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On Sunday, May 28, 1665, Samuel Pepys records in his diary “a fine rarity.”
Thence home and to see my Lady Pen, where my wife and I were shown a fine rarity: of fishes kept in a glass of water, that will live so for ever; and finely marked they are, being foreign.
Goldfish had only recently [...]

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The Old Bailey Online has not only “The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913,” but also extensive background materials.
A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London’s central criminal court.
There are essays on “Community histories”:

Black Communities
Gypsies and Travellers
Homosexuality
Irish London
Jewish [...]

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And, in a break from political videos, I should report that I finished Anthony Trollope’s Phineas Finn, which introduces yet another misguided, modestly dissipated youth who doesn’t know his own mind, in this case the title character. There are also three rather wonderful female characters: Lady Laura Kennedy, for whom the plot is a tragedy; [...]

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I continue my Anthony Trollope kick, this time starting the Palliser series of novels. Can You Forgive Her? is a rhetorical question that quite obviously is intended to be answered, “of course.” But I found Alice Vavasor to be tediously headstrong as well as foolish. I suppose it is to be expected when one is [...]

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A really fine article on Lee Hays, singer and songwriter, a favorite of mine from The Weavers. The People’s Singer
At the end of 1955, the Weavers held a reunion. Their manager beat the blacklist by renting Carnegie Hall for a nameless quartet and then selling it out before anyone could complain. Their opening number was [...]

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While in Portland for the UUA’s General Assembly, I of course went shopping at Powell’s City of Books. I’ve been there once before, and what a treat it is. (They also do mail-order of new and used books.) Among the books I bought was a Dover reprint of Karl Mortensen’s 1912 A Handbook of Norse [...]

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On Friday 26 August 1664, Samuel Pepys mentions William Penn.
This day my wife tells me Mr. Pen, Sir William’s son, is come back from France, and come to visit her. A most modish person, grown, she says, a fine gentleman.

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Cool history resource: BBC - History - Timelines - British Timeline (via Kottke).

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