The Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901 is now remembered mainly for the assassination of McKinley by a Polish-American anarchist follower of Emma Goldman. However it was yet another triumph for Thomas A Edison, Inc and its electric chairs, X-ray machines (McKinley might have survived had an Edison X-ray machine been allowed to locate the…
César-Javier Palacios reports on the cyclist, shot dead by a hunter who mistook him for a boar. When in death’s dark vale loud singing usually suffices to drive off hell’s hunters. Hunters know this too. In his romance, Count Arnaldos, hungry hawk in hand, falls prey to a sailor (love, glory or death, true or…
A little thing by Orson Scott Card, via Kalebeul’s DJ-guru, Irwin Chusid. Apparently I’m about to become a multiple uncle AND bring down capitalism, seriously, so don’t worry too much about this kind of detail. (FYI: kalebeul’s proprietor has voted once in public elections–green/neighbourhoodist in The Hague, has worked for two centre-left parties, once defeated…
Crouched on the street with the usual placard. A granny passes: –5 cents, for the love of God! –Sorry, no. –Well then let me give you a lucky gypsy kiss! (Leaps up and embraces the granny, despite her protests.) –Oh all right then. Wait, I want to give you 20 cents. –Thanks, I’ve already got…
Classic nimbyism, enabled by Spain’s lack of effective central government: Castilla y León has lots of wolves, but other communities which, according to ecologists, should in historical and biological terms have some, don’t want to take the overproduction. So they’re being shot. I don’t suppose we could airlift them to the outskirts of Reykjavik.
With the vaguest of references to i-shepan-im here’s Kirby’s wonderful and scientific museum in 1820: The fecundity of the rabbit is truly astonishing ; it breeds seven times in the year, and generally produces eight young at a time ; from which it is calculated, that one pair may increase in the course of four…
Mr Wu has added our Weird Shit Guaranteeâ„¢ to the Baldie Tours FAQs in response to a suggestion from some New Jersey clients following a conversation with a rather unusual street-organ performer. It may deter as many as it attracts, but what the hell.
Photo 7 on this page shows a lamb being carried by refugees from villages on the Spanish side of the central Pyrenees as the Stalinist-led 43rd Division prepared its famous last stand–the Bielsa Pocket/la Bolsa de Bielsa–against Franco’s advancing Navarrans in spring 1938. Bielsa was completely shattered by the latter’s artillery, but the scorched earth…
Samuel Johnson reports on making acquaintance with London in 1737 that In the last age, when my mother lived in London, there were two sets of people, those who gave the wall, and those who took it; the peaceable and the quarrelsome. When I returned to Lichfield, after having been in London, my mother asked…