Posts tagged as: Vintage

Vintage ResQte

February 1, 2012 By

From the Smithsonian Institution comes this very old photo, along with a heartwarming story of a dog who rode the rails:

Owney was a stray dog who wandered into the Albany, New York, post office in 1888. The clerks let him stay the night, and he fell asleep on a pile of empty mailbags. Owney was attracted to the texture or scent of the mailbags and began to follow them, first onto mail wagons and then onto mail trains. Owney began to ride with the bags on Railway Post Office (RPO) train cars across the state, and then the country. The RPO clerks adopted Owney as their unofficial mascot, marking his travels by placing medals and tags from his stops on his collar


Via Flickr Commons, collections of the world’s photo archives.

62 comments

Vintage Sleight-of-Paw

July 22, 2011 By

In the heady days of vaudeville, one of the more unusual acts was the Whisker Sisters, a magic act consisting of a pair of kittens. Audiences loved them, even though their ability to guess the selected card was at the level of statistical chance.


Date unknown, from the National Archives, Netherlands. Via Flickr Commons.

Update: By request, here’s a link to the photo’s page, which has a little more info.

More updates: Nikki calls Rule 14, and someone corrects my spelling of “sleight.”

36 comments

Vintage Cat in the Hat

March 28, 2011 By

Once, long ago, some girl dropped a bonnet,
And a curious kitten crawled in and upon it.
‘Twas 1885, that’s quite a while,
So only the kitten is still in style.

Image from George Eastman House via The Commons on Flickr.

30 comments

Vintage Overboard

August 22, 2010 By

“Hey, guys? Could somebody throw me one of those — oh, what are they called? — those rescuing things? Oh, you know, the round things with the hole. Um, it’s named just like the candy? Totally drawing a blank here; it’s not Necco Wafers, I know that… Now I’ve got the word preserver stuck in my head, so it must be that candy with lots of preservatives… Man, it’s right on the tip of my tongue…”

Paris Exposition: ship, Paris, France, 1900 from Flickr Commons. (And yes, we know Life Savers were invented in 1912.)

53 comments

Vintage Cannon Fodder

May 26, 2010 By

Way back in your great-great-grandfather’s days in the Navy, it was customary for sailors to pose the ship’s mascot in one of the big guns. Don’t worry, they weren’t loaded. (The guns, that is. The sailors, that’s another story.)

Images from Flickr Commons: The ship’s cats, HMS ‘Hawkins’ (top) and A cat on HMAS Encounter

38 comments

Mabel and the Evil Penguin

September 21, 2009 By

When she was a little girl, Mabel Flossenglottner had an imaginary friend, a penguin she called Mr. Flappy.  She would run and play with him all day long, and share her most private thoughts.  In return, Mr. Flappy would tell Mabel to … do things.

tumblr_kpkz33kTLl1qzvcfgo1_400

Vintage Qte found by Lindsey J.  (With apologies to the little girl, who probably turned out just fine.)

102 comments

ENCORE: So Cute, It’s Unreal

July 18, 2009 By

Way back in the Once Upon, before the world was in color, before time was what turned kittens into cats, it came to pass that our Fearless Leader dispatched this missive across the interwires by high-resolution telegraph, on August the 16th, in the year of two-thousand-and-eight…

—

Puh-lease. Too, too moshe:

black and white?
miniscules and striped?
ear flappage and paw danglage?


kitten1, originally uploaded by Duckproductions.

EHN!

(Cute-Overload-XTreme-Ehn-Up)

Pawtasticposterized_closeup

You love it. Admit it, Lori W.

51 comments

Vintage G’day

June 30, 2009 By

Australia, 1942:  A visiting American soldier comments on how much smaller the rats are compared to his native Brooklyn.

3527155504_6a47fb4988_b

More classic cuteness from Flickr Commons.

71 comments

Vintage Baroo?

June 23, 2009 By

We take you now to 1943, where this mascot of an army cookhouse (how’s that for a choice assignment?) is getting all cleaned up to meet General Douglas MacArthur himself.  Oops, wait — we’re getting word he left already.

But ... but ... he said he would RETURN!

See full image at Flickr Commons.

50 comments

Vintage Blorp

June 17, 2009 By

Time for an oldie: This roly-poly puddle of blorpitude was part of the welcoming committee for the First Australasian Antarctic Expedition, almost one hundred years ago.

3466498959_b00371ce73_o

From the State Library of New South Wales, via Flickr Commons.

59 comments

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2