Breakfast Links: Week of July 9, 2018

Breakfast Links are served! Our weekly round-up of favorite links to other web sites, articles, blogs, and images via Twitter.
• The 1802 Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy faced unexpected competition from the wax figures of  Marie Tussaud .
•  Gin shops  in the Regency: the "blue ruin" before hipsters discovered it.
• When reading inspired women to change history.
• How 18th-19thc literary women  like Mary Robinson and Elizabeth Barrett Browning embraced opiates.
• The accidental Pied Piper of cats in 1909 New York.
• Video: Rotating jeweled flowers on this 18thc clock (sound up!)
• The 1866 wedding fashions in the painting The Hesitant Fiancee by Auguste Toulmouche.
• The link between women , witchcraft, and stirring.
• Pearls for the bride: a magnificent 1830s pearl parure.
• Cimitero delle Fontanelle and the Neapolitan cult of the dead .
• Image: "Touch watch" owned by author  Helen Keller.
• Napoleon's pleasure-loving sister Pauline Bonaparte .
• A short history of tennis fashions .
• When butter was a food group: food and freedom in World War Two.
• The  eagle  as the ideal ruler, from ancient times to the Founding Fathers.
• Image: An aerial view of Hyde Park Fair on the day of Queen Victoria's coronation , June 28, 1838.
• A recipe for an unusual - and very potent - 18thc cocktail: King Calli's Spruce Beer .
• A brief history of the American Pledge of Allegiance .
• Ruth Wakefield is the name and the place behind legendary chocolate chip Toll House Cookies.
• How to live like an 11thc prince .
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.
Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection.