The Earliest Surviving Photos of Iran: Photos from 1850s-60s Capture Everything from Grand Palaces to the Ruins of Persepolis

The tech­nol­o­gy and art of pho­tog­ra­phy emerged in nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Europe. And so, when a part of the world out­side Europe was well-pho­tographed in those days, it tend­ed to be a trav­el­ing Euro­pean behind the cam­era. Take John Thom­son, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, for his pho­tos of Chi­na in the eigh­teen-sev­en­ties. Even before that, an Ital­ian colonel and pho­tog­ra­ph­er named Lui­gi Pesce was hard at work doc­u­ment­ing a land geo­graph­i­cal­ly clos­er to Europe, but hard­ly less exot­ic in the Euro­pean world­view of the time: Per­sia, or what we would today call Iran.

“Accord­ing to schol­ars and his­to­ri­ans, the first pho­tog­ra­ph­er in Iran was Jules Richard, a French­man who, as stat­ed in his diaries, arrived in Tehran in 1844,” says the web site of the Nation­al Muse­um of Asian Art.

“He served as the French lan­guage tutor of the Gul­saz fam­i­ly and took daguerreo­types of Moham­mad Shah (reigned 1834–48) and his son, the crown prince, Nasir al-Din Mirza.” Alas, these pho­tographs seem to be lost, much like most oth­ers tak­en before Pesce’s arrival in the coun­try in 1848, “dur­ing the reign of Nas­er al-Din Shah Qajar, to train Iran­ian infantry units.”

Pesce’s pho­to­graph­ic sub­jects includ­ed Nas­er al-Din him­self, pic­tures of whom appear in the online col­lec­tion of Pesce’s work at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art. It was the Met that received a copy of the pho­to col­lec­tion Pesce pro­duced of Iran’s ancient mon­u­ments — prob­a­bly the very same copy that the pho­tog­ra­ph­er had orig­i­nal­ly sent to Prince William I, King of Prus­sia.

In those days, even such exalt­ed fig­ures had a great deal of curios­i­ty about far-flung realms, and before pho­tog­ra­phy, they had no eas­i­er way of see­ing what those realms real­ly looked like than mak­ing the ardu­ous jour­ney them­selves.

The sites cap­tured in this col­lec­tion include Toghrol Tow­er, the Tomb of Seeh‑i Mumin, and the Mosque of Nass­er-eddin Shah — as well as Pasar­gadae, Naqsh‑e Rus­tam, and Perse­po­lis, the famed cer­e­mo­ni­al cap­i­tal com­plex of the ancient Achaemenid Empire, which Pesce was the first to pho­to­graph. Or at least he was the first to suc­ceed in doing so, Nas­er al-Din hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly sent Richard off to make some daguerreo­types of Perse­po­lis that nev­er came out.

But even Pesce’s pho­tographs, ful­ly exe­cut­ed using just about the height of the tech­nol­o­gy at the time, no longer have the imme­di­a­cy they would have when Prince William gazed upon them; more than a cen­tu­ry and a half lat­er, they have a pati­na of his­tor­i­cal dis­tance that shades into unre­al­i­ty, mak­ing them feel not unlike ruins them­selves. You can also view more pho­tos on Google Arts and Cul­ture.

Relat­ed con­tent:

New Archive of Mid­dle East­ern Pho­tog­ra­phy Fea­tures 9,000 Dig­i­tized Images

Some of the Old­est Pho­tos You Will Ever See: Dis­cov­er Pho­tographs of Greece, Egypt, Turkey & Oth­er Mediter­ranean Lands (1840s)

Behold the World’s Old­est Ani­ma­tion Made on a Vase in Iran 5,200 Years Ago

The Old­est Known Pho­tographs of Rome (1841–1871)

700 Years of Per­sian Man­u­scripts Now Dig­i­tized & Free Online

Behold the Pho­tographs of John Thom­son, the First West­ern Pho­tog­ra­ph­er to Trav­el Wide­ly Through Chi­na (1870s)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

How to Make Medieval Mead: A 13th Century Recipe

Read a sto­ry set in the Mid­dle Ages, Beowulf or any­thing more recent­ly writ­ten, and you’re like­ly to run across a ref­er­ence to mead, which seems often to have been imbibed hearti­ly in halls ded­i­cat­ed to that very activ­i­ty. The same goes for medieval-themed plays, movies, and even video games. Take Assas­s­in’s Creed Val­hal­la, described by Max Miller, host of Youtube chan­nel Tast­ing His­to­ry, as “a his­to­ry-based game of, like, my favorite time peri­od — Sax­ons and Vikings, you know, fight­in’ it out — so I’m assum­ing that there’s going to be mead in there some­where.” He uploaded the video, below, in the fall of 2020, just before that game’s release, but accord­ing to the Assas­s­in’s Creed Wiki, he was right: there is, indeed, mead in there.

