History and Geography Posts

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Ok....the Colmes Files are going back to the greatness that they were founded on.......the history posts I put there will stay because it's too hard to move them here.....lol.....all new history posts, though, will go here.......

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When it became clear the Titanic was going down, Isidor and Ida Straus did as requested—the couple put on life jackets and moved to the Boat Deck where officers were lowering lifeboats and instructing women, children, and First Class passengers to board.

According to detailed accounts from Ida's maid and Isidor's work colleague (both surviving eyewitnesses who recounted the story to newspapers at the time) a Third Officer told Ida, who was wearing a full-length mink coat to brave the icy outdoor temperatures, to step onto the lifeboat. She did. When the officer beckoned to Isidor, prompting him to follow, he shook his head. Isidor said, “No I will not get on the lifeboat until I see that every woman and child has a chance to escape.”

The officer recognizing Mr. Straus as the co-owner of Macy’s, offered him a place on the lifeboat 8 but he declined electing to remain on the deck.

According to Archibald Gracie in "The Truth About the Titanic", at first the men tried to get Mrs. Straus into the boat but she would not go without her husband. Then the men all agreed that an old gentleman like Isador should be allowed into the boat. Gracie writes: "'No', he said, 'I do not wish any distinction in my favor which is not granted to the others.' As near as I can recall them these were the words which they addressed to me. 

Seeing this, Ida then climbed back out of the boat and turned to her beloved husband. "We have lived a wonderful life together for 40 years and have six beautiful children together, if you won't get on the life boat, I won't either,” she told him.

She removed her mink coat and handed it her maid, Ellen Bird. "I won't have any further need," she said. "Please take this as you get into a lifeboat to keep you warm, until you are rescued." 

Other sources say Ida stated, "We have lived together for many years. Where you go, I go." 

Archibald Gracie writes, 'They expressed themselves as fully prepared to die, and calmly sat down in steamer chairs on the glass-enclosed Deck A, prepared to meet their fate.' 

Isidor wrapped his arms around her, then, a great wave came over the port side of the ship and swept them both into the sea.

Isidor's body (No. 96) was recovered by the MacKay-Bennett and taken to Halifax. Ida was lost to the sea. (February 6th, 1849–April 15th, 1912) Born on the same day, they died on the same day.

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The photo you see has been floating around different Texas history pages and many of them are wondering what was on this man's mind at the time it was taken? 
The photo was taken by a photographer from Life Magazine in 1937. 

The town is Freer, Texas in Duvall County. The history of Freer is quite extensive, but for us at All Things Texas we believe that we can give a little more context to this photo. 

The single most important event in the history of Freer occurred in 1928. Three wildcatters drilling on the W. P. Norton property just southwest of what is now the Freer townsite struck one of the nation's largest oil reserves. 

The discovery of oil soon turned Freer into what Life magazine called "the last of the tough frontier oil towns." 

Those who had seen Freer grow into a town they called home soon realized that the oil boom was changing their way of life and not for the good to those who lived there. 

The onset of the "Great Depression" soon saw a little bit of normalcy come to the town of Freer. 

But, the 1930s were a decade of phenomenal growth in Freer. The town had two businesses in 1931, but by the spring of 1933, when a fire that started in the Bluebonnet Cafe on Main Street came close to destroying the town. The fire merely provided the citizens of Freer with an opportunity to display their resilience.

By 1936, when the community's population was estimated at 1,200, Freer had sixty businesses and was incorporated for a time. Two years later both the population and the number of businesses had doubled. The town quickly attracted a colorful cast of prostitutes, gamblers, drifters, and drunks, and a certain type of boomtown trash one could say. 

So, we believe that this is a photo of an older gentleman just making sure that things on the streets of Freer, Texas remains calm. 

Today the population of Freer, Texas is around 2,400.

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Fact Slap  

TITANIC LIVE: 2245-2330

SS CALIFORNIAN stops on the eastern edge of the large known ice field, her Captain, Stanley Lord decides to stop for the night and find a way through come first light. In California’s wireless room the radio operator, Cyril Evans sends out an ice warning to all ships in the vicinity.

