StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Having just finished rereading the Odyssey, this article about race in the Homeric works (as well as the difficulty in dealing with the way that the ancient Greeks understood both color and race) was absolutely fascinating to me.
+13
MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
There had been a tradition of the White House hosting an iftar every year, a Ramadan evening fast-breaking feast. Muslim American community leaders and such would be invited to attend and there would be a photo op and that sort of thing.
This tradition, though it wasn't annual back then, dates back to Thomas Jefferson in 1805. A Tunisian diplomat had arrived for negotiations at the end of the First Barbary War. When Ramadan occurred during that time, Jefferson had a special dinner made up just after sunset so the diplomat could attend and feel welcome, because those sorts of small but kind gestures are how soft power and diplomacy are done. Incidentally, the story mentions that Jefferson had purchased an English translation of the Quran, which was later transferred to the Library of Congress along with the rest of Jefferson's extensive personal library.
Trump of course promptly cancelled the iftar tradition, because of course he did. Also the original story referenced in the article I linked, which was on a State Department website, has apparently been wiped from existence because I can't locate it anymore.
Having just finished rereading the Odyssey, this article about race in the Homeric works (as well as the difficulty in dealing with the way that the ancient Greeks understood both color and race) was absolutely fascinating to me.
I always think it's really interesting and kind of horrifying the extent to which race, which is basically meaningless, was invented and just wasn't a thing to people behind a certain point back in history.
Like the classical Greeks = blonde and Trojans = black haired thing was something I always assumed was just an easy way of differentiating between the two for an audience, but not in a racial sense, just a basic colour motif, because of the non-existence of the whole racial construct for them. I probably should try to learn more about when race was created, and why, and by who
Intellectually I know the two are far enough apart the climbers were safe except maybe some ashfall. In person I still think that's a pants shiitting moment.
Intellectually I know the two are far enough apart the climbers were safe except maybe some ashfall. In person I still think that's a pants shiitting moment.
Still
It's a thing of awe to know it blew out a mountain side
+1
Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
Just once I would love to wake up and find out that Donald Trump wasn’t a worthless piece of shit while I was asleep.
Now, I don't want to be a party pooper, but I'd like to suggest that you abandon that idea entirely, because you're only ever going to be disappointed waiting for him to not be a piece of shit...
Intellectually I know the two are far enough apart the climbers were safe except maybe some ashfall. In person I still think that's a pants shiitting moment.
Still It's a thing of awe to know it blew out a mountain side
It absolutely is. I could stare at this gif for hours
Intellectually I know the two are far enough apart the climbers were safe except maybe some ashfall. In person I still think that's a pants shiitting moment.
Still It's a thing of awe to know it blew out a mountain side
It absolutely is. I could stare at this gif for hours
Intellectually I know the two are far enough apart the climbers were safe except maybe some ashfall. In person I still think that's a pants shiitting moment.
Still It's a thing of awe to know it blew out a mountain side
It absolutely is. I could stare at this gif for hours
Today is the birthday of Virginia Apgar who developed the Apgar-score which helps determining the health of newborn babies. Apgar is also a backronym for the 5 criteria employed in the test score (Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity, Respiration)
She was also started and was the head of the anesthesia division at Columbia throughout the 40s when anesthesiology was just starting to be a specialization for MDs.
Of course when after WW2 the division was turned into a proper department a man was made head of department instead of her. At least she became the first woman to become professor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
+7
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
Alright my sources here are Wikipedia articles, but I found this too interesting to not share:
Crusades were just a papal plot to get all of those assholes with swords that were constantly wandering around Europe to go someplace else. It didn't matter where they went, just as long as they were gone.
to be fair to the catholic church when a lot of the negative impacts of the crusades started to become apparent they tried to backpedal... at least until a new pope came around wanting to prove his shit.
So I'm sifting through First World War military records for stuff about one of my great-grandfathers, since LAC finally has the terrifying papermountain known as "all 620,000 Canadian Expeditionary Force records" digitized. To give you an idea of the scale, the man sat out half the war in hospital and his file is still a hundred pages long.
While poking around other supplementary stuff to figure out details about where he was, I came across something in one of the LAC finding aids discussing the 10th Canadian Siege Battery (McGill University).
Now, my great-grandfather did not serve in that particular battery, but that doesn't change the fact that a university fielded its own personal heavy artillery during the First World War and that's too "wait what?" not to share.
