PlanetOddity.com » Lifestyle

Vintage Photos From The London Playboy Club

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 17:25:04 +0000

The first Playboy clubs were bars were upper class people came to gamble. They also offered cocktail bars and the waitresses and performers were ladies dressed up in sexy bunny costumes. The first club opened in Chicago, and soon a lot of other American city had their own bunny bar.

Being a member of a Playboy club was status even though 21% of the members ever went to one of the clubs which means they only got the membership to show that they are upper class. In London the first Playboy club opened in 1965, and before the opening English girls were trained in America to become perfect bunnies.

This club was visited by the rich and famous in London, like Frank Sinatra, but also from America like James Garner and Woody Allen. In 1981 the London Playboy Club had to shut down because they didn’t renew their gambling license, but now 30 years later this club has opened again with well-trained modern bunnies.

5 of the Most Expensive Wedding Presents Ever

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 19:22:23 +0000

On their wedding day most couples can expect to be showered with an array of decidedly mediocre gifts. The traditional offering is something for the home, be it a trendy toaster or a silly shower curtain. These gifts are often uninspiring and are the perfect example of the old adage “It’s the thought that counts”.

She is not impressed.

With the wealthy elite, however, wedding presents can be used as a symbol of status—a way to impress your peers and ‘flash your cash’. These gifts can amaze and astound with their ostentatious extravagance and, if intended, overshadow even the wedding itself.

Here are the most expensive wedding presents. Ever.

5. The Star of the East—$144,000 (£93,000)

Old-school bling wins.

An American mining heiress and socialite, Evelyn Walsh Mclean, was the daughter of Thomas Walsh, an Irish immigrant who made his millions from mining and prospecting. In 1908, Evelyn married Edward Beale Mclean, the heir to a large publishing fortune. For their wedding the couple received $100,000 (£65,000) each from their respective fathers with which to get Evelyn a wedding gift.

All that money and still she doesn’t smile.

The wedding gift Evelyn’s father had suggested was “The Star of the East”, a 95-carat, pear-shaped diamond, mounted on a chain below a hexagonal emerald of 34 carats and a pearl of 32 grains. Upon seeing the diamond, Evelyn was spellbound and is reported to have bought the gift immediately, using an additional $20,000 (£13,000) dollars of her new husband’s money, bringing the total cost of the gift up to $120,000 (£78,000). On top of that the couple was forced to pay an undisclosed amount of import tax, reckoned to be around $24,000 (£15,000).

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4. Clive Christian Perfume Set—$450,000 (£293,000)

Luckily, they arranged the bottles C then W, and not the other way around.

The Clive Christian No.1 Imperial Majesty Edition is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s most expensive perfume. This isn’t surprising as its ingredients cost $2,350 (£1,530) per ounce and include Italian cinnamon rose, which requires at least 170 blossoms for a single drop of oil.

The bottle includes a 24-carat gold collar with a 5-carat diamond inset; a one-of-a-kind seal commissioned by Queen Victoria over 135 years ago, and is made from a material so difficult to work with that one out of every three attempts to create a bottle fails.

Royals don’t use tongues—it’s not dignified.

For the wedding of Kate Middleton and Prince William, Clive Christian presented the pair with “his and hers” editions of his signature scent in a luxurious silk lined case adorned with an ornate, hand-embroidered, gold coat of arms. This one-of-a-kind gift is technically priceless, as it cannot be bought, but to commission such an item would cost close to half a million dollars.

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3. Custom Gulfstream Jet—$20,000,000 (£13,000,000)

Superman took this picture.

One of the most famous celebrity couples in the world, Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise, married on November 18, 2006, in a $3.5m (£2.3m) ceremony at the fifteenth-century Odescalchi Castle in Bracciano, Italy. For their engagement Cruise had given Holmes a $275,000 (£178,000) Fred Leighton oval-shaped diamond ring; however, for his wedding gift to her he decided to set the stakes a little higher.

She is kneeling down.

Cruise is known to be a fan of personal jets, having owned a Gulfstream IV for a number of years. So, it is no surprise that he would want his bride-to-be to travel in similar style. Some people may consider giving their loved one a $20,000,000 customized Gulfstream Jet, to be a bit ”over-the-top”, but if you’ve ever seen an interview with Tom Cruise, you’ll know that’s exactly his style.

