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April 11th, 2006, 08:12 PM
#61
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April 16th, 2006, 12:57 PM
#62
Vivian Stanshall
Vivian Stanshall at Wikipedia
21 March 1943 – 5 March 1995
Wikipedia: "Vivian Stanshall ... was an English musician, painter, singer, broadcaster, songwriter, poet, writer, wit, and raconteur, best known for his work with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, and for his surreal exploration of the British upper classes in Sir Henry at Rawlinson End."
He was talented and brilliantly funny.
Wikipedia: Stanshall was often called a "great British eccentric", but this was a label he hated as it suggested that he was putting on an act, whereas he always insisted that he was merely being himself—which is arguably a requirement for genuine eccentricity. However, it is not hard to understand why he received the label. Neil Innes said of their first meeting in a large Irish pub: "He was quite plump in those days. He had on Billy Bunter check trousers, a Victorian frock coat, violet pince-nez glasses, and carried a euphonium. He also wore large pink rubber ears."
Stanshall struggled with depression-related mental health problems and with addiction to prescription drugs and alcohol.
Wikipedia: "For all his problems, Stanshall never lost his sense of humor. In particular, his exploits with close friend Keith Moon are legendary, perhaps the most notorious involving Stanshall going into an unsuspecting tailor's shop and admiring a pair of trousers; Moon then came in, posing as another customer, admired the same trousers and demanded to buy them. When Stanshall protested the two men fought over them, splitting them in two so they ended up with one leg each. The tailor was by now beside himself but right then a one-legged actor, who had been hired by Stanshall and Moon, came in, saw the trousers and proclaimed 'Ah! Just what I was looking for.'"
Steve Winwood appears to have been another friend who stuck with him through his problems.
Wikipedia: "Stanshall was found dead on March 6, 1995, after a fire at his Muswell Hill flat, seemingly started by him falling asleep while smoking in bed or by the constantly lit lamp at his bedside. Fuelled by vodka fumes, the cigarette had set fire to his long ginger beard. (Although Stanshall did indeed often set fire to his beard, the coroner found that the fire was begun by faulty wiring near his bed.)"
The Ginger Geezer: The Official Web Site
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It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!
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April 26th, 2006, 10:21 PM
#63
Sir Charles Ross
Sir Charles Ross at Train Museum
Wikipedia: "Sir Charles Henry Augustus Frederick Lockhart Ross, 9th baronet of Balnagowan (born April 4, 1872, Scotland died June 29, 1942 in St. Petersburg, Florida) was inventor of the Ross Rifle, used by his own Machine Gun Battery in the Second Boer War and mass-produced for the Canadian army during World War I.
In an attempt to evade royal taxation on the income from his manufactory, Ross declared his estate to be a territory of the United States of America, which led to his being named an outlaw by the British.
Ross studied at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge and was best known as a capable sharpshooter. He was reputed to have become Britain's largest landholder, with 3,000 tenants on 366,000 acres.
Ross married thrice: First to Winifred Berens, which marriage was dissolved in 1897, then to Patricia Ellison, who divorced him in 1930, and then, in 1938, to his American secretary Dorothy Mercado, who inherited Balnagown Castle at Ross' death."
Ross's Workshop at Train Museum
Wikipedia: "Ross was well connected in Canadian society, and eventually landed a contract in 1903 for 12,000 Mark 1 Ross rifles. ....
The first 1000 rifles were given to the RCMP for testing. Routine inspection before operational testing found 113 defects bad enough to warrant rejection. One of these was a poorly designed bolt lock that enabled the bolt to fall right out of the rifle. Another was poorly tempered component springs that were described as being "soft as copper." In 1906 the RCMP reverted back to their Model 94 Winchesters and Lee-Metfords.
The rifle was modified to correct the faults and became the Mark II Ross (Model 05 {1905)). The Model 10 (1910) was a completely new design, made with the intent to correct the shortcomings of the 1905. None of the major parts are interchangeable between the 1905 and the 1910. The Model 10 was the standard infantry weapon of the Canadian Corps when they first arrived in France during World War I.
