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The Postcard
A postally unused carte postale that was published by A. Richard of 84, Faub. du Temple, Paris, and printed by Edia of Versailles. The card has a divided back.
Abba Eban
"History teaches us that men and
nations behave wisely when they
have exhausted all other alternatives".
This was said during a speech in London UK on 16th. December 1970 by Abba Eban (1915-2002), an Israeli diplomat and writer.
Visa Paris No. 621
The card bears the imprimatur 'Visa Paris' followed by a unique reference number. This means that the image was inspected and deemed by the military authorities in the French capital not to be a security risk. Nevertheless the Albert name has been cut from the card.
'Visa Paris' indicates that the card was published during or soon after the Great War.
The Use of Artillery in the Great War
Artillery was very heavily used by both sides during the Great War. The British fired over 170 million artillery rounds of all types, weighing more than 5 million tons - that's an average of around 70 pounds (32 kilos) per shell.
With an average length of two feet, that number of shells if laid end to end would stretch for 64,394 miles (103,632 kilometres). That's over two and a half times round the Earth. If the artillery of the Central Powers of Germany and its allies is factored in, the figure can be doubled to 5 encirclements of the planet.
During the first two weeks of the Third Battle of Ypres, over 4 million rounds were fired at a cost of over £22,000,000 - a huge sum of money, especially over a century ago.
Artillery was the killer and maimer of the war of attrition.
According to Dennis Winter's book 'Death's Men' three quarters of battle casualties were caused by artillery rounds. According to John Keegan ('The Face of Battle') casualties were:
- Bayonets - less than 1%
- Bullets - 30%
- Artillery and Bombs - 70%
Keegan suggests however that the ratio changed during advances, when massed men walking line-abreast with little protection across no-man's land were no match for for rifles and fortified machine gun emplacements.
Many artillery shells fired during the Great War failed to explode. Drake Goodman provides the following information on Flickr:
"During World War I, an estimated one tonne of explosives was fired for every square metre of territory on the Western front. As many as one in every three shells fired did not detonate. In the Ypres Salient alone, an estimated 300 million projectiles that the British and the German forces fired at each other were "duds", and most of them have not been recovered."
To this day, large quantities of Great War matériel are discovered on a regular basis. Many shells from the Great War were left buried in the mud, and often come to the surface during ploughing and land development.
For example, on the Somme battlefields in 2009 there were 1,025 interventions, unearthing over 6,000 pieces of ammunition weighing 44 tons.
Artillery shells may or may not still be live with explosive or gas, so the bomb disposal squad, of the Civilian Security of the Somme, dispose of them.
A huge mine under the German lines did not explode during the battle of Messines in 1917. The mine, containing several tons of ammonal and gun cotton, was triggered by lightning in 1955, creating an enormous crater.
The precise location of a second mine which also did not explode is unknown. Searches for it are not planned, as they would be too expensive and dangerous. For more on this, please search for "Cotehele Chapel"
The Somme Times
From 'The Somme Times', Monday, 31 July, 1916:
'There was a young girl of the Somme,
Who sat on a number five bomb,
She thought 'twas a dud 'un,
But it went off sudden -
Her exit she made with aplomb!'
I have some friends who I cannot help but offend and some others who cannot help but offend me. #FRIENDSHIP #FAIL
Somehow the stupid ThermaCare Heat Wrap managed to never get warm enough to be at all effective yet still branded these marks into my skin. WTF!
This is a fragile piece of Physalis after the winter. I wanted to show how delicate it is in the pictures - don't think I quite got there. But still interesting.
Fail of a picture water on the lense and horrible lighting but i was so stoked to finally shoot some snowboarding i had to upload it.
taking at stevens pass flash camera right 6" on full. sunpak 383
Here are our failed attempts to partially self replicate using our CNC RepStrap with ABS.
We still have problems with the heated M6 rod plopping out of the PTFE part. Marius had the great idea to wrap around some PTFE tape around the M6 rod before screwing it in to increase the friction to prevent it from popping out. This seemd to work only partially for the rightmost part but at least it did not come out the full way.
Linguistic translation:
I'll pay €120 for a program con Numerical Analysis, modified and explained.
Before November 15th.
Applicants call 635307639
Semantic translation (actual meaning):
I totally suck with computers, let along writing code, so I'll pay you €120 to write the code for me for a specific practical assignment on Numerical Analysis (or just modify one you already have written so that the lecturer won't recognized the code) and, of course, explain the code to me. Needless to say, that last bit will be totally useless, but so will be the rest anyway. I suck so much that I won't understand a bloody thing you tell me about your code, you just make sure I can learn enough things to parrot so that I'll sound like I understand it.
Oh, College was soooo much fun :D