4 results
Thousands of Live Alligators on Free Exhibition
This broadside, dating from about 1950, is an advertisement for Osky’s, also known as Osky’s Curio Shop or Osky’s Alligator Store, a Jacksonville mercantile store that sold gift items, rare or bizarre decorative items, and goods made out of alligator skin, including lamps, purses, and wallets. The shop also exhibited live alligators and other reptiles. Jacksonville was home to many of Florida’s earliest tourist attractions, including the Florida Alligator Farm. Operating for several decades on Jacksonville’s historic Bay Street, Osky’s promoted itself through postcards ...
Contributed by
State Library and Archives of Florida
Papers of Joseph Ingraham, 1790-1792: Journal of the Voyage of the Brigantine "Hope" from Boston to the North-West Coast of America
Joseph Ingraham was the master of the brigantine Hope, a 70-ton American ship that was designed and equipped to make the trip around Cape Horn to the west coast of North America, from there to China, and from China back to Boston. In the late 18th century, American fur traders undertook expeditions to the northwestern Pacific, where they obtained furs, which they brought for sale to the Chinese port of Canton (present-day Guangdong). There they acquired tea, silk, porcelain, and other goods for sale in the U.S. market. This ...
Contributed by
Library of Congress
The Man of Commerce
“The Man of Commerce” is a detailed map that conflates human anatomy with the American transportation system. Published in 1889 by the Land & River Improvement Company of Superior, Wisconsin, the map promotes Superior as a transportation hub and shows the routes of 29 railroads across the United States. The outline map of North America is superimposed by a cutaway diagram of the human body. The map’s metaphor makes West Superior “the center of cardiac or heart circulation.” The railways become major arteries. New York is “the umbilicus through which ...
Contributed by
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries
Brazil
This early map of Brazil is by Jacopo Gastaldi (circa 1500-circa 1565), a Piedmontese cartographer who worked in Venice and rose to the position of cosmographer of the Venetian Republic. Gastaldi produced maps and illustrations for parts of Delle Navigationi et Viaggi (Travels and voyages), a compilation of travel writings by the Venetian diplomat and geographer Giovanni Battista Ramusio (1485-1557). Ramusio’s work contained more than 50 memoirs, including the writings of Marco Polo.
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National Library of Brazil