Per­haps throw­ing back a dig­i­tal horn of mead in a video game has its sat­is­fac­tions, but sure­ly it would only make us curi­ous to taste the real thing. Hence Miller’s episode project of “mak­ing medieval mead like a viking,” which requires only three basic ingre­di­ents: water, hon­ey, and ale dregs or dry ale yeast. (The set of required tools is a bit more com­plex, involv­ing sev­er­al dif­fer­ent ves­sels and, ide­al­ly, a “bub­bler” to let out the car­bon­a­tion.)

In it he con­sults a thir­teenth- or four­teenth-cen­tu­ry man­u­script (above) called the Trac­ta­tus de Mag­ne­tate et Oper­a­tionibus eius, which includes not just a let­ter on the work­ings of mag­nets — and “a uni­ver­si­ty hand­book on the the­o­ry of num­bers, pro­por­tions, and har­mo­ny” and “the sev­en signs of bad breed­ing; the sev­en signs of ele­gance” — but also “one of the old­est known sur­viv­ing Eng­lish mead recipes.”

“When you think of Sax­ons and Vikings, yes, you think of mead,” Miller says, “but mead actu­al­ly got its start way before that,” evi­denced in the alco­hol-and-hon­ey residue found on Chi­nese pot­tery dat­ing to 7000 BC and a writ­ten men­tion in the Indi­an Rigve­da. “I have tast­ed the sweet drink of life, know­ing that it inspires good thoughts and joy­ous expan­sive­ness to the extreme, that all the gods and all mor­tals seek it togeth­er,” says that sacred text. Even if Miller’s mead does­n’t make you feel like a god, it does have the virtue of requir­ing only a few days’ fer­men­ta­tion, as opposed to the tra­di­tion­al peri­od of months. Toward the video’s end, he men­tions hav­ing set one bot­tle aside to ripen fur­ther, and pos­si­bly to fea­ture in a lat­er episode. That was near­ly three years ago; today, Tast­ing His­to­ry fans can only spec­u­late as to what alco­holic Val­hal­la that brew has so far ascend­ed.

You can find the text of the medieval recipe below:

//ffor to make mede. Tak .i. galoun of fyne hony and to
þat .4. galouns of water and hete þat water til it be as
lengh þanne dis­solue þe hony in þe water. thanne set hem
ouer þe fier & let hem boyle and ever scomme it as longe as
any filthe rysith þer on. and þanne tak it doun of þe fier
and let it kole in oþer ves­selle til it be as kold as melk
whan it komith from þe koow. than tak drestis
of þe fynest ale or elles berme and kast in to þe water
& þe hony. and stere al wel to gedre but ferst loke er
þu put þy berme in. that þe water with þe hony be put
in a fayr stonde & þanne put in þy berme or elles þi
drestis for þat is best & stere wel to gedre/ and ley straw
or elles cloth­is a bowte þe ves­sel & a boue gif þe wedir
be kolde and so let it stande .3. dayes & .3. nygth­is gif
þe wedir be kold And gif it be hoot wedir .i. day and
.1. nyght is a nogh at þe fulle But ever after .i. hour or
.2. at þe moste a say þer of and gif þu wilt have it swete
tak it þe sonere from þe drestis & gif þu wilt have it scharpe
let it stand þe lenger þer with. Thanne draw it from
þe drestis as cler as þu may in to an oþer ves­sel clene & let
it stonde .1. nyght or .2. & þanne draw it in to an
oþer clene ves­sel & serve it forth // And gif þu wilt
make mede eglyn. tak sauge .ysope. ros­maryne. Egre-
moyne./ sax­e­frage. betayne./ cen­to­rye. lunarie/ hert-
is tonge./ Tyme./ maru­bi­um album. herbe jon./ of eche of
an hand­ful gif þu make .12. galouns and gif þu mak lesse
tak þe less of her­bis. and to .4. galouns of þi mater .i. galoun of
drestis.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How to Make Ancient Mesopotami­an Beer: See the 4,000-Year-Old Brew­ing Method Put to the Test

5,000-Year-Old Chi­nese Beer Recipe Gets Recre­at­ed by Stan­ford Stu­dents

Bars, Beer & Wine in Ancient Rome: An Intro­duc­tion to Roman Nightlife and Spir­its

Dis­cov­er the Old­est Beer Recipe in His­to­ry From Ancient Sume­ria, 1800 B.C.

