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Forgotten History

Dead Drunk for Two Pennies: The Story of the London Gin Craze of 1720-1757

Some snippets:

The London Gin Craze lasted for over three decades and spanned, roughly, the years 1720-1757, though most historians today believe that the Gin Craze really began much earlier, sometime in the late 1690’s. In 1720, in an effort to essentially reduce Great Britain’s trade deficit when it came to liquor, Parliament passed legislation that made domestic spirit production both cheaper and less regulated than it had been before. This act of Parliament led to the proliferation of countless gin distilleries throughout Great Britain, particularly in and around the city of London.

The London Gin Craze of 1720-1757 was an epidemic of addiction and despair perhaps only rivaled in the annals of history by the crack-cocaine epidemic of the 1980’s which ravaged America’s inner-cities.

And just like crack, the masses of London’s poor in the 1700’s became hooked on drinking gin because it was cheap, stilled hunger pangs and produced a quick escape into oblivion.

Between 1720 and 1750 the death rate in London far outstripped the birth rate each and every year in an era prior to any effective contraceptives. Rampant alcoholism, which for the first time in history affected the female population in large numbers led to widespread prostitution, child neglect, starvation and even infertility.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century cloth, which had to be spun and woven by hand, was much more expensive than it is today, and therefore, the most valuable possession that most of London’s poor had was literally the clothes on their back. In order to obtain money to buy gin many of London’s destitute took to selling and pawning nearly all of their own clothing and this led to masses of mostly naked men and women stumbling drunk, or passed out on street corners, throughout the city’s poorer neighborhoods.
One such new and creative way to sell gin was something called the Puss & Mew Machine which was introduced by the Old Tom distillery of London around the year 1740. The Puss & Mew Machine was a sort of rudimentary manpowered vending machine. The Puss and Mew Machine was an iron cat mounted on a wall of the distillery building. A man would sit behind the iron cat and anyone wishing to purchase gin would hand a penny through the cat’s eye and then the man behind the cat would pour an ounce worth of gin through a spigot in the cat’s mouth. Of course, the Puss & Mew Machine was effective because it was part of the distillery itself and not, technically, a drinking establishment.


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The Puss & Mew Machine still Outside the Old Tom Distillery Today

Finally, in 1751 another more effective Gin Act was passed by Parliament. This Third Gin Act essentially dictated that all merchants must obtain a liquor license to sell gin through the British government and that distillers could neither sell gin independently nor sell it to unlicensed merchants. Licences to sell gin were limited and prohibitively expensive, and since gin could only be gotten through what amounted to government run distilleries, the Third Gin Act of 1751 effectively eliminated the underground selling of penny gin and made it far less attainable for London’s poor.

Slowly, over the next several years in the 1750’s, beer and ale would once again supplant gin as the cheap alcoholic beverage of choice among the masses of London’s poor and the Gin Craze would gradually dissipate.
 
Wow.. Forget Spuds Mackenzie, I'm all about the alcoholic cat now! :badge:
I could swear I've partied with that cat before! :p
 
hand a penny through the cat’s eye and then the man behind the cat would pour an ounce worth of gin through a spigot in the cat’s mouth.

It looks more likely that the penny went in the cat's mouth and the gin came from the spout in its paw.








 
Wilmington 1898: When white supremacists overthrew a US government

Following state elections in 1898, white supremacists moved into the US port of Wilmington, North Carolina, then the largest city in the state. They destroyed black-owned businesses, murdered black residents, and forced the elected local government - a coalition of white and black politicians - to resign en masse.

Historians have described it as the only coup in US history. Its ringleaders took power the same day as the insurrection and swiftly brought in laws to strip voting and civil rights from the state's black population. They faced no consequences.

Wilmington's story has been thrust into the spotlight after a violent mob assaulted the US Capitol on 6 January, seeking to stop the certification of November's presidential election result. More than 120 years after its insurrection, the city is still grappling with its violent past.

In this case, it was Democrats rather than Republicans who were the chief offenders in overt racism/white supremacy.

The day before the state-wide election in 1898, Democratic politician Alfred Moore Waddell gave a speech demanding that white men "do your duty" and look for black people voting.

And if you find one, he said, "tell him to leave the polls and if he refuses kill, shoot him down in his tracks. We shall win tomorrow if we have to do it with guns."

more at link.
 
Wilmington 1898: When white supremacists overthrew a US government

Following state elections in 1898, white supremacists moved into the US port of Wilmington, North Carolina, then the largest city in the state. They destroyed black-owned businesses, murdered black residents, and forced the elected local government - a coalition of white and black politicians - to resign en masse.



