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Milestones

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100 years ago today, October 10, 1924 the Washington D.C. baseball team The Washington Senators won their first and only World Series. President Calving Coolidge watched the game at Griffith Stadium in D.C.

Despite the win, the Washington Senators (in D.C. from 1901 till 1960) were better known as losers. For example it was said of them “Washington: First in war, first in peace, and last in the National League." A 1958 move about them (Damn Yankees) was about a man who sells his soul to the devil so they can beat The Yankees baseball team. The Senators left town in 1960 and became the Minnesota Twins.
 

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On this day 85 years ago, October 10, 1939, the USSR gave Lithuania its capital Vilnius. Before that date, Kaunas was the capital of Lithuania. In 1939, Vilnius was a Polish-Jewish city, where 65 percent of the population were Poles and 28 percent were Jews. Lithuanians in Vilnius in 1939 made up about 6 percent of the city's population.
 

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On October 11, 1899, the Second Anglo-Boer War began – it is commonly called “the last war of the 19th century”; and some experts consider it “the first war for democracy”. …It must be said that the entire world community of those times actively sympathized with the Boers. (And especially, for some reason, the Russian one – take at least the heartbreaking song “Transvaal, my country, you are all burning in flames…”
…The Boers (or rather, the Afrikaners) were the descendants of Dutch (and then German and French) colonists who appeared on the southern tip of Africa back in the middle of the 17th century. In a hundred and fifty years they would settle in quite well (and acquire a considerable number of black slaves) – but then a bigger beast would appear… that is, the ubiquitous Great Britain. To begin with, the British would occupy the Cape Colony. (At that time, Napoleon occupied the Boers’ homeland, the Netherlands… it turned out that now it was, supposedly, the territory of hostile France). The Afrikaners would go deep into the continent, organizing the Orange Free State and the South African Republic (or that same Transvaal. It is not worth talking about what happened to the indigenous population of these new lands… Meanwhile, in 1833 the British will pass a law abolishing slavery - and the British press will start telling stories about how the bad Boers torture their black slaves).
 

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Installed on October 20, 1924
100 years of traffic lights on Potsdamer Platz
100 years ago, when cars were still a rarity and horse-drawn carriages dominated the street scene, a small technical miracle was installed on October 20, 1924 at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin that continues to have a lasting impact on our daily lives today.
Exactly 100 years ago, traffic safety was revolutionized in the middle of Berlin. The "traffic tower" went into operation at Potsdamer Platz - the world's first electric traffic light!
Red, yellow and green have been the referee colors for all road users ever since. The premiere location on October 20, 1924 was perfectly chosen. Five streets led to the busiest square in the world. The first traffic light had exactly five sides and the signal lights were still arranged horizontally and not vertically (as they are today).
Bundesarchiv_Bild_102-00843,_Berlin,_Verkehrsturm_auf_dem_Potsdamer_Platz.jpeg
 
Hugin&Munin said:
Installed on October 20, 1924
100 years of traffic lights on Potsdamer Platz
100 years ago, when cars were still a rarity and horse-drawn carriages dominated the street scene, a small technical miracle was installed on October 20, 1924 at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin that continues to have a lasting impact on our daily lives today.
Exactly 100 years ago, traffic safety was revolutionized in the middle of Berlin. The "traffic tower" went into operation at Potsdamer Platz - the world's first electric traffic light!
Red, yellow and green have been the referee colors for all road users ever since. The premiere location on October 20, 1924 was perfectly chosen. Five streets led to the busiest square in the world. The first traffic light had exactly five sides and the signal lights were still arranged horizontally and not vertically (as they are today).
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The practice of using colour signals had been taken over from practice in railroad signalling. Originally, most traffic lights had only two colours : red and green. At the transition from green to red, both lights were on simultaneously for a couple of seconds.
In the beginning, a bell was often installed, that was ringing either during the transition, or when red was on. However, in cities, where most of the early traffic lights were installed, neighbours soon complained about the day long sound of a ringing bell every minute or so, hence the bells were removed.
 
