Tag: history

bnprime:

sixthrock:

lavastormsw:

bolinsboo:

razzledazzy:

The photo above is the closest humanity has ever come to creating Medusa. 

If you were to look at this, you would die instantly. End of story.

The image is of a reactor core lava formation in the basement of the Chernobyl nuclear plant. It’s called the Elephant’s Foot and weighs hundreds of tons, but is only a couple meters across.

Oh, and regarding the Medusa thing? This picture was taken through a mirror around the corner of the hallway. Because the wheeled camera they sent up to take pictures of it was destroyed by the radiation. 

I wonder if they could get pictures in colour now or maybe get an accurate heat reading off of that thing, if it’s still all there.

It’s crazy to think that something can be that strong that it would kill you by just looking at it. Though it’s understandable. I’d like a heat reading off of it.

Oh my god

I have such a science boner right now

Do you know how fucking dense that must be to weigh hundreds of tons?

Pretty fucking dense.

Wow.

I found this video for anyone who wants to see a video of the thing (although it’s not the best quality). This thing is a serious monster. I have a little trouble deciphering this Wikipedia article, but from what I gather, this thing weighs 1,200 tons (2,400,000 pounds – a number I cannot even begin to fathom) and is only losing about 22 pounds of uranium per year. It resists its environment and if the shelter is improved, that loss is expected to drop.

Holy shit.

I am simply astounded by the sheer power and properties of radiation and nuclear power plants. This is seriously scary stuff. Not to mention its effects on humans. i find deformed humans very, very unnerving. The mutations that radiation cause are the worst, in my opinion, than say, genetic mutations. This video shows some of the mutations from the Chernobyl meltdown (warning: these are very disturbing images, so view at your own risk).

Here’s another website with a collection of Chernobyl pictures, mostly of the building itself (no mutation pictures, so unless you’re upset by major destruction, this is a really cool look-through). This is my favorite picture because it really shows the dripping of the radioactive fuel/debris lava out of the valve. I just find it so absolutely terrifying that something like this could ever happen. Radiation is seriously scary stuff. What I want to know is how they took that picture.

Oh holy shit this is terrifying. The color just makes it worse. It’s like a volcano erupted indoors. Which is probably a pretty accurate analogy, plus tons of radiation to go with it. “”Corium” is only formed during a reactor meltdown as a product of the solid fuel fissioning uncontrollably. This super-hot fuel turns into a liquid and melts its way through steel, concrete, and whatever else that might be in contact with it. So it’s a mixture of fuel and various building materials,” the admin says in the comments.

This article says that Chernobyl will stay radioactive for 100,000 years.

Radiation is just unfathomably scary stuff.

Daaaaamn.

All of this is just so incredibly terrifying and amazing at the same time. Just to think of the things humans are capable of now, and all the various horrible ways everything could go very very wrong if we’re too careless for just a second…

okay yeah fine I didn’t need to sleep tonight anyway ;_;

it took years of carelessness to mess up this badly.

lord-kitschener:

sandra-afrika:

omorka:

darkparallel:

youcantcancelquidditch:

the assassination of franz ferdinand was actually the most hilariously botched assassination attempt of all time though like i can’t even explain to you how badly it went i mean there were six guys and the first one chickened out and the second one forgot to factor in the delay on a hand grenade so it exploded like three cars past the archduke’s so the guy took a cyanide pill and threw himself into a river, but the cyanide was expired and the river was six inches deep so the police just pulled him out and took him off to jail and then everyone else basically gave up and headed home, and then the driver of the archduke took a wrong turn and the car stalled next to the last of the six guys, and he was just like “what a crazy random happenstance” and started world war one

You forgot to mention that the last guy only happened to kill Franz because he had just come out of the sandwich shop where the car stopped

It is obvious to even the most casual observer that this particular event has been meddled with by at least two groups of time travelers trying to change history.  Please, if you invent a time machine, leave the assassination of Ferdinand alone; the space-time continuum there is already showing obvious cracks from the strain.

