The latest entry into the pantheon of architectural and historic landmarks?
The very first location of Der Wienerschnitzel.
Now I’m kind of hungry.
Archive for the ‘History’ Category
Ja, das ist ein Wienerschnitzel.
Wednesday, December 4th, 2013Random notes: December 3, 2013.
Tuesday, December 3rd, 2013Obit watch: William Stevenson, most famous as the author of A Man Called Intrepid
(I remember Intrepid being all over the place when I was growing up. Oddly, given my interests at the time, I never got around to reading it.)
Also among the dead: noted Texas historian and author T.R. Fehrenbach.
Trial update #1: Pavel Dmitrichenko has been convicted in the acid attack on Bolshoi Ballet director Sergei Filin. Dmitrichenko was a Bolshoi soloist, who (according to the WP) felt that Fillin was not giving him “the best parts”. He’ll do six years in prison. Yuri Zarutsky, the man who actually threw the acid, will serve 10 years. Andrei Lipatov, the driver, will serve 4.
The three were also ordered to pay 3.5 millions rubles (about $106,000) in damages to Filin.
(Previously.)
Trial update #2: I am keeping an eye on the Bell/Spaccia trial. It went to the jury before Thanksgiving, and, as far as I know, the jury is still deliberating. (There wasn’t much to report towards the end; just the usual “Rizzo did it”.) I suspect the holidays threw things off quite a bit; stay tuned for details as I get them.
Trial update #3: The trial of Manuel Ramos and Jay Cicinelli started yesterday. Ramos and Cicinelli were police officers with the Fullerton police department: they are charged with beating Kelly Thomas to death. (Previously. Graphic image warning.)
Obit watch: November 22, 2013.
Friday, November 22nd, 2013Jim over at the Travis McGee Reader made a good point a few days ago: both Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis died on this date 50 years ago, but it seems like they got lost in the shuffle. (Although, according to Wikipedia, “In 2013, on the 50th anniversary of his death, Lewis will be honoured with a memorial in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey.” Good.)
(If I was going to have a fantasy dinner party, I’d actually have two: one with C.S. Lewis and G. K. Chesterton. I have a tremendous admiration for both men, and think it would be fascinating to sit and talk with them.)
(The other dinner party would be with Robert Ruark and Peter Hathaway Capstick. And maybe some other folks, too; I’d think I’d also invite Harry Selby and Tam. But I digress.)
And the day before, Robert Stroud passed away. I’d have to go back to the morning papers from the 22nd to see what kind of play Stroud’s death got, but if he got lost in the shuffle, I’d have to say “Good”.
I’m sure I don’t need to tell my readers (all of whom are strong, smart, and if they have children, their kids are all above average) this, but for those who may be coming here for the first time and don’t know: contrary to popular belief and “Birdman of Alcatraz” (both the book and movie), Robert Stroud was a nasty piece of work. Bill James offers a pretty pithy summary in Popular Crime
Stroud, among his other charming qualities, liked to write violent pornography in which he fantasized about abducting, raping, and murdering small children. Alvin (Creepy) Karpis, a famous criminal from the 1930s who was confined with Stroud at Alcatraz, wrote in his account of life on Alcatraz that Stroud talked constantly about raping and killing children, and insisted that he wasn’t bluffing: if he had gotten a chance, he would have done it. This led to a Kafkaesque scene at a parole hearing for Stroud in 1962. Outside the building protestors marched, holding placards demanding the release of the kindly bird doctor portrayed by Burt Lancaster in the movie, while inside the hearing parole officials dealt with a distinctly disturbed old man who mumbled about getting out of prison soon because he had a long list of people he wanted to kill and not much time left to kill them.
(And, yes, Stroud may have been abused by the prison system. Even nasty pieces of work deserve humane treatment and the protection of the law. But between the book by Gaddis
Herbert Mitgang, reporter and editor for the NYT, and author of Dangerous Dossiers
November 22, 1963.
Friday, November 22nd, 2013I don’t remember where I was at the time. It was about 18 months before I was born, so depending on your belief in reincarnation…
I’m about 70-30 on the “Oswald acted alone” front. (I used to be about 60-40, but as I get older, I get more skeptical of conspiracy theories.)
My main reason for leaning that way is that I just can’t believe anybody would be able to keep a conspiracy the size of the alleged JFK one secret for 50 years.
“But altered evidence! Faked documents!” Well, maybe. But once you start letting all that stuff in, you’re really going down the rabbit hole to the point where truth and fiction are completely inseparable and indistinguishable. That way lies madness. Maybe I’m naive, maybe I just want to bury my head in the sand, but I’d rather believe Oswald acted alone than believe in a giant national conspiracy led by The Cigarette Smoking Man (or someone like him). “Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.”
