A glimpse into the past, made easy with the internet

One of the reasons that I love Richmond is that a lot of the old architecture still stands and is still being used today. I saw Speed Racer last night in the Byrd Theatre, which opened in 1928 and sells tickets to recent movies for $2. How can you beat that?

That just inspired me to write a post about the theatre or maybe Richmond itself, but then I remembered that "The Times" in London recently put all of its newspapers online from 1785 to today for free (you can register for free or use login_hater@mailinator.com and login_hater) . I haven't found much out of the ordinary, but others have! A personal advertisement from November 13, 1832 reads:

INSANITY - Mr. OXLEY, surgeon, begs to inform the public that he has a few
VACANCIES in his ASYLUM for respectable patients. No paupers taken. Terms
moderate. Nurses wanted.

There's also this review for a show in 1970 in which Nick Drake opened:


The other really interesting internet time machine that I've come across is the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Archive. The sheer diversity of what you can find is staggering. The images are (usually) in a wickedly-high resolution, so you can print poster-size copies for yourself!

Departure, S.S. Chalmette from Havana Harbor

Chalmette Refinery, American Sugar Refining Company, New Orleans, La.

Tommy Atkins

Federal Theatre presents "Trojan incident" (heh)

And of course, there's always Archive.org, but I've never found too many interesting things, except for entire Soul Coughing live shows that are too large to fit onto a CD. It's weird to think that the internet can be the both information superhighway and the gateway to Jamie Spears' kid, too. You've just gotta look.