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Nckdictator posted:http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_surviving_United_States_war_veterans There are two guys alive right now who are grandsons of 10th US President John Tyler, who was born in 1790. It helps that their father was born when Tyler was in his 60s and their father was in HIS 60s.
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Sep 25, 2014 01:47
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muscles like this? posted:It helps that their father was born when Tyler was in his 60s and their father was in HIS 60s. That's a hell of a trick.
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Sep 25, 2014 02:24
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Besesoth posted:That's a hell of a trick. Access to presidential time machine.
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Sep 25, 2014 03:21
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RevSyd posted:
Was it Atomic Accidents by James Mahaffey? I saw somebody recommend it either in this thread or in the GBS OSHA.jpg thread, and I got it in the mail yesterday. Whomever you are, unknown book-recommending goon, I appreciate your taste in books and thank you for showing me this one.
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Sep 25, 2014 04:14
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muscles like this? posted:There are two guys alive right now who are grandsons of 10th US President John Tyler, who was born in 1790. It helps that their father was born when Tyler was in his 60s and their father was in HIS 60s. The last know civil war widow died in 2008. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maudie_Hopkins quote:Born as Maudie Cecilia Acklin in Baxter County, Arkansas, she married William M. Cantrell (aged 86) on February 2, 1934, when she was 19. Cantrell had enlisted in the Confederate States Army at age 16 in Pikeville, Kentucky, and served in General Samuel G. French's Battalion of the Virginia Infantry. He was captured in 1863, and was part of a prisoner exchange. He had had a previous wife, who died in 1929 I read about her somewhere years ago, I wish I could find the source, that she enjoyed seeing people still fly the Confederate flag. Ol Sweepy has a new favorite as of 05:24 on Sep 25, 2014 |
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Sep 25, 2014 04:22
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TheFallenEvincar posted:I feel like I was reading somewhere that Stalin and the Soviets didn't really have the equipment ready to launch a landing on the Japanese islands? Maybe it was just the threat of it potentially happening even if it was an unrealistic one. They didn't have to, without the resources coming in from the mainland the Japanese couldn't sustain their war effort. Though there were active Japanese communist groups on the islands, and the Emperor was worried enough about the possibility of an internal uprising that he cited it as one of the reasons to surrender.
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Sep 25, 2014 05:54
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benito posted:Jean Thurel lived from 1698 to 1807 and spent 90 years of his life serving as a French soldier under everyone from Louis XV to Napoleon I. As someone who is broke from 11 years in the Infantry, I can't imagine 90 years. This dude had to be a loving Terminator sent back to kill John Connor's great great grandfather or something.
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Sep 25, 2014 07:22
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bulletsponge13 posted:As someone who is broke from 11 years in the Infantry, I can't imagine 90 years. This dude had to be a loving Terminator sent back to kill John Connor's great great grandfather or something. Especially when you consider how difficult it is to be in our modern day infantry, they had it infinitely harder then.
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Sep 25, 2014 07:49
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I'd almost guarantee he was one of those guys that stress and danger didn't affect nearly at all. No one does something for 90 years that they don't enjoy.
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Sep 25, 2014 13:31
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bulletsponge13 posted:As someone who is broke from 11 years in the Infantry, I can't imagine 90 years. This dude had to be a loving Terminator sent back to kill John Connor's great great grandfather or something. "Ride in the wagon? gently caress that, imma show these 16-year old kids how to march in winter."
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Sep 25, 2014 13:55
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The guy also lived through a pretty tense period of French history.
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Sep 25, 2014 19:37
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I kinda hope he was the old french version of the shammers of today- look good while brass is around, sham about when there is work to be done, and avoid anything that looks hard...then talk poo poo about how everyone is pussies.
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Sep 25, 2014 20:11
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bulletsponge13 posted:I kinda hope he was the old french version of the shammers of today- look good while brass is around, sham about when there is work to be done, and avoid anything that looks hard...then talk poo poo about how everyone is pussies. It's also possible that he just got locked into a certain system and couldn't imagine life outside of it, like the old guy in the Shawshank Redemption. A buddy of mine was in the Army with a guy they called "The Machine". He had zero personal ambition and was happiest when every minute of his day was dictated to him. This guy hated leave because he didn't know what to do, and was the kind of guy who would get ordered to mop a warehouse and somebody would find him 18 hours later because nobody told him to stop.
