Sydney, 1885

March 3: The Soudan contingent set sail from Sydney. "The contingent, an infantry battalion of 522 men and 24 officers and an artillery battery of 212 men, was ready to sail on 3 March 1885. It left Sydney amid much public fanfare, generated in part by the holiday declared to farewell the troops; the send-off was described as the most festive occasion in the colony's history. Support was not, however, universal, and many viewed the proceedings with indifference or even hostility. The nationalist Bulletin ridiculed the contingent both before and after its return. Meetings intended to launch a patriotic fund and endorse the government's action were poorly attended in many working-class suburbs, and many of those who turned up voted against the fund. In some country centres there was a significant anti-war response, while miners in rural districts were said to be in 'fierce opposition'."

http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/lawsons/lawson_chronology.html

Stefurov, 1883 // Connellsville, 1897

John Picus "Jack" Quinn, born Joannes (Jan) Pajkos (July 1, 1883 - April 17, 1946), was a pitcher in Major League Baseball.
Born in Stefurov, Slovakia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), Quinn emigrated to America as an infant with his parents Michael Pajkos and Maria Dzjiacsko, arriving in New York on June 18, 1884. His mother died near Hazleton, Pennsylvania shortly after the family's arrival in the US, and Quinn's father moved the family to Buck Mountain, near Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania. In 1887 Quinn's father remarried, to Anastasia ("Noska") Tzar, who is frequently, and mistakenly, listed in baseball encyclopedias as Quinn's birth mother.
Quinn spent his early years working as a coal miner and blacksmith, while playing recreational ball for mining teams. He got his start as a professional in an unusual way: While watching a semi-pro game in Connellsville, the 14-year-old Quinn threw a foul ball back from the stands to the catcher, hitting his mitt right in the middle. The visiting manager, from the nearby town of Dunbar, was impressed by the throw, and he offered Quinn a contract. Quinn went on to spend 23 seasons in the major leagues with eight different teams. He won 247 games and lost 218 games, also collecting 57 saves. Quinn debuted on April 15, 1909 and he played until he was 50 years old; his final game was on July 7, 1933.
Quinn's professional longevity enabled him to achieve several age-related milestones. He is the oldest ML player to win a game, to lead his league in a major category (saves, in 1932), and to start games in the World Series (with the Philadelphia Athletics, in 1929) and on Opening Day (with the Brooklyn Dodgers, in 1931). He was the oldest to hit a home run in the majors, at age 46, until 47-year-old Julio Franco did so in 2006. He was the oldest person to ever play for the Cincinnati Reds, and at the time of his retirement, the eight teams for which he had played also constituted a record, which has since been broken. He was also the last major leaguer who had played in the 1900s decade to formally retire (not counting Charley O'Leary, who in 1934 made a comeback stint). Finally, he remains the oldest player to play regularly, having pitched 87 1/3 innings in 1932 at age 48 and 49, and 15 innings in 1933 at age 49 and 50. (Franco and Phil Niekro were also regular players at age 48, but were one and five months younger respectively during their seasons at that age.)
During his career, Quinn played alongside 31 different members of the Baseball Hall of Fame and collected two World Series rings in three tries. He was also one of the last pitchers in baseball permitted to throw the spitball, grandfathered in along with sixteen others reliant on the pitch when it was banned in 1920. He frequently used his spitball after he was grandfathered in, in addition to his fastball, curve, and changeup.
Quinn died in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, at the age of 62.

http://www.modis.ispras.ru/wikipedia/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_players_with_100_triples.html

Bremen, 1838!

Nosferatu's scriptwriter Henrik Galeen, had previously gained a reputation for his horror/fantasy and Expressionistic work through his co-direction and scripting of the 1914 version of Der Golem and Der Student von Prague (1920) and his script for the 1920 version of Der Golem. Later he was to script Waxworks (1924) and write and direct Alraune (1927), cementing his position as the major collaborator on all of the best German fantasy films. His technique for maintaining the multiple perspectives and the fragmentary nature of Stoker's novel was to frame the story as the chronicle of an unidentified narrator, inserting texts, letters, newspaper clippings, diary and log book entries and documentary footage similar in style to the arachnid footage later used by Buñuel in L'Age d'Or (1930). Murnau further added to this fragmentation with an extensive and complex use of cross-cutting between scenes. Whereas Stoker's novel is contemporaneous (1897), Galeen's script is set at the time of "The Great Death in Wisborg in the year 1843 A.D." In the English language version, the intertitles have altered the location and era to Bremen, 1838, with the historian's name given as Johann Cavallius. The English language version alters several other plot details and sadly, loses the lyrical, Expressionistic character of Galeen's original intertitles. The original has, as Eisner notes, "oddly-broken lines. prolific use of exclamation marks, words in capitals, and letter-spaced lower-case matter. [a] staccato rhythm. with its incomplete sentences, clauses, phrases and idiosyncratic punctuation." For simplicity's sake the remainder of the article will refer to the film's location as Bremen.

