Author: Bess Lovejoy

The Manchac wetlands, about a half hour northwest of New Orleans, are thick with swamp ooze. In the summer the water is pea-green, covered in tiny leaves and crawling with insects that hide in the shadows of the ancient, ghost-gray cypress trees. The boaters who enter the swamps face two main threats, aside from sunstroke and dehydration: the alligators, who mostly lurk just out of view, and the broken logs that float through the muck, remnants of the days when the swamp was home to the now-abandoned logging town of Ruddock.

But some say that anyone entering the swamp should beware a more supernatural threat—the curse of local voodoo queen Julia Brown. Brown, sometimes also called Julie White or Julia Black, is described in local legend as a voodoo priestess who lived at the edge of the swamp and served the town of Frenier. She was known for her charms and her curses, as well as for singing eerie songs with her guitar on her porch. One of the most memorable (and disturbing) went: “One day I’m going to die and take the whole town with me.”

Back when Brown was alive at the turn of the 20th century, the towns of Ruddock, Frenier, and Napton were prosperous settlements clustered on the edge of Lake Pontchartrain, sustained by logging the centuries-old cypress trees and farming cabbages in the thick black soil. The railroad was the towns’ lifeline, bringing groceries from New Orleans and hauling away the logs and cabbages as far as Chicago. They had no roads, no doctors, and no electricity, but had managed to carve out cohesive and self-reliant communities.

That all changed on September 29, 1915, when a massive hurricane swept in from the Caribbean. In Frenier, where Julia lived, the storm surge rose 13 feet, and the winds howled at 125 miles an hour. Many of the townsfolk sought refuge in the railroad depot, which collapsed and killed 25 people. Altogether, close to 300 people in Louisiana died, with almost 60 in Frenier and Ruddock alone. When the storm cleared on October 1, Frenier, Ruddock, and Napton had been entirely destroyed—homes flattened, buildings demolished, and miles of railway tracks washed away. One of the few survivors later described how he’d clung to an upturned cypress tree and shut his ears against the screams of those drowning in the swamp.

The hurricane seemed to come out of nowhere. But if you listen to the guides who take tourists into the Manchac swamp, the storm was the result of the wrath of Julia Brown. Brown, they say, laid a curse on the town because she felt taken for granted—a curse that came true when the storm swept through on the day of her funeral and killed everyone around. On certain tours, the guides take people past a run-down swamp graveyard marked “1915”—it’s a prop, but a good place to tell people that Brown’s ghost still haunts the swamp, as do the souls of those who perished in the hurricane. The legend of Julia Brown has become the area’s most popular ghost story, spreading to paranormal shows and even Reddit, where some claim to have seen Brown cackling at the edge of the water.

After I visited the swamp earlier this year and heard Julia Brown’s story, I got curious about separating fact from fiction. It turns out Julia Brown was a real person: Census records suggest she was born Julia Bernard in Louisiana around 1845, then married a laborer named Celestin Brown in 1880. About 20 years later, the federal government gave her husband a 40-acre homestead plot to farm, property that likely passed on to Julia after her husband’s death around 1914.

Official census and property records don’t make any mention of Brown’s voodoo work, but that’s not especially surprising. A modern New Orleans voodoo priestess, Bloody Mary, told mental_floss she has found references to a voodoo priestess or queen by the name of Brown who worked in New Orleans around the 1860s before moving out to Frenier. Mary notes that because the towns had no doctors, Brown likely served as the local healer (or traiteur, a folk healer in Louisiana tradition) and midwife, using whatever knowledge and materials she could find to care for local residents.

And Brown’s song is documented, too. An oral history account from long-time area resident Helen Schlosser Burg records that “Aunt Julia Brown … always sat on her front porch and played her guitar and sang songs that she would make up. The words to one of the songs she sang said that one day, she would die and everything would die with her.”

There’s even one newspaper account from 1915 that describes Brown’s funeral on the day of the storm. In the words of the New Orleans Times-Picayune from October 2, 1915 (warning: offensive language ahead):

Many pranks were played by wind and tide. Negroes had gathered for miles around to attend the funeral of ‘Aunt’ Julia Brown, an old negress who was well known in that section, and was a big property owner. The funeral was scheduled … and ‘Aunt’ Julia had been placed in her casket and the casket in turn had been placed in the customary wooden box and sealed. At 4 o’clock, however, the storm had become so violent that the negroes left the house in a stampede, abandoning the corpse. The corpse was found Thursday and so was the wooden box, but the casket never has been found.

Bloody Mary, however, doesn’t think Brown laid any kind of curse on the town. “Voodoo isn’t as much about curses as it is about healing,” she says. The locals Mary has spoken to remember Julia as a beloved local healer, not a revengeful type. In fact, Mary suggests that Julia’s song may have been more warning to the townsfolk than a curse against them. Perhaps Brown even tried to perform an anti-storm ritual and was unable to stop the hurricane before it was too late. Whatever she did, Mary says it wasn’t out of malevolence. And if she’s still in the swamp, you have less to fear from her than from the alligators.

In August, we shared a selection of vintage vacation destination photographs captured by the Detroit Photographic Company in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Back then, Detroit Photographic traveled the country snapping picturesque shots for postcards, prints, and albums, often employing their exclusive Photochrom process to print splashy color images in large numbers.

One thing we didn’t include in that round-up: all their photos of cemeteries. While it might seem strange to send someone a postcard of a cemetery today (or to put a photo of one in an album), many of America’s 19th century cemeteries were feats of sculpture and landscaping that provided much-needed fresh air and relaxation. It wasn’t so unusual to visit them even when you weren’t in mourning, perhaps stopping by for a stroll or a picnic. A postcard often made a nice memento of such a visit, particularly if it depicted a famous grave.

Detroit Photographic (later the Detroit Publishing Company, and just one of many companies making images of cemeteries) eventually went bankrupt. Fortunately, you can still enjoy many of its images via Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library. In the spirit of the season, here are just a few of their images from some of the nation’s most picturesque cemeteries and churchyards. You’ll find dozens more in their archives, if you feel like doing some of your own trick-or-treating.

In the 19th century, death was simply part of life. High infant mortality, primitive sanitation, and a lack of basic health care meant that those lucky enough to survive were surrounded with reminders of the brevity of life at all times. And nobody was excluded from elaborate mourning rituals dedicated to celebrating and crying over the dearly departed, not even kids.

Created around 1850, this sampler was painstakingly cross-stitched with silk on cotton, presumably by a young girl learning how to sew. It’s dedicated to “Grandmother” and shows some angels crying at a grave. An anchor—symbol of hope and the cross—leans against the grave, indicating that Grandma has probably gone on to better things.

It must have taken the sampler’s creator a long time to sew it: It’s nearly a foot tall and over 15 inches wide. That’s a lot of cross-stitch, especially for a child.

And its creator was more than likely a kid. Samplers were an important piece of the education of any upper-class girl, who would have learned how to do some decorative arts and needlework at school along with reading, writing, and other “accomplishments” like languages and piano.

Samplers weren’t intended as punishments, though it’s hard to envision a 21st-century kid sitting through a long lesson on the ins and outs of fine needlework. Instead, they were a chance for girls to familiarize themselves with a variety of skills and develop the focus and discipline they’d need to do the nearly endless sewing that was the lot of the era’s women in an age before sewing machines. Even if a girl grew up rich, she would still be expected to create fine embroidery or pitch in on charity sewing projects [PDF].

Mourning samplers became popular in the United States after the death of George Washington, which launched a craze for sad sewing projects with plenty of mourning symbolism.

This sampler is currently housed in the storage facility of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York. Want to see more? Here are the other mourning samplers in the Cooper Hewitt collection—and you can also view a selection of the dizzying array of death-related crafts produced by 19th-century girls.

Laughter may be contagious, but it’s hard to make an audience of strangers laugh night after night. Whether it’s telling jokes, doing impersonations, or sharing stories about their mother-in-law, stand-up comedians try their hardest to get the crowds to cackle. Mental_floss got in touch with a few stand-up comedians to learn more about what it’s like to try—and occasionally fail—to make people laugh for a living.

1. THEY’RE NOT ALWAYS DEPRESSED.

Although many famous stand-up comedians have struggled with depression and substance abuse, the stereotype of an unhappy, insecure comedian is overblown. “There’s this pervasive perception that all stand-up comics are depressed, divorced, alcoholic losers at the end of their rope, but that’s not the case these days,” explains Andrew Michaan, a comedian who lives in Los Angeles.

Michaan tells mental_floss that it’s possible to be a stand-up comedian while also being a happy and pleasant person: “Maybe [we’ll] … eventually be broken by impending emotional upheavals and the defeating nature of show business and the universe itself, but for now we’re defying stereotypes one well-adjusted smile at a time.”

2. DON’T ASK THEM TO TELL YOU A JOKE.

Although their job is to make people laugh, stand-up comedians draw a line between performing on stage and interacting with people in their daily life. If you discover that someone is a comedian, and your usual response is to demand a joke, you’re probably being annoying (sorry). Likewise, most comedians don’t want you to tell them jokes or funny stories, hoping that they’ll add it to their act. What’s funny to you may not be funny to a larger audience, and your story might not translate well to a stand-up act.

3. MOST OF THEM HAVE TO PAY TO PERFORM.

Unless they’re at the top of their game or have built a sizable following, most stand-up comedians have to pay for the chance to make you laugh. Beginning comics often practice their routine at open mic nights, where they may have to pay a cover and sit through hours of other newbie comics’ performances. After they’ve succeeded at open mic nights, comics usually perform at what’s known as “bringer shows“—events where they perform in exchange for guaranteeing the venue that they’ll bring anywhere from two to 15 friends (who will each pay for a ticket and drinks) to the venue.

4. THEY SPEND A LOT OF TIME WRITING.

Stand-up comic Chris Fairbanks says he’s often asked if he writes his own material. “All stand-ups do, or should,” he says, “unless they’re cheating and stealing from other comics. And if you’re having someone else write your jokes and doing them on stage as your own, then in my opinion, you’re an actor,” he explains.

But not just any writing will do: Comedians try to tell stories, particularly ones that will not only make an audience laugh but also connect emotionally. (One definition of a good story: it introduces a problem that needs to be solved, includes an element of vulnerability or fear, and concludes with a resolution to the problem.) Long before they ever step on stage, most comedians are putting pen to paper—or fingers to keyboard—drawing from their daily life, their family, or their romantic relationships to try and tell compelling, funny stories.

5. TO MAKE MONEY, THEY HIT THE ROAD.

Because some large cities have a surplus of comedians, it can be difficult to make money by performing shows in just one area. “We don’t make any money doing shows in Los Angeles. Maybe you can make cab fare here and there in NYC, but LA comics have to leave the city and work the road to make an actual living,” Fairbanks explains. And because audiences in different cities have varying senses of humor and taste, some comedians alter their routine slightly to appeal to the locals—perhaps by referring to local sports teams, weather, or stereotypes about the city’s residents.

