throwback thursday - TBT #27

Nov 10th was the day that the world famous Hope diamond was donated to the smithsonian museum, in 1958.

the hope diamond is a unique, deep blue diamond which originated in india. it travelled far and wide across the globe, and has a long history of which a large part remains unknown. it is believed to be originally part of a bigger uncut stone called the 'tavernier blue', and after passing through the hands of the wealthy and royalty in england and france, it came to the united states in the early 1900s.

the gem merchant Harry Winston acquired the diamond from its previous owners in 1949, and in 1958, donated it to the collections of the smithsonian. the diamond was presented to the museum on nov 10th 1958, after it reached there by registered mail in a simple brown paper package . the package was insured for one million dollars, and the actual postage fee was $2.44 :)

see the original package in which it arrived in 1958, below -

image from wikipedia, here.

photo of the hope diamond being presented to the smithsonian institutions. 

image source - from the collection of the smithsonian archives here. 

and lastly, see my own photo of the hope diamond below, taken during a summer visit.

it is on permanent display in its own, specially lit, rotating glass case - in the gem section of the smithsonian natural history museum in washington d.c.  

the entire gem & mineral section is an incredible collection and makes you want to stay there for hours !

the hope diamond is 45.5 carats, and is in a platinum setting surrounded by 16 white diamonds, and suspended from a chain with 45 diamonds. 

do make it to the gem collection in the natural history museum if you are ever in washington d.c, but remember that it is almost always crowded :)

throwback thursday - TBT #26

the last time i made a throwback thursday post here was in march. two seasons have gone by. huhh.

this weekend (saturday, oct 29th) will be diwali, and i thought there's no better time to pick up things again. so here i was, searching the internet for vintage pics related to diwali or deepavali, india's most popular festival - and by the happiest chance i stumbled on some archives of chandamama.

chandamama was a popular children's magazine in india, published in english and many indian languages. once a fond part of many a kid's childhood, it has sadly ceased publication now.

here is a diwali special issue from november 1955 - the cover art has two ladies holding lamps, children setting off fire crackers, and a temple in the background.

you can see the entire issue here, as well as many old issues uploaded by some kind soul. i was so happy to see them !

you can also check out my throwback post on last year's diwali here.

wish you all a very happy diwali/deepavali, have a great weekend !

throwback thursday - TBT #25

march 17th is st.patrick's day. it is one of those celebrations that have become so much assimilated into mainstream american culture despite having originated in another country (ireland in this case). originally began as a catholic feast day for st.patrick, today it has become more associated with parades, drinking, and everything in green ! many american towns dye their rivers green for the day (and in recent years even the white house fountain ), and it is believed that americans spend more than $4 billion on the day - most of it probably on guinness beer, but also largely on costumes including green irish top hats and shamrocks, and cabbages ! (not to mention probably a sizeable amount on 'dui' tickets, post-beer.)

and now, coming to today's throwback - i always love a good round of vintage-picture-hunting, so here are a few that i found of vintage st.patricks day parades from around the world -

the one above is from the st patrick's day parade in new york city, 1909. photo from the collection of US library of congress, found on wikimedia here

photo above shows a parade in brisbane, australia, around 1927.  (on a side note, see the store on the side called 'barnes self service bazaar'. must have been one of the earliest stores to adopt a 'self service' format, without salespeople handing you the goods.) photo from the state library of queensland, found on wikimedia commons here.

and lastly, one from ireland itself - kids dressed up to entertain, dublin, 1924. photo from the 
national library of ireland, posted on flickr here.

throwback thursday - TBT #24

march 3rd, 1923 - the first issue of 'TIME' magazine is published from new york city.

this is the cover of the first issue, below -

the first issue price of 15 cents can be seen on the cover. the person on the cover is US speaker Joseph G Cannon. 'TIME' has the world's largest circulation among weekly magazines, and its annual features, 'person of the year' and '100 most influential people of the year' are very popular.

today, the 'time' group has a large number of magazines, as well as media & communications businesses.

the entire first issue of time magazine is available to read, from their archives here.

throwback thursday - TBT #23

the weather in these parts was nice and sunny the past weekend, and has since returned to a wintry mix of alternating rain and snow the last few days, though not too bad altogether. my coping mechanism has been to drink generous amounts of ginger chai, and keep staring out of the window now and then.

meanwhile, here are some vintage photos of snowy winters that i found -

the one above is of 5th avenue in new york city, apparently taken around 1905

any guesses for the pic above ? - it is the white house, washington d.c !
taken around 1907.