the story of how ww1 was started by a bunch of incompetent children is my fave historical fact of all time – (and I do mean children, since all 5 of the initially arrested assassination conspirators were minors under austrian law at the time) 

and the fact that some of them initially banded together to commit, like, just any unspecified act of terrorism,not necessarily assassinate the archduke,

as a sort of early 20th century assassination fandom, because they idolized a guy from their town who had previously tried to kill a high ranking bosnian official, meaning terrorism was just the major teen fad of their time

but my absolute fave little factoid that really shows these were just completely regular 19 year old boys in every way is that all of them took a virginity pledge so nothing would distract them in their revolutionary mission

except gavrilo princip had a gf called jelena, and on the night before the assassination he decided he really didn’t want to die a virgin, so he arranged a rendez-vous with jelena in a park and tried to explain that it’s vitally important that they have sex right then, but he couldn’t tell her why because he didn’t want to implicate her in the assassination

so obviously with it being 1914 she says no, he goes home, then goes on to start ww1 in the morning, but what makes the story for me is that when they later interviewed jelena about gavrilo and the assassination, after telling the story about them meeting in the park she said the following (i’m paraphrasing slightly)

‘i’m not surprised. gavrilo was so pissed that night (about them not having sex) he was ready to shoot god, let alone an emperor ’

tfw WWI was partially caused by tfw no gf/sex

graffiti thoughts

knittingnightgaunt:

22mg:

so, there’s a lot of shit going around about banksy right now.

i’m just going to say here that i’m not a graffiti artist. i very much enjoy graffiti but i don’t make graffiti art and these are simply my personal thoughts as an outside perspective.

first of all, i don’t think that tagging and what banksy does are even in the same league. tagging is a specific statement. it takes space, it is a nonviolent way to fight the legality and oppression of the government. it breaks the law in an artistic way where nobody gets hurt. it’s used to claim territory, to immortalize, and to fight against the powers at be. in most cases, its freestyled. it takes hours. the graffiti community is tight knit and exercises a good amount of respect for one another. graffiti is seen by most as a blemish, strange words or names written fantastically on walls that don’t belong to the artist, without permission, and are often covered up by street cleaners because they depreciate business/real estate value.

i do not find banksy as a graffiti artist because he doesn’t do these things. he’s not a radical and he’s not some kind of political revolutionary. he’s not claiming space for the oppressed, he’s just trying to make a buck on a scene he probably thought was cool.

this would be fine with me, if it wasn’t for the inexcusable tragedy that was the years leading up to King Robbo’s death.

this piece was painted by King Robbo in 1985. It was located under the London Transport Police Headquarters in Camden, London. this place was only accessible by water. when most of Robbo’s other works had been covered up, this one remained. for a while it was the oldest piece in London.

by 2009, the piece had gone the way most tags go, everything is transient and every space is fair game for more people to make their marks. this is the nature of graffiti, and to it King Robbo took no offense.

that year, Banksy painted this. It is a wall painter, removing the piece from the walls. he took the oldest piece of graffiti in london, which was no longer even just King Robbo’s, but an impromptu collaboration between many london graffiti artists, and he disrespected it. if it wasn’t enough that they were getting jailed while banksy was making millions for the same work, he disrespected them. he spit on them. he decided his statement was worth more than the oldest piece of graffiti in london and on top of that, THIS IS A STENCIL. he couldn’t even free-hand it! he decided his LITERAL cookie-cutter street art was more important that Robbo’s only surviving legacy.

insulted, King Robbo replied. he was quoted saying 

“I was at a place called the Dragon Bar on Old Street. I was introduced to a couple of guys who were like ‘whoa it’s nice to meet you!’. When I was introduced to Banksy, I went ‘Oh yeah I’ve heard of you mate, how you doing?’ and he went ‘well I’ve never heard of you’…he dismissed me as a nobody, as nothing. So with that I slapped him and went ‘oh what you ain’t heard of me? you won’t forget me now will you?’ and with that he picked up his glasses and ran off.” obviously this was an insulting display to King Robbo, who had managed what most graffiti artists can never pull off, he had a timeless piece. he gained some fame, some notoriety. this piece, of all the pieces in london, banksy covered up with a stencil. EVEN SO, Robbo left banksy’s work, whereas banksy deliberately covered his up.

banksy replied. as you can see, very thought provoking. quite profound.

