Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory took up the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of the Asch Building. Under the ownership of Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, the factory produced women's blouses (known at the time as "shirtwaists"). The factory normally employed about 500 workers, mostly young immigrant women, who normally worked nine hours a day on weekdays plus seven hours on Saturdays.

On this day in 1911 one hudred and forty-six garment workers, most of them women,  died in the space of 18 short minutes. Some perished in the fire, others jumped from a fatal height. This tragedy brought issues of women’s empowerment, labor rights, and immigration to light.

Link to encyclopedia article 

When Jean-Paul Sartre Met Che Guevara

Jean-Paul Sartre met with Ernesto “Che” Guevara when he visited Cuba in the 1960s. Che impressed him greatly and he later said he thought Che to be “not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age” and the “era’s most perfect man.”

Via Frogsmoke

Protesting the Hays Code

This photo is even more interesting than it appears at first glance.

In 1934 the MPAA passed  the Hays Code, largely to avoid governmental regulation. The code prohibited certain plot lines and imagery from films and in publicity materials produced by the MPAA. Among others, there was to be no cleavage, no lace underthings, no drugs or drinking, no corpses, and no one shown getting away with a crime.
A.L. Shafer, the head of photography at Columbia, took a photo that intentionally incorporated all of the 10 banned items into one image.
The photograph was clandestinely passed around among photographers and publicists in Hollywood as a method of symbolic protest to the Hays Code.

Via Human Under Construction

Proper Conduct Should Nazis Bomb The Golf Course

In 1940, Richmond Golf Club in England wrote temporary rules explaining proper conduct should Nazi bombs suddenly fall:

1.) Players are asked to collect Bomb and Shrapnel splinters to save these causing damage to the mowing machines.

2.) In competitions, during gunfire, or while bombs are falling, players may take cover without penalty for ceasing play.

3.) The positions of known delayed-action bombs are marked by red flags placed at reasonably, but not guaranteed safe distance therefrom.

4.)Shrapnel/and/or bomb splinters on the Fairways, or in Bunkers within a club's length of a ball may be moved without penalty, and no penalty shall be incurred if a ball is thereby caused to move accidentally.

5.) A ball moved by enemy action may be replaced, or if lost or destroyed, a ball may be dropped not nearer the hole without penalty.

6.) A ball lying in a crater may be lifted and dropped not nearer the hole, preserving the line to the hole without penalty.

7.) A player whose stroke is affected by the simultaneous explosion of a bomb may play another ball from the same place. Penalty, one stroke.

Thanks Bruce!

Life Imitates Art

In 1981 President Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinckley. This photo was taken outside the Washington Hilton just before the shooting occurred. Secret Service agent Jerry Parr (in the white coat) pushed Reagan into a taxi and rushed him to hospital. There is a "stranger than fiction" footnote to this story:

Parr had been inspired to pursue his career by the 1939 film The Code of the Secret Service, in which dashing agent “Brass” Bancroft survives a shooting in Mexico. Bancroft was played by a 28-year-old Ronald Reagan.

Via Futility Closet

Ruby: 1915

New York Times, Feb. 5, 1923.

BARITONE'S WIFE OBTAINS DIVORCE

Mrs. John C. Thomas Charged
Husband's Cruelty Caused Her
To Lose 28 Pounds

        RENO, Nev., Feb. 4 -- Ruby Thomas, wife of John Charles Thomas, an American baritone, obtained a divorce in the District Court here late yesterday. Cruelty was charged in the complaint, Mrs. Thomas testifying that his treatment caused her to lose weight from 130 pounds to 102 pounds, at which figure she now tips the scales.

        Thomas was temperamental, Mrs. Thomas testified, and on one occasion he bit her until the blood ran from her shoulder, she said. On another occasion Thomas did not like the gown she wore at the breakfast table, and, in the presence of a male guest, is alleged to have torn the garment from her body, leaving her almost nude.