source for both photos - from here.

one thing that should keep our spirits up is the thought that march is just around the corner - hope we see the first signs of spring soon !

throwback thursday - #22

tomorrow is the indian festival of pongal, or makar sankranti. astrologically, is it considered to mark the movement of sun into capricorn, but it is also india's most important celebration of harvest and 'thanksgiving'.

celebrations for every festival vary from state to state in india, and in my home state of tamilnadu, pongal marks a very festive celebration of 3-4 days. the first day of bhogi sees all the homes cleaned, decorated and old stuff discarded. the second day is the main festival of pongal, the birth of the 'thai' month, which marks the beginning of an auspicious season. newly harvested rice is cooked with freshly boiled milk & jaggery, offered to the gods, (especially the sun) and eaten along with sugarcane. the third day is 'maatu pongal', in honour of cattle & livestock, when they are decorated and given offerings of food. even the birds are left with offerings of coloured rice for them to eat.

with that little preface, we come to today's throwback thursday - i was looking for old pongal ads or greeting cards, and ended up finding some beautiful cards listed on ebay. here are a few below -

the colourfully painted card has a woman making traditional offerings on the right, while the left one has a pongal message, signed with a name in tamil that possibly seems 'meyyappan' - and it also bears the location as ipoh, which is in malaysia. ('meyyappan' is a common natukkottai chettiar name and many chettiars were living in malaya/malaysia in the olden days, doing business and bringing wealth back home. )
the card at the top, as can be seen, is signed with the date of jan 14th 1954  - that is exactly 62 years before!

image source for both the above images - from here 

this one shows a rustic rural setting, with a man and woman bundling freshly harvested paddy in the fields, with other farmhands and cattle in the background. this one seems to be painted by the eminent artist k.madhavan, whose works graced many of the tamil magazines and ads of his time.

image source - from here

lastly, the two above seem to be from a three-fold card - featuring the amazingly beautiful yesteryear actress padmini, who is an evergreen favourite of tamil movie fans ! each of the panels has a different message about pongal, with photos of padmini in beautiful traditional jewellery - nethi chutti, jhimki, maatal, kal attigai and oddiyanam !

wishing everyone a very happy pongal and makar sankranti !

throwback thursday - #21

this is that awkward phase - where saying 'last year' seems so odd, it being so recent - and yet we come to terms with the reality of seeing a new number on our calendars. (honestly, a new year doesnt seem much more than that - just a new number on the calendar.)

anyhoo, 2016 has already completed seven days. meanwhile i realised throwback thursday has completed 20 posts in 2015, and the first one of 2016, today, is the 21st.

sharing with you all today, this vintage black&white new year ad for coca cola, which i found on flickr -

have a good 2016 folks.

image source - from flickr

throwback thursday - TBT #20

what could be better today than some wonderful vintage christmas cards - here are some four of them... i've linked the sources below each of them.

 a little boy heading out into the snow, from the graphics fairy.

these lovely birds with windmills in the backdrop, from flickr.

 two young boys in sailors' clothes, waving from the top of a ship, found on wikimedia.

lastly, this funny looking card for a christmas party in december 1918, from wikimedia.

the party announces fancy dress and cards(whist)... note the menu - it is apparently from 1918(according to the info in the file) - the 1st world war would have just ended, and most food items like sugar & butter would have still been in rationing.

mundane monday - #58 | diwali special, throwback monday !

today happens to be not just any monday, but the eve of diwali, india's biggest festival.
i think that is an excellent reason to have a post that combines both my monday and thursday series, making it a throwback monday :)

and so, here is a vintage diwali ad, from one of those classic indian brands, HMT watches. (hmt stood for hindustan machine tools)

image source - from here

and i also found this article about 5 of the iconic models of hmt - interesting to read about the 'dowry watch', i had no clue about that !

throwback thursday - TBT #19

october 15th is the birthday of my most favourite humour author, the unparalleled p.g.wodehouse.

his characters like the bumbling lord emsworth, the intrepid wooster clan of bertie and his aunts, and that gentleman's personal gentleman, the impeccable jeeves - are immortal.

nothing would make me more happier, than being left alone undisturbed with a stack of wodehouse books by my side :)

wodehouse in his library

wodehouse, using his typewriter

both images above are from the website of the P.G.Wodehouse Society UK

throwback thursday - TBT #18

october 8th, 1932 - the Indian Air Force was established in british india. its motto, "nabhaḥ spr̥śaṁ dīptam" meaning "touch the sky with glory" is taken from the 11th chapter of the bhagavad gita.