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Medieval Tav­erns: Learn the His­to­ry of These Rough-and-Tum­ble Ances­tors of the Mod­ern Pub

Beer Archae­ol­o­gy: Yes, It’s a Thing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

When Salvador Dalí Gave a Lecture at the Sorbonne & Arrived in a Rolls Royce Full of Cauliflower (1955)

Sal­vador Dalí led a long and event­ful life, so much so that cer­tain of its chap­ters out­landish enough to define any­one else’s exis­tence have by now been almost for­got­ten. “You’ve done some very mys­te­ri­ous things,” Dick Cavett says to Dalí on the 1971 broad­cast of his show above. “I don’t know if you like to be asked what they mean, but there was an inci­dent once where you appeared for a lec­ture in Paris, at the Sor­bonne, and you arrived in a Rolls-Royce filled with cau­li­flow­ers.” At that, the artist wastes no time launch­ing into an elab­o­rate, semi-intel­li­gi­ble expla­na­tion involv­ing rhi­noc­er­os horns and the gold­en ratio.

The inci­dent in ques­tion had occurred six­teen years ear­li­er, in 1955. “With bed­lam in his mind and a quaint pro­fu­sion of fresh cau­li­flower in his Rolls-Royce lim­ou­sine, Span­ish-born Sur­re­al­ist Painter Sal­vador Dalí arrived at Paris’ Sor­bonne Uni­ver­si­ty to unbur­den him­self of some gib­ber­ish,” says the con­tem­po­rary notice in Time. “His sub­ject: ‘Phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal Aspects of the Crit­i­cal Para­noiac Method.’ Some 2,000 ecsta­t­ic lis­ten­ers were soon shar­ing Sal­vador’s Dalir­i­um.”

To them he announced his dis­cov­ery that “ ‘every­thing departs from the rhi­noc­er­os horn! Every­thing departs from [Dutch Mas­ter] Jan Ver­meer’s The Lace­mak­er! Every­thing ends up in the cau­li­flower!’ The rub, apol­o­gized Dali, is that cau­li­flow­ers are too small to prove this the­o­ry con­clu­sive­ly.”

Near­ly sev­en decades lat­er, Honi Soit’s Nicholas Osiowy takes these ideas rather more seri­ous­ly than did the sneer­ing cor­re­spon­dent from Time. “Beneath the sim­ple shock val­ue and easy sur­re­al­ism, it becomes clear Dalí was onto some­thing; the hum­ble cau­li­flower is con­sid­ered one of the best exam­ples of the leg­endary gold­en ratio,” Osiowy writes. “Cau­li­flow­ers, rhi­noc­er­os­es and anteaters’ tongues were to Dali essen­tial man­i­fes­ta­tions of a glo­ri­ous shape; deserv­ing of an explic­it depic­tion in his The Sacra­ment of the Last Sup­per,” paint­ed in the year of his Sor­bonne lec­ture. “Shape, the idea of geom­e­try itself, is the unsung mag­ic of not just art but our entire cul­tur­al con­scious­ness.” Not that Dalí him­self would have copped to com­mu­ni­cat­ing that: “I am against any kind of mes­sage,” he insists in response to a ques­tion from fel­low Dick Cavett Show guest, who hap­pened to be silent-film icon Lil­lian Gish. The sev­en­ties did­n’t need the sur­re­al; they were the sur­re­al.

Relat­ed con­tent:

When Sal­vador Dali Met Sig­mund Freud, and Changed Freud’s Mind About Sur­re­al­ism (1938)

When Sal­vador Dalí Dressed — and Angri­ly Demol­ished — a Depart­ment Store Win­dow in New York City (1939)

Sal­vador Dalí Reveals the Secrets of His Trade­mark Mous­tache (1954)

Q: Sal­vador Dalí, Are You a Crack­pot? A: No, I’m Just Almost Crazy (1969)

Sal­vador Dalí Strolls onto The Dick Cavett Show with an Anteater, Then Talks About Dreams & Sur­re­al­ism, the Gold­en Ratio & More (1970)

How Dick Cavett Brought Sophis­ti­ca­tion to Late Night Talk Shows: Watch 270 Clas­sic Inter­views Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Romanovs’ Last Ball Brought to Life in Color Photographs (1903)

In 1903, the Romanovs, Russia’s last and longest-reign­ing roy­al fam­i­ly, held a lav­ish cos­tume ball. It was to be their final blowout, and per­haps also the “last great roy­al ball” in Europe, writes the Vin­tage News. The par­ty took place at the Win­ter Palace in St. Peters­burg, 14 years before Czar Nicholas II’s abdi­ca­tion, on the 290th anniver­sary of Romanov rule. The Czar invit­ed 390 guests and the ball ranged over two days of fes­tiv­i­ties, with elab­o­rate 17th-cen­tu­ry boyar cos­tumes, includ­ing “38 orig­i­nal roy­al items of the 17th cen­tu­ry from the armory in Moscow.”

