Did You Know Margherita Pizza Was Actually Named After Italy’s Queen?

In 1889, during a visit to Naples, Queen Margherita of Savoy, wife of King Umberto I, was bored with French gourmet food, the traditional royal fare of Europe at the time while staying in Naples’ Capodimonte Palace. She saw many of the local people eating large flatbread and grew curious. The queen found it to be delicious.

According to legend, Queen Margherita summoned the most famous pizza-maker in Naples, Raffaele Esposito, to bake a variety of pizzas. Her favorite was the one with tomatoes, mozzarella slices, and basil, which perhaps, was made in her honor and so contained the colors of the Italian flag.

The queen loved it so much that she sent a letter of compliments. Esposito was so proud that he named the pizza after her.

And the Margherita Pizza was born!

Queen Margherita was the wife of King Umberto I, who reigned from 1878 until his assassination in 1900. She was born Princess Margherita Maria Teresa Giovanna of Savoy just after midnight on November 20, 1851, at the Palazzo Chiablese, part of the Royal Palace of Turin. Margherita was the daughter of Prince Ferdinando of Savoy, Duke of Genoa, and Princess Elisabeth of Saxony.

On January 9, 1878, Margherita became the first Queen of Italy when her husband ascended to the throne following his father’s death. Immensely popular with the Italian people, Queen Margherita was very active with many cultural organizations, promoting the arts, and working extensively with the Red Cross. She is credited with introducing chamber music in Italy and often helped up-and-coming musicians with their education. These included Giacomo Puccini, who was able to study at the Conservatory of Milan thanks to a scholarship granted to him by The Queen.

Always possessing an adventurous spirit, in 1893 she climbed the Punta Gnifetti for a ceremony in which a mountain hut – the Capanna Regina Margherita – was named in her honor. She later became President of the Ladies’ Alpine Club.

Margherita was widowed on July 29, 1900. While visiting the city of Monza, King Umberto I was shot and killed by an anarchist who was avenging the deaths in the Bava-Beccaris massacre. The throne passed to the couple’s son, Vittorio Emanuele III, and Margherita settled into her new role as Queen Mother. She devoted herself to her charity work and the advancement of the arts in Italy. She maintained her official residence at the Palazzo Margherita in Rome and also lived in the Stupinigi Hunting Lodge.

Queen Margherita died at Villa Margherita on January 4, 1926. She is buried beside her husband in the Pantheon in Rome.

25 Cool Found Snaps Show Naughty Men in the Early 20th Century

A cool set of found photos that shows naughty men from between the 1910s and 1930s.

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32 Beautiful Pics of Denise 'Vanity' Matthews in the 1980s

Born 1959 in Ontario, Canadian singer and actress Denise Katrina Matthews was better known as Vanity who had her career lasted from the early 1980s until the early/mid-1990s.

Vanity was the lead singer of the female trio Vanity 6 from 1981 until it disbanded in 1983. They are known for their 1982 R&B/funk hit "Nasty Girl". Her music career also included two solo albums on the Motown Records label, Wild Animal and Skin on Skin, as well as the minor hit singles "Pretty Mess", "Mechanical Emotion", "Undress" (from the movie Action Jackson), and "Under the Influence".

Vanity also had a successful film career, starring in the movies The Last Dragon, 52 Pick-Up, and Action Jackson. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, she appeared in many magazines around the world.

Vanity died in 2016, at the age of 57, due to renal failure.

Take a look at these pics to see the beauty of young Vanity in the 1980s.

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Tartan Ribbon – The World’s First Color Photograph, Made by the Three-Color Method in 1861

Tartan Ribbon, photograph taken by James Clerk Maxwell in 1861. Considered the first durable color photographic image, and the very first made by the three-color method Maxwell first suggested in 1855. Maxwell had the photographer Thomas Sutton photograph a tartan ribbon three times, each time with a different color filter (red, green, or blue-violet) over the lens.

The three photographs were developed, printed on glass, then projected onto a screen with three different projectors, each equipped with the same color filter used to photograph it. When superimposed on the screen, the three images formed a full-color image. Maxwell’s three-color approach underlies nearly all forms of color photography, whether film-based, analogue video, or digital. The three photographic plates now reside in a small museum at 14 India Street, Edinburgh, the house where Maxwell was born.

The first color photograph made by the three-color method suggested by James Clerk Maxwell in 1855, taken in 1861 by Thomas Sutton. The subject is a colored ribbon, usually described as a tartan ribbon. (via Wikipedia)

The three-color method, which is the foundation of virtually all practical color processes whether chemical or electronic, was first suggested in an 1855 paper on color vision by Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell.

It is based on the Young–Helmholtz theory that the normal human eye sees color because its inner surface is covered with millions of intermingled cone cells of three types: in theory, one type is most sensitive to the end of the spectrum we call “red”, another is more sensitive to the middle or “green” region, and a third which is most strongly stimulated by “blue”. The named colors are somewhat arbitrary divisions imposed on the continuous spectrum of visible light, and the theory is not an entirely accurate description of cone sensitivity. But the simple description of these three colors coincides enough with the sensations experienced by the eye that when these three colors are used the three cones types are adequately and unequally stimulated to form the illusion of various intermediate wavelengths of light.

