Weekend Stubble

If this item hadn't gone for a head-spinning $130 on eBay, I'd have been all over this: a November 1 1897 issue of The Casket, a trade newspaper for morticians. Among ads for the "Detroit Funeral Couch" and ad slogans like "No One Likes To Ride In a Poor Hearse" -- does anyone even like to ride in nice one? -- the ads for embalming fluids are priceless. There's Peruvian Embalming Fluid, Perfectum Embalming Fluid, and of course Shaw Bleaching and Embalming Fluid Powder, which bears the rather unwise motto "Make Your Own Fluid."

My own personal favorite product name: Mummaline.