Im hundertjährigen Staub

ppsh-41: Sailor keeping watch on the deck of the...

Wed, 22 May 2013 17:50:56 +0200

Sailor keeping watch on the deck of the Soviet battleship ”October Revolution” near Leningrad in 1942.

art-of-swords: Cup-hilt Rapier Dated: circa 1650–75 Culture:...

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:25:09 +0200

Cup-hilt Rapier

Dated: circa 1650–75

Culture: Italian, probably Naples

Medium: Steel, pierced and chiseled; iron wire; wood

Measurements: Length of quillon 11 3/4 in. ( 29.85 cm) Length of blade 40 1/8 in. ( 101.9 cm) Length overall 47 1/2 in. ( 120.65 cm) Gr. width of blade 0 11/16 in. ( 1.73 cm) Gr. thickness of blade 0 3/8 in. ( 0.94 cm) Weight 2 lb. 1 oz. ( 936 gm) Hardness of blade 60-65

There’s an inscription on both sides of ricasso. On blade in groove there’s written “xx IOHANIS x BONGEN xx” while the other side features “xx IHN xx SOLINGEN xx.”

Source: © 2000–2013 The Metropolitan Museum of Art

wahnwitzig: Members of the Russian World War I women’s...

Wed, 22 May 2013 11:40:53 +0200

wahnwitzig:

Members of the Russian World War I women’s Battalion of Death.

explore-blog: The Russian-born novelist’s writing habits were...

Wed, 22 May 2013 02:45:26 +0200

explore-blog:

The Russian-born novelist’s writing habits were famously peculiar. Beginning in 1950, he composed first drafts in pencil on ruled index cards, which he stored in long file boxes. Since, Nabokov claimed, he pictured an entire novel in complete form before he began writing it, this method allowed him to compose passages out of sequence, in whatever order he pleased; by shuffling the cards around, he could quickly rearrange paragraphs, chapters, and whole swaths of the book. (His file box also served as portable desk; he started the first draft of Lolita on a road trip across America, working nights in the backseat of his parked car — the only place in the country, he said, with no noise and no drafts.) Only after months of this labor did he finally relinquish the cards to his wife, Vera, for a typed draft, which would then undergo several more rounds of revisions.

Nabokov’s curious daily rituals

I got lots of jealous lovers that all wish they had me backGot...

Wed, 22 May 2013 02:38:42 +0200

I got lots of jealous lovers that all wish they had me back
Got a pistol for a mouth, my own mama gave me that
Making my own road out of gravel and some wine
And if I have to fall then it won’t be in your line

Everybody’s doing it so why the hell should I
Everybody’s doing it so why the hell should I

✪ (whispers, show me the fictionnnnn)

Wed, 22 May 2013 02:36:00 +0200

Filipp held his breath, but all he could hear were his own and Jack’s footsteps, and the bedroom door that creaked and thudded closed. He felt the edge of the bed against his knee, let Jack sit him down and his body sprawl over blankets already unmade.

«You’re sleeping in your clothes. Forget that I undress you, unless you pay me.»

«How much?».

«One half penny.»

«No.» But Captain Cowden wouldn’t let him live to the daylight of next Sunday if he saw him dishevelled again, the washerwoman charged twice to iron creased clothes and the dice hadn’t quite rolled in his favour over the past two weeks. «Yes. Do it. Move, I’m cold.» He dragged his feet up on the bed, so Jack would have to start from the shoes and leave him time to fall asleep while he did away with the rest of the clothes.

But the wicked little bastard slapped his legs off the mattress. «Not with your shoes. They’re grimy.» He took to undoing the knot of his cravat. «So, how did it go with the bloody French?».

«He has a name. Graf von Vauclain, you’d say in your shit language.»

«Say it again, and I garrote you.» Jack tugged at the ends of the cravat, then moved down to his waistcoat. Filipp couldn’t feel what his fingers were doing, was he unbuttoning him or groping for hidden pockets and the money inside them?

«Was he at some battle?».

«Yes, yes, Kloster Kamp or Krefeld… He made the sensible choice, if you ask me.»

«Turn and run?».

«I… think, he said he was captured. Get out of all that, that’s what I mean, the sensible thing – just stay quiet here, in captivity, be comfortable, and have women and wine. There was a lot of wine, Jack. I swear, a lot.»

Yaaaaay 18th century booze aftermath. And the word “garrote”, which I like because of euphony reasons in spite of its horrible and painful meaning.

Photo

Wed, 22 May 2013 02:00:18 +0200

✪!

Wed, 22 May 2013 01:33:00 +0200

Manöver. Manöver den ganzen ‘fluchten Tag. Und wozu auch? Wann wird der neue Krieg ankommen, oder besser gesagt, wann wird der alte Krieg nochmals anfangen?

