Ayrfield & Mortlake Bank wrecks in Homebush Bay, originally uploaded by Andy Brill.
When I got this sword, it was completely covered in blood rust.
Sword maker Francis Boyd is showing me yet another weapon pulled from yet another safe in the heavily fortified workshop behind his northern California home.
You can tell it’s blood,
he says matter-of-factly, because ordinary rust turns the grinding water brown. If it’s blood rust it bleeds, it looks like blood in the water. Even 2,000 years old, it bleeds. And it smells like a steak cooking, like cooked meat. I’ve encountered this before with Japanese swords from World War II. If there’s blood on the sword and you start polishing it, the sword bleeds. It comes with the territory.
Blood rust: I hadn’t thought of that. I guess it would turn water red, but the steak comment is kind of creeping me out, as is the growing realization that if these swords could talk, I couldn’t stomach half the tales they’d have to tell — via Collectors Weekly
It’s been 70 years since the letters of John Pryor were understood in their full meaning. That’s because as a British prisoner of war in Nazi Germany, Pryor’s letters home to his family also included intricate codes that were recently deciphered for the first time since the 1940s.
Pryor’s letters served their purpose in World War II, as Britain’s MI9 agents decoded the messages hidden within them — requests for supplies, notes about German activities — before sending them along to Pryor’s family in Cornwall.
There were two types of information buried in these letters,
Pryor’s son, Stephen. There is military intelligence going back about munitions dumps, about submarines that have been sunk, and information requests for British Military Intelligence in London to send maps and German currency and German ID, to help them with their escape plans
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
Spandrel over the West door — legend has it that the devil came to tempt St Dunstan when he was working at his anvil, and the saint tweaked the devil’s nose with his red-hot pincers — via Spitalfields Life
A century-old US five-cent coin, once branded a fake, has been sold for $3.1m (£2m) at auction.
The 1913 Liberty Head nickel, one of only five such coins, had a pre-sale estimated price of $2.5m.
The coin’s intriguing provenance — it was illegally cast, found in a car crash, deemed a forgery and abandoned for decades — explains its high value.
It was located after a nationwide search and put up for sale by four siblings in the state of Virginia.
Not only is it just one of only five known, genuine 1913-dated Liberty Head design nickels, this particular one was off the radar for decades until it literally came out of the closet after a nationwide search,
said Todd Imhof, vice-president of Heritage Auctions, where the coin was sold — via redwolf.newsvine.com
My grandfather Howard McGraw, a photographer for the Detroit News, likely saw the scene in his neighbourhood and stopped for the shot. The airplane is an early 1940’s Murray Pursuit pedal car with Army decals and machine gun mounts — worth over $1000 today if restored! And the gas pump would likely go for about $3000 restored! Scanned from a 4×5 negative — via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive
Private James Marshall Hendrix of the 101st Airborne, playing guitar at Fort Campbell Kentucky 1962 — via Steve Niles Tumblr
12 November 1957. Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, East 89th Street & Fifth Avenue, New York. Under construction II. Frank Lloyd Wright, architect.
Large-format acetate negative by Samuel H Gottscho — via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive
In lower Manhattan, blocks from where the World Trade Centre once stood, embedded deep into the sidewalk, is a clock. It’s a simple clock, the hours and minutes are neatly displayed by spade hands, while Roman numerals and train track minutes markers circle the dial. All of this is cloudy, but visible under the scratched and stained crystal that occupies a break in the pavement at the intersection of Maiden Lane and Broadway. And it has been ticking away there, under the feet of Manhattan, for over a century. — via HODINKEE + Vimeo
Recently a troop of Russian photographers surreptitiously scaled the Great Pyramid of Giza and documented the unseen vistas from its summit. How’d they do it? Seems like the group waited several hours after closing time, hiding from guards until they saw their chance. As one of the photographers would later point out, climbing the Pyramids is a punishable crime and can carry sentences of up to three years — via Architizer
When I was a kid, Thatcher was the headmistress of our country. Her voice, a bellicose yawn, somehow both boring and boring — I could ignore the content but the intent drilled its way in. She became leader of the Conservatives the year I was born and prime minister when I was four. She remained in power till I was 15. I am, it’s safe to say, one of Thatcher’s children. How then do I feel on the day of this matriarchal mourning?
I grew up in Essex with a single mum and a go-getter Dagenham dad. I don’t know if they ever voted for her, I don’t know if they liked her. My dad, I suspect, did. He had enough Del Boy about him to admire her coiffured virility — but in a way Thatcher was so omnipotent; so omnipresent, so omni-everything that all opinion was redundant.
