History – Page 4 – Postcards

The Story of How NORAD’s Santa Tracker Began

December 20, 2014 No Comments

Lovely little interview in the NPR that explains the story of how the Santa Tracker came to be. Terri remembers her dad had two phones on his desk, including a red one. “Only a four-star general at the Pentagon and my dad had the number,” she says. “This was the ’50s, this was the Cold […]

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Arts Films History Nature & Gardens

Postcards from Pripyat

December 3, 2014December 3, 2014 No Comments

Danny Cooke had an opportunity to explore Chernobyl and Pripyat while working on a CBS documentary earlier this year. Using a go-pro and drone, he posted this video of a land out of time, a ghost of the old Ukranian SSR. Chernobyl is one of the most interesting and dangerous places I’ve been. The nuclear […]

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Computing History Internets

First (ARPANet) Post!

October 30, 2014 No Comments

“Lo.” Inauspicious, perhaps, but then an infant’s first word generally is. Besides, no one on Professor Leonard Kleinrock’s 40-person team suspected that they were starting a revolution of global proportions on Oct. 29, 1969. That was the day Kleinrock and a student assistant, Charley Kline ’70, M.S. ’71, Ph.D. ’80 sent the first “host-to-host” message […]

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Delorean Moments Environment History Jesus Wept

We fucked up

September 23, 2014 No Comments

When I was eight years old they taught us in school that rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were causing the world to warm up. However, they said, it would be thirty years before the effects would be felt, and this would be plenty of time for us to reduce our carbon emissions […]

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Dublin History

The Prussians are impressed

September 22, 2014 No Comments

The DRB has a delightful glimpse of Dublin and Irish life in 1835 by a Prussian vistor: On my way to Mr.W. I saw a gathering of people in the distance and thought that I had once more found a street preacher. But it turned out to be no Scottish sermoniser but rather, as someone […]

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Delorean Moments Equality History Politics

“I assure you it could, and it will”

September 10, 2014 No Comments

This is a fascinating letter from a Dr. Meehan to then Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald on the upcoming 8th amendment referendum – Would Savita be alive today if Galway doctor’s advice had been taken 30 years ago?. There is something especially powerful about a prophetic voice speaking from beyond the grave. Amid the large volume of […]

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History Politics

Dammit, Nancy

August 26, 2014 No Comments

This is an interesting little piece on the late Albert Reynolds and the 1994 IRA ceasefire. One last minute problem arose when the US refused Joe Cahill a visa. No visa, no Cahill in the States “conveying the news to the IRA’s long-time American supporters “in person””, and no ceasefire: Reynolds told me he spent […]

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History Politics Society

Why Ireland became the only country in the democratic world to have a constitutional ban on abortion

August 26, 2014 No Comments

The Irish Responsible Society, of which five key PLAC leaders were members, was the Irish branch of the group led by the English right-wing Catholic activist Valerie Riches (now a papal dame). For Riches, the degeneration of society through sexual permissiveness was a conspiracy driven by International Planned Parenthood. She and her Irish followers were especially […]

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Books History Retro

La Compagnie des Wagon Lits

July 7, 2014July 8, 2014 No Comments

I was browsing through some old books this evening and I came across these two lovely old posters for Cie. des Wagon-lits in a copy of ‘Supertrains’ by Aaron E. Klein, published 1985 (is that old? it’s almost 30!). The first looks very much of ‘La Belle Epoque’, the second is from the 1920/1930s((alas, there’s […]

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Europe History

The scars of war

June 15, 2014 No Comments

Almost a hundred years later, and the landscape still shows the scars of World War I Via http://kottke.org/14/05/the-scars-of-war

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Who?

Murf

The Story of How NORAD’s Santa Tracker Began

Postcards from Pripyat

First (ARPANet) Post!

We fucked up

The Prussians are impressed

“I assure you it could, and it will”

Dammit, Nancy

Why Ireland became the only country in the democratic world to have a constitutional ban on abortion

La Compagnie des Wagon Lits

The scars of war

Category: History