In this case, it was Democrats rather than Republicans who were the chief offenders in overt racism/white supremacy.
more at link

Can only say fucking bastards.

:mad:
 
Swifty - you might like to look into the author Kinky Friedman. I've several of his novels, one of which is a HB signed copy of Blast From The Past. In keeping with the title, the back photo on the jacket is of ...
"Richard 'Kinky' Friedman, age 7, playing World Grandmaster Samuel Reschevsky (standing). Houston, Texas, 1952"
The author was happy to confirm - in writing and in a chat with me in a bar - that while the 'photo is absolutely genuine and inspiring, the "old guy beat me hands down, without even pausing to light a cigarette. It looks so cool, though - me and a recognised genius in chess!"
:D
 
Just found this - the wonders of Google:

"Kinky Friedman: My dad taught me chess, and I was a prodigy at seven. It’s been downhill from there but, yeah, I did play Samuel Reshevsky. He was playing fifty people at one time, of which I was the youngest. He beat everybody, but I did better than a lot of the other players, and he told my dad afterwards that he’s really got to watch it with this seven-year-old. If he were to lose to anybody under say, 12 or 13, it would make headlines; it could mean his career. But he was a very nice man."
Source: A Conversation with Kinky Friedman - The American Interest (the-american-interest.com)
 
Britain's worst road disaster?

We might expect it to be a motorway pile-up.

In fact, it was at Dibbles Bridge in the Yorkshire Dales.

A quiet and dignified 2019 documentary recalls the 1975 event, with some survivors able to participate.

It led to improved safety on coaches but the accident blackspot is not much-improved by signage.

The impact was very local. The victims, apart from the driver, were all women. RIP.
 
There's a You Tube channel called Bad Day HQ that runs documentaries on disasters (fires, weather-related and so on), mainly in Canada. Two videos are on Canadian bus crashes (The St. Joseph bus accident in 1997 and the Eastman bus crash of 1978). Watching the Dibbles Bridge documentary is really similar.
 
There's no doubt that Hitler's "national socialism" was genuine in the sense that fair-haired Aryan Germans were given a lot of perks by the State,
Pfft!.. no. Most Germans even those in Hitler's elite didn't match the ridiculous standards he put forth as the ideal "Aryan" appearance.... Also... One interesting question is where Hitler got the idea from.
1: Aryan is not a real European ethnic group.
2: the only real ethnic group with that name... Probably lived in a region south of the Caspian Sea in what is now Iran. In fact the name Iran is most likely a derivative of the name Aryan.

How does that square with Hitler's rants? The "Aryan race" Hitler was talking about was his own invention. It borrowed ideas from older philosophies, but didn't actually copy any of them.

What does that say about the people of Germany circa 1939? They'd never heard of it before Hitler started popularizing it. Hitler won their support by promising economic reforms. How did that work?
500DM-s-l300.jpg

At one point in time a Deutches Mark was close to the dollar in value. This coin was stamped out of ALUMINUM and around the same size as a modern US 1 dollar coin. I'm sure you can guess what that says about it's value and by comparison the terrible state of the German economy.

Hitler fixed that problem THEN started preaching about Aryan supremacy. He didn't start "weeding out" undesirables until long after he'd stabilized the economy. Of course part of the reason he hated certain groups was seeing them as impediments to his plans.
but having got their support he was then able to begin his campaign of conquest. Whether he had that planned out from the beginning, and whether he had thought he could do it without opposition from Britain and other major powers, is the question. In Speer's book he mentions Hitler referring to the war with Britain as "this mess," as though it really hadn't occurred to him that he would be challenged over his actions.
Honestly? Hitler lied so often that only a handful of his elite actually knew the truth of his plans.

Honestly... I personally think Hitler made up the Aryan Supremacy thing as a propaganda tool and didn't actually believe it to be true. We know he kept most of the crimes of the Reich secret from the public, both in and out of Germany. This was handled by the same propaganda machine.

But this applied to the Allied powers to. He kept secret anything he thought they'd object to. Obviously keeping the invasion of Poland a secret wouldn't last, but... perhaps he thought he could hide WHY he invaded?
 
Hitler fixed that problem THEN started preaching about Aryan supremacy. He didn't start "weeding out" undesirables until long after he'd stabilized the economy. Of course part of the reason he hated certain groups was seeing them as impediments to his plans.
Honestly? Hitler lied so often that only a handful of his elite actually knew the truth of his plans.

