Here's a precursor to the inflatable dancing tube figures used for advertising.  From Judy, Or The London Serio-Comic Journal, 1873.

Remarkably, on July 81st, 1886, the sun rose upside down.  On Sept. 3/24th, the moon turned to green cheese.  From Fun magazine, 1886.

This is the Parisian panther that Rainer Maria Rilke wrote about in "Der Panther, Im Jardin des Plantes, Paris."

INSTRUCTIONS: Click to set the clock back.

David Methuen in the play Monday Next, Theatre Royal, Hobart, Australia, ca. 1951, photographer unknown.

From L'Ame Amante de Son Dieu, Representée dans les Emblémes de Hermannus Hugo Sur ses Pieux Desirs, 1717.

From The Story of a Candy Rabbit by Laura Lee Hope, 1920.

From Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by L. Frank Baum, 1908.

From Jacko and Jumpo Kinkytail by Howard Roger Garis, 1917.

From Adrift in the Wilds by Edward Sylvester Ellis, 1887.

From King Time by Percy Keese Fitzhugh, 1908.  (We actually once spent a week in this tower.  The door to the clock mechanism is kept locked, which was our biggest disappointment.  There is access to the battlements, however.  The clock face itself isn't nearly as grumpy as it's depicted here.)

Walking the pig, from Goaks and Tears by M. Quad, 1875.

Where's the overlap between the beloved vampire film The Lost Boys and the open world game of Grand Theft Auto V?  Besides the vampire tooth of the game's Roman numeral and besides the boardwalk setting?  Off the top of our head, there are two music-related overlaps.  First, there's the band Age of Consent, who provide GTAV's infectious theme "Colours" (chant it with us: "go out, late night; come home, daylight").  They recorded a cover of Tim Cappello's "I Still Believe" from The Lost Boys soundtrack.  Second, the artist Twin Shadow (who serves as the DJ of Radio Mirror Park in the game and who offers the other standout track in the game, "Old Love / New Love"), has a song called "Golden Light," the chorus of which is an homage to the chorus of the film's memorable "Cry Little Sister" theme (chant it with us: "Thou shall not fall; thou shall not lie; thou shall not fear; thou shal not kill").  Twin Shadow's own lyrics are in the spirit of the film, too -- consider how this line, "Some people say there's a golden light -- you're the golden light -- and if I chase after you doesn't mean that it's true," recalls the film's character Michael who has newly arrived in the golden state and, feeling hopeless, chases after a creature of the night.  

"That's blood, Mother" -- a precusor to Norman Bates' "Mother! Oh, God, Mother! Blood! Blood!" in Psycho.  From English Illustrated, 1907.

Here's a precursor to the amateur singing shows like Idol and The Voice.  The caption reads, "Then all at once, without assistance, the afflicted creature found relief.  And since then the Tune's been all over everywhere upside down and downside upmost, besides other ways."  From Judy, Or The London Serio-Comic Journal, 1875.

We've answered an age-old question.  Which came first: the inverted cross of black metal or the egg?  Well, it's actually something of a paradox, as an egg with an inverted cross came first.  Our illustration appears in De la Formation du Blastoderme dans l'Oeuf d'Oiseau by M. Mathias Duval, 1884.

"All of the Alps seen from the hall-door," from Alpine Flowers for English Gardens by W. Robinson, 1870.

From our collection of Magic Words & Symbols Spotted in the Wild:

In the late 1800s, the J & P. Coats thread company released Tarot-like trade cards.

"It quite irritated the lizard."  From Griset's Grotesques, illustrated by Ernest Griset, 1867.

From Mother West Wind "Why" Stories by Thornton Burgess and illustrated by Harrison Cady, 1915.

Here's the djinn of the four-leaf clover, from The Quest of the Four-Leaved Clover by Edouard Laboulaye, 1910.

From Neues Deutsches Märchenbuch by Ludwig Bechstein, 1890.

From Die Nymphe des Brunnes, 1903.

From Histoire d'un Casse-Noisette, 1921.

From Carolina Magazine, 1942.

A Scribner's ad from 1886.

Here's the 4 a.m. "Egg Song" from Cartoons Magazine, 1917.  We didn't make a recording of this, as our exclusive recording of the sound of "turtle heaven" didn't exactly set the world on fire.

"The Worst of Wilde.  'The worst of you, Oscar,' said one stead and stolidly, jolly bank holiday, every-day young reporter, 'the worst of you is, you won't cut your hair.  Now, if you did, you might look like— This; or, with whiskers, thus; or, with a beard, thusly; or thusabouts.  But you won't, and that's what worries us so!"  From Judy, Or The London Serio-Comic Journal, 1882.

From The Biography of a Grizzly by Ernest Thompson Seton, 1918.

INSTRUCTIONS: Click to bring on the night.

"'Enlight'ning the back parlor. ['Not from France']."  From c. 1890.

From Zauberlinda, the Wise Witch by Eva Katherine Clapp, 1901.

From The Violet Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, 1906.

The Comic Language of Flowers

Peppermint — Warmth of feeling.

White Chrysanthemum — Truth.

Cosmelia rubra — The charm of a blush.

Larkspur — Lightness.

Maidenblush Rose — If you love me you will find it out.

Mallow — Mildness.

Indian Jasmin — I attach myself to you.

[From Judy, Or The London Serio-Comic Journal, 1882.]

INSTRUCTIONS: Click to tint the postcard.

Postcard drawn by F. Bluh, 1910.

She'll leave the old goat to take care of the poor little lambs.  A scan by the Wellcome Library, London.

From The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, 1899.

From The Great Sea Horse by Isabel Anderson, 1909.

From Les Assiègés de Compiègne 1430 by A. Robida, 1906.

"The great snow mountain," from Prince Peerless: A Fairy Folk Story Book by Margaret Collier and illustrated by John Collier, 1886.

From L'ami des Enfants by M. Berquin and illustrated by H. Gerbault, 1890.

From Plume et Poil, written and illustrated by Marc, 1921.

From En Avant, l'Arche! by Marc, 1921.

From Beasts and Men by Jean de Boschère, 1918.

You've heard of the Tower of Babel.  Here's its more modest cousin, the sandcastle of verbosity.  From Judy, Or The London Serio-Comic Journal, 1878.

"All good things come in small packages."  From Hunter College's Wistarion yearbook, 1916.

"Patty had dared him to hypnotise her," from "The Voice of the Charmer" by L. T. Meade, in Cassell's, 1895.

"It bears repeating: Be careful not to press the 'shower' button when you meant to flush the toilet." —Jim Loomis, All Aboard

From The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott, illustrated by T. Seccombe, 1870.

From The Winds of a Deal by L. Griswold, 1914.

From Kinder und Hausmarchen by the Grimm Brothers, 1910.

"'Look again and yet again,' said the angel."  From A Child's Book of Warriors by William Canton, 1907.

From Gems from Mother Goose, 1899.

From Cuchulain, the Hound of Ulster by Eleanor Hull, 1910.

From Emblems, Divine and Moral, 1866.

From The Briar Patch yearbook of Sweet Briar College, 1915.  See How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.

From The Book of the Poets, Chaucer to Beattie, 1844.

I dreamed I read chapter 22.  (From Judy, Or The London Serio-Comic Journal, 1877.)

We have discovered a non-surgical, instant way to be your own cat.  We call it, How to Be Your Own Cat.  There are 25 chapters with the steps involved, but results begin immediately.  Literary humorist Jonathan Caws-Elwitt blurbs, "It’s commonly known that you can be your own best friend or your own worst enemy.  It’s even well established that you can be your own grandpa.  But it takes a Professor Oddfellow to teach you How to Be Your Own Cat—and isn’t it about time?"

Martha Brockenbrough, author of The Game of Love and Death, notes: "I am also curious about how to be Schrödinger's cat."  There actually is much to say about being Schrödinger's cat!  We would begin by installing slatted blinds in the windows, because when light goes through a slit it's both a particle and a wave (plus, that's how the Cheshire cat got separated from its grin).  We'd get an "I am not a doormat" doormat so as to foster uncertainty.  We would collect nesting boxes.  We would always leave some mail in the mailbox  and a newspaper in the driveway so as to suggest the possibility of not being home.  We would play music by the dance band M-Theory and spin to it.  We would study ways to entangle strings (putting the macramé into M-theory).  We would adopt the pat answer of agnosticism, "I don't know."  We would collect (infinite) monkey memorabilia.  Then we'd sleep like the dead.

Of course, before you can become Schrödinger's cat in particular, you must transform into a cat in general.  Hence, How to Be Your Own Cat.

"Somebody should write a book about roosters, beginning with the infamous representative that we associate with St. Peter's famous fib." —Vermont Life

"A ray from the remotest star brings in its heart a secret message to him who can read it," from "A Message from Mars by J. Munroe, in Cassell's, 1895.

I dreamed of a vagabond's mustache.

Blowing hot and cold, from The Baby's Own Aesop by Walter Crane, 1899.

From Tales of Fantasy, edited by Tudor Jenks, 1902.

From The Talking Beasts, 1922.

Here's a precursor to what happens in Olenberg staying in Olenberg.  By Clifford Howard, 1911.