It’s instructive to compare the 1862 Exámen del plan económico presentado al gobierno de S. M. Para el Ensanche y Reforma Urbana de Barcelona with debates concerning the balance between private, state and corporate interests in contemporary Barcelona.

Slightly off-topic, but irresistible, from Henry Hiram Riley’s pseudo-ethnography, Puddleford and its people (New York, 1854):
Another amusement, frequent in the country, was the turn-out of the ‘Calathumpian Band.’ … No one knew exactly who its members were; but they were always on hand, soon after a wedding, in full uniform, with all their instruments in [...]

The question has been asked, so no, hell, I am not going on the Marcha Ciclonudista on Saturday. It looks exactly like the Dutch Society for Sexual Reform’s sadomasochism evenings were reputed to be (I lived next door): lots of fat old guys drifting around lusting after young female flesh. Let’s keep cycling healthy.

The excerpt feature in Google Books sometimes delivers surreal gems, Escher stones. Here’s one from Advance Japan: A Nation Thoroughly in Earnest: “that the equivalent of the expression ‘not worth a button’ is, in Japanese, ‘not worth the head of a sardine.’ Mackerel also are extremely plentiful.”
(I’m translating some mid-nineteenth century colloquial Flemish and [...]

I was sitting peacefully on a bench yesterday when an Italian architect came and sat beside me. (I knew he was a architect, because all the Italians here are architects. I don’t know why.) He asked me where the nearest supermarket was, but I knew this was just what chessplayers refer to as the Berlin [...]

“Saleh al-Hami - who, like many former guerrillas who fought in Afghanistan, has a long black beard and a plastic leg - married Mr. Zarqawi’s younger sister.”