The Most Interesting Woman in the World – Thanks, SimonThe Public Domain Review; Geographical Fun: Being Humourous Outlines of Various Countries (1868) – This series of fantastic anthropomorphic maps of European countries, each footnoted by a witty quatrain, was produced by London publisher Hodder and Stoughton in the 1860s. Read the Article – Gallery of Images
Where has this Amazing Comic Book Art Been all My Life?BBC Science – World’s first floating wind farm emerges off coast of Scotland. Each wind turbine is taller than Big Ben. The revolutionary technology will allow wind power to be harvested in waters too deep for the current conventional bottom-standing turbines. The Peterhead wind farm, known as Hywind, is a trial which will bring power to 20,000 homes. Video on BBCSo far, one giant turbine has already been moved into place, while four more wait in readiness in a Norwegian fjord. By the end of the month they’ll all have been towed to 15 miles (25km) off Peterhead, Aberdeenshire. Story on BBCAmerican Seamen’s Friend Society Sailors’ Home and Institute AKA The Jane Hotel in the Meatpacking District
On April 19, 1912, surviving crew members of the RMS Titanic gathered in the small assembly hall of the American Seaman’s Friend on Jane Street. They held a memorial service for those lost just four days before, swallowed up by the freezing Atlantic. The building, the American Seamen’s Friend Society Sailors’ Home and Institute, was built in 1908 to accommodate the society’s growing membership.
Rooms were only a quarter a night (double for captains), and within the first year, over 16,000 men had taken advantage of what an annual report in 1911 called, “a bright, airy, comfortable place to sit without being annoyed by the fumes of liquor or soul-rasping profanity.”
The building is now a New York City landmark, designated in 2000.
Residents of the Seamen’s Institute watching a WPA Art Instructor put the finishing touches on a pastel. “Hey sonny, you think being a sailor sucks? Try being an artist… “Seamen’s Church Institute – 241 Water Street – New York City’s Nautical Architecture: Part IWhile sailing to San Francisco on a foggy night in September 1923, the SS Cuba sank to the bottom of the ocean near San Miguel Island, a small landform lying just southwest of Santa Barbara, California. Though all the ship’s passengers and crew members were saved, the ship has remained at the bottom of the ocean for the past 94 years. The waters are now part of the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary and a protected U.S. national park. A new video from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Marine Sanctuaries offers a glimpse into the SS Cuba’s submerged ruins. video and more on National Geographicromancecomics: Sailors are different, more exciting…
The preserved whale heart weighs approximately 400 pounds. (Courtesy Royal Ontario Museum) This massive specimen is now on display in Canada’s Royal Ontario Museum
“It took four staff onsite plus myself to push the heart out of the thoracic cavity, through a window created through the ribs and into a dumpster bag,” Miller says.Detail from Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues’ 1591 map of Florida, where David Ingram supposedly began his journey up the Eastern seaboard
If three shipwrecked English sailors really did travel by foot from Florida to Nova Scotia in 1569 then it would certainly count as one of the most remarkable walks undertaken in recorded history. Although the account’s more fantastical elements, such as the sighting of elephants, have spurred many to consign it to the fiction department, John Toohey argues for a second look.
Dirty RiverAnd 200,000 gallons of paint later … As the famous old sailor adage goes: “If it moves, salute it; if it doesn’t, paint it.” And indeed, painting is a key part of the process at Newport News Shipbuilding, requiring between 120 and 170 workers to get the job done. The new, self-healing coating on the Gerald R. Ford, shown here, is formulated to resist heat and UV rays. Photo by: John Whalen for Huntington Ingalls Industries. MORE PHOTOS ON CNETFranz Radziwill (1895-1983) Der Hafen II (The Harbor II), 1930 – Berlin museums 5 — Neue NationalgalerieFranz Radziwill ; Die Spur am Himmel (Entfaltung)Kunsthalle zeigt Franz RadziwillFranz Radziwill und BremenYour Moment of Maine: Working Waterfront: a little bit more about the year round ferry to Monhegan Island (video posted by Monhegan Boat Line)The Royal Canadian Mint unveiled a Northern Lights–themed luminescent coin to commemorate the country’s 150th birthday.
