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Picture Of The Day

Picture of the Day

landwehermann

A Prussian Landwehrmann tanning rat skins in a dugout, WWI

A Prussian Landwehrmann tanning rat skins in a dugout, WWI. The trench soldier of WWI had to cope with millions of rats. They were attracted by the human waste of war – not simply sewage waste but also the bodies of men long forgotten who had been buried in the trenches.

Possibly drawing on his pre-war trade in the leather industry, this fellow has set himself up in business, tanning the pelts in the age-old method of separating soil and gore from the skin, before they are washed and spread out to dry (as depicted here). It’s possible that he used the skins to make patches for repairs to uniforms. Some of these rats grew extremely large. Many troops were awakened by them crawling across their faces, or attempting to take food from the pockets of sleeping men.

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Picture of the Day

An “Apache revolver” used by early 1900s French gangsters, the weapon worked as a gun, knife and brass knuckles all at the same time.

These knuckle duster revolvers were sold by Frenchman Louis Dolne in the late 1860s and combine a pinfire pepperbox style revolver with folding brass knuckles for a grip and a 3 1/2 inch kris style folding dagger.

There is no barrel or sights, so range is very limited. The brass knuckles and blade also clearly indicate there were designed to be used at extremely close range, ostensibly for self-defense.

With the blade and knuckles folded down, the revolver could easily be concealed in a coat pocket. The Apache nickname originates from a group of well-known members of the French criminal sub-culture in the early 20th century said to prefer these revolvers as well as garrotting and general brute force when mugging their victims.

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Picture of the Day

alice lee roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt’s high-spirited daughter Alice. Her father said of her “I can either run the country or I can attend to Alice, but I cannot possibly do both.” In 15 months she attended 407 dinners, 350 balls and 300 parties

Her mother died when she was born. Roosevelt later remarried and Alice was raised partially by an aunt because she never got along with her stepmother, who liked to claim that if she’d lived, Teddy’s first wife would have ‘bored him to death’.

They once got mad at her for her fierce independence (ironically inherited from her father), and they threatened to send her to some strict girls boarding school as punishment. She responded in a letter, writing “If you send me I will humiliate you. I will do something that will shame you. I tell you I will.”

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Picture Of The Day

Olive Oatman was captured by Native Americans in Arizona in 1851, and integrated into a Mojave tribe. She was given her (blue) tattoo to ensure her passage into the afterlife. In 1857 she was finally set free after being located by local settlers. This photo was taken after her rescue.

In 1851 Olive Oatman was a thirteen-year old pioneer traveling west toward Zion, with her Mormon family. Within a decade, she was a white Indian with a chin tattoo, caught between cultures. The Blue Tattoo tells the harrowing story of this forgotten heroine of frontier America. Orphaned when her family was brutally killed by Yavapai Indians, Oatman lived as a slave to her captors for a year before being traded to the Mohave, who tattooed her face and raised her as their own. She was fully assimilated and perfectly happy when, at nineteen, she was ransomed back to white society. She became an instant celebrity, but the price of fame was high and the pain of her ruptured childhood lasted a lifetime.

The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

Picture of the Day

max schreck nosferatu

Max Schreck relaxing behind the scenes of Nosferatu, 1922

Little is known about Max Schreck’s life and film career, a fact to which his biographer, Stefan Eickhoff, can attest. According to Eickhoff, the actor’s colleagues regarded him as a “loyal, conscientious loner with an offbeat sense of humor and a talent for playing the grotesque.” The star of over 40 motion pictures, Schreck is best remembered for his haunting portrayal of Orlok in Nosferatu.

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How Did A Prop Gun Kill Brandon Lee On The Set Of The Crow?

brandon lee the crow

Brandon Lee, Bruce Lee’s son, was accidentally killed on the set of The Crow when a prop gun was loaded improperly, causing dummy bullets to fire with the same force as live ammunition. He was only 28 years old when he died. Why would this ever happen?

