9AM daily. Pen on paper, 8-1/2 x 11, approx. 2 square inches per day.
My WebEx Meeting Notes 13 January – 12 April 2022
9AM daily. Pen on paper, 8-1/2 x 11, approx. 2 square inches per day.
Category: True Stories
Bullock-Skin Boats
This is some twenty miles from Maldera, up in the hill country of the Punjab. The mountain river here is deep and swift; you can see ahead how high, steep banks wall it in and you can judge how pouring rains, draining from such slopes, would turn this stream into a fiercely raging torrent.
These men are natives in their customary clothes, and the rather ghastly looking objects with which they are busy are the hides of cattle, sewed up tightly and inflated with air till they can be used like enormous life-preservers. Two of the men you notice, are still at work blowing their “boats” full of air; they have cords there all ready to tie up the end of the skin when it is sufficiently distended.
Another has done the blowing-up at home and is bringing his skin down over the rocky bank; it is bulky but naturally very light and comparatively easy to handle.
When they are ready to start each man will throw himself across one of the inflated skins, using his foot on one side and a short paddle on the other side to propel the queer craft. If his balance is no perfect of course the craft rolls over and he gats a ducking, but practice makes skilful, and, as a matter of fact, small loads of freight and even passengers are ferried across in safety. If several passengers are to be taken over, it is customary for two “boats” to start out side by side, the passengers on the different floats taking hold of each thr to help balance the queer craft.
From Notes of Travel, No. 7, copyright, 1904, by Underwood & Underwood.
Inflating Bullok-Skin “Boats” for Crossing a Swift Himalayan River; India.
Source image unknown; Underwood & Underwood were publishers, not explorers. At one time, Underwood & Underwood was the largest publisher of stereoviews in the world, producing 10 million views a year.
[Found here. Original stereoscope photo found here via Tineye.]
Replenishing Oil Fields in 1962
Return to the earth what you borrowed from the earth.
BUT NOT LIKE THIS.
The Doctor Will See You Now
That appears to be self-portrait artist Samuel Fosso, from a series titled African Spirits (ca. 2008). Born in Camaroon, he fled the Nigerian Biafra Wars, found refuge in Bangui, Central African Republic.
[Images found without captions here and credits Jean Marc Patras.]
More Wills’ Cigarette Cards – Civilian Defense Tips in WWII Britain
For many years it was the practice for cigarette manufacturers to put what was called a ‘cigarette card’ inside each packet of cigarettes. These and others were produced by the cigarette company ‘Wills, in collaboration with the ARP (Air Raid Precautions), an organisation dedicated to the protection of civilians from the danger of air-raids.
Wills’ Cigarette Cards – Civilian Defense Tips in WWII Britain
For many years it was the practice for cigarette manufacturers to put what was called a ‘cigarette card’ inside each packet of cigarettes. These and others were produced by the cigarette company ‘Wills, in collaboration with the ARP (Air Raid Precautions), an organisation dedicated to the protection of civilians from the danger of air-raids.
Little Porky Peeper
In the mid-19th Century, not long after the invention of photography, John Benjamin Dancer (1812 – 1887) began printing tiny photographs onto glass slides at his studio in Liverpool, England. In Paris, René Dagron (1817 – 1900) wondered how to circumvent the need for an expensive microscope to view them. In 1859, Dagron patented the first Stanhope lens mounted with a mini-photograph.
He named it after the magnifying device invented 50 years earlier by Charles Stanhope, Third Earl Stanhope (1753-1816). In the late-18th century, Stanhope invented lenses which allowed all sorts of “viewers” to house images in secret. Stanhopes, also called Bijoux Photomicroscopiques, became known as ‘peep holes’, ‘peep-eye views’ or ‘peeps’.
And this little piggy had a secret…
Bots wanna bot: As a US citizen, I believe that we have 85 Jessicas
The Most Effectual Method of Recovering a Drowned Person
In the 1730s, René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur popularized a recent discovery: the seemingly lifeless could be revived with a wealth of strategies. This “Pliny of the Eighteenth Century” (Réaumur invented a precursor to the Celsius scale, influenced methods of silk production in China, and pioneered the process of metallic tinning still used today) wrote a pamphlet titled Avis pour donner du secours à ceux que l’on croit noyez (Advice to aid those believed drowned).
After debating the pros and cons of tickling the nose with feathers and filling a drowning man’s mouth with warm urine, Réaumur reveals what he believes to be the best technique: using a pipe stem to blow stimulating tobacco smoke into the intestines through the rectum. Louis XV found the pamphlet dazzling and encouraged its wide distribution. Startlingly, as Anton Serdeczny discusses in his recent book on reanimation, soon riverbanks across Europe were lined with “resuscitation kits”, as close-by as a contemporary defibrillator, which contained all the necessary supplies for giving a nicotine enema (and later, thankfully, included bellows as a substitute for breath).
[Source.]
Helmet Testing 1912 – W. T. Warren’s Contribution To The World
“This rather comical photo was taken in 1912, and contrary to popular belief on the internet it isn’t a man testing a new prototype of American Football helmet by bashing his head against a wall. The truth is actually more interesting than the myth when it comes to this image. In actual fact the man is British inventor W.T. Warren, and the image is of him leaping against a hanger wall at the flying school of William Hugh Ewen, at Hendon in the UK.
His invention, the Warren Safety Helmet was a spring-equipped pilot safety helmet, which was padded with horsehair. It was designed to absorb an impact as head injuries were the leading cause of death in flight accidents at the time. The helmet saw considerable use during World War I and an example of Warren’s invention can be found in the Imperial War Museum.
The other men in the photo are the flying school’s owner William Hugh Ewen, in the middle, on the left stands his chief pilot Lewis Turner and the man on the right was named A. M. Ramsey. The photograph was published in Aviation magazine Flight on 6th April 1912.”
[Image found here, description from the comments.]
Tacky Raccoons 