I went there about 15 times during those years, always with various groups of friends. I could write a book on the injuries I witnessed. The first few times were with parents, who actually watched injuries happen. Luckily ours were all minor, but I question our parents’ judgment in allowing us to keep going.
I just found out about the Spilhaus Projection, a world map projection that centers on the oceans rather than the land . I thought it was pretty cool.
The first time I saw the Spilhaus Projection it was labeled “A whale’s map of the world.”
Speaking of von Ribbentrop, I remember being surprised to learn that he started his working career in Canada (including having a wine import business in Ottawa).
The modern German Embassy in Paris is on Avenue Franklin Roosevelt.
In 1851 James Henry Fox Talbot, one of the inventors of photography, inventor of the Camera Lucida, Discoverer of the Talbot Effect*, co-translator of cuneiform, and discoverer or inventor of lots of other stuff, pinned a printed page to a disc and rotated it rapidly. He then illuminated it with the light from a very bright spark (using electricity from a bank of Leyden jars) and produced the very first strobe photograph. The image “froze” the image of the rotating paper so well that it could be read. (Legend has it that the page was a copy of the London Times, but Talbot’s own notes – our only direct record of this – don’t say so. The photograph no longer exists.)
Seventy years before Harold “Doc” Edgerton’s strobe lamp.
*Talbot effect – it’s startling when you first see it
In at least some parts of the American South, a knit beanie or watch cap is called a toboggan.
This is what can happen to the engine in a towing fail.
This Jeep wasn’t just in first gear; it was in first gear with the transfer case in 4WD Low, which multiplies the engine RPM even more for a given travel speed. If you thought 12,000 RPM was bad, well, 50,000 is quite a bit worse. As you can see, the result is something akin to throwing a wet paper bag into a tornado.
Nice. Similar to a “money shift,” which is what happens in a manual-gearbox car when you redline in second gear and then accidentally shift into first instead of third.
Streets in Tower Hamlets (in east London) near the proposed new Chinese embassy could be renamed to such names as “Tiananmen Square”, “Hong Kong Road”, and “Uyghur Court”. This article is from January, but I haven’t seen any follow-up. Street names around new Chinese embassy could be renamed in honour of persecuted Muslim population | Evening Standard
Found a better site that includes the video working…this has some F bombs in the audio, so it’s possibly NSFW for that.
Added contribution for today: those black lines on a school bus?
The three rails are there to demarcate the body mid-section/top of the seat, the seat line itself where all the kids’ butts are installed, and the floor line of the passenger compartment.
The rails add some strength to the thin sheet metal sides of the bus, and provide a good visual aid for rescue and safety workers in case a bus is involved in an accident; a quick glance at these rails can show if the impact happened below the floor line, for example, which would be less serious.
In 1939, UK publishers released an Agatha Christie mystery novel titled “Ten Little N******s”. It became the best-selling mystery novel of all time, after being released in the US under the titles “And Then There Were None”, and “Ten Little Indians”. A hard-cover UK original sells for about $6500.
And more than one movie was based on that book.
Irony of the day: there is no way to report phishing emails pretending to be NortonLifeLock to NortonLifeLock. One would think that a company supposedly interested in protecting identity theft would take a proactive stance with protecting their own identity!
Many. There was a British TV production a few years ago where the various rhymes in the story were changed to “Ten Little soldier boys.” And Then There Were None is now the only title used for productions, since the story is too good (and popular) to not be revived.
Here’s a twofer of related facts, one I’ve known for some time, one from today. More of our local history:
Old fact: There used to be an inland waterway route from London to Portsmouth, The London to Portsmouth canal aka the Wey and Arun Canal, which we stumbled across one day in one of those How Could I Not Know That? moments.
In 1810, the Earl of Egremont began to promote the idea of a canal to link the Rivers Wey and Arun, separated by only 15 miles (24 km). Part of the justification for this canal through a very rural area, with few of the cargoes which had made other canals profitable, was to provide an inland route from London to the south coast of England, utilising these two rivers and the Portsmouth and Arundel Canal. This was considered an important consideration as England was at war with France and thus coastal shipping at risk of attack…
…The canal was never very prosperous, but did reasonably well, with a maximum of 23,000 tons carried in 1839. However, railway competition hit hard in 1865 with the opening of the Guildford and Horsham Railway, which was in direct competition with the canal. There were also engineering problems with few sources of water to tap into, compounded by porous soil on the summit level, which led to water shortages.
The canal fell out of use, became derelict, but more recently has been in part rescued and renovated by enthusiasts, to the extent that you can now go for canal boat trips on a section a couple of miles long out of Loxwood, West Sussex. It was on one of these trips that a guide told us that one use of the canal was to ship gunpowder from Shalford to Portsmouth for naval use.
New fact: Today we stumbled across the gunpowder factory. Shalford was the loading point on the canal (old open day announcement) - the factory was a couple of miles away at Chilworth.
The Surrey Hills isn’t the first place that you’d associate with heavy industry, but in the village of Chilworth, near Guildford, are the ruins of an industry that dominated the area for almost 300 years – the manufacturing of gunpowder.
Dominated the area? Who knew?
At a time when Britain seemed to be eternally at war or under threat, not just from foreign powers but also from influences within, the powder mills at Chilworth played an important part in keeping the guns firing. The mills employed 600 people at their peak but this highly productive industry also brought with it inherent danger which led to frequent fatal accidents…
My bold. Source.
… The gunpowder mills at Chilworth in Surrey were established in 1626 on the course of The Tilling Bourne , a tributary to the River Wey. Although only a small river, its four principal tributaries, and the fact that it flowed over a steep gradient, ensured a good flow of water that not only powered the gunpowder mills but a good number of other mills too.
The mill closed in 1920, but the buildings are still there. By dragging and dropping the little man onto the marked viewpoints on google maps you can take a look around.
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Starship’s long-reviled megahit “We Built This City” was co-written by Bernie Taupin.
A pizzeria a couple of miles from here was established by a criminal defense attorney in a former flower shop. The American Nazi Party had its headquarters nearby and the Jewish pizza makers refused to serve them.
Wodka freezes at - 24 degrees Celsius. DSC_0258~3|381x500
I’ve seen various figures for vodka and other ethanol mixtures. Some reports have it at -25C for 80 proof vodka (40% ethanol), while 100 proof vodka (50% ethanol) is usually said to freeze at -32C.