“The first day fea­tured feast­ing and danc­ing,” notes Rus­sia Beyond, “and a masked ball was held on the sec­ond. Every­thing was cap­tured in a pho­to album that con­tin­ues to inspire artists to this day.” The entire Romanov fam­i­ly gath­ered for a pho­to­graph on the stair­case of the Her­mitage the­ater, the last time they would all be pho­tographed togeth­er.

It is like see­ing two dif­fer­ent dead worlds super­im­posed on each other—the Romanovs’ play­act­ing their begin­ning while stand­ing on the thresh­old of their last days.

With the irony of hind­sight, we will always look upon these poised aris­to­crats as doomed to vio­lent death and exile. In a mor­bid turn of mind, I can’t help think­ing of the baroque goth­ic of “The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allan Poe’s sto­ry about a doomed aris­toc­ra­cy who seal them­selves inside a cos­tume ball while a con­ta­gion rav­ages the world out­side: “The exter­nal world could take care of itself,” Poe’s nar­ra­tor says. “In the mean­time it was fol­ly to grieve or to think. The prince had pro­vid­ed all the appli­ances of plea­sure…. It was a volup­tuous scene, that mas­quer­ade.”

Maybe in our imag­i­na­tion, the Romanovs and their friends seem haunt­ed by the weight of suf­fer­ing out­side their palace walls, in both their coun­try and around Europe as the old order fell apart. Or per­haps they just look haunt­ed the way every­one does in pho­tographs from over 100 years ago. Does the col­oriz­ing of these pho­tos by Russ­ian artist Klimbim—who has done sim­i­lar work with images of WW2 sol­diers and por­traits of Russ­ian poets and writ­ers—make them less ghost­ly?

It puts flesh on the pale mono­chro­mat­ic faces, and gives the lav­ish cos­tum­ing and fur­ni­ture tex­ture and dimen­sion. Some of the images almost look like art nou­veau illus­tra­tions (and resem­ble those of some of the finest illus­tra­tors of Poe’s work) and the work of con­tem­po­rary painters like Gus­tav Klimt. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that unease lingers in the eyes of some subjects—Empress Alexan­dra Fedorov­na among them—a cer­tain vague and trou­bled appre­hen­sion.

In their book A Life­long Pas­sion, authors Andrei May­lu­nas and Sergei Miro­nenko quote the Grand Duke Alexan­der Mikhailovitch who remem­bered the event as “the last spec­tac­u­lar ball in the his­to­ry of the empire.” The Grand Duke also recalled that “a new and hos­tile Rus­sia glared through the large win­dows of the palace… while we danced, the work­ers were strik­ing and the clouds in the Far East were hang­ing dan­ger­ous­ly low.” As Rus­sia Beyond notes, soon after this cel­e­bra­tion, “The glob­al eco­nom­ic cri­sis marked the begin­ning of the end for the Russ­ian Empire, and the court ceased to hold balls.”

In 1904, the Rus­so-Japan­ese War began, a war Rus­sia was to lose the fol­low­ing year. Then the aristocracy’s pow­er was fur­ther weak­ened by the Rev­o­lu­tion of 1905, which Lenin would lat­er call the “Great Dress Rehearsal” for the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary takeover of 1917. While the aris­toc­ra­cy cos­tumed itself in the trap­pings of past glo­ry, armies amassed to force their reck­on­ing with the 20th cen­tu­ry.

Who knows what thoughts went through the mind of the tzar, tza­ri­na, and their heirs dur­ing those two days, and the minds of the almost 400 noble­men and women dressed in cos­tumes spe­cial­ly designed by artist Sergey Solomko, who drew from the work of sev­er­al his­to­ri­ans to make accu­rate 17th-cen­tu­ry recre­ations, while Peter Carl Fabergé chose the jew­el­ry, includ­ing, writes the Vin­tage News, the tzarina’s “pearls topped by a dia­mond and emer­ald-stud­ded crown” and an “enor­mous emer­ald” on her bro­cad­ed dress?