6. THEY’RE PAYING CLOSE ATTENTION TO YOUR REACTION.

Until they try a new joke in front of an audience, stand-up comedians don’t know if their material will actually work. Even minor tweaks in tone and diction can elicit more laughs, so comedians have their ear fine-tuned to the crowd to determine what works and what doesn’t. And when a certain joke continually fails to elicit laughter from multiple audiences, comedians will remove it from their set.

Stand-up comedian Christina Lopez, who admits that it can take years to develop a killer 30-minute set, describes how she reacts instantly to what the audience is feeling: “As my act goes on, I feel the audience going in another direction and will literally switch jokes in my head to make my LPM (laughs per minute) go up. Kind of like some weird mind trick going on right before your eyes,” she explains.

7. THEY KNOW HOW TO GRACEFULLY HANDLE HECKLERS.

Audiences will sometimes include an individual so drunk and/or obnoxious they shout at the comedian and try to interrupt the show. But according to Michaan, it’s very rare to encounter someone who’s truly having a bad time and wants to ruin the show for the performer and audience. “What’s more common is someone who is enjoying themselves but doesn’t understand what’s expected of an audience member. They don’t know the boundaries, and they talk too much and want to be involved,” he explains. To deal with that type of heckler, Michaan addresses the person, thanks them for being excited, and asks them to please stop talking. “I usually speak to them right on the border of nice and mean,” he says.

Jared Volle, a stand-up comedian who also trains other comedians at CreativeStandUp.com, adds that hecklers can give comedians an opportunity to improvise, be authentic, and add fun to the show. “Some of the greatest moments I’ve had on stage [were] due to some type of heckle … I see hecklers as an invitation to be real with the audience and to really connect with them,” Volle tells mental_floss.

8. IT’S STILL RARE TO SEE SUCCESSFUL FEMALE COMEDIANS.

Although comedians such as Amy Schumer, Sarah Silverman, and Tina Fey have achieved mainstream success, comedy is still largely a man’s world. Author and speaking coach Judy Carter says that when she was touring as a female stand-up comic in the late 1980s, the amount of sexism in the business always shocked her: “Most often I was introduced as an oddity—‘Are you ready for something different? We have a FEMALE stand-up!’” And she says sexism is still entrenched in the comedy world. “Still today I am shocked at the consistency of all-male lineups at comedy clubs,” she admits.

9. A SILENT AUDIENCE ISN’T THE END OF THE WORLD.

Although most comedians are terrified of the idea of bombing—performing to a silent crowd that doesn’t laugh or smile—a quiet audience can be an opportunity. “If you just plow ahead and do your normal material without mentioning [the silence and uncomfortable vibe], you’re going to continue to do poorly,” Michaan says. Rather than insult the audience, Michaan says he’ll start chatting with them to confront the silence head-on. Once he determines where the weird vibe is coming from, he can try to create a shared funny experience that brings the room together, then build from there. “Or I just run away crying. Either way,” he jokes.

10. DON’T TAKE EVERYTHING THEY SAY AT FACE VALUE.

To be conversational and topical, stand-up comedians often relate a story about something that happened to them recently, whether it was their dog’s trip to the veterinarian or their dishwasher breaking. But don’t take everything they say literally. When they’re on stage, comedians inhabit a persona, exaggerating certain qualities and glossing over others for comic effect. For example, comedians will often say that something happened to them recently when it really happened years ago—or may have never happened at all.

11. THEY’RE ADDICTED TO MAKING YOU LAUGH.

Struggling stand-up comedians put up with low (or no) pay, grimy clubs, and hours of bad open mic nights because they simply love to make people laugh. Being on stage, with the spotlight and everyone’s attention on them, makes them feel important and confident. And because laughter (or silence) is immediate and audible, stand-up comedians know right away whether they’ve been successful. This instantaneous feedback, and the sweet sound of laughter when their jokes kill, draw them back to the stand-up stage again and again.

All photos via iStock.

They’ve left our earthly world, but spirits sure have a lot to share with us. At least, that seems to have been the case in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a period that witnessed a boom in books said to have been drafted by the departed. That era was the golden age of Spiritualism, and many people claimed they communicated with spirits who guided their minds and hands into recording stories, poems, and even voluminous novels. Here are six books supposedly dictated by ghosts that remain widely accessible today.

1. HISTORICAL REVELATIONS …(1886), EMPEROR JULIAN & THOMAS CUSHMAN BUDDINGTON

The Roman Emperor Julian was apparently so taken aback by how civilization developed in the 1500 years following his death in 363 CE that he felt compelled to express himself from beyond the grave via the printed word. Historical Revelations of the Relation Existing Between Christianity and Paganism Since the Disintegration of the Roman Empire, recorded by American writer Thomas Cushman Buddington, attacked Christianity as the root cause of what Julian supposedly saw as a world in utter disarray and desolation. Julian’s spirit condemned Constantine and his successors for embracing “a false religion” that bred violence and stagnated Europe’s development.

More realistically, this call to return to traditional Roman values was Cushman’s rather creative way to share his own grievances. Perhaps Cushman felt uncomfortable openly lambasting Christianity as an obstacle to moral and intellectual growth and found the emperor, who studied Platonic philosophy, a suitable figure to vocalize his concerns about the human race. In his preface to Julian’s writings, he praises the spirit, saying he “is of the most of the most pure and elevated character.”