+6
Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
So I'm sifting through First World War military records for stuff about one of my great-grandfathers, since LAC finally has the terrifying papermountain known as "all 620,000 Canadian Expeditionary Force records" digitized. To give you an idea of the scale, the man sat out half the war in hospital and his file is still a hundred pages long.
While poking around other supplementary stuff to figure out details about where he was, I came across something in one of the LAC finding aids discussing the 10th Canadian Siege Battery (McGill University).
Now, my great-grandfather did not serve in that particular battery, but that doesn't change the fact that a university fielded its own personal heavy artillery during the First World War and that's too "wait what?" not to share.
That's the most intense way to earn your physics credit I've ever heard of.
Now, my great-grandfather did not serve in that particular battery, but that doesn't change the fact that a university fielded its own personal heavy artillery during the First World War and that's too "wait what?" not to share.
In the first year of the war, there was a sufficiently huge number of volunteers in Britain and the Dominions that the army allowed them to serve in units formed up entirely of men from the same club/school/village. The British were leery about resorting to conscription, and this incentivized enlistment by guaranteeing that you could sign up with your friends without being separated. I assume the McGill University battery was a similar unit formed up of graduates or students of that school.
The upshot of this was that some towns lost entire graduating classes of boys in a single artillery barrage.
I'd figure something along those lines is the case. Of the 120-ish batteries which served with the CEF (or, later, in Russia), it's actually the only one with a name more elaborate than "(number) (type of field piece) Battery, Canadian Field Artillery."
0
Der Waffle MousBlame this on the misfortune of your birth.New Yark, New Yark.Registered Userregular
So I'm sifting through First World War military records for stuff about one of my great-grandfathers, since LAC finally has the terrifying papermountain known as "all 620,000 Canadian Expeditionary Force records" digitized. To give you an idea of the scale, the man sat out half the war in hospital and his file is still a hundred pages long.
While poking around other supplementary stuff to figure out details about where he was, I came across something in one of the LAC finding aids discussing the 10th Canadian Siege Battery (McGill University).
Now, my great-grandfather did not serve in that particular battery, but that doesn't change the fact that a university fielded its own personal heavy artillery during the First World War and that's too "wait what?" not to share.
McGill University has had a weird affair with artillery.
It's the 50 year anniversary of of the Prague Spring.
The Prague Spring (Czech: Pražské jaro, Slovak: Pražská jar) was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II. It began on 5 January 1968, when reformist Alexander Dubček was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ), and continued until 21 August 1968 when the Soviet Union and other members of the Warsaw Pact invaded the country to halt the reforms.
The Prague Spring reforms were a strong attempt by Dubček to grant additional rights to the citizens of Czechoslovakia in an act of partial decentralization of the economy and democratization. The freedoms granted included a loosening of restrictions on the media, speech and travel. After national discussion of dividing the country into a federation of three republics, Bohemia, Moravia-Silesia and Slovakia, Dubček oversaw the decision to split into two, the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic.[1] This was the only formal change that survived the end of Prague Spring, though the relative success of the nonviolent resistance undoubtedly prefigured and facilitated the peaceful transition to liberal democracy with the collapse of Soviet hegemony in 1989.[citation needed]
The reforms, especially the decentralization of administrative authority, were not received well by the Soviets, who, after failed negotiations, sent half a million Warsaw Pact troops and tanks to occupy the country. The New York Times cited reports of 650,000 men equipped with the most modern and sophisticated weapons in the Soviet military catalogue.[2] A large wave of emigration swept the nation. A spirited non-violent resistance was mounted throughout the country, involving attempted fraternization, painting over and turning street signs (on one occasion an entire invasion force from Poland was routed back out of the country after a day's wandering),[citation needed] defiance of various curfews, etc. While the Soviet military had predicted that it would take four days to subdue the country, the resistance held out for eight months
Now, my great-grandfather did not serve in that particular battery, but that doesn't change the fact that a university fielded its own personal heavy artillery during the First World War and that's too "wait what?" not to share.
In the first year of the war, there was a sufficiently huge number of volunteers in Britain and the Dominions that the army allowed them to serve in units formed up entirely of men from the same club/school/village. The British were leery about resorting to conscription, and this incentivized enlistment by guaranteeing that you could sign up with your friends without being separated. I assume the McGill University battery was a similar unit formed up of graduates or students of that school.