Dachau was opened in March 1933, just under two months after Hitler was appointed Chancellor. Originally intended for political prisoners, other groups were sent there long before the beginning of the war. Hitler didn't always have a complete plan in his head, never mind on paper. A lot of things were down to initiatives from below.
 
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Honestly? Hitler lied so often that only a handful of his elite actually knew the truth of his plans.

I think the issues are more complex than Hitler 'just making the Aryan thing up' - but the line I've quoted above I absolutely agree with.

Whatever Hitler's intentions, some of his lieutenants such as Himmler believed totally in both the racist/nationalist and the socialist part of Hitler's platform - socialism in this case being of course confined to Aryans, the rest to be serfs, slaves. or exterminated.
 
Dachau was opened in March 1933, just under two months after Hitler was appointed Chancellor. Originally intended for political prisoners, other groups were sent there long before the beginning of the war. Hitler didn't always have a complete plan in his head, never mind on paper. A lot of things were down to initiatives from below.
Dachau was the first purpose built one, although the German Empire had similar prisons in WW1 some of which got used by the Nazis. Hitler's rise to power does seem to have included the goal of getting rid of the German communist party. They were the first carted off to the camps. That started in March 1933. Apparently Slavs were considered so inferior that they often didn't live long enough to get taken to camps. But yeah... the camps included anyone Hitler didn't like. It started off rather slowly in 1933 though. Also it was mostly political dissidents who had actually been arrested, and not people that were being rounded up en masse. there was a LOT of arrests, but mass arrests were less common in 1933.

While Hitler probably anticipated the idea before becoming chancellor, it's clear the scope and specific purpose of the camps was an evolving beast and one that grew much much bigger over time. And like you said... Himmler was the architect of the concentration camps, Hitler merely approved of it.
I think the issues are more complex than Hitler 'just making the Aryan thing up' - but the line I've quoted above I absolutely agree with.
Well I did say Hitler based it on older ideas. Arthur de Gobineau was apparently one source of inspiration Hitler used. But Hitler created his own version of it dramatically different from Gobineau's ideas. IIRC Hitler's version had the idea that Aryans were originally a race of demi-gods.
Whatever Hitler's intentions, some of his lieutenants such as Himmler believed totally in both the racist/nationalist and the socialist part of Hitler's platform - socialism in this case being of course confined to Aryans, the rest to be serfs, slaves. or exterminated.
well that's a typical thing with cults. the originator knows it's fake, but at least some of the cultists believe it to be true.
 
Perhaps Hitler meant Eireann, but didn't like that dodgy Irish spelling?
 
The Sutro Baths of San Francisco.

An elaborate entertainment-complex, brainchild of an eccentric millionaire, this art nouveau folly lasted from the 1890s until 1966, when it was torched by a disgruntled employee - probably.

In its later years, only part of the complex was still in use, as a skating rink. I especially like the stories of the naughty kids, who were tempted to venture through the fire-doors to gaze in wonderment at the ruins of the disused baths beyond . . . :)
 
A much less happy piece of American forgotten history.

The deadliest school massacre in American history? Not really a pub-quiz question, unless your pub was the Cemetery Inn, or something.

Try getting the decade right . . .

1920s? You watched the video first! Or live in Michigan.

Kehoe, the culprit - no question about it - was an ageing, disappointed politician, not the usual INCEL type. :(
 
Kohima remembered.

Captain Robin Rowland was 22 when his regiment was deployed to the north-eastern Indian town of Kohima. It was May 1944, and a small group of British-Indian soldiers was under assault by an entire division of Japanese forces.

Capt Rowland, now 99, vividly remembers approaching the town, following a trail of devastation to the front line.

"We saw abandoned trenches and destroyed villages, and as we moved forward the smell of death was everywhere," he said.

The young captain was a member of the Punjab regiment of the British Indian army, on his way to help relieve 1,500 of his fellow soldiers who had spent weeks resisting 10 times their number in Japanese forces.

Cut off by the Japanese, the allied forces were depending solely on supplies by air, and very few believed they could sustain the relentless onslaught. Japan's soldiers had marched to Kohima through what was then Burma - their aim to invade India. The Japanese had already routed the British in Burma, but no-one expected them to successfully negotiate the mosquito-infested jungle hills and fast-flowing streams en route to Kohima, the capital of Nagaland, and Imphal, the capital of Manipur state in India.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-55625447
 
19 Years ago today, the move now known as 'The Bradbury' came to be. Legendary in Australia, possibly forgotten on the world stage:

I love it when a plan comes together!

