The beach buns are here again.... waiting to make a splash. This set includes a new flamingo floatie. After two weeks of swimming lessons, I see a close resemblance to the bunnies and terrified kids at the pool. The black one is obviously being forced by his mommy to participate. Trust your flotation devices friends and remember to blow your bubbles.

The motor vessel Frontenac II is a ferry on Lake Ontario, that runs from Millhaven, Ontario to Amherst Island.

Travel Easy Underwater Plastic Camera vs Lomography X-Pro 200 cross processed

Summer Snowflake

 

Leucojum aestivum, commonly called the summer snowflake, giant snowflake, Loddon lily (see River Loddon § Loddon lily) and rarely snowbell and dewdrop among others, is a plant species widely cultivated as an ornamental. It is native to most of Europe from Spain and Ireland to Ukraine, with the exception of Scandinavia, Russia, Belarus and the Baltic countries. It is also considered native to Turkey, Iran and the Caucasus. It is naturalized in Denmark, South Australia, New South Wales, Nova Scotia and much of the eastern United States.

 

Description

 

Leucojum aestivum is a perennial bulbous plant, generally 35–60 cm (14–24 in) tall, but some forms reach 90 cm (35 in). Its leaves, which are well developed at the time of flowering, are strap-shaped, 5–20 mm (0.2–0.8 in) wide, reaching to about the same height as the flowers. The flowering stem (scape) is hollow and has wings with translucent margins. The pendant flowers appear in late spring and are borne in umbels of usually three to five, sometimes as many as seven. The flower stalks (pedicels are of different lengths, 25–70 mm (1.0–2.8 in) long. The flowers are about 3–4 cm (1.2–1.6 in) in diameter and have six white tepals, each with a greenish mark just below the tip. The black seeds are 5–7 mm (0.2–0.3 in) long.

 

After flowering, the fruits develop flotation chambers but remain attached to the stem. In England, it has been recorded that flooding causes the stems to break and the fruits to be carried downstream and stranded in river debris or on flood-plains. The bulbs can also be transported during heavy floods and deposited on river banks.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leucojum_aestivum

Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.

 

Today however we are not at Cavendish Mews. We have travelled north-west from Mayfair, beyond Paddington and Maida Hill, past Kensal Town and Harlesden where Edith’s parents George and Ada live in their red brick terrace house, to Wembley Park. Here, in a purpose built stadium* surrounded by landscaped pleasure gardens and adjoined by a vast amusement park is the British Empire Exhibition**, the great colonial exhibition held at Wembley Park which opened on the 23rd of April. It is at the Exhibition that the wonders of Empire may be seen, in various pavilions in all their glory: from the vast golden wheat farms of the dominions of Australia and Canda and the tea plantations of British India to the exotic climes of Malaya***, Ceylon****, Bermuda and the British protectorates in South Africa. In addition are the pavilions for the British Government and the vast Palaces of Art, Industry and Engineering, divided by the tree lined avenue of the King’s Walk. There are cafes and kiosks, restaurants and cinemas, all to entertain the vast throng of people from all around the Empire and around the world who pour through the gates each day. It is amongst all the movement, noise colour and patriotic gaiety that Lettice’s maid, Edith, and her sweetheart, grocer’s delivery boy Frank, have come with Edith’s parents and seafaring salon steward brother, Bert, and Frank’s Scottish grandmother, Mrs. McTavish have come to enjoy the spectacle of Empire too.

 

We find Edith alone on a park bench on the edge of a brick path opposite the Canadian Pavilion with trees and greenery of a central green space behind her, festive patriotic bunting and Union Jacks draped through the branches. Dressed in a pretty floral printed summer cotton frock that she has made especially for their visit to the British Empire Exhibition, and wearing her wide brimmed summer hat decorated with ornamental flowers and bows from Mrs. Minkin’s Haberdashery in Whitechapel, she enjoys the moment alone as Frank searches for some sustenance for them whilst the rest of the family group have made their way back to the Palace of Engineering. Edith smiles and allows her lids to lower over her blue eyes as she allows the sun to soak into her stockinged legs and lace glove clad hands. She listens to the people chatting as they walk past her, all agog over the wonders of the Empire.

 

“Here we are then, Edith,” comes Frank’s familiar tones, resounding happily over the hubbub of human chatter, laughter and the distant trill of fairground music. “One serving of the best quality hot chips that British Empire has to offer!”

 

Edith allows her lids to flutter open and looks up at her young beau’s happy face smiling down at her, as he hands her a crumpled bundle of newspaper, already showing little greasy spots where the oil from the chips held within the parcel is seeping through. She quickly peels off her lace gloves and slips them into the front of her green leather handbag, slung over the arm of the bench.

 

“Oh, thanks ever so, Frank!” Edith replies gratefully, reaching up and taking her parcel eagerly from his outstretched hand.

 

Moving over on the bench to make room for him, Edith heart leaps a little in her chest as Frank slips in next to her, his thigh in his Sunday best suit trousers pressed up against hers. The newspaper crumples noisily as they both pull at the pages of yesterday’s London tabloids to reveal nests of golden yellow hot chips, sending forth aromatic steam that quickly permeates the air around them.

 

“And!” Frank adds, delving into the pocket of his vest, wincing as he grabs it. “A piping hot meat pie!”

 

He quickly dumps the golden hot pastry unceremoniously on the edge of Edith’s unwrapped chips and blows on his fingers, scalded by the heat of the pie. Edith looks at it in a rather unimpressed fashion, screwing up her pert nose as she reaches down and picks off a piece of blue cotton from Frank’s vest pocket off the daintily decorated edge of the pie and drags it away, rolling it between her thumb and middle finger to release it, allowing it to be blown away by the wind.

 

“Oh Frank!” She looks at him with doleful eyes as he smiles at her in a guilty fashion. “Would it have been that hard to have it thrown in with the chips?”

 

“Yes!” Frank defends himself. “You try carrying two parcels of hot chips and then buy a pie from a separate stand!”

 

Clipping the front of his tweed flat cap with her fingers, Edith laughs and shakes her head. “Oh Frank!” she sighs. “You are hopeless!”

 

“But you love your Frank anyway, don’t you Edith?”

 

“I do adore you nonetheless.” Edith concedes.

 

“Well, no matter if you don’t want any of the pie!” Frank says, his smile broadening. “More for me then. I’m not afraid of a bit of cotton from my waistcoat pocket. It just so happens to be very clean in there.” He opens the slit in his blue waistcoat and glances in at all the crumbs now clinging to the lining of his pocket. “Or rather, it was.”

 

Edith giggles, her girlish chuckles emboldening Frank to reach down and pick up the hot pie again, lifting it to his mouth and taking a big bite, piping hot mincemeat and gravy spilling into his mouth, scalding his tongue and roof of his mouth.

 

“Ow!” he exclaims, quickly dropping it back onto the edge of Edith’s chips. “That’s bloody hot!” he manages to say through a mouth of pie as he opens his mouth and breathes in the air around him to try and cool down the mince in his mouth.

 

“Language!” Edith chides him as a middle-aged woman in a muddy brown three quarter length coat and straw hat not unlike her own, only decorated with feathers, stomps past them on the arm of an older lady and scowls disapprovingly at Frank.

 

“Well it is.” Frank struggles to say as he continues to suck in cool air and roll the hot meat and pastry around on is tongue in an effort to cool it down.

 

“That’ll teach you for being so ungallant, Frank Leadbetter!” Edith laughs good-naturedly.

 

“That’s not funny.” Frank says after a few moments as he swallows the meat and pastry, feeling the heat of it as it works its way down his throat to his stomach, wiping his bottom lip with the back of his hand.

 

“Oh yes it is!” Edith giggles, taking out her own hand embroidered lace trimmed handkerchief from her handbag and offering it to the grateful Frank. She shakes her head again as he accepts it.

 

“I don’t suppose you’ve got a knife in your basket, have you Edith?”

 

“I don’t, Frank,” she replies apologetically. “But I do have some tea.” She reaches down and withdraws the orange striped red thermos flask***** and two white enamelled cups. “Here.” She pours some tea into one of the cups and hands it to him. “Anyway, now that you’ve bitten a hole in it, that will allow the pie to cool, and in a bit we’ll pull it apart with our fingers.”

 

“Ta.” he replies, taking the cup of milky tea gratefully. “That’s a good idea, Edith.”

 

“Not ‘ta’, Frank.” Edith corrects him. She pours tea into her own cup. “It’s ‘thank you’ if you’re to be a union leader one day.”

 

“Ta is spoken by a man of the people, Edith.”

 

“But a man of the people must also be able to socialise with the upper crust.” Edith responds seriously. “I’m just trying to help.”

 

“I know, Edith. You’re more than just a pretty face.” Frank opines, reaching his left hand across the wooden slats of the bench and discreetly clasping Edith’s dainty, careworn right hand in his behind the cover of the unfurled chip grease oiled newspaper.

 

“Oh Frank!” She looks over to her beau and smiles fulsomely. “You really are quite sweet.”

 

“I know!” Frank replies, leaning over further and snatching one of her chips from the pile on her lap with his free right and eating it, winking cheekily at her as he does.

 

“Oi!” She slaps his hand away, and laughs again.

 

The pair settle back into the wooden slats of the comfortable wooden bench, allowing themselves the luxury of soaking up the sun of the wonderfully sunny London Sunday. Around them the vociferous chatter of the many visitors to the British Empire exhibition walking by blends with the laughing and occasional crying of children, the strains of ‘The Maid with the Flaxen Hair’****** played by the gaily uniformed brass band in the rotunda nearby and the screams and squeals of delight from the people enjoying the rides in the Exhibition’s amusement park.

 

“I think we were lucky to get this seat.” Edith says as she watches a middle aged woman in a lemon yellow frock with a matching cardigan and cloche hat push a perambulator with large wheels past them, a trail of four children of varying ages following in her wake laughing and moaning. “There are so many people here today.”

 

“Today and every day from what I’ve read in the papers. Apparently, it’s really popular. I don’t remember seeing this many people in one place since the first Armistice Day in 1919*******.” Frank agrees as he looks around him, observing a shiny Railodok******* bus full of gentlemen in suits and bowlers, ladies in jackets, fur stoles and cloches and young children in sailor suits and boaters slowly rumble past. “Still, it’s good that people have come out to see all the wonders of the Empire. It makes me proud to be British.”

 

“Oh me too, Frank!” Edith enthuses in return. “It makes me feel like I’m part of something ever so much bigger. It’s wonderful!”

 

“Better than a date to see ‘The Enchanted Cottage’********* at the Premier in East Ham********** then?”

 

“I’ll say, or a trip to the Hammersmith Palais***********. Where else do you get to see the wonders of the Empire without even having to leave London?”

 

“And enjoy the company of your handsome sweetheart at the same time.” Frank leans back against the sun warmed back of the bench, looks lazily across at Edith, and gives her a cheeky smile as he puts another chip, this time one of his own, in his mouth.

 

“You’ve got tickets on yourself, Frank Leadbetter.” Edith begins, determined not to let Frank’s obvious teasing of her go unanswered without a little of her own in return. “I could be walking on my Dad’s arm right now, and he’s every bit as handsome as you are, even more so.”

 

“And older.” Frank jokes jovially.

 

“And more worldly.” Edith counters cheekily, stabbing at his pride.

 

“Alright! Alright! I concede!” Frank says, raising his hands, one still holding his enamel cup, aloft.

 

“Thank you!” Edith says smugly as she chews on another chip.

 

The pair laugh happily and smile at one another.

 

“So, what have you enjoyed the most out of what we’ve seen so far, then Edith?”

 

Edith pauses with a chip held between her index finger and thumb midway between her lap and her mouth and considers her answer for a few moments before answering.

 

“Well, I loved the Australian Pavilion and seeing the bush landscape for myself.” She remembers the Australian dairy farm display with branches of Australian gum trees set up behind sheaths of wheat and cut outs of cows against a blue painted sky. “It helps me to picture what Bert sees when his ship docks over there, even if he did say the display is nowhere near as beautiful as the real thing. It gives me an idea of what it must look like. So much better than an illustration in a book from the library.”

 

“I liked Freda the Friesian.” Frank adds with a wry smile, remarking on the life size taxidermied Friesian cow standing to the left of the tableau with a bucket at her feet and a sign in front of her, proudly displaying her name.

 

“Imagine going out there to live though.” Edith remarks, remembering the large welcoming map of Australia near the entrance that encouraged British farmers with capital, lads who could work or farms or girls to be domestics to immigrate half way around the world to Australia.

 

“No, it’s too far away for me.” Frank replies. “Even if they did have a beautiful orchid display.”

 

“The Canadan Pavilion is very beautiful,” Edith remarks, pointing to grand classically designed white building standing across from them in its temporary garden surrounds.

 

“The butter display of His Royal Highness was very impressive!” Frank gasps, picturing the tableau behind glass they had seen in the pavilion, made entirely of Canadian butter depicting the Prince of Wales next to a horse on a Canadian ranch.

 

“Those butter displays are amazing!” Edith agrees, thinking of the one in the Australian Pavilion made of Australian butter showing Jack Hobbs************ playing Test Cricket in Melbourne.

 

“What about the metalwork displays in the Nigerian Pavilion?” Franks asks, remembering the vast window display beneath a mud brick archway showing a man and a young boy in traditional garb making metal bowls and plates over a brazier.

 

“I’ve never seen anyone so exotic looking!” Edith colours as she recalls their dark skin, so very different to her own pale pink flesh. “And their costumes! Colourful beads and hats! Who would ever have pictured men wearing them?”

 

“And the elephants!” Frank gasps before eating another chip.

 

“I’ve never seen an elephant in the flesh before!” remarks Edith after swallowing her mouthful of chip. “And there they were, cavorting about in the lake, splashing about and spraying water!”

 

“Have you never been to the zoo for an elephant ride*************, Edith?” Frank asks.

 

“Never, Frank. I’ve never been to the zoo, ever!”

 

“Then I shall have to take you sometime, Edith. You don’t know what you’re missing out on. We’ll add it to our list of places to go.”

 

“I’d like that.” Edith replies gratefully, blushing as she does.

 

“I’m glad we weren’t close enough to get drenched by the shower of water from the elephant trunks.” Frank admits. “Like that couple picnicking by the lake.”

 

“Oh yes! Poor them!” Edith says. “And poor gardeners! Did you see how the elephants just pulled up flowers from the garden beds with their trunks and ate them**************!” Edith takes a sip of tea. “I must confess, I was glad to be far enough away from them. They are so enormous, just walking around like that, that they scare me.”

 

“Oh I shouldn’t worry too much, Edith,” Frank assures her. “They all have attendants who make sure they don’t get up to too much mischief.”

 

“Well, I don’t see how such little men can command such big creatures as elephants, Frank.”

 

“They wouldn’t let them roam about if they were dangerous, Edith.”

 

“Maybe not, Frank,” Edith nurses her cup. “But they still scare me, just the same.”

 

The pair fall silent for a little while and continue to eat their chips and sip their tea, watching the people parade pass them: young and old, rich and poor, all enjoying the spectacle of the British Empire on London soil.

 

“Your Mum and my Gran seemed fascinated by the electric stove displays in the Palace of Industry***************.” Frank remarks.

 

“Well both of them use coal ranges, Frank, and I don’t know about your Gran, but I’m fairly sure that Mum has never seen a gas stove before.”

 

“Really Edith?”

 

“Oh no, Frank. I’m lucky working for Miss Lettice and having a gas stove to cook on, but prior to Mrs. Plaistow’s where I had a position before Miss Lettice, I’d never seen a gas stove either. I wish old Widow Hounslow,” Edith refers to the doughy and misery widow who is her parents’ landlady. “Would cough up**************** the money to pull out the old coke range in Mum’s kitchen and put in a nice new clean gas stove. What a difference it would make!”

 

“Do you think she will?”

 

“Pshaw!” Edith scoffs bitterly. “I’ll ride in one of those flying boats***************** we saw in the Palace of Engineering before old Widow Hounslow gives my Mum a new anything for around the house!”

 

“Well, I doubt Mr. Soloman who owns Gran’s house will install one for her either. But then again, I don’t think Gran would know how to work one if he did. She has an uncanny knack of knowing if the bread oven is too hot or too cold just by waving her hand in it, and it works. She never has burnt bread from too hot an oven, nor a sunken cake from one not warm enough.”

 

“Mum’s the same. I’m amazed by how well she knows that old range”

 

“And I don’t think Gran’s Rumbledethumps****************** would taste the same cooked in a gas oven.”

 

“I’ll have to try and make your Gran’s recipe in Miss Lettice’s oven one day, Frank.”

 

“I thought you’d never ask.”

 

“Cheeky!” Edith laughs before taking a sip of tea. “Mind you, your Gran has to part with the recipe first.” she adds with an encouraging glance at her beau.

 

“I’ll see if I can work on her, and convince her that you’re the one she should pass her precious recipe on to. I don’t see how she can expect me to be happy if she’s the only one who knows how to make them the way I like them.”

 

“She just wants to remain your best girl, Frank.” She pauses and smiles cheekily. “Or should that be, Francis?”

 

“Don’t call me that, Edith!” Frank hisses. “I’m not a little boy! No-one will take me seriously if I’m known as Francis.”

 

“I would.”

