1816: Gaslight illuminates Philadelphia's Chestnut Street Theatre. Theater patrons are living in an age of wonders: lights that burn "without wick or oil."

[www.wired.com]

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(By which I mean the NYT, not "random guy in the second row that day who wrote about it in his diary.")

But I am troubled by the extent to which the pictured shimmying John Van Arsdale is uncleated.

Apparently 19th Cent. historical painters were the bloggers of the art world, playin' all fast and loose with the rules and the history.

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Where to begin? First, the British were the preeminent imperialists par excellence. Just take a gander over at India, Hong Kong, Buenos Aires and Canada, just to mention a few of their more well-known colonies. The British empire was the largest empire in history and by the early 1920's it encompassed almost a quarter of the world's population. And no, the British never ran the United States for a time. They ran their colonies. Colonies that would eventually become the United States of America, but only after they fought and won the War of Independence and drove the British off their soil.

Sorry to get all pedantic and shit but I take my history seriously. I'm done now.

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