2. MY TUSSLE WITH THE DEVIL, AND OTHER STORIES (1918), O. HENRY & ALBERT HOUGHTON PRATT

Born William Sydney Porter, the celebrated writer known as O. Henry died in 1910 with hundreds of short stories to his name. Yet even death could not halt his creative output, as eight years later, a collection of stories surfaced, all purportedly newly written by him. They arrived through the medium Albert Houghton Pratt, who claimed that he communicated with O. Henry through a ouija board. The very first conversation had supposedly occurred on September 18, 1917, and many more followed, with Pratt inviting friends to gather around the board to listen to O. Henry’s spirit rattle off tales. Pratt, in his opening comments to the book, describes O. Henry as a chatty spirit; apparently “overburdened with plots,” the ghost at times even exhausted his human companions as sessions stretched into late hours of the night. He would also self-edit his narrations: Once, he told Pratt to erase the last half of a story that had come to him too quickly and that fell short of his standards.

Pratt apparently had full control over his own thoughts throughout these sittings and found opportunities to pose his own questions. Once, he asked O. Henry what he thought about movie adaptations of his books. The spirit’s response: “Foolish rehash of yesterday’s ignorance.”

It appears Pratt anticipated the negative reception of O. Henry’s alleged latest writings, too. In an introduction signed by “Parma”—Pratt’s pseudonym—he brushed off nonbelievers and any skeptics who might have found the prose style different from O. Henry’s. The spirit world, Pratt explained, simply inspires a different voice; furthermore, the stories prove that a leopard can change its spots.

3. HOPE TRUEBLOOD (1918), PATIENCE WORTH & PEARL CURRAN

Also dictated through a ouija board was Hope Trueblood, just one of many works of fiction purportedly penned by the spirit Patience Worth in 1918. Arguably one of the most famous of spirit authors, Worth communicated through Pearl Curran, a housewife who lived in St. Louis. From 1913 through 1937, Curran dutifully recorded books, plays, poems, and short stories, at times receiving and scribbling thousands of words in one session.

Hope Trueblood, which told the story of a girl in Mid-Victorian England searching for her father, stands out from the rest of Worth’s oeuvre. The spirit was known for her archaic language and typically set stories far in the past: Telka occurred in medieval England; The Sorry Tale was set in the days of Jesus. Hope Trueblood unfolded in the present era (when originally published) and Worth employed plain English for the first time. Like many of her works, the novel received critical acclaim.

Hope Trueblood, however, also drew more skeptics than Worth’s previous works. What would the spirit of a 17th-century English girl (whom Indians murdered when she immigrated to America) know of Victorian life? Yet people had difficulty explaining how Curran, who had little education and opportunity for travel, wove these stories that contained detailed, accurate descriptions of distant settings. The mystery captivated Worth and Curran’s readers, and it went with Curran to her grave. When she passed away in 1937, the headline of her obituary in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat read “Patience Worth is Dead.”

4. TO WOMAN (1920), MESLOM & MARY MCEVILLY

An American medium in Paris known as Mary McEvilly received messages from a mysterious spirit named Meslom during a number of sessions held between October 1919 and March 1920. They form To Woman, a book describing the duties of the female sex to help better the world and lead mankind to salvation. Lofty, abstract statements fill the 108 pages, and Meslom’s often-repetitive ramblings are arduous to read. Overall, the spirit argues that women are responsible for human’s spiritual progression since they are in more in touch with nature and have greater intuition than men, who have more highly developed powers of reason.

McEvilly identifies Meslom as a man, and although he praises women for their sensitivities, he also betrays sexist attitudes. Man will always be master, and women should surrender any hope of gender equality, he tells McEvilly; although they have good judgment, women will never make laws; women who steadily pursue an education may weaken their innate connection to all that is good. Most rewarding, he suggests, would be for a woman to instead pray frequently for knowledge that leads to spiritual development and happiness.

Curiously, To Woman emerged a few months before women in the U.S. received the full right to vote. Little record of Mary McEvilly exists, but her book must have come off as backward to more than a few people even when originally printed.

5. A WANDERER IN THE SPIRIT LANDS (1896), FRANCHEZZO & A. FARNESE

Victorians would find a chilling moral lesson in A Wanderer in the Spirit Lands, supposedly dictated to one A. Farnese by an Italian man who had recently passed away. Identified only as Franchezzo, his spirit fills over 300 pages with vivid descriptions of his lonely, miserable journey through the spirit world. Those dark travels were his deserved punishment, he writes, as he had lived a selfish life in worship of the material rather than of God.

Franchezzo initially ventures into the cold and decaying realms of hell, and only through laborious works of atonement eventually passes through bright heavenly gates. His tale serves as an engrossing sermon, warning its readers of the terrible fate that awaits if they do not start changing their sinful behavior while on earth—before it is too late.

6. OUINA’S CANOE AND CHRISTMAS OFFERING, FILLED WITH FLOWERS FOR THE DARLINGS OF THE EARTH (1882), OUINA & CORA L. V. RICHMOND

One of America’s most beloved spirits, Ouina was believed to be a young Native American girl who spread tens of thousands of uplifting messages from the spirit world. Beginning in 1851, she spoke through Cora Lodensia Veronica Scott, a famous Spiritualist from New York who had begun channeling spirits at a young age and launched a career as a trance lecturer (someone who performed public lectures supposedly received from the spirit world). Scott’s audience was often people who had lost loved ones; her romantic poems and tales painted the afterlife as a place filled with beauty and joy, offering mourners some comfort and rest from grief. Ouina’s Canoe was the first published collection of a handful of the spirit’s works, set to print at Christmas time as her gift to help and heal more people.

Along with verses filled with flowers, sunbeams, moonbeam fairies and morning stars, the book includes a biography of Ouina. Her own story is one of sorrow: Her mother had died in childbirth, and her father, chief of a tribe that resided along the Shenandoah River, decided to sacrifice her when she was about 15 to save his people from misfortune. With her touching history and messages of peace and love, it’s unsurprising that Scott’s guide received such great adoration, rather than cynical criticism.

