I asked for drawing suggestions the other day. Eileen Parkman said "Sumerian Anti-Nausea Tablets." I accidentally did too much research and made a comic that might be funny to scholars of ancient civilizations or something but that's about it.
(no subject)
Mar. 11th, 2010 01:36 pmTHINGS THEY DON'T TEACH US IN OUR HISTORY BOOKS:
The actual anniversary was yesterday.
65 years ago the United States committed a war crime against Japan by firebombing ordinary citizens in Tokyo.
100,000 civilians died by explosion and fire, the largest number from any attack during the entirety of the war.
I wish I could be surprised that war crimes like this were ignored during/after the the hostilities ended, not to mention that as part of an agreement signed by Japan in 1951, nobody in that country could sue over it being a war crime. But I'm not surprised.
100,000 civilians dead, simply for the crime of being citizens in a country at war. Save for the usual warmonger cries of "they should have stopped their government" or "destabilizing a population is part of war," there was little-to-no significant military reasons for the attack.
This article is from five years ago, but it tell you what you NEED to know.
MARCH 10, 1945: The Firebombing of Tokyo
b
The actual anniversary was yesterday.
65 years ago the United States committed a war crime against Japan by firebombing ordinary citizens in Tokyo.
100,000 civilians died by explosion and fire, the largest number from any attack during the entirety of the war.
I wish I could be surprised that war crimes like this were ignored during/after the the hostilities ended, not to mention that as part of an agreement signed by Japan in 1951, nobody in that country could sue over it being a war crime. But I'm not surprised.
100,000 civilians dead, simply for the crime of being citizens in a country at war. Save for the usual warmonger cries of "they should have stopped their government" or "destabilizing a population is part of war," there was little-to-no significant military reasons for the attack.
This article is from five years ago, but it tell you what you NEED to know.
MARCH 10, 1945: The Firebombing of Tokyo
b
(no subject)
Aug. 9th, 2007 05:08 pm![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
auroracita wants to know the answers to FIVE QUESTIONS.So here we go:
1. What would you choose to be your last meal?
Dead serious, human flesh, no question. Don't lie and say you've never been curious. I'd want that, and baked beans, and kim chi, and kohlrabi, and cheesecake, and root beer, and bacon and sushi and...
2. If you could have one great mystery of history solved for you, what would it be?
I have a number of them, but we'll just go with one.
Hmmm...
How about...Roswell. What the shit really went down? Even if there were no alien, that was some crazyass stuff.
3. What's your concept of the afterlife?
Don't so much have one. Becoming a bit of all things would make me perfectly happy.
4. What is the single greatest regret of your life?
Not sure that I really have one, truth be told. Maybe...good lord, who knows? I'm sure I could figure one out, but...
Remind me later, maybe I'll have thought of one.
5. Casket or cremation? Why?
Cremation. Better yet, just leave me in a never-visited bit of forest somewhere. Why should I give a shit about my body? Especially caskets. WHY DO WE PUT DEAD PEOPLE IN CASKETS SEALED IN VAULTS UNDER DIRT?! What, do we need me to be MiB or some shit?
If, through some fluke, I end up being buried, this had better be my tombstone:
I am still accepting requests.
b
(no subject)
Apr. 24th, 2006 04:30 pm I live for days like today.
You see, I work at the main library at the University of Illinois, which has over 10 million books. I work in an area where we process and do repairs on books heading to our high-density shelving area. We often find a number of strange things in the books, from ink blotters made by the “Orient Coal” company in 1922, to envelopes full of stamps from the sixties, to a filled-out-but-never-sent subscription card for AMERICAN MAGAZINE dated 1940.
One of the most fascinating finds we’ve ever made was a pristine, string-bound, several page marriage certificate dated 1912. Most interesting was that it was from British Columbia. The certificate was found before I started working here, but I thought to myself, “Why don’t I spend a few minutes trying to track down any family that may still be living?”
I never thought I’d have any use for those bizarre genealogical websites, but on that day I did. I tracked down a distant relative on the East coast, living in one of the Carolinas. He was fascinated by the find, and asked if I could mail it to him.
I took proper care in packaging it, using non-acidic archival boards to guarantee that it wouldn’t get beaten up on the way to him. I later received an e-mail that he had received it and one from another relative who had seen it. Both sent their thanks, but I expected that to be the end of it.