If the Romanovs had any inkling their almost 300-year dynasty was com­ing to its end and would take all of the Russ­ian aris­toc­ra­cy with it, they were, at least, deter­mined to go out with the high­est style; the fam­i­ly with “almost cer­tain­ly… the most abso­lutist pow­ers” would spare no expense to live in their past, no mat­ter what the future held for them. See the orig­i­nal, black and white pho­tos, includ­ing that last fam­i­ly por­trait, at His­to­ry Dai­ly, and see sev­er­al more col­orized images at the Vin­tage News.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch Scenes from Czarist Moscow Vivid­ly Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (May 1896)

Dos­toyevsky Got a Reprieve from the Czar’s Fir­ing Squad and Then Saved Charles Bukowski’s Life

Tsarist Rus­sia Comes to Life in Vivid Col­or Pho­tographs Tak­en Cir­ca 1905–1915

 

 

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Vin Mariani, the 19th-Century Cocaine-Infused Wine, Imbibed and Endorsed by Presidents, Popes & Writers

In the nev­erend­ing quest to ele­vate them­selves above the fray, today’s mixol­o­gists — for­mer­ly known as bar­tenders — are putting a mod­ern spin on obscure cock­tail recipes, and res­ur­rect­ing anachro­nis­tic spir­its like mahia, Char­treuse, Usque­baugh, and absinthe.

Might we see a return of Vin Mar­i­ani, a Belle Époque ‘ton­ic wine’ that was hit with such august per­son­ages as Queen Vic­to­ria, Ulysses S. Grant, Alexan­der Dumas and Emile Zola?

Prob­a­bly not.

It’s got coca in it, known for its psy­choac­tive alka­loid, cocaine.

Cor­si­can chemist Ange­lo Mar­i­ani came up with the restora­tive bev­er­age, for­mal­ly known as Vin Tonique Mar­i­ani à la Coca de Per­oum, in 1863, inspired by physi­cian and anthro­pol­o­gist Pao­lo Man­tegaz­za who served as his own guinea pig after observ­ing native use of coca leaves while on a trip to South Amer­i­ca:

I sneered at the poor mor­tals con­demned to live in this val­ley of tears while I, car­ried on the wings of two leaves of coca, went fly­ing through the spaces of 77,438 words, each more splen­did than the one before…An hour lat­er, I was suf­fi­cient­ly calm to write these words in a steady hand: God is unjust because he made man inca­pable of sus­tain­ing the effect of coca all life long. I would rather have a life span of ten years with coca than one of 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 000 cen­turies with­out coca.

Mar­i­ani iden­ti­fied an untapped oppor­tu­ni­ty and added ground coca leaves to Bor­deaux, at a ratio of 6 mil­ligrams of coca to one ounce of wine.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the result­ing con­coc­tion not only took the edge off, it was accord­ed a num­ber of health­ful ben­e­fits in an age where gen­er­al cure-alls were high­ly prized.

The rec­om­mend­ed dosage for adults was two or three glass­es a day, before or after meals. For kids, the amount could be divid­ed in two.

Reign­ing mas­ters of graph­ic design were enlist­ed to pro­mote the mir­a­cle elixir.

Jules Chéret leaned into its ener­gy boost­ing effects by depict­ing a come­ly young woman clad in skimpy, sheer yel­low replen­ish­ing her glass mid-leap, while Alphonse Mucha went dark, claim­ing that “the mum­mies them­selves stand up and walk after drink­ing Vin Mar­i­ani.”

While we’re on the sub­ject of corpse revivers, 21st-cen­tu­ry mixol­o­gists will please note that a cock­tail of Vin Mar­i­ani, ver­mouth and bit­ters, served with a twist, was a par­tic­u­lar­ly pop­u­lar prepa­ra­tion, espe­cial­ly across the Atlantic, where Vin Mar­i­ani was export­ed in a more potent ver­sion con­tain­ing 7.2 mil­ligrams of coca.

Ange­lo Mariani’s inno­va­tions were not lim­it­ed to the chem­istry of alco­holic com­pounds.

He was also a mar­ket­ing genius, who cur­ried celebri­ty favor by send­ing a com­pli­men­ta­ry case of Vin Mar­i­ani to dozens of famous names, along with a hum­ble request for an endorse­ment and pho­to, should the con­tents prove pleas­ing.

These acco­lades were col­lect­ed and repur­posed as adver­tise­ments that assured ador­ing fans and fol­low­ers of the product’s qual­i­ty.

Sarah Bern­hardt con­ferred super­star sta­tus on the drink, and not so sub­tly shored up her own, grand­ly pro­nounc­ing the blend the “King of Ton­ics, Ton­ic of Kings:”

I have been delight­ed to find Vin Mar­i­ani in all the large cities of the Unit­ed States, and it has, as always, large­ly helped to give me that strength so nec­es­sary in the per­for­mance of the ardu­ous duties which I have imposed upon myself. I nev­er fail to praise its virtues to all my friends and I hearti­ly con­grat­u­late upon the suc­cess which you so well deserve. 

Pope Leo XIII not only car­ried “a per­son­al hip flask” of the stuff to “for­ti­fy him­self in those moments when prayer was insuf­fi­cient,” he invent­ed and award­ed a Vat­i­can gold medal to Vin Mar­i­ani “in recog­ni­tion of ben­e­fits received.”

