Category: History

Christmas Arachnids

Christmas Spider

“An old European Christmas legend tells of a poor woman unable to provide the traditional decorations for the special holiday. A spider made his home in her tree and began to spin beautiful webs. On Christmas morning, the first light of sun struck the cobwebs, turning them to silver. When the woman awoke, she found the tree was covered with silver treasure. The spider had brought good fortune!”
[via]

Other versions claim it’s a German or Ukrainian tradition, and that either the Christ Child or Santa transformed the webs. Although I grew up in an area with a large German population, I never heard the story and can’t find an original source.

Yet, there IS such a creature called a Christmas Spider.

[Image found here.]

8:9:10 11/12/13 – The 8th Second of The 9th Minute of The 10th Hour of The 11th Day of The 12th Month of The 13th Year of The Century

8 9 10 11 12 13 Date Time Convergence

Second : Minute : Hour; Day / Month / Year
Sequential time and date convergence, smallest to largest increments.

A similar sequence occurred at 8:09:10 on November 12 2013, but this one rocks. Unless I’m missing something, we’ll have no more great time/date convergences for a very long time.

Adding the numbers and dividing by 21 (the number of the current Century for those of you not keeping track) results in the Number 3, the minimum number of points to describe a circle, a plane and a non-collapsible polygon; the noblest of all digits according to Pythagoras and one of only 9 Heegner Numbers, the Atomic Number of Lithium (3rd in line after Hydrogen and Helium), the number of physical dimensions we’re able to sense,  and it’s also a crowd.

It all means something, I just don’t know what.

7 December 1941 – Remember Always

7 December 1941 Never Forget

[via]

Previous posts about The Day Of Infamy here.

Graffito. No Respect

No Respect - Cairo

December 2013, in al-Khalifa street, Old Cairo

[Found here.]

The Best Crappiest Speakers Ever Made.

RCA

They looked like armadillos boinking a mailbox, and yes, they were speakers. They were virtually indestructible. They hung on the inside of your car window when it was freezing outside and wouldn’t allow you to roll it up all the way.

They were also easily stolen with a pen knife. Lupe had a wall of them in his apartment, all wired together and hooked up to his stereo for a tinny wall of sound. Listening to Led Zeppelin through a dozen drive-in rattlebuzzers was truly something to behold. Truly.

[Found here.]

Crumbling Dice & Exploding Billiard Balls

decompsed dice

Cellulose nitrate was used to make dice from the late 1860s until the middle of the twentieth century, and the material remains stable for decades. Then, in a flash, they can dramatically decompose. Nitric acid is released in a process called outgassing. The dice cleave, crumble, and then implode.

From Dice: Deception, Fate & Rotten Luck by Ricky Jay and Rosamond Purcell, 2002.

[Via Wiki] Because of its explosive nature, not all applications of nitrocellulose were successful. In 1869, with elephants having been poached to near extinction, the billiards industry offered a $10,000 prize to whoever came up with the best replacement for ivory billiard balls. John Wesley Hyatt created the winning replacement, which he created with a new material he discovered called camphored nitrocellulose—the first thermoplastic, better known as celluloid. The invention enjoyed a brief popularity, but the Hyatt balls were extremely flammable, and sometimes portions of the outer shell would explode upon impact. An owner of a billiard saloon in Colorado wrote to Hyatt about the explosive tendencies, saying that he did not mind very much personally but for the fact that every man in his saloon immediately pulled a gun at the sound.

[Found here.]

Happy Thanksgiving

Retro Thanksgiving

It amazes me to think that in September 1620, 102 people were so fed up with the English monarchy that they were willing to risk a dangerous late-season voyage across the Atlantic (that lasted over two months at sea) to a new land to establish a free colony.

Disease, scurvy, starvation and weather exposure took their toll, and half of them died before the following spring. In March of 1621, the survivors sought to establish Plymouth Rock, ventured ashore, and met an escaped British slave named Squanto who spoke English.

His first words to William Bradford were:
“Dude. This is a swamp. You f’d up. Y’all gonna die an’ stuff.”
Bradford replied, “Bro, WTF?”
“Here. Plant some of this, but put a fish under it.”
“Dude, no way.”
“Way. Just do it.”
“K.  By the way, we got a plow.”
“Get out. You got a what? What you need a plow on a boat for?”
“We got one. You got an ox?”
“Ordered one on Amazon, but he ain’t showed up yet. They walk slow.”
“Cool. We’re gonna pop some pheasant for supper. Y’all wanna come?”
“Hell yeah. We’ll bag some Bambi and see you about 4.”

And the rest is history.

Have a great holiday, folks, and never forget the Reason for Thanksgiving.

[Image from here.]

Big Little Green Army Men

Green Army Men

Yeah, we had ’em.

We’d split them up, Germans vs. Allies, set them up in the dirt, then each of us would shoot rubber bands at the opponent’s “army.” If the rubber band knocked over a soldier, he was taken off of the battlefield as KIA.

If you shot a rubber band off your thumb, hit or miss, it became part of your opponent’s arsenal. If you were a good shot but too aggressive, you might run out of rubberband ammo and lose the battle. Strategy & Tactics for 8 year old boys.

[Found here, via here.]

8:9:10 11/12/13

8 9 10 11 12 13

Hour: Minute: Second; Month/Day/Year
Cool Date/time numerical convergence.

Armistice Day: The 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month of 1918

Walter Myers

The letter below was penned by my grand-uncle Walter (1899-1978) to his parents (my great-grandparents). He had just turned 19, and was serving in the US Army Signal Corps. In WWI that meant he was stationed at the German Front, providing reconnaissance from balloons and wiring reports via telegraph. Very dangerous place to be.

21 August 1918 – France

Dearest Mom and Dad,

Was under fire for the first time recently. No casualties. Believe me you never heard such an unearthly noise. Everything quiet then all of a sudden “Boom” s-h-h-h sh-sh-sh. The boom is when the shell bursts and the “sh” sounds like the wind whistling through a crack. The “sh” is caused by flying splinters. The damned Deutsch can’t hit a barn so we should worry. We have dugouts.

Sorry I can’t tell more. This may be cut out. I don’t think it will though because there is no information. I guess the Deutsch remember shooting at us. So this letter wouldn’t give them any “info”.

You say that you will meet me when I get off the returning transport. I think the day when I arrive will be about 10 years hence, at the present rate. However, though, the unexpected might happen and I might get home inside of 9 years instead of ten. So you get my impression from the above paragraph. However though, I am absolutely not homesick.

Of course I would like to get home, which is only natural. But I don’t want to get home ’till the “Guerre” is finished and finished to a frizzle and finished in our favor, and the damned deutsch exterminated.

We are now sleeping on the ground and in pup tents. Great sport, too. Just like a big camp.

Well, I guess we will call things off for the present. So, “Au revoire cher Pere et Mere.” I will see you “Apres La Guerre.”

With love,
Soldier Bill

Unfortunately, The Armistice lasted barely twenty years, allowed the creation of the WehrMacht, and WWII ensued. The Korean “Conflict” was stalled the same way, and now North Korea is a dangerous rogue nation. Do I need to mention Iran? Fini La Guerre.

God Bless all Veterans who fight selflessly for what’s right.

[Related posts here.]