Hello and welcome to another round of Friday Favourites! This week I’d like to thank all the users who contributed information that helped us find more precise locations and Street Views of some great photos. A castle bridge c.1890, a railway hotel in 1913, and this Salford UK street are just a few that we’ve been able to improve. If you think that you can ‘suggest more accurate details’ of a particular pin, don’t hesitate to do so. Now on to some great content:

Pin of the Week

Junction, Rathmines, Dublin, 1911.

A closer look

Pin of the Week is a wonderful Street View from the Open University’s MA History program. The course focuses on local and regional history, and is using Historypin as a platform for sharing their interesting finds with the online community.

The turn-of-the century Dublin photo above shows streetcars, horse and carts, and some fashionable dress from the women in the foreground. A contributor on the photo’s Flickr page has done some sleuthing to discover the correct date of the scene, using the poster headlines between Retz and Rooney & Co. as clues: “And I think the poster says Saturday! However, the next word looks like August to me, so I kept searching and this looks fairly promising from Saturday, 26 August 1911:
“MURDER IN A MOTOR CAR.
The trial of Mr. Beattie for the murder of his wife by shooting her while travelling in a motor car, was resumed to-day…”"

Many of the buildings in the present day are for the most part unchanged, which makes for a great Street View overlay with the 1911 scene. Check out a fullscreen version by clicking the first photo.

There are many school projects that utilise Historypin, and OU’s MA History program is just one of great examples.  We really encourage that Historypin become a learning tool in the classroom!

Check out OU MA History Channel here.

Pinner of the Week

Traffic controller agents, Leon, Mexico, 1922.

Pinner of the Week is user David, who has been pinning lots of great material from León, Mexico. In these photos we can see the hustle and bustle of everyday life, from train station scenes, to market shopping, to cycling on the streets. And speaking of the streets, there are so many great Street Views on this Channel, of scenes spanning multiple decades.

He has also taken a great Historypin Repeat, which I encourage anyone with the our Android App to experiment with. It is a fun way to include yourself and have fun with great historical scenes already out there!

Click the photos for a closer view, and have a look at David’s Channel here.

Train station, 1925-1945.

House built in 1883 and demolished in 1971, Leon, Mexico.

One of the many great flood photos that we have on Historypin; "One day after the flood of 1926."

A bonus repeat as well, taken May 2012.

Story of the Week

Bob Dylan at Kronborg Castle, 1966.

In May 1966, Bob Dylan visited Denmark as part of his World Tour, the first in which he travelled with an electric band. He had caused a sensation a year earlier at the Newport Folk Festival by ‘going electric,’ much disconcerting to many members of the folk movement.

While in Denmark he visited Kronborg Castle in Helsingor, a UNESCO’s World Heritage Site and one of the most important Renaissance castles in Northern Europe.  The castle is most famous as Shakespeare’s Elsinore Castle in Hamlet. Hamlet was performed in the castle for the first time in 1816 to mark the 200th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare, with a cast consisting of soldiers from the castle garrison. The play has since been performed several times in the courtyard and at various locations on the fortifications.

Dylan wrote a verse for the play’s Ophelia in his “Desolation Row”:

Now Ophelia, she is at the window, 
For her I feel so afraid 
On her twenty-second birthday 
She already is an old maid  

Thanks to Google’s efforts at Street Viewing more ‘inside’ locations, Kronborg Castle is one of the most recent additions to this growing list. This is how we could get this atypical overlay with sweeping sea views and castle grounds below. Click for a bigger view of Dylan contemplating Elsinore:

In Street View inside the castle.

Remember that you too can keep up with the latest Google Street View additions through the official blog. Maybe you’ll find some new and interesting places to pin!