Space Age decor in the coffee bar of the Dress Circle restaurant at Harrods Department Store, London, in 1968 (Architectural Press Archive / RIBA Collections) 🗃️

These two women and the little girl standing in front of their bark cottage on the Australian goldfields, probably near the town of Gulgong in New South Wales, c.1870 (State Library of NSW) 🗃️

This umbrella fancy dress costume from 1925 (Musée Galliera, Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris) 🗃️

Eat some fish and get a haircut – businesses in Bardolino, Lake Garda, in 1960 (Ivor de Wolfe, RIBA) 🗃️

Still Life with Five Objects, 1956 – an etching by Giorgio Morandi, who was born on this day – 20 July – in Bologna in 1890 🗃️

Inquiry desk in the entrance hall of Australia House (Australian High Commission), The Strand, London in 1952 (Architectural Press Archive / RIBA Collections) 🗃️

Climbing the Spanish Steps – Rome, 1961 (photo by Monica Pidgeon, RIBA Collections) 🗃️

Community limes 🍋‍🟩

Solar eclipse at 12.10pm on 17 April 1912 (Gallica, BnF) 🗃️ (this was a demonstration print of the photo – hence all the scratches)

The vibrancy of 'Avignon from the West' (oil on canvas, National Gallery, London) – painted in 1836 by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, who was born on this day (16 July) in Paris in 1796 🗃️

'The Park' in oil on canvas (MoMA), painted around 1910 by Gustav Klimt, who was born on this day – 14 July – in Vienna in 1862 🗃️

The historian and the calculator: Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie crunches the numbers on a mechanical adding machine 🗃️

'Still Life with Cheese, Fruit, Bread and Nuts,' 1616 – painting in oil on wood by Floris van Dijck (private collection, on loan to the National Gallery, London)

Ballet costume for a seahorse designed around 1916 for the Ballets Russes by Natalia Goncharova (National Gallery of Australia) 🗃️

The historian and the computer: Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie tries out the first computer to be introduced to the catalogue room of the Bibliothèque nationale de France on the rue de Richelieu in February 1988 🗃️

Tree Portrait #3, Wakoto, Hokkaido, Japan (photo by Michael Kenna)

Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1997 (photo by Candide Höfer) 🗃️

'Never Again War' (Nie Wieder Krieg) – German anti-war poster commissioned by the Socialist Workers' Youth in Leipzig for mass demonstrations against war in August 1924. Made by Käthe Kollwitz, who was born on this day – 8 July – in Königsberg in 1867. 🗃️

Frida Kahlo – born on this day (6 July) in 1907 in Mexico City – photographed in 1937 sitting next to an agave plant (US Library of Congress) 🗃️

A cappuccino in Canberra in 1973 (National Archives of Australia) 🗃️

This skyline of rooftops crowded with chimneys set against clouds, 1856–59 (photo by Franck-François-Genès Chauvassaignes, The Met) 🗃️

This woman carrying an art folio with a picture of a human skeleton posing on the front in Paris's Saint-Germain-des-Prés, c.1953 (photo by Ed van der Elsken, Rijksmuseum) 🗃️

This beautiful, delicate ornament in the shape of a bee – just 12cm long and made in gilded copper by Moche artisans in northern Peru in the 6th or 7th century CE (The Met) 🗃️

This group of people rugged up and seated in profile on a boat gliding across a lake surrounded by snow-capped mountains in Switzerland, c.1900 (photo taken by the French painter Georges Maroniez; Bibliothèque nationale de France) 🗃️

This exquisite cup in blue-green glass, attributed to Iran or Iraq, was made — mind-bogglingly — all the way back in the 9th or 10th centuries (Metropolitan Museum of Art) 🗃️

Travellers in the dining car on board the Palatino train running between Paris and Rome, c.1960s (Ferrovie dello Stato) Back when a dining car had tablecloths, porcelain crockery, and real meals cooked on board by a chef (who apparently – at least sometimes – doled out the spaghetti himself) 🗃️

Here among the ads for servants, cooks, gardeners, etc in Tasmania's Launceston Examiner newspaper in March 1884, a straightforward request for "live native tigers" 😮 "Mr McGowan"=William McGowan of Launceston's City Park Zoo, the main dealer in living Tasmanian fauna (incl. thylacines) at the time.

All aboard the horse-drawn omnibus trotting between the Panthéon and the Place Courcelles in Paris in 1912 (Bibliothèque nationale de France) 🗃️

So many fascinating and intriguing details here – the flash of baguette on the street; the ornate iron grill on the red door; the pram in the courtyard protected with a sheet of plastic; the bright red bag... What stories these objects would tell.

A doorway, a courtyard, a street in the 19th arrondissement of Paris in 1970 (Michel Fromont, Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris) 🗃️