July 30, 2012 | 7 notes

Document Deep Dive: A Peek at the Last Time London Hosted the Olympics The National Archives in London unveiled a new web site, The Olympic Record, containing hundreds of digitized documents and images from the past 112 years of Olympic history. We focused on two charts in particular for more insight into the 1948 Games. Here, you see that the javelins on loan from Finland are valued at 17 pounds, 5 shillings and 11 pence. With inflation, that amount is equivalent to 532 pounds and 19 shillings today. Ed note: Our guess is you probably watched the Opening Ceremony last week from the comfort of your couch? You’ll appreciate that even more once you know why the Ancient Olympics were no fun to watch.

Document Deep Dive: A Peek at the Last Time London Hosted the Olympics

The National Archives in London unveiled a new web site, The Olympic Record, containing hundreds of digitized documents and images from the past 112 years of Olympic history. We focused on two charts in particular for more insight into the 1948 Games.

Here, you see that the javelins on loan from Finland are valued at 17 pounds, 5 shillings and 11 pence. With inflation, that amount is equivalent to 532 pounds and 19 shillings today.

Ed note: Our guess is you probably watched the Opening Ceremony last week from the comfort of your couch? You’ll appreciate that even more once you know why the Ancient Olympics were no fun to watch.

July 3, 2012 | 15 notes

Quite Likely the Worst Job Ever Among [Henry] Mayhew’s more memorable meetings were encounters with the “bone grubber,” the “Hindoo tract seller,” an eight-year-old girl watercress-seller and the “pure finder,” whose surprisingly sought-after job was picking up dog mess and selling it to tanners, who then used it to cure leather. None of his subjects, though, aroused more fascination—or greater disgust—among his readers than the men who made it their living by forcing entry into London’s sewers at low tide and wandering through them, sometimes for miles, searching out and collecting the miscellaneous scraps washed down from the streets above: bones, fragments of rope, miscellaneous bits of metal, silver cutlery and—if they were lucky—coins dropped in the streets above and swept into the gutters. - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com. Photo: Public Domain Ed note: The long and winding history of the Thames river.

Quite Likely the Worst Job Ever

Among [Henry] Mayhew’s more memorable meetings were encounters with the “bone grubber,” the “Hindoo tract seller,” an eight-year-old girl watercress-seller and the “pure finder,” whose surprisingly sought-after job was picking up dog mess and selling it to tanners, who then used it to cure leather. None of his subjects, though, aroused more fascination—or greater disgust—among his readers than the men who made it their living by forcing entry into London’s sewers at low tide and wandering through them, sometimes for miles, searching out and collecting the miscellaneous scraps washed down from the streets above: bones, fragments of rope, miscellaneous bits of metal, silver cutlery and—if they were lucky—coins dropped in the streets above and swept into the gutters. - Continue reading at Smithsonian.com.

Photo: Public Domain

Ed note: The long and winding history of the Thames river.