 

“Anyway, changing the subject, but thinking of the Palaces of Industry and Engineering, you were right about your dad.”

 

“I was?” Edith queries, unsure as to what Frank is referring to.

 

“You know, when you said your dad likes trains and was keen to see the Flying Scotsman******************* in the Palace of Engineering.” Frank elucidates. “He must be really keen if he’s taken Gran and your mum and Bert back for a second look, considering the crowds.”

 

“Oh Frank!” Edith blushes. “I don’t think he’s that keen.”

 

“What do you mean, Edith? He took Gran, your mum and brother back into the Palace of Engineering to see it. I saw them walk in that direction.” He points through the greenery behind them to the top of the vast Palace of Engineering behind them.

 

“Dad says that’s what he’s doing,” Edith smiles shyly as she colours more and takes another sip of her tea. “But what I think he was really doing was trying to give you and I a little bit of time to ourselves, without anyone else getting under foot as it were.”

 

“Oh!”

 

The look of surprise on Frank’s face shows that he never suspected Edith’s father of even contemplating such a thing, making Edith giggle yet again.

 

“Well,” Frank coughs and clears his throat. “If I do wish to have some quiet time with my best girl, I can do that with her in the Tunnel of Love******************** in the Exhibition Amusement Park.”

 

“Oh Frank!” Edith gasps. “You are awful!”

 

The pair then laugh again and continue to enjoy the last of their hot chips sitting together on the bench, all the while watching the passing parade of visitors to the British Empire Exhibition.

 

*A purpose-built "great national sports ground", called the Empire Stadium, was built for the Exhibition at Wembley. This became Wembley Stadium. Wembley Urban District Council was opposed to the idea, as was The Times, which considered Wembley too far from Central London. The first turf for this stadium was cut, on the site of the old tower, on the 10th of January 1922. 250,000 tons of earth were then removed, and the new structure constructed within ten months, opening well before the rest of the Exhibition was ready. Designed by John William Simpson and Maxwell Ayrton, and built by Sir Robert McAlpine, it could hold 125,000 people, 30,000 of them seated. The building was an unusual mix of Roman imperial and Mughal architecture. Although it incorporated a football pitch, it was not solely intended as a football stadium. Its quarter mile running track, incorporating a 220 yard straight track (the longest in the country) were seen as being at least equally important. The only standard gauge locomotive involved in the construction of the Stadium has survived, and still runs on Sir William McAlpine's private Fawley Hill railway near Henley.

 

**The British Empire Exhibition was a colonial exhibition held at Wembley Park, London England from 23 April to 1 November 1924 and from 9 May to 31 October 1925. In 1920 the British Government decided to site the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Park, on the site of the pleasure gardens created by Edward Watkin in the 1890s. A British Empire Exhibition had first been proposed in 1902, by the British Empire League, and again in 1913. The Russo-Japanese War had prevented the first plan from being developed and World War I put an end to the second, though there had been a Festival of Empire in 1911, held in part at Crystal Palace. One of the reasons for the suggestion was a sense that other powers, like America and Japan, were challenging Britain on the world stage. Despite victory in Great War, this was in some ways even truer in 1919. The country had economic problems and its naval supremacy was being challenged by two of its former allies, the United States and Japan. In 1917 Britain had committed itself eventually to leave India, which effectively signalled the end of the British Empire to anyone who thought about the consequences, while the Dominions had shown little interest in following British foreign policy since the war. It was hoped that the Exhibition would strengthen the bonds within the Empire, stimulate trade and demonstrate British greatness both abroad and at home, where the public was believed to be increasingly uninterested in Empire, preferring other distractions, such as the cinema.

 

***British Malaya refers to a set of states on the Malay Peninsula and the island of Singapore that were brought under British hegemony or control between the late Eighteenth and the mid-Twentieth Century. Unlike the term "British India", which excludes the Indian princely states, British Malaya is often used to refer to the Federated and the Unfederated Malay States, which were British protectorates with their own local rulers, as well as the Straits Settlements, which were under the sovereignty and direct rule of the British Crown, after a period of control by the East India Company.

 

****Ceylon is then old colonial name for Sri Lanka.

 

*****When we think of thermos flasks these days we are often reminded of the plaid and gawdy floral varieties that existed in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Invented in 1892 by Sir James Dewar, a scientist at Oxford University, the "vacuum flask" was not manufactured for commercial use until 1904, when two German glass blowers formed Thermos GmbH. They held a contest to name the "vacuum flask" and a resident of Munich submitted "Thermos", which came from the Greek word "Therme" meaning "hot". In 1907, Thermos GmbH sold the Thermos trademark rights to three independent companies: The American Thermos Bottle Company of Brooklyn, New York; Thermos Limited of Tottenham, England; Canadian Thermos Bottle Co. Ltd. of Montreal, Canada. The three Thermos companies operated independently of each other, yet developed the Thermos vacuum flask into a widely sought after product that was taken on many famous expeditions, including: Schackelton\'s trip to the South Pole; Lieutenant Robert E. Peary\'s trip to the Arctic; Colonel Roosevelt\'s expedition to Mombassa and into the heart of the African Congo with Richard Harding Davis. It even became airborne when the Wright Brothers took it up in their airplane and Count Zepplin carried it up in his air balloon.

 

******‘The Maid with the Flaxen Hair’ (‘La fille aux cheveux de lin’) is a musical composition created for solo piano by French composer Claude Debussy. It is the eighth piece in the composer's first book of Préludes, written between late 1909 and early 1910.

 

*******Armistice Day or Remembrance Day is a memorial day observed in Commonwealth member states since the end of the First World War to honour armed forces members who have died in the line of duty. It falls on the 11th of November every year. Remembrance Day is marked at eleven o’clock (the time that the armistice was declared) with a minute’s silence to honour the fallen. Following a tradition inaugurated by King George V in 1919, the day is also marked by war remembrances in many non-Commonwealth countries.

 

********A Railodock bus was an electric bus used to transport people between the different exhibition buildings on the site of the British Empire Exhibition.

 

*********‘The Enchanted Cottage’ is a 1924 American silent drama film directed by John S. Robertson based upon a 1923 play by Arthur Wing Pinero. Oliver Bashforth (played by the film’s producer, American silent film actor Richard Barthelmess), physically wrecked by the late war and hating himself because of his twisted body and hollow cheeks, breaks his engagement with his boyhood sweetheart and quits his family to seek isolation in a lonely cottage in the woods. There he meets Laura Pennington (May McAvoy), a lonely little governess, whose plainness makes her unattractive to men. They marry and then both commit themselves to intense depression because they are both so ugly. However, with the dawning of real love, both commence to see each other through the beauty of the soul, with the consequence that each appears as handsome to each other as either could wish. In the week of their enchantment, they have found love and they look forward to a future happiness and to the creation of children who will embody the beauty they do not possess.

 

**********The Premier Super Cinema in East Ham was opened on the 12th of March, 1921, replacing the 800 seat capacity 1912 Premier Electric Theatre. The new cinema could seat 2,408 patrons. The Premier Super Cinema was taken over by Provincial Cinematograph Theatres who were taken over by Gaumont British in February 1929. It was renamed the Gaumont from 21st April 1952. The Gaumont was closed by the Rank Organisation on 6th April 1963. After that it became a bingo hall and remained so until 2005. Despite attempts to have it listed as a historic building due to its relatively intact 1921 interior, the Gaumont was demolished in 2009.

 

***********The Hammersmith Palais de Danse, in its last years simply named Hammersmith Palais, was a dance hall and entertainment venue in Hammersmith, London, England that operated from 1919 until 2007. It was the first palais de danse to be built in Britain.

 

************Sir John Berry Hobbs was an English professional cricketer who played for Surrey from 1905 to 1934 and for England in 61 Test matches between 1908 and 1930. Known as "The Master", he is widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket.

 

*************A hangover from the Victorian days of the zoological gardens, when zoos were as much about entertainments as seeing exotic animals, rides on the London Zoo’s elephants and camels were a popular attraction in the 1920s and 30s, and continued through until the 1960s. People often sat or stood along the pathways, feeding the elephants sticky buns and other such foods as they passed within touching distance: a far cry from today’s zoo experience which is far more educational for the visitor, and enjoyable for the animals in residence.

 

**************This incident of the elephants spraying visitors to the British Empire Exhibition with water and eating the ornamental floral beds is based on a true event that happened the following year on the 17th of July 1925, when two elephants, Simla and Saucy went for a bathe in the Wembley Lake. Simla began to attack Saucy for some reason and showers of water rose in all directions, and spectators on the bank of the lake had to flee to avoid being drenched. Desperate efforts were made by the attendants to get Simla out of the lake, for fear of his tusks piercing and killing Saucy, who was an older elephant. Eventually Simla was coaxed to dry land by his Indian attendants, and there consoled himself by lunching substantially on the floral decorations of the lake side!

 

***************The Palaces of Industry and Engineering focussed upon Britan’s expertise, dominance, and capabilities in those areas. For their contribution to the British Empire Exhibition, the British Gas Industry put money towards a British Empire Gas Exhibit in the Palace of Industry, which demonstrated the application of gas in both an industrial and domestic capacity to educate the public in all the ways in which gas could serve households and businesses alike.

 

****************The term “to cough up” might sound funny coming from Edith in the 1920s, but in fact it is a very old Middle English slang term dating back to the time of the Goths invading Britain.

 

*****************A flying boat is a type of fixed-winged seaplane with a hull, allowing it to land on water. It differs from a floatplane in having a fuselage that is purpose-designed for flotation, while floatplanes rely on fuselage-mounted floats for buoyancy. Ascending into common use during the Great War, flying boats rapidly grew in both scale and capability during the interwar period, during which time numerous operators found commercial success with the type. Flying boats were some of the largest aircraft of the first half of the Twentieth Century, exceeded in size only by the bombers developed during the Second World War. Their advantage lay in using water instead of expensive land-based runways, making them the basis for international airlines in the interwar period. They were also commonly used as maritime patrol aircraft and air-sea rescue, particularly during times of conflict.

 

******************Rumbledethumps is a dish that is popular in the Scottish border regions and is perfect for using up leftover mashed potatoes and excess vegetables. Often referred to as the Scottish version of bubble ‘n squeak, rumbledethumps recipes usually contain turnip and cabbage, but really any vegetable leftovers could be used. The vegetable mixture is topped with cheese and then baked until bubbling. The dish can be made the day before and heated up and whilst it can be eaten on its own, makes a nice accompaniment for a hearty stew.

 

*******************No. 4472 Flying Scotsman is a LNER Class A3 4-6-2 "Pacific" steam locomotive built in 1923 for the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) at Doncaster Works to a design of Nigel Gresley. It was employed on long-distance express passenger trains on the East Coast Main Line by LNER and its successors, British Railways' Eastern and North Eastern Regions, notably on The Flying Scotsman service between London King's Cross and Edinburgh Waverley after which it was named. Retired from British Railways in 1963 after covering 2.08 million miles, Flying Scotsman has been described as the world's most famous steam locomotive. It had earned considerable fame in preservation under the ownership of, successively, Alan Pegler, William McAlpine, Tony Marchington, and, since 2004, the National Railway Museum. 4472 became a flagship locomotive for the LNER, representing the company twice at the British Empire Exhibition and in 1928, hauled the inaugural non-stop Flying Scotsman service. It set two world records for steam traction, becoming the first locomotive to reach the officially authenticated speed of 100 miles per hour on the 30th of November 1934, and setting the longest non-stop run of a steam locomotive of 422 miles on the 8th of August 1989 whilst on tour in Australia.

 

********************The Tunnel of Love is an amusement park ride that commenced as an off spin of the late Nineteenth Century American boat ride called ‘old mill’. In early incarnations of old mill attractions, riders of the Tunnel of Love boarded a two-passenger boat that floated along guided tracks throughout dark passages. Many were either a relaxing, romantic rides encouraging cuddling, or they were themed as haunted attractions where couples would cling to one another. The darkness provided a degree of privacy, and the frightening scenes offered a socially acceptable excuse for physical contact during an era when public affection – holding hands, hugging, and kissing – especially between two unmarried people, was considered inappropriate.

 

Although it may look life-sized to you, this idyllic outdoor scene at the British Empire Exhibition is in fact comprised of pieces from my miniatures collection.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

Edith’s pretty straw picture hat decorated with a real fabric ribbon and artificial flowers is an artisan piece and was acquired through Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders miniature shop in the United Kingdom. 1:12 size miniature hats made to such exacting standards of quality and realism are often far more expensive than real hats are. When you think that it would sit comfortably on the tip of your index finger, yet it could cost in excess of $150.00 or £100.00, it is an extravagance. American artists seem to have the monopoly on this skill and some of the hats that I have seen or acquired over the years are remarkable.

 

Edith’s handbag handmade from soft leather is part of a larger collection of hats and bags that I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel.

 

Made of polymer clay glazed to look oily and stuck to miniature newspaper print, the two servings of golden hot chips on the bench were made in England by hand by former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Her work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination. The pie is also a 1:12 miniature artisan piece, but is my an unknown artist, and acquired through Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop in the United Kingdom.

 

The basket I acquired from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering. The Thermos flask came as part of another picnic set I acquired from a miniatures collector through E-Bay. The two enamelled teacups come from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop.

 

The bench is made by Town Hall Miniatures, and acquired through E-Bay.

 

The brick footbath upon which the bench sits a very special piece, and one of my more recent additions to my miniatures collection. Made painstakingly by hand, this was made by my very dear Flickr friend and artist Kim Hagar (www.flickr.com/photos/bkhagar_gallery/), she surprised me with this amazing piece entitled “Wall” as a Christmas gift, with the intention that I use it in my miniatures photos. Each brick has been individually cut and then worn to give texture before being stuck to the backing board and then painted. She has created several floors in the same way for some of her own miniature projects which you can see in her “In Miniature” album here: www.flickr.com/photos/bkhagar_gallery/albums/721777203007....

 

The Union Jack bunting hanging from the trees I made myself.

 

The setting for this scene is my front garden, and the tree behind the bench is a slow growing miniature conifer. I am not sure what variety it is, but it is a Cypress pine.

Tenta, also referred to as Kalavasos-Tenta or Tenda, is an Aceramic Neolithic settlement located in modern Kalavasos near the southern coast of Cyprus. The settlement is approximately 38 kilometres southwest of Larnaca and approximately 45 kilometres south of Nicosia. Tenta occupies a small natural hill on the west side of the Vasilikos valley, close to the Nicosia–Limassol highway.

 

The earliest occupation at the site has been dated to around 8000 BC, which is contemporary with the sites Shillourokambos and Mylouthkia, and notably predating Khirokitia by almost a millennium. It was still settled during the 6th millennium BC, but deserted at some point before the advent of the Cypriotic Ceramic Neolithic.

 

Six seasons of excavation in Tenta occurred from 1947 to 1984. The obtained data is of interest to studies of cultural change in Prehistoric Cyprus because Tenta's architectural remains, artefacts, human burials, flora and fauna have been "virtually unchanged for two millennia, suggesting that there was considerable continuity in social organisation as well as technological and economic practices."

 

Today, the site is open to visitors (with entrance fee), and protected by a characteristic, modern cone-shaped roof. The roof is considered a local landmark, and the site a popular tourist attraction

 

The Vasilikos valley is located in the Larnaca District of southern Cyprus. The valley was known to be abundant in archaeological sites from numerous extensive surveys conducted due to excavations of accidentally discovered sites; however these sites were widely scattered in Cyprus.

 

According to local tradition, the name of the location refers back to 327 AD when Saint Helena, mother of Constantine I, stayed there in a tent (Greek: Tέντα). Helena supposedly pitched her tent after walking up the Vasilikos valley (Greek: Βασιλικός), vasilikos meaning "royal place or land".

 

The archealogical site of Tenta was first reported by Porphyrios Dikaios in 1940 when artefacts were discovered during the construction of a mining railway line. In 1947, Dikaios undertook a two-week archaeological excavation focused 25 metres south of the summit of Tenta. Eleven locals and several students from Brandeis University were employed to assist with the excavation. A detailed report of the excavation was never published, but a plan of the excavation was released in 1960, which showed a trench being excavated approximately five metres below and adjacent to a curvilinear wall.

 

Since many sites of Cyprus had only been fleetingly explored, Vassos Karageorghis, the Director of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus, worked with Ian Todd, who had previously assisted in numerous excavations in Turkey and Iran, to direct the Vasilikos Valley project which included five seasons of excavation in Tenta between 1976 and 1984. The project was sponsored by Brandeis University and funded by the National Science Foundation.

 

To locate sites, Todd walked nineteen different transects across the valley from east to west – from the Kalavasos Dam to the coast. Each transect was positioned equidistant from each other. Problems of the archaeological field survey in Cyprus include erosion as many sites were situated on different gradients, which often affects the estimation of the size of a site as well as makes it more challenging for surveyors to find where artefacts are located. Furthermore, aggradation was also considered to be a potential problem impacting the discovery of sites due to the increase in land elevation.

 

Although the excavations ended in 1984, details about the findings were published as late as 2005.

