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National Underwear Day 2013
Times Square, NYC
August 5th, 2013
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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED,
BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.
Comic book published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Public Information Department in 1985 entitled, "The Story of Foreign Trade and Exchange."
Art by: Al Wenzel
793.21.1 (e)
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Finance Secretary Derek Mackay visited business start-up Aquila Biomedical, based at Edinburgh BioQuarter.
Where they released latest Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) figures show Scotland’s fiscal position improved in 2016-17.
The Postcard
A carte postale published by Neurdein et Cie of Paris.
It was posted to:
Miss B. Warwick,
50, Cliff Terrace,
Carlisle,
England.
The message on the back of the card was as follows:
"On Active Service.
30.6.18
Having a gay time though
we have been a trifle busy.
How do you like work?
Billy sends his best wishes.
Love to all,
S."
Amiens
Amiens is the chief city of Picardy, in the valley of the River Somme, and is just over 100 km north of Paris.
Amiens Cathedral
The Gothic Cathedral of our Lady of Amiens is the tallest complete cathedral in France, with the greatest interior volume (estimated at 200,000 cubic metres).
According to this estimate, the cathedral could comfortably accommodate well over sixty billion marbles. (Yes, billion, not million!) This number of marbles, laid end to end, would produce a line 900,000km long - it would encircle the earth 22 times, or stretch to the moon and back nearly two and a half times. It's a big building!
The vaults of the nave are 42.3 metres high.
Work on the cathedral started in 1220 and was mostly finished by 1266. The floors include a number of designs, including a swastika. The labyrinth was installed in 1288.
The cathedral contains what is alleged to be the head of St. John the Baptist, a relic brought back from Constantinople. You can find out what happened to one of his fingers by searching for the tag 65SJD88. There are bits of him all over the place! In fact the Great Mosque in Damascus also claims to hold the head of John the Baptist.
The west front of the cathedral, which is shown in the photograph, was built between 1220 and 1236. It shows an unusual degree of artistic unity. Its lower tier with 3 vast deep porches is capped with a gallery of larger than lifesize kings which stretches across the entire façade beneath the rose window.
The immense rose window has a diameter of 43 feet (13m).
Above the rose window is an open arcade - the Galerie des Sonneurs. A sonneur is a player of traditional music, primarily in Brittany, typically playing a clarinet or the Breton bagpipe.
In the 1919 book Mr. Standfast by John Buchan (1875-1940), the character Richard Hannay describes the cathedral as being:
"The noblest church that the
hand of man ever built for God".
Lady Isobel Barnett
So what else happened on the day that the card was written?
Well, on Sunday the 30th. June 1918, Isobel Morag Marshall was born. After her marriage she became known as Lady Isobel Barnett. Isobel was a Scottish radio and television personality, who had her highest profile during the 1950's and 1960's.
Isobel Barnett - The Early Years
Barnett was born in Aberdeen, the daughter of a doctor. She went to the independent Mount School in York and, following in her father's footsteps, studied medicine at the University of Glasgow.
Isobel qualified as a doctor in 1940, and married solicitor and company director Geoffrey Barnett the following year. He was knighted for political and public services to the city of Leicester in 1953. Lady Barnett gave up her medical career in 1948, and for the next 20 years was a Justice of the peace.
Radio and Television
In 1953 Isobel arrived on BBC television as one of the panel of 'What's My Line?', which made her a household name. She appeared on the programme for ten years, but was not an original panellist, her seat having been previously occupied by Marghanita Laski.
Isobel was regarded by audiences as elegant and witty, the epitome of the British aristocracy, although her title actually came from the fact that her solicitor husband had been knighted; she was not an aristocrat, nor had she married into the aristocracy.
Isobel also made regular appearances on the BBC radio series 'Any Questions', on the radio panel game 'Many a Slip', and on the women's discussion series 'Petticoat Line'. She was greatly in demand as an after-dinner speaker, a role into which she slipped confidently.
In 1956, a reviewer predicted that an alien visiting from another planet could ask anyone between the ages of seven and 70 "What is What's my Line?" and "Who is Isobel Barnett?" and be confident of getting an answer.
Later Life and Death of Lady Isobel Barnett
In her last years, Barnett became reclusive and eccentric. In 1980 she was found guilty of shoplifting, and fined £75 for stealing a can of tuna and a carton of cream worth 87 pence from her village grocer.
This brought her briefly back into the public eye; four days later, on the evening of Sunday the 20th. October 1980, she was found dead at her home in Cossington, Leicestershire.
Isobel was found dead in the bath, into which she had thrown an electric heater, causing ventricular fibrillation and a heart attack. The local doctor gave the cause of death unusually as uremia. Her body was cremated in haste before a full post-mortem could be carried out, and the whole affair was hushed up as far as was possible.
During the inquest, police testified that Isobel wore an extra spacious pocket, known as a poacher's pocket, sewn inside her coat when she was caught stealing the groceries. Two days before her death, Barnett told an interviewer she was a compulsive thief, and had been shoplifting for years.
Finding that Barnett, a trained physician, killed herself deliberately with an overdose of arthritis painkiller, coroner Guy Tooze said:
"She had recently suffered one
of the most traumatic experiences
any woman could suffer.
I am satisfied she took a fatal
overdose deliberately, and knew
what she was doing".
A Daily Mail columnist commented:
“I am sorry for the generation of
women among whom Lady Barnett
finds herself.
Often their lives, without a career
and with children gone away from
home, go racing downhill into sheer
grinding boredom.”
There still seems to be some confusion to this day over whether Isobel's suicide resulted from a drug overdose, electrocution or uremia.
Thank you, Ronel for giving me permission to publish this photo
You can read Ronel concert report here:
andrerieufan.com/2010/06/07/andre-rieu-29-may-2010-vienna...
The Postcard
A postcard that is curiously called on the back a "Modern Humour Series" card. It was published by Alfred Stiebel & Co. of London E.C.
The flower interpretations need to be taken with a pinch of salt - e.g. if you were to declare your undying love with a bunch of daisies, you might not get the response you were hoping for.
The card was posted in Finsbury Park, London on Thursday the 26th. March 1914 to:
Miss Stanbrook,
'Northolme',
42, Montagu Road,
Hendon.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Dear Eileen,
I am afraid I shall not be
able to come Friday as it
is the end of our school
year, and there is so much
to do - but I will come if I
can.
If not I will come Sat.
I have got the tickets - the
concert begins at 2.30 -
early, isn't it?
Please get cocoa.
Love from Auntie Lil".
Pancho Villa
So what else happened on the day that Auntie Lil posted the card to her niece Eileen?
Well, on the 26th. March 1914, Pancho Villa's forces reached Torreón and attacked 12,000 federal troops occupying the city.
Vicious fighting over the next six days yielded heavy losses on both sides, but Villa was able to recapture the city that he had previously conquered in September, 1913.
Trondheim Airport
Also on that day, a Farman MF.7 military plane was the first aircraft to use Værnes Air Station in Norway. The military air base was eventually expanded to civilian air traffic, and became Trondheim Airport.
William Westmoreland
The 26th. March 1914 also marked the birth in Saxon, South Carolina of the American army officer William Westmoreland.
William commanded American military operations in the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1968. He died in 2005.
Ian McGeoch
Also born on that day, in Helensburgh, Scotland, was the British naval officer Ian McGeoch.
Ian was commander of the submarine HMS Splendid. He died in 2007.
The Postcard
A postally unused carte postale published by A. Leconte, 38 Rue Ste.-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie, Paris.
La Place de la Concorde
The Place de la Concorde is one of the major public squares in Paris. Measuring 7.6 ha (19 acres) in area, it is the largest square in the French capital. It is located in the city's eighth arrondissement, at the eastern end of the Champs-Élysées.
It was the site of many notable public executions, including those of King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and Maximilien Robespierre in the course of the French Revolution, during which the square was temporarily renamed Place de la Révolution.
History of the Place de la Concorde
The Place was originally designed to be the site of an equestrian statue of King Louis XV, commissioned in 1748 by the merchants of Paris, to celebrate the recovery of King Louis XV from a serious illness.
The site chosen for the statue was the large esplanade or space between the revolving gate the Tuileries Gardens and the Cour-de-la-Reine, a popular lane for horseback riding at the edge of the city.
At the time the Concorde bridge and the Rue de Rivoli did not exist, and the Rue Royale was a muddy lane that descended down to a marsh beside the Seine.
The architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel made a plan for the site, and the square was finished by 1772. It was in the form of an octagon, bordered by a moat twenty meters wide, crossed by stone bridges, and surrounded by a stone balustrade.
At the eight corners Gabriel placed stone stairways to descend into the Place, which was divided into flowerbeds. In the center of the gardens was the pedestal on which the statue stood.
The statue, by Bouchardon, depicted the King on horseback as the victor of the Battle of Fontenoy, dressed as a Roman general, with a laurel wreath on his head.
The four corners of the pedestal were designed with bronze statues by Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, depicting the virtues of great monarchs; Force, Justice, Prudence, and Peace.
The statue was dedicated on the 20th. June 1763, but by this time the King had lost much of his popularity. A few days after its dedication, someone hung a placard on the statue, proclaiming:
"Oh, the beautiful statue! Oh, the fine
pedestal! The Virtues are under the
feet, and Vice is in the saddle!"
On the north side of the square, between 1760 and 1775, Gabriel built two palatial buildings with identical façades. The classical façades were inspired by those created by Charles Perrault, the royal architect, for the facade of the Louvre.
They were originally intended to be occupied by embassies, but in the end the east building became a depot for the Royal furnishings, before becoming the headquarters of the French Navy, the Hôtel de la Marine. The west building was divided into individual properties for the nobility.
The French Revolution
Beginning in 1789, the Place was a central stage for the events of the French Revolution. On the 13th. July 1789, a mob came to the Hotel de la Marine and seized a store of weapons, including two old cannon, gifts from the King of Siam, which fired the first shots during the storming of the Bastille on the 14th. July 1789.
On the 11th. August 1792, the statue of Louis XV was pulled down and taken to a foundry, where it was melted down. A few months later, a new statue, "Liberty", by the sculptor François-Frédéric Lemot, took its place; it was figure wearing a red liberty cap and holding a lance. The Place Louis XV became the Place de la Revolution.
The first executions by guillotine in the square, those of the two thieves who had stolen the royal crown diamonds from the Hotel de la Marine, took place there in October 1792. On the 21st. January 1793, the guillotine was used to execute King Louis XVI. The guillotine was nicknamed 'The National Razor'.
As the Reign of Terror commenced, it was set up again on the 11th. May 1793, midway between the Statue of Liberty and the turning bridge at the entrance to the Tuileries Gardens, and remained there for thirteen months.
Of the 2,498 persons executed by the guillotine in Paris during the Revolution, 1,119 were executed in the Place de la Concorde, 73 in the Place Bastille and 1,306 in the Place de la Nation.
Beside Louis XVI, others executed there included Marie-Antoinette, Charlotte Corday, Madame du Barry, and Antoine Lavoisier.
In the later days of the Terror, after the 27th. July 1794, the revolutionaries Georges Danton, Maximilien Robespierre and Louis de Saint-Just were guillotined. The last executions, those of the Prairial rlot participants, were carried out in the Place de la Concorde in May 1795.
In 1790, early in the French Revolution, the Concorde bridge was constructed, and, at the suggestion of Jacques-Louis David, the statues of the "Horses of Marly" by G. Cousteau, were placed on the north side, at the entrance to the Champs-Élysées.
In 1795, under the Directory, the square was renamed Place de la Concorde as a gesture of reconciliation after the turmoil of the revolution.
The Place de la Concorde in the 19th. Century
In 1806, Napoleon Bonaparte began to construct the Rue de Rivoli along the edge of the square.
After the Bourbon Restoration of 1814, the name of the square was changed back to Place Louis XV, and in 1826 it was renamed Place Louis XVI. After the July Revolution of 1830 the name was returned to Place de la Concorde.
Under King Louis-Philippe, and his prefect of the Seine, Rambuteau, the square was remade. IN 1832, Jacques Ignace Hittorff was named chief architect of the project.
In October 1835 Hittorff installed the new centrepiece of the square, the Luxor Obelisk, a gift to the King from the vice-pasha of Egypt, Mehemet Ali. It was hoisted into place, before a huge crowd, on the 25th. October 1836.
Hittorff commissioned celebrated sculptors, including James Pradier and Jean-Pierre Cortot to make eight statues representing the major cities of France, which were placed in 1838 on columns which had earlier been put in place around the square. A ring of twenty columns with lanterns was put in place at the same time.
Between 1836 and 1840, Hittorff erected two monumental fountains, the Fontaine Maritime on the side of the Seine, and the Fontaine Fluviale on the side of the Rue Royale. The design, with two fountains each nine meters high, was modelled after that of the fountains of Saint-Peter's Square in Rome.
In 1853, under Napoleon III, the deep moats around the square, which had turned into rendezvous-points for prostitutes, were filled in.
Events in the Place de la Concorde
The Place was the entry point for two major international expositions:
-- The Paris Universal Exposition of 1900, which
left behind the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais.
-- The 1925 International Exhibition of Modern
Decorative and Industrial Arts, which gave its
name to Art Deco.
The square was also the site of great national celebrations, including the victory celebrations of the end of the Great War.
Crowds celebrating the August 1944 Liberation of Paris in the Second World War had to scatter from German sniper fire.
The square has experienced violent confrontations, including a demonstration against parliamentary corruption in 1934 which turned violent, with eleven deaths and two hundred injured.
The Luxor Obelisk
The centrepiece of the Place de la Concorde is an ancient Egyptian obelisk decorated with hieroglyphics. In the 1800's François Chabas produced a full translation of these. They exalt the reign of Ramesses II, and also praise Amun-Ra and Horus.
The obelisk is a monolith carved from a single block of red granite. It is one of two which the Egyptian government gave to the French in the 19th. century. The other, slightly larger one, stayed in Egypt, too difficult and heavy to move to France with the technology available at that time.
On the 26th. September 1981, President François Mitterrand formally returned the title of the second obelisk to Egypt.
The obelisk once marked the entrance to the Luxor Temple. The Khedive of Egypt, or royal constitutional monarch, Muhammad Ali Pasha, offered the 3,300-year-old Luxor Obelisk as a diplomatic gift to France in November 1829.
This was in spite of the fact that the obelisks had previously been given to the British, and the fact that the French diplomat arranging the acquisition, Baron Taylor, had been authorized to do so by Charles X, who had been overthrown in July.
The obelisk was taken down and transported to France by a ship custom-built for the transport, the Luxor.
In reciprocation for the gift, France gave a mechanical clock in the 1840's, today known as the Cairo Citadel Clock. The clock has rarely worked since its arrival in Cairo, but in 2021 the Supreme Council of Antiquities announced that:
"Egypt is seeking to repair the citadel
clock, one of the oldest of its type in
the world, so that it will work again."
The obelisk arrived in Paris on the 21st. December 1833.
Three years later, it was hoisted into place, on top of the pedestal which originally supported the statue of Louis XVI, destroyed during the July Revolution 1830. In 1839, diagrams explaining the complex machinery that was used for the transportation were added to the pedestal.
The original Egyptian pedestals involved sculptures of baboons with prominent male genitalia, raising their hands to the sun. A fragment of this original pedestal from the rear of the remaining obelisk was brought to Paris at the same time as the obelisk, intended to be displayed with it. Deemed too obscene for public exhibition, it was sent to the Egyptian section of the Louvre.
The raising of the column was a major feat of engineering, depicted by illustrations on the base of the monument. King Louis Philippe dedicated the obelisk on the 25th. October 1836.
The obelisk is 23 metres (75 ft) high, including the base, and weighs over 250 tonnes. Given the technical limitations of the day, transporting it was no easy feat.
The Paris obelisk has a fissure in the original stone that had been tended to in antiquity.
The eastern and western faces of both obelisks are slightly convex, the only two ancient obelisks with this feature, and the reason for this is not understood.
The government of France added a gold-leafed pyramidal cap to the top of the obelisk in 1998, replacing the missing original, believed to have been stolen in the 6th. century BC.
More Recent Events Associated With the Obelisk
Modern events include the following:
-- On the 1st. December 1993, demonstrators from Act Up Paris. an organization dedicated to fighting AIDS, covered the Parisian obelisk with a giant pink condom to mark World AIDS Day.
-- In 1998 Alain "Spiderman" Robert, the French urban climber, illegally scaled the Parisian obelisk without the use of any ropes or other climbing equipment or safety devices.
-- In 1999 as part of Paris's millennium celebration activities, 300 brass disks and nearly 1,000 feet of yellow thermosensitive strips were placed around the obelisk in order to use it as the gnomon of a functioning sundial. They remained until the end of the year 2000.
-- In 2015 Milène Guermont's monumental interactive sculpture PHARES was displayed next to the obelisk for several months, where it was designed to illuminate the obelisk.
Chasing Daylight for Cosmopolitan HK
Photography : Shavonne Wong/ Zhiffy Photography
Art Direction & Styling : Irene Chan
Model : Ting Wai /Style Management
Make-up & Hair : Angel Wong
Styling Assistant & Coordination : Tammy Chan
Blog post and BTS images:
Several of my photos have been used in the Spring 2013 edition of NCT Mattters, the magazine of the National Childbirth Trust in the UK.
First Minister: “Choice is between economic recovery or economic retreat."
Growth in Scotland’s onshore revenues last year has more than offset the downturn in oil revenues, figures published today in Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland 2015-16 (GERS) have shown.
The 2014 Mermaid Parade
Saturday, June 21st, 2014
Coney Island (Brooklyn, NY)
© 2014 LEROE24FOTOS.COM
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED,
BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.
Performed by the Brisbane Baroque Orchestra, 2nd March 2025, in the City Tabernacle Baptist Church on Wickham Terrace in central Brisbane.
The Postcard
A postally unused carte postale that was published by L. C. H. The card has a divided back.
Enemy artillery during the Great War targeted churches, cathedrals and other tall buildings because of their value as observation posts. Shells aimed at churches which just missed their target tended to fall in the churchyards, throwing up gravestones, coffins and corpses.
'The Shell' by H. Smalley Sarson
'Shrieking its message the flying death
Cursed the resisting air,
Then buried its nose by a battered church,
A skeleton gaunt and bare.
The brains of science, the money of fools
Had fashioned an iron slave
Destined to kill, yet the futile end
Was a child's uprooted grave'.
Abba Eban
"History teaches us that men and
nations behave wisely when they
have exhausted all other alternatives".
This was said during a speech in London UK on 16th. December 1970 by Abba Eban (1915-2002), an Israeli diplomat and writer.
Visé Paris
The reference to 'Visé Paris' means that the image has been inspected by the military authorities in the French capital and deemed not to be a security risk.
'Visé Paris' signifies that the card was published during or soon after the end of the Great War.
Vermandovillers
Vermandovillers is a commune in the Somme département in Hauts-de-France in northern France. It is situated 26 miles (42 km) east of Amiens.
A Great War Battle at Vermandovillers
A German attack occurred on the 24th. September 1914. It was partially blocked by the 75th. Infantry Regiment at Vermandovillers’ Etoilé woods near to Herleville.
The front was stabilised for two years until the spearhead attack of the 4th. September 1916 at edge of Etoilé woods. The attack had been assigned to the 132nd. Division of the 10th. Army, against heavily concreted machine gun bunkers that the Germans had been building for 2 years.
The battle ended on the 9th. September 1916 because of lack of troops. The 158th., the 366th. Infantry Regiment and the 1st. Battalion Chasseurs showed exemplary conduct and suffered heavy losses.
Between the 4th. and 9th. September 1916, the 86th. Brigade lost 1,071 men, the 264th. Brigade lost 1,513 and 108th. Brigade 1,580.
These figures account for the fact that within a 5 kilometre (3 mile) radius around Vermandovillers, there are buried 1,261 French soldiers. 22,632 German soldiers lie in the Vermandovillers German war cemetery, including the writers Reinhard Johannes Sorge and Alfred Lichtenstein.
In the Somme there are 410 Commonwealth cemeteries,
22 French Military cemeteries and 14 German cemeteries.
The largest of them is the German cemetery situated on the
French front at Vermandovillers. 10,000 men were laid to rest under black crosses; the remainder were buried in 15 mass graves.
The British are not counted because although many were killed in the fighting, they are buried mainly near the Villers–Bretonneux Australian National Memorial.
A Poem About the Battle of the Somme
'It was 1916 on the 1st of July
That artillery and smoke blackened the sky.
Shots rang out and men fell dead,
The sky was black, while the ground was red.
To battle the Germans the French and British had come,
To the bloodiest fight of the War, The Battle of the Somme.
While artillery rained down on the German side
The allies swallowed their fear and stood with pride.
Waiting to be ordered over the top,
To run without question, don’t look back and don’t stop.
But this is when the slaughter started,
Machine guns screamed out as bodies and limbs became parted.
Fifty-eight thousand casualties in one single day
‘A necessary loss’ the Generals would say.
‘We will rest for now and recommence tomorrow
No time for the men to indulge in their sorrow’
So they readied the next batch of men for the slaughter,
Would they fare better when faced with the mortars?
The answer to this question was obviously no
As the casualty counts continued to grow.
For every single centimetre of ground that was taken
The lives of two men were sadly forsaken.
And so the battle waged on and on,
The bloodiest battle of World War One.
Yet as they made progress towards German lines,
The allies had one thing in the front of their minds.
For the Germans had a weapon the allies had yet to discover
One that would find men even if they took cover.
As the allied assault drew nearer and nearer
The time to use this weapon had never been clearer.
The little grey canisters flew through the air
Giving the allied forces more than a scare.
The men now engaged in a fight for their lives,
They could not protect themselves with their guns or their knives.
Their only weapon now was a mask
But fitting it in time was a very hard task.
‘Gas, Gas!’ some men would cry
Most had masks, the rest would die.
Their screams could be heard as they approached their death,
Blood curdled in their lungs as they drew their last breath.
Eventually their eyes would roll back in their head
And with a final twitch and spasm they lay still, dead.
And so the battle waged on and on,
The bloodiest battle of World War One.
Even with the threat of the German gas,
It was time for a final allied assault to mass.
And with this Britain unveiled their tank
When the battle ended they had this to thank.
It stormed over No-Man’s Land, through German wire,
The Germans shook in fear as it prepared to fire.
For the British troops it opened the way,
For the deaths of their comrades the Germans would pay.
And the German death count grew and grew
As the allied assault continued to break through.
And though the fighting had not ended,
The morale of the allies began to get mended.
They pushed with valor towards their objective,
With a new vigour the Germans had not expected.
Although the enemy held, and did not retreat
This battle is viewed as a German defeat.
It was 1916 on the 21st of November
That the five month long battle was finally over.
No shots rang out but thousands were dead,
The sky was still black, the ground was stained red.
To battle the Germans the French and British had come,
To the bloodiest fight of the War, The Battle of the Somme'.
The Use of Artillery in the Great War
Artillery was very heavily used by both sides during the Great War. The British fired over 170 million artillery rounds of all types, weighing more than 5 million tons - that's an average of around 70 pounds (32 kilos) per shell.
If the 170m rounds were on average two feet long, and if they were laid end to end, they would stretch for 64,394 miles (103,632 kilometres); the line would go round the equator over two and a half times. If the artillery of the Central Powers of Germany and its allies is factored in, the figure can be doubled to 5 encirclements of the planet.
During the first two weeks of the Third Battle of Ypres, over 4 million rounds were fired at a cost of over £22,000,000 - a huge sum of money, especially over a century ago.
Artillery was the killer and maimer of the war of attrition.
According to Dennis Winter's book 'Death's Men' three quarters of battle casualties were caused by artillery rounds. According to John Keegan ('The Face of Battle') casualties were:
- Bayonets - less than 1%
- Bullets - 30%
- Artillery and Bombs - 70%
Keegan suggests however that the ratio changed during advances, when massed men walking line-abreast with little protection across no-man's land were no match for for rifles and fortified machine gun emplacements.
Many artillery shells fired during the Great War failed to explode. Drake Goodman provides the following information on Flickr:
"During World War I, an estimated one tonne of explosives was fired for every square metre of territory on the Western front. As many as one in every three shells fired did not detonate. In the Ypres Salient alone, an estimated 300 million projectiles that the British and the German forces fired at each other were "duds", and most of them have not been recovered."
To this day, large quantities of Great War matériel are discovered on a regular basis. Many shells from the Great War were left buried in the mud, and often come to the surface during ploughing and land development.
For example, on the Somme battlefields in 2009 there were 1,025 interventions, unearthing over 6,000 pieces of ammunition weighing 44 tons.
Artillery shells may or may not still be live with explosive or gas, so the bomb disposal squad, of the Civilian Security of the Somme, dispose of them.
A huge mine under the German lines did not explode during the battle of Messines in 1917. The mine, containing several tons of ammonal and gun cotton, was triggered by lightning in 1955, creating an enormous crater.
The precise location of a second mine which also did not explode is unknown. Searches for it are not planned, as they would be too expensive and dangerous. For more on this, please search for "Cotehele Chapel"
The Somme Times
From 'The Somme Times', Monday, 31 July, 1916:
'There was a young girl of the Somme,
Who sat on a number five bomb,
She thought 'twas a dud 'un,
But it went off sudden -
Her exit she made with aplomb!'
The Postcard
A postcard published by the Photochrom Co. Ltd.
The card was posted in Margate on Friday the 19th. September 1919 to:
Miss G. Stiles,
36, Brookwood Road,
Southfields,
London S.W.
The pencilled message on the back of the card was as follows:
"Churchfield Boarding
House,
Churchfields,
Margate.
Dear Grace,
We are having a ripping
time.
Our faces are quite sore
being sunburnt.
Fancy George being in
England.
I am glad I have an extra
week's holiday, I want the
time we have down here
not to go quickly.
Love from Rose".
The Photochrom Co. Ltd.
The Photochrom Co. Ltd. of London and Royal Tunbridge Wells originally produced Christmas cards before becoming a major publisher and printer of tourist albums, guide books, and postcards.
These mainly captured worldwide views as real photos, or were printed in black & white, monochrome, and color.
They also published many advertising, comic, silhouette, novelty, panoramic, and notable artist-signed cards in named series as well. The huge number of titles that Photochrom produced may well exceed 40,000.
In 1896 they took over Fussli’s London office established three years earlier, and began publishing similar photo-chromolithographic postcards after securing the exclusive English licence for the Swiss photochrom process.
This technique was used to produce a great number of view-cards of both England and Europe. While they captured the same fine details as the Swiss prints, their colours were much softer and reduced.
Apart from their better known photochroms, they produced their Celesque series of view-cards printed in tricolor.
One of the largest unnamed series that Photochrom produced was of view-cards printed in brown rotogravure. Many of these cards were simply hand coloured with a dominant red and blue, which gives these cards a distinct appearance. They are similar to cards produced in their Photogravure and Velvet Finish Series.
Photochrom postcard series include:
-- Night Series - Line block halftone over a blue tint depicting London.
-- Carbofoto Series - Black & white real photo cards.
-- Sepiatone Series - Sepia real photo cards.
-- Grano Series - View-cards printed in black & white.
-- Exclusive Photo-Color Series - View-cards printed in colour.
-- Duotype Process Series - View-cards printed in two tones.
Cliftonville
Cliftonville is a coastal area of the town of Margate, situated to the east of the main town. It contains the area known as Palm Bay.
The original Palm Bay estate was built in the 1930's as a number of large, wide avenues with detached and semi-detached houses with driveways, garages and gardens. This land was sold by Mr Sidney Simon Van Den Bergh to the Palm Bay Estate Co. on the 23rd. June 1924. Such avenues include Gloucester Avenue and Leicester Avenue.
East Cliftonville
The Palm Bay estate covers the eastern part of Cliftonville, and was fields before the first avenue was built. It extends east beyond Northumberland Avenue and has been developed in phases. The later phase extending eastwards of Princess Margaret Avenue is a modern-style housing estate with small houses largely identical in appearance and of less substantial build quality than the original 1930's estate.
The eastward expansion of Cliftonville has included much of the former parish of Northdown, including Northdown Park and House.
West Cliftonville
West Cliftonville was originally developed as the up-market alternative to bustling Margate, and had many small private hotels and guest houses with outstanding Victorian architecture which catered for the many visitors to what was in the first half of the 20th. century a thriving holiday resort.
Many of the large hotels have been converted into one bed flats; this has brought about positive action from Thanet District Council which introduced selective licensing, ensuring that quality home improvements are maintained by landlords (2006) and restricting planning permission for one bedroom flats (2007).
Cliftonville now has many of its streets protected by conservation area orders. The seafront area once included many large hotels, including at one time a large Butlins complex. Some fantastic hotels remain, e.g. Smiths Court Hotel overlooking the sea, and The Walpole Bay Hotel.
Tourism and visitor numbers have increased in Cliftonville (2018) with the addition of newly opened bed and breakfasts changing the Cliftonville landscape. Northdown Road and Cliff Terrace have also had a resurgence, with many trendy and hip businesses opening up.
The Oval Bandstand and lawns run by community group GRASS Cliftonville bring an opportunity to bring community engagement to Cliftonville, and they host a monthly award-winning farmers' market on the last Sunday of every month.
During the summer there are a number of activities and events, including musical shows. The Tom Thumb Theatre brings a host of music events and theatre to Cliftonville.
Writing and Poetry
During the first half of the 20th. century, Cliftonville was considered the fashionable hotel quarter of Margate. It was during the autumn of 1921 that T. S. Eliot spent a period of convalescence at the Albermarle Hotel. His widow has confirmed that he found inspiration for, and wrote significant sections of 'The Waste Land' in the Grade II listed Nayland Rock promenade shelter.
The spirit of early 20th. century Cliftonville was caught by John Betjeman in his poem "Margate Pier".
Trevor Howard
The actor Trevor Howard was born in Cliftonville on the 29th. September 1913.
Sugar Consumption in the U.S.
So what else happened on the day that Rose posted the card?
Well, on the 19th. September 1919, the Chicago Tribune reported that the consumption of sugar in the United States for the first 7 months of 1919 was 362,000 tons more than during the corresponding period in the previous year.
This was according to statistics compiled by the United States Sugar Equalization Board.
This represents an increased per capita consumption of one pound per month. So now you know.
SHANGHAI: A History in Photographs, 1842-Today
Author：
Liu Heung Shing & Karen Smith
Publisher：
Viking Penguin
Shanghai traces the story of the most modern of China’s cities, through evocative, beautiful and sometimes painful images. In 1842, the signing of the ignominious Treaty of Nanking turned a small riverside stop-off into a bustling treaty port. Over the near-170 years that followed, Shanghai was shaped and defined by outside forces, from the foreign concessions and Japanese occupiers through to the arrival of the Communists and the cult of Mao. Through civil war, invasion, revolution and famine, Shanghai beat the odds to become a thriving metropolis that commands a place in the contemporary imagination unlike any other. Shanghai has unceasingly been a byword for style, culture, business, and opportunity, and has led the way in China’s ongoing economic boom. The story told through the pages of Shanghai is both grand in scale, and domestic in tone. Photographs depict families living under the cloud of war, enjoying the fine life accorded by a booming international trade (as much in pictures of the 19th century as today), and suffering the inequalities of poverty. Time moves on and fashions change, but above all else, it is the humanity of the city of Shanghai shines through in this spectacular and sweeping history.
Liu Heung Shing was born in Hong Kong in 1952, and is a photojournalist with a career spanning more than twenty years. In 1992, Liu became the first ethnic Chinese person to win a Pulitzer Prize, sharing it for his coverage of the collapse of the Soviet Union. With international assignments for the Associated Press and Time magazine to his name, Liu is the author of China After Mao (Penguin, 1983) and China: Portrait of a Country (Taschen, 2008).
Karen Smith is a Beijing-based British art historian, specializing in contemporary Chinese art of the post-Mao era. She is the author of Ai Weiwei (Phaodon, 2009) and is currently finishing her forthcoming book, Bang to Boom: Chinese Art in the 1990s.
i was very proud to participate in the inside-out | be the change project in athens, greece. on friday, june 21st, 2013, a group of young people plastered some portraits that i shot, along with extraordinary photographers, around klafthmonos square. this was one action of many, in which a new generation is being the change they want to see.
more information:
athens youth being the change they wish to see
Scan from book published in 1904. FLIEGENDE BLATTER. This image is IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN and you may use them as you like, though I'd love it if you left a comment when you do use them.
ALSO: I do not speak German and have not translated this, so I have no idea what it says. If you feel like translating, please do! I'd love to know what this says.
Very gratifying to have my photograph "Silo" selected by Amateur Photographer Magazine as their "Online Picture of the Week" and published in the 15 November 2014 issue of the magazine.
Original photo: www.flickr.com/photos/dave_horton/15359788627/
Published in Angels (The Post), This is the centre spread of the magazine, Photography by me and Layout by Mudassar Amin
Tigers, snaked and elephants,
and monkeys climbing trees,
And we can't find the pathways,
Amidst the jungle's menageries
with our little legs and limbs
we walk through the green maze
And the slight beams of sunlight that crep through,
The leafy trees, shows us the sights that amaze
In the anima world, we're happy to be elite,
The ones who finds time to enjoy Mother Nature's retreat
There's danger and fun, but we kids like to play,
And for many men it's a rare treat
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Erlend Øye, il leader dei Norvegesi Kings Of Convenience, e fan del gruppo (tanto da averli personalmente invitati ad aprire per i sui concerti) ha recentemente dichiarato su Vanity Fair a proposito della musica Italiana, che: “la scena di oggi, a parte i Fitness Forever, è un’imitazione di musica straniera”.
E in un momento in cui le nostre band più celebrate, sono impegnatissime a proporre un sound che di sicuro non ha radici nel nostro stivale (finendo per destare ben poco interesse negli ascoltatori stranieri, che forse non avvertiranno il bisogno di ascoltare una versione Italiana di New Order, Motorpsycho o Animal Collective) forse non è paradossale che i Fitness Forever trovino visibilità e i maggiori consensi proprio al di fuori del nostro paese, nonostante sia gruppo che canta in Italiano e con un suono profondamente ispirato dai nostri maestri dei 60,70 e 80: una musica che non a caso ha ispirato e continua a ispirare un gran numero di musicisti e appassionati in tutto il mondo!
Nati nel 2007 da una costola di Barbara Bouchet, i Fitness Forever declinano il Pop come un sorriso di Anne Hathaway, una finta di Pelè, un quadro di Rothko, una tinta di capelli di Biscardi – ossia, facendo sembrare facili le cose più difficili… Come ad esempio, far coesistere in un motivetto pop di 3 minuti il pop raffinato virato 60’ di Bacharach, i prodigiosi arrangiamenti di archi di Umiliani,, le pulsioni funk di Enzo Carella e Steely Dan, l’immenso Battisti dei tardi 70 , il Philly Sound, le allucinazioni Italo-Disco, i Matia Bazar, Herbie Hancock e DiscoMare 78’!!! Impossibile? Per accertarvene vi basterà suonare il loro secondo LP,COSMOS, sul vostro giradischi: un Viaggio Cosmico di 38 minuti con un’orchestra d’archi, un quartetto di fiati, tonnellate di strumenti vintage e armonie complesse e raffinate che, pur non perdendo mai di vista l’immediatezza Pop, tentano di portare il gioco a un livello superiore.
Il primo disco “Personal Train” del 2009, è stato accolto calorosamente in tutto il mondo : presenza fissa nei palinsesti di BBC Radio, Radio 1 in Spagna, J-Wave di Tokyo (che hanno inserito la loro “Brasil” come pezzo di apertura della loro nuova compilation “Rendez vous voyage” del 2012 ) recensito entusiasticamente tra gli altri da Allmusic.com, El Pais, Rockdeluxe, Mojo, A Nous Paris, distribuito ovunque e addirittura ristampato in Giappone, Korea, Indonesia e Thailandia!Prodotti e dalla storica Indie spagnola Elefant Records, (che ha in catalogo gente del calibro di Camera Obscura, BMX Bandits, Stereo Total e The School) i Fitness hanno prestato la loro musica soave e malinconica a grossi marchi come Mini Cooper, opere cinematografiche (Yo, Tambien (Me too), e Fuga de Cerebros 2) cartoni animati (“Jelly Jamm”) e addirittura alla stra-famosa serie tv prodotta dal colosso televisivo americano HBO, Bored to Death.
Carola Moccia: guitar, vocals
Chicca Iavarone: flute, vocals
Roberto Porzio: keyboards
Andrea De Fazio: drums
Alfredo Maddaluno: keys, guitar, vocals
Luigi Scialdone: bass, vocals
Carlos Valderrama: guitar, keys, vocals