(I couldn’t resist re-posted this one under a different historical context…what a piece!)

On this day in 1884, the first roller coaster in America opened at Coney Island, in Brooklyn, New York. LaMarcus Thompson, designed the ride, know as the switchback railroad, that traveled approximately six miles per hour and cost a nickel to ride.

Agnes Mushet made this Octagon pillow cover from cigar silks around 1890. Noted in this Quilt Index record contributed by the New England Quilt Museum: “Husband Frank probably collected the silks when he worked at the Glen Forest Amusement Park on the Merrimack River in Methuen as head of concessions in the late 1890s.”

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