In medieval England, many people couldn’t read or write. How did they get the news out? The town crier walked around with a bell, yelling out the news.
Category: history
Queensberry rules
The Queensberry rules of boxing do not permit shoes with springs in them. I knew those Z-Coil shoes were unsportsmanlike the minute I saw them!
The last military sailing ship
There is still a large sailing ship in the military. The Coast Guard has the Eagle, which is used for training. Apparently, nothing gives sailors a feel for the sea like sailing. It was actually commissioned by Germany in WWII and taken as a prize of war.
Mmm, weevils
I was watching a documentary about life in the Royal Navy in the time of sailing ships. Imagine the poor sanitation of that time, but all focused within the confines of a ship. Poor sailors. “Scotch coffee” was sometimes made using burnt bread and sweetened with sugar. Mmm.
I, like, totally take umbrage to that
I was watching the first episode of Horatio Hornblower: The Duel. I was reading about duels. It was all pretty weird, with official rules and regulations. In the Horatio series, Horatio takes umbrage (is offended by) something the evil fellow says in front of witnesses. The fellow refuses to apologize and it’s all very official.
The stars at night are big and bright…
We went to El Paso, TX this weekend to visit me gramma. On the way there, we saw thousands of cows. I’ve never seen so many! Had a nice, but brief visit with her. Ate weight in haddock tampiquena (2/5). We stayed at a Super 8 motel, which was quite bad, apparently. No AC. Switched rooms. Loud neighbors kept us up.
Yesterday we were in Deming to attend church and then went to the Pancho Villa State Park. There was a lot of history about Villa I didn’t know. He came and attacked Columbus, NM and the US retaliated by sending a huge number of troops into Mexico to chase him. This was just before WW I, so they were practicing some new military techniques that would be used over there, such as the use of airplanes. They used the “Jenny” JN-3, which was a plane with a terrible reputation. We also went very briefly into Las Palomas, MX. We sorta felt a little creepy the way people were lined up, sitting on the sidewalks to gawk, so we left pretty hastily and didn’t really go anywhere. Overall, Sean whined less on the road than I expected…although he did break down and whine for the last hour of driving last night, it was not enough to make my head explode as I had feared.