Whether or not you buy into his theories (personally, we’ve always struggled with that whole women as castrated men who lack a strong superego thing), is there anyone who had a greater impact on 20th? century thought than Sigmund Freud? And yet, until today we had no idea what the man even sounded like. Now you too can listen to a recording of Freud that was taken by a BBC radio crew who visited the father of psychoanalysis at his home in Hampstead, North London back in 1938, just months after he fled from Nazi-occupied Austria. Between his heavy accent and the excruciating pain of speaking with mouth cancer, it can be difficult to make out everything that Freud is saying here, so head over to Open Culture if you’d like to read the transcript.

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Judging from this footage shot at Coney Island in 1905, school girls haven’t changed all that much in the past hundred years. Even way back then they were still taking forever to get situated in the car, strolling the boardwalk in unwieldy, impossible to navigate groups, playing mean tricks on their unsuspecting chaperone, and happiest when splashing about in the ocean — albeit with full-length dresses on. But you know what has changed? The amusement park rides. They are terrifying. The medieval contraptions that these girls gleefully hop aboard make the Cyclone look like a kiddie coaster. We sincerely hope Miss Knapp’s Select School had their parents sign permission slips.

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Today is Groundhog Day, when loyal citizenry, local mayors, and rookie reporters troop to zoos across the country to eagerly await a midsize rodent’s reaction to the morning weather. Wiarton Willie, Punxsutawney Phil, and Staten Island Chuck will all have their moment in the sun (or cloud cover), and, meteorologic equipment be damned, we might still believe just a little bit that they hold the power in their tiny paws to banish the remaining weeks of wintery doldrums. Groundhog Day is perhaps the weirdest nationally acknowledged day of observance, stemming from a Pennsylvania German tradition in which a badger or bear would perform the groundhog duties. But it’s far from the world’s only piece of bizarre weather predicting lore. From watching a cow tail to gauging the height of wasp nests, these traditions will have you feeling grateful for The Weather Channel.

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Get ready to take a serious head trip through pre-World War II Manhattan, from Wall Street to Harlem, in this 1938 video from Castle Films. You’ll get glimpses of the Bowery, “famous in song and story, but a dingy street today,” the Lower East Side, “its squalor and tenements rapidly being replaced by wider streets and better housing — but the push markets still survive,” Harlem, whose population is “not always prosperous, but seemingly, always happy,” and of course, “Chinatown: exotic, mysterious, where thousands of Orientals live apart in their own peculiar way… a fascinating place, especially on ceremonial occasions.” Well, we won’t deny that Chinatown is rather fascinating, but we’re happy to report that our fair city has come a long way — at least in some respects. Click through to watch the video, and let us know what you think in the comments!

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Dig what we’re puttin’ down, readers. Sometimes, you just want to find a groovy, little stash and hold back the dawn. Know what we mean? If not, you’re in dire need of the jive talk glossary below, which was included in the packaging for jazz pianist Harry “The Hipster” Gibson’s 1944 album, Boogie Woogie in Blue. “For Characters Who Don’t Dig Jive Talk” is full of both outdated phrases and terms that have stood the test of time. But perhaps the most currently relevant definition is the one Gibson provides for his namesake “hipsters”: “characters who like hot jazz.” So, there you have it. In only 67 years, we have taken a word that use to mean “jazz fans” and turned it into the apparently un-killable mess it is now. Read More »

The Museo de los Soldaditos de Plomo in Valencia, Spain, which we first heard about over at BoingBoing, holds the world’s largest collection of toy soldiers and miniature figures — there are over a million pieces in the collection, many of them on display in historical dioramas and extensive battle scenes. Museum director Alejandro Noguera has been a collector of the trinkets from childhood, a hobby inherited from his father, who used the toys as teaching tools for his children, and who himself had an extensive collection that now makes up a large portion of the museum. The displays, like the 10,000-piece re-enactment of the 1707 Battle of Almansa, are highly detailed, each figure, from soldier to butcher to “camp follower” in its proper place, carefully and often beautifully rendered. Click through to see a few historic scenes acted out in miniature and read descriptions from the Smithsonian Magazine, and then be sure to check out the full article for even more photos and information. Read More »