The upshot of this was that some towns lost entire graduating classes of boys in a single artillery barrage.
That sounds like it would make things...a great deal worse. "Oh hey that's a guy I've known forever. In like four pieces. Wait, that piece os someone else I've known forever."
Really need to read the whole story of that Polish army following fake signs and eventually being returned to their own border. Sounds like a cartoon.
0
StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
This may be more weirdly specific to my interests than most of the things I post about in here, but Columbia University Libraries recently digitized a large collection of old playing cards.
Which sounds kind of boring at first blush, I know, because modern playing card decks all look essentially the same, but here we're dealing with a huge variety of artistic styles (as well as differences in suits and such based on which country the deck is from). And that's just in the basic decks.
But what's been fascinating me are the educational and propaganda decks. For instance, there are decks that detail the events of the Popish Plot, cards with multiplication tables and measure equivalencies on them, decks that serve as a basic world almanac, with continents divided by suit, and so on. It's fascinating - it's like early edutainment, because playing cards were a commonplace enough item that frequently transcended class, so why not put some interesting information on them?
There's not a lot of description provided for these, or much in the way of sorting, but here are a few of my favorites:
Italian Suit Playing Cards (Austria, 1790). The Italian suits are what we would more commonly think of as tarot suits in the modern day (there's a bunch of tarot in this collection as well). I mostly just like these because they're really pretty though.
American Revolution Playing Cards (United States, 1801). The kings are, of course, founding fathers rather than kings (there's a similar trend with cards published in France around this same time). Unfortunately, they begin to lose their way after the kings - the queens are vague concepts rather than actual women, and the jacks are pretty much just pure racism.
World Geography Playing Cards (England, 1678). Hearts are Europe, as pictured, and then Hearts are Europe, Spades are Africa, Diamonds are Asia, and Clubs the Americas. The amount of information on African nations in the various almanac decks has honestly been surprising to me - it's still deeply problematic, of course, but I'm kind of surprised that it was included in the first place.
French Revolution Playing Cards (France, 1793). Here the kings were replaced with anthropomorphic representations of the elements, the queens with the seasons, and the jacks (pictured) with various agricultural workers.
Songs Playing Cards (England, circa 1725). I can't sing or play the flute, but these ones hold a particular allure for me and I want to own a deck and just be able to start singing whatever card someone draws.
I was laying in a hammock and had the thought "What is the highest man-made acceleration?", and my Google search led me to the wiki of the Plumbbob Nuclear tests.. Copied from the wiki
During the Pascal-B nuclear test, a 900-kilogram (2,000 lb) steel plate cap (a piece of armor plate) was blasted off the top of a test shaft at a speed of more than 66 km/s (41 mi/s; 240,000 km/h; 150,000 mph). Before the test, experimental designer Robert Brownlee had estimated that the nuclear explosion, combined with the specific design of the shaft, would accelerate the plate to approximately six times Earth's escape velocity. The plate was never found, but Dr. Brownlee believes that the plate did not leave the atmosphere, as it may even have been vaporized by compression heating of the atmosphere due to its high speed. The calculated velocity was sufficiently interesting that the crew trained a high-speed camera on the plate, which unfortunately only appeared in one frame, but this nevertheless gave a very high lower bound for its speed. After the event, Dr. Brownlee described the best estimate of the cover's speed from the photographic evidence as "going like a bat!"
For reference, Earths escape velocity at the surface is 11.186 km/s (40,270 km/h), 6.951 mi/s (25,020 mph), while the Sun's from Earth is 42.1km/s (151,560 km/h), 26.160mi/s (94,175 mph). If any piece of the steel plate actually made it out of the atmosphere, then it beat Sputnik to space by 38 days, and is well out of the solar system if it didn't hit anything.
Cross posted to D&D's history thread, too
Edit: found an article written by Dr. Brownlee partially talking about this
For Pascal B, my calculations were designed to calculate the time and specifics of the shock wave as it reached the cap. I used yields both expected and exaggerated in my calculations, but significant ones. When I described my results to Bill Ogle, the conversation went something like this.
Ogle: "What time does the shock arrive at the top of the pipe?"
RRB: "Thirty one milliseconds."
Ogle: "And what happens?"
RRB: "The shock reflects back down the hole, but the pressures and temperatures are such that the welded cap is bound to come off the hole."
