Vila Wolf's Dyslexic Folklorist Ranting

San Francisco before the quake – Old photos of the city in the early 1900s.

Photograph of the explosion of the American transport ship SS Robert Rowan during amphibious landings at Gela, Sicily. Nov. 7, 1943.

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Lister’s antiseptic operating technique,1883

Vespertilio spectrum (now Vampyrum spectrum) - The Spectral Bat

Also known as the false vampire bat and Linnaeus’ vampire bat, the spectral bat may not bite humans like the common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus), but small animals and large insects have much more to fear from this stealthy hunter.

True vampire bats (Desmodus sp.) hunt by opening a small wound in an animal while it sleeps, with razor sharp teeth that don’t even wake the victim. It laps up the blood, and flies away undetected. The fact that the animals are almost always unharmed by this encounter makes true vampire bats the only parasitic mammals.

Spectral bats, on the other hand, are absolute hunters. They do not drink blood like true vampire bats, and often hunt much like owls, stealthily patrolling the edges of forests at night, and swooping down to attack and consume large insects, small mammals, reptiles, and even other bats (whose distress calls can attract many spectral bats from miles around).

The spectral bat is much larger than the true vampire bats, and has large ears and decent sight. It hunts by using its large canine teeth to puncture either the cervical arteries or the brain-case of small vertebrates, or sever the head of insects. Like the true vampires, spectral bats are nocturnal, and live in the Americas. However, they’re not as ubiquitous, being confined mostly to the northwest quadrant of South America, and living almost exclusively in forested regions. 

Images:

Flickr via Wikimedia Commons

Die Säugthiere in Abbildungen nach der Natur.  Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber, 1775.

Taken in 1843, this rather stern depiction of John Quincy Adams is the earliest confirmed photograph of an American President. We sure have come a long way.

Lois Long (right) pictured in her office at the New Yorker. Early 1920s.

Long (1901-1974) was the archetypal flapper: intelligent, beautiful and daring, she wrote insightful and witty commentary about fashion and NYC nightlife in the speakeasies for the brand new magazine The New Yorker. While Victorian suffragists found the “new woman” frivolous and apolitical, the flappers voted, worked, drank, smoked, and made love. In rejecting the old social order that expected women to be virginal and morally elevated, the flappers took ownership of what had been denied their mothers: the right to be sexy.

Harry Houdini and the Ghost of Abraham Lincoln Mary Lincoln passed away on July 16, 1882, but it appears that, even as late as 1924, there was some curiosity about the spirit realm still surrounding Mary’s descendants. Enough curiosity, it seems, that world-renowned magician Harry Houdini helped to dispel the notion of at least one “spirit photograph” featuring himself and Abraham Lincoln.

On Feb. 13, 1924, just one day after what would have been Abraham Lincoln’s 115th birthday, Houdini typed out a letter to Mary Edwards Lincoln Brown, the grand-daughter of Ninian and Elizabeth Edwards, Mary Lincoln’s sister. The letter reads:

                                                                                  State Lake Theatre,                                                                          Chicago, Ill. Feb. 13, 1924.    

Mrs. Mary Edwards Lincoln Brown, Lincoln Homestead, Springfield, Ill.  

My dear Mrs. Brown:

Enclosed you will find Spirit Photograph of your renowned ancestor, and although the Theomonistic Society in Washington, D.C. claim that it is a genuine spirit photograph, as I made this one, you have my word for it, that it is only a trick effect.

Mrs. Houdini joins me in sending you kindest regards,  

                                                Sincerely yours,

                                                            Houdini

Chicago, October 20, 1902, Dr. Friedman and family observing the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. Photograph by Chicago Daily News.

Want a copy of this photo?  

> Visit our Rights and Reproductions Department and give them this number: DN-0000060

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Parade procession: Fire Department Baltimore ca. 1890-1908 Unidentified photographer 4 x 5 inch glass negative Baltimore City Life Museum Collection Maryland Historical Society MC3825 .1 MC3825 .2 MC3825 .3

Note associated with these negatives: “Fire engine ca. 1890; pumping engine; crowd watching parade. Fire Department Parade, part of Homecoming?”

Crowd watching Harry Houdini Charles Street, Baltimore April 26, 1916 Unidentified photographer 8 x 10 inch glass negative  Baltimore City Life Museum Collection Maryland Historical Society 1985.26.21

Over 500,000 people gathered in front of the Sun Building to watch Harry Houdini hang upside-down, 50 feet above the ground, for the two and a half minutes it took for him to escape from a straitjacket. 

Siamese twins (girls) in their cradle in St. Thomas hospital in London, England, 1927. (Nationaal Archief) 

Yup’ik shaman exorcising evil spirits from a sick boy.

LOC Frank and Fraces Carpenter Collection

Pain…

Staff and Patients Christmas Photograph, Parc Gwylllt Hospital (Date Unknown)

A Group of Nurses and doctors at Parc Gwyllt (Date Unknown)

A picture from an 1899 edition of Harmsworth Magazine entitled ‘If London Were Like Venice’. In the late 19th century it was believed that London was subsiding and would eventually be partially submerged by the River Thames. In response to this theory Harmsworth Magazine released a series of manipulated photographs imagining landmarks such as St Paul’s Cathedral, Regent Street, Horse Guards Parade and Her Majesty’s Theatre surrounded by canals filled with gondolas.