Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

August 18, 1783: Depiction of the unusually bright meteor seen over the UK on this day. At the time such phenomena were not well understood and the meteor was the subject of much discussion, and also works of art.


The caption reads:
"An accurate representation of the meteor which was seen on Aug.t 18th. 1783. At first it appeared as one ball of fire, but, in a few seconds, broke into many small ones. It's course was from N.W. to S.E. This extraordinary phaenomenon was of that species of meteor which the great phisiologist Dr. Woodward and others call the Draco volans or Flying dragon. The above view was taken at Winthorpe near Newark upon Trent, by Henry Robinson, schoolmaster. - and published by him as the Act directs, 14. Oct.r 1783. This plate is inscribed to Roger Pocklington Esq.r by his much obliged humble servant Henry Robinson."


Portents of death and destruction. Gouache, ca. 1910 (?)


Description: Heavy rain, clouds, thunder and lightning falling on a deserted landscape; left, a great skull and cross bones in the sky; centre, a falling star; right, a bier in the sky marked with the heads of three Middle Eastern men.

XVIIth International Congress of Medicine: handbook of the Historical Medical Museum organized by Henry S. Wellcome (the Museum of the Section of the History of Medicine), London, 1913, catalogue no. 267, p. 62 (possibly this item, described as "Death, famine and pestilence as forecast by a comet. From a MS of the 15th century")

See more meteors and comets in art here: Flowers of the Sky


August 19, 1945: pilot Lt. Tetsuo Tanifuji decided to take his wife on a kamikaze mission to attack Soviet tanks in Manchuria. They were joined by another pilot who had his fiancée sitting in his lap. They never returned and it is unknown if the pilots reached their targets. They took ride or die together, literally.



"There's a woman on the plane!"


August 19, 1983: Rodney Dangerfield's EASY MONEY premiered.




Happy World Photography Day! Celebrate with a peruse through Public Domain Review photography collection which features a huge range of subjects, from falling cats and chameleon bones to naked tennis and Charles Babbage's brain:




Of Chickens, Eggs, and Cannonballs: Roger Fenton’s Valley of the Shadow of Death (1855)


August 19, 1991: Soviet coup d'état aka August Coup was attempted by hardliner commies. State of Emergency was declared by GKChP (The State Committee on the State of Emergency) members who became known as the "Gang of Eight". The GKChP cut communications to Gorbachev's dacha, including telephone landlines and the nuclear command and control system.




Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was placed under house arrest while on holiday in the town of Foros, Crimea. The coup ultimately failed, with the provisional government collapsing by 22 August 1991. All members were arrested for treason, except one... Boris Pugo, Interior Minister. However, he died from two gunshots to the head on August 22 and his death was ruled a suicide. Naturally. On 23 February 1994, the State Duma declared amnesty for all GKChP members and their accomplices, along with the participants of the October Surprise of 1993...a constitutional crisis. Come November we might see a similar coup...with clowns. I put nothing past the swamp psychos.

Photos are from the Russian political ephemera (late 1980s-1990s). Soviet coup d'état attempt 1991 ephemera, Slavic Division, Harvard College Library

American weaponry to protect the Swiss gold!



James Bond 007 Goldfinger Film Location: Furka Pass Then & Now




135 days to cybergasm doom...


Sex & the machine


Luke Combs – Ain’t No Love In Oklahoma (From Twisters: The Album)