 

All structures discovered in Tenta are curvilinear and thus from the Aceramic Neolithic period due to neighbouring Neolithic settlements like Khirokitia exhibiting similar features. From the excavations, it was discovered that public buildings were constructed at the summit of Tenta's natural hill, "first in stone and mudbrick, then entirely in mudbrick and finally entirely in stone." Furthermore, homes at the site were unearthed to find that the stone structures were built of limestone with a mixture of diabase locally accessible in the Vasilikos river. The walls of the curvilinear structures stood to one metre or more in height and were determined to vary thickness between 25 and 60 centimetres as well as varied in colour including grey, reddish-brown, light brown, and dark brown. The floors and walls of the buildings were often made of gypsum, lime, or a combination of both as well as "coated with a thin, whitish plaster layer laid on a base of friable mud plaster". The stones of the buildings were predominately found to be laid neatly in parallel as well as had within them platforms, benches and seats. The flat as well as domed roofs of the buildings in Tenta were constructed from branches, reeds, and rammed earth and the surfaces of the walls of the buildings were often intricately decorated such as a "painting depicting two human figures with upraised hands." Furthermore, approximately 40 to 45 structures were excavated in total, and it was estimated that the population in Tenta never exceeded 150 people based on the size and shape of the structures.

 

Approximately one thousand man-made artefacts crafted with stone, animal bone or shell were recovered from the Tenta excavations. The artefacts were found within and outside buildings as well as within soil deposits. All objects were retrieved using a sieve, which assisted in recovering many of the objects which were small and fragmented due to the rubbish that had enveloped them, especially in soil deposits. The artefacts found are predominantly from the Aceramic Neolithic period with the exception of two clay plugs, a characteristic of the Chalcolithic period, which were found in the wall of a building. Artefacts discovered on the settlement include stone vessels, axes, hammerstones, and chipped stone tools like blades. Furthermore, there is evidence of proficiency from the inhabitants of Tenta such as their complex shapes carved in stone vessels. Rare artefacts were also found inside the walls of structures "including pendants, beads, large arrowheads and ground-stone implements covered with ochre." Copious picrolite, a crystal varying from dark green to grey most commonly found in the Kouris Dam, was likely used by the villagers to make jewellery during the Aceramic Neolithic period. Furthermore, chert was used as a tool by the villagers of Tenta to break things by force as well as to start fires because sparks ignite easily when the rock is struck on a hard surface.

A selection of artefacts are displayed in the Cyprus Museum and the Larnaca District Archaeological Museum.

 

Fourteen human burials containing eighteen individuals were excavated at Tenta. The eighteen skeletons were buried in contracted positions and positioned to the internal house walls, within oval pits not accompanied with any gifts or offerings, just beneath the floors or outside the structures. The burials include adults, children and infants buried separately, except the remains of four infants buried together in one pit.

 

The average age at death for males and females was 30.5 years and 36.5 years respectively. This six-year gap between the sexes may be due to limitations of a small sample size as well as poor preservation and age averaging techniques, especially due to the differences in neighbouring Neolithic settlements in which the longevity of males is greater than females. Furthermore, the average height for males and females was 162.9 centimetres (5 ft 4.1 in) and 153.8 centimetres (5 ft 0.6 in), respectively. Analysis of the skeletons' teeth suggest that the inhabitants had generally good dental health as well as a diet sufficient in protein and carbohydrates. This is due to the inhabitants' main diet consisting of plants as well as domesticated or hunted animals like fallow deer, pig and cattle. Moreover, analysis of the eighteen skeletons determined that the inhabitants of Tenta may have suffered from hemolytic anemia and iron-deficiency anemia, as well as having practiced artificial cranial deformation due to 11.1% of them having their skulls bound. Such practices were also common in the neighbouring Neolithic settlement of Khirokitia, and also during later periods in Cyprus such as the Late Bronze Age.

 

The botanical remains from Tenta revealed the subsistence practices in the Aceramic Neolithic period. It was expected that the botanical remains of wheat, barley and various legumes would be found in Tenta based on the earlier excavations from the neighbouring Neolithic settlements of Kastros and Khirokitia. The remains were recovered using a froth flotation process designed by Anthony Legge. According to Todd, "[a]pproximately 10 litres of every excavated deposit were examined and sorted under low power (10×–50×) magnification using a Bausch and Lomb stereo microscope." Components of the plant such as roots, stems and seeds were analysed separately and were compared with modern samples. Only 175 from the 416 botanical remains recovered via froth flotation contained carbon to analyse accurately. There was a smaller amount of carbonised remains to analyse compared to neighbouring Neolithic settlements due to the damage from excavating the remains with picks and trowels. From the 2074 litres sieved out of 7764 litres of carbonised botanical remains via froth flotation, it was discovered that "domesticated plants from the site consist of emmer and einkorn wheat, barley (probably two-row), lentil and possibly pea."

 

The distribution of botanical remains as well as the fire pits and hearths inside and outside the architectural remains were examined and compared to neighbouring Neolithic settlements. It was discovered that more hearths and fire pits were outside and between buildings than inside them, suggesting that the cooking in the period was conducted outside. Two hearths from the site revealed that civilians had gathered wild resources for cooking such as fig, pistachio, grape, olive and plum, but the analysis of the botanical remains did not indicate the specific cooking process or storage practices in the Aceramic Neolithic period

 

From the excavations at Tenta, 2817 faunal bone fragments were recovered. As shown in the table below, the majority of bone fragments (99.7%) were from deer, pig and caprinae (sheep and goat), which highlights that the civilians of Tenta predominately surrounding these mammals coupled with the remaining 0.3% of fragments being cat, fox and rodent. From epiphyseal plate data obtained from the faunal remains, it was found that 72% of deer, 28% of pig, 60% of caprinae were culled as adults. A collection of antlers from deer were also found intact inside three buildings and believed to have been possibly showcased by villagers in Tenta as an achievement of their hunting.

 

The process of recovering the faunal remains involved sieving excavated deposits through all 1 cm, 5 mm and 3 mm meshes.[13] Despite this high standard process of retrieving faunal remains, the bone fragments recovered were fragile and there was a high risk of the bone splitting, which resulted in many of the bones breaking and splintering. Thus, the veracity of any interpretation of the faunal remains may contribute to preservation bias during faunal assemblage. The range of animals recovered in the neighbouring Neolithic settlement of Khirokitia similarly was mostly deer, pig and caprinae with a small representation of cat, fox and rodent in the bone fragments. Hence, the same array of animals – based on the husbanding of pigs and caprines and the hunting of deer – provided the basis for subsistence economies in the Aceramic Neolithic period. The main aim of culling these animals for the Tenta and Khirokitia villagers was to consume their meat, but also most likely use their skin and bones for clothes and tools. Furthermore, cats and foxes were most likely to have been imported by colonists and used for their pelts as well as exterminators of vermin such as rodents.

 

In 1994 to 1995, Vassos Karageorghis commissioned and the Anastasios G. Leventis Foundation funded the construction of a tent-like conical or "pyramidal" structure that improved the protection of the remnants of Tenta from the elements. The shelter consists of glulam beams coated by a PVC membrane and cost US$340,000 over the two year construction phase. The structure has been called a local landmark.

 

Aceramic is defined as "not producing pottery". In archaeology, the term means "without pottery". Aceramic societies usually used bark, basketry, gourds and leather for containers.

 

"Aceramic" is used to describe a culture at any time prior to its development of pottery as well as cultures that lack pottery altogether. A preceramic period is traditionally regarded as occurring in the early stage of the Neolithic period of a culture, but recent findings in Japan and China have pushed the origin of ceramic technology there well back into the Paleolithic era.

 

West Asia

In Western Asian archaeology it is used to refer to a specific early Neolithic period before the development of ceramics, the Middle Eastern Pre-Pottery Neolithic, in which case it is a synonym of preceramic or pre-pottery.

 

The Western Asian Pre-Pottery Neolithic A began roughly around 8500 BC and can be identified with over a half a dozen sites. The period was most prominent in Western Asia in an economy based on the cultivation of crops or the rearing of animals or both. Outside Western Asia Aceramic Neolithic groups are more rare. Aceramic Neolithic villages had many attributes of agricultural communities: large settlement size, substantial architecture, long settlement duration, intensive harvesting of seeds with sickles, equipment and facilities for storing and grinding seeds, and containers. Morphological evidence for domestication of plants comes only from Middle PPNB (Pre-Pottery Neolithic B), and by Late PPNB some animals, notably goats, were domesticated or at least managed in most of the sites.

 

Cyprus

Some of the most famous Aceramic sites are located in the Republic of Cyprus. There was an Early Aceramic Neolithic phase beginning around 8200 BC. The phase can be best thought of as a "colony", or initial settlement of the island. Until the relatively recent discoveries of the Akrotiri and the Early Aceramic Neolithic phases, the Aceramic Neolithic culture known as the Khirokitia culture was thought to be the earliest human settlement on Cyprus, from 7000 to 5000 BC.[5] There are a number of Late Aceramic Neolithic sites throughout the island. The two most important are called Khirokitia and Kalavasos-Tenta. Late Aceramic Cyprus did not have much external contact because of a lack of settlement in the west or northwest during the period. However, Late Aceramic Cyprus was a well-structured society.

 

Americas

The specific term Pre-Ceramic is used for a period in many chronologies of the archaeology of the Americas, typically showing some agriculture and developed textiles but no fired pottery. For example, in the Norte Chico civilization and other cultures of Peru, the cultivation of cotton seems to have been very important in economic and power relations, from around 3200 BC. Here, Cotton Pre-Ceramic may be used as a period. The Pre-Ceramic may be followed by "Ceramic" periods or a formative stage.

 

The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Greek νέος néos 'new' and λίθος líthos 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Europe, Asia and Africa. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts of the world. This "Neolithic package" included the introduction of farming, domestication of animals, and change from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of settlement. The term 'Neolithic' was coined by Sir John Lubbock in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system.

 

The Neolithic began about 12,000 years ago when farming appeared in the Epipalaeolithic Near East, and later in other parts of the world. It lasted in the Near East until the transitional period of the Chalcolithic (Copper Age) from about 6,500 years ago (4500 BC), marked by the development of metallurgy, leading up to the Bronze Age and Iron Age.

 

In other places, the Neolithic followed the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) and then lasted until later. In Ancient Egypt, the Neolithic lasted until the Protodynastic period, c. 3150 BC. In China, it lasted until circa 2000 BC with the rise of the pre-Shang Erlitou culture, and in Scandinavia, the Neolithic lasted until about 2000 BC

A WW2 Invasion Flotation life belt manufactured by Master Tire & Rubber Company and dated October 1944.

This date is significant to me since October 20, 1944 was the date of the invasion of Leyte, Philippines. Granted, if this was produced that month, it wasn't used that month, but it is still a great find in this condition (very good to excellent).

All the connections look brand new, and the tubes are free of cracks and are pliable. The brown streaks are a sealant for the seams. The tan-colored canvas portions of the belt are actually very smooth to the touch.

 

It makes me wonder if my father had something similar when he landed near Olongapo, Luzon in January of 1945. That possibility is why this piece is such an important part of my collection.

Niagara Falls is a group of three waterfalls at the southern end of Niagara Gorge, spanning the border between the province of Ontario in Canada and the state of New York in the United States. The largest of the three is Horseshoe Falls, which straddles the international border of the two countries. It is also known as the Canadian Falls. The smaller American Falls and Bridal Veil Falls lie within the United States. Bridal Veil Falls is separated from Horseshoe Falls by Goat Island and from American Falls by Luna Island, with both islands situated in New York.

 

Formed by the Niagara River, which drains Lake Erie into Lake Ontario, the combined falls have the highest flow rate of any waterfall in North America that has a vertical drop of more than 50 m (160 ft). During peak daytime tourist hours, more than 168,000 m3 (5.9 million cu ft) of water goes over the crest of the falls every minute. Horseshoe Falls is the most powerful waterfall in North America, as measured by flow rate. Niagara Falls is famed for its beauty and is a valuable source of hydroelectric power. Balancing recreational, commercial, and industrial uses has been a challenge for the stewards of the falls since the 19th century.

 

Niagara Falls is 27 km (17 mi) northwest of Buffalo, New York, and 69 km (43 mi) southeast of Toronto, between the twin cities of Niagara Falls, Ontario, and Niagara Falls, New York. Niagara Falls was formed when glaciers receded at the end of the Wisconsin glaciation (the last ice age), and water from the newly formed Great Lakes carved a path over and through the Niagara Escarpment en route to the Atlantic Ocean.

 

Horseshoe Falls is about 57 m (187 ft) high, while the height of the American Falls varies between 21 and 30 m (69 and 98 ft) because of the presence of giant boulders at its base. The larger Horseshoe Falls is about 790 m (2,590 ft) wide, while the American Falls is 320 m (1,050 ft) wide. The distance between the American extremity of Niagara Falls and the Canadian extremity is 1,039 m (3,409 ft).

 

The peak flow over Horseshoe Falls was recorded at 6,370 m3 (225,000 cu ft) per second. The average annual flow rate is 2,400 m3 (85,000 cu ft) per second. Since the flow is a direct function of the Lake Erie water elevation, it typically peaks in late spring or early summer. During the summer months, at least 2,800 m3 (99,000 cu ft) per second of water traverse the falls, some 90% of which goes over Horseshoe Falls, while the balance is diverted to hydroelectric facilities and then on to American Falls and Bridal Veil Falls. This is accomplished by employing a weir – the International Control Dam – with movable gates upstream from Horseshoe Falls.

 

The water flow is halved at night and during the low tourist season winter months and only attains a minimum flow of 1,400 cubic metres (49,000 cu ft) per second. Water diversion is regulated by the 1950 Niagara Treaty and is administered by the International Niagara Board of Control. The verdant green color of the water flowing over Niagara Falls is a byproduct of the estimated 60 tonnes/minute of dissolved salts and rock flour (very finely ground rock) generated by the erosive force of the Niagara River.

 

The Niagara River is an Important Bird Area due to its impact on Bonaparte's gulls, ring-billed gulls, and herring gulls. Several thousand birds migrate and winter in the surrounding area.

 

The features that became Niagara Falls were created by the Wisconsin glaciation about 10,000 years ago. The retreat of the ice sheet left behind a large amount of meltwater (see Lake Algonquin, Lake Chicago, Glacial Lake Iroquois, and Champlain Sea) that filled up the basins that the glaciers had carved, thus creating the Great Lakes as we know them today. Scientists posit there is an old valley, St David's Buried Gorge, buried by glacial drift, at the approximate location of the present Welland Canal.

 

When the ice melted, the upper Great Lakes emptied into the Niagara River, which followed the rearranged topography across the Niagara Escarpment. In time, the river cut a gorge through the north-facing cliff, or cuesta. Because of the interactions of three major rock formations, the rocky bed did not erode evenly. The caprock formation is composed of hard, erosion-resistant limestone and dolomite of the Lockport Formation (Middle Silurian). That hard layer of stone eroded more slowly than the underlying materials. Immediately below the caprock lies the weaker, softer, sloping Rochester Formation (Lower Silurian). This formation is composed mainly of shale, though it has some thin limestone layers. It also contains ancient fossils. In time, the river eroded the soft layer that supported the hard layers, undercutting the hard caprock, which gave way in great chunks. This process repeated countless times, eventually carving out the falls. Submerged in the river in the lower valley, hidden from view, is the Queenston Formation (Upper Ordovician), which is composed of shales and fine sandstones. All three formations were laid down in an ancient sea, their differences of character deriving from changing conditions within that sea.

 

About 10,900 years ago, the Niagara Falls was between present-day Queenston, Ontario, and Lewiston, New York, but erosion of the crest caused the falls to retreat approximately 6.8 miles (10.9 km) southward. The shape of Horseshoe Falls has changed through the process of erosion, evolving from a small arch to a horseshoe bend to the present day V-shape. Just upstream from the falls' current location, Goat Island splits the course of the Niagara River, resulting in the separation of Horseshoe Falls to the west from the American and Bridal Veil Falls to the east. Engineering has slowed erosion and recession.

 

Future of the falls

The current rate of erosion is approximately 30 centimeters (0.98 feet) per year, down from a historical average of 0.91 m (3.0 ft) per year. At this rate, in about 50,000 years Niagara Falls will have eroded the remaining 32 km (20 mi) to Lake Erie, and the falls will cease to exist.

 

Preservation efforts

In the 1870s, sightseers had limited access to Niagara Falls and often had to pay for a glimpse, and industrialization threatened to carve up Goat Island to further expand commercial development. Other industrial encroachments and lack of public access led to a conservation movement in the U.S. known as Free Niagara, led by such notables as Hudson River School artist Frederic Edwin Church, landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted, and architect Henry Hobson Richardson. Church approached Lord Dufferin, governor-general of Canada, with a proposal for international discussions on the establishment of a public park.

 

Goat Island was one of the inspirations for the American side of the effort. William Dorsheimer, moved by the scene from the island, brought Olmsted to Buffalo in 1868 to design a city park system, which helped promote Olmsted's career. In 1879, the New York state legislature commissioned Olmsted and James T. Gardner to survey the falls and to create the single most important document in the Niagara preservation movement, a "Special Report on the preservation of Niagara Falls". The report advocated for state purchase, restoration and preservation through public ownership of the scenic lands surrounding Niagara Falls. Restoring the former beauty of the falls was described in the report as a "sacred obligation to mankind". In 1883, New York Governor Grover Cleveland drafted legislation authorizing acquisition of lands for a state reservation at Niagara, and the Niagara Falls Association, a private citizens group founded in 1882, mounted a great letter-writing campaign and petition drive in support of the park. Professor Charles Eliot Norton and Olmsted were among the leaders of the public campaign, while New York Governor Alonzo Cornell opposed.