Ogle: "How fast does it go?"
RRB: "My calculations are irrelevant on this point. They are only valid in speaking of the shock reflection."
Ogle: "How fast did it go?"
RRB: "Those numbers are meaningless. I have only a vacuum above the cap. No air, no gravity, no real material strengths in the iron cap. Effectively the cap is just loose, traveling through meaningless space."
Ogle: And how fast is it going?"
This last question was more of a shout. Bill liked to have a direct answer to each one of his questions.
RRB: "Six times the escape velocity from the earth."
Bill was quite delighted with the answer, for he had never before heard a velocity given in terms of the escape velocity from the earth!
I have been on the Victory. The ceilings (are they still called ceilings in a ship?) are so low. Old timey sailors must have been hobbitlike.
They were children for the most part
But yes they bent over often leading to studies by the Royal Navy about back problems some of the first research into the spine
Whenever I see pre-1900 stuff in museums I'm pretty much constantly amazed by how small everyone was. The beds, military uniforms, mummies. I see a uniform that looks like it'd fit on a modern 13 year old, and then I think about the size of some of the modern soldiers I've met...
Whenever I see pre-1900 stuff in museums I'm pretty much constantly amazed by how small everyone was. The beds, military uniforms, mummies. I see a uniform that looks like it'd fit on a modern 13 year old, and then I think about the size of some of the modern soldiers I've met...
Well guarantee of decent food for children does do wonders
Whenever I see pre-1900 stuff in museums I'm pretty much constantly amazed by how small everyone was. The beds, military uniforms, mummies. I see a uniform that looks like it'd fit on a modern 13 year old, and then I think about the size of some of the modern soldiers I've met...
Well guarantee of decent food for children does do wonders
That and a lot of the equipment actually was made for 13 year olds.
+4
L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
Whenever I see pre-1900 stuff in museums I'm pretty much constantly amazed by how small everyone was. The beds, military uniforms, mummies. I see a uniform that looks like it'd fit on a modern 13 year old, and then I think about the size of some of the modern soldiers I've met...
Well guarantee of decent food for children does do wonders
That and a lot of the equipment actually was made for 13 year olds.
By 13 year olds....
0
Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
The use of bagpipes on the front lines had actually been banned following World War 1 due to heavy casualties, but this was far from the only time their drone would be heard during World War 2. Famously, Jack Churchill went into battle with a set of pipes and a basket-hilt claymore.
Perhaps more notable, though, was the presence of pipers at the second Battle of El Alamein.
The plan was for the British forces to send infantry through the minefield, because they were too light to set off the anti-tank mines. They were to create bridgeheads at a weak points in the German lines. Engineers and sappers would follow clearing mines and marking paths for the tanks.
The allied forces in the battle were the 2nd New Zealand Division, the 9th Australian Division, the 1st South African Division, and the 51st Highland Division.
The 51st Highland Division contained battalions from the Seaforth Highlanders, The Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders, the Black Watch, the Gordon Highlanders, and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.
The attack started around 11pm on the night of October 23, 1942. It started with an artillery barrage of almost 1,000 guns. The shelling lasted for five and a half hours with almost 530,000 rounds fired. After 20 minutes of general bombardment, the artillery started targeting specific axis positions to support the British advance.
The battalions moved through the minefields by regiments. They advanced in a line a mile and a half wide with the soldiers keeping about five meters between them to reduce the effects of machine gun fire. The darkness made it difficult to stay in formation and to stay with their regiments.
Because of the darkness and the smoke and sand in the air from the artillery, the soldiers could hardly see the men on either side of them. Almost every group of the 51st Battalion was assigned a piper. The pipers played regimental tunes so the members of each regiment could stay in formation.
Another company of the Black Watch was accompanied by Piper Duncan MacIntyre of the Black Watch. At one point of the advance, his company came upon a German machine gun nest. As they approached, MacIntyre, who was playing "Highland Laddie," the regimental march, was wounded.
He continued playing during the assault until he was again shot and fatally wounded. It is said he continued to play until he ran out of breath. The next morning his body was found with his pipes under his arm and his hands on his chanter.
In many of the groups the bagpipers were at the head of the regiments. There are also reports of them walking and playing beside the tanks. As a result the bagpipers suffered high casualty rates during the battle. After the battle, and for the rest of the war, bagpipers were delegated to positions behind the front lines.
