via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
CRESCENT LIMITED TRAIN WRECK at ANACOSTIA BRIDGE
WASHINGTON, Aug. 27, 1933 -- Harried by accident, Pennsylvania Railroad officials last night were bringing up heavy reinforcements of workmen and machinery for the task of reopening the main passenger line into Washington, closed by the collapse of the bridge under the Crescent Limited just inside the District near Kenilworth early Thursday. Two persons were killed and 13 injured in the train crash. A huge pile driver swayed from its fastenings yesterday and plunged into the Eastern Branch. This mishap followed the toppling of a telephone pole, which killed one workman and seriously injured another. A score of men missed death or injury as the pile driver careened into the river. The string of mishaps at the wreck scene continued last night when a beam fell from a wrecking train, crushing the foot of William Covington, colored, Baltimore laborer. Covington was taken to Casualty Hospital ...
August 1933, Washington, D.C.
“Crescent Limited train wreck”
Harris & Ewing Collection glass negative
View original post
==========================================
Who was the Marquis de Sade really?
via 3 Quarks Daily by Suzi Feay in The Telegraph
The Marquis de Sade, who died 200 years ago today, lived a turbulent life. He was born into an aristocratic Provençal family, enjoying all the privileges of the ancien régime before it took against him; he kept his head through the French Revolution and died, aged 74, in a lunatic asylum. His libertarian writings alienated two kings, a revolutionary tribunal and an emperor. He spent most of his adult life under lock and key: if they couldn’t get him for being bad, being mad would do.
Continue reading
==========================================
via Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Temp shifts
The natural world is not easily shoehorned into a mathematical formula. Thus the long, strange history of efforts to reimagine the calendar… more
Fascinating article
==========================================
Milky Way over Devils Tower
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
David Lane’s absolutely stunning image of the Milky Way over Devils Tower. If everything’s ready here on the Dark Side of the Moon... play the five tones.
Continue reading
==========================================
Created and still developing: an online archive of troubadour crusade poetry. How cool is that?
via Research Buzz by Tara
“Researchers from the University of Warwick are editing and collating the first comprehensive archive of troubadour and trouvere poetry and songs covering the Crusades as part of a new Anglo-Italian research project which will open up the lyric poetry of the medieval troubadours and trouveres to its widest-ever audience. The poetry, some of it long forgotten to modern audiences, will be published on the University of Warwick and University of Naples websites complete with translations, information on manuscripts and earlier editions, and details of the historical circumstances of their original composition and performance.”
==========================================
via Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
In love with poetry
When the times are brutal and the news is all lies, great poets experience our loneliness for us. Andrew O’Hagan explains… more
==========================================
The history of the newspaper
via OUP Blog by Hannah Charters
On 28th November 1814 The Times in London was printed by automatic, steam powered presses for the first time. These presses, built by the German inventors Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer, meant that newspapers were now available to a new mass audience, and by 1815 The Times had a circulation of approximately 5,000 people.
Continue reading
==========================================
A master of otherworldly space art
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
Above, the extrasolar planet 16 Cygni Bb as rendered by artist Ron Miller, illustrator of science, astronomy, and science fiction, and author of The Art of Space: The History of Space Art, from the Earliest Visions to the Graphics of the Modern Era.
Continue reading
==========================================
via Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
How letters tell stories
The alphabet is an arrangement of convenience – maybe a temporary one. Letters are born, grow, fight, change, or die… more
==========================================
The legacy of Sinclair’s Spectrum
via BBC News/technology by Leo Kelion, Technology desk editor
Sir Clive Sinclair appears pretty laid back about concerns that he may have hastened the demise of the human race.
His ZX Spectrum computers were in large part responsible for creating a generation of programmers back in the 1980s, when the machines and their clones became best-sellers in the UK, Russia, and elsewhere.
Continue reading (and there’s a video to watch)
No comments:
Post a Comment