(For five more books dictated from beyond the grave, click here.)

While most of us think of a coffin as having a pretty singular purpose, there are plenty of inventive people out there who have reimagined what the coffin (or casket) can be. Here are some examples of alternative uses for coffins, both before and after death.

1. BOOKSHELF

 
Thinking about building your own coffin but not sure how to store it until your last exit? Just add some slats and set it on end, and you have an instant ominous bookshelf. Woodworker Chuck Lakin makes a more subtle bookcase coffin that is basically two shelves hinged together, ready to transition into a chest for burial. Phoenix Boatworks likewise creates canoe-shaped coffins that function as bookshelves until the “final voyage.” Designer William Warren, meanwhile, has envisioned “Shelves for Life” with wooden parts for book storage that can be reconfigured into coffin parts in death.

2. FLOWER PLANTER

Back in 2013, a man in Northumberland, England, discovered that the garden trough he’d been using for three decades was in fact a rare Roman sarcophagus. That discovery followed a 2012 auction of a Roman marble coffin that had been found in a Dorset garden. Maybe your resting place will have an unexpected resurrection—it might if you’re buried in stone like a member of the Roman Empire.

3. COUCH

Coffin Couches create their plush furniture from 18 gauge steel coffins obtained from California funeral homes. These aren’t being recycled out of the cemetery. The coffins are models that have “slight cosmetic inconsistencies,” have been scratched during shipment, or were bought by a family and held a body, but not used in cremation or burial.

4. COFFEE TABLE

 
Designer Charles Constantine‘s “Coffin Table” might seem like a bold modular choice for the living room with its pine wood angles. Made with open sides for storage, it’s also an unusual bent shape. This hints at its future reuse as a coffin, in which the body is arranged in a fetal position facing the eastern sun, a sign of rebirth in some cultures.

5. POOL TABLE

 
Although this isn’t exactly up to regulation billiards standards, the coffin pool table from Casket Furniture was envisioned as a source of entertainment in life before its final reuse as a tomb. Considering both a fine pool table and high-end coffin cost thousands of dollars, it makes sense to get some enjoyment from the object in the time you have.

6. TANNING BED

The slyly named “Sundead” was a 2012 conceptual project in which Argentine artist Luciano Podcaminsky built a tanning bed contained in a coffin. The piece contrasted the quest for physical perfection with the inevitability of that body’s decay.

7. BAR AND GRILL

This is best suited for a cookout where your friends are quite chill about their transience, as the roving Open Casket Bar and Grill from the Nightmare Cruisers Hearse Club is a combo hearse and coffin turned into a mobile grilling machine. And if you’re in the Detroit area, it’s rentable for parties.

8. BOAT

Last year, a mysterious “Lost Undertaker” was spotted paddling a coffin in Australia’s Lake Burley Griffin. Chilean artist Sebastian Errazuriz was way ahead of him, exhibiting his 2009 “Boat Coffin” in the 2012 London Design Festival. The casket-shaped contraption has a working motor and keel, the idea being that a “sailor” could stage his or her own funeral, navigating the casket from shore, then pulling its plug when they’re ready for the end.

9. HOT ROD

You’d think the data on traffic fatalities would make drivers superstitious, but hot rods made from coffins aren’t that uncommon. The most famous is likely the puntastic DRAG-U-LA from The Munsters, especially the 1965 episode “Hot Rod Herman,” in which Grandpa Munster competes in a drag race. That car was made from an actual fiberglass coffin. Classic and custom car fans, perhaps inspired by the eerie auto, are still building their own DIY vehicles—maybe for some grand theft grave digging.

“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” If this motto summons up visions of brave postal workers trudging through inclement weather conditions, you’re not alone—for over a century, it’s been synonymous with the tireless work the postal service does to make sure you get your junk mail, magazines, and birthday cards on time. But if you think it’s the official creed of the United States Postal Service, think again—it was actually written about another set of postal workers from around 500 BCE.

In fact, the USPS doesn’t have an official motto [PDF]. And given that the postal service regularly cancels mail delivery due to weather, the misunderstanding about its motto regularly leads to even more frustration from mail-less customers.

Blame a building for the confusion. In 1912, a building then called the General Post Office Building (since renamed the James A. Farley Post Office Building) was constructed in what would later become ZIP code 10001. Smack in the center of Manhattan, the grand building was built right across from Penn Station and Madison Square Garden. It had prime real estate and a profile to match—white columns, a grandiose reception hall, and even a dry moat around it to light up its gigantic basement.

It also had an architect with a taste for classical flair. William Mitchell Kendall designed other column-studded sites like the Manhattan Municipal Building and the Arlington Memorial Bridge. Kendall, whose dad was a classics scholar, also loved the words of the ancients as much as their columns. So when he designed the post office, he decided to inscribe it with a phrase by Herodotus, the Greek scholar sometimes known as the father of history.

Kendall modified a translation of Herodotus’s work by George Herbert Palmer, a professor at Harvard and a preeminent classicist, for the building. The line was written by Herodotus in paragraph 98, book eight of his book The Persian Wars, which recounts the history of a war that took place between the Greeks and the Persian Empire from 499 to 479 BCE (the exact time period of the war is disputed).

Herodotus was impressed by the efficient, relay-like postal system employed by the Persians, which he compared to the Greek torch race. “There is nothing in the world which travels faster than the Persian couriers,” he wrote admiringly. The postal system may have been impressive, but it ultimately didn’t help Persia—after decades of conflicts, they lost the wars.