the first squadron was commissioned the following year with four westland wapiti biplanes and five indian pilots. 

a westland wapiti biplane, the first kind of aircraft to be used by the IAF, seen flying above new delhi.

throwback thursday - TBT #17

been a few weeks since i showed up and marked attendance here... travel, being a bit under the weather, and sundry other excuses as usual.

i've just not been in the best of spirits lately, and i was thinking of something to post today while still being in a sore mood.
the only thing that came to my mind was that, when you are feeling blue, the best medicine is a little purple :) yup, what quickly cheers me up is thoughts of my beloved cadburys. (to be precise, real old cadbury's, before it became kraft. somehow its never the same inside my head anymore.)

anyway, ended up browsing through vintage ads of cadburys and found this one -

          image from flickr, here

( i wish I find meself some cadburys real soon. right now all i have on hand is some white chocolate, which im using as an emergency substitute.)

throwback thursday - TBT #16

august 6th, a day in history that humanity never should, and never will, forget.

american forces used the atomic bomb for the first time on august 6th 1945, completely destroying the city of hiroshima and killing hundreds of thousands of people, both immediately and later gradually, as a result of radiation exposure.
nagasaki would be bombed three days later on august 9th.

one can only hope that never again will the world witness such a horror, even though the kind of news that we wake up to each day leaves us with less and less hope for humanity.

make love, not war.

throwback thursday - TBT #15

on 9th july 1877, the first wimbledon tournament began - at the 'All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club' in wimbledon, london.

the program of the first wimbledon is below, announcing the players, the prize money, and the dates. the original date of the finals was to be 16th july and was later postponed to 19th july due to rain.

throwback thursday - TBT #14

july 2nd, 1962 - the first walmart store opens in arkansas, USA.

walmart is today the world's largest company by revenue and the world's largest private employer.

crowd gathered outside the store for the opening day 

throwback thursday - TBT #13

on june 18th, 1928, amelia earhart would become the first woman to have flown across the atlantic ocean. the flight departed from newfoundland (on june 17th) and arrived at the welsh coast more than 20 hours later, braving risky weather.

amelia earhart accompanied two other pilots on this flight and kept the flight log. her own solo flight across the atlantic would happen four years later, in 1932.

image source - the new york times

View image | gettyimages.com

crowds gathered at southampton to greet amelia earhart after her 1928 transatlantic flight.

throwback thursday - TBT #12

june 4th, 1919 - the 19th amendment to the united states constitution was passed, granting women in america the right to vote. (many of the states though, had passed their own legislation before, allowing women to vote.)
the 1920 general election was the first one in which women across all the states in the usa had the right to vote.

throwback thursday - TBT #11

on may 28th, 1937, the volkswagen car company was established in germany.

it was born as a result of hitler's intentions to have a 'people's car' that the german public could afford. the first car prototype, built to hitler's specifications and obejctives (by ferdinand porsche and his team) was called the 'kdf-wagen', which would later evolve into the iconic beetles.
with the onset of the war, the production turned to military vehicles and used slave labour.

the post-war revival of the company, made possible largely due to the intervention of the british army, is a whole other story.

thus began das auto !

image provided by the german federal archives to wikimedia commons - Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1988-019-16 

throwback thursday - TBT #10

may 14th is the day that the world's first vaccine was given - by Dr.Edward Jenner to an eight year old boy called james phipps. the year was 1796. edward jenner is the father of immunology, and his work paved the way to save millions of lives through preventive medicine.

the word vaccine itself comes from 'vacca', the latin word for cow - based on dr.jenner's research of using cowpox for preventing the occurence of smallpox. it took 200 years though, to eradicate smallpox entirely from the world.

throwback thursday - TBT #9

may 7th is the birthday of Rabindranath Tagore -  poet, artist, philosopher and thinker. he was the first non-european to be awarded the nobel prize for literature, in 1913.

he was knighted by the british in 1915 but renounced it in 1919 after the jallianwallah bagh massacre in amritsar.

his verses have been chosen as the national anthem of two countries, india and bangladesh.

seen below is a photo of rabindranath tagore with einstein, taken in 1930.

we had to read tagore's famous verse "where the mind is without fear" back in school, and it has remained etched in my memory ever since.

another of tagore's famous songs in bengali, "ekla chalo re" was used as the theme song for the indian government's 'clean india (swachh barath) mission' launched in 2014. click here to hear the beautifully rendered version by kishore kumar, one of india's much loved singers.