The theatre of Epidaurus . 2500 years old & an incredible acoustic until today.
Source: Enture (reddit)
The World’s first playground swing…
Built 90 years ago, these photographs show what historians beleive to be the world’s first playground swing.
The play equipment is believed to have been constructed in 1923 in Wicksteed Park in Kettering, England - the first park of its kind in the UK.
It was designed by owner Charles Wicksteed, as part of his vision to inspire and encourage play as part of families’ health and well-being.Charles Wicksteed said at the time: ‘We had a Sunday School treat in the park and put up primitive swings with large poles, tied together at the top with chains.
Fortunately they were not cleared away with the other things the day after the treat and I ultimately found them so popular that instead of pulling them down I added more.
I have direct evidence from mothers how whining, pale-faced children, complaining of any food they get, have come back with healthy faces and rosy complexions, ready to eat the house out after a good play in the playground.’
“Berlin lies strewn about, Dust blows up, then a lull again… the great rubble woman will be canonized…” (Günter Grass)
Berlin, December 1948: With German cities in ruins after World War II and the country’s male population decimated, it fell to the women to clean up the rubble. The so-called “Trümmerfrauen,” or “rubble women,” worked with their bare hands and whatever tools they could find.
The Trümmerfrauen phenomenon was launched by Allied orders requiring women between the ages of 15 and 50 to report for duty. A law passed by the military government allowing local authorities to employ women in clearing rubble. Up to 80 percent of the historic centers of German cities had been destroyed by Allied bombs during the war; Liselotte Kubitza recalls emerging as an 11 year old from her shelter of three weeks to a scene of destruction in Berlin, where “[o]ne whole wall between us and the neighbouring flat had collapsed, parts of the ceiling had come down and all the windows were gone.” Once the violence ceased, unsafe buildings were torn down. Bricks and other materials were carefully sorted so they could be used again.
At one stage, it was estimated that it wouls take 25 years to clear the city rubble, with 42,000 workers continuously at work. Munich, Kiel and Stuttgart were the fastest; by 1949, Munich had cleared 80 percent of its rubble, and by 1952, Stuttgart had cleared 88 percent.
The post-war blockade of Berlin by the Soviets meant that not as much construction material could get through to the city. As a result, a higher number of workers had to turn to rubble clearance.
“We had to do something,” says Naß. “First and foremost because at the back of the mind you had that thought, ‘When my brother comes home, or when my husband gets home, it can’t be like this.’ And who else would do it? So the women did it together.” Physical hardship was the norm for Naß and her peers and they carried out their exhausting work with bare hands alone. “We had no hammers, no shovels, no buckets, no gloves,” she says.
The work though was a distraction from the bitter disappointment and emotional turmoil Berlin’s survivors felt. As a young woman who had grown up almost exclusively under the Third Reich, Frau Naß admits the end of the war threw all her beliefs into question: “We were totally disillusioned, because as girls we had gone through the Hitler Youth,” she says. “You have to imagine how you would react if the whole system you had been brought up in simply didn’t exist anymore. People just couldn’t grasp it.”
Explosons nucleares no mundo desde 1945
Adivinham quem lidera o ranking de estados que já figérom ataques e testes nucleares? Exato, os EUA, cujo imperialismo representa ainda hoje o maior inimigo da humanidade.
Cuando estudiaba en Cambridge recuerdo a una profesora de antropología mostrando una fotografía de un hueso con 28 incisiones talladas en él. “Esto es considerado a menudo como el primer intento del hombre en hacer un calendario” explicó. Ella hizo una pausa mientras tomábamos nota de esto diligentemente. “Mi pregunta para vosotrxs es esta: ¿qué hombre necesita marcar 28 días? Yo os sugeriría que este es el primer intento de una mujer en hacer un calendario”. Fue un momento que cambió mi vida. En ese instante me paré a cuestionar prácticamente todo lo que me habían enseñado sobre el pasado. ¿Cuán a menudo había pasado por alto las contribuciones de las mujeres?
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When I was a student at Cambridge I remember an anthropology professor holding up a picture of a bone with 28 incisions carved in it. “This is often considered to be man’s first attempt at a calendar” she explained. She paused as we dutifully wrote this down. ‘My question to you is this – what man needs to mark 28 days? I would suggest to you that this is woman’s first attempt at a calendar.’ It was a moment that changed my life. In that second I stopped to question almost everything I had been taught about the past. How often had I overlooked women’s contributions? Sandi Toksvig (via socialismartnature, learninglog) (via mscoolcat) (via perrabellum) |
The first telephone pay station in Los Angeles, at 228 S. Spring Street, 1899. The service was not cheap: that 50¢ per minute call to San Francisco would cost $13.58 per minute in today’s dollars.
Caesar (1898–1914)
A Wire Fox Terrier owned by King Edward VII. He was given to King Edward VII by Lord Dudley in 1902 to replace the King’s dog Jack who had died after choking on food, and became the constant companion of the King. He wore a collar that read “I am Caesar. I belong to the King”. Caesar was the subject of paintings, and a hand crafted hardstone model created by the House of Fabergé.
After the King’s death in 1910, the dog attended the funeral and walked in the procession in prominence ahead of nine kings and other heads of state.
Caesar then refused to eat, and would spend time whining outside the King’s bedroom.At one point, he managed to sneak into the King’s bedroom and was found hiding under his bed by Queen Alexandra.The Queen encouraged him to eat once more and restored him to his normal self.After the King’s death, a portrait of the dog was painted once more by Maud Earl. The painting entitled Silent Sorrow, features Caesar resting his head on the King’s favourite chair.
Caesar died following an operation in April 1914.
The Inspiration for the original “Rosie the Riveter” — Geraldine Hoff Doyle
Rosie’s story began in the 1940s, when the 17-year-old Doyle was working at a metal factory in Ann Arbor, Michigan. A visiting United Press International photographer snapped a pic of her on the job.
The image was then used by artist J. Howard Miller for the “We Can Do It!” poster, released during World War II. As the Washington Post writes, “For millions of Americans throughout the decades since World War II, the stunning brunette in the red and white polka-dot bandanna was Rosie the Riveter.”
A later “Rosie the Riveter” interpretation, done by Norman Rockwell, was featured on the Saturday Evening Post [on May 29,] 1943. Ultimately, the idea of “Rosie the Riveter” came to represent all female factory workers at the time.
But for decades, Doyle had no idea that her likeness was used on the original poster. The New York Times writes:
Mrs. Doyle was unaware of the poster’s existence until 1982, when, while thumbing through a magazine, she saw a photograph of it and recognized herself. Her daughter said that the face on the poster was her mother’s, but that the muscles were not.
“She didn’t have big, muscular arms,” [her daughter Stephanie] Gregg said. “She was 5-foot-10 and very slender. She was a glamour girl. The arched eyebrows, the beautiful lips, the shape of the face — that’s her.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, Doyle quit after just one week at the factory where her picture was made famous. “She later married a dentist and raised a family in Lansing, Mich.,” the Journal reports.
I prefer Norman Rockwell’s interpretation. Notice what her foot is on. As a side note, Rockwell’s interpretation of Rosie was inspired by Michelangelo’s Isaiah:
