Breakfast Links Week of March 26, 2012

Served up fresh for your browsing delight: our favorite links of the week to other blogs, web sites, pictures, and articles, collected from around the Twitterverse.
• Brief history of royal barges, including Eleanor of Provence's being pelted with stones from London Bridge in 1263.
• The onager, a fabulous beast, and symbol of the devil, who brays 12 times on the spring equinox.
• Artist at the window: 18th c French painter Marie Victoire Lemoine.
• Who was Casanova - history's greatest lover, a cad, or a misunderstood intellectual?
• Breathtaking pink silk satin evening gown by Liberty c 1910 - esp. like the open sleeves & tassels.
• An "angel in a top hat" or "a great meddler"? Henry Bergh (1813-1888) inspiring founder of ASCPA.
• Few artists are as sharply cruel as caricaturist James Gillray: his 1807 take on Lady Hamilton, "greatly enlarged."
• The original "Mad Men" office building 1957.
• Rare archival photographs of everyday life on board the Titanic by fortunate passenger who disembarked early.
• Who killed Alexander the Great? New theories about his death.
• Grim way of punishing outspoken women in the 16th-17th c: the scold's bridle.
• The education of an 18th c squire: John Wilkes (1725-1797.)
• The donkey born in a First World War trench that became a mascot for British troops.
• Caroline, Byron, and Annabella, in the same house on the same "fatal day."
• So cool! Virtual tour of Victorian chemist shop at Hitchin Museum.
• Garden history: 19th c White House gardens and grounds.
• A view of London: Tottenham Court Road, 1812.
• Self-Murder: The Sad Case of Mary Hunt (1767-1792.)
• An unusual Italian Renaissance mansion on NYC's Upper East Side survives relatively unchanged.
• Fannie Farmer & Cooking: fantastic list/links of historical cooking & recipe sources.
• Automaton: The Turk-The Grandmaster Hoax.
• "The wisdom of Solomon"and a stone pyramid, in the yard of a Hawksmoor church in London.
• Elegant black lace mitts from 1830s, not 1980s.