Archive for the ‘History’ Category
4 May 1970 Kent State
Tuesday, 4 May 2021Indiana Bell Building 1930
Wednesday, 7 April 2021
“In 1930 the Indiana Bell Building was rotated 90°. Over a month, the 22-million-pound structure was moved 15 inches/hour, all while 600 employees still worked there. There was no interruption to gas, heat, electricity, water, sewage, or the telephone service they provided. No one inside felt it move.”
Built in 1907, the 8-story, 11,000-ton building was moved to provide room for a larger facility, all while providing uninterrupted telephone service to the State of Indiana. It was relocated 52 feet (16 m) to the south and 100 feet (30 m) west of its original location. The move began 14 October and was complete on 12 November 1930.
Most of the power needed to move the building was provided by hand-operated jacks assisted by a steam engine. Each time the jacks were pumped, the house moved 3/8ths of an inch.
Easter
Sunday, 4 April 2021
Fountains Abbey Cistercian Monastery
North Yorkshire, England
Established 1132AD.
Belgian Coal Miners ca. 1900
Thursday, 25 March 2021
That’s an elevator and some of the “safety gates” are missing. The workers are wearing wood clogs. Actual date and place is unknown.
[Found here.]
Three Women in China
Wednesday, 10 March 2021
Three women in the pillory, China, Anonymous, c.1875
Earliest Tineye image search results link to various Chinese websites (deleted or defunct) ca. February 2008. One source claims these women were accused of witchcraft, which suggests that the picture may have been related to religious persecutions that occurred during the Taiping Rebellion and/or the later Boxer Rebellion.
Religious persecutions persist in modern day communist China, and they are brutal:
“Rooted in atheism and materialism, the communist regime has been brutally suppressing Uyghur Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, and Falun Gong practitioners for years. Those who refuse to comply with the CCP’s orders are detained and taken to secretive “re-education camps” where they are subjected to unimaginable abuses, including gang rape and electrocution.” [Source]
[Image found here.]
John L. Burns
Monday, 1 March 2021
“On the afternoon of July 1, 1863, as the tide of gray soldiers pushed forward towards town, a 69 year old defender confidently strode towards the expanding struggle. A veteran of the War of 1812, John Burns could not simply stand idly by as his home became a hotly contested battle ground. Moving in with the somewhat incredulous men of the Iron Brigade, the near 70 year old Burns fought along side men 50 years his junior. With them he would remain until wounded. Although the Southerners would capture the ground of the McPherson farm that he helped to defend, with assistance from his Union Army comrades, Burns found his way home where he recovered from several wounds received that day. A few months later, John Burns would have the honor of meeting and walking with President Abraham Lincoln when, in November of that year, Lincoln offered his few appropriate remarks to the dedication of the soldiers national cemetery.
Union Lieutenant Frank Haskell, also present for the battle, wrote of his brief contact with Burns. “I saw “John Burns,” the only citizen of Gettysburg who fought in the battle, and I asked him what troops he fought with. He said: “O, I pitched in with them Wisconsin fellers.” I asked what sort of men they were, and he answered: “They fit terribly. The Rebs couldn’t make anything of them fellers.”
And so the brave compliment the brave. This man was touched by three bullets from the enemy, but not seriously wounded.”
According to Burns’s biography in Appleton’s Cyclopedia, during the last two years of his life his mind failed, and his friends were unable to prevent his wandering about the country. He was found in New York City on a cold winter’s night in December 1871, in a state of destitution, and was cared for and sent home, but died of pneumonia in 1872.
[More about John L. Burns here. Colorized image found here, story here. Not sure why the farmhouse photo is distorted.]
Hey, Mr. Spaceman.
Tuesday, 26 January 2021
Christ Being Led to the Praetorium
Thursday, 21 January 2021
“Christ Being Led to the Praetorium,” from “The Very Rich Hours of the Duke of Berry,” Folio 143, back; between 1412 and 1416, by the Limbourg brothers. Tempera on vellum. Condé Museum, France.
[Found here.]
What a great run.
Wednesday, 20 January 2021
“We are—and must always be—a land of hope, of light, and of glory to all the world. This week we inaugurate a new administration and pray for its success in keeping America safe and prosperous. We did what we came here to do—and so much more. Above all, we have reasserted the sacred idea that in America, the government answers to the people.
We restored the idea that in America, no one is forgotten—because everyone matters and everyone has a voice. I took on the tough battles, the hardest fights, the most difficult choices—because that’s what you elected me to do. Our agenda was not about right or left, it wasn’t about Republican or Democrat, but about the good of a nation, and that means the whole nation.” – President Donald J. Trump
https://www.whitehouse.gov/trump-administration-accomplishments/
https://www.frcaction.org/accomplishments
Update: The White House list of President Trump’s accomplishments has been scrubbed as of the morning of 20 January 2021. Here it is, unedited and in its entirety.
(more…)
15 January 1929 – 4 April 1968
Friday, 15 January 2021