He sends out the message and is told to shut up by Jack Phillips on TITANIC who is still trying to clear the backlog of private passenger messages and at the close range of TITANIC and CALIFORNIAN, his broadcast is almost deafening to Phillips which prompted the shut up and get out response. 

At 2330 Cyril shuts down his equipment and goes to bed. He is the only wireless operator onboard and there’s no law yet stating that there has to be a 24hr watch on the wireless sets yet.

This will change given the events that are about to happen.

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This image shows an illustrated reconstruction of a Roman fort or a fortified settlement, often referred to as a castrum. It is meticulously organized, with a central open area flanked by orderly arranged buildings, indicative of Roman engineering and military discipline. Surrounding the fort are various ancillary structures like farming plots, smaller buildings, and possibly stables, suggesting a self-sustaining outpost. The landscape around includes a forest, some mountains in the distance, and a road leading to the fort, all suggesting a strategic location likely chosen for its defensible position and logistical advantages.

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[Monte1076]

3 hours ago, RETIREDFAN1 said:

When it became clear the Titanic was going down, Isidor and Ida Straus did as requested—the couple put on life jackets and moved to the Boat Deck where officers were lowering lifeboats and instructing women, children, and First Class passengers to board.

According to detailed accounts from Ida's maid and Isidor's work colleague (both surviving eyewitnesses who recounted the story to newspapers at the time) a Third Officer told Ida, who was wearing a full-length mink coat to brave the icy outdoor temperatures, to step onto the lifeboat. She did. When the officer beckoned to Isidor, prompting him to follow, he shook his head. Isidor said, “No I will not get on the lifeboat until I see that every woman and child has a chance to escape.”

The officer recognizing Mr. Straus as the co-owner of Macy’s, offered him a place on the lifeboat 8 but he declined electing to remain on the deck.

According to Archibald Gracie in "The Truth About the Titanic", at first the men tried to get Mrs. Straus into the boat but she would not go without her husband. Then the men all agreed that an old gentleman like Isador should be allowed into the boat. Gracie writes: "'No', he said, 'I do not wish any distinction in my favor which is not granted to the others.' As near as I can recall them these were the words which they addressed to me. 

Seeing this, Ida then climbed back out of the boat and turned to her beloved husband. "We have lived a wonderful life together for 40 years and have six beautiful children together, if you won't get on the life boat, I won't either,” she told him.

She removed her mink coat and handed it her maid, Ellen Bird. "I won't have any further need," she said. "Please take this as you get into a lifeboat to keep you warm, until you are rescued." 

Other sources say Ida stated, "We have lived together for many years. Where you go, I go." 

Archibald Gracie writes, 'They expressed themselves as fully prepared to die, and calmly sat down in steamer chairs on the glass-enclosed Deck A, prepared to meet their fate.' 

Isidor wrapped his arms around her, then, a great wave came over the port side of the ship and swept them both into the sea.

Isidor's body (No. 96) was recovered by the MacKay-Bennett and taken to Halifax. Ida was lost to the sea. (February 6th, 1849–April 15th, 1912) Born on the same day, they died on the same day.

They're briefly shown in the movie Titanic, too...laying in bed embracing one another as their room floods.

 

Edited April 16 by Monte1076

[Monte1076]

1 hour ago, RETIREDFAN1 said:

Fact Slap  

TITANIC LIVE: 2245-2330

SS CALIFORNIAN stops on the eastern edge of the large known ice field, her Captain, Stanley Lord decides to stop for the night and find a way through come first light. In California’s wireless room the radio operator, Cyril Evans sends out an ice warning to all ships in the vicinity.

He sends out the message and is told to shut up by Jack Phillips on TITANIC who is still trying to clear the backlog of private passenger messages and at the close range of TITANIC and CALIFORNIAN, his broadcast is almost deafening to Phillips which prompted the shut up and get out response. 

At 2330 Cyril shuts down his equipment and goes to bed. He is the only wireless operator onboard and there’s no law yet stating that there has to be a 24hr watch on the wireless sets yet.

This will change given the events that are about to happen.

If you're interested in Titanic (like I am), check out the book "On A Sea of Glass".

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18 minutes ago, Monte1076 said:

If you're interested in Titanic (like I am), check out the book "On A Sea of Glass".

I'm not......I just post cool history items here......thanks, though.....

