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The place where the world comes together in honesty and mirth.
Windmills Tilted, Scared Cows Butchered, Lies Skewered on the Lance of Reality ... or something to that effect.


Sunday, September 3, 2017

The Daily Drift

Welcome to Today's Edition of
Carolina Naturally
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Today in History

1189
After the death of Henry II, Richard the Lionheart is crowned King of England.
1260
Mamelukes under Sultan Qutuz defeat Mongols and Crusaders at Ain Jalut.
1346
Edward III of England begins the siege of Calais, along the coast of France.
1650
The English under Cromwell defeat a superior Scottish army under David Leslie at the Battle of Dunbar.
1777
The American flag (stars & stripes), approved by Congress on June 14th, is carried into battle for the first time by a force under General William Maxwell.
1783
The Treaty of Paris is signed by Great Britain and the new United States, formally bringing the American Revolution to an end.
1838
Frederick Douglass escapes slavery disguised as a sailor. He would later write The Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass, his memoirs about slave life.
1855
General William Harney defeats Little Thunder’s Brule Sioux at the Battle of Blue Water in Nebraska.
1895
The first professional American football game is played in Latrobe, Pennsylvania between the Latrobe Young Men’s Christian Association and the Jeannette Athletic Club. Latrobe wins 12-0.
1914
The French capital is moved from Paris to Bordeaux as the Battle of the Marne begins.
1916
The German Somme front is broken by an Allied offensive.
1918
The United States recognizes the nation of Czechoslovakia.
1939
After Germany ignores Great Britain’s ultimatum to stop the invasion of Poland, Great Britain declares war on Germany, marking the beginning of World War II in Europe.
1939
The British passenger ship Athenia is sunk by a German submarine in the Atlantic, with 30 Americans among those killed. American Secretary of State Cordell Hull warns Americans to avoid travel to Europe unless absolutely necessary.
1943
British troops invade Italy, landing at Calabria.
1944
The U.S. Seventh Army captures Lyons, France.
1945
General Tomoyuki Yamashita, the Japanese commander of the Philippines, surrenders to Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright at Baguio.
1967
Lieutenant General Nguyen Van Thieu is elected president of South Vietnam.
1969
Ho Chi Minh, the leader of North Vietnam, dies.
1976
The unmanned US spacecraft Viking 2 lands on Mars, taking the first close-up, color photos of the planet’s surface.
1981
Egypt arrests some 1,500 opponents of the government.
1989
The US begins shipping military aircraft and weapons to Colombia for use against that country’s drug lords.
1994
Russia and China sign a demarcation agreement to end a dispute over a stretch of their border and agree they will no longer target each other with nuclear weapons.
2001
Protestant loyalists in Belfast, Ireland, begin an 11-week picket of the Holy Cross Catholic school for girls, sparking rioting.

The True Story of the Koh-i-Noor Diamond

The 105-carat Koh-i-Noor Diamond is part of the British Crown Jewels, and is on display at the Tower of London. The sign next to it says the gem was a gift from India to Britain, which doesn't tell the entire story. The nominal ruler of India was forced to give the diamond to his British overlords. But the history of the diamond goes back much further. It may be much older than the earliest records, which tell how the Indian diamond was embedded into the Peacock Throne built for Mughal ruler Shah Jahan in 1628. The Persians later took it when they invaded India. It changed hands several times, often violently, before it returned to India. There, it changed hands by violence again. When the British Empire took possession of India, the Koh-i-Noor Diamond was sent to Queen Victoria, and it's been in the British royal family ever since. But who does it really belong to?
“Post-colonial collections is a big topic everywhere,” says Jane Milosch, the director of Smithsonian’s Provenance Research Initiative. “There can be a reassessment for certain objects of, ‘we may have legal ownership, but does it make sense to keep this material?’” She cites a 2014 case in which the British Museum returned two bronze statues from Benin to Nigeria (they were taken during an attack in 1897 after British officers were killed during a trade mission).
But returning pillaged art and treasure from World War II, as complicated as that can be, is still far less complex than unraveling colonial history. “You’re dealing with countries that existed when the object was acquired, but they may not exist now—and countries who we had trade agreements with that may have different export laws now,” Milosch says. “Provenance is very complex and people aren’t used to processing a chain of ownership. By the time you hit the second or third owner over time, the information can get more difficult to research. This is why I say it’s important that these things not be yanked out of museums, because at least people have access and can study them until we know for sure if they were looted.”
So while art stolen during World War II and Egyptian tomb treasures are returned to their rightful owners, the Koh-i-Noor Diamond has a history of ownership changing hands by looting going back hundreds of years. Read the sordid history of the diamond and the controversy surrounding its ownership at Smithsonian.

Should Teachers Have to Panhandle to Prep for a New School Year?

