Be careful on this site, you might waste your whole day.
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Metairie Cemetary, 1895.
A number of our Louisiana McCormick family members are buried here. We visited a few years ago and it’s a neat place. Some of those above-ground mausoleums are incredibly ornate and ancient. Because of New Orleans’ situation at or below sea-level, traditional burial isn’t possible.
We noticed that many of them were unfortunately damaged during Katrina.
(shorpy)
The last surviving Union Jack flag from the Battle of Trafalgar sold at an auction:
“Yesterday was Trafalgar Day, the 204th anniversary of the and patriotic fervor was in the air at Charles Miller Auctions when the last Union Jack flag to survive the Battle of Trafalgar sold for £384,000 ($638,000), 21 times its highest estimate.”
The archive of LIFE magazine from ‘36 to ‘72 is now readable in its entirety on Google Books.
What an amazing catalog of American culture and history, in it’s full context with the original advertisements and all.
Samples I found browsing:
The Big Picture remembers Apollo 11 on its 40th anniversary with some stunning photography.
I like this one of Buzz Aldrin, this one showing the VAB’s massive size, and of course, the Earthrise.
In 1909, planner Daniel Burnham proposed his grand Plan of Chicago:
“Because Chicago’s transportation infrastructure was so congested—the railroads, harbor and streets were a disorganized mess—the plan analyzed the city within a 60-mile radius, proposing boulevards connecting the center to the outlying suburbs and the suburbs to one another. While the full street system was not built, the proposal for a double-level boulevard to handle commercial and regular traffic was realized in Wacker Drive—still a wonder to visitors from congested cities. The plan urged that the Chicago River be straightened, as indeed it was, to produce more efficient water-borne commerce and transportation.”
The one time I drove through Chicago, I thought it was gorgeous. At the time, I’d never been to NYC, which I’ve since become pretty familiar with. Another visit to Chicago is definitely in order, I’m interested to compare the two.
New York, June 6, 1944. “D-Day. Crowd watching the news line on the Times building at Times Square.” Large format nitrate negative by Howard Hollem or Edward Meyer for the Office of War Information.
We watched The Pixar Story a couple nights ago. It’s a well-made documentary following the inception of Pixar and it’s growth and development into an animation studio on the backs of people like John Lasseter, Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull, and Alvy Ray Smith.
Lasseter was the main creative drive in getting the company so heavily invested in computer animation. Some of the things he created in the lead up to his first feature, Toy Story, are amazing to see, considering the time in which they were made.
During production of The Godfather, the line between fact and fiction started to blur.
The memory of Hank Aaron.
I normally don’t like Mike Luckovich’s cartoons, but if one casts Hank Aaron in good light, I’m in.
