There she was, staring out at the world as though from the beginning of time.

Wrote Raquel Welch, in "Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage."

R.I.P., Raquel Welch.

"We can’t 'Whatevs' hard enough on this one."

"The only thing that merits any kind of response is the question of style. And since she clearly doesn’t have any, there’s literally nothing left to say about it. We reiterate what we said the morning after she destroyed Western Civilization: she just looks stupid.... Nothing says 'I have no persona of my own' than freezing your face into nothing more than a logo for pictures and thinking that it makes you look interesting."

Meanwhile, at the Emmys, keep scrolling here until you get to Raquel Welch. She's 73.

LIFE's sexiest photographs.

A nice collection. My favorite as a photograph is Jayne Mansfield. The sexiest, in my personal opinion, is "Clint Eastwood... bare-chested and bandaged after a brutal beating...."

And for those of you who were sad that I laughed at Raquel Welch yesterday — in her uncomfortable dancing singer guise — she's looking much more at ease here in a roller derby outfit — possibly because it's a still photograph.

Speaking of photography, here's a question I thought of yesterday and realized I couldn't answer: Who was the first U.S. President to be photographed? It's easy to think of photos of Abraham Lincoln, but was there anyone before him? It turns out to be crucial how you ask the question. You'll get a different answer if you look at the list of Presidents in the order that they served and find which is the first of them to have been photographed than if you look for the oldest date on a photograph of a U.S. President.

Do you even have a rough idea of when the earliest photographs were taken? Clue: it was not during the Civil War. Do you know the date of the earliest photographic portrait of a human being? You can see this person at 0:55 in this video, which collects many photographic firsts. The man looks like someone you would find — I would find — attractive if he walked down the street today. And at 1:12, you'll see the earliest-born person that we have a photograph of. Try to guess the year she was born before you look.



ADDED: By coincidence, it's Louis Daguerre's birthday, and Google has a doodle for him today:

Raquel Welch singing "Bang Bang" in 1967.

Hilarious. Painful to watch, but worth it. The singing gives real depth to the lyric "that awful sound."

The dancing... well, if you can't hang around for the mercifully singing-free James-Bond inspired segment that begins at 2:43, at least check out the action at 1:28. I think it's where Prince got the idea for his Super Bowl performance.

Now, to get that out of your head, here's the Nancy Sinatra rendition. Unlike Raquel, she does not go all boots-were-made-for-walking. She's wearing boots, but she never gets up off her ass. In fact, when the song ends, she rolls off the stage.

For simultaneous singing and walking in boots, here's the 80s Cher version.