Punch that card!

Spotted this today at Kelly's school library. Copyright 1996, but looks more like 1956.

Did not know Abraham from "Walking Dead" was a mainframe technician.

A farerwell to Europe as lost as Atlantis

Don't miss this stunningly sad eulogy for Europe that appeared in the NYT after WWII.

"Mr. LaFarge gives us a last look at a continent as irretrievably lost as Atlantis. Only if Europe could have at least a half-century without the threat of war could it hope to restore its housing to the 1939 level of comfort. Who thinks this is possible when past wars have been only 20 years apart and each more terrible?"

Oh, ye of little faith..Makes me want to hop in a time machine just to tell them that .Europe will rise again. And Tokyo, Berlin and Rome will once again become such fast friends that it will be impossible for future generations to view them as enemies. We'll find more enemies, we always do -- and they'll be doozies.

Fake text can be fascinating

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

That's filler text, and if you've done any kind of journalism, design or layout work, you know it well. (If you're lucky, you never forgot and left it in a document and had it published live.)

But do you know what it means, or why we use it? Read on.

Poor Cicero sure had a bloody death and aftermath, huh?

The torturer who doesn't feel sorry

If you're not already addicted to the wonderful work collected at Longreads, you should sign up for their newsletters or follow their Twitter feed.

I've always been fascinated with the Khmer Rouge and their bloody history in Cambodia, and the horrors of Prison S-21, which in more innocent days was once a high school. Imagine traveling into that buildings past and seeing the students going to class there, laughing with friends. Then imagine telling them, somehow making them understand that the place where they're sitting in peace and friendship will be as infamous as Auschwitz one day. Could they ever understand it? Can we today?

Rithy Panh not only survived the Killing Fields of Cambodia, he interviewed Duch, its notorious commandant. This story is both horrible and necessary.

Mamie-pink bathrooms

I had no idea "Mamie pink," as in Mamie Eisenhower, who was apparently a big pink fan, was a thing.

But I certainly DID know that many bathrooms of a certain Fifties-esque era had pink fixtures (some other pastels as well -- good friends have a baby blue tub). This site pays a nice homage to those pastely water closets, and makes me see their charm and history instead of their outdatedness.

...and everyone hates the French

Stereotypes the world over, nicely mapped for your pleasure. (Via Ask Metafilter)

Hitler's oak trees

I have never heard tell of Hitler's oak trees before. Apparently they were given to Olympic medalists in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, including the legendary Jesse Owens, he whose very skin color must have tortured Hitler when he won.

How could they lose the trees, though?

(Via Deadspin.)

Sometimes state flags...

Oh, I love, love, LOVE this. State Flags explained.

My favorite: "Sometimes state flags were so excited to use up their gold star stickers, they forgot what they were doing. (Indiana)"

(Via Metafilter.)

The Metafilter link also taught me that there was a movement not that long ago for a totally awesome Minnesota state flag, but it never worked out. Damn!

Goodbye, Space Shuttle

Breathtaking slideshow of space shuttle images over its history. (Via Kottke.)

I like the one where they're driving it through California and first had to hollow out the mountains so its wings would fit.

Not our fault

100 years ago, the Titanic was launched from Belfast. They now sell shirts there that say "She was all right when she left here." Ha!

(Via Muck Rack.)

A mighty avalanche

Words from Sam Houston as Texas was about to secede during the Civil War. Wow.

"Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives you may win Southern independence, but I doubt it. The North is determined to preserve this Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche."

I'm rewatching the stunning 1990 Ken Burns documentary. For no real reason except it's really, really great. And perhaps, in this divided time, where we are so set against each other politically, it is good to remember a time when we were even more divided, and yet came together again.

Kent State remembered

No, it's not May 4, the anniversary, but this bit of an article quoting the man who took the famous photograph really got to me:

Excerpt: “They just started firing downhill…I thought these were blanks,” he said. “The way people were running and knocking each other over I thought, ‘This is a great scare tactic firing blanks because you could really hurt someone.’”

The student journalist put his 35 mm Nikkormat camera to his eye, heard a shot from a guardsman’s gun and watched as a bullet struck a metal sculpture that “exploded into a cloud of rock.”

“I thought, ‘Oh my God, that guy’s using live ammunition,’” he said. “I never took the picture. I let the camera hang around my neck. I thought, ‘Holy damn, that’s live ammunition.’ I thought someone was dumb enough to put live ammunition in it.”

And then he realized the worst. All of the guardsmen were using live ammunition.

Last of the pink triangles.

Rudolf Brazda is believed to be the last surviving man deported to concentration camps for his homosexuality. When we lose him, we will lose a witness to history's horrors.

Via Metafilter.

Homes where the residents couldn't stay

A touching story about homes in Berlin that once housed Holocaust victims, and how those who now live there are remembering these people they never knew.

I'm reading a book now set in Israel, "The Debba," and when the characters speak of their relatives who died in the Holocaust, they speak of those who "went with Hitler." Chilling.

Scramble for Africa

Sometimes you stumble across Wikipedia entries that are just fascinating and that you never really learned about in history class. I'm going to have to read The Scramble For Africa entry when I have more time.

Triceratops never existed?

What the heck? Triceratops is one of the best dinosaur names there is, and now you say it may never have existed?

First over the Wall

I was reading about defectors to the West (don't ask...I have a fascinating life) and was taken in by this Wikipedia entry and photo.

Conrad Schumann was a 18-year-old border guard in East Germany and on the third day of the construction of the Berlin Wall, he made a break for the West, effortlessly leaping the then-tiny wall, which was then just a tangle of barbed wire.

This sentence puts a lump in my throat: "As the people on the Western side shouted Komm rüber! ("come over"), Schumann jumped the barbed wire and was driven away at high speeds by a waiting West Berlin police car."

Come over. And he did, and lived there the rest of his life.

Sadly, he suffered from depression, and committed suicide in 1998, hanging himself in his orchard.

The boy who fell from the sky

In 1960, a plane crashed in Brooklyn. One boy survived, just for a night, and one young nurse spent that night with him. This is what happened.

Inspired by this beautiful Metafilter post, and this plaque, which includes the pocket change the young boy had with him when the plane crashed.

Moon rock update

I posted about moon rocks kind of out of the blue last week, but now one of the many missing moon rocks has been found in West Virginia.

Once upon a time in Afghanistan

Amazing pictures from the 1950s in Afghanistan.

It could be the US in these images--women studying to be doctors, wearing Western clothes, not hidden behind cloaks and veils, young people mingling and buying records, kids in Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, people attending Hollywood movies.

How horrible it must be for those who live there now and remember the past, to see a country that has actually regressed.