Posts Tagged ‘World War I’
Trump Card…
As Donald Trump’s ruminations on a run for the White House gain form, as his thoughts on an agenda when he’s there solidify (build a $100 million ballroom in the White House, threaten China, appropriate Iraqi oil fields to pay for our invasion, etc.), and as he begins to attract endorsements (Gary Busey!), it’s surely time to contemplate a future in which The Donald could become Commander-in-Chief Donald. Happily, the good folks at Team Coco have developed a simple infographic to help voters navigate the inevitable confusion created by an embarrassment of famous Donalds…
As we remember that if we don’t cast our votes wisely we get exactly what we deserve, we might recall that it was on this date in 1918 that Manfred von Richthofen, aka The Red Baron, shot down his 79th and 80th victims, his final victories before his death-in-a-dogfight the following day.
Richthofen in 1917, wearing the Pour le Mérite, the “Blue Max”, Prussia’s highest military order (source)
Placebos for the drug-free…
From Futility Closet:
In most elevators installed since the early 1990s, the “close door” button has no effect. Otis Elevator engineers confirmed the fact to the Wall Street Journal in 2003.
Similarly, many office thermostats are dummies, designed to give workers the illusion of control. “You just get tired of dealing with them and you screw in a cheap thermostat,” said Illinois HVAC specialist Richard Dawson. “Guess what? They quit calling you.”
In 2004 the New York Times reported that more than 2,500 of the 3,250 “walk” buttons in New York intersections do nothing. “The city deactivated most of the pedestrian buttons long ago with the emergence of computer-controlled traffic signals, even as an unwitting public continued to push on.”
TotH to Slashdot (from whence, the photo above).
As we press ahead anyway, we might recall that it was on this date in 1918 that an Armistice was declared, ending World War One. The conflict, which was triggered by the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in 1914, had involved almost 70 million military personnel, and had direct economic costs estimated at $232 trillion. 8.5 million died during the conflict; 21 million were wounded; and there were 7.5 million prisoners & missing. Aftereffects included the devastation of the European (especially the German) economy that contributed to the outbreak of the second round of the conflict (aka “World War Two”), and the creation of health problems that included the worldwide influenza epidemic that had killed 22 million by 1920.
A ration party of the Royal Irish Rifles in a communication trench during the Battle of the Somme (source)
The lore of large numbers…
The folks at Pingdom pay pretty close attention to the Net. Now, in “Internet 2009 in Numbers,” they share back what they’ve learned.
For example:
– 90 trillion – The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2009.
– 247 billion – Average number of email messages per day.
– 1.4 billion – The number of email users worldwide.
– 100 million – New email users since the year before.
– 81% – The percentage of emails that were spam.
– 92% – Peak spam levels late in the year.
– 24% – Increase in spam since last year.
– 200 billion – The number of spam emails per day (assuming 81% are spam).
There’s more– in a way that’s amusingly resonant with their subject, much, much more– here. As the folks at Pingdom suggest, “prepare for information overload… but in a good way.”
As we reset our spam filters, we might recall that it was on this date in 1919 that The Paris Peace Conference, convened to build a lasting peace after World War I, approved the proposal to create the League of Nations. A centerpiece of Woodrow Wilson’s “Fourteen Points for Peace,” the organization was meant to provide “mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.”
The League was liquidated in 1946, at the end of the global conflagration– World War II– it was meant to prevent; it was effectively replaced by the United Nations, which took over many of the League’s agencies and functions.
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