Whipped Cream Difficulties

It isn’t Thursday, but I thought we’d go on a safari.

A surfing safari.

“Kingdoms of the Sea”, a 1950s TV series. This episode covers water skiing, surfing, and “other water acrobatic stunts”.

Very short, and totally unrelated, bonus: this is one of my favorite “Perry Mason” moments. Della teases Lt. Tragg…and Tragg responds with perfect 1950s hepcat jive.

I saw “Patton” (edited for television) at a very young and impressionable age. It follows that I’ve had an interest in the man for much of my life.

“Patton and the Third Army”. This is a 1960 episode of something called “The Twentieth Century”, and Walter Cronkite is our narrator.

Bonus video, also deliberate Lawrence bait: from our friends at the Tank Museum, their list of the bottom five tanks in the museum.

This one had me at “Narrated by Burgess Meredith”. I think this is just called “Copper!” From Kennecott Copper, intended to promote their Bingham Mine.

Bonus: how could I pass this up? “They Make Zinc At Swansea”.

Swansea is a coastal city and county, officially known as the City and County of Swansea in Wales. During the 19th-century industrial heyday, Swansea was the key centre of the copper-smelting industry, earning the nickname Copperopolis. In 1876, the Swansea Vale works were the first smelter to be built in Britain primarily for the production of zinc metal.

Some real history today. According to my calendars, Monday is Yom Kippur, and I think this is the last appropriate time to get this in before the holiday.

“Never Again To Be Denied”, a 1968 film (according to YouTube, made for the United Jewish Appeal) about the 1967 Six Day War.

Slightly longer bonus: I think this is an episode of something called “Line Of Fire”, also covering the Six Day War.

The other day, ASM826 posted an appreciation of “Zulu”. The Saturday Night Movie Group watched it not too long ago, and I believe we are all in agreement that it is a swell movie. (I recommend the 50th Anniversary bluray, which is available from Amazon at an eminently reasonable price. Yes, that is an affiliate link.)

I thought it might be fun to post some “Zulu” related history.

The British Museum has a YouTube channel.

“Rorke’s Drift to the British Museum: The story of Henry Hook”. Henry Hook was one of the men who received the Victoria Cross for valor in the face of the enemy as a result of his actions at Rorke’s Drift. You may remember Hook:

In the film Zulu, Hook is depicted as an insubordinate malingerer placed under arrest in the hospital, only to come good during the battle. However, Saul David writes in his book, Zulu: The Heroism and Tragedy of the Zulu War of 1879, that he was there as the hospital cook, subsequently as part of a small guard detail assigned to protect the patients. Saul David continues that far from the miscreant portrayed, Hook was actually a teetotaler, Methodist preacher and model soldier.

Bonus: “A tour of Rorke’s Drift”.

Bonus #2: this is a reading of a transcript of an interview with Frank Bourne. The man reading it is his grandson. There’s really no video to this, so you can put it on in the background while you work.

Bourne, who was now an NCO in B Company, 2nd Battalion, 24th (2nd Warwickshire) Regiment of Foot, helped organise the defence at the mission station and field hospital.

He received the Distinguished Conduct Medal (which, according to Wikipedia, was second only to the Victoria Cross at the time).

After Rorke’s Drift, Frank Bourne served in British India and Burma, being promoted to Quartermaster-Sergeant in 1884. He was commissioned in 1890. In 1893 he was appointed adjutant of the School of Musketry at Hythe, Kent, retiring from the army in 1907. During World War I, he rejoined and served as adjutant of the School of Musketry in Dublin. During this time he was responsible for training over 10,000 British and Irish sharpshooters. Some of these highly trained Irish infantry troops and snipers are thought to have utilised their specialised fighting skills to train local republican sympathisers after the war ended. These paramilitary and splinter groups would then form part of what is known today as the Irish Republican Army. At the end of the war, he was given the honorary rank of lieutenant colonel and appointed OBE.

Frank Bourne passed away on May 9, 1945 at the age of 90. He was the last survivor of Rorke’s Drift.

Bonus #3: “The Making of Zulu”.

I’m still a little behind the curve today (but improving). So what’s in the bucket? Well…we could fly a helicopter. Nothing left to talk about.

(So, it has come to this. I am literally posting Garbage.)

(But I do like that song. Though my preferred version is actually an a cappella cover by Stanford Mixed Company.)

Today’s video: “A New Star in the Sky…The UH-60A”, a promo film for the Blackhawk.

Bonus, because I don’t know where else I can fit it: “Fields of the Future”. This is a promo film for North American Aviation, I guess to encourage kids to go into aerospace related careers.