Giant busts of 43 US Presidents are stored in a Virginia field awaiting their next assignment. Each is approximately 20 feet tall and weighs 11 tons.
Category: True Stories
4 May 1970 – Kent State
Remember Always
Who Set It Up and Who Paid The Price
It began when left-wing activists from off-campus arrived by bus on Friday May 1 1970 to host a May Day protest rally. Kent State, a small university in northeast Ohio, had been chosen.
Doppelgangers.
[Update: Apparently the one on the left is a fabrication, but it still amuses me. The beach photo comes from Getty Images.]
[Update 2: Looks like it’s either a mistake or a joke that went viral. https://jerz.setonhill.edu/blog/2020/04/21/no-this-beach-photo-doesnt-prove-the-media-is-lying/ ]
Doktorskaya kolbasa
Russian Докторская колбаса (Doctor’s sausage) had it’s origins in the United States.
The Bolsheviks mismanaged food production resulting in a widespread famine, so in 1936 Josef Stalin sent his food industry administrator to find out what the Americans were doing. Anastas Mikoyan found a lot of bologna.
Here is the exact recipe of Doktorskaya kolbasa that was used as industry standard from 1936 till 1974:
Quantities of ingredients to produce 100 kg of Doktorskaya kolbasa:
-
- 25 kg of beef meat
- 70 kg of semi-lean pork meat
- 3 liters of milk
- 2 liters of eggs
- 2 kg of salt and 200 gr of sugar
- 30 gr of cardamom
- 50 gr of ascorbic acid (color stabilizer)
Manufacturing technology included dicing and mixing all ingredients in a homogenous paste, filling the tubes and later drying and boiling the sausage. Final product was incredibly tasty and quite healthy.
At least it was tasty and healthy enough for those who hadn’t starved to death during the famine, or slaughtered during Большой террор.
Social Distance Shaming Hot Links
Jungle Boogie, The Bobby True Trio, 1948:
I spy Walter Wick.
Who did the voice of Cecil the Turtle best?
COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic stats are interesting. To date, less than four-thousandths of one percent (0.003.5%) of the US population has contracted it; six ten-thousandths of one percent (0.0006%) of the US population has died from it. Italy’s death rate from the virus is 1.7%.
The Republic of San Marino is a 24 sq. mi. micronation surrounded by Italy. It has the highest fatality rate (of the countries listed) at 6.5%.
PJMedia parsed the same statistics I did and posted the graphs below:
From the What-Are-They-Hiding Department:
This. Oh, and also This.
Earlier this year, a Beijing district office for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention announced that pants should be an effective barrier against farts that might disperse the Wuhan virus.
[Status update: A Humble Request.]
From the Archives: 1 year ago. 5 years ago. 10 years ago.
An Unplanned Vacation
Yeah, I’m gonna go dark for a while. Might be a week or more.
Seems I’ve got a nasty little beastie inside that requires some medical attention. I don’t know how long the recovery is going to take or what it entails, but I’ll find out soon enough. Meanwhile, check out the great sites in the blogroll, tell ’em I sent you.
Rock on wit yo bad sefs.
Bunk
The First Del Taco, Yermo, California
“Ed Hackbarth and David Jameson opened the first Del Taco in Yermo, CA in 1964. With a menu of 19¢ tacos, tostadas, fries and 24¢ cheeseburgers, Del Taco brought in $169 in sales on its first day in business – the equivalent of 900 tacos.”
Seems that the Del Taco pictured above opened in 1961, predating the one that opened in Barstow in 1964. It was originally named “House of the Taco,” er, um, “Casa del Taco.”
$169 in 1961 is about $1,500 in 2020 dollars. Not a bad first day.
[Image found here, caption here.]
UPDATE: Ed Hackbarth Jr. points out that Dave Jameson had nothing to do with the Del Taco Yermo. He joined Ed Hackbarth later 1964-65, opening the Del Taco in Corona CA. – Thanks, Ed.
Saturday Matinee – The Great East Japan Earthquake 2011, Steve Gibbons Band, Keb’ Mo’, Juzzie Smith & Jeff Beck’s Killer Lineup
11 March 2011 – The Great East Japan Earthquake (video at Sendai Airport) measured 9.0–9.1 on the Richter Scale. It moved Honshu (the main island of Japan) 8 feet east.
It was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan, and the fourth most powerful earthquake in the world since modern record-keeping began in 1900. The earthquake triggered powerful tsunami waves that may have reached heights of up to 40.5 meters (133 ft) in Miyako in Tōhoku’s Iwate Prefecture, and which, in the Sendai area, traveled at 700 km/h (435 mph) for up to 10 km (6 mi) inland. Residents of Sendai had only eight to ten minutes of warning, and more than 19,000 were killed, many at evacuation sites, more than a hundred of which washed away. [Wiki]
[Watch the whole thing. Video found here, via here.]
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That’s a tough one to follow, but let’s try this.
Long intro, good story by The Steve Gibbons Band (1977). If you don’t know who he is, check out his credentials. I bought one of his albums for his cover of Chuck Berry’s “Tulane.”
Keb’ Mo’ plays Son House‘ “Walkin’ Blues” (1930), accompanied by musicians from six countries. It’s part of the “Playing For Change” video series.
Juzzie Smith introduces his One Man Band, and it’s amazing. I can play harmonica and guitar, but my brain won’t let me do both at once.
Jeff Beck (guitar), Tal Wilkenfeld (bass), Beth Hart (vocals), Lizzie Ball (violin) and Jonathan Joseph (drums) crank out Freddie King‘s 1971 classic “Going Down” at Crossroads Guitar Festival 2013. What a lineup.
That should hold y’all for a bit. See you back here tomorrow for something or other.
Bone Cold.
Egyptian bone figurine, 3700–3500 BC (somewhere in that 200 year window). Her eyes are made from lapis lazuli, and she looks cold. She doesn’t look very happy and apparently she was quite hirsute.
[Found here.]
“It’s A Colorful Day In The Neigh-Bor-Hood”
Damages could run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“He obviously has a drug issue or something going on, [neighbor] Klawans said. “I have just never seen anything like this in my life.”
The Collier County Property Appraiser’s office says the house belongs to 40-year-old Jeffrey Leibman, who neighbors said did the damage over the course of a week.
Tacky Raccoons 