In his studies of color vision, Maxwell showed, by using a rotating disk with which he could alter the proportions, that any visible hue or gray tone could be made by mixing only three pure colors of light – red, green and blue – in proportions that would stimulate the three types of cells to the same degrees under particular lighting conditions. To emphasize that each type of cell by itself did not actually see color but was simply more or less stimulated, he drew an analogy to black-and-white photography: if three colorless photographs of the same scene were taken through red, green and blue filters, and transparencies (“slides”) made from them were projected through the same filters and superimposed on a screen, the result would be an image reproducing not only red, green and blue, but all of the colors in the original scene.

The first color photograph made according to Maxwell’s prescription, a set of three monochrome “color separations”, was taken by Thomas Sutton in 1861 for use in illustrating a lecture on color by Maxwell, where it was shown in color by the triple projection method. The test subject was a bow made of ribbon with stripes of various colors, apparently including red and green. During the lecture, which was about physics and physiology, not photography, Maxwell commented on the inadequacy of the results and the need for a photographic material more sensitive to red and green light.

A century later, historians were mystified by the reproduction of any red at all, because the photographic process used by Sutton was for all practical purposes totally insensitive to red light and only marginally sensitive to green. In 1961, researchers found that many red dyes also reflect ultraviolet light, coincidentally transmitted by Sutton's red filter, and surmised that the three images were probably due to ultra-violet, blue-green and blue wavelengths, rather than to red, green and blue.

Creating colors by mixing colored lights (usually red, green and blue) in various proportions is the additive method of color reproduction. LCD, LED, plasma and CRT (picture tube) color video displays all use this method. If one of these displays is examined with a sufficiently strong magnifier, it will be seen that each pixel is actually composed of red, green and blue sub-pixels which blend at normal viewing distances, reproducing a wide range of colors as well as white and shades of gray. This is also known as the RGB color model.

Beautiful Fashion Photography by Jerry Schatzberg

Jerry Schatzberg is notably known for his iconic and intimate portraits of famous figures, for example, the defining cover of Blonde and Blonde featuring a scowling Bob Dylan. However, before that sudden switch, Schatzberg was a fashion photographer, trained by the famous Alexey Brodovitch. Here are some of his shots taken for magazines such as Vogue, Esquire, Glamour and McCall’s during the ‘50s and ‘60s:

On a tricycle, photographer William 'Bill' Helburn peddles Italian actress and model Elsa Martinelli, who rides in an attached cart, across Park Ave South, New York, 1954.

Model Colin Fox, in a tuxedo, and an unidentified female model, in a black, backless dress, share a bottle of champagne in Central Park, New York, 1956.

Low-angle view of two models as they talk together in a waiting room at Idlewild Airport (later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport), Queens, New York, 1957. The photo was part of a shoot for Vogue magazine.

Outside of the Bergdorf Goodman clothing store, a woman in a black fur hat and fur-trimmed coat hails a taxi as pedestrians walk past and window shop, New York, 1958.

Portrait of Cynthia O'Neal and Anne St. Marie, both in white fur hats and black dresses, as they sit at a table under a window through which a boy watches, New York, July 21, 1958.

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Life of Post-WWII Scotland Through Amazing Found Photos

The end of the Second World War was a major turning point in the modern history of Scotland. With the fighting over, hopes were high that the country would play a leading role in the confident New Britain.

However, For Scotland, the 1940s marked the beginning of a long economic slide which was to end in the industrial devastation and widespread misery of the Thatcher years.

When the war ended, Scots were still largely dependent on primary and heavy industries such as coal mining, shipbuilding and steel production. The government recognized that it would make sense to try and encourage new companies to come north of the border to try and create a broader spread of work and investment.

However, this grand scheme never really came to fruition, and a much-needed opportunity was wasted. Scotland's traditional industries were outdated and the problems which would turn the country into an industrial wasteland within a couple of generations were already beginning to build up in the background.

These amazing color pics from Found Slides that captured street scenes of Scotland in 1949.

Bo'ness. South Street

Bo'ness. The Corbiehall

Edinburgh panorama

Edinburgh panorama

Edinburgh. 399-401 Queensferry Road

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40 Cool Pics that Defined Fashion Styles of Young Women in the 1960s

Fashion of the 1960s featured a number of diverse trends. It was a decade that broke many fashion traditions, mirroring social movements during the time.

Around the middle of the decade, fashions arising from small pockets of young people in a few urban centres received large amounts of media publicity, and began to heavily influence both the haute couture of elite designers and the mass-market manufacturers.

Examples include the mini skirt, culottes, go-go boots, and more experimental fashions, less often seen on the street, such as curved bad-shaped PVC dresses and other PVC clothes.

Take a look at these cool pics to see what fashion styles of young women looked like from the 1960s.

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