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In “The Assassination Bureau” (1969), Oliver Reed plays a chief of a 19th Century group of ethical killers, who has a contract put on his life by suffragette female reporter Diana Rigg.
Instead of being angry, Reed is delighted. He makes it clear to his underlings that either they must kill him, or he will kill them. The finale was a swordfight on a zeppelin.
Oliver Reed famously died during the middle of the making of Gladiator in 1999, where he challenged Royal Navy sailors to a drinking contest. He consumed over 20 beverages, and perished of a heart attack in the middle of arm-wrestling.
amazed Id never heard of this film and it is immediately at the top of my watchlist.
(via himbofisher)
i know this image floats around and gets reposted frequently. it depicts clerks in a massive card catalog doing what is essentially database work.
I love learning these details about the past that show that humans have been, in some fundamental ways, doing a lot of the same things - just via different methods.
We see this in how newspapers (at least in big cities) published multiple editions during the day to distribute information and update stories as they develop over the day.
Or how (again, usually in big cities in the US) there would be workers listening on the radio and then using these large boards, manipulated by hand, that they would update with the state of the game as it was played.
An even older example, royal courts! The court, in addition to having the kind of officials that one would expect: priests, advisors, generals, etc. would often be populated with other people whose jobs were basically to entertain: this took the form of jesters but also included people whose sole *job* was to basically share gossip. Ladies in waiting were also often tasked with assisting the queen/princess with her correspondence. To say nothing of the couriers and footmen that would be tasked with transporting letters, packages, etc.
What is a menagerie but an old, elite version of “catsofinstagram”?