October 31rst: Today in 1917 the 4th Light Horse Brigade charged entrenched Turkish Infantry supported by machine guns and artillery at the Battle of Beersheba in what is often described as the last successful cavalry charge . The Turkish troops were demoralized before and didn’t put up much of a fight, but the charge was [...]

Some heroes turn into legends but sadly most are forgotten. One of the nicest things about the web is that sometimes these heroes can be brought out into the light again and celebrated and I plan to take a look at these as well as some of history’s villains on a daily basis on days [...]

Congratulations to the Cardinals! I managed to miss every game on TV, but have followed it closely in the papers and it sounds like a fun world series. I am amazed that people were as surprised by the Cards as they were, they haven’t been golden this year, but they were never a weak team [...]

Be back soon, until then God Save The Queen!

Pumpkin Afternoon

Originally uploaded by Tancread.

When I was a kid my Dad would sometimes buy the meat that was on special in the commissary, this would lead to meals of pork chops we were convinced had been cut with dynamite rather than knives and meals of meat sometime so tough that you chewed on it longer than you chewed on [...]

I have hit a bit of a mental wall and will be back posting as soon as I scale it.

October 6th: Today in 1927 The Jazz Singer, the first full length talking movie debuted. There is a ton of debate about the movie’s first status, but there is no doubt it was the first mass hit with talking directly in the soundtrack. Surprisingly, it is a pretty good movie, often the first of something [...]

October 5th: Today in 1582 October 5th didn’t exist in Italy, Spain, Poland and Portugal as they adopted the Gregorian calendar. You may celebrate by not doing anything, but don’t expect to get paid for a day that doesn’t exist.

October 4th: Today in 1931 the Dick Tracy comic strip first appeared in newspapers. Chester Gould’s black and white look at the classic cops and robbers stories were filled with deformed gangsters like Pruneface, Big Boy, Mumbles and of course Flattop. The strip had several runs into Science Fiction, with radio watches and Moon people [...]