King Robbo corrected the piece.

at this point, an unknown third part covers the wall.

it wasn’t over, as this had become very personal for King Robbo. He painted this work. At this point, many other graffiti artists had already started tagging the streets with “TEAM ROBBO”.  many of banksy’s works were being tagged over, like he did to King Robbo’s, in an effort to send a message. Mainstream media called these “defacement” and “vandalism” of banksy Originals, where the travesty against King Robbo went mostly unnoticed outside london and the graffiti community.

as you can see, Team Robbo exploded, giving many of banksy’s pieces the same respect he gave King Robbo’s long-standing artwork. 

after being blacked out again, banksy painted this piece. the meaning is lost on me, if you know what it means, let me know. it’s strange and confusing.

this had gone on into 2011, when King Robbo fell into a coma. It was only 5 days before his exhibition, “Team Robbo – The Sellout Tour”. he unfortunately never got to attend his exhibition, and never again woke up. he died in july 2014.

banksy, supposedly making a memorial, made sure he got the last word:

RIP King Robbo.

So what blows my mind is when I first saw this photoset it was billed as ‘tee hee look at this good natured exchange’. Which, without context, I bought.

The fact that these two vastly different narratives exist, and the way context has been stripped from one of them to excuse Banksy, says a lot about… well, everything, including the people doing the painting. It’s one hell of a message. The way people want to sell the story (Banksy) and the way people actually fell about it (Robbo and his followers)

daughtersofsappho:

Boston Marriages

Boston marriages – romantic unions between women that were usually monogamous but not necessarily sexual – flourished in the late nineteenth century. The term was coined in New England, around the time that numerous women’s colleges such as Vassar, Smith, and Wellesley emerged.The concept of love between women was, of course, not new; “Boston marriage” and the very similar, earlier nineteenth-century term “romantic friendship” connote a type of relationship that dates back to at least the Renaissance in the West, and possibly further in the non-Western world. Boston marriages signified a new phenomenon, however, in that the women involved in them tended to be college-educated, feminist, financially independent, and career-minded – hardly the social norm among females of the day. These characteristics distinguish women bound together in Boston marriages from participants in the earlier romantic friendships.

Boston marriages were long-term and committed, and resembled traditional marriages in many ways. But remaining unattached to men gave women a chance to attain significant decision-making power over their own lives, power they would have forfeited to their husbands in a conventional marriage.The social acceptance of the Boston marriage was predicated upon the common assumption that the women involved did not practice any form of genital sexuality with each other. At the time, sexologists had not begun the regular use of pejorative terms such as “sexual inversion” and “perversion” to decry homosexuality, and the term “lesbian” was not yet in popular usage. Since nineteenth- and early twentieth-century women were often considered not to have strong sex drives – sex for them was supposedly a duty, and intended for procreation only – nothing was deemed wrong with women’s public displays of affection. Neither were their sharing households and even beds considered suspicious.Whether women in these romantic relationships did indeed refrain from sexual contact with each other is difficult to determine, but it is very likely that some, if not all, of Boston marriage couples were physically as well as emotionally involved. Their love letters to each other often indicate a passion that could hardly be considered platonic, and modern lesbian historians and writers have speculated that if members of Boston marriages were alive today, they would openly identify as lesbian.

– Teresa Theophano [X]

currentsinbiology:

fragenherrdoktor:

The Sick Rose by Richard Barnett is a collection of 19th-century medical illustrations. Prior to the use of photography, these images were used to capture the gruesome diseases of the era in painstakingly beautiful detail. Meticulous illustrations were an essential tool for educating students and helping doctors of the day diagnose and record ailments.

Purchase your copy here.

I feel morbid for wanting a copy.

American Song

uicspecialcollections:

dcpubliclibrary:

Have you checked out one of our newer databases, American Song? It’s a great resource with a large collection of historical American music. Check it out!

Music Online: American Song
is a history database that allows people to hear and feel the music from
America’s past. The database includes songs by and about American
Indians, miners, immigrants, slaves, children, pioneers and cowboys.
Included in the database are the songs of Civil Rights, political
campaigns, Prohibition, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, anti-war
protests and more.

What an excellent database!