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2. Wedding Stadium—$22,000,000 (£14,000,000)

This makes every present you ever got look pathetic.

In 1981, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, married Princess Salama. To celebrate the occasion, the Sheikh’s father, the Ruler of Dubai, provided the venue for the wedding, which is not an unusual gesture for a parent to make.

More royalty should wear sunglasses.

In this case, however, the venue happened to be a purpose-built 20,000-seat stadium, at an estimated cost of around 22 million dollars. Upon completion, the couple enjoyed a week-long celebration within the stadium of their marriage. Even though the wedding was over two decades ago, it is still in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most expensive wedding ever, costing an incredible $100,000,000 (£65,000,000).

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1. Two Towns—Priceless

This is only half of the gift.

In 1659 Portugal was abandoned by its ally France. Fearing for her country’s security, the then regent, Queen Luisa, opened up negotiations with England that were to end in an alliance that still lasts to this day. This alliance was secured by the marriage of the recently restored monarch, Charles II of England, to Catherine of Braganza.

The original pimp.

As was the tradition of the age, a dowry was given to the husband as “payment” for taking over possession of the wife. Usually, a royal dowry would consist of precious jewels and metals, but the dowry Charles II received was rather more extravagant—he was given the towns of Tangiers and Bombay (modern day Mumbai). The price of this gift is incalculable as both towns are now world-class cities, creating billions of dollars of money every year.

If a single person where in sole possession of these two cities, they would be the richest person in the world.

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There you have it, five dazzling ways in which well wishers have approved the joining of lives that wedding represent. Don’t worry if your wedding presents don’t pass the 100k amount – love should not cost your life savings. You can’t by happiness, or love for that matter.

Artistic Subway System Of Stockholm

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:54:14 +0000

When you enter the subway system in Stockholm, you’re not sure whether you’ve entered an art exhibition or a transport system. That subway system is said to be the longest art exhibition in the world, about 110 kilometers in length. There are 100 subway stations around Stockholm, and about 90 of them are decorated with old and new art. Everything from sculptures to paintings.

150 artists have participated in this project to make the Stockholm subway an amazing traveling experience, and it is part of a long tradition. When you sit on one of the trains and travel underground you feel like you are traveling through time. In some stations the roof has a bright and crazy color.

Another station looks like an archaeological excavation, while others have modern style several arrows painted in different directions. You can find all kind of art, and it’s open for everyone. Something completely opposite is this abandoned subway in Cincinnati.

Unbelievably Realistic Paintings

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 19:15:28 +0000

At first I thought this was real black and white photographs, but then I realized it was paintings. Amazing is the perfect word for Spanish painter Juan Bautista Nieto’s work. And if you wonder how he can draw such perfect human bodies, the answer is: he studied medicine before studying art.

He uses a combination of acrylic and oil paint, and he paints with an air-brush method. He uses a lot of time on each painting because he wants it all to be very detailed, so he produced a couple of paintings every year.

He says himself that only one painting take about 6 to 9 months to finish. In his work you will see a lot of female bodies, either dressed or half undressed.

The work is so delicate that you can sit a really long time just staring at them trying to figure out one flaw that would make it look more like a painting than a photo. Other realistic paintings are these cinematic paintings.

Dark And Raw Movie Posters

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 22:00:49 +0000

These actually look like book covers, but they’re not, they are movie posters. Flickr User Traumatron Illustration form UK is the person behind them. He is drawing the movie posters with probably darkness as inspirations.

Because they are dark and raw, just like the covers of horror or fantasy books that you can find in the library. The movies that are represented are The Shining, Black Swan, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, and many others very known films.

If you take a closer look at these movie posters, you will notice how scary the characters are, more scary than in the actual movies. The “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” is working its creepiness. Some other amazing posters of famous movies are these minimalist ones.

Beautiful Vintage Photos Of Moscow

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 00:03:25 +0000

Moscow is such a beautiful town with so much to see. It has always been that way it seems. You can see some amazing photos from 1909 of this capital. They were taken by an American that came to Moscow on an exhibition tour with a group of American champion trotting horses. The traveler had a Graflex box camera and took about 400 photos from the trip.