http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/00/8/nosferatu.html

Barbegal, 1940

- The concept was simple, but the application is impressive. Barbegal was an immense flour mill, dating from the 4th century A.D. The power to drive the millstones came from 16 waterwheels, arranged in two parallel rows of eight. Each row ran downhill so that the water dropped from one wheel to the next, driving all eight in turn before running into a drain at the foot of the hill.
- Near the top of the ridge is a sign dedicated to the man who first investigated the site in 1940, Fernand Benoit: "Thanks to his efforts we have a better understanding of the technological innovation of the Roman Empire." Contemporary evidence of multiple mills during the Roman era is rare.
- While looking over the site, several other groups of intrepid travelers arrived at the site. Most struggled to make sense of the rubble dotting the hillside. I lent my Scientific American illustration to two of the groups. While one travel book alleges that the site is "well preserved," a healthy imagination is still important.

http://www.waterhistory.org/histories/barbegal/

Ponteland, 1956

In due course, the Darras Hall branch extended westwards by about 10 miles to a colliery at Kirkheaton, which closed in 1926. The post Great War motor bus services killed off the passenger trains to Ponteland and Darras Hall, which were withdrawn in 1929. The Darras Hall line was used for wagon storage until the 1950s but the branch was a busy one.
My First acquaintance with Ponteland was in April 1954 when, in my very first job as a Relief Station Master, I went to Ponteland to cover the vacancy on the retirement of Tom Scott who had been the Station Master for over 30 years. Tom had built up a huge coal sale business, which he retained, he drove a brand new Ford Zephyr and moved out of the Station House to a property in Darras Hall. Obviosly, he was not a typical pensioned railwayman. The business of the station was mainly agricultural, with two large 'cattle cake' distributors operating from the station. Apart from the Station Master, staff consisted of a porter signalman, goods porter, lorry driver (a 5ton Bedford) and a railhead lorry from Newcastle. In those days the Cattle Mart gave rise to regular business for the daily goods train.
My first visit to Ponteland lasted some time until Mr Ridley became Station Master but although under 50 he died suddenly in 1956 and I went back again. In that spell. I had a unique experiance. A farmer called Gilbert Evans came to see me to ask if I could organise a special train to remove him to Seamer in Yorkshire where he had bought a new farm. In due course, animals, machinery.stores and furniture were all loaded up and the special train took the Evans family to their new life.

http://railways-of-britain.com/branchingout.html

Bookshelf : best of, 2005-2009

10/10
-------------
The Catcher in the Rye (J D Salinger) 2005
Eastern Approaches (Fitzroy MacLean) 2007
Ripley's Game (Patricia Highsmith) 2009

9/10
-------------
Blue Highways (William Least Heat-Moon) 2005
Cities of the Red Night (William S Burroughs) 2006
Deliverance (James Dickey) 2008
The Devil in the White City (Erik Larson) 2005
A Fan's Notes (Frederick Exley) 2007
5 on the Outside (Vern) 2006
The Great Port (Jan Morris) 2005
Hollywood (Charles Bukowski) 2007
Junky (William S Burroughs) 2007
A Kiss Before Dying (Ira Levin) 2005 and 2007
The Lathe of Heaven (Ursula K Leguin) 2005
North Dallas Forty (Pete Gent) 2005
Roadside Picnic (Arkady and Boris Strugatsky) 2007
The Road to Oxiana (Robert Byron) 2008
The Shadow of the Sun (Ryszard Kapuscinski) 2007
Tender is the Night (F Scott Fitzgerald) 2006
This Bloody Mary is the Last Thing I Own (Jonathan Rendall) 2007
Ubik (Philip K Dick) 2008

------------------------------------------------------------------------

pre-2005

American Psycho (Brett Easton Ellis) 10/10
AWopBopaLooBopALopBamBoom (Nik Cohn) 9/10
The Bogey Man (George Plimpton) 9/10
The Boys on the Bus (Timothy Crouse) 9/10
The Chain of Chance (Stanislaw Lem) 9/10
Child of God (Cormac McCarthy) 9/10
The Cry of the Owl (Patricia Highsmith) 9/10
Deep Water (Patricia Highsmith) 9/10
The Demon (Hubert Selby Jr) 9/10
Dispatches (Michael Herr) 9/10
Factotum (Charles Bukowski) 9/10
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972 (Hunter S Thompson) 10/10
Fiasco (Stanislaw Lem) 9/10
The Great Gatsby (F Scott Fitzgerald) 9/10
The Great Shark Hunt (Hunter S Thompson) 9/10
Guide for the Film Fanatic (Danny Peary) 10/10
The Informers (Brett Easton Ellis) 9/10
Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad) 9/10
Lights Out for the Territory (Iain Sinclair) 9/10
The Press (A J Liebling) 9/10
Shadow Box (George Plimpton) 9/10
Time Out of Joint (Philip K Dick) 9/10
The Weight of the World (Peter Handke) 10/10
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami) 10/10
Wise Blood (Flannery O'Connor) 9/10

Dogger Bank, 1931

The tremor began at around 1:30am on June 7, 1931 with its epicentre located on the Dogger Bank, 60 miles (100 km) off the Yorkshire coast in the North Sea. The effects were felt throughout Great Britain and in Belgium and France. The earthquake resulted in damage at locations throughout eastern England. The town of Filey in Yorkshire was worst hit with the spire of a church being twisted by the tremor. Chimneys collapsed in Hull, Beverley and Bridlington, and Flamborough Head suffered crumbling of parts of its cliffs. Rather less seriously, in London the head of the waxwork of Dr Crippen at Madame Tussauds fell off.

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/1931-Dogger-Bank-earthquake