Risking imprisonment, torture and death, Klaus-Günter Jacobi modified a BMW Isetta to help his friend escape the oppression of East Germany in 1963. Nine others were able to escape using the same method.
[Escaping East Berlin in a 1961 BMW Isetta [via]. Short vid here.]
Nearly all of what historians have learned about the first Thanksgiving comes from a single eyewitness report: a letter written in December 1621 by Edward Winslow, one of the 100 or so people who sailed from England aboard the Mayflower in 1620 and founded Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts.
[…]
Just over 50 colonists are believed to have attended, including 22 men, four married women—including Edward Winslow’s wife—and more than 25 children and teenagers. These were the lucky ones who had made it through a rough entry into the New World, including a harsh winter during which an epidemic of disease swept through the colony, felling nearly half the original group. Some 78 percent of the women who had arrived on the Mayflower had died during the first winter, a far higher percentage than for men or children.
“For the English, [the first Thanksgiving] was also celebrating the fact that they had survived their first year here in New England,” Tom Begley [of Plymoth Plantation] points out.
The Plymouth colonists were likely outnumbered more than two-to-one at the event by their Native American guests. Winslow’s account records “many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men.” Massasoit (who was actually named Ousemequin) was the sachem (leader) of the Pokanoket Wampanoag, a local Native American society that had begun dealings with the colonists earlier in 1621.
[Image from here, historical commentary from here.
Related posts here.]
Veterans Day gives Americans the opportunity to celebrate the bravery and sacrifice of all U.S. veterans. However, many Americans confuse this holiday with Memorial Day.
A Brief History of Veterans Day
Veterans Day, formerly known as Armistice Day, was originally set as a U.S. legal holiday to honor the end of World War I, which officially took place on November 11, 1918. In legislation that was passed in 1938, November 11 was “dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be hereafter celebrated and known as ‘Armistice Day.'” As such, this new legal holiday honored World War I veterans.
In 1954, after having been through both World War II and the Korean War, the 83rd U.S. Congress — at the urging of the veterans service organizations — amended the Act of 1938 by striking out the word “Armistice” and inserting the word “Veterans.” With the approval of this legislation on June 1, 1954, Nov. 11 became a day to honor American veterans of all wars.
In 1968, the Uniform Holiday Act ensured three-day weekends for federal employees by celebrating four national holidays on Mondays: Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and Columbus Day. Under this bill, Veterans Day was moved to the fourth Monday of October. Many states did not agree with this decision and continued to celebrate the holiday on its original date. The first Veterans Day under the new law was observed with much confusion on Oct. 25, 1971.
Finally on September 20, 1975, President Gerald R. Ford signed a law which returned the annual observance of Veterans Day to its original date of Nov. 11, beginning in 1978. Since then, the Veterans Day holiday has been observed on Nov. 11.
Self-taught John Harrison spent 43 years overcoming engineering challenges to develop the first marine chronometer. Harrison won a British competition to resolve deep sea navigation problems, but it took him several years to win the full prize.
In 1714, the British government offered a longitude prize for a method of determining longitude at sea, with the awards ranging from £10,000 to £20,000 (£2 million to £4 million in 2019 terms) depending on accuracy. John Harrison, a Yorkshire carpenter, submitted a project in 1730, and in 1735 completed a clock based on a pair of counter-oscillating weighted beams connected by springs whose motion was not influenced by gravity or the motion of a ship. His first two sea timepieces H1 and H2 (completed in 1741) used this system, but he realized that they had a fundamental sensitivity to centrifugal force, which meant that they could never be accurate enough at sea. Construction of his third machine, designated H3, in 1759 included novel circular balances and the invention of the bi-metallic strip and caged roller bearings, inventions which are still widely used. However, H3’s circular balances still proved too inaccurate and he eventually abandoned the large machines.
Harrison solved the precision problems with his much smaller H4 chronometer design in 1761. H4 looked much like a large five-inch (12 cm) diameter pocket watch. In 1761, Harrison submitted H4 for the £20,000 longitude prize. His design used a fast-beating balance wheel controlled by a temperature-compensated spiral spring. These features remained in use until stable electronic oscillators allowed very accurate portable timepieces to be made at affordable cost.
£20,000 in 1714 = ±£3,837,000 in 2018 = ±$4,733,000 USD.
$110k/year is not a bad payoff for a 45 year-long side project. Harrison began as a 21 year-old, and was 66 when he resolved the problem and received the full amount of the prize. He died 17 years later in 1776.
“A Marine dentist sets up his office on Saipan, using a Japanese box as a footrest, a Japanese pail as a waste-bucket, and a Japanese shrine (left background) as decor for his waiting room. In order to keep his dentistry really ‘painless’ a Marine patrol nearby kept on the alert for Jap snipers.” (U.S. Naval Institute Photo Archives)
[Caption and image found here. Story at the link.]