He was even arrested several times for taking unauthorized pictures, so he did experience a lot. Only 38 of those photographs are used in the museum exhibition “Empire and Empathy – Vintage Photographs of Russia”.

The photographer was obviously skilled or at least he got a lot of practice because the photos are amazing, and the obvious black-and-white style makes it even more adventurous in a way.

It’s always exciting to see how the big cities looked like back then. Some other photos of the whole Soviet that are worth seeing are these ones from 1922 – 1991.

Beautiful Parts of West Siberia We Didn’t Know About

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 17:06:42 +0000

Photography with an “above-view” has always been popular. Here we have a selection of those kinds of photos of The Novosibirsk region which is a part of the West Siberian Plain. It’s a huge area that’s about 178,2 thousand square kilometres. It’s mainly plain but in north there are some huge woodland with lots of marshes.

There are two main rivers of this “oblast” (Russian for region) , the Ob and Om, and the biggest lakes are Chani, Sartlan, Ubinskoye, some with salt water which looks completely white. They all make wonderful nature that can be seen on the photos.

The region has a continental climate, -19C in winter and 19C in summer. Animals can also be spotted in the photos, but the green vegetation is stunning. You may also notice the border with Kazakhstan.

There are also some population here and there, and some farmlands. All in all a beautiful but forgotten part of this world. This lovely Siberian nature has been used to express art as well; the frozen lake of Baikal is now full of huge circles made by a talented artist.

Photos by Gelio.

Anamorphosis At Its Best

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 21:52:58 +0000

Without a cylindrical mirror these paintings would look meaningless. This kind of art is called Anamorphosis and comes from the Greek words meaning “formed again.” It’s basically paintings that can be viewed only with a special device. In this case a cylindrical mirror is the solution, and the amazing paintings are made by Indian artist Awtar Singh Virdi.

He holds a record in Guinness World Record for the largest anamorphic portrait made in 2004. He started with anamorphosis when he one day saw his distorted reflection on a very clean car at at Mercedes Benz training center at Jamshedpur where he worked some time. He went home and practiced each day his skills on making amazing anamorphosis paintings.

He makes portraits of very known people like George W Bush, Mother Teresa and Amitabh Bachchan among many others. This kind of art can remind somehow on this artist’s work; he makes enormous portraits that can only be viewed from the sky.

Stunning 150 Years Old 3D Photos

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 19:15:20 +0000

We are all aware of the fact that there were no 3D effects 150 years ago. Well, maybe that’s just a theory, because they actually had something alike 3D that they called stereo photography. It was pretty popular during the Civil War in 1861. Here you can see a selection of Civil War photographs that have some kind of 3D effect.

They were all released by The Library of Congress recently. They basically used two 2D images and “melted” them together, so it would look three-dimensional.

The method they used was some sort of digitally converting that made the two images into an anaglyphs, that can be viewed with 3D glasses.

The library has its own Flickr page and website where you can find thousands of photos. Looking at the 3D photos without glasses can be a bit disturbing.

Photoshop didn’t either exist back in the days, but here are some amazing photo montages that are done without it.

The Stunning Sherlock Holmes Museum In London

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 18:18:24 +0000

When stopping with the metro at Baker Street station in London you will see the known silhouette of Sherlock Holmes with the hat and pipe. The reason for that is because Sherlock Holmes museum is located in 221b Baker Street.

The non profit organization Sherlock Holmes International Society is running the museum. These photos was shot by photoblogger omnesolum.

The museum is dedicated to the famous detective Sherlock Holmes that was a character created by Sir Conan Doyle.

The museum is a house of four floors. In the first one you can find a gift shop, second one is the bedroom and living room of Sherlock Holmes, third floor is where the house owners, Watson and Mrs Hudson, live, and the last floor has wax figures of the characters from the story.

The bathroom is situated in a separate loft. Every corner of the house is perfectly decorated just like it was described in the books.

Sherlock Holmes hat and pipe is also there as well as his other detective stuff. Really worth visiting. You can also check six must see tourist attraction in London.