Hugin&Munin said:
Installed on October 20, 1924
100 years of traffic lights on Potsdamer Platz
100 years ago, when cars were still a rarity and horse-drawn carriages dominated the street scene, a small technical miracle was installed on October 20, 1924 at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin that continues to have a lasting impact on our daily lives today.
Exactly 100 years ago, traffic safety was revolutionized in the middle of Berlin. The "traffic tower" went into operation at Potsdamer Platz - the world's first electric traffic light!
Red, yellow and green have been the referee colors for all road users ever since. The premiere location on October 20, 1924 was perfectly chosen. Five streets led to the busiest square in the world. The first traffic light had exactly five sides and the signal lights were still arranged horizontally and not vertically (as they are today).
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Which was, no doubt, quickly followed by the worlds first traffic ticket. :roto2gay:
 
Eulalia said:
I'm in the happy position of living 22 miles from the nearest traffic lights. Can any cruxer beat that?
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I have no chance, the next traffic light is only 800 m (half a mile) from my house.
 
Frank Petrexa said:
Near the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania, there is a coal seam that has been smoldering for years and the toxic gases released forced abandonment of a church. I've also read (the author is reliable) that a deposit of dung from the Giant Ground Sloth (extinct for thousands of years) is smoldering away in a cave. A few years ago, the Forest Service was sued over a wild fire in northern New Mexico. They had cleared brush to prevent wild fires. They had burned the piles in the summer in a controlled burn. The fire wasn't completely extinguished, it smoldered over the winter (with snow and rain), and ignited a very destructive wild fire the next year. So as the Forest Service's "Smokey the Bear" says, make sure your campfire is completely out.
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Centralia is the place with the underground coal mine burning
 
Mikerytel said:
Centralia is the place with the underground coal mine burning
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I live about 100 miles from Centralia. The mine fire has been burning since about 60 years ago. The mine was inactive, and the area around an entrance was filled with discarded trash, as people tend to do with their trash. The ignition of the fire was evidently spontaneous combustion, there being no evidence of arson, etc. The fire accessed a coal seam, and that was that. All attempts to extinguish the fire have been unsuccessful. Fumes and subsidence have been problems since then.

The town is now pretty much abandoned, and area roads are no longer used. In the 1990s, I think, the Commonwealth of PA condemned the entire borough under eminent domain and bought the houses of those who wanted to leave, but some folks insisted on staying. A special agreement was made with those residents to stay in their homes until their deaths. Sad story - one of many in small PA towns.
 
supplice said:
I live about 100 miles from Centralia. The mine fire has been burning since about 60 years ago. The mine was inactive, and the area around an entrance was filled with discarded trash, as people tend to do with their trash. The ignition of the fire was evidently spontaneous combustion, there being no evidence of arson, etc. The fire accessed a coal seam, and that was that. All attempts to extinguish the fire have been unsuccessful. Fumes and subsidence have been problems since then.

The town is now pretty much abandoned, and area roads are no longer used. In the 1990s, I think, the Commonwealth of PA condemned the entire borough under eminent domain and bought the houses of those who wanted to leave, but some folks insisted on staying. A special agreement was made with those residents to stay in their homes until their deaths. Sad story - one of many in small PA towns.
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They also used centralia as a backdrop for the silent hill movies
 
vadim69 said:
On the occasion of the American folk holiday
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American?????

Actually what we think of today as traditional Halloween customs (trick or treat, dressing up, jack o lanterns etc) originated in Scotland, not America.

The only part of it that is actually American is the use of pumpkins rather than the traditional turnip, as the pumpkin is native to North America and was introduced to Europe in the 1500s, but carving spooky faces into them didn't start until the mid 1800s, when people realised that they were a hell of a lot easier to carve than turnips which are very much harder and tougher, though in some parts of Scotland, people still carve turnips, which actually look spookier - their general colour and size makes them look a bit like shrunken heads, and because they are smaller, the candle inside tends to burn their lid, resulting in a distinct and memorable smell. This also makes then get very hot too, so many people carried them around on some sort of hook or chain, to avoid burning their hands.

Halloween itself is derived from the very ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, where it was believed that the veil between the real world and the spirit world was at its thinnest, allowing the ghosts of the dead to come over into the material world. Ancient peoples believed that some of these spirits had evil intent towards the living, and so they would disguise themselves as creepy demons/monsters etc to confuse the spirits into believing that they were already dead so they would leave them alone, which is where the practice of dressing up for Halloween comes from.

The practice of bobbing for apples is actually a seperate tradition which formed part of a ritual to determine the identity of a future spouse which has become part of Halloween for as long as most people can remember :)

Not sure quite how pulling apples out of wet vessels with your teeth is supposed to determine who you will spend your life with, but I'm sure there's a porn movie in there somewhere :p
 
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