I love these lamps! They're charming, functional and probably terribly hot to the touch. I'm not sure who made them, but my friend Marilyn Bellamy thinks that they can be traced back to a company called Balloonatics Ente...

On Oct. 24, 1901, 63-year old schoolteacher Annie Edson Taylor climbed into a barrel and plunged over Niagara Falls. She was the first known person to do so and survive. Emerging from the barrel, she advised against atte...

(Photo: Franziska Kauffman/EPA)Ferdinand Porsche (1875-1951) was an automotive engineer and founder of the car company Porsche. In 1898, he personally built his first car: a 1898 Egger-Lohner electric C2 Phaeton. It had...

(Photo: Rama)(Photo: Daderot)Swedish-American inventor Henry Konrad Sandell designed this device, the Mills Violano Virtuoso. It's like a mechanical player piano, but it plays a violin. He patented it in 1905 along with...

This lovely sculpture is actually a drinking cup owned by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. It dates back to about the 1600s and originated in what is now Germany. It’s gilt with silver and wrapped around a...

When I was a kid in the 1960s, I embroidered a tea towel to give to my grandmother every year for Christmas. By the time I got to high school, I found I could make decent money embroidering designs and scenes on other pe...

I can’t verify these claims, but according to various tumblr blogs, this photo shows a strongbox made in Nuremberg in around 1540. It’s made of sheets of forged iron riveted together. In addition to the three...

(Photos: Columbia University)This unusual antique is called a diptych dial—a type of sundial. Skilled craftsmen produced them from the Sixteenth through the Eighteenth Centuries, usually in Nuremberg. They were use...

(Photo: Rouillac)This Seventeenth Century Japanese lacquer box was a masterpiece in its time and, in our time, stout enough to support a heavy television set. What is now known as the Mazarin Chest passed through various...

Angélique Marguerite Le Boursier du Coudray (1714-1794) was the midwife of the court of French King Louis XV. She was famous for her skills in that trade and highly sought after as a teacher. Madame du Coudray tra...