It was not long before it became apparent the design was unsuitable for trench life. Generally when the rifle was used in field conditions the screw threads operating the bolt lugs would become clogged with dirt and the rifle would jam open or closed. Worse yet, when the bolt was disassembled for routine cleaning, it could inadvertently be reassembled in a manner that would fail to lock but still allow a round to be fired. This led to a number of serious injuries and deaths when the bolt would fly back out of the rifle and hit the operator. The troops sometimes took Lee Enfields from dead British troops during battles."
My grandfather, who had a Ross rifle which he refused to use, and his friends who had served in WWI held the Ross rifle in great contempt and considered its adoption by the Canadian army to be a shameful case of political patronage and corruption. Their story was not that Canadian troops "sometimes" took Lee Enfields from dead Tommys but rather that they took them as soon as possible without actually killing the British soldiers themselves.
_____________________________________________
It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!
Last edited by houseisland; April 26th, 2006 at 11:58 PM.
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April 27th, 2006, 09:54 PM
#64
Ned Kelly
Ned Kelly at Wikipedia
c. 1854 – 11 November 1880
Ned Kelly is Austraiia's equivalent of Billy the Kid -- Wikipedia: "to some, a folk hero for his defiance of the colonial authorities."
The shoot out with the police that ended in his capture is legendary. Kelly wore a partial suit of armor and faced a hail of police bullets head on. Historical truth is always slippery. Was Kelly a cheap petty criminal? Was he a revolutionary martyr? We will defer to Mayet and the Platypus here. Whichever the case may be, he was not without poplular contemporary support.
Wikipedia:
"Stories abounded of Ned's altruistic and gentlemanly behaviour, casting him as a modern-day Robin Hood. More than 32,000 Victorians signed a petition against Kelly's sentencing, and an inquiry was held in which all the police officers involved in Ned's exploits were either fired or demoted.
.....
Since his death Kelly has become part of Australian folklore, and the subject of a large number of books and several films, including one with Mick Jagger in the title role. To some, he is a folk hero, to others a common thug whose crimes were brutal and entirely for personal gain. Ned Kelly is particuarly a hero for the Australian Celtic community who view him as an anti-racist legend.
In the time since his execution, Ned Kelly has been mythologised among some into a Robin Hood figure of sorts, a political revolutionary and a figure of Irish Catholic and working-class resistance to the establishment and British colonial ties. It is claimed that Kelly's bank robberies were to fund the push for a "Republic of the North-East of Victoria", and that the police found a declaration of the republic in his pocket when he was captured, which has led to him being seen as an icon by some in the Australian Republican cause (itself including a lot of Australians of Irish descent, most notably former Prime Minister Paul Keating and author Thomas Kenneally). However, concrete evidence of the planning of such a republic or Kelly's involvement in such has not yet appeared.
Australian far-right organisations such as National Action have also adopted Ned Kelly (as well as other Australian rebel imagery such as the Eureka Flag)."
By the way, the movie with Mick Jagger was particularly flakey.
_____________________________________________
It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!
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May 5th, 2006, 08:41 AM
#65
Registered User
Asoka
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashoka_the_Great
http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/ashoka.html
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0805027.html
One of the greatest rulers, bar none, Asoka managed to conquer an huge empire, comprised of most of the Indian Peninsula, up to Nepal and over to the edges of Persia. At first he was known as Asoka the Cruel, but after the terrible slaughter of one of his conquests, he converted to Buddhism, and became one of the most enlightened rulers of all time. He died in 232 B.C. and the Mauryan Dynasty ended shortly afterwards.
Last edited by El_Squid; May 5th, 2006 at 08:44 AM.
Reason: Adding links
I didn't surrender, but they took my horse and made him surrender. They have him pulling a wagon up in Kansas I bet.
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May 29th, 2006, 03:41 PM
#66
Moche Mystery Woman
Moche Mystery Woman at National Geographic
"An ornately tattooed 1,600-year-old mummy unearthed in Peru could be a warrior queen of the violent Moche people."