        The couple were married in Baltimore in 1913.

Shorpy Historical Photo Archive

This Day In History: The Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-In

On February 1, 1960, four students sat down at the lunch counter inside the Woolworth’s store at 132 South Elm Street in Greensboro, North Carolina. The men, later known as the Greensboro Four, ordered coffee. Following store policy, the lunch counter staff refused to serve the African American men at the “whites only” counter and the store’s manager asked them to leave. The four university freshmen stayed until the store closed.

The protest grew and on July 26th of that same year the entire Woolworth's chain was desegregated.

Read more at Twisted Sifter

The London Library after the Blitz. Some 6 million...

Some 6 million rare books burned down in the fire that raged through the bookmaker’s district near St. Paul’s after an air raid struck it.

Via Libraryland

A Roman Village In China - a History Mystery

Did a lost Roman Legion lay down roots in China's Gansu province on the fringes of the Gobi Desert? DNA tests conducted in 2007 have shown 56 per cent of the residents are Caucasian in origin.

In 55 BC, Marcus Licinius Crassus led a Roman army into Parthia, what is now north-eastern Iran. In what has become known as the battle of Carrhae, his army was annihilated - or so it was thought at the time.Ten years later, Chinese Imperial histories record capturing a mercenary army of white soldiers fighting for the Parthians. The Roman testudo formation is described in detail, as is the strange fact that they have white skin and blue/green eyes, and even a Chinese transliteration of the the word "Legion" is recorded as "Lee Chian".That army is then settled by the Han emperor in a remote region of Gansu.

Jonathan Kos-Read's Flickr set Via Alan Parker's Facebook page

Chauvet Cave Art

Pictures of animals drawn some 35,000 years ago in the Ardeche region of France help us understand the origins of art. Painted during the Ice Age they are thought to be almost twice as old as the more famous drawings in Lascaux.

Cave_of_forgotten_dreams from Doru Diaconu on Vimeo.

Via Coolio's

Dictators' Remains As Tourist Attractions

From Evita's earthly remains to Mao's mummy Atlas Obscura answers any questions you might have had about what happened to some dictators after they shed this mortal coil.

A team of embalmers care for Lenin's corpse, buffing and bleaching it and even changing his suits.

Eva Peron wins the prize for most miles put on a corpse.

Read more - via Coisas Do Arco Da Velha

Postman's Park. A Memorial to Self-Sacrifice

In 1900 George Frederick Watt set up a memorial near St. Paul's cathedral in London to honour ordinary people who died saving the lives of others and might otherwise have been forgotten. 
In 1972 the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice was listed on the English Heritage Register.

See more at Imgur
Thanks Bruce!

Sarah Mapp the Cross-eyed, Very Fat, and Hideously Ugly Bonesetter

Mrs. Sarah (Wallin) Mapp by Cruickshank probably taken from Hogarth's caricature. (via BibliOdyssey)

Sarah Mapp, born in 1706, followed in her father's footsteps and became a bonesetter in Epsom. By 1734 she was famous as one of the "three great quacks of England". Ballads were written about her and the town of Epsom paid her a 100 pounds per year retention fee. She commuted once or twice to her satellite office in London, traveling in a coach drawn by four horses.
Sarah was labelled an "ignorant, illiberal, drunken female savage",  a description I find appealing. Although she died penniless she led an interesting life for a woman in those times. 

Read more about her at Shrine of Dreams

Kersey Timeslip Mystery

Watercolour of Kersey in 1957 by Jack Merriott

In 1957 three Royal Navy cadets wandered into the British village of Kersey while on a map-reading exercise. What they saw confounded them - the deserted village was much as it might have been in medieval times lacking any signs of modernity.

Years later, William Laing, the Scottish boy who led the group, put it this way: “It was a ghost village, so to speak. It was almost as if we had walked back in time… I experienced an overwhelming feeling of sadness and depression in Kersey, but also a feeling of unfriendliness and unseen watchers which sent shivers up one’s back… I wondered if we’d knocked at a door to ask a question who might have answered it? It doesn’t bear thinking about.”