 

Preservationists' efforts were rewarded on April 30, 1885, when Governor David B. Hill signed legislation creating the Niagara Reservation, New York's first state park. New York State began to purchase land from developers, under the charter of the Niagara Reservation State Park. In the same year, the province of Ontario established the Queen Victoria Niagara Falls Park for the same purpose. On the Canadian side, the Niagara Parks Commission governs land usage along the entire course of the Niagara River, from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario.

 

In 1887, Olmsted and Calvert Vaux issued a supplemental report detailing plans to restore the falls. Their intent was "to restore and conserve the natural surroundings of the Falls of Niagara, rather than to attempt to add anything thereto", and the report anticipated fundamental questions, such as how to provide access without destroying the beauty of the falls, and how to restore natural landscapes damaged by man. They planned a park with scenic roadways, paths and a few shelters designed to protect the landscape while allowing large numbers of visitors to enjoy the falls. Commemorative statues, shops, restaurants, and a 1959 glass and metal observation tower were added later. Preservationists continue to strive to strike a balance between Olmsted's idyllic vision and the realities of administering a popular scenic attraction.

 

Preservation efforts continued well into the 20th century. J. Horace McFarland, the Sierra Club, and the Appalachian Mountain Club persuaded the United States Congress in 1906 to enact legislation to preserve the falls by regulating the waters of the Niagara River. The act sought, in cooperation with the Canadian government, to restrict diversion of water, and a treaty resulted in 1909 that limited the total amount of water diverted from the falls by both nations to approximately 56,000 cubic feet per second (1,600 m3/s). That limitation remained in effect until 1950.

 

Erosion control efforts have always been of importance. Underwater weirs redirect the most damaging currents, and the top of the falls has been strengthened. In June 1969, the Niagara River was completely diverted from American Falls for several months through construction of a temporary rock and earth dam. During this time, two bodies were removed from under the falls, including a man who had been seen jumping over the falls, and the body of a woman, which was discovered once the falls dried. While Horseshoe Falls absorbed the extra flow, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers studied the riverbed and mechanically bolted and strengthened any faults they found; faults that would, if left untreated, have hastened the retreat of American Falls. A plan to remove the huge mound of talus deposited in 1954 was abandoned owing to cost, and in November 1969, the temporary dam was dynamited, restoring flow to American Falls. Even after these undertakings, Luna Island, the small piece of land between the American Falls and Bridal Veil Falls, remained off limits to the public for years owing to fears that it was unstable and could collapse into the gorge.

 

Commercial interests have continued to encroach on the land surrounding the state park, including the construction of several tall buildings (most of them hotels) on the Canadian side. The result is a significant alteration and urbanisation of the landscape. One study found that the tall buildings changed the breeze patterns and increased the number of mist days from 29 per year to 68 per year, but another study disputed this idea.

 

In 2013, New York State began an effort to renovate Three Sisters Islands located south of Goat Island. Funds were used from the re-licensing of the New York Power Authority hydroelectric plant downriver in Lewiston, New York, to rebuild walking paths on the Three Sisters Islands and to plant native vegetation on the islands. The state also renovated the area around Prospect Point at the brink of American Falls in the state park.

 

Toponymy

Theories differ as to the origin of the name of the falls. The Native American word Ongiara means thundering water; The New York Times used this in 1925. According to Iroquoian scholar Bruce Trigger, Niagara is derived from the name given to a branch of the local native Neutral Confederacy, who are described as the Niagagarega people on several late-17th-century French maps of the area. According to George R. Stewart, it comes from the name of an Iroquois town called Onguiaahra, meaning "point of land cut in two". In 1847, an Iroquois interpreter stated that the name came from Jaonniaka-re, meaning "noisy point or portage". To Mohawks, the name refers to "the neck", pronounced "onyara"; the portage or neck of land between lakes Erie and Ontario onyara.

 

History

Many figures have been suggested as first circulating a European eyewitness description of Niagara Falls. The Frenchman Samuel de Champlain visited the area as early as 1604 during his exploration of what is now Canada, and members of his party reported to him the spectacular waterfalls, which he described in his journals. The first description of the falls is credited to Belgian missionary, Father Louis Hennepin in 1677, after traveling with the explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, thus bringing the falls to the attention of Europeans. French Jesuit missionary Paul Ragueneau likely visited the falls some 35 years before Hennepin's visit while working among the Huron First Nation in Canada. Jean de Brébeuf also may have visited the falls, while spending time with the Neutral Nation. The Finnish-Swedish naturalist Pehr Kalm explored the area in the early 18th century and is credited with the first scientific description of the falls. In 1762, Captain Thomas Davies, a British Army officer and artist, surveyed the area and painted the watercolor, An East View of the Great Cataract of Niagara, the first eyewitness painting of the falls.

 

During the 19th century, tourism became popular, and by the mid-century, it was the area's main industry. Theodosia Burr Alston (daughter of Vice President Aaron Burr) and her husband Joseph Alston were the first recorded couple to honeymoon there in 1801. Napoleon Bonaparte's brother Jérôme visited with his bride in the early 19th century. In 1825, British explorer John Franklin visited the falls while passing through New York en route to Cumberland House as part of his second Arctic expedition, calling them "so justly celebrated as the first in the world for grandeur".

 

In 1843, Frederick Douglass joined the American Anti-Slavery Society's "One Hundred Conventions" tour throughout New York and the midwest. Sometime on this tour, Douglass visited Niagara Falls and wrote a brief account of the experience: "When I came into its awful presence the power of discription failed me, an irrisistible power closed my lips." Being on the Canadian border, Niagara Falls was on one of the routes of the Underground Railroad. The falls were also a popular tourist attraction for Southern slaveowners, who would bring their enslaved workers on the trip. "Many a time the trusted body-servant, or slave-girl, would leave master or mistress in the discharge of some errand, and never come back." This sometimes led to conflict. Early town father Peter Porter assisted slavecatchers in finding runaway slaves, even leading, in the case of runaway Solomon Moseby, to a riot in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada. Much of this history is memorialized in the Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Center. After the American Civil War, the New York Central Railroad publicized Niagara Falls as a focus of pleasure and honeymoon visits. After World War II, the auto industry, along with local tourism boards, began to promote Niagara honeymoons.

 

In about 1840, the English industrial chemist Hugh Lee Pattinson traveled to Canada, stopping at Niagara Falls long enough to make the earliest known photograph of the falls, a daguerreotype in the collection of Newcastle University. It was once believed that the small figure standing silhouetted with a top hat was added by an engraver working from imagination as well as the daguerreotype as his source, but the figure is clearly present in the photograph. Because of the very long exposure required, of ten minutes or more, the figure is assumed by Canada's Niagara Parks agency to be Pattinson. The image is left-right inverted and taken from the Canadian side. Pattinson made other photographs of Horseshoe Falls; these were then transferred to engravings to illustrate Noël Marie Paymal Lerebours' Excursions Daguerriennes (Paris, 1841–1864).[55]

 

On August 6, 1918, an iron scow became stuck on the rocks above the falls. The two men on the scow were rescued, but the vessel remained trapped on rocks in the river, and is still visible there in a deteriorated state, although its position shifted by 50 meters (160 ft) during a storm on October 31, 2019. Daredevil William "Red" Hill Sr. was particularly praised for his role in the rescue.

 

After the First World War, tourism boomed as automobiles made getting to the falls much easier. The story of Niagara Falls in the 20th century is largely that of efforts to harness the energy of the falls for hydroelectric power, and to control the development on both sides that threaten the area's natural beauty. Before the late 20th century, the northeastern end of Horseshoe Falls was in the United States, flowing around the Terrapin Rocks, which were once connected to Goat Island by a series of bridges. In 1955, the area between the rocks and Goat Island was filled in, creating Terrapin Point. In the early 1980s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers filled in more land and built diversion dams and retaining walls to force the water away from Terrapin Point. Altogether, 400 ft (120 m) of Horseshoe Falls were eliminated, including 100 ft (30 m) on the Canadian side. According to author Ginger Strand, the Horseshoe Falls is now entirely in Canada. Other sources say "most of" Horseshoe Falls is in Canada.

 

The only recorded freeze-up of the river and falls was caused by an ice jam on March 29, 1848. No water (or at best a trickle) fell for as much as 40 hours. Waterwheels stopped, and mills and factories shut down for having no power. In 1912, American Falls was completely frozen, but the other two falls kept flowing. Although the falls commonly ice up most winters, the river and the falls do not freeze completely. The years 1885, 1902, 1906, 1911, 1932, 1936, 2014, 2017 and 2019 are noted for partial freezing of the falls. A so-called ice bridge was common in certain years at the base of the falls and was used by people who wanted to cross the river before bridges had been built. During some winters, the ice sheet was as thick as 40 to 100 feet (12 to 30 m), but that thickness has not occurred since 1954. The ice bridge of 1841 was said to be at least 100 feet thick. On February 12, 1912, the ice bridge which had formed on January 15 began breaking up while people were still on it. Many escaped, but three died during the event, later named the Ice Bridge Tragedy.

 

Bridge crossings

A number of bridges have spanned the Niagara River in the general vicinity of the falls. The first, not far from the whirlpool, was a suspension bridge above the gorge. It opened for use by the public in July 1848 and remained in use until 1855. A second bridge in the Upper Falls area was commissioned, with two levels or decks, one for use by the Great Western Railway. This Niagara Falls Suspension Bridge opened in 1855. It was used by conductors on the Underground Railroad to escort runaway slaves to Canada. In 1882, the Grand Trunk Railway took over control of the second deck after it absorbed the Great Western company. Significant structural improvements were made in the late 1870s and then in 1886; this bridge remained in use until 1897.

 

Because of the volume of traffic, the decision was made to construct a new arch bridge nearby, under and around the existing bridge. After it opened in September 1897, a decision was made to remove and scrap the railway suspension bridge. This new bridge was initially known as the Niagara Railway Arch, or Lower Steel Arch Bridge; it had two decks, the lower one used for carriages and the upper for trains. In 1937, it was renamed the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge and remains in use today. All of the structures built up to that time were referred to as Lower Niagara bridges and were some distance from the falls.

 

The first bridge in the so-called Upper Niagara area (closer to the falls) was a two-level suspension structure that opened in January 1869; it was destroyed during a severe storm in January 1889. The replacement was built quickly and opened in May 1889. In order to handle heavy traffic, a second bridge was commissioned, slightly closer to American Falls. This one was a steel bridge and opened to traffic in June 1897; it was known as the Upper Steel Arch Bridge but was often called the Honeymoon Bridge. The single level included a track for trolleys and space for carriages and pedestrians. The design led to the bridge being very close to the surface of the river and in January 1938, an ice jam twisted the steel frame of the bridge which later collapsed on January 27, 1938.

 

Another Lower Niagara bridge had been commissioned in 1883 by Cornelius Vanderbilt for use by railways at a location roughly approximately 200 feet south of the Railway Suspension Bridge. This one was of an entirely different design; it was a cantilever bridge to provide greater strength. The Niagara Cantilever Bridge had two cantilevers which were joined by steel sections; it opened officially in December 1883, and improvements were made over the years for a stronger structure. As rail traffic was increasing, the Michigan Central Railroad company decided to build a new bridge in 1923, to be located between the Lower Steel Arch Bridge and the Cantilever Bridge. The Michigan Central Railway Bridge opened in February 1925 and remained in use until the early 21st century. The Cantilever Bridge was removed and scrapped after the new rail bridge opened. Nonetheless, it was inducted into the North America Railway Hall of Fame in 2006.

 

There was a lengthy dispute as to which agency should build the replacement for the Niagara Railway Arch, or Lower Steel Arch Bridge in the Upper Niagara area. When that was resolved, construction of a steel bridge commenced in February 1940. Named the Rainbow Bridge, and featuring two lanes for traffic separated by a barrier, it opened in November 1941 and remains in use today.

 

Industry and commerce

The enormous energy of Niagara Falls has long been recognized as a potential source of power. The first known effort to harness the waters was in 1750, when Daniel Joncaire built a small canal above the falls to power his sawmill. Augustus and Peter Porter purchased this area and all of American Falls in 1805 from the New York state government, and enlarged the original canal to provide hydraulic power for their gristmill and tannery. In 1853, the Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power and Mining Company was chartered, which eventually constructed the canals that would be used to generate electricity. In 1881, under the leadership of Jacob F. Schoellkopf, the Niagara River's first hydroelectric generating station was built. The water fell 86 feet (26 m) and generated direct current electricity, which ran the machinery of local mills and lit up some of the village streets.

 

The Niagara Falls Power Company, a descendant of Schoellkopf's firm, formed the Cataract Company headed by Edward Dean Adams, with the intent of expanding Niagara Falls' power capacity. In 1890, a five-member International Niagara Commission headed by Sir William Thomson among other distinguished scientists deliberated on the expansion of Niagara hydroelectric capacity based on seventeen proposals but could not select any as the best combined project for hydraulic development and distribution. In 1893, Westinghouse Electric (which had built the smaller-scale Ames Hydroelectric Generating Plant near Ophir, Colorado, two years earlier) was hired to design a system to generate alternating current on Niagara Falls, and three years after that a large-scale AC power system was created (activated on August 26, 1895). The Adams Power Plant Transformer House remains as a landmark of the original system.

 

By 1896, financing from moguls including J. P. Morgan, John Jacob Astor IV, and the Vanderbilts had fueled the construction of giant underground conduits leading to turbines generating upwards of 100,000 horsepower (75 MW), sent as far as Buffalo, 20 mi (32 km) away. Some of the original designs for the power transmission plants were created by the Swiss firm Faesch & Piccard, which also constructed the original 5,000 hp (3.7 MW) waterwheels. Private companies on the Canadian side also began to harness the energy of the falls. The Government of Ontario eventually brought power transmission operations under public control in 1906, distributing Niagara's energy to various parts of the Canadian province.

 

Other hydropower plants were being built along the Niagara River. But in 1956, disaster struck when the region's largest hydropower station was partially destroyed in a landslide. This drastically reduced power production and put tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs at stake. In 1957, Congress passed the Niagara Redevelopment Act, which granted the New York Power Authority the right to fully develop the United States' share of the Niagara River's hydroelectric potential.

 

In 1961, when the Niagara Falls hydroelectric project went online, it was the largest hydropower facility in the Western world. Today, Niagara is still the largest electricity producer in New York state, with a generating capacity of 2.4 GW. Up to 1,420 cubic metres (380,000 US gal) of water per second is diverted from the Niagara River through conduits under the city of Niagara Falls to the Lewiston and Robert Moses power plants. Currently between 50% and 75% of the Niagara River's flow is diverted via four huge tunnels that arise far upstream from the waterfalls. The water then passes through hydroelectric turbines that supply power to nearby areas of Canada and the United States before returning to the river well past the falls. When electrical demand is low, the Lewiston units can operate as pumps to transport water from the lower bay back up to the plant's reservoir, allowing this water to be used again during the daytime when electricity use peaks. During peak electrical demand, the same Lewiston pumps are reversed and become generators.

 

To preserve Niagara Falls' natural beauty, a 1950 treaty signed by the U.S. and Canada limited water usage by the power plants. The treaty allows higher summertime diversion at night when tourists are fewer and during the winter months when there are even fewer tourists. This treaty, designed to ensure an "unbroken curtain of water" flowing over the falls, states that during daylight time during the tourist season (April 1 to October 31) there must be 100,000 cubic feet per second (2,800 m3/s) of water flowing over the falls, and during the night and off-tourist season there must be 50,000 cubic feet per second (1,400 m3/s) of water flowing over the falls. This treaty is monitored by the International Niagara Board of Control, using a NOAA gauging station above the falls. During winter, the Power Authority of New York works with Ontario Power Generation to prevent ice on the Niagara River from interfering with power production or causing flooding of shoreline property. One of their joint efforts is an 8,800-foot-long (2,700 m) ice boom, which prevents the buildup of ice, yet allows water to continue flowing downstream. In addition to minimum water volume, the crest of Horseshoe falls was reduced to maintain an uninterrupted "curtain of water".

 

In August 2005, Ontario Power Generation, which is responsible for the Sir Adam Beck stations, started a major civil engineering project, called the Niagara Tunnel Project, to increase power production by building a new 12.7-metre (42 ft) diameter, 10.2-kilometre-long (6.3 mi) water diversion tunnel. It was officially placed into service in March 2013, helping to increase the generating complex's nameplate capacity by 150 megawatts. It did so by tapping water from farther up the Niagara River than was possible with the preexisting arrangement. The tunnel provided new hydroelectricity for approximately 160,000 homes.

 

Transport

Ships can bypass Niagara Falls by means of the Welland Canal, which was improved and incorporated into the Saint Lawrence Seaway in the mid-1950s. While the seaway diverted water traffic from nearby Buffalo and led to the demise of its steel and grain mills, other industries in the Niagara River valley flourished with the help of the electric power produced by the river. However, since the 1970s the region has declined economically.

