History Challenge & Journal

[Dannie Boy]

I think this is the best place to post, but Mods, please move if necessary

I regularly (these days) watch and thoroughly enjoy a show in the UK (BBC 1) called "The Repair Shop" - pretty sure it's been mentioned before. Basically, a team of experts restoring historical items - in BBC wording: -

"Enter a workshop filled with expert craftspeople, bringing loved pieces of family history and the memories they hold back to life"

Anywho, the latest episode included an "Inclined Plane Clock" - something I've never really come across and found truly fascinating... I'm a lover of clocks and watches for my sins - mechanical stuff

This is an example of a similar clock (https://www.sellingantiques.co.uk/59974 ... -frodsham/), but I'd seriously recommend looking at this series which revolves around history!

As your fond of clocks, I thought I’d post a picture of one that I have at my house here in Cha Am. It’s an old “Clocking in Clock” that originated from a London Power Station (I think Acton Lane), which ended up at another Power Station called West Thurrock, in Essex and where I worked at one stage. In 1993 it was decided to close the power station and as part of the process, we brought in Auctioneers to sell off anything of value. This clock was on the wall of my office and so I’d become quite fond of it, so to cut a long story short, I managed to agree a “fair” auction price and bought it for the princely sum of £10 and it’s been with me ever since, spending time in the UK and Abu Dhabi before I finally retired to Thailand in 2011.

Back in the early days when I started work in 1969, it was quite common for blue collar workers to have to clock in at the beginning and end of the day. Where I worked there were 700 such workers and every clock card had to be manually checked for timekeeping - anybody more than 3 minutes late was marked up on their card and anybody late more than 3 times in a week was docked a quarter of an hours pay!!

F5065CAB-9F2D-4EAF-8F7B-A50E0BF9CA91.jpeg (53.2 KiB) Viewed 365 times

[dtaai-maai]

So much to like about The Repair Shop aside from the technical stuff that gives engineers like pharvey and Dannie Boy a hard-on: the hugely talented craftspeople get so wrapped up in the emotional side of it all; the Shop itself, a beautiful old barn; the voices of the narrators, actors Robert Pugh and Bill Paterson; the location - that legendary part of the English countryside where the sun always shines, the grass is always perfectly mown, horses frolic with gay abandon in the meadows... am I going over the top here?

A heart-warming show that is an antidote to the trials and tribulations of modern-day life and - yes, I admit it - pretty damn sexy!

[Thailightzone]

It's an oldie time shift clock-in?clock-out I think

[pharvey]

It's an oldie time shift clock-in?clock-out I think

Didn't the description given in Danie Boy's post or the "In-Out" shown on the photo give it away? Your powers of perception are quite incredible!

As for the clock DB - superb.

[Thailightzone]

It's an oldie time shift clock-in?clock-out I think

Didn't the description given in Danie Boy's post or the "In-Out" shown on the photo give it away? Your powers of perception are quite incredible!

As for the clock DB - superb.

Well you have uncovered a few things. I didn't really read Danie Boy's post, nor did I give the photo more than a glance.
So given that, I would say my powers of concentration are poor, my powers of perception are subliminal, and my powers of deduction are legendary.

Please feel free to follow this up with a post whereupon you title it 'U-Boats of the WW2' and I will reply with an insightful comment that i think it is about submarines in WW2.

[dtaai-maai]

^^ Excellent post. I do enjoy a bit of self-deprecation. I also like dressing up in female superhero costumes and walking down the high street behind much younger females wearing tight leggings. So sue me.

[pharvey]

... am I going over the top here?

Nooo, NOT at all DM....... Are you good? Windows open? Not stalking nieghbours trees?

It's an oldie time shift clock-in?clock-out I think

Didn't the description given in Danie Boy's post or the "In-Out" shown on the photo give it away? Your powers of perception are quite incredible!

As for the clock DB - superb.

I would say my powers of concentration are poor, my powers of perception are subliminal, and my powers of deduction are legendary.

I'm fairly sure the same applies to many, including myself... aside from the latter

With that said, I continue to have these subliminal messages towards an historical event regarding a WW 2 U-Boat with this Australian guy and a Londoner-cum-Arborist based in the north of England as crew members..... Truly frightening, believe me! I wonder if you could help out?

[PeteC]

A scary day for the world, especially Europe.

Radioactive cloud from Chernobyl disaster, 1986

https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/radioacti ... tive_cloud] (Video)


A radioactive cloud drifted over Europe after an explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in April 1986.

Design flaws in the power plant led to a power surge, which caused massive explosions and blew the top of the reactor.

The contamination spread from Ukraine to neighbouring Belarus, and into Europe.

Originally broadcast on 29 April 1986.

[Bamboo Grove]

We have this TV program here in Finland now called "Where were you when.....happened?" When the Chernobyl disaster happened, I was on a train between St. Petersburg and Helsinki coming back from my first trip to China. An Aussie friend of mine who was on the same train with me from Beijing to Moscow was on a train crossing to Poland that night. So he was quite close to the action.

[dtaai-maai]

^^Watching the news broadcast, it's interesting to note that "BBC English" (the RP accent) was alive and well as recently as 1986.

[dtaai-maai]

Link for pharvey:

[PeteC]

On this day

1932 Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly non-stop across the Atlantic. Hear her account of the record-breaking achievement.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/amelia_ea ... liaearhart]

[sateeb]

Just a bit of Sunday fun.

What does this song need? If you don't know the answer within the first 5 to 30 seconds you'll never get it.

Heard this song in my car today and it reminded me of something from April 2000

[Jimbob]

yes, a challenge!
What two islands were exchanged by the British and Dutch to settle a dispute and was considered the second dumbest real estate deal in history after Alaska was sold off.

[PeteC]

On this date in history:

In 1864, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, anxious to create new free territories during the Civil War, signed an act establishing the Montana Territory. Montana became a state 25 years later.

In 1868, at the end of a historic two-month trial, the U.S. Senate acquitted President Andrew Johnson of impeachment charges levied against him by the House of Representatives. Johnson won acquittal by one vote on each count.

In 1896, Nicholas II became the Russian czar.

In 1897, Dracula was published by Irish writer Bram Stoker.

In 1927, the final Ford Model T was built. More than 15 million of the vehicles were produced. Henry Ford revealed details about the car's successor, the Model A, the same day to the United Press.

In 1940, the evacuation of Dunkirk began. Sailing vessels of every kind were pressed into service to ferry British, French and Belgian soldiers trapped by advancing German forces in northern France across the English Channel. (Partial story from 1940 https://www.upi.com/Archives/1940/05/31 ... 251818433/ )

In 1954, more than 100 crewmembers of the aircraft carrier USS Bennington died in an explosion off Rhode Island.

In 1972, at a Moscow summit, U.S. President Richard Nixon and Soviet Communist Party leader Leonid Brezhnev signed a pact limiting nuclear weapons.

In 1985, a cyclone struck the Bay of Bengal, killing 1,400 people in Bangladesh.

In 1991, a Lauda Air Boeing 767-300 exploded over Thailand after takeoff, killing all 223 people aboard.

In 1994, Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley, the only child of Elvis Presley, were married in the Dominican Republic. They divorced two years later.

In 2003, a plane crash in Turkey killed all 74 people aboard, including 62 Spanish soldiers returning from peacekeeping duties in Afghanistan.

In 2020, Twitter placed labels indicating potentially harmful or misleading information on a pair of President Donald Trump's tweets for the first time. The social media company banned him from the service after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.