As I scan the statements of my memory bank for early deposits (it’d be a kid’s memory bank account at a neurological NatWest where you’re encouraged to become a greedy little capitalist with an escalating family of porcelain pigs), I see her in her hairy helmet, condescending on Nationwide, eviscerating eunuch MPs and baffled BBC fuddy duddies with her General Zodd stare and coldly condemning the IRA. And the miners. And the single mums. The dockers. The poll-tax rioters. The Brixton rioters, the Argentinians, teachers; everyone actually — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Usually, when a public figure dies, even their staunchest enemies briefly suspend hostilities in respect for the dead.
But with Margaret Thatcher that was never going to be the case. She was loathed by too many, for too long.
For some, the wounds left by Thatcher’s Britain are still raw.
By mid-afternoon on the day of Lady Thatcher’s death, the editor of the London Daily Telegraph announced he had closed comments on every Thatcher story.
Even our address to email tributes is filled with abuse,
he said — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The cables are all from the time period of 1973 to 1976. Without droning about too many numbers that can be found in the press release, about 200,000 of the cables relate directly to former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. These cables include significant revelations about US involvements with fascist dictatorships, particularly in Latin America, under Franco’s Spain (including about the Spanish royal family) and in Greece under the regime of the Colonels. The documents also contain hourly diplomatic reporting on the 1973 war between Israel, Egypt and Syria (the Yom Kippur war
). While several of these documents have been used by US academic researchers in the past, the Kissinger Cables provides unparalleled access to journalists and the general public. The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer
—Henry A Kissinger, US Secretary of State, 10 March 1975 — via Slashdot
A long-running scandal finally ended on Friday with the signing into law of new legislation that allows the British Library and other legal deposit libraries to archive around 5 million websites in the .uk domain. British content on other domains, such as .com and .org, will be added later.
While the legislation is to be applauded, it’s two decades too late to capture the early history of web development in the UK. Massive amounts of valuable data have presumably been lost forever, and there will always be a digital black hole in British history. The consolation is that the Internet Archive, founded by American digital activist Brewster Kahle in 1996, scooped up and preserved some of it in its Wayback Machine.
The British Library has been one of the UK’s copyright libraries since 1662, which means publishers have been legally obliged to give it free copy of everything they print. This has resulted in a priceless archive, albeit one that takes up 500 miles of shelf space.
It would have been logical to make the BL similarly responsible for storing copies of web-based publications as well. If it didn’t feel it had the legal right, or the money, the British government should speedily have provided both — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Myra Tombs, originally uploaded by Caleb Maclennan.
Residents have been evacuated and traffic diverted in Berlin as sappers defused an unexploded WWII bomb near the capital’s main train station on Wednesday.
A police spokesman said the 100 kilogram explosive was dropped by an Allied plane during the Second World War. Media reports said it was a Soviet bomb.
The site lies about 1.5 kilometres north of the main station and the rail operator, Deutsche Bahn, said up to 50 regional and long-distance trains had to be re-directed to other hubs from 9:00am (local time).
The bomb was found [on Tuesday] afternoon on property belonging to the rail company,
the police spokesman said.
The changed travel plan was expected to last three hours, with suburban train links unaffected and the main station itself still open.
It took just half an hour for the disposal team to complete the delicate operation — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A nine-year-old girl has had a prehistoric beast named in her honour after fossilised bones she found turned out to be an undiscovered species.
Daisy Morris from the Isle of Wight stumbled upon the remains on Atherfield beach four years ago.
A scientific paper stated the newly discovered species of pterosaur would be called Vectidraco daisymorrisae.
Fossil expert Martin Simpson said this was an example of how major discoveries can be made by amateurs
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
Manuel Maia Gomes converted House Antero de Quental, the home of a 19th-Century poet, into a contemporary literary centre in Portugal — via Dornob
This is a clip from the BBC series Edwardian Farm that shows how rope was made in the olden days
The ashes of an Australian second world war spy who was the inspiration for the book and film, Charlotte Gray, have been scattered at a ceremony in France.
Nancy Wake requested that her ashes be scattered near the village of Verneix in central France where she worked with the French resistance.
The ceremony was attended by the mayor of Verneix and Brigadier Bill Sowry, the Australian military attache.
We are here today to pass on our respects, to give her the respect she deserves,
Sowry said. It’s great the people of Verneix have done so much to recognise her and make this little part of France part of Australia as well
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
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