Lancaster over 315 Front

 A tweet from the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum has a picture taken from their Lancaster bomber on its first flight over Toronto.  The picture was taken on 11 November 1988 and features the still-under-construction Toronto Skydome stadium.  The picture also includes the RBC systems building where I had just started work two weeks earlier.

Trench Warfare

A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry has a post on why trench warfare in the First World War worked out the way it did and why a stalemate and huge numbers of casualties are inevitable.  It doesn't have anything to do with stupid or uncaring generals (though those certainly did exist) but with technology.

The trench stalemate is the result of a fairly complicated interaction of weapons which created a novel tactical problem. The key technologies are machine guns, barbed wire and artillery (though as we’ll see, artillery almost ought to be listed here multiple times: the problems are artillery, machine guns, trenches, artillery, barbed wire, artillery, and artillery), but their interaction is not quite straight-forward.

Video: Selfish Altruism

Kottke.org has a post with a video explaining why it is better for you if everyone's living standard improves.  It makes an interesting comparison between the situations in pre-industrial times and today.

Making a stack of Chinese bowls

British woodworker Robin Wood has a blog post with a very well made short video showing a Chinese craftsman making a stack of wooden bowls using a foot-powered lathe.  I've never seen a lathe quite like that one - most of the Western ones I've seen use some sort of spring to counter-rotate the lathe - nor have I seen anyone make a stack of bowls all at once.

The Shrinking Reach of Malaria

The Economist has a post with a set of map showing how the area affected by malaria has been shrinking over time.  Interestingly, malaria was endemic in North America and Europe until the mid-20th century.

Obit: Hugh Montgomery

The Washington Post has the obituary of Dr Hugh Montgomery an American soldier and spy.  He started his career parachuting into Normandy in 1941 and retired from the CIA in 2014 at the age of 90.

via Twitter

Making Glasses from Scratch

The Knowledge has a post with a 15 minute video from How To Make Everything which details making a pair of glasses from scratch.

The myth of the volunteer kamikaze

The Economist has an article (actually a book review from 2006) that dispels the idea that Japanese pilots lined up to become kamikazes.

She reveals that the tokkotai (“special attack force”, which is how the kamikaze are referred to in Japan) had no volunteers when it was formed in October 1944. Instead, new recruits were either assigned by their superiors or forced to sign up using pressure tactics. No senior officer offered his life for this mission; instead the “volunteer” corps comprised newly enlisted boy-soldiers barely of age and student conscripts from the nation's top universities.

Making a katana from scratch

Sploid (part of gizmodo) have a post with a video on making a samurai katana (based on the one in Kill Bill) from scratch - i.e. they start with iron ore.  Well worth the 18 minutes.

I had never heard of the traditional Japanese technique for lighting the forge where they pound a piece of iron with a hammer until it becomes red hot then use that to ignite a piece of paper.

First Org Chart

Slate has a post about, and with a picture of, the first org chart.  It was drawn in 1855 for an American railway.

Google Street View on a Submarine

I have always like submarines and now Google Street View will let you take a tour of HMS Ocelot a submarine at the Chatham Historic Dockyard in the UK.

via Google Maps Mania

The Great Sahara Sea

According to this article on IO9, in the 19th century there were plans to dig a canal from the Mediterranean to flood the low lying areas of the Sahara desert and create a giant inland sea.

The London Times said that the plan "dazzles the imagination, yet it has a sufficiently substantial basis to satisfy several shrewd traders in African commerce and some distinguished engineers." The Daily News called the project "the most remarkable that has ever been devised."

The Royal Navy in the First World War

The Guardian has an animation that shows the movement of the ships of the Royal Navy during the First World War.  The information comes from a project that is going through all of weather information in the ships' logs as part of a study on climate change.  I am assuming it doesn't include all RN ships but it doesn't really say.

500 New Fairy Tales Found

The Guardian reports that 500 new fairly tales have been found in an archive in Germany where they had been sleeping for 150 years.

For example, there is the tale of a maiden who escapes a witch by transforming herself into a pond. The witch then lies on her stomach and drinks all the water, swallowing the young girl, who uses a knife to cut her way out of the witch. However, the collection also includes local versions of the tales children all over the world have grown up with including Cinderella and Rumpelstiltskin, and which appear in many different versions across Europe.

Power on Tap

Low-Tech Magazine has a post explaining that before the spread of electricity people used to power household devices using the water pressure from their water taps.

Victorian Lockpickers

Slate has the story of Alfred C. Hobbs an American locksmith who shocked Victorian London by picking a supposedly unpickable lock.

A Map of History

Slate has an article about a "Histomap", published in 1931, that purports to show human history in chart form.

The 5-foot-long Histomap was sold for $1 and folded into a green cover, which featured endorsements from historians and reviewers. The chart was advertised as “clear, vivid, and shorn of elaboration,” while at the same time capable of “holding you enthralled” by presenting:

 the actual picture of the march of civilization, from the mud huts of the ancients thru the monarchistic glamour of the middle ages to the living panorama of life in present day America.

Names Are Becoming Less Common

The Economist reports (with graphs) that the names of newborns in the US are increasing not in the top 100 names.

In fact since the 1950s names have become less uniform across the board. Back then 76% of baby boys were given one of the 100 most popular names. Now the proportion is 43%.

Where the Countries used to be

Flowing Data has a post with a map showing the original continent of Pangea with modern day country borders.  It looks like you could have walked from Newfoundland to Morocco.

Invented in Canada

Mental Floss as a post with a list of 19 things invented in Canada.  In addition to the usual suspects there were a few on the list that I hadn't known were Canadian.