“In the mid twentieth century there was made a series of photographs advertising Soviet “An” planes to western buyers. Some of these photos have been revealed just recently. Party leaders didn’t allow them to be used abroad and the photos were kept in the archives of “Antonov” company.”
[Image and caption found in here. More about the Ukraine-based company here.]
I’m not an historian, but here’s the gist.
In 1894 there was a recession in the US, and Chicago engineer, industrialist and developer George Pullman had to lay off a large chunk of his workforce (yet he kept about 2/3rds on the payroll).
Some of those laid off were anarchists, socialists and Marxists (the Progressive Movement was on the march) and they organized a strike, not only for the layoffs, but because Pullman wouldn’t reduce the rent for the housing he built and owned. But they did more than protest. They turned to violence and arson.
They burned the buildings and product of their employer (The Pullman Car Company) and others. The damage affected the rail commerce of 27 states, the US Postal Service, and thousands of workers and their families not directly affected by the layoffs. Dozens were killed during the riots.
Note that the arson and violence didn’t affect Pullman nearly as much as it did to the thousands of people who benefited from Pullman’s brilliance, including engineering underground sewage systems for the city of Chicago.
In that year, democrats controlled the House, the Senate AND the Presidency. What did President Cleveland do? He gave the “strikers” an Official Holiday. Then a few days later, he sent in the U.S. Military to kick ass on his own constituents.
Even as Pullman Company and railroad workers were striking, Congress passed legislation in June 1894 making the first Monday in September a federal legal holiday to recognize and celebrate labor. President Grover Cleveland signed the bill into law June 28, 1894, a few days before sending federal troops to Chicago.
“It was a way of being supportive of labor. Labor unions were a constituency of the Democrat Party at the time, and it didn’t look good for Cleveland, who was a Democrat, to be putting down this strike.”
[Richard Schneirov, professor of history, founder of the local chapter of the SDS, 1966, Grinnel University.]Federal troops were recalled from Chicago on July 20, and the Pullman strike was declared over in early August. Eugene V. Debs, arrested at the height of the violence along with several other ARU leaders, was charged with violating the injunction and served six months in jail. Though the ARU disbanded, Debs would emerge as the leader of the nation’s growing socialist movement, running for president five times on the Socialist Party ticket.
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 2019 – 11th year Blogoversary!
As of that (missed) date, there were 4,731 posts in our archives.
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. There are some surprises, and I still don’t know why some get an exorbitant amount of hits while others fade.
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 2019).
“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/563 – The Stomach Contents Of A Giant Isopod
No. 10/NR/901 – The .GIF Friday Post No. 472 – Cooler Pwnd, Dance Hard & Warehouse Windsurfing
No. 9/NR/148 – Here’s the Grub, Bub.
No. 8/3/94 – Hello. I Am Mr. Google.
No. 7/NR/850 – A Humble Request.
This was a complete surprise to me. Thanks to all for your generous donations. -Bunk
No. 6/5/82 – Beads, Beer, Boobs & Blues = Heureux Mardi Gras!
No. 5/2/52 – Meet The Beetles
No. 4/4/151 – The Kluck Klams
No. 3/8/250 – Bigass Ammonite Fossil is not a Bigass Ammonite Fossil
No 2/1/43 – The .Gif Friday Post No. 445 – Demolition Demon, Roll Survivor & Rock This Way
And the Number One Post for the past 12 months is:
Posted on 2 September 2011, this wins with a score of 1/NR/40 for completely unknown reasons (and yeah, the zombie squid is kinda disturbing, so you’re forewarned).
Thanks for all your visits, favorites and linkys, and I wish you all the best.
Bunk
P.S. If you haven’t done so already, visit
The Official Cutting Edge, State Of The Art and Wave Of The Future Tacky Raccoons Store
for trendy and stylish accoutrements. If you don’t see what you like, or you want something a bit different, leave a comment or use the “Write Bunk” link in the sidebar.
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P.P.P.S. Muchisimas 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 as far as you know. In any case, we appreciate it. After all, a dime a day keeps the meerkats away. Cutesy little standy-uppy weasel-lookin’ bastards.
When a post hits your eye
Like a big pizza pie,
That’s a Moire.
Bear necessities [h/t bekitschig].
Twilight Zone Radio Show Episode 61.
Gillette lost billions after a bigoted ad campaign.
It’s only 4th Grade Science. (Brilliant captions, too.)
Hans Prinzhorn’s Artistry of the Mentally Ill (1922).
“We spoke with many people today who say that the President should consider coming here to Baltimore … to see for himself.” [via]
READ CHAPTER X and explain to me how the U.S. Democrat Party (and Bernie Sanders’) platform differs from that of mass murderer Josef Stalin. Describe the results.
[Top image from here: “One unlucky day 13,000 years ago, a slight, malnourished teenager missed her footing and tumbled to the bottom of a 100-foot pit deep inside a cave in Mexico’s Yucatán. Rising seas flooded the cave and cut it off from the outside world—until a team of divers chanced upon her nearly complete skeleton in 2007.”]
Tacky Raccoons 