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The Sumerians looked to the sky when they invented the time system we still use today.
We may find it funny that we divide hours into 60 minutes and days into 24 hours; why not a multiple of 10 or 12?. In short, the answer is that the inventors of time did not operate with a decimal (base 10) or duodecimal (base 12), but with a sexagesimal system (base 60). For ancient Sumerian innovators who first divided the motions of the skies into countable intervals, 60 was the perfect number. The number 60 can be divided into 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30 equal parts. In addition, ancient astronomers believed that a year had 360 days, a number that 60 fits perfectly into six times. The Sumerian Empire didn't last. Yet for over 5,000 years the world keeps measuring time as they dictated. And if time is an illusion in the spiritual sense is this invention a good or a bad thing? From my perspective looking at their tablets and what not they seem to have been a very patriarchal and submissive culture ...

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A mediocre student who flunked his examination for West Point, Edgar Rice Burroughs worked a variety of jobs all over the country, among them a cowboy in Idaho, a gold miner in Oregon, a railroad policeman in Utah, and a department manager for Sears Roebuck in Chicago. By 1911, after seven years of low wages as a pencil-sharpener wholesaler, Burroughs began to write fiction.

"If people were paid for writing rot such as I read in some of those (pulp-fiction) magazines, that I could write stories just as rotten. As a matter of fact, although I had never written a story, I knew absolutely that I could write stories just as entertaining and probably a whole lot more so than any I chanced to read in those magazines."

He published "A Princess of Mars" under the title "Under the Moons of Mars" in six parts between February and July of 1912, in "All-Story Magazine." That same magazine put out his immediately successful "Tarzan of the Apes" in October of that year. Two years later, the hardback book appeared, and on January 27, 1918, the movie opened on Broadway starring Elmo Lincoln as Tarzan. It was one of the first movies to gross over $1,000,000.

The character of Tarzan was immediately popular, and Burroughs capitalized on it in every way possible, including a syndicated Tarzan comic strip, movies, and merchandise. Tarzan remains one of the most successful fictional characters to this day and is a cultural icon. Burroughs's California ranch is now the center of the Tarzana neighborhood in Los Angeles, named after the character.

Burroughs was in his late 60s and was in Honolulu at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Despite his age, he applied for and received permission to become a war correspondent, becoming one of the oldest U.S. war correspondents during World War II.

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[KirtFalcon]

3 minutes ago, RETIREDFAN1 said:

I knew her well ..... dated her sister a couple times ..... 

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THE ONLY ROMAN BOILER IN THE WORLD, FOUND INTACT, WITH ALL ITS PIPES, VALVES AND ACCESSORIES.
An extraordinary find, unique in the world, found in the excavations of the Villa Della Pisanella in Boscoreale.
The Villa della Pisanella, located in the Roman countryside of Boscoreale (Naples), constitutes one of the many productive settlements that, in Roman times, were scattered in the northern suburbs of Pompeii. Unfortunately, these settlements, except in rare cases, have not been the subject of systematic excavations, but only partial explorations. These rapid excavations, carried out without any scientific systematics, had the objective of recovering precious finds, which today are scattered in various museums around the world.
The first testimonies of the Villa Della Pisanella date back to November 1868, when Modestino Pulzella, while tracing the foundations of a wall, found some pre-existing wall structures. Continuing the excavations, some mosaics were found. The excavations then had to stop because the owner of the neighboring land, Vincenzo De Prisco, highlighted the danger of damage to his land. Only in September 1894 were excavations resumed, which continued until June 1895. This time precisely at the initiative of De Prisco who, evidently, no longer feared "damage." This is how the famous "Boscoreale Treasure" came to light, sensationally sold abroad due to a failure in legislation protecting cultural heritage. There was another interruption, which lasted about a year, before excavations resumed in May 1896. Thus the Roman baths and boiler came to light, found intact, with all their pipes. De Prisco then carried out the restoration of part of the villa, transforming it into a kind of museum (before it was decided to rebury it). And it is precisely during the life of the “Museo De Prisco” that the Alinari Brothers had the opportunity to take this extraordinary photo.
The boiler was equipped with real taps to regulate the flow of water. The valves were of the male type: the upper cylinder was then inserted into the valve body and, by piercing it, it closed and opened the flow of water with a 90 degree rotation. The production of this type of mechanisms by the Collegia Fabrorum had to comply with precisely established standards, similar to those defined today by the EU, which we know through the work of Frontinus: De aquae ductu urbis Romae.
The boiler and pipes were made of lead but the valves were made of bronze and cast in a single block using molds. The connection to the lead pipes was made by soldering. Instead of the blowtorch, small flat-tipped rods (a type of screwdriver) were used, the tips of which had been heated to red hot thanks to the use of portable forges. Additionally, a solder wire with a 70% lead alloy was used. For the flux (the product that favors the distribution of the new metal on the surface to be soldered, protecting it from oxidation) pine resin was probably used.
As for the current location of the caldera, thanks to the information provided by Nobile Di Castroreale, it is known that it is preserved in the technological section of the National Archaeological Museum of Naples (MANN). Section currently under renovation and not open to the public.