On March 31, 1993, Lee was filming a scene in The Crow where his character is shot and killed by thugs. In the scene, Lee’s character walks into his apartment and discovers his fiancée being beaten and raped, and a thug played by actor Michael Massee is to fire a Smith & Wesson Model 629 .44 Magnum revolver at Lee’s character as he walks into the room.

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Picture of the Day

texas am u bbq course

Texas A&M University offers a class on Texas Barbecue that teaches the history of BBQ, cooking methodology, flavorings and seasonings, and different types of BBQ.

Here are the topics covered in ANSC 117 each semester:

  • Introduction, expectations, brief history of barbecue, food safety overview
  • Cooking methodology: pits, kettles, water smokers, barrel smokers
  • Types of fuel (charcoal brickettes, charcoal chunks, wood coals) and smoke (hickory, oak, pecan, mesquite)
  • Adding flavoring: seasonings, marinades, rubs, sauces
  • Pork: Southeastern-style pulled pork, Hawaiian-inspired pork loin
  • Ribs, ribs, ribs: baby back versus St. Louis-style; Memphis-style (dry) versus Kansas City-style (wet); Asian-inspired rubs and sauces
  • Chicken: smoking, cooking by rotisserie; whole or pieces
  • Barbecuing lamb and goat
  • Briskets: To wrap or not to wrap, that is the question!
  • Smoking other cuts of beef: shoulder clods, sirloins, ribeyes, and tenderloins
  • Cooking beef South American style: Brazil and Argentina
  • Thanksgiving Turkey: brining recipes; smoking, frying, cooking by rotisserie
  • Cooking whole pigs: Hawaiian, Cuban, Cajun
  • Course wrap up

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Picture of the Day

Stephan-Bibrowski

Barnum & Bailey Circus’Sideshow performer Stephan Bibrowski, also known as Lionel the Lion-Faced Man.

Stephan Bibrowski was born in Bielsk, Poland in 1890 with stunning blonde hair — that covered his entire body from head to toe. Aghast at this so-called abomination, his mother gave him up and turned him over to a businessman who paraded him across Europe as a sideshow attraction before taking him to America in 1901.⁠

Once in the U.S., Barnum & Bailey quickly snatched Bibrowski up and put him on display as “Lionel the Lion-Faced Man,” describing him as “half-man half-lion.” For 20 years, Bibrowski was exhibited as a “freak,” with audiences scarcely realizing that the gentle soul behind the hair was a soft-spoken man who knew five languages and nurtured a secret dream of leaving the stage and becoming a dentist.⁠

(story) ⁠

Picture of the Day

sniper-rifle-dog-robot

Ghost Robotics strapped a sniper rifle to its robot dog

The US military may be getting a dog-like quadruped robot armed with a sniper rifle.

The robot, developed by Ghost Robotics of Philadelphia, is a new version of its Vision series of legged robots. The US Air Force is currently testing an unarmed version of these robots for use as perimeter security at the Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida.

Ghost Robotics displayed the armed version at the annual meeting of the Association of the United States Army held in Washington DC this week. The robot is fitted with a Special Purpose Unmanned Rifle pod from Sword Defense, with a powerful 6.5mm sniper rifle. This has day and night cameras and an effective range of 1200 metres.

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Picture of the Day

birds aren't real

‘The Birds Aren’t Real’ movement says federal government replaced all birds with surveillance drones

 In 1947 the C.I.A. was founded, its sole responsibility to watch and survey tens of thousands of Americans suspected of doing communist things. This orchestrated stalking epidemic went on for almost 5 years, and few were found guilty of any real crimes. However, it became clear in the early 1950s that the threat of communism was only going to rise, and a broader system was needed to track any individual who was suspected of such activity. The fears were only encouraged when in 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were wrongly arrested and convicted of espionage against the United States- accused of spying on behalf of the Soviet Union (the big boy communist people.) This highly publicized event gave the government a small window to implement a new program that would place the first CCTV surveillance cameras in areas with a high Russian immigrant concentration.

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