I have always had a huge amount of admiration and respect for battlefield musicians. The courage required to go into battle with almost no ability to defend oneself is mind-boggling.
These are the songs Bill Millin played on D-Day. He had an opportunity to meet the German commander responsible for the section of beach (Sword beach for those wondering) he landed on, and asked the German why he wasn't shot that day. The German commander responded that he thought the piper was mad, and told his men to ignore him.
I am gonna put this post in this thread too because why not
Norway is mourning the saboteur Joachim Rønneberg, who led a five-man team that daringly blew up a factory producing heavy water, depriving Nazi Germany of a key ingredient it could have used to make nuclear weapons
The men parachuted on to a plateau, skied across country, descended into a ravine and crossed an icy river before using the railway line to get into the plant and set their explosives.
"We very often thought that this was a one way trip," he said.
After the explosion, the men escaped into neighbouring Sweden by skiing 320km (200 miles) across Telemark - despite being chased by some 3,000 German soldiers.
With a wry smile, Ronneberg described it as "the best skiing weekend I ever had.
+27
Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
I'm gonna mention that guy to my Norwegian uncle next time I see him
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
- Siegfried Sassoon, 1918
Remembrance Day (11/11) is a big deal in European and Commonwealth countries (coinciding with Veterans Day in the USA, but with a particular focus on WWI).
I don't have anything novel to say about the topic, it's just a day that I think is going to hit harder than usual this year. As the world grapples once again with nationalism and isolationism, this time while under an encroaching threat which will require unified and collective action to avoid untold destruction, I'm going to make a personal effort to remember and mourn the cost of such rhetoric. Even if I have to stand in the rain to do it.
Posts
http://falsemachine.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/orcs.html
This tradition, though it wasn't annual back then, dates back to Thomas Jefferson in 1805. A Tunisian diplomat had arrived for negotiations at the end of the First Barbary War. When Ramadan occurred during that time, Jefferson had a special dinner made up just after sunset so the diplomat could attend and feel welcome, because those sorts of small but kind gestures are how soft power and diplomacy are done. Incidentally, the story mentions that Jefferson had purchased an English translation of the Quran, which was later transferred to the Library of Congress along with the rest of Jefferson's extensive personal library.
Trump of course promptly cancelled the iftar tradition, because of course he did. Also the original story referenced in the article I linked, which was on a State Department website, has apparently been wiped from existence because I can't locate it anymore.
I always think it's really interesting and kind of horrifying the extent to which race, which is basically meaningless, was invented and just wasn't a thing to people behind a certain point back in history.
Like the classical Greeks = blonde and Trojans = black haired thing was something I always assumed was just an easy way of differentiating between the two for an audience, but not in a racial sense, just a basic colour motif, because of the non-existence of the whole racial construct for them. I probably should try to learn more about when race was created, and why, and by who
Intellectually I know the two are far enough apart the climbers were safe except maybe some ashfall. In person I still think that's a pants shiitting moment.
Still
It's a thing of awe to know it blew out a mountain side
Now, I don't want to be a party pooper, but I'd like to suggest that you abandon that idea entirely, because you're only ever going to be disappointed waiting for him to not be a piece of shit...
It absolutely is. I could stare at this gif for hours
I'd like to wake up and find a Unicorn in my backyard. I think between the two, I stand a better chance.
ground shouldn't ever move like that
"Fuck you buddy, you don't know me." -Bernoulli probably
Today is the birthday of Virginia Apgar who developed the Apgar-score which helps determining the health of newborn babies. Apgar is also a backronym for the 5 criteria employed in the test score (Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity, Respiration)
She was also started and was the head of the anesthesia division at Columbia throughout the 40s when anesthesiology was just starting to be a specialization for MDs.
Of course when after WW2 the division was turned into a proper department a man was made head of department instead of her. At least she became the first woman to become professor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
The cases in question are Schenck v. United States and Brandenburg v. Ohio
to be fair to the catholic church when a lot of the negative impacts of the crusades started to become apparent they tried to backpedal... at least until a new pope came around wanting to prove his shit.
While poking around other supplementary stuff to figure out details about where he was, I came across something in one of the LAC finding aids discussing the 10th Canadian Siege Battery (McGill University).
Now, my great-grandfather did not serve in that particular battery, but that doesn't change the fact that a university fielded its own personal heavy artillery during the First World War and that's too "wait what?" not to share.