 

The cities of Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, and Niagara Falls, New York, United States, are connected by two international bridges. The Rainbow Bridge, just downriver from the falls, affords the closest view of the falls and is open to non-commercial vehicle traffic and pedestrians. The Whirlpool Rapids Bridge lies one mile (1.6 km) north of the Rainbow Bridge and is the oldest bridge over the Niagara River. Nearby Niagara Falls International Airport and Buffalo Niagara International Airport were named after the waterfall, as were Niagara University, countless local businesses, and even an asteroid.

 

Over the falls

The first recorded publicity stunt using the Falls was the wreck of the schooner Michigan in 1827. Local hotel owners acquired a former Lake Erie freighter, loaded it with animals and effigies of people, towed it to a spot above the falls and let it plunge over the brink. Admission of fifty cents was charged.

 

In October 1829, Sam Patch, who called himself "the Yankee Leapster", jumped from a high tower into the gorge below the falls and survived; this began a long tradition of daredevils trying to go over the falls. Englishman Captain Matthew Webb, the first man to swim the English Channel, drowned in 1883 trying to swim the rapids downriver from the falls.

 

On October 24, 1901, 63-year-old Michigan school teacher Annie Edson Taylor became the first person to go over the falls in a barrel as a publicity stunt; she survived, bleeding, but otherwise unharmed. Soon after exiting the barrel, she said, "No one ought ever do that again." Days before Taylor's attempt, her domestic cat was sent over the falls in her barrel to test its strength. The cat survived the plunge unharmed and later posed with Taylor in photographs. Since Taylor's historic ride, over a dozen people have intentionally gone over the falls in or on a device, despite her advice. Some have survived unharmed, but others have drowned or been severely injured. Survivors face charges and stiff fines, as it is now illegal, on both sides of the border, to attempt to go over the falls. Charles Stephens, a 58-year-old barber from Bristol, England, went over the falls in a wooden barrel in July 1920 and was the first person to die in an endeavor of this type. Bobby Leach went over Horseshoe Falls in a crude steel barrel in 1911 and needed rescuing by William "Red" Hill Sr. Hill again came to the rescue of Leach following his failed attempt to swim the Niagara Gorge in 1920. In 1928, "Smiling Jean" Lussier tried an entirely different concept, going over the falls in a large rubber ball; he was successful and survived the ordeal.

  

Annie Edson Taylor posing with her wooden barrel (1901)

In the "Miracle at Niagara", on July 9, 1960, Roger Woodward, a seven-year-old American boy, was swept over Horseshoe Falls after the boat in which he was cruising lost power; two tourists pulled his 17-year-old sister Deanne from the river only 20 ft (6.1 m) from the lip of the Horseshoe Falls at Goat Island. Minutes later, Woodward was plucked from the roiling plunge pool beneath Horseshoe Falls after grabbing a life ring thrown to him by the crew of the Maid of the Mist boat. The children's uncle, Jim Honeycutt, who had been steering the boat, was swept over the edge to his death.

 

On July 2, 1984, Canadian Karel Soucek from Hamilton, Ontario, plunged over Horseshoe Falls in a barrel with only minor injuries. Soucek was fined $500 for performing the stunt without a license. In 1985, he was fatally injured while attempting to re-create the Niagara drop at the Houston Astrodome. His aim was to climb into a barrel hoisted to the rafters of the Astrodome and to drop 180 ft (55 m) into a water tank on the floor. After his barrel released prematurely, it hit the side of the tank, and he died the next day from his injuries.

 

In August 1985, Steve Trotter, an aspiring stuntman from Rhode Island, became the youngest person ever (age 22) and the first American in 25 years to go over the falls in a barrel. Ten years later, Trotter went over the falls again, becoming the second person to go over the falls twice and survive. It was also the second "duo"; Lori Martin joined Trotter for the barrel ride over the falls. They survived the fall, but their barrel became stuck at the bottom of the falls, requiring a rescue.

 

On September 28, 1989, Niagara natives Peter DeBernardi and Jeffery James Petkovich became the first "team" to make it over the falls in a two-person barrel. The stunt was conceived by DeBenardi, who wanted to discourage youth from following in his path of addictive drug use. The pair emerged shortly after going over with minor injuries and were charged with performing an illegal stunt under the Niagara Parks Act.

 

On June 5, 1990, Jesse Sharp, a whitewater canoeist from Tennessee paddled over the falls in a closed deck canoe. He chose not to wear a helmet to make his face more visible for photographs of the event. He also did not wear a life vest because he believed it would hinder his escape from the hydraulics at the base of the falls. His boat flushed out of the falls, but his body was never found. On September 27, 1993, John "David" Munday, of Caistor Centre, Ontario, completed his second journey over the falls. On October 1, 1995, Robert Douglas "Firecracker" Overacker went over the falls on a Jet Ski to raise awareness for the homeless. His rocket-propelled parachute failed to open and he plunged to his death. Overacker's body was recovered before he was pronounced dead at Niagara General Hospital.

 

Kirk Jones of Canton, Michigan, became the first known person to survive a plunge over Horseshoe Falls without a flotation device on October 20, 2003. According to some reports, Jones had attempted to commit suicide, but he survived the fall with only battered ribs, scrapes, and bruises. Jones tried going over the falls again in 2017, using a large inflatable ball, but died in the process. Later reports revealed that Jones had arranged for a friend to shoot video clips of his stunt.

 

On March 11, 2009, a man survived an unprotected trip over Horseshoe Falls. When rescued from the river he suffered from severe hypothermia and a large wound to his head. His identity was never released. Eyewitnesses reported seeing the man intentionally enter the water. On May 21, 2012, an unidentified man became the fourth person to survive an unprotected trip over Horseshoe Falls. Eyewitness reports show he "deliberately jumped" into the Niagara River after climbing over a railing. On July 8, 2019, at roughly 4 am, officers responded to a report of a person in crisis at the brink of the Canadian side of the falls. Once officers got to the scene, the man climbed the retaining wall, jumped into the river and went over Horseshoe Falls. Authorities subsequently began to search the lower Niagara River basin, where the man was found alive but injured sitting on the rocks at the water's edge.

 

Tightrope walkers

Tightrope walkers drew huge crowds to witness their exploits. Their wires ran across the gorge, near the current Rainbow Bridge, not over the waterfall. Jean François "Blondin" Gravelet was the first to cross Niagara Gorge on June 30, 1859, and did so again eight times that year. His most difficult crossing occurred on August 14, when he carried his manager, Harry Colcord, on his back.[114] His final crossing, on September 8, 1860, was witnessed by the Prince of Wales. Author Ginger Strand argues that these performances may have had symbolic meanings at the time relating to slavery and abolition.

 

Between 1859 and 1896 a wire-walking craze emerged, resulting in frequent feats over the river below the falls. One inexperienced walker slid down his safety rope. Only one man fell to his death, at night and under mysterious circumstances, at the anchoring place for his wire.

 

Maria Spelterini, a 23-year-old Italian was the first and only woman to cross the Niagara River gorge; she did so on a tightrope on July 8, 1876. She repeated the stunt several times during the same month. During one crossing she was blindfolded and during another, her ankles and wrists were handcuffed.

 

Among the many competitors was Ontario's William Hunt, who billed himself as "The Great Farini"; his first crossing was in 1860. Farini competed with Blondin in performing outrageous stunts over the gorge. On August 8, 1864, however, an attempt failed and he needed to be rescued.

 

On June 15, 2012, high wire artist Nik Wallenda became the first person to walk across the falls area in 116 years, after receiving special permission from both governments. The full length of his tightrope was 1,800 feet (550 m). Wallenda crossed near the brink of Horseshoe Falls, unlike walkers who had crossed farther downstream. According to Wallenda, it was the longest unsupported tightrope walk in history. He carried his passport on the trip and was required to present it upon arrival on the Canadian side of the falls.

 

Tourism

A ring-billed gull flies by a rainbow over the Horseshoe Falls

Peak visitor traffic occurs in the summertime, when Niagara Falls is both a daytime and evening attraction. From the Canadian side, floodlights illuminate both sides of the falls for several hours after dark (until midnight). The number of visitors in 2007 was expected to total 20 million, and by 2009 the annual rate was expected to top 28 million tourists.

 

The oldest and best known tourist attraction at Niagara Falls is the Maid of the Mist boat cruise, named for an alleged ancient Ongiara Indian mythical character, which has carried passengers into the rapids immediately below the falls since 1846. Cruise boats operate from boat docks on both sides of the falls, with the Maid of the Mist operating from the American side and Hornblower Cruises (originally Maid of the Mist until 2014) from the Canadian side. In 1996, Native American groups threatened to boycott the boat companies if they would not stop playing what they said was a fake story on their boats. The Maid of the Mist dropped the audio.

 

From the U.S. side, American Falls can be viewed from walkways along Prospect Point Park, which also features the Prospect Point Observation Tower and a boat dock for the Maid of the Mist. Goat Island offers more views of the falls and is accessible by foot and automobile traffic by bridge above American Falls. From Goat Island, the Cave of the Winds is accessible by elevator and leads hikers to a point beneath Bridal Veil Falls. Also on Goat Island are the Three Sisters Islands, the Power Portal where a statue of Nikola Tesla (the inventor whose patents for the AC induction motor and other devices for AC power transmission helped make the harnessing of the falls possible) can be seen, and a walking path that enables views of the rapids, the Niagara River, the gorge, and all of the falls. Most of these attractions lie within the Niagara Falls State Park.

 

The Niagara Scenic Trolley offers guided trips along American Falls and around Goat Island. Panoramic and aerial views of the falls can also be viewed by helicopter. The Niagara Gorge Discovery Center showcases the natural and local history of Niagara Falls and the Niagara Gorge. A casino and luxury hotel was opened in Niagara Falls, New York, by the Seneca Indian tribe. The Seneca Niagara Casino & Hotel occupies the former Niagara Falls Convention Center. The new hotel is the first addition to the city's skyline since completion of the United Office Building in the 1920s.

 

On the Canadian side, Queen Victoria Park features manicured gardens, platforms offering views of American, Bridal Veil, and Horseshoe Falls, and underground walkways leading into observation rooms that yield the illusion of being within the falling waters. Along the Niagara River, the Niagara River Recreational Trail runs 35 mi (56 km) from Fort Erie to Fort George, and includes many historical sites from the War of 1812.

 

The observation deck of the nearby Skylon Tower offers the highest view of the falls, and in the opposite direction gives views as far as Toronto. Along with the Tower Hotel (built as the Seagrams Tower, later renamed the Heritage Tower, the Royal Inn Tower, the Royal Center Tower, the Panasonic Tower, the Minolta Tower, and most recently the Konica Minolta Tower before receiving its current name in 2010), it is one of two towers in Canada with a view of the falls. The Whirlpool Aero Car, built in 1916 from a design by Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo, is a cable car that takes passengers over the Niagara Whirlpool on the Canadian side. The Journey Behind the Falls consists of an observation platform and series of tunnels near the bottom of the Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side. There are two casinos on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, the Niagara Fallsview Casino Resort and Casino Niagara.

 

Touring by helicopter over the falls, from both the US and the Canadian side, was described by The New York Times as still popular a year after a serious crash. Although The New York Times had long before described attempting to tour the falls as "bent on suicide" and despite a number of fatal crashes, the "as many as 100 eight-minute rides each day" are hard to regulate; two countries and various government agencies would have to coordinate. These flights have been available "since the early 1960s."

A man floating in a very beautiful Trillium Lake in Oregon casts his rod in hopes of catching something while fly fishing.

 

▪ my blog

▪ my facebook

▪ my twitter

▪ my website

▪ my youtube

▪ my e-mail

 

© 2012 Todd Klassy. All Rights Reserved.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reminds visitors at Corps lakes that adding a few extra items on a life jacket can help aid in a swift rescue. This public service announcement is in conjunction with the National Water Safety Program campaign, National Water Safety Program campaign “Life Jackets Worn…Nobody Mourns.” #ILoveThisLifeJacket #PrepareAthon #WearIt (USACE Video by Ashley Webster)

Taken in one of the the lower sections of Waggon Creek, a cut that runs for about 3.5km between steep limestone walls covered in moss and ferns. I had to swim the deeper sections using my pack for flotation, quite unnerving as the water was black with tanin and I had thoughts of massive eels biting my fingers off playing through my mind! A stunning place though, and one I would love to get back to again.

 

Take a look at my Waggon Creek album which contains this plus many more images taken along the length of the cut that I was able to explore. Unfortunately the water was very cold and the cut acted as a wind tunnel once the morning breeze came up, it wasn't too long before I was chilled to the bone and I had to turn back.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/peteprue/albums/72157632290462408

 

Best viewed on BLACK

Cold water suit, flotation devices and waders

Tenta, also referred to as Kalavasos-Tenta or Tenda, is an Aceramic Neolithic settlement located in modern Kalavasos near the southern coast of Cyprus. The settlement is approximately 38 kilometres southwest of Larnaca and approximately 45 kilometres south of Nicosia. Tenta occupies a small natural hill on the west side of the Vasilikos valley, close to the Nicosia–Limassol highway.

 

The earliest occupation at the site has been dated to around 8000 BC, which is contemporary with the sites Shillourokambos and Mylouthkia, and notably predating Khirokitia by almost a millennium. It was still settled during the 6th millennium BC, but deserted at some point before the advent of the Cypriotic Ceramic Neolithic.

 

Six seasons of excavation in Tenta occurred from 1947 to 1984. The obtained data is of interest to studies of cultural change in Prehistoric Cyprus because Tenta's architectural remains, artefacts, human burials, flora and fauna have been "virtually unchanged for two millennia, suggesting that there was considerable continuity in social organisation as well as technological and economic practices."

 

Today, the site is open to visitors (with entrance fee), and protected by a characteristic, modern cone-shaped roof. The roof is considered a local landmark, and the site a popular tourist attraction

 

The Vasilikos valley is located in the Larnaca District of southern Cyprus. The valley was known to be abundant in archaeological sites from numerous extensive surveys conducted due to excavations of accidentally discovered sites; however these sites were widely scattered in Cyprus.

 

According to local tradition, the name of the location refers back to 327 AD when Saint Helena, mother of Constantine I, stayed there in a tent (Greek: Tέντα). Helena supposedly pitched her tent after walking up the Vasilikos valley (Greek: Βασιλικός), vasilikos meaning "royal place or land".

 

The archealogical site of Tenta was first reported by Porphyrios Dikaios in 1940 when artefacts were discovered during the construction of a mining railway line. In 1947, Dikaios undertook a two-week archaeological excavation focused 25 metres south of the summit of Tenta. Eleven locals and several students from Brandeis University were employed to assist with the excavation. A detailed report of the excavation was never published, but a plan of the excavation was released in 1960, which showed a trench being excavated approximately five metres below and adjacent to a curvilinear wall.

 

Since many sites of Cyprus had only been fleetingly explored, Vassos Karageorghis, the Director of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus, worked with Ian Todd, who had previously assisted in numerous excavations in Turkey and Iran, to direct the Vasilikos Valley project which included five seasons of excavation in Tenta between 1976 and 1984. The project was sponsored by Brandeis University and funded by the National Science Foundation.

 

To locate sites, Todd walked nineteen different transects across the valley from east to west – from the Kalavasos Dam to the coast. Each transect was positioned equidistant from each other. Problems of the archaeological field survey in Cyprus include erosion as many sites were situated on different gradients, which often affects the estimation of the size of a site as well as makes it more challenging for surveyors to find where artefacts are located. Furthermore, aggradation was also considered to be a potential problem impacting the discovery of sites due to the increase in land elevation.

 

Although the excavations ended in 1984, details about the findings were published as late as 2005.

 

All structures discovered in Tenta are curvilinear and thus from the Aceramic Neolithic period due to neighbouring Neolithic settlements like Khirokitia exhibiting similar features. From the excavations, it was discovered that public buildings were constructed at the summit of Tenta's natural hill, "first in stone and mudbrick, then entirely in mudbrick and finally entirely in stone." Furthermore, homes at the site were unearthed to find that the stone structures were built of limestone with a mixture of diabase locally accessible in the Vasilikos river. The walls of the curvilinear structures stood to one metre or more in height and were determined to vary thickness between 25 and 60 centimetres as well as varied in colour including grey, reddish-brown, light brown, and dark brown. The floors and walls of the buildings were often made of gypsum, lime, or a combination of both as well as "coated with a thin, whitish plaster layer laid on a base of friable mud plaster". The stones of the buildings were predominately found to be laid neatly in parallel as well as had within them platforms, benches and seats. The flat as well as domed roofs of the buildings in Tenta were constructed from branches, reeds, and rammed earth and the surfaces of the walls of the buildings were often intricately decorated such as a "painting depicting two human figures with upraised hands." Furthermore, approximately 40 to 45 structures were excavated in total, and it was estimated that the population in Tenta never exceeded 150 people based on the size and shape of the structures.

