paper lantern

Napoleon crossing the Alps

The Jacques-Louis David shows a strongly idealized view of the real crossing that Napoleon and his army made across the Alps through the Great St. Bernard Pass in May 1800.

Napoleon was known to have crossed the Alps on the back of a 'sure-footed mule'.

Pic courtesy of wiki commons

Scorpion Dagger

The MEGA talented artist James Kerr is behind the Scorpion Dagger Tumblr, link here

Check it out! So good ^_^

All gifs and video from Scorpion Dagger, all property of James Kerr

The Unicorns shorts are BRILLIANT! A must for the medievally-minded!

Bayeux tapestry, Castles

Managed to find a full graphic of the Bayeux tapestry, as above.

The Bayeux tapestry depicts the events before the Norman invasion of England, eventually leading to the Battle of Hastings.The Norman invasion of England happened in the 11th century. It is one of the most fascinating times in history. As the saying goes those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.

There is a WHOLE BOOK of castle cross sections out there that I plan to get my mitts on one day, wonderful! Castles are a living reminder of what the harsh reality of the past was like. A lot of sieges were only successful because, though the castle and its defences held up, their food supply within dried up. It's a fascinatingly small detail, but of huge catastrophic importance!

Top pic pinterest, lower pic from Amazon!

World Toilet day

No, world toilet day is not about the overly narcissistic use of social media, its a wonderful initiative for something a lot of us in the developed world take for granted and perhaps have rarely given thought to, our access to toilets.

More info at World toilet organisation website

(Pic from It's Interesting)

Here is a great article TIME wrote about the history of toilets

World toilet day is an important reminder that basic access to clean non contaminated water, secure enclosed toilets and the spread of disease at the lack of these 2 basic necessities of life, is an every day part of life for billions still on this our planet.

"The urgent run" is a great fundraising initiative and I hope world toilet day and the organisation start to catch on with people, especially those of us lucky to have secure hygenic toilets

10 for today

Kenojuak Ashevak: Ravens

Sharing bread in a 14th century illustration

Psychology of conciousness illustration, it would make a good album cover

Well I know where I would spend all my time if I lived in London

Check their sit out here if you are interested in a different way of approaching this crazy world of ours and this unmapped thing called life....

Alice Smith art, here is a link to her site really brilliant artist!

Medieval playing cards

made me laugh, because it's so true, but perhaps instead of the government we should bring back small scale farms to overgrow the producers of shitty supermarket produce, visit the local farmers market! The Canberra farmer's markets are great! I get great spaghetti squash on the weekends and a nice lady even gave me a wombok for free the other day because she said I had a nice smile ^_^

Simple pleasures

Does anyone else think it would be a good idea, in one way, to bring back the stocks? Not in a nasty "suffer BE HUMILIATED!" way, but in the sense that perhaps people would think twice about sillier/ pettier crimes? Just the psychological effect of knowing this was around might be enough?

As I type this I'm aware of how evil it seems! There is such an ever present fear of humiliation, and sometimes what people describe as 'humiliating' such as a picture on their fakebook not getting enough likes, I wonder, imagine a time where your town could pelt you with rotting produce!

and number 10: just this reminder. A good graffito in my mind, so true