Did the boys travel back in time? Past Imperfect investigates what may have happened.

The Original Seven

You'll never guess who these guys are.

In this 1960 photograph, the seven original Mercury astronauts participate in U.S. Air Force survival training exercises at Stead Air Force Base in Nevada. Pictured from left to right are: L. Gordon Cooper, M. Scott Carpenter, John Glenn, Alan Shepard, Virgil I. Grissom, Walter Schirra and Donald K. Slayton. Portions of their clothing have been fashioned from parachute material, and all have grown beards from their time in the wilderness. The purpose of this training was to prepare astronauts in the event of an emergency or faulty landing in a remote area.

Link - Via Uncertain Times

An Indelible Cold War Symbol

“My best salesmen are named Kennedy and Khrushchev”

--Home Fallout Shelter Salesman, 1961

In this well-researched piece CONELRAD Adjacent tracks the history of the fallout shelter sign.

Just as it would be difficult to imagine the Cold War without the Berlin Wall or the American-Soviet 'hotline,' it would be equally hard to consider this tumultuous era without the instantly recognizable National Fallout Shelter Sign. Beginning in 1961, this ubiquitous yellow and black sign with inverted triangular shapes began showing up on and in structures across the United States. The purpose of the sign was to alert the citizenry that space had been identified by the government for public shelter in the event of a nuclear attack.[ii]

Walk around any major American city today and you will still be able to see at least a few rusty Fallout Shelter Signs attached to buildings of a certain vintage.[iii] These distinctive metallic, reflective signs remain the most durable—literally and figuratively—symbol of the Cold War. But how did the sign come to be and who exactly was responsible for its creation?

Thanks for the interesting read Bruce!

Nataliya Dmytruk

Nataliya Dmytruk was a sign language interpreter on a state run television station in Ukraine. She became famous on November 24, 2004 when she refused to translate the results of the presidential election provided to her by both the voice announcer and a script because she believed them to be fraudulent.

Instead she signed, “I am addressing everybody who is deaf in Ukraine. Our president is Victor Yushchenko. Do not trust the results of the central election committee. They are all lies. … And I am very ashamed to translate such lies to you. Maybe you will see me again.”

Read more at Futility Closet

The Architecture of 13,000,000 Pounds of Opium Production

Here are some iconic images of the opium receiving/production/distribution center in Patna, India, which claimed to produce some 13,000,000 pounds of opium juice annually. They were taken by the Bengal Commissioner Lt. Col. Walter S. Sherwill. Much of the product was exported to China where there was heavy demand for it.

The Examining Room

The Mixing Room

The Drying Room

It’s also interesting to consider these grand, temple-like opium factories alongside contemporary spaces of drug production: the foreclosed tract homes that house America’s meth labs, or the tunnels carved out as part of the U.S.-Mexico border smuggling wars. 

Link Via Edible Geography
Thanks Bruce!

Worcy Crawford’s Buses Drove Civil Rights Movement

No one talks much about Worcy Crawford, who died in July at age 90, leaving a graveyard of decaying buses behind his house on the outskirts of Birmingham.His private coaches, all of them tended by Mr. Crawford almost until the day he died, do not have the panache of the city buses that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.refused to ride. But they have significance nonetheless.With their cracked windows and rusting engines thick with brambles, they are remnants of something that was quite rare in the South: a bus company owned by an African-American.

More at NYTimes.com - Via Metafilter

Threads of Feeling

Photo: threadsoffeeling.com

More than 4,000 babies were left at the Foundling Hospital between 1741 and 1760. A small object or token, usually a piece of fabric, was kept as an identifying record. This is a touching online-only exhibition of the contents of the museum’s fabric archives, photographed in exquisite detail so that you can see the threads.

See the slideshow at Threads of Feeling - Via