 

Approximately one thousand man-made artefacts crafted with stone, animal bone or shell were recovered from the Tenta excavations. The artefacts were found within and outside buildings as well as within soil deposits. All objects were retrieved using a sieve, which assisted in recovering many of the objects which were small and fragmented due to the rubbish that had enveloped them, especially in soil deposits. The artefacts found are predominantly from the Aceramic Neolithic period with the exception of two clay plugs, a characteristic of the Chalcolithic period, which were found in the wall of a building. Artefacts discovered on the settlement include stone vessels, axes, hammerstones, and chipped stone tools like blades. Furthermore, there is evidence of proficiency from the inhabitants of Tenta such as their complex shapes carved in stone vessels. Rare artefacts were also found inside the walls of structures "including pendants, beads, large arrowheads and ground-stone implements covered with ochre." Copious picrolite, a crystal varying from dark green to grey most commonly found in the Kouris Dam, was likely used by the villagers to make jewellery during the Aceramic Neolithic period. Furthermore, chert was used as a tool by the villagers of Tenta to break things by force as well as to start fires because sparks ignite easily when the rock is struck on a hard surface.

A selection of artefacts are displayed in the Cyprus Museum and the Larnaca District Archaeological Museum.

 

Fourteen human burials containing eighteen individuals were excavated at Tenta. The eighteen skeletons were buried in contracted positions and positioned to the internal house walls, within oval pits not accompanied with any gifts or offerings, just beneath the floors or outside the structures. The burials include adults, children and infants buried separately, except the remains of four infants buried together in one pit.

 

The average age at death for males and females was 30.5 years and 36.5 years respectively. This six-year gap between the sexes may be due to limitations of a small sample size as well as poor preservation and age averaging techniques, especially due to the differences in neighbouring Neolithic settlements in which the longevity of males is greater than females. Furthermore, the average height for males and females was 162.9 centimetres (5 ft 4.1 in) and 153.8 centimetres (5 ft 0.6 in), respectively. Analysis of the skeletons' teeth suggest that the inhabitants had generally good dental health as well as a diet sufficient in protein and carbohydrates. This is due to the inhabitants' main diet consisting of plants as well as domesticated or hunted animals like fallow deer, pig and cattle. Moreover, analysis of the eighteen skeletons determined that the inhabitants of Tenta may have suffered from hemolytic anemia and iron-deficiency anemia, as well as having practiced artificial cranial deformation due to 11.1% of them having their skulls bound. Such practices were also common in the neighbouring Neolithic settlement of Khirokitia, and also during later periods in Cyprus such as the Late Bronze Age.

 

The botanical remains from Tenta revealed the subsistence practices in the Aceramic Neolithic period. It was expected that the botanical remains of wheat, barley and various legumes would be found in Tenta based on the earlier excavations from the neighbouring Neolithic settlements of Kastros and Khirokitia. The remains were recovered using a froth flotation process designed by Anthony Legge. According to Todd, "[a]pproximately 10 litres of every excavated deposit were examined and sorted under low power (10×–50×) magnification using a Bausch and Lomb stereo microscope." Components of the plant such as roots, stems and seeds were analysed separately and were compared with modern samples. Only 175 from the 416 botanical remains recovered via froth flotation contained carbon to analyse accurately. There was a smaller amount of carbonised remains to analyse compared to neighbouring Neolithic settlements due to the damage from excavating the remains with picks and trowels. From the 2074 litres sieved out of 7764 litres of carbonised botanical remains via froth flotation, it was discovered that "domesticated plants from the site consist of emmer and einkorn wheat, barley (probably two-row), lentil and possibly pea."

 

The distribution of botanical remains as well as the fire pits and hearths inside and outside the architectural remains were examined and compared to neighbouring Neolithic settlements. It was discovered that more hearths and fire pits were outside and between buildings than inside them, suggesting that the cooking in the period was conducted outside. Two hearths from the site revealed that civilians had gathered wild resources for cooking such as fig, pistachio, grape, olive and plum, but the analysis of the botanical remains did not indicate the specific cooking process or storage practices in the Aceramic Neolithic period

 

From the excavations at Tenta, 2817 faunal bone fragments were recovered. As shown in the table below, the majority of bone fragments (99.7%) were from deer, pig and caprinae (sheep and goat), which highlights that the civilians of Tenta predominately surrounding these mammals coupled with the remaining 0.3% of fragments being cat, fox and rodent. From epiphyseal plate data obtained from the faunal remains, it was found that 72% of deer, 28% of pig, 60% of caprinae were culled as adults. A collection of antlers from deer were also found intact inside three buildings and believed to have been possibly showcased by villagers in Tenta as an achievement of their hunting.

 

The process of recovering the faunal remains involved sieving excavated deposits through all 1 cm, 5 mm and 3 mm meshes.[13] Despite this high standard process of retrieving faunal remains, the bone fragments recovered were fragile and there was a high risk of the bone splitting, which resulted in many of the bones breaking and splintering. Thus, the veracity of any interpretation of the faunal remains may contribute to preservation bias during faunal assemblage. The range of animals recovered in the neighbouring Neolithic settlement of Khirokitia similarly was mostly deer, pig and caprinae with a small representation of cat, fox and rodent in the bone fragments. Hence, the same array of animals – based on the husbanding of pigs and caprines and the hunting of deer – provided the basis for subsistence economies in the Aceramic Neolithic period. The main aim of culling these animals for the Tenta and Khirokitia villagers was to consume their meat, but also most likely use their skin and bones for clothes and tools. Furthermore, cats and foxes were most likely to have been imported by colonists and used for their pelts as well as exterminators of vermin such as rodents.

 

In 1994 to 1995, Vassos Karageorghis commissioned and the Anastasios G. Leventis Foundation funded the construction of a tent-like conical or "pyramidal" structure that improved the protection of the remnants of Tenta from the elements. The shelter consists of glulam beams coated by a PVC membrane and cost US$340,000 over the two year construction phase. The structure has been called a local landmark.

 

Aceramic is defined as "not producing pottery". In archaeology, the term means "without pottery". Aceramic societies usually used bark, basketry, gourds and leather for containers.

 

"Aceramic" is used to describe a culture at any time prior to its development of pottery as well as cultures that lack pottery altogether. A preceramic period is traditionally regarded as occurring in the early stage of the Neolithic period of a culture, but recent findings in Japan and China have pushed the origin of ceramic technology there well back into the Paleolithic era.

 

West Asia

In Western Asian archaeology it is used to refer to a specific early Neolithic period before the development of ceramics, the Middle Eastern Pre-Pottery Neolithic, in which case it is a synonym of preceramic or pre-pottery.

 

The Western Asian Pre-Pottery Neolithic A began roughly around 8500 BC and can be identified with over a half a dozen sites. The period was most prominent in Western Asia in an economy based on the cultivation of crops or the rearing of animals or both. Outside Western Asia Aceramic Neolithic groups are more rare. Aceramic Neolithic villages had many attributes of agricultural communities: large settlement size, substantial architecture, long settlement duration, intensive harvesting of seeds with sickles, equipment and facilities for storing and grinding seeds, and containers. Morphological evidence for domestication of plants comes only from Middle PPNB (Pre-Pottery Neolithic B), and by Late PPNB some animals, notably goats, were domesticated or at least managed in most of the sites.

 

Cyprus

Some of the most famous Aceramic sites are located in the Republic of Cyprus. There was an Early Aceramic Neolithic phase beginning around 8200 BC. The phase can be best thought of as a "colony", or initial settlement of the island. Until the relatively recent discoveries of the Akrotiri and the Early Aceramic Neolithic phases, the Aceramic Neolithic culture known as the Khirokitia culture was thought to be the earliest human settlement on Cyprus, from 7000 to 5000 BC.[5] There are a number of Late Aceramic Neolithic sites throughout the island. The two most important are called Khirokitia and Kalavasos-Tenta. Late Aceramic Cyprus did not have much external contact because of a lack of settlement in the west or northwest during the period. However, Late Aceramic Cyprus was a well-structured society.

 

Americas

The specific term Pre-Ceramic is used for a period in many chronologies of the archaeology of the Americas, typically showing some agriculture and developed textiles but no fired pottery. For example, in the Norte Chico civilization and other cultures of Peru, the cultivation of cotton seems to have been very important in economic and power relations, from around 3200 BC. Here, Cotton Pre-Ceramic may be used as a period. The Pre-Ceramic may be followed by "Ceramic" periods or a formative stage.

 

The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Greek νέος néos 'new' and λίθος líthos 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Europe, Asia and Africa. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts of the world. This "Neolithic package" included the introduction of farming, domestication of animals, and change from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of settlement. The term 'Neolithic' was coined by Sir John Lubbock in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system.

 

The Neolithic began about 12,000 years ago when farming appeared in the Epipalaeolithic Near East, and later in other parts of the world. It lasted in the Near East until the transitional period of the Chalcolithic (Copper Age) from about 6,500 years ago (4500 BC), marked by the development of metallurgy, leading up to the Bronze Age and Iron Age.

 

In other places, the Neolithic followed the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) and then lasted until later. In Ancient Egypt, the Neolithic lasted until the Protodynastic period, c. 3150 BC. In China, it lasted until circa 2000 BC with the rise of the pre-Shang Erlitou culture, and in Scandinavia, the Neolithic lasted until about 2000 BC

all i want in life's a little bit of love

to take the pain away.

getting strong today.

a giant step each day

 

all my time until i die,

we'll float in space just you and i.

so please put your sweet hand in mine.

we'll float in space, just you and i.

  

If I ran a hotel, I would install rapid wine coolers in every room.

 

Wine does not cool in French sinks. It simply lolls and languishes in what it thinks is a womb-like flotation tank.

 

The illusion of cooling though can be achieved by a desperate mind.

 

The longer you stare at it and crave it the higher the temperature of white wine that you will tolerate. Eventually it gets to the point where the wine’s temperature is probably warmer than when it was on the shelf but your level of acceptance has dropped as low as a teenager in a pitch dark local park of friends all ‘getting off’ with the sexy boys and being left with the geeky, musty smelling one and a need to feel like part of the gang.

 

French supermarkets are the only place where you can get Boursin that isn’t laced with every possible fetid flavour. You would think that England would be the place for bland but no, English supermarkets offer only garlic, chive, and bad breath flavour boursin where France offers all sorts of delicate perfumes; Bee’s legs, honeysuckle armpits, fresh linen.

 

I have never understood why anyone would eat foods whose taste will linger longer than the time you can guarantee that you won’t be kissing anyone. I will choose bland, bland, bland in case the perfect man bursts into my life three days after whatever dinner I am eating.

 

My mother has recently been having teeth troubles. The dentist sent her packing from her appointment with special gum healing mouthwash (in one of those minute bottles which is the equivalent of a Kellogs variety pack in size - one box equals one spoonful).

 

Ten minutes later she had to go out and buy a new bottle of mouthwash. Three weeks after this she screams like Carrie in the bathroom as she notices that her teeth are as yellow as a nicotine addicted lab rat. My mum has never smoked or eaten yellow dye.

It turns out that the mouthwash she bought to replace the dentist’s supplied thimble full was the ‘teeth yellowing’ version. Now if you made a mouthwash (Corsodyl pay attention) for people with dental troubles to keep their mouth and gums healthy and you developed two varieties; one which made your teeth go yellow as pilau rice and one which left your teeth white, would you really continue research and production of the yellow version?

 

I often wonder about setting up a company providing the most inappropriate goods, just to see how well it would do.

 

I would sell:

 

Coffee flavoured toothpaste

 

15 inch penis-handled skipping ropes for fives and under

 

Toilet duck that comes out like pebble dashing

 

Fart flavoured air freshener

 

Dark red tampons

 

Baby reins with strap-ons on the harness

 

Baby dummies which scream at 150 decibels

 

Magic trees for cars - eau de burning rubber

 

BO fragranced deoderant

 

Office toilet cubicles which announce to everyone what kind of evacuation the person has just had and then send it down a see-through pipe throughout the entire building.

       

Harrods is a British luxury department store located on Brompton Road in Knightsbridge, London, England. It is owned by Harrods Ltd, a company currently owned by the state of Qatar via its sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority. The Harrods brand also applies to other enterprises undertaken by the Harrods group of companies, including Harrods Estates, Harrods Aviation and Air Harrods. Recognised as one of the world's leading department stores, it is visited by 15 million people per year.

 

The store occupies a 5-acre (2 ha) site and has 330 departments covering 1.1 million sq ft (100,000 m2) of retail space. It is one of the largest and most famous department stores in the world.

 

The Harrods motto is Omnia Omnibus Ubique, which is Latin for "all things for all people, everywhere". Several of its departments, including the Seasonal Christmas department, jewellery departments and the Food Halls, are well known.

 

Harrods was also a founder of the International Association of Department Stores in 1928, which is still active today, and remained a member until 1935. Franck Chitham, Harrods' president at the time, was president of the Association in 1930.

 

In 1824, at the age of 25, Charles Henry Harrod established a business at 228 Borough High Street in Southwark. He ran this business, variously listed as a draper, mercer, and a haberdasher, until at least 1831. During 1825, the business was listed as 'Harrod and Wicking, Linen Drapers, Retail', but this partnership was dissolved at the end of that year. His first grocery business appears to be as 'Harrod & Co. Grocers' at 163 Upper Whitecross Street, Clerkenwell, E.C.1., in 1832.

 

In 1834, in London's East End, he established a wholesale grocery in Stepney at 4 Cable Street with a special interest in tea. Attempting to capitalise on trade during the Great Exhibition of 1851 in nearby Hyde Park, in 1849 Harrod took over a small shop in the district of Brompton, on the site of the current store. Beginning in a single room employing two assistants and a messenger boy, Harrod's son Charles Digby Harrod built the business into a thriving retail operation selling medicines, perfumes, stationery, fruits and vegetables. Harrods rapidly expanded, acquired the adjoining buildings, and employed one hundred people by 1881.

 

However, the store's booming fortunes were reversed in early December 1883, when it burnt to the ground. Remarkably, Charles Harrod fulfilled all of his commitments to his customers to make Christmas deliveries that year—and made a record profit in the process. In short order, a new building was built on the same site, and soon Harrods extended credit for the first time to its best customers, among them Oscar Wilde, Lillie Langtry, Ellen Terry, Charlie Chaplin, Noël Coward, Gertrude Lawrence, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, Sigmund Freud, A. A. Milne, and many members of the British Royal Family. Beatrix Potter frequented the store from the age of 17. First published in 1902, her children's book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, was soon on sale in Harrods, accompanied by the world's first licensed character, a Peter Rabbit soft toy (Peter and toys of other Potter characters appeared in Harrods catalogues from 1910). In 1921, Milne bought the 18-inch Alpha Farnell teddy bear from the store for his son Christopher Robin Milne who would name it Edward, then Winnie, becoming the basis for Winnie-the-Pooh. In December 1926, Agatha Christie, who visited Harrods as a girl, marvelled at the spectacle of the store's Christmas display. The store has also featured in fiction, for example Mr. Bean (played by Rowan Atkinson) visited Harrods to buy Christmas decorations in the 1992 Mr. Bean episode "Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean".

 

A chance meeting in London with businessman, Edgar Cohen, eventually led to Charles Harrod selling his interest in the store for £120,000 (equivalent to £16,753,448 in 2023) via a stock market flotation in 1889. The new company was called Harrod's Stores Limited. Sir Alfred James Newton became chairman and Richard Burbidge managing director. Financier William Mendel was appointed to the board in 1891 and he raised funding for many of the business expansion plans. Richard Burbidge was succeeded in 1917 by his son Woodman Burbidge and he in turn by his son Richard in 1935.

 

On 16 November 1898, Harrods debuted England's first "moving staircase" (escalator) in their Brompton Road stores; the device was actually a woven leather conveyor belt-like unit with a mahogany and "silver plate-glass" balustrade. Nervous customers were offered brandy at the top to revive them after their 'ordeal'.

 

The department store was acquired by House of Fraser in 1959, which in turn was purchased by the Fayed brothers in 1985. In 1994, Harrods was moved out of the House of Fraser Group to remain a private company prior to the group's relisting on the London Stock Exchange.

Snowmobile skipping, snowmobile watercross, snowmobile skimming, water skipping or puddle jumping is a sport and/or exhibition where snowmobile racers hydroplane their sleds across lakes or rivers. Watercross consists of crossing water while riding a snowmobile, which is possible because snowmobiles have wide tracks for traction and flotation in the snow. If one hits the water at an acceptable speed (5 mph per 150 lb or 12 km/h per 100 kg of weight) and keeps the sled's throttle open, the track keeps the snowmobile on the surface of the water without sinking. If the rider backs out of the throttle or the sled bogs or floods out, the sled will sink. A sunk sled is able to be revived by cleaning water out of the carburetor, exhaust, spark plugs, and replacing the fuel. The front of the sled is pitched upwards as riders commonly do in deep mountain powder snow.

 

Source: wikipedia.org

Alder trees don't mind the wet, in fact their seeds have a flotation sac built in to allow the seed to float down stream to allow germination.

Was tinkering a bit with micro trees and I somehow came up with this design, utilising ninja horns stuffed into flotation rings. I found it pretty hilarious and kept laughing to myself while building it, to the point that my son started asking why I was laughing and he reassured me it looked good :)

 

I quite like the look, especially the irregular texture of the ninja horns, but I feel the smoothness of the flotation rings ruins the organic look a bit. In any case, each tree needs 44 ninja horns and 11 flotation devices, so I doubt it'll be a very useful design. It's also a bit on the big side when compared to my other micro tree designs, which limits its usefulness.