The Persians may not have won in Greece, but the Persian couriers who inspired the inscription must have been on to something—to this day, the USPS relies on a relay-like system to both get mail across the country and help postal carriers on their daily rounds. They may not operate in all weather conditions, but today’s USPS still manages to deliver hundreds of billions of pieces of mail each year. Not bad for an organization with no official motto.

What’s your personality like? Long before BuzzFeed or the Myers-Briggs personality test, there was phrenology—a pseudoscience that used the lumps and bumps of human skulls to tease out the secrets of human psychology.

This skeleton-bedecked snuff box looks creepy, but it served as a handy reference for its 19th-century owner. Part of the collection of the Science Museum, London, it shows three views of a numbered skull on the lid and has a handy-dandy key on the bottom of the box.

The concept behind phrenology makes a certain kind of sense: Since the brain holds the mind, different faculties of the mind must live in certain parts of the brain, or so phrenology’s followers believed. And while that’s not totally off base, they also believed that one could “read” the elevations and depressions of the skull for clues about the capabilities and “faculties” of the brain within.

That’s demonstrated on this snuff box, which shows three views of a skull studded with numbers. Each number on the skull corresponds to an “organ” responsible for a personality trait. Number 18, for example, indicated vanity, so someone with a large or protruding area at that part of the skull would presumably be vain.

There are 27 “faculties” or “organs” overall, each divvied up and named by Franz Joseph Gall, the German physiologist who invented phrenology. The sections cover the entire gamut of human emotion and behavior, from haughtiness and arrogance to poetic talent.

Phrenology may have long since been dismissed as a pseudoscience, but it sure left some creepy memorabilia behind. Take the box in question: Made in France at some point between 1800 and 1830, it also jumped on another trend—sniffing snuff, or fine-ground tobacco. The practice was all the rage in Europe between the 16th and 19th centuries, and spawned not only elaborate snuff-taking rituals but a collecting craze. Today, snuff boxes made of everything from silver to papier-mâché are still prized collector’s items.

Though snuff has fallen out of favor, it’s not dead: You can still buy it in some places, and in the British House of Commons, where smoking is banned, some MPs still take a snort of snuff from the Parliament’s communal box before legislating. Their box isn’t as creepy-cool, though … merely plated with pure silver. (There are snuff boxes in the U.S. Senate, too, but though they’re filled with snuff they’re not used by any Senators today.)

[h/t Lindsey Fitzharris]

There is something about seeing a wild animal—a stalking tiger, soaring hawk, splashing whale, or slithering snake—that captivates the imagination. Yet these creatures are elusive, and it’s not easy to capture their splendor. So how can you get the perfect picture of a wild creature? Luckily, there are people out there who have devoted their lives to the art of wildlife photography, and mental_floss talked to a few who were willing to share their tips.

1. YOU DON’T NEED FANCY EQUIPMENT—BUT YOU NEED TO KNOW YOUR EQUIPMENT.

Florida-based conservation photographer Mac Stone says it’s a misconception that good photographers need top-of-the-line equipment in order to get a good shot. “There’s an old saying that goes, ‘The best camera is the one that’s in your pocket,’” he notes. Stone, who shoots all kinds of wild creatures from American alligators to burrowing owls, says the key is knowing how to use the equipment you have: Read your camera manual and experiment before going out to shoot in the field.

2. THINK LIKE AN ANIMAL.

 
If you want to catch an animal on camera, you need to think like an animal, says Richard Slattery, a Long Island-based professional photographer who has been photographing wild animals for more than 20 years.

“While I’m not a scientist, I’ve spent a lot of time with animal experts who have taught me to look for signs preceding animal action,” he notes. For example, when photographing humpback whales on whale-watching trips, Slattery has learned from whale experts to look for “bubble nets” on the water’s surface. These bubbles of air, exhaled from underwater, always precede a whale surfacing to swallow up fish and plankton—a perfect photo opportunity. Slattery suggests attending public lectures, watching documentaries, and reading books about wildlife to learn how to anticipate animal action.

3. LEARN TO READ NATURE’S CUES.

Besides knowing how to read animal behavior, it’s also critical to know how to read your environment, says Kristofer Rowe, who’s been professionally photographing ospreys and other birds since 2011. Once you know about the species you want to shoot, “you can increase your odds by knowing where and when to position yourself for optimum images,” he notes. Between April and October—osprey season in Connecticut, where he is based—Rowe says he uses the sunrise, tides, and winds to help him find ospreys and craft the perfect shot. The same educational strategies for learning about animal behavior can also be applied to learning about their environment.

4. BE AN AMBASSADOR FIRST, PHOTOGRAPHER SECOND.

 
Professional wildlife photographer and writer Hob Osterlund has devoted her life to the conservation of one species: the albatross, a large seabird native to Hawaii, the state where she’s based. Albatross face many challenges to their survival, including feral cats, invasive species, ocean plastic, and habitat destruction. To get the best possible photos of these birds, Osterlund says, “Take shots that make people love and respect the animal. They need your help much more than you need an award.”

5. TAKE TONS OF SHOTS, THEN KEEP THE BEST.

Ecologist, author, and Safina Center founder/president Carl Safina has been photographing wild animals for decades. Over the years, this Long Island-based wildlife expert has traveled the world amassing thousands of beautiful photos of all kinds of wild creatures, from wolves to walruses. The key, he says, “Is to shoot lots of frames of the same thing; never think you’ve ‘got’ it—you can always get it better. Then, when you’re back home, comb through your images and delete those that don’t work so you can focus on the best images you’ve taken.”

