Tag: History

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

[Previously posted here. Related posts here.]

The sign on the front of the truck reads, “The Kaiser’s Funeral.”

26 September 1918

“We are in a camp near Auzeville and the big drive is to start. In fact the one that finished the ‘Boches’. Then the morning of the 26th dawned but dawn was preceded by a terrific barrage which was as loud as thunder and lighted up the whole skyline for miles. We were not flying ours but were held in reserve. Hundreds of “planes” were now flying over head. One bunch had over 150 in it.

Along about 8 a.m., along comes a boche plane and he burned three of the balloons all observers landed safe but one and his parachute burned and he fell to his death.

A fellow by the name of Barnett and I started out to see the fun. Put our guns on and started for the front line trenches which were about 5 miles north. After a short while we hit the trenches but of course our boys had advanced and were chasing the boche for a fare you well. We hit several mine craters where the boche had mined the roads but already our engineers had started to budge them. After another hour’s walk and dodging a few pieces of shrapnel we hit the town of Varennes and were keen for souvenirs. The boche were still in one side of the Varennes and we were in the other.

Machine guns were crackling with a steady roar and long streams of ambulances carrying away the wounded. Dead Boche were laying every where. The roads were filled with them. Long about then a Boche 77 took my ….. but never touched us. Then we started going through the dugouts and it was there that I got the general’s helmet. Also was almost lucky enough to capture a Jerry but a doughboy beat me to it. He was hiding in a dug out. Looked like he wasn’t as old as “Bugs” and he was scared almost to death.

After monkeying around a while we hopped an ambulance and rode back toward Auzeville. So that finished the day’s fun. But you ought to have seen the dead Huns. Some had legs blown off. Some had their heads and shoulders off and some were in pieces only. A great many had been burned by mustard gas and were burned to a crisp.”

PFC Walter Myers, age 19, US Army Signal Corps

75 Years Ago Today

Video begins at about 01:50. Top image found here.

IT’S OUR BLOGOVERSARY! 13 YEARS OF STUFF!

Tacky Raccoons Be Crawlin' 300

On Friday, 3 August 2007, the date of our first posted post that was posted, the world twitched imperceptibly, a global nanoflinch, an earthquake with the power of a morning fart, or less. It’s our 11th Anniversary, because this:

3 August 2007 – Whelped
3 August 2008 – 1st year Blogoversary
3 August 2020 – 12th year Blogoversary!

As of this date, there are  exactly 5,099 posts in our archives, 9,002 comments and 22,991 “shares” that comprise

Steal, lift, purloin, burgle and abscond with anything you find here, just link back and give us credit for finding the stuff before you did.

We’ve featured the Top 11 Posts every year since 3 August 2008 and this year is no different.

–Previous Top 11 hits linked here–

The numbers adjacent to the titles indicate ranking for the previous 12 months, followed by the previous year’s ranking, and the third number is for all-time popularity (August 2007 – August 2020).

“NR” denotes “Not Ranked.”

Click on any image below and it’ll take you to the original post. So let’s go!

No. 11/NR/411 – Open Your Mouth, Stick Out Your Tongue and Say, “Hot Links.”

No. 10/NR/189 – How To Draw Elbows: A Tutorial

No. 09/10/259 – The .GIF Friday Post No. 472 – Cooler Pwnd, Dance Hard & Warehouse Windsurfing

No. 8/NR/93 – 11 September 2001 – Never Forget.

No. 7/5/17 – Meet The Beetles

No. 6/NR/225- Cliffside Path, China

No. 5/2/15 – The .Gif Friday Post No. 445 – Demolition Demon, Roll Survivor & Rock This Way

mardi-gras-boobs-and-beads 150

No. 4/6/28 – Beads, Beer, Boobs & Blues = Heureux Mardi Gras!

No. 3/NR/9 – An Expensive Ignosecond

No. 2/NR/117 – The .Gif Friday Post No. 421 – 15mph Stupid, Googly Eyes & Still Life With Monkey

And the Number One Post for the past 12 months is:

Bigass Ammonite Fossil is not a Bigass Ammonite Fossil

Posted on 18 July 2016, this wins with a score of 1/3/44. It made 1st Place in record time (well done, Redditors!)

Thanks for all your visits, favorites and linkys, and I wish you all the best.

Bunk

P.S. Follow @bunkstrutts on Twitter for automatic updates with little to no commentary; ditto for you folks on Facebook. Both accounts are spam-free. Also, muchísimas grassyass to those of you who contributed to our PayPal Donation Account. We’re not in this for profit and we don’t beg, but that doesn’t rule out blogwhoring. In any case, we appreciate it, and a dime a day keeps the meerkats away. Cutesy little standy-uppy weasel-lookin’ bastards.

The Tapestry.

[Found here via here.]

The Tea Party

[Couldn’t find the background story anywhere. Image found here.]

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.

[Image found in here, story here.]

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.]

Rum Runners 1920s

In October 1919, Congress passed the National Prohibition Act, overriding a veto by President Woodrow Wilson. And so began the so-called noble experiment of Prohibition.

[Found here.]

Head (bread, kneaded)

[From Hans Prinzhorn’s Artistry of the Mentally Ill (1922).]

The Dorque of WTF

Arthur William Patrick Albert, aka Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, circa 1874.
That photo wasn’t good enough for him, so he upped the ante.

Yeah. That rocks. Much better.

[Found here.]