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Sailors in the foretop on USS Texas BB-35 during North Atlantic convoy escort duty in early 1942

LIFE Magazine Archives - Frank Scherschel Photographer

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Katharine Wright, often overshadowed by her famous brothers Orville and Wilbur, played a pivotal role in ensuring the success of the Wright Brothers' historic achievements in aviation. Her contributions, though sometimes overlooked, were instrumental in shaping the course of history. 

She provided crucial financial support to her brothers' endeavors. She managed the household affairs, allowing Wilbur and Orville to focus on their experiments and research. She even took on additional work to supplement their income, demonstrating her unwavering dedication to their vision.

Beyond financial assistance, Katharine offered unwavering emotional and moral support to her brothers. She believed wholeheartedly in their ambitions, encouraging them during moments of doubt and celebrating their triumphs. Her belief in their abilities bolstered their confidence and determination, essential qualities for tackling the monumental challenges they faced.

Katharine possessed a keen intellect and a sharp understanding of business and public relations. She provided strategic advice to her brothers, guiding them in their interactions with investors, government officials, and the media. Her diplomatic skills and foresight helped navigate the complexities of the aviation industry, paving the way for the Wright Brothers' success.

She also took on the role of public relations manager for the Wright Brothers, actively promoting their achievements and garnering support for their endeavors. She engaged with #journalists, #politicians, and influential figures, effectively shaping the public perception of her brothers' work. Her advocacy efforts helped garner widespread recognition and acclaim for the Wright Brothers' groundbreaking achievements.

Katharine herself was well-educated and intellectually curious. She shared her knowledge and insights with her brothers, enriching their understanding of various subjects relevant to their work, including #aerodynamics and #engineering principles. 

Her intellectual contributions complemented her brothers' technical expertise, resulting in a more holistic approach to their research and experimentation.
#katharinewright  #wrightbrothers

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Derinkuyu, an ancient underground city in Cappadocia, Turkey, was rediscovered in 1963 when a resident of the area found a mysterious room behind a wall in his home. This led to the discovery of the vast underground city beneath the surface, which had been hidden for centuries. 
The bulk of the city was likely built by the Phrygians, highly skilled Iron-age architects who had the means to construct elaborate underground facilities. The Phrygians were one of Anatolia's most prominent early empires, flourishing from around the 12th century BC to the 7th century BC. 
Over time, Derinkuyu was further expanded and utilized by various civilizations, including the Byzantines. One of the largest of its kind, Derinkuyu is capable of sheltering thousands of people and their livestock, with multiple levels reaching deep underground. Its rediscovery has provided valuable insights into ancient engineering and resourcefulness.

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Ingenious Engineering of Mohenjo-daro!
Indus Valley Civilization 

Mohenjo-daro, a testament to ancient innovation. This major city was not only a cradle of civilization but also a pioneer in urban planning. Its houses boasted wells, sophisticated drainage systems, and even toilets with flushing capabilities – all connected to an elaborate underground network.

These archaeological marvels highlight the impressive engineering skills of a civilization that thrived over 5,000 years ago. The people of Mohenjo-daro mastered the art of water management long before modern conveniences, showcasing their forward-thinking approach to city living.

#AncientEngineering #MohenjoDaro #IndusValley #ArchaeologyLovers

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