I wish I could recommend a good JFK book to you, but I’m not that well read in the literature. Heck, I haven’t even been to Dallas and toured the Sixth Floor Museum, though that is on the agenda for sometime soon.
Bill James
On the other hand, James also recommends Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK
(And I owe you guys a longer discussion of Popular Crime.)
Here are two of my favorite related videos. CBS News hires sharpshooters and attempts to recreate the shooting. (Bonus: the dulcet tones of Dan Rather, for those of you who have been missing the sound of his voice.)
And I’ve referenced this before, but I don’t think I’ve ever embedded it, and the link I did use is broken, so: Penn and Teller explain why JFK’s head moved the way it did, using a honeydew melon, fiberglass tape, a Carcano rifle, and a pink pillbox hat.
TMQ Watch: November 5, 2013.
Tuesday, November 5th, 2013Happy Guy Fawkes Day, everyone. Let’s just get into it, shall we?
This week’s TMQ, after the jump…
Two for your consideration.
Wednesday, October 30th, 2013PetaPixel reprints a post (from the LensRentals blog) about a WWII story I’ve never heard before.
Jay Zeamer was a pilot. But he wasn’t a great one. He had problems passing his check tests, especially when it came to the “landing” part. He managed to get into B-17s and started flying as a “fill-in” pilot and on photoreconnaissance runs.
But nobody wanted to fly with him. So he created his own crew by gathering up every…
But they didn’t have a plane. So they grabbed onto a dilapidated B-17 that had been flown in for spare parts and somehow rebuilt it into flying condition. The base commander thought this was a pretty good thing, and intended to assign the plane to another crew.
Zeamer and crew called the plane “Old 666”. And yes, they took on the missions no one else wanted.
My kind of guys.
This would make for one heck of a movie. Especially in light of what eventually happened to “Old 666” and her crew. But for that you should go read the rest of the story at PetaPixel or LensRentals.
Meanwhile, by way of Insta (who draws a different conclusion than I do): W. Joseph Campbell, author of Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism
And where did we get such men?
Monday, October 28th, 2013Brigadier General Robinson Risner (USAF- ret.) has died.
General Risner spent a total of seven and half years in Hoa Lo Prison, more than three of those in solitary confinement.
One of his major acts of defiance was helping to organize a church service in 1971, even though he knew he would be punished. As guards led him away to yet another spell in solitary confinement, more than 40 P.O.W.’s sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” to show support. He was later asked how he felt at that moment.
“I felt like I was nine feet tall and could go bear hunting with a switch,” he said. In 2001, a nine-foot-tall statue of General Risner was installed at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs to commemorate that declaration.
Updates.
Friday, October 18th, 2013Shon Washington is going to do four years in state prison. You may remember Mr. Washington as the man who looted the Christmas Bureau. (Previously.)
While searching for a good link on the Washington story, I ran across this:
72 bottles over 16 months is 4.5 bottles per month, or a little over a bottle per week. Or, if you want to look at it another way, 23 gallons over 16 months is 1.4375 gallons, 184 ounces, or 5441.53 ml per month. Assuming a 30 day month, that’s a little over 6 ounces of vodka a day. Or somewhere between two and three stiff drinks.
If you drive drunk with an open bottle in your car, you have a problem. If you have two stiff drinks a day, do you have a problem? I’m not so sure. (One of the current comments on this story calls out the hidden assumption that she drank it all herself, rather than having parties, having friends over, another family member drinking some of it, etc.) And it bothers me a little that the attorney was able to get records of her purchases from Twin Liquor. I buy from Twin Liquor; is some lawyer going to be able to subpoena records of my purchases? Should I start paying in cash?
(Another hidden assumption: she only bought from Twin Liquor, and not from Spec’s, or any of the dozens of other liquor stores around town.)
(Am I the only person who sees Debs Liquor and thinks to myself, “Well, good for him. I’m glad he found more honest work than running for president.”)
Obit watch: October 4, 2013.
Friday, October 4th, 2013I was taught you should say only good of the dead.
By way of Lawrence, I have learned that General Vo Nguyen Giap, described by the NYT as “the relentless and charismatic North Vietnamese general whose campaigns drove both France and the United States out of Vietnam”, has died.
(I’ll have to go back and look: did the NYT ever describe Hermann Göring or Erwin Rommel as “relentless and charismatic”?)
Leadership Secrets of Non-Fictional Characters (part 9 in a series).
Thursday, August 22nd, 2013He was tireless, honest, and smart, and getting smarter all the time as he made a strong team stronger. His subordinates responded well to his leadership, but he wanted more. He would encourage and recruit the hardheaded, iconoclastic, passionate original thinkers whom others would often dismiss as too much trouble. They not only followed him, they challenged him to be better. They pushed him. They questioned him. They constructively, fearlessly voiced dissent if warranted. He did the same with me. That’s a mark of superlative subordinates; they make their bosses better leaders.