It's Just Bonkers to Compare Fascists to the Activists Trying to Stop Them

L'Oreal drops transgender model over controversial comments

French cosmetics giant L'Oreal on Friday confirmed it had dropped a British transgender model over comments the company deemed "at odds with our values," after she was hired as part of a diversity campaign.
"L’Oreal champions diversity," the beauty brand said on Twitter. "Comments by Munroe Bergdorf are at odds with our values and so we have decided to end our partnership with her".
L'Oreal drops transgender model over controversial comments

Did Overdevelopment Make Flooding in Houston Worse?

Texas wingnut turns down donated blankets, beds, manpower from Canada

Many of those who have been impacted by Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Louisiana lost everything. But one Texas wingnut is turning down help for them.

Fellow Pastor Unleashes Holy Hell on Osteen

Armed wingnut militias ripped for bringing guns to ‘help’ Harvey survivors in Houston

Hundreds of people on the ground in Texas have rushed to Houston and surrounding areas to help. It's unclear what these guys are doing.

'We Only Kill Black People'

Utah nurse dragged away by out-of-control cop for refusing to draw unconscious patient’s blood

Disturbing video shows Utah nurse dragged away by out-of-control cop for refusing to draw unconscious patient’s blood

Sheriff’s deputy charged with battery after a violent road rage altercation

Retired sheriff’s deputy charged with battery after a violent road rage altercation

Over 20 hectares of Roman ruins discovered submerged off Tunisian coast

On July 21, 365 AD the pearl-city of Alexandria, Egypt was devastated by a massive tsunami which was triggered by an earthquake off the coast of Greece. Though the ancients couldn't measure earthquakes at the time, contemporary scientists estimated from the historical records that the largest of the two tremors had a magnitude of 8.0.

New Experiment Reveals Secret Behind 200,000-Year-Old Neanderthal Glue


We once assumed that Neanderthals were just dumb cavemen because they looked so different from modern humans. But as scientists uncover more and more information about them, we learn that while they were primitive, they were no dummies. They were using tar to glue objects together 200,000 years ago, which enabled them to design and manufacture tools. That was way before the invention of ceramics, much less the forging of metal pots. So how did they manage to cook the necessary ingredients to make tar? A group of researchers from Leiden University tried to recreate the possible scenario for the Neanderthal's discovery of tar, using the materials (birch bark, pine) and methods (fire) thought to be available to them at the time. By repeating the process and varying the conditions, they were able to reproduce the kind of tar Neanderthals used.
“What this paper reinforces is that all of the humans that were around 50,000 to 150,000 years ago roughly, were culturally similar and equally capable of these levels of imagination, invention and technology,” explained Washington University anthropologist Erik Trinkaus, who wasn’t involved in the study, in an interview with Gizmodo. “Anthropologists have been confusing anatomy and behavior, making the inference that archaic anatomy equals archaic behavior, and ‘modern’ behavior [is equivalent to] modern human anatomy. What is emerging from the human fossil and Paleolithic archeological records across the Eurasia and Africa is that, at any one slice in time during this period, they were all doing—and capable of doing—basically the same things, whatever they looked like.”  
By the way, even the way Neanderthals looked has undergone a lot of revision since we first discovered their skeletons. Read more about the Neanderthal glue experiments at Gizmodo.

Human footprints found in Greece are 5.7 million years old

Scientists say they may have found human footprints in Greece that date back to a time when it is commonly believed our ancestors were still only in Africa, potentially changing our ideas of how the species evolved and dispersed.

The Northern Lights - Nature's free psychedelic show

Now’s the perfect time to get up close and personal with the Northern Lights.
The Northern Lights, also known as Aurora Borealis, are a natural phenomenon that light up the night sky most notably in the Arctic region.
The dazzling spectacle – akin to a free laser show – is a hypnotic dance of colours which can be seen in a range of places from northern parts of Canada and Alaska to Scandinavia and Iceland.
The Northern Lights - Nature's free psychedelic show

Puppies' First Howl

Puppies are new at the business of being dogs, and they aren't very good at it. But every learning experience has to start somewhere. Watch these puppies of all breeds take their first attempt at howling.

Cat Fight in the Street

Sarah Verney was traveling near Kokadjo, in northern Maine, when the car had to slow down because there were two lynx in the road. Lynx usually do whatever they can to avoid humans, so it seemed odd that they didn't get out of the road. It turns out these cats had very important business with each other. They stopped traffic while they had a bit of an argument.
Verney wanted to record what they sounded like, so she rolled down the window. The terrifying wildcat screams we expect turned out to resemble two old women arguing. Redditor stanfan114 nailed it.
They sounds like the old ladies from Monty Python with the penguin on top of the television set.
You can see that reference here.

Animal Pictures