How to Wear a Monocle (1930)

 

Old cars with big engines

 

Net Zero Rail Travel

 

No good for commuting though

 

Pylon Men (1956)

 

Lens Making in the 1600s

Interesting video on how Antoni van Leeuwenhoek might have made the tiny lenses he used to make hundreds of simple, single lens microscopes using techniques he kept secret.

Ann Packer 1964 Tokyo Olympics, 800m world record

Commentary by David Coleman who becomes quite excited.

The Helen Keller story doesn't add up

Below is an interesting video on why the Helen Keller story could reasonably be classed as dubious. It doesn't add up as the video title says.

Also interesting is that Wikipedia gives no real hint that there are good reasons to doubt the validity of the Helen Keller story while Grokipedia gives those doubts reasonable coverage. 

 

Little Tich - Big Boot Dance (1900)

 

Old Bus Routes

It's interesting how well we remember bus services we used to catch in our younger days. Mrs H remembers catching the B1 Nottingham bus quite often in the 1960s, although she only used it for local journeys. We're not sure where this accident was.

The bus service I remember best is the 24 Henley Green from Derby to a stop near to where we lived in the 1950s, close to what is now the Derby ring-road.

Photo sent by Alan H

Hoover Constellation

Mrs H remembers these because her parents had one. We didn't, we had a boring upright.

On the eve of war

We're off into Derbyshire this morning, but it won't be like this.

Picky

Stone Age humans were picky about which rocks they used for making tools, study finds

Early human ancestors during the Old Stone Age were more picky about the rocks they used for making tools than previously known, according to research published Friday.

Not only did these early people make tools, they had a mental picture of where suitable raw materials were located and planned ahead to use them, traveling long distances.

Interesting, but for some reason this section raised a smile.

“This suggests they’ve got a mental map of where different resources are distributed across the landscape,” said co-author Rick Potts of the Smithsonian's Human Origins Program.

Imagine a Paranthropus conversation along the same lines - "You need a mental map of where different resources are distributed across the landscape" stone chippers say to their apprentices.

Union Pacific's Big Boy 4014

Union Pacific 4014 built in 1941, retired in 1961.

Blimey - I had one of those

 

Drowned in Ale

The way we were

As I watched this video I occasionally thought "is that someone I knew"?

No H&S here lads

Putting the poles back on a Derby trolley bus
From Alan H

 

Throwley Old Hall

Interesting video about Throwley Old Hall in Staffordshire, not far from the Staffordshire/Derbyshire boundary. It can be seen from a couple of our walks, although we haven't been that way for a few years.

There is a nearby farm and holiday accommodation now, but when inhabited the Hall must have seemed a remote and strangely situated place. What went on there? It would be easy to make up stories.

 

In search of forgotten heroes

Alexander Chula has a very interesting Critic piece on Bishop Charles Mackenzie.


In search of forgotten heroes

The Church has consigned to oblivion those who risked all to end the slave trade

The grave was buried in dry silt and foliage, and it took an hour of hacking and digging in the stifling midday heat before steel chinked on stone. Slowly, amidst the clatter of hoes and machetes, six pillars emerged from the earth. The grave revealed, our excavation party set down their tools to say the Lord’s Prayer in Chichewa, the dust still hanging round them in the windless air.

We were in Mozambique, at the confluence of the Ruo and Shire rivers just across the border from Malawi. We had set off before dawn, travelling by dugout canoe along a stretch of water busy with crocodiles and known locally as Mtayamoyo — the place where you lose your life.

Here, on 31 January 1862, Charles Mackenzie lost his. The last warrior bishop of the Anglican Church, Mackenzie died horribly of blackwater fever whilst leading a campaign against slavery which has been consigned to oblivion in Britain, but deserves to be remembered as amongst our greatest moral crusades.


The whole piece is well worth reading, especially comments by Justin Welby as archbishop of Canterbury.


Earlier this year Justin Welby, as archbishop of Canterbury, gave a sermon in Zanzibar but chose to emphasise the faults of the early missionaries over their achievements and sacrifices. “They did not change their attitudes,” he averred. “They treated Africans as inferior.”

I am curious to know who exactly the former Archbishop had in mind. Mackenzie’s successors gave everything they had to the region, and their graves litter Malawi, still venerated today. They committed to sharing the lives of local peoples and — as I argue in my recent book (Goodbye, Dr Banda) — approached their cultures with a curiosity and respect seldom matched by Western visitors today. The imputation that they treated Africans as inferior dishonours men who died precisely because they considered Africans as worthy of that sacrifice as anyone else.