Despite working on the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ franchise, ‘Castaway’ and ‘Captain Phillips’, nothing could have prepared marine coordinator Neil Andrea for the scale of the ‘Dunkirk’ shoot
“We had Messerschmitts flying overhead, thousands of extras on the beach, minesweepers in the background, a 350ft destroyer and torpedo boats all in the same shot.”
Nolan and his team actually filmed on location in Dunkirk with real war ships and fighter planes. “On certain days, there were up to 60 ships in the water,”
This image from the 12th-century Libellus de primo Saxonum uel Normannorum adventu shows Odin crowned as ancestral king of the Anglo-Saxons. The text describes the royal lineages of the kingdoms of Kent, Mercia, Deira, Bernicia and Wessex respectively, each claiming descent (and so the right to rule) from the mythical figure turned king
“Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your viking helmets…”
George Washington: first President of the United States, father of his country, crosser of the Delaware, and descendant of Odin. This, at least, was the claim put forward by the late nineteenth-century genealogist Albert Welles. In the floridly titled, four-hundred-page tome The Pedigree and History of the Washington Family Derived from Odin, the Founder of Scandinavia. B.C. 70, Involving a Period of Eighteen Centuries, and Including Fifty-Five Generations, Down to General George Washington, First President of the United States (1879), Welles created a family tree for Washington of truly mythical proportions, and one which shows just how useful nineteenth-century Americans found the Middle Ages to be when it came to shaping their understandings of their country’s origins.
Replica of the Gokstad Viking ship complete with the Stars and Stripes proudly flying, featured at the World’s Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893
Viking, an exact replica of the Gokstad ship, crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Bergen, Norway to be exhibited at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893; it remains on exhibit near Chicago. wikipedia
Soldiers' names engraved in Mephisto's rear armour.[2]
The tank was lost at the Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux on 24 April 1918. The battle for the area saw the Australian, British, and German forces in a fluid situation, moving around the tank, which had been abandoned after falling into a ditch.
The 26th Battalion of the 7th Brigade, mostly from Queensland,[3] hatched a plan to capture it. In July 1918, under the cover of an artillery barrage, Australian infantry and two British vehicles (either Gun Carriers or Mark IV tanks) moved forward and dragged it back to their lines under fire from the Germans who were still within sight of the tank. They had to don gas masks after German poison gas was deployed.
The 26th Battalion working party involved in the recovery of Mephisto on 22 July 1918 probably consisted of Sergeant F.R. Hanson, Privates J. Battley, G. Bradley,T. Clark, H.J. Dray, E.J. Frost, A.W. Heit, J.J. Kennedy, T.M. Kingston, R.J. Lewis, A.G. Masters, W. Sam, and G.H. White.[4]
Mephisto being dragged into the Queensland Museum by two steamrollers in 1919
Following its capture, Mephisto was transported to the 5th Tank Brigade demonstration ground at Vaux-en-Amiénois near Amiens. During its stay there it was decorated with "soldier-art" paintings of a British lion with its paw on an A7V, many soldiers' names, details of its capture and recovery, the colour patch of the 26th Battalion and the rising sun badge of the Australian Imperial Force (A.I.F.) The words "TANK BOYS" and the names of 13 soldiers (mainly from other Australian units) were engraved on the front, left side, and rear armour. From Vaux-en-Amiénois, Mephisto was shipped by rail to the Tank Corps Gunnery School at Merlimont and then shipped from Dunkirk to London. Proposals for it to be displayed as a war trophy in Australia were raised, and on 2 April 1919 it was loaded on the SS Armagh at Tilbury. The ship was to deliver it to Sydney, with plans for it to go to the war memorial in Canberra's display, but it was diverted to Brisbane, arriving on 6 June 1919 at the Norman Wharf (near the intersection of Creek Street and Eagle Street, approximately where the Eagle Street Pier ferry wharf is today) in the Brisbane River.[5] On 22 August 1919 two steamrollers from the Brisbane Municipal Council pulled Mephisto (travelling on its own caterpillar treads) from the wharf to the Queensland Museum (then at the Old Museum building in Bowen Hills), a journey of less than 2 miles taking 11 hours.[6][7]
