For anyone considering making a reptile a part of the family:
explore.britannica.com/explore/savi...

Over a third of Frida Kahlo's paintings were self-portraits.

Although her paintings often mixed fantasy with realism, she said, "I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality."

Of animal skeletons she collected, O'Keeffe said:

“To me they are as beautiful as anything I know… . The bones seem to cut sharply to the center of something that is keenly alive on the desert.”

While other painters at the time found sunflowers slightly coarse and unrefined, Van Gogh championed them in his paintings.

After his death, friends brought sunflowers to his funeral.

During the height of the Victorian era, many Brits delighted in the bizarre and macabre, even during the holidays.

We have them to thank for the quintessentially odd Christmas cards that still delight (and freak us out) today.

"God bless us, everyone."

The increased popularity of novelty cards also meant that middle-class families could own a piece of art to display in their homes.

And who wouldn’t want a coy boot-wearing onion hanging on your wall??

Although the church and rigid social codes dominated Victorian culture, there are remarkably few religious themes.

Instead, dark humor found its way into the designs.

With the advancement of printing processes, cards became cheaper and more accessible.

Card companies began commissioning artists to create designs specifically for Christmas cards.

To keep up with competition, the designs became more original.

The first Christmas card is thought to have been designed in England in 1843, the EXACT SAME YEAR that Charles Dickens wrote ‘A Christmas Carol.’

Christmas (snow, big feasts, family cheer) was becoming a thing.

1,000 hand-colored copies of the card were sold in London.

Queen Victoria, whose mother and husband were born in Germany, is credited with bringing German holiday traditions like Christmas trees and card-giving to England in the 1830s.