An Old Friend

https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/ju30ou/the_worlds_oldest_surviving_diving_suit_the_old/

Finland’s Raahe Museum contains the oldest surviving diving suit in the world, “The Old Gentleman,” an outfit of calf leather that could sustain a man long enough to inspect the bottom of a sailing vessel.

Museum conservator Jouko Turunen made a copy in 1988. Pleasingly, he called it The Young Gentleman.

The River Witham Sword

https://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2015/08/help-us-decipher-this-inscription.html

This 13th-century double-edged sword, possibly of German manufacture, was found in the River Witham, Lincolnshire, in 1825. Inlaid in gold wire along one of its edges is a curious inscription:

+NDXOXCHWDRGHDXORVI+

It’s been speculated that this is a religious invocation, but its full meaning is not clear. In 2015 the British Library invited readers to offer their thoughts, but no conclusive solution was reached. Medieval historian Marc van Hasselt of Utrecht University says it may be the product of a sophisticated workshop that made swords for the elite, as similar blades have been found throughout Europe. “These similarities go so far as to suggest the same hand in making the inscriptions. However, their contents are still a mystery, regardless of their origins.”

Podcast Episode 341: An Overlooked Bacteriologist

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anti-cholera_inoculation,_Calcutta,_1894_Wellcome_L0037329.jpg
Image: Wikimedia Commons

In the 1890s, Waldemar Haffkine worked valiantly to develop vaccines against both cholera and bubonic plague. Then an unjust accusation derailed his career. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll describe Haffkine’s momentous work in India, which has been largely overlooked by history.

We’ll also consider some museum cats and puzzle over an endlessly energetic vehicle.

See full show notes …

Expenses

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Document_in_Commonwealth_Museum_-_Massachusetts_Archives_-_IMG_9259.JPG

The Massachusetts Archives holds a 1775 bill from Paul Revere for “self and horse.”

It covers the period April 21-May 7, starting three days after the midnight ride. The provisional state government paid it.

“It seems at first blush incongruous, but then again, it’s not,” Massachusetts secretary of state William F. Galvin told the Bangor Daily News. “Even a revolutionary horse needs to be fed, not to mention Paul Revere himself.”

The Presidents’ Tree

In August 1865, Maryland farmer Samuel M’Closky Fenton carved this grid into an American beech in Takoma Park:

  	N L O C N I L M L I N C O L N
	L O C N I L M A M L I N C O L
	O C N I L M A H A M L I N C O
	C N I L M A H A H A M L I N C
	N I L M A H A R A H A M L I N
	I L M A H A R B R A H A M L I
	L M A H A R B A B R A H A M L
	I L M A H A R B R A H A M L I
	N I L M A H A R A H A M L I N
	C N I L M A H A H A M L I N C
	O C N I L M A H A M L I N C O
	L O C N I L M A M L I N C O L
	N L O C N I L M L I N C O L N

He intended it as a memorial to Abraham Lincoln, who had been assassinated that April. Starting at the central A and following a jagged path toward any of the corner Ns will spell out the fallen president’s name.

Fenton also carved the name of every American president to date. In 1948 the tree was enclosed in an iron fence and dedicated “as a living memorial to men who gave their lives for their country in the war of 1861-1865.”

Podcast Episode 340: A Vanished Physicist

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ettore_Majorana.jpg

In 1938, Italian physicist Ettore Majorana vanished after taking a sudden sea journey. At first it was feared that he’d ended his life, but the perplexing circumstances left the truth uncertain. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll review the facts of Majorana’s disappearance, its meaning for physics, and a surprising modern postscript.

We’ll also dither over pronunciation and puzzle over why it will take three days to catch a murderer.

See full show notes …

Security

In the Middle Ages, before the advent of street lighting or organized police forces, fortified cities and towns used to discourage vandals by closing their gates and laying chains across their roads, “as if it were in tyme of warr.” Historian A. Roger Ekirch writes that Nuremberg “maintained more than four hundred sets [of chains]. Unwound each evening from large drums, they were strung at waist height, sometimes in two or three bands, from one side of a street to the other … [and] Paris officials in 1405 set all the city’s farriers to forging chains to cordon off not just streets but also the Seine.”

In some cities, residents who’d returned home for the night were required to give their keys to the authorities. A Paris decree of 1380 reads, “At night all houses … are to be locked and the keyes deposited with a magistrate. Nobody may then enter or leave a house unless he can give the magistrate a good reason for doing so.”

(From Jane Brox, Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light, 2010.)

Waste Not, Want Not

In 1929, Indiana Bell bought the Central Union Telephone Company of Indianapolis. Central Union’s headquarters building at that time was more than 20 years old and inadequate to the new company’s needs, but rather than demolish it, architect Kurt Vonnegut Sr. (father of the novelist) proposed moving it out of the way.

Over the course of a month, the 10,000-ton building was shifted 52 feet south, rotated 90 degrees, then shifted another 100 feet west. Amazingly, this was all accomplished while the building was open and operating — customer telephone service was never interrupted, and the building’s gas, heat, electricity, and water operated continuously throughout the move.

A new headquarters was built on the old site, and the shifted building stood in its new position until 1963.

Podcast Episode 339: The Baron of Arizona

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Peralta_land_grant.jpg

In 1883, Missouri real estate broker James Reavis announced that he held title to a huge tract of land in the Arizona Territory. If certified, the claim would threaten the livelihoods of thousands of residents. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll tell the story of the Baron of Arizona, one of the most audacious frauds in American history.

We’ll also scrutinize British statues and puzzle over some curious floor numbers.

See full show notes …

Brave New World

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charlesproteussteinmetz.jpg

In 1921 Charles Steinmetz, “the electrical wizard of Schenectady,” described the conveniences of 2021:

When heating is all done electrically, and I want 70 degrees in my home, I shall set the thermostat at 70 and the temperature will not rise above that point. This temperature will be maintained uniformly regardless of the weather outside.

This will also hold true on the warm day when the temperature outside may be 90 or 100 degrees. The same electrical apparatus will cool the air, and what’s more it will also keep the humidity normal at all times.

“Look back 100 years and it is like jumping into the Dark Ages,” he wrote. “The electrical development is still in its infancy.”

(Via Reddit’s ArchivePorn.)