A Link To The Past: Faces & Voices From History

[Ermintruder]

Rather than simply appending this to the "Good Stuff Online", I really felt that this Youtube video deserved its own thread (mods, if you disagree, please bin it over onto that location).

This is just breathtaking: American Civil War veterans, and other 70+ year-old worthies, filmed in a very-early talkie.

Everything about this is amazing...their health, their accents, their sense of humour, their sheer lively presence.

It now makes me feel that photographs from the 1920s and 30s are only fractionally-better than tombstones, in connecting us with the past.

Please watch this whole video- it may be the closest you ever get to time-travel. These people, though long-dead, will never die- I am totally-humbled to have seen this....

ps presuming that it is entirely legit

 

[rpkemp]

There's another one here:

Mr Draper has the right idea. Shame about the billiards trick shot towards the end - perhaps he could do it 60 or 70 years before.

There's masses more old video footage posted by the same Youtube user.

 

[Yossarian]

On a similar note, I love this clip;

A mystery guest on the game show "I've Got A Secret", in the mid-50s - effectively the age-old game where the contestants have to guess what the guest is famous for - who was the last surviving witness of the assassination of Lincoln.

 

[Schrodinger's Zebra]

Rather than simply appending this to the "Good Stuff Online", I really felt that this Youtube video deserved its own thread (mods, if you disagree, please bin it over onto that location).

This is just breathtaking: American Civil War veterans, and other 70+ year-old worthies, filmed in a very-early talkie.

Everything about this is amazing...their health, their accents, their sense of humour, their sheer lively presence.

It now makes me feel that photographs from the 1920s and 30s are only fractionally-better than tombstones, in connecting us with the past.

Please watch this whole video- it may be the closest you ever get to time-travel. These people, though long-dead, will never die- I am totally-humbled to have seen this....

ps presuming that it is entirely legit

Wow thank you for posting this... just watched it and it's amazing. To think these people lived through 50 or 60 years of the 1800s and are there in as late as 1929.

And the 100-year-old woman having a little waltz on her birthday she was so sprightly!

Wonderful stuff.


EDIT: They all look so much healthier than elderly people do nowadays, Mr Zebra noticed this too. Wonder what the reason for that is - diet? environment? lifestyle?

 

[James_H]

On a similar note, I love this clip;

A mystery guest on the game show "I've Got A Secret", in the mid-50s - effectively the age-old game where the contestants have to guess what the guest is famous for - who was the last surviving witness of the assassination of Lincoln.

Those contestants are no slouches, they guessed almost immediately.

 

[Yithian]

I assume you've all heard the 'factoid' that's been floating around the Internet for the past several months.

John Tyler was the 10th President of the United States of America.

He was born in 1790 and took office in 1841.

Two of his grandchildren are still alive today.

As both the president and one of his (many) sons fathered children late in life, Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr. (b. 1924), and Harrison Ruffin Tyler (b. 1928) are still with us today.

And long may they be so!

http://mentalfloss.com/article/29842/president-john-tylers-grandsons-are-still-alive

Edit: They also look very well-preserved physically:

 

[James_H]

There's a new thread on reddit that covers some of the same ground: Senior citizens of reddit, what were the elderly like when you were kids? How is your generation different in old age?

 

[Roger Nowell]

I think this whole thing is fascinating. It's degrees of separation again, measured in lives.

I'm reading a Martin Fido book on Jack The Ripper and the mathematics struck me:

Suppose an Eastender is - say - 80 now then he/she was born in 1938.

This hypothetical Londoner had a grandparent aged 80 dying in the mid 1950s.

Therefore that grandparent could have lived in the area during the spree killings and later have given a firsthand account to someone alive this very day.

 

[Loquaciousness]

I have done a search and can't seem to find another thread. This is a story I came across a while ago, and for some reason it boggles my mind. Anyway, two of the grandchildren, of the 10th president of the USA born in the 1790s, are still alive. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-two-of-president-john-tylers-grandsons-are-still-alive/

 

[Amoradala]

Did you come across it about three posts up ?

 

[Yithian]

Did you come across it about three posts up ?

That post has just been merged into this thread today. It was originally a new thread--no foul here.

 

[Amoradala]

Oh ok . Apologies loquaciousness

 

[escargot]

I think this whole thing is fascinating. It's degrees of separation again, measured in lives.

I'm reading a Martin Fido book on Jack The Ripper and the mathematics struck me:

Suppose an Eastender is - say - 80 now then he/she was born in 1938.

This hypothetical Londoner had a grandparent aged 80 dying in the mid 1950s.

Therefore that grandparent could have lived in the area during the spree killings and later have given a firsthand account to someone alive this very day.

My late maternal grandmother, born in 1908, used to tell stories about her own grandfather who lived 1830-1929. She lived to nearly 90 herself.
Her tales from the life of Great-Great-Grandfather were the story of how agricultural workers were gradually pushed off the land and into factories by mechanisation and industrialisation.

 

[Coal]

Her tales from the life of Great-Great-Grandfather were the story of how agricultural workers were gradually pushed off the land and into factories by mechanisation and industrialisation.

I don't doubt that some were forced into industrial work.

Once the inclosure acts were passed, use of common lands and occasional farm work as a means of semi-subsistence, were all but eradicated, forcing many into working for farmers as a sole way of earning a living. They were often exploited by the farmers, who previously had to pay well, as the labour market was competitive.

For many of those folk, the industrial revolution, whatever we think about factory conditions at the time, represented regular work and a decent wage all year round and many took it on with alacrity and were glad of it.

 

[ramonmercado]

I don't doubt that some were forced into industrial work.

Once the inclosure acts were passed, use of common lands and occasional farm work as a means of semi-subsistence, were all but eradicated, forcing many into working for farmers as a sole way of earning a living. They were often exploited by the farmers, who previously had to pay well, as the labour market was competitive.

For many of those folk, the industrial revolution, whatever we think about factory conditions at the time, represented regular work and a decent wage all year round and many took it on with alacrity and were glad of it.

Bastard farmers! As a weaver says in the Mike Leigh film Peterloo.

 

[Kingsize Wombat]

I went to an exhibition of 1920s Vintage Police Mugshots recently - all local to old Sydney town. Absolutely fascinating.

While googling for some examples, I found they even made the Daily Mail!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ustralian-criminals-hide-sinister-crimes.html

 

[JamesWhitehead]

A virtual animation of Alfred Lord Tennyson reciting The Charge of the Light Brigade.

The sound is from the 1890 Edison cylinder. The clever animation appears to be made from a series of still photographs, maybe only one!

Since the poet died in 1892, there are no genuine moving films.

Much the same animation can be found elsewhere on Youtube, where it is married to a record by the actor Lewis Waller.