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Sep 25, 2014 23:18
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benito posted:It's also possible that he just got locked into a certain system and couldn't imagine life outside of it, like the old guy in the Shawshank Redemption. A buddy of mine was in the Army with a guy they called "The Machine". He had zero personal ambition and was happiest when every minute of his day was dictated to him. This guy hated leave because he didn't know what to do, and was the kind of guy who would get ordered to mop a warehouse and somebody would find him 18 hours later because nobody told him to stop. Mr. T once chopped down 60 trees because no one told him to stop. Army guys are weird.
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Sep 25, 2014 23:31
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bulletsponge13 posted:I kinda hope he was the old french version of the shammers of today- look good while brass is around, sham about when there is work to be done, and avoid anything that looks hard...then talk poo poo about how everyone is pussies. Those people were probably murdered pretty regularly in the 1700s
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Sep 25, 2014 23:47
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benito posted:It's also possible that he just got locked into a certain system and couldn't imagine life outside of it, like the old guy in the Shawshank Redemption. A buddy of mine was in the Army with a guy they called "The Machine". He had zero personal ambition and was happiest when every minute of his day was dictated to him. This guy hated leave because he didn't know what to do, and was the kind of guy who would get ordered to mop a warehouse and somebody would find him 18 hours later because nobody told him to stop. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_%22Nish%22_Bruce#Death Andy McNab [Author pen name] suggested he suicide jumped out of an aircraft without a parachute because he missed the adrenaline of working in the SAS
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Sep 25, 2014 23:58
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A Pinball Wizard posted:What happens when you place a chemical factory on the edge of a tributary leading to one of the largest fishing areas in Japan? You get Minamata disease, aka mercury poisoning. This goes way deeper than just the harassment and shutting down the people that lived in the area directly hit by the chemicals from the plant. Perhaps not quite scary, but definitely unnerving, is what happened to the photographer W. Eugene Smith, which is really only glossed over in the article. This is what the Minamata bay looked like, as the chemicals poured into it.  Ken Kobre described the attack in an essay at the Masters Exhibition website: "Smith almost lost his eyesight covering the story. He and his wife, armed with camera and tape-recorder, accompanied a group of patients to record a meeting the group expected to have with an official of the company. The official failed to show up. "But," Smith related, "suddenly, a group of about 100 men, on orders from the company, crowded into the room. They hit me first. They grabbed me and kicked me in the crotch and snatched the cameras, then hit me in the stomach. Then they dragged me out and picked me up and slammed my head on the concrete." Smith survived, but with limited vision in one eye - he was literally curb-stomped into the concrete by this band of brutes. Later, he would slip and fall and hit his head just ever so the wrong way, causing the never-quite-healed injuries to get the best of him. He had a massive stroke and died on the floor, essentially, all sourced from the beating he took over making this story public.  The photos he took during this time are... It's very hard to put just a few words down to describe them. Horrible. Haunting. Somehow still beautiful, even though they're of very, very ugly things that were being perpetuated at that time. This is the most famous one, and if you're familiar at all with photo history you've probably seen it before. It is unfortunately no longer in print, as Smith's ex-wife very rightfully gave the copyright of the photo to the family of the girl. 
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Sep 26, 2014 01:47
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I need that book. These photos are from a book right?
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Sep 26, 2014 05:31
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Anna Coleman Laddquote:On the day after Christmas in 1920, a French mailman and veteran of World War I wrote an American woman named Anna Coleman Ladd to thank her for what she had done for him during the war.  quote:“She was a neoclassical sculptor,” said David Lubin, the Charlotte C. Weber professor of art at Wake Forest University.  quote:“I endeavour by means of the skill I happen to possess as a sculptor to make a man’s face as near as possible to what it looked like before he was wounded,” Ladd wrote. “ The patient acquires his old self-respect . . . [and] his presence is no longer a source of melancholy.”   quote:The mask began with a plaster cast of the soldier’s disfigured face. Later, Ladd would hang on the walls a collection of the casts, visible in photographs taken at the time.   quote:Ladd directed the making of about 100 masks, and subordinates made many more after she returned to the United States in late 1918.   quote:One letter among her papers, written in French, says in part:  
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Sep 26, 2014 13:49
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That neither scary or unnerving. It's heartwarming is what it is. Thanks for sharing.
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Sep 26, 2014 14:55
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Yeah, that's a pretty great post about a series of great deeds.
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Sep 26, 2014 15:02
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They say war brings out the best and worst of humanity, and after pages of the worst it was great reading about one of the best.
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Sep 26, 2014 15:47
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 It must be satisfying to have such a talent for something that can be used to heal and help people cope with lovely personal realities.
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Sep 26, 2014 15:54
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Dissapointed Owl posted:I need that book. It sure is! In fact, you can get a paperback version of it for a reasonable price - but frankly I'd go for the hardcover. Photobooks cry to have the photos printed large and in your face. As a photographer, I find the most moving part of a story to be the photos, if they accompany it. This had me bawling. What an amazing woman.