6. DON’T BE AFRAID TO GET DIRTY.

You can expect to get at least a little mud on your shoes when trying to photograph wild animals (they live outside, after all). But Osterlund says you shouldn’t be afraid to really get down and dirty to get the shots you’re after. “I learned from the great Melissa Groo to lie down,” says Osterlund. “Get at eye level [with an animal] as much as possible. Buy elbow pads so you don’t tear your flesh off. Carry a small tarp.”

7. PRE-FOCUS YOUR CAMERA WHEN APPROPRIATE.

 
It can be challenging to get a steady shot when on a boat or trying to photograph moving animals (or both), says professional photographer Jodi Frediani. Frediani, who is based in California, spends a lot of time photographing whales and other marine creatures. She says there are many situations where it pays to take advantage of your camera’s pre-focus feature in order to get a clear shot, such as when you’re on a boat. For example, when trying to get photos of humpback whales, Frediani says she’ll “pre-focus where I think a serial breaching will come up next.”

8. BE STUBBORN ABOUT GETTING THE SHOT YOU WANT …

It’s easy to get discouraged in the field if you don’t get the shot you’re looking for on the first try. But Stone says it’s important not to give up on the images you want even if you fail a few (or many) times. “Really attack an image and go after it until you get it,” says Stone. “Go out every day to the place you want to get the image and really focus yourself on your task.” Eventually, with enough stubbornness, Stone says, you’re likely to get the image you’re after.

9. BUT DON’T FORGET TO APPRECIATE EVERYDAY MOMENTS.

 
Some of the best photographs of wild creatures capture very regular parts of their lives, such as feeding and sleeping. Frediani says she especially enjoys watching humpback whales lunge upward through the water’s surface to get a mouthful of krill, plankton, and small fish. While whale feeding is an everyday behavior, Frediani says she gets excited every time she gets on a boat to watch “these leviathans ‘making a living.’”

10. PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT’S ACTUALLY IN THE FRAME.

When it comes to crafting the right shot, framing is very important, says Safina. When you look through your viewfinder, think of its confines as a picture frame. You can always crop a photo, but often the best shots are framed correctly even before they’re taken. “Everything else you are aware of about your surroundings and the circumstances, the viewer will never see,” Safina says. So pay special attention to getting what you need in the frame and excluding the things that may distract your viewer.

11. BE RESPECTFUL.

Perhaps the most important secret to keep in mind is to respect the animals you’re photographing, Slattery says. Each type of animal has its own comfort level around humans. “Think about the ethics of each situation you’re in,” says Slattery. “If you could be harmed by getting close to an animal, or the animal could get stressed, stay far away and use a long magnifying lens.” It should go without saying, but no picture is worth harming an animal—or getting injured yourself.

Cookbooks and recipe collections don’t just record the delicacies and comfort food of the past, but also reflect social trends, immigration, and industrialization over the centuries. Each of these online resources offers a chef’s bounty of historic gastronomy, from 17th-century roasted peacock (served in its feathered skin) to broiled iceberg lettuce salad from the 1980s.

1. FEEDING AMERICA: THE HISTORIC AMERICAN COOKBOOK PROJECT

Amelia Simmons’s American Cookery is considered the first book by an American about American food, and is the earliest publication in Michigan State University Library’s Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project. The online project, started in 2001, focuses on 76 cookbooks from the library’s collections dating from the 18th to early 20th century. You can explore a glossary of old cooking terms and images of antique cooking implements, just in case you need to track down a sugar nipper, salamander, or centrifugal ice cream freezer for your classic cuisine.

2. WELLCOME LIBRARY’S RECIPE BOOKS

Recipe books were not always just about food. Often home remedies were included too, like the 1621 recipe collection of Grace Acton, which followed up an elaborate roasted peacock recipe with a bedwetting treatment that involved boiling a mouse in urine. The eccentric collection is among the Wellcome Library’s trove of online recipe books, which are mainly from the 16th to 19th centuries and demonstrate how cookbooks were a personal connection between food and medicine. The 17th-century recipe book of Lady Ann Fanshawe, for instance, has notes on a red powder she used after a miscarriage, mingling with one of the earliest known recipes for ice cream.

3. THE HENRY FORD’S HISTORIC RECIPE BANK

The Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, Michigan, has an online Historic Recipe Bank neatly arranged so you can explore by category (whether appetizers or poultry) and era (from the 1700s to the 1990s). The resource mainly highlights American cuisine, including the 1894 Mrs. Rorer’s Sandwiches, the first tome to focus on the American sandwich; the 1932 Macy’s Cook Book and Kitchen Guide for the Busy Woman with its economic pot roast and graham bread; and the 1960s vegetarian touchstone Diet for a Small Planet.

4. MILWAUKEE PUBLIC LIBRARY’S HISTORIC RECIPE FILE

Hundreds of recipes were clipped from newspapers by librarians at Milwaukee Public Library from the 1960s to the 1980s. Wisconsin residents could telephone to enquire on the directions for Beer-Cheese Bites, Broiled Iceberg Salad (made with a cup of mayonnaise), or the sturdy Breta Griem’s Cathedral Fruitcake, which can survive in a refrigerator for a year. Now you can access over 200 of these concoctions in the library’s Historic Recipe File.

5. THE RECIPES PROJECT

The Recipes Project is an ongoing collaboration by international scholars to delve into the past through historic recipes, whether for charms, food, or medicine. Their recent explorations include 18th-century perfume, medieval toothache cures, and recipes with plants in Roman Egypt. The site also regularly interviews librarians and curators about their recipe collections, such as the New York Academy of Medicine Library and the University of Pennsylvania Library.

