what,” “to hear” and “man.” It also contains surprises: “to flow,” “ashes” and “worm.” The existence of the long-lived words suggests there was a “proto-Eurasiatic” language that was the common ancestor to about 700 contemporary languages that are the native tongues of more than half the world’s people.

Wired magazine have gathered up a collection of internet memes from the last 15 or 16 years. How many can you name though?

The site where Stonehenge is located may have once been close to a migration route used by wild aurochs, therefore making for some good hunting, meaning the prehistoric monument could have been a way of marking the spot, or so go some recent thoughts on the subject.

The team uncovered roughly 350 animal bones and 12,500 flint tools or fragments, as well as lots of evidence of burning. Carbon dating suggested the area was occupied by humans from 7500 B.C. to 4700 B.C. – roughly 5,000 years prior to the erection of the first stones at Stonehenge. “The spring may have originally attracted large animals to it, which would have aided hunting and may have led to associations that the area was a sacred hunting ground,” Jacques wrote.

Update: no, not a hunting ground after all, rather Stonehenge was a burial ground for the rich, according to another study. The mystery as to the site’s purpose, and meaning, remains then.

Dietmar Eckell, a German photographer based in Thailand, has assembled an impressive collection of images of aircraft wrecks from across the world. The photos are to be featured in a book, “Happy Endings”, that Eckell plans to publish.

As the title suggests, the passengers and crew survived the crashes that brought each of the aeroplanes they were aboard to grief, and its these stories that Eckell now hopes to tell.

Via PetaPixel.

US sailor Dennis Hale recounts the experience of being shipwrecked after the freighter he was aboard sank during a storm on Lake Huron. Of a crew of 29, Hale, who spent almost 40 hours drifting on a life raft in freezing conditions, was the sole survivor of the 1966 Great Lakes tragedy.

The Morrell was peeling apart. Invisible hands ripped the deck like a sheet of cardboard. The 60-year-old boat ran on coal, so severed steam pipes billowed into the cold air. Sparks crackled from snapped wires. Since the propeller was still churning, the stern didn’t sink, but slid around in a blind half-circle, slamming into the bow, where Hale and his shipmates were waiting for their dangling raft to reach water. The impact vaulted all of them overboard. When Hale surfaced, he saw a carbide lamp, glowing from the raft. The light flashed in and out of sight as dunes of water gathered up and collapsed. Hale swam toward the shifting beacon, clawing handfuls of wave. Two crewmen, Art Stojek and John Cleary, had beaten him there. They pulled him aboard. Soon, they were joined by a fourth, Charles “Fuzzy” Fosbender.