As the owner of a large number of Boxer Rebellion figures, I appreciate these photos of China in color circa 1912. My guess is that this is pretty representative of China over a long period of time, and will be useful for gamers from the Opium Wars through the revolution.
For writers of steampunk and other Victorian / Edwardian era fare, here’s a free dictionary of English slang from 1909.
The Dice Flew Furiously is Ross MacFarlane’s set of rules for modernistic warfare. From his notes:
Notes: This is a simple set of rules for playing wargames in the Age of the Machine Gun. They are meant to provide an enjoyable game and to be evocative of stories told rather than an accurate simulation or recreation of experience or fact. More specifically, they aim to work in OSW fashion, not worrying about consistent time and ground scales and operating on multiple levels at once. Figures and vehicles are treated more or less as individuals so a player can get that emotional feel of being there in the midst of things while putting dozens if not hundreds of toy soldiers on the table and getting the feel of commanding a “battalion” or even a “brigade”, yet still be able to finish a game in 2 to 4 hours. The rules are intended for use with individual figures of 20mm size or larger but it should be able to be used with multi-figure bases either counting each base as a figure or by marking hits.
Here’s an interesting set of Flickr photos of pre Revolution Moscow.
For Wild West fans, here are a bunch of period photos of the American West.