We're honored by a 5-star review of our Field Guide to Identifying Unicorns by Sound.  Jessy Carlisle describes the book as quirky fun for the alternative thinker.  Pictured is a page from the book, with four tips for hearing a unicorn.

Whether or not the earth is flat, the United States was put on an acre of paper in 1924.  From Popular Mechanics.

One doesn't often see the word "superecstasy."  In yogic terms, it's a fifth state of consciousness (Turya-Atita-Avasta) enjoyed by holy men.  From David Vallory by Francis Lynde, 1919.

Here are some freshly-hatched chicken sandwiches from Wayside Tales, 1906.

"Giving an absent treatment," from The Perfect Course of Instruction in Hypnotism, Mesmerism, Clairvoyance, Suggestive Therapeutics, and the Sleep Cure, 1900.

"A corner of one of the stockroms" of a skeleton factory, from Pearson's, 1897.

From Judy, Or The London Serio-Comic Journal, 1879.

A 1910 issue of The Sphinx, the UW Madison campus humor magazine.  See How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.

An illustration by Wijnand Otto Jan Nieuwenkamp for Eigen Haard, 1896.

The phrase "monoliths don't grow on trees" is a Googlewhack.  From Jugend, 1898.

"You young pickles!"  (Also known as gherkins.)  From English Illustrated, 1907.

Here's a precursor to The Skipper from Gilligan's Island.  From Jugend, 1910.

From Wiener Revue, 1946.

From That Fated Shore by Phil Farrand, 2009.

Spoiler - it's balsa wood.  From Popular Mechanics, 1920.

Here's a pickle parade from Wayside Tales, 1906.

"Then he set about telling me of the beautiful gold and silver ware they use in the Elysian Fields," from Ghosts I Have Met and Some Others by John Kendrick Bangs, 1898.

"'Yes, no doubt about it, the map ends at this juncture.'  Windza sat down.  'So what do we do now, turn back?'" —A. C. Wright, The Stone

Here's a precursor to the Twilight Zone episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," though less elevated.  From English Illustrated, 1907.

INSTRUCTIONS: Click to reveal the original photo.

"The Thing which is not in the Curriculum" is flourishing.  From Hunter College's Echo, 1901.  See How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.

In Scotland (whether or not at Loch Ness), sometimes you see only the head of a beast, but sometimes (as in this Pictish stone at Gairloch) it's the head that's invisble.

An illustration from Green Ghost Detective.

Here's a mad hatter from Punch, 1863.

A page from the Arthur and Fritz Kahn Collection, courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute Archives.

"Character as indicated by the hand," from 1893.

This is utter bullshit and the perfect example of my horror (not too strong a word) of the cold, soulless mentality of white-coat scientists (whom Robert Anton Wilson dubbed the New Inquisition).  From Popular Mechanics, 1924.

This can actually happen.  When Hurricane Matthew destoyed my home last October, a case of alcohol washed into my yard.  The garbage man asked if he could have it, so I gave it to him.  From an ad in Jugend, 1910.

"Idealist and realist."  From Die Muskete, 1925.

From Latest Sleights, Illusions, Mind Reading, and New Card Effects by R. D. Chater, 1903.

"The author was suffering from a combination of evils, want of rest and want of money being predominant."  From English Illustrated, 1907.

Is the cure a dose of ink?  (English Illustrated, 1890).

Here's a keyboard-activated bird dispatcher.  From Judy, Or The London Serio-Comic Journal, 1883.

INSTRUCTIONS: Click to transform the title.

From Punch, 1863.

A non-slip cat's paw (a detail from an advertisement, date uncertain).

You've heard of inscribing "a hieroglyphic in which culture is coded, thus creating a microscopic counterpart to the great enigma" that we desire to decipher (Ricardo Piglia, "Sarmiento the Writer").  Well, here's the Eye in the Pyramid as seen under a microscope, from Archiv für Mikroskopische Anatomiem, 1897.

From Le Imagini dei Degli Antichi, 1608.

"It was in the year 339,700 that I talked to the Queer Horse and the Strange Man put in the jar!"  From The Magical Land of Noom, written and illustrated by Johnny Gruelle, 1922.

From Jugend, 1897.

Can you read her face to determine the strength of the hand she was dealt?  From Hunter College's Wistarion yearbook, 1962.

You've heard that the money you touch is dirty, but here's why: money is squeezed out of people.  From Jugend, 1909.

From Idle Idyls by Carolyn Wells, 1900.

"Bring us liquor!"  From Wayside Tales, 1906.

Here are some fairies from The Sketch, 1903.

"The simple answer: habits. It is all about habits." —Feel Good Every Day: Let Your Thoughts Change Your Life

"Our tenants."  From English Illustrated, 1907.

From The Windsor Magazine, 1902.

From Judy, Or The London Serio-Comic Journal, 1879.

INSTRUCTIONS: Click to reveal the photo of Bette Davis cropped by the newspaper.

"The tiger and the crystal" -- the frontispiece to The Man Inside by V. F. Calverton, 1936.

Here's a "23 skidoo" broken down into three fives and an eight.

From the Choice Flower Seeds catalog, 1898.

From an ad for Buckingham's Dye for the Whiskers, c. 1890.

She's apparently singing about the three little pigs.  From Jugend, 1898.

Jonathan quips: "If some of the toffs in her audience are wearing necklaces, she's casting swines before pearls."

"The cubist."  From Die Muskete, 1925.

"The ego's strategy is always to blame the iceberg for being in the way" (Eve Eschner Hogan).  From Jugend, 1912.

From Die Bühne, 1925.  See also This Book is a Cactus.

Remarkable properties of the number nine.  From Curiosities for the Ingenious by Ash and Mason, 1825.

From The Common-Sense Philosophy of Spirit Or Psychology by Charles H. Foster, 1901.

"Roll, Britannia!"  From The Sketch, 1903.