Harry Houdini

The Private Book Collections of 10 Famous Readers

Earlier this month, we stumbled across Carolyn Kellogg’s great article about Bernie Madoff’s book collection, parts of which are being sold slowly on eBay by the person who won Madoff’s books in an auction. Sure, the books someone has may not be as great an indicator of their personality as, er, some other things we know about them, but, nerds that we are, we tend to consider our libraries extensions of ourselves. So of course, we did a little digging, pouring through the collections of famous (or infamous) cultural icons and see what they were made of. After the jump, browse through our excerpts of the private libraries of everyone from Darwin to Houdini to Oprah, and draw your conclusions where you may. … Read More

What's On at Flavorpill: The Links The Made the Rounds in Our Office

Today at Flavorpill, we procatinated. We learned about 25 celebrity couples that we previously never knew existed. We watched Justin Bieber do his best to single-handedly ruin steampunk while making awful faces. We kind of fell in love with these little kids dressed up like TODAY hosts… Read More

Houdini's Letterhead Was Way Ahead of Its Time

Meet the 1920s equivalent of the “sent from my iPhone” signature. Famed magician Harry Houdini used this preemptively apologetic letterhead when sending a speedy lettergram — which from what we can tell, is similar to a telegram. [Letterheady via Gizmodo]

Design Porn: Celebrity Letterheads

Welcome to the latest edition of Design Porn, Flavorpill’s regular roundup of all things drool-worthy. Earlier today Jason Kottke pointed us toward Letterheady, “an online homage to offline correspondence” that focuses on design, not content. (It’s the virtual sibling of Letters of Note, where we discovered this David Bowie gem.) We’ve rounded up some of their most high-profile letterheads after the jump, including those belonging to The Rolling Stones, Harry Houdini, and Adolf Hitler — a man who according to Oliver Stone, is just… Read More