History on Air

The Goonies

Not quiet history, but I loved The Goonies when I was growing up.  Maybe you did too.  Anyway, here is some trivia from the movie.

The actress who played Harriet Walsh, Mary Ellen Trainor, married Robert Zemeckis. She was in four of his movies - Romancing the Stone, Back to the Future Part II, Death Becomes Her and Forrest Gump. They divorced in 2000.  Corey Feldman memorized all of the Spanish for the scene where he purposely mistranslates all of Mrs. Walsh’s instructions for the maid. If you recognize the housekeeper, by the way, it may be from Selena - she played Selena’s killer Yolanda. [Neatorama]

Click the link for more trivia.  Image credit: Roscoe Van Damme

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The History Behind 10 Classic Toys

Lincoln Logs were invented by John Lloyd Wright, Frank Lloyd Wright’s son. The original instructions included a how to construct a replica of Abraham Lincoln’s cabin, but also how to construct Uncle Tom’s cabin. [mental_floss]

Follow the link to find out more.  Image credit: Patrick Q

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Military History Videos

I came across this Miliatary History Talks on video and thought I would share them with you.  Thank you to Mark Grimsley from BLOG THEM OUT OF THE STONE AGE for sharing them.

1. The G. I. Experience in the Korean War: A Precursor to Vietnam?
2. To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne , 1918
3. General William E. Dupuy: Preparing the Army for Modern War

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Cave Paintings

Great article from The History Blog describing a recent find of thousands of 6,000 year old cave paintings found in the Amazon.

Peruvian archaeologist Quirino Olivera has found thousands of 6,000-year-old cave paintings in the Amazon jungle in the Andes.  They’ve been researching the area for the past two years and had found over 6,000 Stone Age cave painting already. Now they’ve found 10,000 more.  According to Olivera, most of the Tambolic paintings depict hunting scenes and are similar to those found in Toquepala. The artists used mainly red, brown, yellow and black pigments.

Image Credit: allspice1

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Tory Houses

Great article at Boston 1775.  Some great pictures of Cambridge in 1776.  Very cool to browse through.

This is a detail of the wonderful map that Henry Pelham engraved in England after leaving Boston with the British military in 1776. You can explore the whole thing through the Library of Congress’s website of maps from the American Revolution and Its Era. North on this map is at about two o’clock, in case you’re having trouble orienting it with today’s streets and Charles River.

Image Credit: StarrGazr

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20-Year Anniversary of Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

What a horrible anniversary.  This is an incredible sad event in our history.  My hope is by posting this it will remind all who read it to take better care of our planet.  It’s the only one we’ve got.

Read this great article by Naomi Lubick from NatureNews titled Lasting legacy of the Exxon Valdez.  Here is an excerpt:

When people think of big oil spills, they think of theExxon Valdez. Twenty years ago, the oil tanker spilled its load off the coast of Alaska, and images of oil-slicked birds hit the news at a time when environmental awareness was quickly rising in the United States.  The accident became a lightening rod for green groups and lawmakers, but has also prompted hundreds of scientific studies looking at the implications of the disaster on local people, the ecosystem, remediation practices and oil spill response. Nature takes a look back at the disaster, and finds out what the situation is today.

Naomi goes on to describe how it happened and how that ecosystem is doing now.  A great article.

There is also more at TreeHugger.

Lastly for those who really want the whole story check out these books:
Out of the Channel: The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill in Prince William Sound
The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill (Environmental Disasters)
Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

Image Credit: jimbrickett

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Lion Drome…

Unbelievable!!!  I don’t have the words for this so just look at the picture.

This ladies and gentlemen is why I love history!!!  Yes, you are looking at a picture with a woman driving a care on a wall, yes, that is a lion in the sidecar next to her.  Oh my God, I can’t believe I just wrote that!  Now that I have your attention, this is real and it did happen in the 1920′s.  See, entertainment was so much better before television!  These brave women kept the lions they drove with as pets!

Lots of links for this one as it is making its way through the interweb:

Thrillarena.com – More information and pictures.

History of the photo shown above at Photodoto.

Lots of pictures and description of crazy people driving cars on walls with lions at Dark Roasted Blend.

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Selma To Montgomery Voting Rights March [On This Day]

On this day in history in 1965, more than 3,000 civil rights demonstrators led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. began their march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

A week after Reeb’s death, Judge Johnson ruled in favor of the First Amendment rights of blacks to march in protest and against the state of Alabama from blocking them:

The law is clear that the right to petition one’s government for the redress of grievances may be exercised in large groups . . . . These rights may . . . be exercised by marching, even along public highways.

Read more…

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Tokyo Sarin Gas Subway Attack (On This Day in History)

In Tokyo, 12 people were killed, 50 were severly injurered and more than 5,500 others sickened and afflicted with temporary vision problems when packages containing the poisonous gas sarin (learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin) leaked on five separate subway trains. This was a terrible event in our worlds history, but I believe it is important.  The Japanese media calmly referred to the event as the Subway Sarin Incident. The “incident” was an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated by members of Aum. The attack was directed against trains passing through Kasumigaseki and Nagatach?, home to the Japanese government. This was the most serious attack to occur in Japan since the end of World War II.

More after the jump…

Read more…

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Listen to History Podcast on Your Zune

The recently launched Zune market place has a page for History Podcast.  So all you Microsoft fan boys and girls and subscribe to history podcast on your Zune.

Image credit: Peter Boden

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