Mar­i­ani even­tu­al­ly pack­aged the glow­ing endorse­ments he’d been squir­rel­ing away as Por­traits from Album Mar­i­ani. It’s a com­pendi­um of famous artists, writ­ers, actors, and musi­cians of the day, some remem­bered, most­ly not…

Com­pos­er John Philip Sousa:

When worn out after a long rehearsal or a per­for­mance, I find noth­ing so help­ful as a glass of Vin Mar­i­ani. To brain work­ers and those who expend a great deal of ner­vous force, it is invalu­able.

Opera singer Lil­lian Blau­velt:

Vin Mar­i­ani is the great­est of all ton­ic stim­u­lants for the voice and sys­tem. Dur­ing my pro­fes­sion­al career, I have nev­er been with­out it.

Illus­tra­tor Albert Robi­da:

At last! At last! It has been dis­cov­ered — they hold it, that cel­e­brat­ed microbe so long sought after — the microbe of microbes that kills all oth­er microbes. It is the great, the won­der­ful, the incom­pa­ra­ble microbe of health! It is, it is Vin Mar­i­ani!

(We sus­pect Robi­da penned his entry after swal­low­ing more than a few glass­es… or he was of a mis­chie­vous nature and would’ve fit right in with the Sur­re­al­ists, the Futur­ists, Fluxus, or any oth­er move­ment that jabbed at the bour­geoisie with hyper­bole and humor.

Mar­i­ani used the album to pub­lish the Philadel­phia Med­ical Times’ defense of celebri­ty endorse­ments:

The array of notable names is a strong one. Too strong in stand­ing, as well as in num­bers, to allow of the charge of inter­est­ed motives.

Mar­i­ani also includ­ed an excerpt from the New York Med­ical Jour­nal, denounc­ing the unscrupu­lous man­u­fac­tur­ers of “rival prepa­ra­tions of coca” who pirat­ed Vin Mariani’s glow­ing reviews, “crafti­ly mak­ing those records appear to apply to their own prepa­ra­tions.”

Else­where in the album, med­ical author­i­ties tout Vin Mariani’s suc­cess in com­bat­ting such mal­adies as headaches, heart strain, brain exhaus­tion, spasms, la grippe, laryn­geal afflic­tions, influen­za, inor­di­nate irri­tabil­i­ty and wor­ry.

They fail to men­tion that it could get you much high­er than vins ordi­naires, defined, for pur­pos­es of this post, as “wines lack­ing in coca.”

The psy­choac­tive prop­er­ties of coca def­i­nite­ly received a boost from the alco­hol, a col­li­sion that gave rise to a third chem­i­cal com­pound, cocaeth­yl­ene, a long-last­ing intox­i­cant that pro­duces intense eupho­ria, along with a height­ened risk of car­diotox­i­c­i­ty and sud­den death.

…some dead celebri­ties could like­ly tell us a thing or two about it.

Mariani’s for­tunes began to turn ear­ly in the 20th cen­tu­ry, owing to the Pure Food and Drug Act, the grow­ing tem­per­ance move­ment, and increased pub­lic aware­ness of the dan­gers of cocaine.

We may nev­er see a Vin Mar­i­ani cock­tail on the menu at Death & Co, Licor­ería Liman­tour, or Par­adiso, but the Drug Enforce­ment Administration’s Muse­um keeps a bot­tle on hand.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Coca-Cola Was Orig­i­nal­ly Sold as an Intel­lec­tu­al Stim­u­lant & Med­i­cine: The Unlike­ly Sto­ry of the Icon­ic Soft Drink’s Inven­tion

How a Young Sig­mund Freud Researched & Got Addict­ed to Cocaine, the New “Mir­a­cle Drug,” in 1894

The Cof­fee Pot That Fueled Hon­oré de Balzac’s Cof­fee Addic­tion

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

A Mischievous Samurai Describes His Rough-and-Tumble Life in 19th Century Japan

The samu­rai class first took shape in Japan more than 800 years ago, and it cap­tures the imag­i­na­tion still today. Up until at least the sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry, their life and work seems to have been rel­a­tive­ly pres­ti­gious and well-com­pen­sat­ed. By Kat­su Kokichi’s day, how­ev­er, the way of the samu­rai was­n’t what it used to be. Born in 1802, Kat­su lived through the first half of the cen­tu­ry in which the samu­rai as we know it would go extinct, ren­dered unsup­port­able by evolv­ing mil­i­tary tech­nol­o­gy and a chang­ing social order. But read­ing his auto­bi­og­ra­phy Musui’s Sto­ry: The Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of a Toku­gawa Samu­rai, one gets the feel­ing that he would­n’t exact­ly have excelled even in his pro­fes­sion’s hey­day.