–Henry A. Crumpton, The Art of Intelligence: Lessons from a Life in the CIA’s Clandestine Service
Leadership Secrets of Non-Fictional Characters (part 8 of a series).
Tuesday, July 23rd, 2013Apropos of nothing in particular, there’s a story in Theodore Rockwell’s book, The Rickover Effect
The setup for this is that Rockwell and another member of Rickover’s team have been aboard one of the nuclear subs, doing an inspection and quizzing the crew about what they know and remember from their training. In this particular case, the inspection wasn’t perfect; the chief they’re talking to in this excerpt spent several minutes trying to find the answer for a problem he could have solved with basic math and a slide rule in seconds.
I turned to walk away, but the chief called after me, hesitatingly. “Sir, I have to tell you something.”
“Yes?”
“I want you to know something. I was in the Navy for nearly fifteen years before this program came along. I was a typical sailor like in the movies. You know the type. If the average human being uses 10 percent of his brain, I was using 1 percent. Everybody figured sailors were supposed to be stupid, and who were we to argue? Now I’m working my tail off, but I’m alive. Y’know, I’m actually a thinking human being. And I think about how I just threw away fifteen years of my life because nobody kicked my ass. You know what really woke me up? On my old ship we didn’t have toasters, ’cause sailors are too dumb to work toasters, right? So we had cold, hard, dry toast from the galley. Then one day we had toasters on the tables. And I asked around, How come? And you know what I found out? They said Captain Rickover had told the top Navy brass that if sailors were smart enough to run a nuclear power plant, they could damn well run a toaster. [Emphasis added – DB] And I said, There’s a guy I want to work for. And I – well, I wanted you to know that you’ve done that for a lot of guys, ’cause I wasn’t the only one. Thanks.”
He turned away, and I was really touched. But all I could say was, “Thanks, Chief. I really appreciate your telling me that. Good luck to you.”
What do I want you to take away from this? Well, here’s a question for you: those people you ask to work on equipment that costs tens of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands or even millions? Do you think they’re too stupid to run a toaster? Or do you trust that they can make their own toast?
(“Toaster” is not a metaphor here. Except to the extent that it is. But as I said, this is apropos of nothing in particular.)
Also: “I just threw away fifteen years of my life because nobody kicked my ass.” That’s worth thinking about, too; are you letting people throw away their lives, or are you kicking their asses and challenging them to be great? Even if it means they might be great someplace else?
Random notes: July 17, 2013.
Wednesday, July 17th, 2013The sport in question is rhythmic gymnastics.
Obit watch: Eugene P. Wilkinson.
(94. Damn, that was a good run. Also: “He received the Silver Star for valor in the Pacific.”)
Congrats to Lawrence on his winning the Grand Panjandrum’s Special Award in the Bulwer-Lytton Contest. Sadly, according to Lawrence, he will not be getting the complete set of Edward George Bulwer-Lytton’s novels, which is a shame, as I was looking forward to borrowing his copy of Paul Clifford.
As seen on the road…
Sunday, July 14th, 2013
Yes, that is a real road sign.
And where does River Styx Road go to? If you guessed “River Styx“, take two gold stars and advance to the next blue square.
We would also accept “the River Styx Bridge” as a correct answer.
Happy Bastille Day, everyone!
Sunday, July 14th, 2013Whether you’re eating Beef Bourguignon and drinking a good Burgundy, or storming a prison to get at the gunpowder inside, I hope your celebration is a happy one.
Historical note, suitable for use in schools.
Friday, June 21st, 2013A thread on FARK led me to the 1931 movie The Viking, which I was previously unfamiliar with. (This should not be confused with the 1928 movie The Viking.)
The Viking is somewhat interesting because it was the first talkie shot in Canada, because it was one of the earliest films shot in a documentary style (inspired by Nanook of the North) and because of how it was shot:
The basic story of The Viking is your classic “young man runs away and joins up with seal hunters to prove himself worthy of his girlfriend’s love”:
But other than the location aspects, and the seal hunting, why is The Viking interesting? After it premiered, the producer, Varick Frisell, decided “What this movie needs is more footage of ice floes.” So he and some film crew members went out to get pickup shots of the ice floes while their ship (the real ship named Viking) was hunting seals. The Viking (the ship) got stuck in the ice…
….and, on March 15, 1931, the good ship The Viking exploded, killing Frisell, his dog, and 26 other members of the crew.
As far as I know, and have been able to determine, this is the largest number of people killed in a single accident during the making of a film. I’m a little surprised I’d never heard this story before today.
TCM page on The Viking. Wikipedia. Entry on The Viking from the Canadian Film Encyclopedia.