That's one of my favourite sporting memories ever, and I'm speaking as a lifelong cricket, football, rugby (both codes) and cycling fan. And regarding short track speed skating, I feel sorry for Wilf O'Reilly. He was one of the world's best short-course skaters at a time it wasn't an Olympic sport, picking up two golds when it was a demonstration event in 1988 and a world title in 1991. However, come the 1994 Olympics he crashed out of both his events. Shame, the UK hadn't exactly excelled at winter events prior to then, with a few exceptions...
 
Stumbled on this:

The detonation..took one-fifteenth of a second, five times faster than the blink of an eye. The epicenter of the explosion instantaneously shot up to 9,000 degrees Fahrenheit, about six times hotter than molten lava…The explosion started in the gigantic steel casement of the cargo hold, which had been packed tight and was far too small to contain such an exponential expansion. The blast shot outward in all directions at 3,400 miles per hour, or four times the speed of sound. It tore through the ship’s steel hull like wet tissue paper, converting the vessel into a monstrous hand grenade. The heat vaporized the water surrounding the ship and the people trying to tie her up and put out the fire. The remains of these victims were never found because there were no remains to find…”
- John U. Bacon, The Great Halifax Explosion


One hundred years ago, in the midst of one of the bloodiest and calamitous wars in human history, some 2,000 people in Halifax, Nova Scotia, were obliterated by one of the largest manmade explosions ever created. On December 6, 1917, a cargo ship called the Mont Blanc collided with a second ship, the Imo, in the Narrows of Halifax Harbor. The Mont Blanc was packed to the gills with explosive material:

62 tons of gun cotton, similar to dynamite; 246 tons of a new and particularly combustible airplane fuel called benzol, packed in 494 thin steel drums and stacked three and four barrels high; 250 tons of TNT; and 2,366 tons of picric acid, a notoriously unstable and poisonous chemical more powerful than its cousin, TNT, which was used to make shells, the Great War’s principle weapon.


When the Mont Blanc went off, it leveled a hugh swath of town. Along with the fatalities, around 9,000 people were injured. The mushroom cloud that rose over Halifax would be recognizable in a later day as something akin to a nuclear blast.

The Halifax Explosion was a massive disaster, striking in terms of loss of life, injuries, property damage, and human error. Yet, today, it is mostly forgotten, or at least unknown, possibly a result of it occurring at a time when millions had been killed in the trenches, and millions more were about to be killed by the flu.
 
There's some good You Tube documentaries on the Halifax Explosion.
So many people were blinded because they were at the window, watching the fire. A section of the Mont Blanc anchor weighing just over 0.5 tons landed 2.5 miles from the blast! o_O
 
There was once a seaplane station just down the road from me (in fact it's on our regular cycle route).

This site is aimed at younger readers but there are some interesting nuggets and good pics.


Why Tide Mills for a Seaplane Station?

In 1917, Germany (one of the countries Britain was at war with) announced unrestricted submarine warfare. German submarines were called U-Boats and they were deadly.

Britain relied on big ships to transport ammunition and supplies for the war from Newhaven in England to Dieppe in France, but the U-Boats were sinking them with torpedoes. This was bad for the British.

The supply ships needed protecting, so a large seaplane station was built at Tide Mills, next to the port at Newhaven. This meant that the seaplanes could escort the ships, keeping a look out for U-Boats below the waves!

https://tidemillsproject.uk/explore/ww1-seaplane-station/#seaplanestation
 
I am old enough to remember the days when a trip up to Scotland was a rite of passage!

Before the M6 existed - or before its segments had been joined-up - road traffic had to negotiate the hazardous A6, through Shap Fell.

Was it the Hillman - badly named - the Austin or the Rover that was laden up one year for the epic journey?

We would risk such a trip in summer, only but there was every chance that the radiator would boil dry, especially if we were in a convoy of slow-moving vehicles. No wonder certain views of Shap Fell are fixed in my mind from trips of the 1960s!

Here is a delightful slice of nostalgia, as some old commercial vehicles make the journey up the old A6!

It's in five-minute segments; the last one shorter. It runs about 52 minutes in all. Delightful interviewees. It must have been made a few years back!

I loved the tales of the Jungle Café, the Leyland Clock - now in Kendal - and, best of all, the "carnivorous forest" - mentioned in video 4.

:loveu:
 
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