Today I got the surprise of being visited by the youngest son of the couple in the certificate. He and his wife are from a town about 30 minutes from here, and though they rarely make even small trips, they came to visit the man who got a mysterious piece of their family’s history and passed it on.
The couple are in their eighties, and it turns out that the man had never known that much about his father, as he had died when the son was quite young. He said that certainly nobody knew that his parents had been inexplicably married in Canada, since all evidence pointed to their having been in Wisconsin their entire lives—well, except for the fact that the groom's father was born in Bohemia in 1848 and had come through the Port of New York, and had sworn off any allegiances to foreign powers (“particularly to the King of Bohemia ", according to a document they showed me a photostatic copy of) and sworn sole allegiance to the United States of America. Having known nothing about the marriage itself, they certainly didn’t know that it had taken place at the “home of the bride’s parents.”
The couple who came to visit me were as kind and polite as could be, and shared that they had both graduated from the University of Illinois in the same year, after having gotten married their junior years. Indeed, the husband had intentionally fallen ½ credit short of graduation, just so he could be in the same graduating class and ceremony as his wife.
I showed them one floor of the 10 stories of bookstacks (which are, indeed, quite huge), and told them how lucky we considered ourselves for having found such a gem in so many books. The husband got goosbumps and shook my hand for the third time, telling me that he said that he and his family were the lucky ones and thought it was fabulous that the marriage certificate had not only been found, but returned to a family who never knew it existed.
I expressed to them that I work here not just because I love books, or because my coworkers are fabulous, but because every day I touch history, and on some particularly wonderful days...history touches back.
benjamin sTone
You see, I work at the main library at the University of Illinois, which has over 10 million books. I work in an area where we process and do repairs on books heading to our high-density shelving area. We often find a number of strange things in the books, from ink blotters made by the “Orient Coal” company in 1922, to envelopes full of stamps from the sixties, to a filled-out-but-never-sent subscription card for AMERICAN MAGAZINE dated 1940.
One of the most fascinating finds we’ve ever made was a pristine, string-bound, several page marriage certificate dated 1912. Most interesting was that it was from British Columbia. The certificate was found before I started working here, but I thought to myself, “Why don’t I spend a few minutes trying to track down any family that may still be living?”
I never thought I’d have any use for those bizarre genealogical websites, but on that day I did. I tracked down a distant relative on the East coast, living in one of the Carolinas. He was fascinated by the find, and asked if I could mail it to him.
I took proper care in packaging it, using non-acidic archival boards to guarantee that it wouldn’t get beaten up on the way to him. I later received an e-mail that he had received it and one from another relative who had seen it. Both sent their thanks, but I expected that to be the end of it.
Today I got the surprise of being visited by the youngest son of the couple in the certificate. He and his wife are from a town about 30 minutes from here, and though they rarely make even small trips, they came to visit the man who got a mysterious piece of their family’s history and passed it on.
The couple are in their eighties, and it turns out that the man had never known that much about his father, as he had died when the son was quite young. He said that certainly nobody knew that his parents had been inexplicably married in Canada, since all evidence pointed to their having been in Wisconsin their entire lives—well, except for the fact that the groom's father was born in Bohemia in 1848 and had come through the Port of New York, and had sworn off any allegiances to foreign powers (“particularly to the King of Bohemia ", according to a document they showed me a photostatic copy of) and sworn sole allegiance to the United States of America. Having known nothing about the marriage itself, they certainly didn’t know that it had taken place at the “home of the bride’s parents.”
The couple who came to visit me were as kind and polite as could be, and shared that they had both graduated from the University of Illinois in the same year, after having gotten married their junior years. Indeed, the husband had intentionally fallen ½ credit short of graduation, just so he could be in the same graduating class and ceremony as his wife.
I showed them one floor of the 10 stories of bookstacks (which are, indeed, quite huge), and told them how lucky we considered ourselves for having found such a gem in so many books. The husband got goosbumps and shook my hand for the third time, telling me that he said that he and his family were the lucky ones and thought it was fabulous that the marriage certificate had not only been found, but returned to a family who never knew it existed.
I expressed to them that I work here not just because I love books, or because my coworkers are fabulous, but because every day I touch history, and on some particularly wonderful days...history touches back.
benjamin sTone
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