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Sep 26, 2014 17:17
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Herv posted:Speaking about radiation, I submit 'The Demon Core'. Going back a few pages but this made me remember this scene from Fat Man & Little Boy. Freaked me out as a kid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ0P7R9CfCY Edit: Guess I should've read the wiki page 
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Sep 26, 2014 17:26
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Earlier in this thread I wrote about Oskar Dirlewanger, the SS rapist/murderer who was too sadistic for the Nazis. How could he get even weirder? Turns out he had a pet monkey according to Valhalla's Warriors: A History of the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front 1941-1945 by Terry Goldsworthyquote:"When I reached Dirlewanger's staff I was met by a strange sight.The Brigadefuhrer,a not very appealing adventurer type,was sitting at his desk with a live monkey perched on his shoulder. The monkey was said to have accompanied him everywhere,including Poland.When I discovered that the staff was packing up I ordered them to stay on the spot.....The unit was,as suggested before,a wild bunch. One company---communists who were expected to "prove themselves" on the front---had just deserted to the enemy. 
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Sep 26, 2014 17:59
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bonestructure posted:
This woman and her work is amazing, and I'm glad you shared this with all of us, bonestructure. I'm also certain there's a pun in your username and this post, but I have neither the wit nor the heart to make it.
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Sep 27, 2014 02:09
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about a heroic woman
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Nckdictator posted:Earlier in this thread I wrote about Oskar Dirlewanger, the SS rapist/murderer who was too sadistic for the Nazis. How could he get even weirder? Turns out he had a pet monkey according to Valhalla's Warriors: A History of the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front 1941-1945 by Terry Goldsworthy I wonder if that's the inspiration for the monkey in Come and See.
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Sep 27, 2014 02:17
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I saw bits of Come and See. It's horrifying.
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Sep 27, 2014 03:00
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Frostwerks posted:I wonder if that's the inspiration for the monkey in Come and See. Yes it is. The whole movie was inspired by him apparently.
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Sep 27, 2014 03:05
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Frostwerks posted:I wonder if that's the inspiration for the monkey in Come and See. Dirlewanger was indeed the model for the German SS commander in Come and See.
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Sep 27, 2014 03:09
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Kimmalah posted:Yes it is. The whole movie was inspired by him apparently. Wikipedia posted:Dirlewanger and his unit were the subject of or were featured in various works of World War II fiction, such as... the 2012 graphic novel Monkeywanger by Peeler Watt...  So, here's a thing that exists, and it looks to be every bit as pathetically bad as it sounds: http://youtu.be/UTe3zxiIruU
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Sep 27, 2014 03:28
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Alain Perdrix posted:
beautifully illustrated.
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Sep 27, 2014 04:01
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If nothing else, this thread has given me an appreciation of how badly-written many wikipedia pages are. Case in point: the one on Genie, where the author solves the problem of summary by including absolutely every tiny little fact. I mean, it's longer than the page for WW2. Contribution: the mystery airship page eventually leads to Charles DellSchau. In 1899, this grouchy retired butcher began to paint amazing airships with shiplike decks strung under striped balloons, piloted by dapper Victorian men. There are helicopters and war machines and passenger liners: quote:He lived and worked in an attic apartment in Houston, Texas ... giving his career as an artist a 21-year span. His work was in large part a record of the activities of the Sonora Aero Club ... a secret group of flight enthusiasts who met at Sonora, California in the mid-19th century. One of the members had discovered the formula for an anti-gravity fuel he called "NB Gas." Their mission was to design and build the first navigable aircraft using the NB Gas for lift and propulsion. Dellschau identified himself as a draughtsman for the club, which went to great lengths to hide its activities. but was it in any way real? quote:Despite exhaustive research, including searches of census records, voting rosters, and death records, nothing has been found to substantiate the existence of this group except for a few gravestones in the Columbia Cemetery where several of the surnames are found. It is speculated that, like Henry Darger's "Realms of the Unreal", the Sonora Aero Club is a fiction by Dellschau. However, according to UFO writer Pete Navarro, a coded story is hidden throughout the drawings, which he interprets to mean that the Sonora Aero Club was a branch of a larger secret society ... Right. So it's not real: quote:Tracy Baker-White, a historian and former curator at the San Antonio Museum of Art, has spent 14 years trying to answer these questions. "This club -- whether or not it actually happened -- we don't exactly know," she told me. "But," she continued, "I do believe he was in California and I do believe he had some experience that was important to him, that had to do with this, whether it was exactly as he depicted it or not in his later years." But how do we know of these drawings? One century later, a house in Houston, caught on fire. In the aftermath, a fire inspector