Le Monocle was a well-know lesbian bar located in Montmartre section of Paris, France that was open from the 1920s thru the early 1940s.
During the 1920s, Paris gained a reputation for the variety of its nighttime options and for its free and easy attitude toward life in general. As a result, many gay and lesbian nightclubs opened and flourished. Among these was Le Monocle, which is credited with being one of the first, and certainly the most famous of lesbian nightclubs. It was opened by Lulu de Montparnasse in the Montmartre area, which at that time was the main gathering place for Parisian lesbians who were often seen at Montmartre’s outdoor cafes or dancing at the Moulin Rouge. Le Monocle’s scene was describe by Florence Tamagne as, “All the women there dressed as men, in Tuxedos, and wore their hair in a bob.”
The name Le Monocle derived from a fad at the time where women who identified as lesbian would sport a monocle to indicate sexual preference. The writer Colette once obsevered the fad by describing women in the area as “often affecting a monocle and a white carnation in the buttonhole.” (as seen in the photo above of Le Monocle)
Time LordImmortal JellyfishJust 5 millimetres wide, the tiny Turritopsis dohrnii has discovered how to cheat death. More commonly known as the immortal jellyfish, it has been silently invading oceans all over the world with its ever-increasing population—due to the fact it can age backwards. The jellyfish’s reproduction cycle involves the meeting of free-floating sperm and eggs, which then settle on a hard surface and form a blob-like polyp, which slowly matures. Most mature jellyfish species die soon after reproducing, but the Turritopsis is able to transform from back into a polyp and restart life anew, inverting their ‘umbrella’ and absorbing their tentacles. This can only be done in an emergency such as starvation, physical damage, or temperature or salinity change, but the cycle can be repeated indefinitely, rendering the Turritopsis immortal. Remarkably, their cells are completely transformed in the process. Biologist Stefano Piraino thinks that they’re able to “switch off some genes and switch on [others], reactivating genetic programs that were used in earlier stages of the life cycle.” However, researchers have dismissed ideas that the species could hold the key to anti-aging drugs—and maybe that’s for the best. If the Turritopsis can spread this rapidly through the world’s oceans, then I don’t think immortality would very healthy for humans.
Read about the implications on National Geographic
(via sciencesoup:)
