Who says librarians can’t be fashionable? Join us September 5th-12th as we celebrate New York Fashion Week by highlighting the fabulous fashion and costume items in our collections. Stay tuned here on the blog, as well as Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook, as we strut down the virtual catwalk!
Month: September 2013
On August 31, 1835, what came to be known as The Great Moon Hoax took its final bow in the Sun newspaper. During the following weeks, the story would be largely revealed as a hoax, but was still running wild as a story just the same. Other than discovering animal life and man-bats on the Moon, the other truly odd part of the hoax was that it was no hoax at all, but rather a satire that very few figured out.
Thomas Baines 1820-1875
For a British Empire that stretched across much of the globe at the beginning of the 19th century, the interiors of Africa and Australia remained intriguing mysteries. The challenge of opening these continents to imperial influence fell to a proto-professional coterie of determined explorers. They sought knowledge, adventure and fame, but often experienced confusion, fear and failure. “The Last Blank Spaces: Exploring Africa and Australia” (Harvard University Press, 2013) follows the arc of these explorations, from idea to practice, from intention to outcome, from myth to reality.