Begins with fabulous shots of model cars and trucks on a moving conveyor belt. Looks like a surreal motorway with brightly coloured cars moving along it. Traffic a go-go! — via Youtube
A pair of Apollo-era NASA computers and hundreds of mysterious tape reels have been discovered in a deceased engineer’s basement in Pittsburgh, according to a NASA Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report released in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
Most of the tapes are unmarked, but the majority of the rest appear to be instrumentation reels for Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, NASA’s fly-by missions to Jupiter and Saturn.
The two computers are so heavy that a crane was likely used to move the machines, the report concluded.
At some point in the early 1970s, an IBM engineer working for NASA at the height of the Space Race took home the computers — and the mysterious tape reels. A scrap dealer, invited to clean out the deceased’s electronics-filled basement, discovered the computers. The devices were clearly labelled NASA PROPERTY
, so the dealer called NASA to report the find.
Please tell NASA these items were not stolen,
the engineer’s heir told the scrap dealer, according to the report. They belonged to IBM Allegheny Center Pittsburgh, PA 15212. During the 1968-1972 timeframe, IBM was getting rid of the items so [redacted engineer] asked if he could have them and was told he could have them.
You can read the entire report; the engineer’s identity has been redacted — Ars Technica UK
While driving through Norway, my boyfriend and I listened to Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman. Here’s a quick sketch of Fenrir Wolf who is tricked into letting the God’s tie him with ribbon that traps him — via hollisketch
Ancient Roman concrete marine structures built thousands of years ago are stronger now than when they were first built.
So how has Roman concrete outlasted the empire, while modern concrete mixtures erode within decades of being exposed to seawater?
Scientists have uncovered the chemistry behind how Roman sea walls and harbour piers resisted the elements, and what modern engineers could learn from it.
Romans built their sea walls from a mixture of lime (calcium oxide), volcanic rocks and volcanic ash, a study, published in the journal American Mineralogist, found.
Elements within the volcanic material reacted with sea water to strengthen the concrete structure and prevent cracks from growing over time.
It’s the most durable building material in human history, and I say that as an engineer not prone to hyperbole,
Roman monument expert Phillip Brune told the Washington Post — via redwolf.newsvine.com
When radium was first discovered, its luminous green colour inspired people to add it into beauty products and jewelry. It wasn’t until much later that we realized that radium’s harmful effects outweighed its visual benefits. Unfortunately, radium isn’t the only pigment that historically seemed harmless or useful but turned out to be deadly. JV Maranto details history’s deadliest colours — via Youtube
St John’s Pipe Organ, St John’s Saint Paul Window, St John’s Door Hinge and Raven originally uploaded by Red Wolf
Archaeologists investigating human bones excavated from the deserted mediaeval village of Wharram Percy in North Yorkshire have suggested that the villagers burned and mutilated corpses to prevent the dead from rising from their graves to terrorise the living.
Although starvation cannibalism often accounts for the mutilation of corpses during the Middle Ages, when famines were common, researchers from Historic England and the University of Southampton have found that the ways in which the Wharram Perry remains had been dismembered suggested actions more significant of folk beliefs about preventing the dead from going walkabout.
Their paper, titled A multidisciplinary study of a burnt and mutilated assemblage of human remains from a deserted mediaeval village in England, is published today in the Journal of Archaeological Science — via redwolf.newsvine.com
New Order’s Blue Monday was released on 7 March 1983, and its cutting-edge electronic groove changed pop music forever. But what would it have sounded like if it had been made 50 years earlier? In a special film, using only instruments available in the 1930s — from the theremin and musical saw to the harmonium and prepared piano — the mysterious Orkestra Obsolete present this classic track as you’ve never heard it before — via Youtube
History is full of fascinating and successful weapons… and then there are these failures — via Youtube
GUARD Archaeologists have recently recovered a very rare and internationally significant hoard of metalwork that is a major addition to Scottish Late Bronze Age archaeology.
A bronze spearhead decorated with gold was found alongside a bronze sword, pin and scabbard fittings in a pit close to a Bronze Age settlement excavated by a team of GUARD Archaeologists led by Alan Hunter Blair, on behalf of Angus Council in advance of their development of two football pitches at Carnoustie.
Each individual object in the hoard is significant but the presence of gold ornament on the spearhead makes this an exceptional group. Within Britain and Ireland, only a handful of such spearheads are known — among them a weapon hoard found in 1963 at Pyotdykes Farm to the west of Dundee. These two weapon hoards from Angus — found only a few kilometres apart — hint at the wealth of the local warrior society during the centuries around 1000-800 BC — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The Trump-Hitler comparison. Is there any comparison? Between the way the campaigns of Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler should have been treated by the media and the culture? The way the media should act now? The problem of normalisation?