What started as a harmless German language exercise is quickly turning into something else. I have given up on finding excuses.

Send me a ✪ and I'll give you a bit from one of my WIPs.

Wed, 22 May 2013 01:09:11 +0200

cuddlingthecthulhu:

Sounds fun!
Feel free to mention which fandom you’d want the WIP to be from uvu

It comes with a caveat: I don’t do fandoms. Expect a bit from one of my original fiction WIPs.

wahnwitzig: 1905 Imperial Russia, Elegant Mustached Young Men...

Tue, 21 May 2013 21:27:47 +0200

wahnwitzig:

1905 Imperial Russia, Elegant Mustached Young Men Students Studying

jaded-mandarin: Michael Dahl. Portrait of a Boy with a Gun,...

Tue, 21 May 2013 20:57:59 +0200

jaded-mandarin:

Michael Dahl. Portrait of a Boy with a Gun, 1690.

allthingseurope: Trieste (Friuli-Venezia Giulia -Italia (by...

Tue, 21 May 2013 17:08:32 +0200

allthingseurope:

Trieste (Friuli-Venezia Giulia -Italia (by orcapeppa)

"The key thing is managed awareness of your role in the world and history. Think too much and you..."

Tue, 21 May 2013 15:23:10 +0200

““The key thing is managed awareness of your role in the world and history. Think too much and you know you are nothing. Think just enough and you know you are small, but important to some. That’s the best you can do.””

- ‘A Hologram For The King’, Dave Eggers (via booksandpublishing)

waffenss1972: Polish soldier with a machine gun wz.28

Tue, 21 May 2013 14:04:48 +0200

waffenss1972:

Polish soldier with a machine gun wz.28

Photo

Tue, 21 May 2013 14:03:13 +0200

onlyartists: spanishbaroqueart: Composer: Matías Durango (1636...

Tue, 21 May 2013 09:17:47 +0200

onlyartists:

spanishbaroqueart:

Composer: Matías Durango (1636 - 1698)

Music: ’En fiesta tan alegre’ (Jácara al Santísimo)

Performer: La Boz Galana

Spanish Baroque FIESTA!

derwolfsmantel: Photographs of a devastated post-war Berlin in...

Tue, 21 May 2013 09:17:08 +0200

derwolfsmantel:

Photographs of a devastated post-war Berlin in the summer of 1945.

“When Allied observers came to Germany after the war, most of them expected to find destruction on the same scale as they had witnessed in Britain during the Blitz. Even after British and American newspapers and magazines began to print pictures and descriptions of the devastation it was impossible to prepare for the sight of the real thing. Austin Robinson, for example, was sent to western Germany directly after the war on behalf of the British Ministry of Production. His description of Mainz while he was there displays his sense of shock:

That skeleton, with whole blocks level, huge areas with nothing but walls standing, factories almost completely gutted, was a picture that I know will live with me for life. One had known it intellectually without feeling it emotionally or humanly.

British Lieutenant Philip Dark was equally apalled by the apocalyptic vision he saw in Hamburg at the end of the war:

[W]e swung in towards the centre and started to enter a city devastated beyond all comprehension. It was more than appalling. As far as the eye could see, square mile after square mile of empty shells of buildings with twisted girders scarecrowed in the air, radiators of a flat jutting out from a shaft of a still-standing wall, like a crucified pterodactyl skeleton. Horrible, hideous shapes of chimneys sprouting from the frame of a wall. The whole pervaded by an atmosphere of ageless quiet… Such impressions are incomprehensible unless seen.

Berlin was “completely shattered - just piles of rubble and skeleton houses.” Between 18 and 20 million German people were rendered homeless by the destruction of their cities - that is the same as the combined prewar populations of Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg. These people lived in cellars, ruins, holes in the ground - anywhere they could find a modicum of shelter. They were entirely deprived of essential servies, such as water, gas, electricity - as were millions of others across Europe.”

(Text via Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II by Keith Lowe; photographs via)

worldofhabsburgs: Franz Joseph with Archduke Friedrich, Cieszyn...

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:53:42 +0200

worldofhabsburgs:

Franz Joseph with Archduke Friedrich, Cieszyn (Poland) 1906.

Photo

Mon, 20 May 2013 22:48:21 +0200

bestrooftalkever: Two bald eagles in air battle crash-land at...

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:17:33 +0200

bestrooftalkever:

Two bald eagles in air battle crash-land at airport

Dude these two eagles were fighting mid-air and got stuck. They crash landed at an airport and both survived.

How hardcore is that? Look at their faces tho.

Its like “I swear to GAWD Jerry”