 

Still, I like it, so I'm going to try adding it into micro builds here and there - just for fun :)

 

You can read more about the build at Full Plate Builds :)

The DEEPSEA CHALLENGER Expedition included two telephone-booth-sized mechanical landers. They were developed by American Kevin Hardy, retired engineer from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego, to conduct scientific experiments.

 

THe landers free-fall at a rate of 1 metre per second and ascend with the flotation devices that include Isofloat foam to achieve 2/3 fixed and 1/3 variable buoyancy. This mans that up to 1/3 of the mass of the lander is in the form of ballast weights that can be partially offloaded to slow its descent and dropped to allow the craft to ascend.

 

At the surface the lander sends an acoustic signal of its location to be collected. DOV (deep ocean vehicle) Mike recovered prawn-like amphipods using a trap baited with raw chicken.

 

The smaller animals (Hirondellea and Lysianassidae) were recovered from the Middle Pond of the Mariana Trench. Investigation has revealed that they contain scyllo-inositol, a compound being tracked as a possible treatment for Alzheimer's Disease.

 

Lent by Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

 

Nikon F4. AF Nikkor 50mm F1.4D lens. CineStill 800T 35mm C41 film.

Within the 4-acre casting basin in Aberdeen, tug boats navigated through the six pontoons that make up Cycle 2. One by one, the pontoons were towed from the casting basin into Grays Harbor. Photo taken just before midnight, April 28, 2013

 

Progress continues on the SR 520 Pontoon Construction Project, as the second cycle of new pontoons left the Aberdeen casting basin overnight April 28 and 29, 2013. The late-night timing coincided with the favorable high tide needed for float-out.

 

In the second cycle, crews built three longitudinal pontoons, two supplemental stability pontoons and one cross pontoon. The 360-foot-long longitudinal pontoons are the backbone of the new SR 520 floating bridge being built on Lake Washington; the supplemental pontoons provide stability and flotation, and the cross pontoons cap the bridge on the east and west ends. Crews will build a total of six cycles of new pontoons in Aberdeen.

www.flickr.com/groups/fosforiidimaa/pool/

ingo-valgma.blogspot.com/search?q=fosforiit

fosforiidimaa.blogspot.com/search/label/Fosforiidimaa

Portage Lakefront and Riverwalk Pavilion, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, Indiana, USA

The caribou is a specialist that is well adapted to cooler climates with hollow-hair fur that covers almost all of its body including its nose, and provides insulation in winter and flotation for swimming.[4] Caribou can reach a speed of 60–80 km/h (37–50 mph).[1] Young caribou can already outrun an Olympic sprinter when only a day old.[16] The caribou's favourite winter food is fruticose deer lichen. Seventy percent of the diet of woodland caribou consists of arboreal lichen which take hundreds of years to grow and are therefore only found in mature forests. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caribou

A Swift Water Rescue POD filled with waders, flotation devices, instant inflatable rafts, rope packs and lights.

M/V Golden Kimisis, June 1974

 

Nikon S3, 50mm, Ektachrome, Hell s3900 scanner

c/n 03/16

Built 1974 as one of two prototypes built specifically for the Royal Navy. Flew on testing and trials until 1981 when it retired from flying and was used for ground trials at Farnborough.

Restored at RNAS Yeovilton in time for the 2011 Air Day and then brought to the museum here for permanent display.

The Helicopter Museum

Weston-super-Mare, North Somerset, UK

2nd October 2020

 

The following information is from The Helicopter Museum website:-

 

“Development of the Westland WG-13 Lynx helicopter began in the early 1960s as a joint Anglo-French project, with two distinct variants emerging from a Memorandum of Understanding signed on 17 May 1965. This required development of an Army tactical transport, with a skid undercarriage, and a naval anti-submarine version with wheeled landing gear. Design responsibility remained in the UK with France having a 30% share of the development and production of the maritime aircraft.

Initially five basic WG-13 prototypes were ordered together with one (XX469) to represent the naval version. These were then followed by a dedicated Army prototype and four maritime prototypes, two for the French Navy (XX904 and XX911) and two for the Royal Navy (XX510 and XX910). These featured a re-profiled lowered top-decking, a more bulbous nose to accommodate the Ferranti Seaspray radar, a folding tail and main rotor blades, and a high-strength wheeled landing gear with flotation equipment and a deck harpoon to facilitate operations from small ships in high sea states.

The original basic naval prototype XX469 first flew on 25 May 1972 but was relatively short-lived, being written off in an accident on Westland's Yeovil airfield on 27 November 1972. Construction of XX910, the second dedicated Royal Navy prototype, began at Yeovil in 1972 alongside XX510 but the aircraft did not reach the paint shop until February 1974 and the Flight Shed soon after. Initially it was utilised for some weapon installation tests before its first five minute flight on 23 April 1974 at the hands of test pilot John Morton. Allocated for radar development, it spent much of the next two years testing the Ferranti Seaspray radar and associated Sea Skua missile guidance system, carrying out trials at various locations including Burnt Island near Edinburgh, RAE Aberporth, A & AEE Boscombe Down, Yeovil and at Portland from where it completed the radar trials in late 1974 - early 1975 in an assessment against fast patrol boats off the Dorset coast, this despite testing being frequently interrupted by Russian surveillance trawlers trying to gather electronic data and forcing the crew to switch off the radar!

Interspersed with this were appearances at the SBAC show at Farnborough in 1974, the Paris Air Show in 1975 and a loan back to Westland in late August 1976, when the aircraft was used by John Morton to perform the first-ever Lynx loop to establish the parameters for display flying. This feat occurred at 10.46 on 28 August after five part-loops, and was followed by two more complete loops on the same day and similar demonstrations at the Farnborough SBAC Show in early September. Later that year XX910 visited RNAS Lee-on-Solent to fly HRH The Prince of Wales to and from HMS Sheffield in the Solent. In 1977 the aircraft returned to more mundane trials work at A & AEE Boscombe Down.

In March 1978 XX910 began a new career as a trials installation vehicle with the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough and Bedford until 1980. By March 1981 it had been grounded, with only around 450 total flying hours completed and the rotors and tailboom removed. It continued to be used on and off as a systems rig for various tests at Farnborough, mostly parked out doors, until finally declared redundant in November 2000.

Following this decision, the partially stripped front fuselage was donated to The Helicopter Museum and delivered on 5 December to Weston-super-Mare. Here it remained in storage until early 2011, when a team at RNAS Yeovilton offered to restore the airframe to a static display standard, using a tailboom and other parts acquired by The Helicopter Museum in the intervening years and scrap components from early production Lynx being retired from service. XX910 was therefore shipped to Yeovilton on 16 February 2011 and over the next 19 weeks was rebuilt and repainted before being displayed at Yeovilton Air Day on 9 July, prior to returning to The Helicopter Museum for permanent display.”

Three boys, donning their flotation vests, wave to the camera as they enjoy a day on the lake.

 

[Ektachrome slide scanned and restored]

Striker was designed by Alvis as a fast, hard-hitting, tank destroyer. It was member of the CVR(T) family of light armoured vehicles and had its origins in a series of staff requirements and design studies produced during the 1950s and '60s.

 

The requirement was for an air-portable reconnaissance vehicle that could also provide fire and anti-tank support. It became clear that a single vehicle could not meet the total requirement so it was decided to produce a family of armoured fighting vehicles. Size and weight was dictated by the wish to fit two vehicles into a C-130 Hercules aircraft.

 

A range of vehicles was produced called the Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (Tracked) family or CVR(T). The family includes the Striker, the FV101 Scorpion reconnaissance and fire support vehicle, the FV103 Spartan armoured personnel carrier, the FV104 Samaritan armoured ambulance, the FV105 Sultan armoured command vehicle, the FV106 Samson armoured recovery vehicle and the FV107 Scimitar reconnaissance vehicle.

 

Striker entered service in 1976. Like others in the CVR(T) range it was initially powered by a Jaguar 4.2 litre engine and employed aluminium armour. The entire fleet saw the Jaguar engines replaced by a Cummins BTA 5.9 diesel engine under the CVR(T) life extension programme.

 

Striker is armed with the BAe Systems Swingfire anti-tank wire guided missile, five of which are carried in launcher boxes at the rear of the vehicle that are raised for launching only at the last minute. Five more missiles are carried inside the hull. Swingfire had a range of up to 4,000m and could penetrate up to 80cms of armour. It used semi-automatic command line-of-sight guidance (SACLOS).

 

Striker was designed to fight from cover: for example the vehicle could hide behind a ridge while the missile operator launched and guided missiles by remote control from a separate observation post. Striker was originally fitted with a folding flotation screen, later removed by the British Army. The prototype at the Tank Museum (above) still has its flotation screen. It is painted in the markings of L Battery, Royal Horse Artillery.

 

A total of 89 Strikers were built for the British Army of which some 48 remained in service until 2004. They served in armoured reconnaissance regiments, which had a troop of four vehicles in each of their three squadrons. Strikers were used by the British in BAOR and at home and saw active service in the Gulf War (1991) and the Iraq War (2003).

 

Strikers were withdrawn from British Army service in mid-2005 when the Swingfire and Milan ATGMs were replaced by the new American-produced Javelin. It can be used as a fire-and-forget weapon, i.e. does not need guidance all the way to the target, as required by both Swingfire and Milan.

A Coast Guardsman simulates being a survivor in the water during ice rescue training, while the Coast Guard station’s dog named Brizo watches over him at U.S. Coast Guard Station Alexandria Bay, New York, March 16, 2021. This station is unique, in that it has a dog as its mascot. Brizo is named after the ancient Greek goddess known as the protector of mariners, sailors, and fishermen. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. 1st Class Bernardo Fuller)

BernardoFuller.com

We tried to take advantage of the last warm weeks of the year by doing some swimming. I had to bring out the underwater case for my camera again. Here Joshua is shown trying to balance on a flotation noodle. I told him to try and hold it underwater but he could never get the balance right. I liked the colors and obvious fun in this shot.

For more of my creative projects, visit my short stories website: 500ironicstories.com

Stairway in the basement of the Flotation Plant. Federal Mill No. 3, Park Hills, Missouri.

FWC Photo by Amanda Nalley

It's been a whirlwind of cities and revolving hotel doors (and yes, I've made a point of checking - every one of those hotels had a phone next to the toilet).

 

With a trip down this particular rabbit hole, the sounds of jet engines have become as lulling as any water noise, the hotels a haven as welcome as open fields and a trip through for fast food a welcome change to restaurants and the "dinner meetings".

 

So, a quick pop in to say "Hello" and a brief respite from my current realities as I open my eyes to one soft sunrise before pushing on for the next couple of weeks.

The Mount Elliott Mining Complex is an aggregation of the remnants of copper mining and smelting operations from the early 20th century and the associated former mining township of Selwyn. The earliest copper mining at Mount Elliott was in 1906 with smelting operations commencing shortly after. Significant upgrades to the mining and smelting operations occurred under the management of W.R. Corbould during 1909 - 1910. Following these upgrades and increases in production, the Selwyn Township grew quickly and had 1500 residents by 1918. The Mount Elliott Company took over other companies on the Cloncurry field in the 1920s, including the Mount Cuthbert and Kuridala smelters. Mount Elliott operations were taken over by Mount Isa Mines in 1943 to ensure the supply of copper during World War Two. The Mount Elliott Company was eventually liquidated in 1953.

 

The Mount Elliott Smelter:

 

The existence of copper in the Leichhardt River area of north western Queensland had been known since Ernest Henry discovered the Great Australia Mine in 1867 at Cloncurry. In 1899 James Elliott discovered copper on the conical hill that became Mount Elliott, but having no capital to develop the mine, he sold an interest to James Morphett, a pastoralist of Fort Constantine station near Cloncurry. Morphett, being drought stricken, in turn sold out to John Moffat of Irvinebank, the most successful mining promoter in Queensland at the time.

 

Plentiful capital and cheap transport were prerequisites for developing the Cloncurry field, which had stagnated for forty years. Without capital it was impossible to explore and prove ore-bodies; without proof of large reserves of wealth it was futile to build a railway; and without a railway it was hazardous to invest capital in finding large reserves of ore. The mining investor or the railway builder had to break the impasse.

 

In 1906 - 1907 copper averaged £87 a ton on the London market, the highest price for thirty years, and the Cloncurry field grew. The railway was extended west of Richmond in 1905 - 1906 by the Government and mines were floated on the Melbourne Stock Exchange. At Mount Elliott a prospecting shaft had been sunk and on the 1st of August 1906 a Cornish boiler and winding plant were installed on the site.

 

Mount Elliott Limited was floated in Melbourne on the 13th of July 1906. In 1907 it was taken over by British and French interests and restructured. Combining with its competitor, Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited, Mount Elliott formed a special company to finance and construct the railway from Cloncurry to Malbon, Kuridala (then Friezeland) and Mount Elliott (later Selwyn). This new company then entered into an agreement with the Queensland Railways Department in July 1908.

 

The railway, which was known as the 'Syndicate Railway', aroused opposition in 1908 from the trade unions and Labor movement generally, who contended that railways should be State-owned. However, the Hampden-Mount Elliott Railway Bill was passed by the Queensland Parliament and assented to on the 21st of April 1908; construction finished in December 1910. The railway terminated at the Mount Elliott smelter.

 

By 1907 the main underlie shaft had been sunk and construction of the smelters was underway using a second-hand water-jacket blast furnace and converters. At this time, W.H. Corbould was appointed general manager of Mount Elliott Limited.

 

The second-hand blast furnace and converters were commissioned or 'blown in' in May 1909, but were problematic causing hold-ups. Corbould referred to the equipment in use as being the 'worst collection of worn-out junk he had ever come across'. Corbould soon convinced his directors to scrap the plant and let him design new works.

 

Corbould was a metallurgist and geologist as well as mine/smelter manager. He foresaw a need to obtain control and thereby ensure a reliable supply of ore from a cross-section of mines in the region. He also saw a need to implement an effective strategy to manage the economies of smelting low-grade ore. Smelting operations in the region were made difficult by the technical and economic problems posed by the deterioration in the grade of ore. Corbould resolved the issue by a process of blending ores with different chemical properties, increasing the throughput capacity of the smelter and by championing the unification of smelting operations in the region. In 1912, Corbould acquired Hampden Consols Mine at Kuridala for Mount Elliott Limited, followed with the purchases of other small mines in the district.

 

Walkers Limited of Maryborough was commissioned to manufacture a new 200 ton water jacket furnace for the smelters. An air compressor and blower for the smelters were constructed in the powerhouse and an electric motor and dynamo provided power for the crane and lighting for the smelter and mine.

 

The new smelter was blown in September 1910, a month after the first train arrived, and it ran well, producing 2040 tons of blister copper by the end of the year. The new smelting plant made it possible to cope with low-grade sulphide ores at Mount Elliott. The use of 1000 tons of low-grade sulphide ores bought from the Hampden Consols Mine in 1911 made it clear that if a supply of higher sulphur ore could be obtained and blended, performance, and economy would improve. Accordingly, the company bought a number of smaller mines in the district in 1912.

 

Corbould mined with cut and fill stoping but a young Mines Inspector condemned the system, ordered it dismantled and replaced with square set timbering. In 1911, after gradual movement in stopes on the No. 3 level, the smelter was closed for two months. Nevertheless, 5447 tons of blister copper was produced in 1911, rising to 6690 tons in 1912 - the company's best year. Many of the surviving structures at the site were built at this time.

 

Troubles for Mount Elliott started in 1913. In February, a fire at the Consols Mine closed it for months. In June, a thirteen week strike closed the whole operation, severely depleting the workforce. The year 1913 was also bad for industrial accidents in the area, possibly due to inexperienced people replacing the strikers. Nevertheless, the company paid generous dividends that year.

 

At the end of 1914 smelting ceased for more than a year due to shortage of ore. Although 3200 tons of blister copper was produced in 1913, production fell to 1840 tons in 1914 and the workforce dwindled to only 40 men. For the second half of 1915 and early 1916 the smelter treated ore railed south from Mount Cuthbert. At the end of July 1916 the smelting plant at Selwyn was dismantled except for the flue chambers and stacks. A new furnace with a capacity of 500 tons per day was built, a large amount of second-hand equipment was obtained and the converters were increased in size.

 

After the enlarged furnace was commissioned in June 1917, continuing industrial unrest retarded production which amounted to only 1000 tons of copper that year. The point of contention was the efficiency of the new smelter which processed twice as much ore while employing fewer men. The company decided to close down the smelter in October and reduce the size of the furnace, the largest in Australia, from 6.5m to 5.5m. In the meantime the price of copper had almost doubled from 1916 due to wartime consumption of munitions.

 

The new furnace commenced on the 16th of January 1918 and 77,482 tons of ore were smelted yielding 3580 tons of blister copper which were sent to the Bowen refinery before export to Britain. Local coal and coke supply was a problem and materials were being sourced from the distant Bowen Colliery. The smelter had a good run for almost a year except for a strike in July and another in December, which caused Corbould to close down the plant until New Year. In 1919, following relaxation of wartime controls by the British Metal Corporation, the copper price plunged from about £110 per ton at the start of the year to £75 per ton in April, dashing the company's optimism regarding treatment of low grade ores. The smelter finally closed after two months operation and most employees were laid off.

