Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray (Johan Zoffany c. 1780)
Welcome back to our weekly CABINET OF CURIOSITIES — a round up of the history-related news and happenings that captured our imaginations this week.
Teasers started to appear for the 2015 Portsmouth Athenaeum exhibit on 18th century footwear. Fashionistas and material culture gurus, prepare yourselves; the exhibit looks like a delight for the senses.
While Amelia Earhart’s 1937 flight ended in the pilot’s tragic disappearance, later this month, 31 year old Amelia Rose Earhart will seek to recreate the flight in order to become the world’s youngest woman to fly the world in a single engine aircraft.
Xrays of an unopened cardboard box have revealed a cache of Christmas presents sent to World War I British soldiers by the Royal Family. The box, up for auction starting at approximately $60,000, never made it to its originally intended recipients.
Do you have a fascination with kings and queens? (We admittedly do!) This letter from James Stuart (later King James I of England) was written when he was a boy of six, living in Scotland; and it gives a glimpse into the hand he would form as an adult ruler.
Speaking of the exploits of nobility, the film Belle has been getting attention at theaters around the country. Anyone interested in the true history should look into Dido Elizabeth Belle, illegitimate daughter of Sir John Lindsay and an unknown slave, who was raised as a “companion” to the daughter of William Murray, first earl of Mansfield. The portrait of the two girls fascinates viewers today with the ambiguous relationship it shows between two cousins in very different social circumstances.
What fascinated you this week? Let us know! Leave a comment below or message us on Twitter @history_geek!
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