Posts by Geri Walton
Cashmere Shawls in the 1700 and 1800s
Cashmere shawls were first introduced in Europe around the late 1700s. Joan Hart, a textile expert of today, wrote: “The artist Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun first noted the shawls at a party in 1795 in St. Petersburg where she entertained her guests with “tableaux vivants” using cashmere shawls as props. … The shawls were already…
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Surviving the Hangman’s Noose in the 1700 and 1800s
Execution by hangings were not always successful and sometimes didn’t turn out as expected. There are several stories about botched hangings and a few about the condemned surviving the hangman’s noose in the 1700 and 1800s. Here are four stories about those who happened to survive being hanged between 1723 and 1885.
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Mrs. Williams the Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Astrologer and Fortune-Teller
Mrs. Williams the eighteenth and nineteenth-century astrologer and fortune-teller was born on 28 May 1759 and supposedly descended from an ancient, wealthy, and respectable family in Wales. Unfortunately, her father experienced a great falling out with his family and any wealth that he might have been entitled to was lost. This also meant that Mrs.…
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Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility was originally called Elinor and Marianne. The first draft of it was in epistolary form and written perhaps as early 1795, although she touched it up again at age twenty-one in November of 1797 and renamed it Sense and Sensibility. She drew inspiration for the novel from other novels of…
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Interesting Facts About Napoleon Bonaparte
There are many interesting facts about Napoleon Bonaparte. For instance, you may have heard that his favorite card game was ving-et-un (twenty-one), the forerunner to blackjack, and that he liked the game “because it afforded him an opportunity of cheating.”[1] But Napoleon did not cheat to win money because according to Louis Antoine Fauvelet de…
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More Interesting Facts About Madame Tussaud the Wax Sculptor
Madame Tussaud, the wax sculptor, was christened in Strasbourg, France on 1 December of 1761 as Anne-Marie Grosholtz. To differentiate her from her mother who had the same name, the young Anne-Marie was called Marie, and her mother served as a housekeeper to a doctor named Philippe Mathé Curtius. He began to create anatomical wax…
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Buffalo Bill’s 1889 visit to France
William Frederick Cody, better known as “Buffalo Bill,” was an American scout, bison hunter, frontiersman, and showman who took his show on tour in Europe during the late 1800s. He had supplied Kansas Pacific Railroad workers with buffalo meat and was purported to have killed 4,282 buffalo in eighteen months between 1867 and 1868, which…
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Chateau de Chaumont-sur-Loire in the 1700 and 1800s
The Chateau de Chaumont-sur-Loire is in the village of Chaumont-sur-Loire in the Loire Valley, and the name Chaumont is derived from the French chauve mont, meaning “bald hill.” It was initially a fortress built around 1000 by Odo I, Count of Blois. The original château had four sides surrounding a courtyard. However, after it was…
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James Lackington Revolutionized the Book Trade
James Lackington revolutionized the book trade because of his innovative book-selling practices. He was born in on 31 August 1746 in Wellington, Somerset to a shoemaker and was one of eleven children. His father had some money and young Lackington was lucky enough to attend a “Dame School,” but it lasted only a short time…
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Theatres of Paris from the Late 1700s to Early 1800s
Theatres of Paris from the late 1700s to early 1800s were extremely popular, always open, and constantly full of patrons. Supposedly, they were also considered the “idol of Parisians,” but at the time, there were not more than about twenty theatres that provided public recreation for the French masses. Parisian theatres were also known to…
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