Such a beautiful quote
“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
~Paublo Neruda
The paint’s basically still wet. Just finished in room 627 at Ace Hotel New York by Annica of Dirty Bandits.
I love this!
Those who are unaccustomed to high levels of cute may have to shield their eyes from this post which comes with a triple Q rating. For this ladies and gentlemen is Mira, seen here doing her best impression of a stuffed toy. Mira’s name is short for miracle and as the tiniest orphan to ever arrive at the sloth sanctuary of Costa Rica her chances of survival were indeed slim. But she has flourished and is in fact becoming quite a feisty young sloth. The only thing is Mira isn’t getting much bigger which means she’s very likely a dwarf. As such she will need extra care. If you feel like giving Mira a helping hand why not visit the sanctuary website and adopt her. They won’t post her to you (even though she is small enough) as sloths should never be kept as pets. But they will send you regular updates of her progress. Click here to find out more.
The working model of a guillotine made from bone by prisoner awaiting execution
A working model of a guillotine made by a Napoleonic prisoner, awaiting his death, is expected to fetch up to £8,000 at auction when it goes on sale early next month.
The 200-year-old replica was crafted by an inmate using scrap animal bone, salvaged from waste bins.
The 20 inch-tall model was unearthed by an expert doing a routine valuation in a house near Dorchester, Dorset.
Amy Brenan, from Duke’s auction house in Dorchester, said the family who owned the model guillotine had no idea what it was.
She said: ‘With little contact outside the prisoner of war camps, prisoners were forced to improvise.
‘Cheap materials like straw and scrap wood were easy to find and prisoners were able to use skills learnt in their trades outside the camp to produce high quality objects such as woven straw-work boxes.
The prototype shows a platform lined with soldiers and a set of steps up the the guillotine itself.
Other soldiers surround the blade and a decapitated body lies beneath it.
The macabre model is intricately carved and the blade goes up and down and even the soldiers who are holding swords have moving arms.
Click through for the rest of the article!
Inside the lost island of New York: eerie pictures of the abandoned leper colony just 350 yards from the Bronx
Stairwells strewn with debris and walls crumbling slowly to dust, it is the island that New York forgot for 50 years.
Now, in a series of extraordinarily eerie pictures, the lost world of North Brother - quarantine zone, leper colony and centre for drug addicts - has been brought back to life.
It is hard to believe that these echoing corridors and abandoned halls were home to hundreds of patients - or that a criss-cross of tree-lined avenues were once roads.
But the haunting quality of these pictures makes it easy to imagine that it was a place of indescribable misery, which one inmate compared to the notorious black hole of Calcutta.
Just 350 yards from the crowded tenements of the Bronx, North Brother Island was first employed as a quarantine centre in 1885.
It was soon a home to six lepers. Its most notorious resident was ‘Typhoid Mary’ - the first healthy carrier of any disease ever to be identified - who spent years confined in its bleak woods.
North Brother Island was also witness to America’s worst disaster until the 9/11 attacks - the 1904 fire onboard the passenger ship, General Slocum which killed 1,021 people, mainly women and children on a church outing.
Closed in 1963, it is now a haunting labyrinth of crumbling ruins. Protected birds are its only inhabitants and the waters around the island are patrolled by armed coastguards who ensure the sanctity of the former quarantine zone is never violated
Meanwhile, the hospital, staff and patient quarters and forced drug rehabilitation centres are slowly reverting to nature.
These pictures were taken by local historian and photographer Ian Ference who was given unprecedented access to the site. He has slowly pieced together the forgotten story of this unique landscape.
‘This has got to be one of America’s most important places to visit,’ he said. ‘Historically it has had a notorious and sometimes sinister reputation.
‘It was established as a forced quarantine camp for people suffering from infectious and often fatal diseases such as typhoid, scarlet fever, yellow fever and typhus. There were six people suffering from leprosy confined here in wooden huts.
‘New York was taking in a huge number of immigrants in the late nineteenth and earth twentieth centuries - and new arrivals were forced to live in crowded and unsanitary conditions.
‘Diseases would inevitably spread and once the health authorities identified a person as having a communicable disease they were seized and forced to live on North Brother Island - unless they were rich enough to afford a private clinic.
‘Conditions were bad - the mortality rate among patients was high and the recovery rate low.
‘There was no telephony in those early days so once people were grabbed and taken there - they were often never heard from again by their families.’
Click through for the rest of the article and more incredible photographs.
