Category: True Stories
Emergency Gear
When nuclear fallout protection was all the rage.
Not sure what’s in the Emergency Life Pack, perhaps an 8 day supply of cigarettes and iodine pills. Note that the Cuban Missile Crisis went down in October of 1962, so the photo date may be in error.
[Photo by Max Scheler, colorized, found here.]
Antiquarians
“Collectors like Hollister, left, and Porter Hovey, sisters with an appetite for late 19th-century relics like apothecary cabinets and dressmakers dummies, are turning their homes into pastiches of the past.”
New York Times 29 July 2009
[Found here.]
1922 Color Television by Radio
The Roof Ninja
“It’s not for everybody, it’s not even for me.” – The Roof Ninja
I sometimes watch police bodycam videos for amusement – someone gets pulled over for a minor infraction, then escalates the encounter into multiple felonies and jail time.
This one intrigued me.
Midland Michigan Police were called to evict a woman who had been living on a grocery store rooftop in a sign access space for about a year. From the YouTube description:
On April 23, 2024, police were dispatched to the Family Fare grocery store in Midland, MI, to investigate a suspicious incident. The store manager reported that a contractor working on the roof had stumbled upon a 34-year-old woman, known as the ‘roof ninja,’ residing inside the store’s rooftop sign. The sign had been transformed into a mini-apartment, containing items such as a printer, pantry, desk, and coffee maker. It was subsequently discovered that she had been residing there for quite a while.
The policewoman was impressed, noting that the attic was clean, and she could smell a whiff of garlic. The Roof Ninja offered the officers some non-alcoholic ginger root beer before leaving most of her possessions behind in the attic. The police presumably issued a trespass (that if she returned to the property she’d be arrested) and her possessions were ultimately returned.
Full video:
https://youtu.be/osTeKSTvtC8?si=91JjrkvAB3FHb7Zh
Short version:
https://youtu.be/R28ZSY2Sc2A?si=NUE1UjX37TDwZ6fK
Hasil Adkin’s Contribution To The World
“We salute one of the great outsiders in R&R: Hasil Adkins was born in Boone County, West Virginia on April 29, 1937, where he spent his entire life. He was the youngest of ten children of Wid Adkins, a coal miner, and Alice Adkins, raised in a tarpaper shack on property rented from a local coal company. Born at the time of the Great Depression, Adkins’ early life was stricken by poverty. His parents were unable to provide him shoes until he was four or five years old. Some reports say he attended school for a very brief time, as few as two days of first grade.
His genres include rock & roll, country, blues and more commonly rockabilly, and because of his unusual playing and singing style, he is often cited as an example of outsider music. He generally performed as a one-man band, playing guitar and drums.
Adkins was born during the Great Depression and grew up in poverty. His spirited, unusual lifestyle is reflected in his music. His songs, which he began recording and distributing locally in the mid-1950s, explored an affinity for chicken, sexual intercourse, and decapitation, and were obscure outside of West Virginia until the 1980s. The newfound popularity secured him a cult following, spawned the Norton Records label, and helped usher in the genre well known as psychobilly.”
[Found here via here, and there’s a documentary trailer here.]
Geometricities
Bolwoningen
In 1968 the Dutch government allocated funding for an experimental housing project in the city of Hertogenbosch. Responding to a call for submissions, artist/designer Dries Kreijkamp proposed Bolwoningen (Ball Houses), and his unusual concept was chosen. The design sat on the shelf until 1980 when construction of fifty of the small homes began.
Each 18-foot diameter sphere consists of prefabricated panels made of fiberglass-reinforced concrete mounted on a cylindrical base. Weighing only 2.8 tons, it can be disassembled and relocated.
The experimental neighborhood of Bolwoningen remains as a tourist curiosity, and holiday rentals are available.
[Images and story found here.]
Buy Him Some Peanuts and Cracker Jack
11 June 2024, Cincinnati
In the 9th inning of the Cincinnati Reds / Cleveland Guardians game Tuesday night, Reds fan William Hendon, a sophomore at OSU, ran onto the field of the Great American Ball Park in his socks and wearing a Johnny Bench jersey. A police officer approached, Hendon did a backflip, and the officer stopped him with a Taser.
Hendon “did knowingly run onto the Reds playing field during the game without permission to do so,” an officer wrote in one of his criminal complaints.
“Everybody thinks you landed that backflip,” Municipal Court Judge William Mallory said during Hendon’s arraignment Wednesday morning.
“I’m pretty sure I did,” replied Hendon.
Hendon pleaded not guilty.
D-Day 06 June 1944
The Daily Mail posted an interactive timeline of the D-Day, the Invasion of Normandy, 80 years ago today.
Tacky Raccoons 