 

For much of the period 1919 to 1922, Corbould was in England trying to raise capital to reorganise the company's operations but he failed and resigned from the company in 1922. The Mount Elliott Company took over the assets of the other companies on the Cloncurry field in the 1920s - Mount Cuthbert in 1925 and Kuridala in 1926. Mount Isa Mines bought the Mount Elliott plant and machinery, including the three smelters, in 1943 for £2,300, enabling them to start copper production in the middle of the Second World War. The Mount Elliott Company was finally liquidated in 1953.

 

In 1950 A.E. Powell took up the Mount Elliott Reward Claim at Selwyn and worked close to the old smelter buildings. An open cut mine commenced at Starra, south of Mount Elliott and Selwyn, in 1988 and is Australia's third largest copper producer producing copper-gold concentrates from flotation and gold bullion from carbon-in-leach processing.

 

Profitable copper-gold ore bodies were recently proved at depth beneath the Mount Elliott smelter and old underground workings by Cyprus Gold Australia Pty Ltd. These deposits were subsequently acquired by Arimco Mining Pty Ltd for underground development which commenced in July 1993. A decline tunnel portal, ore and overburden dumps now occupy a large area of the Maggie Creek valley south-west of the smelter which was formerly the site of early miner's camps.

 

The Old Selwyn Township:

 

In 1907, the first hotel, run by H. Williams, was opened at the site. The township was surveyed later, around 1910, by the Mines Department. The town was to be situated north of the mine and smelter operations adjacent the railway, about 1.5km distant. It took its name from the nearby Selwyn Ranges which were named, during Burke's expedition, after the Victorian Government Geologist, A.R. Selwyn. The town has also been known by the name of Mount Elliott, after the nearby mines and smelter.

 

Many of the residents either worked at the Mount Elliott Mine and Smelter or worked in the service industries which grew around the mining and smelting operations. Little documentation exists about the everyday life of the town's residents. Surrounding sheep and cattle stations, however, meant that meat was available cheaply and vegetables grown in the area were delivered to the township by horse and cart. Imported commodities were, however, expensive.

 

By 1910 the town had four hotels. There was also an aerated water manufacturer, three stores, four fruiterers, a butcher, baker, saddler, garage, police, hospital, banks, post office (officially from 1906 to 1928, then unofficially until 1975) and a railway station. There was even an orchestra of ten players in 1912. The population of Selwyn rose from 1000 in 1911 to 1500 in 1918, before gradually declining.

 

Source: Queensland Heritage Register.

For an old MOCpages contest in 2012. I was pretty happy with it at the time. There was a whole backstory, as follows.

 

Many thousands of years ago, when the Great Beings crafted Mata Nui, they built Toa to inhabit him. Many Toa were created by the use of Toa stones, which channeled the elemental power of the universe into Matoran. Not the Toa of Fluorine.

 

The power of Fluorine rejected the Toa stones, and reacted violently with Protodermis. But the Great Beings know that its unique powers were necessary for the inner workings of their creation.

 

So they made a Toa whose power was not contained within his body and channeled into a thousand uses and powers, but rather, stemmed from the very materials his body was crafted of.

 

The first Toa of Fluorine to be born died the same day, when the power of Fluorine reacted with the metal room he was crafted in. Two Great Beings perished in the toxic flames. Because the Great Beings had spurned the natural Elemental Powers of the universe and relied instead on their own processes, the Toa could not control his powers.

 

The Great Beings crafted three more Toa of Fluorine, each one perishing when his powers reacted with the environment. The last two survived long enough to show that they could, indeed, use the powers as they wished- but when their bodies contacted a Fluorine-reactant material they couldn’t stop the violent eruptions of energy.

 

Their fifth attempt was created as the others- a raw mess of artificial elemental energy just waiting to explode. But the Great Beings had one last hope. In the controlled conditions of their lab, they bonded all the surfaces of his body with other elements and materials to create non-reactive Fluoropolymers. He emerged from the lab strong, non-reactive- and entirely powerless.

 

This fifth Toa did not release his power unwillingly, nor could he access it willingly. It was trapped within a prison of atomic bonds. In light of this final failure, the Great Beings were on the verge of cancelling the project altogether when one of them had an insane and risky idea.

 

Why, he asked, should the entire Toa be converted into Fluoropolymer? Why not leave the Toa a single arm to channel his power with?

 

And thus Fluonek was born. His Fluorine energy was contained exclusively in his left arm and a few other relatively safe parts of his body. He was trained to never let anything touch those parts of him, and equipped with a Fluoropolymer shield for further protection.

 

The Great Beings also gave him a staff of the same powerful, artificial mineral that housed his power. He could channel his Fluorine power through it and draw power from it as he needed. And, of course, anything that touched it was history.

 

He traveled the Matoran Universe for millennia, using his vast destructive and creative capabilities for the greater good.

 

Unfortunately, he was working with a tribe of coastal Matoran when the Mata Nui robot collapsed. The immense force of the fall made water flood the beach and wash over him, reacting with his Fluorine arm. As the flames engulfed him he threw his Fluoropolymer shield to the Matoran, who all survived by using it as a flotation device.

"In case of a water landing..."

See more photos of this, and the Wikipedia article.

 

Details, quoting from Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum | Space Shuttle Enterprise:

 

Manufacturer:

Rockwell International Corporation

 

Country of Origin:

United States of America

 

Dimensions:

Overall: 57 ft. tall x 122 ft. long x 78 ft. wing span, 150,000 lb.

(1737.36 x 3718.57 x 2377.44cm, 68039.6kg)

 

Materials:

Aluminum airframe and body with some fiberglass features; payload bay doors are graphite epoxy composite; thermal tiles are simulated (polyurethane foam) except for test samples of actual tiles and thermal blankets.

 

The first Space Shuttle orbiter, "Enterprise," is a full-scale test vehicle used for flights in the atmosphere and tests on the ground; it is not equipped for spaceflight. Although the airframe and flight control elements are like those of the Shuttles flown in space, this vehicle has no propulsion system and only simulated thermal tiles because these features were not needed for atmospheric and ground tests. "Enterprise" was rolled out at Rockwell International's assembly facility in Palmdale, California, in 1976. In 1977, it entered service for a nine-month-long approach-and-landing test flight program. Thereafter it was used for vibration tests and fit checks at NASA centers, and it also appeared in the 1983 Paris Air Show and the 1984 World's Fair in New Orleans. In 1985, NASA transferred "Enterprise" to the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum.

 

Transferred from National Aeronautics and Space Administration

 

• • •

 

Quoting from Wikipedia | Space Shuttle Enterprise:

 

The Space Shuttle Enterprise (NASA Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-101) was the first Space Shuttle orbiter. It was built for NASA as part of the Space Shuttle program to perform test flights in the atmosphere. It was constructed without engines or a functional heat shield, and was therefore not capable of spaceflight.

 

Originally, Enterprise had been intended to be refitted for orbital flight, which would have made it the second space shuttle to fly after Columbia. However, during the construction of Columbia, details of the final design changed, particularly with regard to the weight of the fuselage and wings. Refitting Enterprise for spaceflight would have involved dismantling the orbiter and returning the sections to subcontractors across the country. As this was an expensive proposition, it was determined to be less costly to build Challenger around a body frame (STA-099) that had been created as a test article. Similarly, Enterprise was considered for refit to replace Challenger after the latter was destroyed, but Endeavour was built from structural spares instead.

  

Service

 

Construction began on the first orbiter on June 4, 1974. Designated OV-101, it was originally planned to be named Constitution and unveiled on Constitution Day, September 17, 1976. A write-in campaign by Trekkies to President Gerald Ford asked that the orbiter be named after the Starship Enterprise, featured on the television show Star Trek. Although Ford did not mention the campaign, the president—who during World War II had served on the aircraft carrier USS Monterey (CVL-26) that served with USS Enterprise (CV-6)—said that he was "partial to the name" and overrode NASA officials.

 

The design of OV-101 was not the same as that planned for OV-102, the first flight model; the tail was constructed differently, and it did not have the interfaces to mount OMS pods. A large number of subsystems—ranging from main engines to radar equipment—were not installed on this vehicle, but the capacity to add them in the future was retained. Instead of a thermal protection system, its surface was primarily fiberglass.

 

In mid-1976, the orbiter was used for ground vibration tests, allowing engineers to compare data from an actual flight vehicle with theoretical models.

 

On September 17, 1976, Enterprise was rolled out of Rockwell's plant at Palmdale, California. In recognition of its fictional namesake, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and most of the principal cast of the original series of Star Trek were on hand at the dedication ceremony.

 

Approach and landing tests (ALT)

 

Main article: Approach and Landing Tests

 

On January 31, 1977, it was taken by road to Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, to begin operational testing.

 

While at NASA Dryden, Enterprise was used by NASA for a variety of ground and flight tests intended to validate aspects of the shuttle program. The initial nine-month testing period was referred to by the acronym ALT, for "Approach and Landing Test". These tests included a maiden "flight" on February 18, 1977 atop a Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) to measure structural loads and ground handling and braking characteristics of the mated system. Ground tests of all orbiter subsystems were carried out to verify functionality prior to atmospheric flight.

 

The mated Enterprise/SCA combination was then subjected to five test flights with Enterprise unmanned and unactivated. The purpose of these test flights was to measure the flight characteristics of the mated combination. These tests were followed with three test flights with Enterprise manned to test the shuttle flight control systems.

 

Enterprise underwent five free flights where the craft separated from the SCA and was landed under astronaut control. These tests verified the flight characteristics of the orbiter design and were carried out under several aerodynamic and weight configurations. On the fifth and final glider flight, pilot-induced oscillation problems were revealed, which had to be addressed before the first orbital launch occurred.

 

On August 12, 1977, the space shuttle Enterprise flew on its own for the first time.

 

Preparation for STS-1

 

Following the ALT program, Enterprise was ferried among several NASA facilities to configure the craft for vibration testing. In June 1979, it was mated with an external tank and solid rocket boosters (known as a boilerplate configuration) and tested in a launch configuration at Kennedy Space Center Launch Pad 39A.

 

Retirement

 

With the completion of critical testing, Enterprise was partially disassembled to allow certain components to be reused in other shuttles, then underwent an international tour visiting France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the U.S. states of California, Alabama, and Louisiana (during the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition). It was also used to fit-check the never-used shuttle launch pad at Vandenberg AFB, California. Finally, on November 18, 1985, Enterprise was ferried to Washington, D.C., where it became property of the Smithsonian Institution.

 

Post-Challenger

 

After the Challenger disaster, NASA considered using Enterprise as a replacement. However refitting the shuttle with all of the necessary equipment needed for it to be used in space was considered, but instead it was decided to use spares constructed at the same time as Discovery and Atlantis to build Endeavour.

 

Post-Columbia

 

In 2003, after the breakup of Columbia during re-entry, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board conducted tests at Southwest Research Institute, which used an air gun to shoot foam blocks of similar size, mass and speed to that which struck Columbia at a test structure which mechanically replicated the orbiter wing leading edge. They removed a fiberglass panel from Enterprise's wing to perform analysis of the material and attached it to the test structure, then shot a foam block at it. While the panel was not broken as a result of the test, the impact was enough to permanently deform a seal. As the reinforced carbon-carbon (RCC) panel on Columbia was 2.5 times weaker, this suggested that the RCC leading edge would have been shattered. Additional tests on the fiberglass were canceled in order not to risk damaging the test apparatus, and a panel from Discovery was tested to determine the effects of the foam on a similarly-aged RCC leading edge. On July 7, 2003, a foam impact test created a hole 41 cm by 42.5 cm (16.1 inches by 16.7 inches) in the protective RCC panel. The tests clearly demonstrated that a foam impact of the type Columbia sustained could seriously breach the protective RCC panels on the wing leading edge.

 

The board determined that the probable cause of the accident was that the foam impact caused a breach of a reinforced carbon-carbon panel along the leading edge of Columbia's left wing, allowing hot gases generated during re-entry to enter the wing and cause structural collapse. This caused Columbia to spin out of control, breaking up with the loss of the entire crew.

 

Museum exhibit

 

Enterprise was stored at the Smithsonian's hangar at Washington Dulles International Airport before it was restored and moved to the newly built Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles International Airport, where it has been the centerpiece of the space collection. On April 12, 2011, NASA announced that Space Shuttle Discovery, the most traveled orbiter in the fleet, will be added to the collection once the Shuttle fleet is retired. When that happens, Enterprise will be moved to the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum in New York City, to a newly constructed hangar adjacent to the museum. In preparation for the anticipated relocation, engineers evaluated the vehicle in early 2010 and determined that it was safe to fly on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft once again.

Kayak Kids

2019 Route 66 Car Show

Oak Park Avenue & Ogden Avenue

Berwyn, Illinois.

Cook County, USA.

August 24, 2019

 

From wikipedia

 

The Amphicar Model 770 is an amphibious automobile which was launched at the 1961 New York Auto Show, manufactured in West Germany and marketed from 1961 to 1968. Production stopped in 1965.

 

Designed by Hans Trippel, the amphibious vehicle was manufactured by the Quandt Group at Lübeck and at Berlin-Borsigwalde, with a total of 3,878 manufactured in a single generation. Engine: Triumph four-cylinder engine of 1147 cc, 8:1 compression ratio, rated at 38.3 bhp

 

A descendant of the Volkswagen Schwimmwagen, the Amphicar offered only modest performance compared to most contemporary boats or cars, featured navigation lights and flag as mandated by the US Coast Guard — and after operation in water, required greasing at 13 points, one of which required removal of the rear seat.

 

The Amphicar name is a portmanteau of "amphibious" and "car".

 

Appearance

 

Front undersurface is slightly pointed and sharply cut away below. The wheels are set low, so that the vehicle stands well above ground level when on dry land. Front and rear bumpers are placed low on the body panels (but fairly high in relation to dry ground). The one-piece windshield is curved. The foldable top causes the body style to be classified as cabriolet. Its water propulsion is provided by twin propellers mounted under the rear bumper. The Amphicar is made of mild steel.

 

Powertrain

 

The Amphicar's engine was mounted at the rear of the craft, driving the rear wheels through a 4-speed manual transmission. For use in the water, the same engine drove a pair of reversible propellers at the rear, with a second gear lever engaging forward or reverse drive. Once in the water, the main gear lever would normally be left in neutral. By engaging first gear as well as drive to the propellers when approaching a boat ramp, the Amphicar could drive itself out of the water. .

 

Performance

The powerplant was the 1147 cc (69 in³) Standard SC engine from the British Triumph Herald 1200. Many engines were tried in prototypes, but the Triumph engine was "state of the art" in 1961 and it had the necessary combination of performance, weight, cool running, and reliability. Updated versions of this engine remained in production in the Triumph Spitfire until 1980.

 

The Amphicar engine had a power output of 43 hp (32 kW) at 4750 rpm, slightly more than the Triumph Herald due to a shorter exhaust.[7] Designated the "Model 770",[5] the Amphicar could achieve speeds of 7 knots in the water and 70 mph (110 km/h) on land. Later versions of the engine displaced 1296 cc and 1493 cc and produced up to 75 bhp (56 kW).

 

One owner was quoted "It's not a good car and it's not a good boat, but it does just fine" largely because of modest performance in and out of water. Another added, "We like to think of it as the fastest car on the water and fastest boat on the road."

 

Amphicar 1962.

 

In water as well as on land, the Amphicar steered with the front wheels, making it less maneuverable than a conventional boat. Time’s Dan Neil called it "a vehicle that promised to revolutionize drowning", explaining, "Its flotation was entirely dependent on whether the bilge pump could keep up with the leakage." In reality, a well maintained Amphicar does not leak at all and can be left in water, parked at a dock side, for many hours

  

History

 

Production started in late 1960. By the end of 1963 complete production was stopped.[15] From 1963-65 cars were assembled from shells and parts inventory built up in anticipation of sales of 25,000 units, with the last new build units assembled in 1965. Cars were titled in the year they actually sold rather than when they were produced, e.g. an unsold Amphicar assembled in 1963 or 1965 could be titled as 1967 or 1968 if that was when it was first sold, though the inventory could not be sold in the U.S. in the 1968 model year or later due to new environmental and USDOT emissions and safety equipment standards, they were available in other countries into 1968. The remaining inventory of unused parts was eventually purchased by Hugh Gordon of Santa Fe Springs, California.

 

Most Amphicars were sold in the United States. Cars were sold in the United Kingdom from 1964. Total production was 3,878 vehicles. 99 right-hand drives were converted from left-hand drives. Some were used in the Berlin police department and others were fitted for rescue operations.

 

Amphicar shows and rides

 

Amphicar owners regularly convene during the spring, summer and fall months at various locations nationwide for "swim-ins", the largest of which is held at Grand Lake St. Marys State Park, Ohio.

 

In 2015, the Boathouse at Walt Disney World's Disney Springs in Orlando, Florida began offering public Amphicar rides to visitors, charging $125 per ride for groups of up to three. Disney heavily re-engineered and enhanced the eight Amphicars of various original colors in its fleet for safety, reliability, and comfort.

The Romp by Chong Fahcheong a set of bronze statues of kids playing.

Usually standing on rocks 2 feet about the water.

Some kids told his dad that might need light jackets so one of the stores in Penticton donated the PFDs.