“My readers must fancy themselves spirits, capable of living in a medium different from our atmosphere, and so pass with me through a wonderful brazen tunnel, with crystal doors at the entrance.“ From Agnes Catlow’s Drops of Water (1851). More here: publicdomainreview.org/collections/ag…

Menu for the 1874 Anniversary Dinner of the UK Palaeontographical Society. Featuring 'Sheeps' Brains à la Numa', 'Consommé of Trout à la Buckland' (served with 'Thick Kangaroo Tail'), 'Saddle (Croupe) of Wild Boar à la Danoise, pickled in Beer', and 'Gateau Palæontrographie'.

From 1903 to 1907 Augustus Jansson produced more than 30 striking adverts for the Queen City Printing Ink Company, including the wonderful Ink Beasts Parade series, with its 'Magenta Ponies' and 'Orange-Yellow Ibexiaticus'. More here: publicdomainreview.org/collections/au…

#OnThisDay in 1731, Daniel Defoe passed away due to 'lethargy'.

J. H. Pearl looks at the power of utopias, particularly in Defoe's Crusoe novels, to disrupt our surrender to orthodoxy: buff.ly/32HDdQa #otd

Dentologia (1833) — A sprawling eighty-page poem all about teeth, written by an eminent dentist, with an additional fifty pages of endnotes: publicdomainreview.org/collection/den…

Looking at times like some kind of strange fusion of De Stijl abstraction and Tetris, behold the enigmatic 'color analysis' charts of Emily Noyes Vanderpoel from her 1901 book Color Problems: A Practical Manual for the Lay Student of Color.

More here: buff.ly/2Uzv7J2

More than a century before the mobile phone, a #Victorian love poem using #textspeak . See two even earlier examples here: publicdomainreview.org/collections/ni…

“As if an angel dropped down from the clouds”, William Blake's 1809 illustration to Henry IV by a certain William Shakespeare whose birthday is celebrated #onthisday in 1564 (also his death day in 1616).

See our collection of art inspired by his plays: buff.ly/2IBS2YF

Were Jefferson, Franklin, and co, among the first to push the idea of man-made climate change? Raphael Calel explores how, in contrast to today's association of the U.S. with climate change skepticism, it was a very different story in the 18th century: bit.ly/1bLPXYI

Total Eclipse of the Sun, 1882. Chromolithograph after a pastel drawing by astronomer, artist, and amateur entomologist Étienne Léopold Trouvelot, who died on this day in 1895.

More on his life and stunning astronomical art here: buff.ly/2ENtY5g

The first person to discover a link between increased levels of CO2 and #globalwarming was a New Yorker named Eunice Newton Foote. Read her 1856 paper, and how she went unacknowledged for more than a century, here: buff.ly/2nhNlyf #earthday #climatechange

Gustave Doré’s depiction of Don Quixote amid his fantasies of chivalric romance: frontispiece to a 1863 edition of the 17th-century masterpiece of Miguel de Cervantes, who died #onthisday in 1616.

More on the imagery of Don Quixote here: buff.ly/2QPck6O #otd

The Cyclops, by François Desprez, 1562.
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Available as a print from our shop here: publicdomainreview.org/shop/fine-art-…

Nicholas Jeeves looks at the 'Roy Gold Collection', a remarkable library of around 9000 books, the vast majority of which have been carefully and systematically defaced by the elusive Gold... buff.ly/2KwMSPm

Mark Twain died #onthisday in 1910. The best known of his books is Huckleberry Finn, not so well known is Jap Herron which, according to a woman named Emily Grant Hutchings, he dictated from beyond the grave via a ouija board... buff.ly/2XW7S9q #OTD

The books of John Muir — born #onthisday 1838 — are known for their scientific acumen as well as their rhapsodic flights. Terry Gifford explores Muir’s engagement with what he called 'God’s big show' — buff.ly/3arzYkr #OTD

(Pictured: Muir with President Roosevelt, 1906)

Extract from The Hasheesh Eater (1857) by novelist/journalist Fitz Hugh Ludlow. Terence McKenna would describe Ludlow as 'Part genius, part madman, … halfway between Captain Ahab and PT Barnum, a kind of Mark Twain on hashish': buff.ly/3glDC33 #fourtwenty #four20

Our essay by Benjamin Breen on how cannabis travelled from the streets of Machilipatnam to 17th-century London's scientific circles, including the very 1st recorded description in English of a cannabis high... buff.ly/3n0isc3 #Happy420 #fourtwenty #420day

Medieval marijuana, from a 12th-century medical and herbal collection: buff.ly/3aoGaJT

The Latin at the bottom reads: 'Grows but in waste places, and at roadsides, and along hedges. The very best medicine for healing.'

#Happy420 #fourtwenty #420day

Born #onthisday in 1840, the French symbolist artist Odilon Redon. Known for his surreal and often haunting imagery, some of his most stunning works are his illustrations for Flaubert's failed masterpiece Temptation of St Anthony: buff.ly/3nbwgzy #OTD