Because I’d written a book called Explaining Hitler several editors had asked me, during the campaign, to see what could be said on the subject.
Until the morning after the election I had declined them. While Trump’s crusade had at times been malign, as had his vociferous supporters, he and they did not seem bent on genocide. He did not seem bent on anything but hideous, hurtful simple-mindedness — a childishly vindictive buffoon trailing racist followers whose existence he had main-streamed. When I say followers I’m thinking about the perpetrators of violence against women outlined by New York Magazine who punched women in the face and shouted racist slurs at them. Those supporters. These are the people Trump has dragged into the mainstream, and as my friend Michael Hirschorn pointed out, their hatefulness will no longer find the Obama Justice Department standing in their way.
Bad enough, but genocide is almost by definition beyond comparison with normal
politics and everyday thuggish behaviour, and to compare Trump’s feckless racism and compulsive lying was inevitably to trivialize Hitler’s crime and the victims of genocide — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The continuing story of a huge 17th century map found stuffed up a chimney is told by a conservator, a map curator, a historian and an explorer. As the map is painstakingly conserved at the National Library of Scotland, it unfolds stories of exploration, battles, slavery, kingship and knowledge — via Youtube
In a cemetery in Huelva, in Spain, is the grave of Major William Martin, of the British Royal Marines. Or rather, it’s the grave of a man called Glyndwr Michael, who served his country during World War 2 in a very unexpected way… after his death — via Youtube
In 1944, the Office of Strategic Services — the predecessor of the post-war CIA — was concerned with sabotage directed against enemies of the US military. Among their ephemera, declassified and published today by the CIA, is a fascinating document called the Simple Sabotage Field Manual (PDF). It’s not just about blowing things up; a lot of its tips are concerned with how sympathizers with the allied cause can impair enemy material production and morale:
- Managers and Supervisors: To lower morale and production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work.
- Employees: Work slowly. Think of ways to increase the number of movements needed to do your job: use a light hammer instead of a heavy one; try to make a small wrench do instead of a big one.
- Organizations and Conferences: When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committees as large and bureaucratic as possible. Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.
- Telephone: At office, hotel and local telephone switchboards, delay putting calls through, give out wrong numbers, cut people off “accidentally,” or forget to disconnect them so that the line cannot be used again.
- Transportation: Make train travel as inconvenient as possible for enemy personnel. Issue two tickets for the same seat on a train in order to set up an “interesting” argument.
— via Charlie’s Diary
On their equipment from the late 1800’s Lofty Pursuits make a batch of a Victorian flavour of candy called Nectar and discuss the use and restoration of their old candy making equipment — via Youtube
— via Youtube
Any man who really has faith in himself will be dubbed arrogant by his fellows
— Frank Lloyd Wright in 1957, as told to Mike Wallace.
Hear more outtakes and watch the full interview @ Blank on Blank.
If you’ve ever been to Illinois, you’ll know all about the defining features of its landscape – namely, that it’s pretty much flat. But architect Frank Lloyd Wright did something new when he made buildings that somehow became one with the prairie. Long, low lines, and interiors that brought the light and space of the outside in. With the same approach, he built homes in the woods around waterfalls, on high bluffs that take in the stretch and space of the land below. If you’ve ever visited one of his houses, you’ll know how they manage to make you understand more about exactly where you live — via Youtube
Captain Eric Winkle
Brown, the pilot who flew more types of planes than anyone in history, has died in Britain at the age of 97.
Described as the Scotsman whose real-life adventures made James Bond’s fictional life seem dull, Captain Brown held the world record for flying the greatest number of different types of aircraft — 487.
He landed on aircraft carrier decks more times than any pilot in history, with 2,407 landings over the course of 65 years, and also led an elite British unit charged with testing captured Nazi experimental planes at the end of World War II.
Aviation experts say the records set by the Navy test pilot and war hero are unlikely to ever be broken — via redwolf.newsvine.com
This UKWMO (United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation) base offers an intriguing piece of Cold War History, with a wood-burning stove and retains well-preserved relics relating to its history. Accommodation The underground accommodation comprises of a main room, measuring approximately 2.32 metres by 4.61 metres and a small subsidiary chamber, currently utilised for storage, which would be suited to development into a washroom facility — via Rettie & Co
200,000 fish bones discovered in and around a pit in Sweden suggest that the people living in the area more than 9000 years ago were more settled and cultured than we previously thought. Research published in the Journal of Archaeological Science suggests people were storing large amounts of fermented food much earlier than experts thought.
The new paper reveals the earliest evidence of fermentation in Scandinavia, from the Early Mesolithic time period, about 9,200 years ago. The author of the study, from Lund University in Sweden, say the findings suggest that people who survived by foraging for food were actually more advanced than assumed — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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