“From child­hood, Kat­su was giv­en to mis­chief,” says the site of the book’s pub­lish­er. “He ran away from home, once at thir­teen, mak­ing his way as a beg­gar on the great trunk road between Edo and Kyoto, and again at twen­ty, pos­ing as the emis­sary of a feu­dal lord. He even­tu­al­ly mar­ried and had chil­dren but nev­er obtained offi­cial prefer­ment and was forced to sup­ple­ment a mea­ger stipend by deal­ing in swords, sell­ing pro­tec­tion to shop­keep­ers, and gen­er­al­ly using his mus­cle and wits.”

But don’t take it from The Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona Press when you can hear selec­tions of Kat­su’s dis­solute picaresque of a life retold in his own words — and nar­rat­ed in Eng­lish trans­la­tion — in the ani­mat­ed Voic­es of the Past video above.

“Unable to dis­tin­guish right and wrong, I took my excess­es as the behav­ior of heroes and brave men,” writes a 42-year-old Kat­su in a par­tic­u­lar­ly self-fla­gel­lat­ing pas­sage. “In every­thing, I was mis­guid­ed, and I will nev­er know how much anguish I caused my rel­a­tives, par­ents, wife, and chil­dren. Even more rep­re­hen­si­ble, I behaved most dis­loy­al­ly to my lord and mas­ter the shogun and with utter­most defi­ance to my supe­ri­ors. Thus did I final­ly bring myself to this low estate.” But if was from that inglo­ri­ous posi­tion that Kat­su could pro­duce such an enter­tain­ing and illu­mi­nat­ing set of reflec­tions. He may have been no Miyamo­to Musashi, but he left us a more vivid descrip­tion of every­day life in nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Japan than his exalt­ed con­tem­po­raries could have man­aged.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hand-Col­ored 1860s Pho­tographs Reveal the Last Days of Samu­rai Japan

How to Be a Samu­rai: A 17th Cen­tu­ry Code for Life & War

The 17th Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Samu­rai Who Sailed to Europe, Met the Pope & Became a Roman Cit­i­zen

The His­to­ry of Ancient Japan: The Sto­ry of How Japan Began, Told by Those Who Wit­nessed It (297‑1274)

Hear an Ancient Chi­nese His­to­ri­an Describe The Roman Empire (and Oth­er Voic­es of the Past)

Watch the Old­est Japan­ese Ani­me Film, Jun’ichi Kōuchi’s The Dull Sword (1917)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Behold 1,600-Year-Old Egyptian Socks Made with Nålbindning, an Ancient Proto-Knitting Technique

We have, above, a pair of socks. You can tell that much by look­ing at them, of course, but what’s less obvi­ous at a glance is their age: this pair dates back to 250–420 AD, and were exca­vat­ed in Egypt at the end of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. That infor­ma­tion comes from the site of the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um, where you can learn more about not just these Egypt­ian socks but the dis­tinc­tive, now-van­ished tech­nique used to make socks in Egypt at the time: “nål­bind­ning, some­times called knot­less net­ting or sin­gle nee­dle knit­ting — a tech­nique clos­er to sewing than knit­ting,” which, as we know it, would­n’t emerge until the eleventh cen­tu­ry in Islam­ic Egypt. The tech­nique still remains in use today.

Time con­sum­ing and skill-inten­sive, nålbind­ning pro­duced espe­cial­ly close-fit­ting gar­ments, and “fit is of par­tic­u­lar impor­tance in a cold cli­mate but also for pro­tect­ing feet clothed in san­dals only.” And yes, it seems that socks like these were indeed worn with san­dals, a func­tion indi­cat­ed by their split-toe con­struc­tion.

A few years ago, we fea­tured archae­o­log­i­cal research here on Open Cul­ture point­ing to the ancient Romans as the first sock-and-san­dal wear­ers in human his­to­ry. These par­tic­u­lar socks were also made in the time of the Roman Empire, though they were unearthed at its far reach­es, from “the bur­ial grounds of ancient Oxyrhynchus, a Greek colony on the Nile.”

As Smithsonian.com’s Emi­ly Spi­vack writes, “We don’t know for sure whether these socks were for every­day use, worn with a pair of san­dals to do the ancient Egypt­ian equiv­a­lent of run­ning errands or head­ing to work — or if they were used as cer­e­mo­ni­al offer­ings to the dead (they were found by bur­ial grounds, after all).” But the fact that their appear­ance is so strik­ing to us today, at least six­teen cen­turies lat­er, reminds us that we aren’t as famil­iar as we think with the world that pro­duced them. And if, to our mod­ern eyes, they even look a bit goofy — though less goofy than they would if worn prop­er­ly, along with a pair of san­dals — we should remem­ber the painstak­ing method with which they must have been craft­ed, as well as the way they con­sti­tute a thread, as it were, through the his­to­ry of west­ern civ­i­liza­tion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Ancient Egyp­tians Wore Fash­ion­able Striped Socks, New Pio­neer­ing Imag­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Imag­ing Reveals

A 3,000-Year-Old Painter’s Palette from Ancient Egypt, with Traces of the Orig­i­nal Col­ors Still In It

An Ancient Egypt­ian Home­work Assign­ment from 1800 Years Ago: Some Things Are Tru­ly Time­less

3,200-Year-Old Egypt­ian Tablet Records Excus­es for Why Peo­ple Missed Work: “The Scor­pi­on Bit Him,” “Brew­ing Beer” & More

The Met Dig­i­tal­ly Restores the Col­ors of an Ancient Egypt­ian Tem­ple, Using Pro­jec­tion Map­ping Tech­nol­o­gy

The Ancient Romans First Com­mit­ted the Sar­to­r­i­al Crime of Wear­ing Socks with San­dals, Archae­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence Sug­gests

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

All This and World War II: The Forgotten 1976 Film That Mashed Up WWII Film Clips & Beatles Covers by Peter Gabriel, Elton John, Keith Moon & More

You may not hear the term mash-up very often these days, but the con­cept itself isn’t exact­ly the ear­ly-two-thou­sands fad that it might imply. It seems that, as soon as tech­nol­o­gy made it pos­si­ble for enthu­si­asts to com­bine osten­si­bly unre­lat­ed pieces of media — the more incon­gru­ous, the bet­ter — they start­ed doing so: take the syn­chro­niza­tion of The Wiz­ard of Oz and Pink Floy­d’s The Dark Side of the Moon, known as The Dark Side of the Rain­bow. But even back in the sev­en­ties, the art of the pro­to-mash-up was­n’t prac­ticed only by rogue pro­jec­tion­ists in altered states of mind, as evi­denced by the 1976 20th Cen­tu­ry Fox Release All This and World War II, which assem­bled real and dra­ma­tized footage of that epoch-mak­ing geopo­lit­i­cal con­flict with Bea­t­les cov­ers.

Upon its release, All This and World War II “was received so harsh­ly it was pulled from the­aters after two weeks and nev­er spo­ken of again,” as Kei­th Phipps writes at The Reveal.

Those who actu­al­ly seek it out and watch it today will find that it gets off to an even less aus­pi­cious start than they might imag­ine: “A clip of Char­lie Chan (Sid­ney Tol­er) skep­ti­cal­ly receiv­ing the news of Neville Chamberlain’s ‘peace in our time’ dec­la­ra­tion in the 1939 film City in Dark­ness gives way to a cov­er of ‘Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour’ by ’70s soft-rock giants Ambrosia. Accom­pa­ny­ing the song: footage of swasti­ka ban­ners, Ger­man sol­diers march­ing in for­ma­tion, and a cli­mac­tic appear­ance from a smil­ing Adolf Hitler, by impli­ca­tion the orga­niz­er of the ‘mys­tery tour’ that was World War II.”

The oth­er record­ing artists of the sev­en­ties enlist­ed to sup­ply new ver­sions of well-known Bea­t­les num­bers include the Bee Gees, Elton John, the Who’s Kei­th Moon, and Peter Gabriel, names that assured the sound­track album (which you can hear on this Youtube playlist) a much greater suc­cess than the film itself, with its fever-dream mix­ture of news­reels Axis and Allied with 20th Cen­tu­ry Fox war-pic­ture clips.

As for what every­one involved was think­ing in the first place, Phipps quotes an expla­na­tion that sound­track pro­duc­er Lou Reizn­er once pro­vid­ed to UPI: “It would have been easy to take the music of the era and dub it to match the action on screen. But we’d have lost the young audi­ence. We want all age groups to see this pic­ture because we think it makes a state­ment about the absur­di­ty of war. It is the defin­i­tive anti-war film” — or, as Phipps puts it, the defin­i­tive “cult film in search of cult.”

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear 100 Amaz­ing Cov­er Ver­sions of Bea­t­les Songs

The 15 Worst Cov­ers of Bea­t­les Songs: William Shat­ner, Bill Cos­by, Tiny Tim, Sean Con­nery & Your Excel­lent Picks

Dark Side of the Rain­bow: Pink Floyd Meets The Wiz­ard of Oz in One of the Ear­li­est Mash-Ups

The Atom­ic Café: The Cult Clas­sic Doc­u­men­tary Made Entire­ly Out of Nuclear Weapons Pro­pa­gan­da from the Cold War (1982)

Watch 85,000 His­toric News­reel Films from British Pathé Free Online (1910–2008)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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