instructed the family to get rid of some of the junk in the attic: quote:The entire body of work was discarded into a landfill in Houston Texas but, luckily was salvaged [a used furniture dealer] who took them to his warehouse where they ended up under a pile of discarded carpet. Mary Jane Victor, a student at St. Thomas University asked to lend some of the books to the University for a display they were putting on. The drawings so impressed Dominique de Menil, the Art Director of Rice University and one of Houston Texas' leading fine arts collectors that she bought four of the books. See: * http://www.charlesdellschau.com/images.html * http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/03/18/charles_dellschau_the_artist_s_scrapbooks_documenting_the_sonora_aero_club.html * http://designobserver.com/feature/dreams-of-the-sonora-aero-club/37754 * http://www.houstonpress.com/1998-12-10/news/secrets-of-the-sonora-aero-club/full/
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Sep 27, 2014 14:53
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outlier posted:If nothing else, this thread has given me an appreciation of how badly-written many wikipedia pages are. It is because of these threads that I have become quite the Wikipedia editor. loving typos, the bane of my existence. Content: Strip Search Phone Scam - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strip_search_phone_call_scam quote:The strip search phone call scam is a series of incidents that extended over a period of about ten years before an arrest was made in 2004. The incidents involved a man calling a restaurant or grocery store, claiming to be a police officer and then convincing managers to conduct strip searches of female employees and to perform other bizarre acts on behalf of "the police". The calls were most often placed to fast-food restaurants in small towns located in rural areas of the United States. Perceived authority makes people's critical thinking skills shut down.
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Sep 27, 2014 15:58
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Screaming Idiot posted:This woman and her work is amazing, and I'm glad you shared this with all of us, bonestructure. Aw, I'm glad everyone enjoyed it. I figured we could use a palate cleanser. 
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Sep 28, 2014 00:23
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There's currently discussion about a image of a dead body falling out of a ceiling in the creepy pics thread, it reminded me of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_Glory_Funeral_Home_scandal Morning Glory was in my neighborhood growing up and I was 9 or 10 when this all went down. Me and some of the kids rode our bikes up to watch them haul the bodies out. My dad worked for the sheriff's office and knew a couple of the guys that initially went in there. When they started opening the walls and found bodies, someone went into the attic and fell through the ceiling along with a couple of corpses. But he said it was one of the most insane things he had seen- most of the bodies hadn't been embalmed and the oldest ones looked like decaying mummies in cheap suits. A news crew actually showed footage, it was terrifying even with the faces of the bodies blurred. Then you had this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-State_Crematory At least 330 bodies that were supposed to have been cremated, instead they were tossed into the woods and sheds of this guy's property. There are a lot of weird things about the case that I can't find details on now but when it was happening, I remember the police telling the media they had seized cameras and digital media that the guy had used to photograph the bodies and unspecified activities involving the remains, there was also the issue of it being more difficult to drag the bodies outside into the woods versus just cremating them- he stated the oven wasn't working but I think investigators said that it was functional. But what's really crazy is for over two years, people who had been near/on the property had been reporting the guy for having bodies laying around and no one did anything. A pretty large number of the remains were never identified.
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Oct 1, 2014 14:56
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I really like stories about people beating the odds. Especially this crazy one about a man named Phineas Gage who had an iron rod shoot through his skull and brain and managed to live another 12 years relatively okay all things considered.quote:Gage was doing this around 4:30 p.m. when (possibly because the sand was omitted)the iron "struck fire" against the rock and the powder exploded. Rocketing from the hole, the tamping iron entered on the [left] side of [Gage's] face ... passing back of the left eye, and out at the top of the head. The whole article is pretty weird and grotesque, goes into detail about the surgery and him vomiting once and having it pop out of the hole in his head.
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Oct 2, 2014 20:27
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Lblitzer posted:I really like stories about people beating the odds. Especially this crazy one about a man named Phineas Gage who had an iron rod shoot through his skull and brain and managed to live another 12 years relatively okay all things considered. That would definitely break the ice at parties.
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Oct 2, 2014 20:52
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There's an article I read recently about Gage, which of course I can't find now. The premise was that while Gage was grievously injured, the conventional narrative of his personality being utterly changed by the accident was overblown. He held down several jobs afterwards and travelled to South America. The "change" may have been little more than natural reactions of a man who had been horribly maimed and still had severe physical effects from the accident.
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Oct 2, 2014 20:53
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