6. HANDWRITTEN RECIPES

Bookseller Michael Popek regularly updates the Handwritten Recipes blog with scrawled recipes he finds wedged in used titles. He published some of them in a 2012 book, and continues to add to the archive of ephemera with items such as a recipe for hot chocolate from the 1902 The Strollers by Frederic S. Isham, a notecard with a recipe for fudge discovered in the 1903 Capital Stories by American Authors, and a worn recipe for cheezy pretzels that was wedged in a 1914 copy of P. G. Wodehouse’s The Little Nugget.

7. SZATHMARY RECIPE PAMPHLET DIGITAL COLLECTION

From 1880 to 1930, cooking radically changed alongside industrialization, which increased commercial food in diets and expanded the availability of products. To encourage consumer loyalty you might have received a “Now you’re cooking with tomato paste” pamphlet in the mail from Contadina, or an “Around the kitchen clock with walnuts” brochure from the California Walnut Growers Association. The Szathmary Recipe Pamphlet Digital Collection, amassed by Hungarian-born chef Louis Szathmary at the University of Iowa Libraries, has over 4000 recipe pamphlets from these decades of change.

8. FOUR POUNDS FLOUR

On Four Pounds Flour, “historic gastronomist” Sarah Lohman deciphers recipes, mainly from 18th and 19th century American cuisine, and attempts to recreate or interpret the obscure meals. She recently purchased a bay leaf plant just to blend 18th and 19th century ice creams, cooked eggs for seven hours as if preparing for a 19th-century Jewish Sabbath, and tracked down the origins of that Thanksgiving staple: sweet potato casserole. Her upcoming publication Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine will further delve into this savory history.

9. DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES DIGITAL COLLECTIONS

Among the formidable Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850-1920 collection at Duke University Libraries are hundreds of booklets and cookbooks published to promote food products as part of modern consumer culture. The 1920s “How Phyllis Grew Thin” has lean dishes throughout its pages, but is basically one long advertisement for the quack medicine Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound pills; “Sixty One Uses for Salt with Some Comment on the Kind of Salt to Use” was distributed by the Diamond Crystal Salt Co.; and the 1916 “Excellent Recipes for Baking Raised Breads” extolled Fleischmann’s Yeast.

10. SERVICE THROUGH SPONGE CAKE

The Indiana University Library and Indianapolis Public Library joined together to create Service through Sponge Cake. Launched in 2010, it celebrates DIY cookbooks from churches, community organizations, and synagogues, where everyone suggested their favorite cookies or casseroles. The resource includes 200 Years of Black Cookery from 1976 by the Indianapolis Black Bicentennial Committee, 1944 baking from the 4-H Club, and a 1975 Spanish & Latin-American Cookbook from the Hispano-American Center of Indianapolis.

11. TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

The historical cookbooks collection online at Texas Tech University Libraries Digital Collections definitely has a Lonestar State feel. One title is the 1914 Cooking Tough Meats, with a chicken fricasse “for a tough fowl” and directions on how to make mutton stew from neck pieces. Yet there’s a lot to explore beyond such carnivorous conundrums, like the exhaustive 1978 Sixteen Cottage Cheese Recipes, and the patriotic World War II-era Food Is Ammunition put out by the Georgia Agricultural Extension Service.

12. VIRGINIA TECH CULINARY HISTORY COLLECTION

Virginia Tech’s History of Food & Drink Collection features several hundred publications on the culinary arts, mainly from the 19th and early 20th century, although there’s also a digitized recipe book from 1731 [PDF] that opens with guidelines on how to pickle everything from a “great cucumber” to kidney beans. Among the vintage cookbooks, you can also find a 1930s cocktail manual, and the 1923 Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-dish Dainties which answers such pressing questions as “are midnight suppers hygienic?” alongside its recipes for “pineapple-and-cream-cheese salad, Easter style” and eggs à la king.

13. GASTRONOMY BOOKS FROM THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The Library of Congress selected works from its cookery collections within the Rare Books & Special Collections to make available online, with material dating back to the 15th century. The gastronomy books include The Accomplish’d lady’s delight in preserving, physick, beautifying, and cookery from 1675, with directions for dressing fowl as well as “Excellent receipts in physick and chirurgery.” The 1498 Apicius. De re coquinaria. Milan, Guillermus Le Signerre is the earliest surviving collection of recipes from Europe, believed to have evolved from a 1st century version compiled in Rome. And Lydia Maria Child’s 1829 Frugal housewife. Dedicated to those who are not ashamed of economy represents the thrifty work of one of the first women to support herself as a writer.

14. INTERNET ARCHIVE

The Internet Archive nonprofit digital library is a great resource for just about any media, cookery included. A search for cookbooks on the site turns up over 1000 results including examples from libraries and rare book collections. Among the vintage and historic publications are a California Mexican-Spanish cookbook from 1914, part of the University of California Libraries; a 1928 compendium of “salad secrets” from McGill University Library; and the 1913 The White House Cook Book, also from University of California Libraries.

15. BRITISH LIBRARY’S BOOKS FOR COOKS

The British Library’s online Books for Cooks is a chronological exploration from medieval banquets adorned with pastry ships to frugal Victorians in London recycling their coffee grounds. Publications with highlighted recipes include the 1595 The Widdowes Treasure, which advises on killing lice as well as preventing mold on pears; the 1670 The Queen-like Closet with recipes for calves’ foot pie and oyster pie; and the 1729 The Queen’s Royal Cookery, in which you can attempt to learn how to master the collaring of an eel.