For the first Link Dump of 2018, we are again sponsored by the League of New Year's Cats!
How the hell old was Old Tom Parr?
How the hell deep can humans dig?
Watch out for those Iowa vampires!
Watch out for those Welsh mines!
David Hume describes the execution of Viscount Stafford.
The cemetery of witty gravestones.
The Great London Fog and Frost.
Some New Year's witchcraft.
A Victorian dinosaur park.
The bad science that saved Victorian lives.
This week's "rewriting human history" link.
Thomas Edison's sci-fi novel.
The "Templar Stone" turns out not to be very Templar.
So, you're the first Chinese Emperor and you want to live forever. Here's how.
A trio of very unusual aviators.
Life, the Universe, and the Anthropic Principle.
The man who forfeited a Victoria Cross.
In related news, here's the guy who heard the above story and said "Hold my beer."
Rumors of WWII.
The woman who slept with both Napoleon and Wellington.
The first medical school for women.
A look at Twelfth Night.
The Doughnut Girls of WWI.
The first known practical joke.
A butcher's New Year murder.
This week's Advice From Thomas Morris: What not to do with your false teeth.
Conning the Conquistadors.
Another murder on New Year's Day.
Colorized cowboys!
And so we come to the end of this week's links. See you on Monday, when we'll look at that evergreen topic of arsenic poisoning! In the meantime, here's a look at how Latvians celebrate winter.
Yup. These are my people.
I read with interest the article about the man who had to forfeit his Victoria Cross. I remember reading a book on that award, and how King George V thought it horrendous that a VC-winner should have to forfeit his decoration. As HM wrote, it's an award for valour, not for moral rectitude. I agree completely. However terrible one's behaviour subsequently, neither what a man or woman does valorously, nor its reward, can or should be erased.
ReplyDeleteWhat an awesome video. I love the guys dancing dressed as bulls (am I reading that right? That's how it looked in the video.)
ReplyDeleteRegarding the bigamists and trigamists and forfeited Victoria Crosses, I think it's evolutionarily fitting that the valorous guy who impulsively saved all his comrades celebrated by having two large families of children (a good thing he passed on those genes, eh?) Or maybe he just balanced out the sleazy trigamist who apparently ditched his first wife because his second one paid to send him to medical school . . .