That's the most intense way to earn your physics credit I've ever heard of.
In the first year of the war, there was a sufficiently huge number of volunteers in Britain and the Dominions that the army allowed them to serve in units formed up entirely of men from the same club/school/village. The British were leery about resorting to conscription, and this incentivized enlistment by guaranteeing that you could sign up with your friends without being separated. I assume the McGill University battery was a similar unit formed up of graduates or students of that school.
The upshot of this was that some towns lost entire graduating classes of boys in a single artillery barrage.
McGill University has had a weird affair with artillery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Babylon
NYT: 50 Years After Prague Spring, Lessons on Freedom (and a Broken Spirit)
Guardian: Russian presence divides Czechs 50 years after Prague Spring
At least next year is the 30 year anniversary of the Velvet Revolution.
That sounds like it would make things...a great deal worse. "Oh hey that's a guy I've known forever. In like four pieces. Wait, that piece os someone else I've known forever."
Which sounds kind of boring at first blush, I know, because modern playing card decks all look essentially the same, but here we're dealing with a huge variety of artistic styles (as well as differences in suits and such based on which country the deck is from). And that's just in the basic decks.
But what's been fascinating me are the educational and propaganda decks. For instance, there are decks that detail the events of the Popish Plot, cards with multiplication tables and measure equivalencies on them, decks that serve as a basic world almanac, with continents divided by suit, and so on. It's fascinating - it's like early edutainment, because playing cards were a commonplace enough item that frequently transcended class, so why not put some interesting information on them?
There's not a lot of description provided for these, or much in the way of sorting, but here are a few of my favorites:
Italian Suit Playing Cards (Austria, 1790). The Italian suits are what we would more commonly think of as tarot suits in the modern day (there's a bunch of tarot in this collection as well). I mostly just like these because they're really pretty though.
American Revolution Playing Cards (United States, 1801). The kings are, of course, founding fathers rather than kings (there's a similar trend with cards published in France around this same time). Unfortunately, they begin to lose their way after the kings - the queens are vague concepts rather than actual women, and the jacks are pretty much just pure racism.
World Geography Playing Cards (England, 1678). Hearts are Europe, as pictured, and then Hearts are Europe, Spades are Africa, Diamonds are Asia, and Clubs the Americas. The amount of information on African nations in the various almanac decks has honestly been surprising to me - it's still deeply problematic, of course, but I'm kind of surprised that it was included in the first place.
French Revolution Playing Cards (France, 1793). Here the kings were replaced with anthropomorphic representations of the elements, the queens with the seasons, and the jacks (pictured) with various agricultural workers.
Songs Playing Cards (England, circa 1725). I can't sing or play the flute, but these ones hold a particular allure for me and I want to own a deck and just be able to start singing whatever card someone draws.
For reference, Earths escape velocity at the surface is 11.186 km/s (40,270 km/h), 6.951 mi/s (25,020 mph), while the Sun's from Earth is 42.1km/s (151,560 km/h), 26.160mi/s (94,175 mph). If any piece of the steel plate actually made it out of the atmosphere, then it beat Sputnik to space by 38 days, and is well out of the solar system if it didn't hit anything.
Cross posted to D&D's history thread, too
Edit: found an article written by Dr. Brownlee partially talking about this
https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Brownlee.html
Here he is fighting a polar bear (his gun misfired so the crew used their cannon to scare the bear off).
They were children for the most part
But yes they bent over often leading to studies by the Royal Navy about back problems some of the first research into the spine
Well guarantee of decent food for children does do wonders
That and a lot of the equipment actually was made for 13 year olds.
By 13 year olds....
I am gonna put this post in this thread too because why not
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45938874
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
- Siegfried Sassoon, 1918
Remembrance Day (11/11) is a big deal in European and Commonwealth countries (coinciding with Veterans Day in the USA, but with a particular focus on WWI).
I don't have anything novel to say about the topic, it's just a day that I think is going to hit harder than usual this year. As the world grapples once again with nationalism and isolationism, this time while under an encroaching threat which will require unified and collective action to avoid untold destruction, I'm going to make a personal effort to remember and mourn the cost of such rhetoric. Even if I have to stand in the rain to do it.
Basically it's footage from WW1 colourized and sound added to try and give as accurate picture of what life was life for soldiers: