April 2

1912 - RMS Titanic

Attachment 63544

leaves Belfast for sea trials.

1982 – Falklands War: Argentina invades the Falkland Islands.

2014 – A spree shooting occurs at the Fort Hood army base in Texas, with four dead, including the gunman, and 16 others injured.

It seems like yesterday.
I vividly recall Al Haig making a commendable, if exhausting and ultimately unsuccessful, effort to broker a settlement between ourselves and Argentina.

April 3

Attachment 63547

1882 - An unarmed Jesse James is shot by the coward Robert Ford, in the back of the head, while standing on a chair cleaning a dusty picture hanging on the wall.

James had just learned from a newspaper article that gang member Dick Liddil had confessed to the murder of one Wood Hite. He was suspicious as to why the Ford brothers hadn't told him about it. James then realized the Fords were there to betray him. Instead of confronting them, with whom he had just eaten breakfast, James removed both his pistols, walked across the room, laid them on the sofa, and returned across the living room, and began cleaning the picture.

Attachment 63548

£1.00 = $1.41

LINK

I't's amazing, If I spent millions of dollars to buy that tintype I probably wouldn't see any more than looking at the picture Carruthers posted. As a matter of fact less because the tintype is 2.5 x 3.5 and my screen picture is about 7" square.

Now I can't hang it over the mantle without an armed guard, so it's got to be locked away in a damn big safe, a safety deposit box, or a museum. Also every crook and con man will be looking me up to see I have any money left. And never before seen distant relatives will be crawling out of the sewers.

Plus the gold digging harlots.

OK, I'm in. :blush:

All of that shit will happen.

It doesn't have to be a whole lot of money, either.

Because people.

April 9, 1865

CSA General Robert E. Lee surrenders the Army of Northern Virginia (26,765 troops) to US General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War.

April 16

1943 - ~ Albert Hofmann, Speech on 100th birthday

:celebrat:

Attachment 63622

Today is ANZAC Day.

April 26, 1986

Chernobyl

Led to HYDROGEN being used as a coolant?!?!

What the fucking fuck?

That's common everywhere but not in the turbine, in the generator.

Not led to hydrogen being used a s a coolant.

Led the hydrogen which was already being used as a turbine coolant to leak from the turbine into the turbine hall.

Hydrogen's cold, y'know.:D

Not the turbine, the generator. They got that wrong. The turbine must cool slowly or it'll break.

I assumed.

Yet another time that assuming has made an ass outta me.

I have the advantage, I spent 17 years working for Westinghouse Steam Turbines, 10 of them traveling to customer's power plants instrumenting turbines for start up.

I had a Spanish solder point a rifle at me because I was smoking a cigarette while adjusting instrumentation on the turbine/generator coupling after they had charged the generator with hydrogen. :haha:

OK

Uncle, uncle.

I learned something, from here. I also read a lot of other words at the same site that didn't produce any actual learning, so, no damage done.

Still. ... a flammable mixture when air is introduced at ratios between 4 and 75%. That seems like a wiiiiiidde band of DO NOT GO THERE. Anyhow, all very interesting. And I'm glad you didn't get shot xoB.

Well, maybe just a little.

Directly in the buttock.[/Gump]

Further to my post #964...

Attachment 63727

Justin Whiting's photo Jesse James (right) and an existing picture of the outlaw at a similar age.

Something of a disappointment to both Mr Whiting and historians.

Daily Telegraph

May 19

1780 - It was a dark day for New England this day. No, really, it was dark.

June 2

1953 – Elizabeth II

Attachment 63917

was crowned Queen of the United Kingdom at Westminster Abbey.

June 11

1955 - A crash at the 24 Hrs of Le Mans results in 83 spectators, and one driver, being killed, and 178 others injured.

Wikipedia has a very good breakdown on the disaster, and how it all unfolded.

Fuck!

I had to stop reading at "the race was not red-flagged".

Horrible.

They didn't stop the race because an extremely huge number of ppl would have tried to leave the track all at once. This would have ground all traffic to a halt, for miles, preventing emergency vehicles from reaching the places they were needed. Remember, there were 178 ppl injured. There's no way the emergency vehicles on hand could handle them all. And, even if they could, if the race had been red-flagged (stopped), all those ppl trying to leave would have bottled the ambulances up, and they could not have gotten out. Additional, desperately needed, fire trucks and personnel would not have been able to reach the track, much less the victims.

So, prolly a good thing.

July 14, 1881

Pat Garrett

Attachment 64323

shoots, and kills, Billy The Kid

Attachment 64324

outside Fort Sumner, in what was then New Mexico Territory.

Man, you can just look at that picture and know that Billy the Kid would be great at online gaming.

Ya mean like a...



























...first person shooter?

Pat Garrett looks like he could stand behind a barber's chair with a pair of scissors in his hand and tell great stories.

Q: Who was the best rapper in the old west?

A: Hip-Hop-along Cassidy.

:bolt:

According to the people in Hico Tx , he survived that and lived there. And died in Hamilton Tx. in a nursing home in the early '50s. My Mother says that when they would go visit her Grandparents "Brushy Bill" would be there. He was William Bonney " Billy the Kid".

July 21st 1969 - Apollo 11
 

Lies! Conspiracy!! :D

Yeah, how can a flag fly with no wind? And the shadows are all wrong. Plus my mailman's babysitter's great uncle's neighbor's cousin works at the Hollywood studio here he heard about the subterfuge. :crone:

Today's NASA Astro pic is remarkable in its simplicity.
I have always figured in the back of all the minds involved, especially Armstrong's and Aldrin's was the thought:
"Well damn, this SOB really works!"

If they did it (went to the moon) within 7-8 years in the 60s (with 60s tech) why is it gonna take 15 years to do it (go back to the moon) again in the 21st century?

Because it's not a race anymore.


[edit]


And we will want to do more than take selfies when we get there this time.

Because few Americans think it's a priority

But now The Donald wants to build a hotel there … Lunatic Towers.

Maybe Ralph Crandon can help him out.

Um... Kramden? Pow, to the moon?

Can you imagine trying to make The Honeymooners in today's social climate?

Or a lot of other shows from the Golden age of TV.
Lots of people found them silly and stupid but not offensive.

King of Queens? I don't watch many sitcoms, but I suspect the formula is still in heavy rotation. There was more to the Honeymooners than Ralph threatening to beat up Alice, and it could survive the removal of that aspect.

But that's the aspect we speak of.

If you're talking about making exactly the original Honeymooners, I think that a bigger obstacle would be that the cast is all dead. But if you're talking about a show like the Honeymooners, I think we never really stopped making them.

What's the last 30 min sit com you saw where the main character threatened his wife with physical assault? While shaking his fist at her in close proximity.

Like I said, there are many reasons you couldn't make exactly "The Honeymooners" today. The iconic cast. The audience wouldn't accept black and white. The aspect ratio doesn't match today's TVs. It would now be a "period piece", when it was originally written as contemporary. And yes, the threats of assault for comedic affect.


But making a new "Honeymooners" today, all of those could be changed and retain the formula. The only real issue with changing it would be the cast. They'd be hard pressed to get one that worked as well.


Animation is another story, though. "The Simpsons" is a take on "The Honeymooners" formula, and while Homer doesn't threaten Marge, he does actually choke out Bart as a "pow, bang, to the moon"-style recurring gag. And "South Park" and various Adult Swim offerings regularly do worse.

Four-hundred eighty-six years ago today, King Henry VIII granted his future wife, Anne Boleyn, the noble title Marquess of Pembroke. Unfortunately for her, marrying a king did not help her get ahead -- or even keep the one she already had. - Alexa.

Apollo 7 - October 11th 1968
 

Fifty years ago today, the first manned flight of the Apollo program was launched.

Attachment 65192

It's breathtaking that between October 1968 and July 1969 (Apollo 11) a total of five manned flights in the program were successfully completed.
Has there ever been such a time in the history of exploration?

Link

Link

November 11, 1975

November 11, 1871

November 20, 1820

Call me Ishmael.

1947

Phil and Liz tie the knot.

50 years ago today, the first interracial kiss on American network TV is aired - between Captain Kirk and Lt. Uhura.

This is the kind of fact you can just throw out there during a lull in conversation at Thanksgiving Dinner.

Thanks, UT!

Add, when Nyota Uhura(Nichelle Nichols) tried to quit the show Dr Martin Luther King pleaded with her not to, so she stayed.

I don't remember being scandalized by this at the time, but it's obviously a landmark moment in television history. It's been a normal thing in my mind since then.

It's weird to consider how tied-down network TV was back in the day.

I remember that the simple sound of a toilet flush was a wildly hilarious gag on "All In the Family", partly because it was so unexpected. I remember that most people think "Brady Bunch" was the first time a married couple was shown in the same bed (google research shows it wasn't the first, but that people thought that, just goes to show how rare it was).

This site has a nice short video about it and makes the distinction between first interracial kiss on TV and the first on American network TV:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/tune...ard/vp-BBPXUZh

It was the product of the people producing it, and what got produced was what the people paying for it, commercial purchasers, thought their customers would like/watch. Of course, there were some other synergies in play and it's hard to say what parts were chickens and which were eggs, but it seems clear to me that what we had available to us to consume was the product of those with means and agency, and they showed what they saw and lived.

One problem was, network TV was limited to what everyone in the goddamn country thought was decent, and what the FCC would take seriously when considering revoking licenses.