Deputy Dog has a great post with some awesome pictures of star shaped forts from several different locations in Europe and Asia. Star shaped forts, in contrast to circular or square shapes, allow for unrestricted fields of fire no matter how close to the walls an enemy is.
In a square or circular shaped fort, once the enemy gets too close to the wall, it is very hard to shoot him because the wall itself shields him from the defenders on top. With a star shaped fort, no portion of the wall is ever out of reach of fire from another portion. So even though being close to the wall may shield an enemy from those directly above him, those defenders on the adjacent walls can easily direct their fire at the enemy.
Fun Forever (A cool site even though it has a very annoying green background that hurts my eyes), has a post with pictures of TV sets from the earliest TVs in 1928 to TVs from the early 1980s.
Some of them are really bizarre looking.
This is really interesting. You get to see the filming and editing of a short clip reenacting the storming of of the beaches at Normandy. What makes this so cool, is that the entire scene is done by three guys and the only props are those they could fit in a small car.
All of the actors, filming, editing, and props done just by the three guys. And yet the final result is amazing! Just goes to show that movies these days don’t need a huge budget for graphics.
Interesting Thing of the Day, has a great post about the history of land development in San Francisco. The city of San Francisco is one of the prettiest cities in the US. Pictures of it and the Golden gate bridge, are often used in depictions of the US West coast or of the State of California.
San Francisco was founded by the Spanish in 1776, but didn’t see major growth until the 1848 California gold rush. During the gold rush, land values in the city skyrocketed. And there was a severe shortage of land space. At the same time, hundreds of ships had been abandoned by their crews in the harbor. The crews had left to seek their fortune in the mines and hills beyond the city.
The city members decided to recycle the abandoned ships and use them as landfill to create new building areas in the bay. Other ships were towed onto the beach and set up as new buildings. To this day, construction crews are continually finding buried ships and parts of ships beneath the city.
NewScientist has an article about some recently discovered texts that seem to indicate a crude form of biological warfare.
The texts reference the practice of sending infected sheep to enemies of the Hittite Empire as a method of softening up the defenses of the potential enemies. The disease used is called tularemia, and is a potentially fatal bacterial infection. The disease is passed most commonly via infected ticks and other parasites.
Today the disease is rare and easily treatable with modern antibiotics, but at that time it was a serious plague. Records indicate that areas suffering attempted to minimize the plague by forbidding animals(specifically donkeys) from entering city precincts.
I find it fascinating that despite a lack of modern science and knowledge about bacteria, the ancient Hittites understood a disease well enough to use it as a form of warfare. Too often we think of ancient peoples as simple primitives. Things like this remind us that they were quite sophisticated and knowledgeable about their environment.
Interesting Thing of The Day, a great site for offbeat and forgotten information, has an amazing article about the history of steam powered cars.
Before reading the article, I had always assumed that the engineering and practicality hurdles of a steam powered car had never been solved. Turns out that the Doble steam car had all the major problems of a steam powered car solved back in the 1930’s. The only real reason why it never took off is because of the much higher, at least at that time, cost of building a steam powered car when compared to an internal combustion car. Even more amazing, is that the cars were almost emissions free!
Check out the whole story at Interesting Thing of The Day: Doble Steam Cars
Neatorama has an amazing post with pictures and history of 10 of the most amazing temples in the world. Most of the temples are from Southeast Asia, and you may have even hear of a few of them before. But you really should check it out. I don’t think I had ever heard of many of the temples listed.
The picture above is of Prambanan. Prambanan was built as a Hindu temple in Central Java, Indonesia. Constructed around 850 AD, it is covered with Hindu stories. Particularly stories of Hanuman the Monkey King. Follow the link below to read about it and other temples.
Yahoo user Tzuki has taken a current map of the city of New York, and overlaid it with a historical map of New Amsterdam from 1660.
The current city of New York was originally settled by the Dutch, and was then known as New Amsterdam. When the English took it, it was renamed New York. Comparing the two, you can really see the vast amount of land that has been reclaimed from the ocean. The land the city occupies has at least doubled in the years since it was first settled.
Using high powered lights, scientists at the University of Cardiff have developed a way of reading ancient texts and writings without having to touch or unroll the item.Many of the most ancient writings, like some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, are unreadable. Not because or the language they were written in, or because of fading inks, but because the simple act of attempting to unroll or open the document would destroy it. With this method, many previously unreadable documents are now able to be read.
The scientists call their machine the synchrotron. The process works much like an X-Ray where the high intensity light illuminates the text within the document. Then a computer virtually “unrolls” the document. Allowing the text to be read.
The very name, lost city, conjures up thoughts of adventure and treasure. Pictures of ancient cities and ruins always fascinate me. Looking at the pictures, I can almost imagine myself exploring ancient temples and palaces.
So I was pretty excited when I found an entire site devoted to images and photos of lost cities and monuments from ancient civilizations. The site has tons of pictures organized into location. Clicking on a location gives you a brief description of the city and it’s history.
The picture above, is of the cave temple complex of Badami. Badami was the capital of the Early Chalukyas, who ruled over Karnataka India in the 6th to 8th centuries. The cave temples date back to 600 and 700 AD.
Check out the site for more pictures and info on ancient lost cities. Shunya: Lost Cities