_____________________________________________
It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!
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June 6th, 2006, 07:34 PM
#67
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June 13th, 2006, 10:56 AM
#68
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June 24th, 2006, 02:02 PM
#69
Registered User
In honor of the start of the 2006 WSOP.
Stuart Errol "Stuey The Kid" Ungar (September 8, 1953 - November 22, 1998)
Born and raised on Manhattan's Lower East Side to Jewish parents, Ungar was originally a champion gin player. When he was 10 years old in 1963, he won a local tournament. By 1967, he was regarded as one of the best players in New York. He dropped out of school in 1968 to play gin rummy full time and began winning tournaments earning him $10,000 or more. He later moved to Miami, Florida to find more action, and in 1976, he left for Las Vegas, Nevada.
One story Ungar recalled was when a known cheater at gin called to set up a match with him. Ungar knew the man was a cheater as well but agreed to play him for money anyway. During the match, Ungar's bodyguard (sent by his financial backers because in those days the backers of a losing player at times assaulted or killed a winning player and took their money back) noticed the man was cheating. The bodyguard pulled Ungar aside and was irate while telling him. Ungar calmly told the bodyguard "I know he's cheating. Don't worry. I'll beat him anyway,", to which he did.
In 1980 he entered the World Series of Poker looking for more high-stakes action. He won the main event becoming the youngest champion in its history (he would later be surpassed by Phil Hellmuth). Ungar looked even younger than he was, and was dubbed "The Kid". He would defend his title successfully the next year.
Ungar had an eidetic memory that enabled him to keep track of every card in a six-deck shoe. In 1977 he was bet $100,000 by Bob Stupak, an owner and designer of casinos, that he could not count down the last three decks in a six-deck shoe. Ungar won the bet.
His drug problem escalated to such a point that during the WSOP main event in 1990, to which close friend and poker pro Billy Baxter had staked him, Ungar was found on the third day of the tournament unconscious on the floor of his hotel room due to a drug overdose. However, he had such a chip lead that even when the dealers kept taking his blinds out every time around the table Ungar still finished 9th and pocketed $20,500.
Ungar is still regarded by many poker insiders as the greatest pure talent ever to play the game; in his life, he is estimated to have won over $30 million at the poker table. Along with Johnny Moss, Ungar is the only three-time WSOP main event champion, winning it in 1980, 1981, and 1997. His win in 1997 is considered particularly remarkable as a comeback after 16 years of drug abuse. During his WSOP career, Ungar won 5 WSOP bracelets and more than $2 million in tournament pay.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stu_Ungar
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July 11th, 2006, 10:40 PM
#70
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July 26th, 2006, 03:09 AM
#71
Registered User
Fred Truman - one of the best.
Firey Fred
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August 15th, 2006, 07:42 AM
#72
Intel Mod
An ancestor of mine, Thomas Holcroft:
http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Thomas_Holcroft
"THOMAS HOLCROFT (1745-1809), English dramatist and miscellaneous writer, was born on the 10th of December 1745 in Orange Court, Leicester Fields, London...
He acted in various strolling companies until 1778, when he produced The Crisis; or, Love and Famine, at Drury Lane. Duplicity followed in 1781. Two years later he went to Paris as correspondent of the Morning Herald... (We have a newspaper cutting of his report on the ascent of the Montgolfier brothers in their hot-air balloon. P.)
He was a member of the Society for Constitutional Information, and on that account was, in 1794, indicted of high treason, but was discharged without a trial...
His Memoirs written by Himself and continued down to the Time of his Death, from his Diary, Notes and other Papers, by William Hazlitt, appeared in 1816, and was reprinted, in a slightly abridged form, in 1852." (Yesterday I received from the US the 1968 two-volume reprint of the Memoirs, which I have just commenced reading. P.)
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August 16th, 2006, 06:53 PM
#73
Registered User
"We Must Have Toliver Gravy!"Said The Bloody
Little Yellow Lumbermen To The Forum King. 
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September 20th, 2006, 11:26 PM
#74
Ressurection of the thread?
Been busy lately.......
Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 – October 25, 1400) at Wikipedia
Chaucer is one of the greatest writers in the English language. His wide ranging knowledge of his culture, his mercurial wit, and his playful delight in the fundamental indeterminacy/ambiguity of language distinguish him as a towering giant among a whole ot of short people, some very very short. Unfortunately language is not static, and the English language has moved on since the 14th century, leaving poor Chaucer's writing largely incomprehensible to anyone not willing to put the effort into learning what is now almost a foreign language. There is also the problem of cosmology or psycho-linguistic schemata (world view or cognitive templates/frameworks with which we recognize and process meaning in experience and language) -- these, too, have changed considerably since the 14th century -- we do not see, experience, and interpret the world in the same manner as people in the 14th century. We do not carry the mediaeval background knowledge in our heads necessary to decode Chaucer's texts -- we are not part of his speech community. Chaucer's work is thus rendered even more incomprehensible. If Chaucer's work is taught in school, it is done so only at the most superficial level of surface narrative, and even at this level of simplicity, its reading is a mind-bending and painful experience for most students, especially if they are forced to read it without the questionable benefit of a modern "translation." So very very sad. Chaucer's brilliance is worth effort of learning to understand.
The surprisingly few contemporary manuscripts of Chaucer's work have led some to suggest that he was not widely known as a writer in his own time. Indeed, he was not professionally a writer. He was a civil servant and diplomat in the government of King Richard II. As a writer he may have written for a small audience of other writers in the civil service and for the intelligentsia at court. By contrast Piers Ploughman, a contemporary work by another author, possibly William Langland, survives in many more manuscripts and fragments than does Chaucer's magnum opus, The Canterbury Tales, perhaps an indication of the greater fame and wide-spread popularity of Langland's writing.
Chaucer lived in interesting times, as in the Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times!" Henry of Bolingbroke, later King Henry IV, usurped the throne of England, deposing Richard II. Richard was probably murdered while in prison. Many of Chaucer's close friends were executed. There seems to have been a crack down on the (highly relative) religious, intellectual and political freedom that had existed under Richard. There was almost certainly a censoring of historical chronicles maintained by abbeys and monasteries. Henry IV and his supporters began a two pronged propaganda campaign aimed at discrediting Richard and legitimizing Henry, and a very successful campaign it was.
The period is all heady stuff for academics. Terry Jones (ex-Monty Python's Flying Circus) has fronted a collaborative book, entitled, Who Murdered Chaucer? A Medieval Mystery. Although highly speculative (as is most historical writing), the book is very interesting. Chaucer disappeared. There is some ambiguity about the date of his death. He was a well-known civil servant. Jones et al suggest that he was also well known as a writer and that he and his works were destroyed by "the powers that were" in the clean up after death of Richard II. It is not until the reign of Henry V, Henry IV's son, who was a personal friend and the possible protégé of Richard II, that Chaucer reappears. His memorial was constructed at this time. He begins to be celebrated as the father of English literature at this time.
The book also illustrates the impossibility of separating our understanding of the present from our understanding of the past. Jones et al see in the late 14th/early 15th century a "war on heresy," a war which allows the suspension of the norms of law and in which heresy itself is defined and redefined ad hoc by those in power to suit their momentary needs.
Very interesting....... and Chaucer is dead, too.
____________________________________________
It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!
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October 8th, 2006, 10:30 PM
#75
BBC, On This Day, October 9: Che Guevara 'shot dead'
"A post mortem examination on Che Guevara's body, carried out two days after his death, suggested he had not in fact been killed in battle but had been captured and executed a day later."
Che at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara/
Che is interesting as a historical figure. He is equally as interesting as a political/pop/semi-religious icon. In Peru in the 1970s, he appeared to have become the patron saint of truck drivers, his image gracing truck doors, hoods, mud flaps, etc. High school kids today can still sometimes be found sporting buttons and t-shirts. The Motorcycle Diaries was an interesting film.
I suspect that a certain well-known and loved cephlapod will have interesting commentary here.
____________________________________________
It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!
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