Category Archives: History

For Whovians and fans of early electronica alike, The Definitive Guide To The  Doctor Who Theme Music is a fascinating guide to the construction of that iconic piece of music. To wit:

Created in 1963, the Doctor Who theme was one of the first electronic signature tunes for television and after nearly five decades remains one of the most easily recognised. The original recording of the Doctor Who theme music is widely regarded as a significant and innovative piece of electronic music, recorded well before the availability of commercial synthesisers.

Explore it here.

Above (top pic): Delia Derbyshire who, along with Dick Mills, arranged the theme music based on Ron Grainer’s composition.

boingboing/kottke

A nicely baked short by Matthew Salton – and all true for all you know. To wit:

In 1968 Patty was a flight attendant, who realised she could smuggle prime pot in from Jamaica with relative ease, given her line of work. She is 77 years old now, and this is her version of what happened.

curiousbrain

50 years ago this week, local officials of a small seaside town in Oregon decided to dispose of a long dead beached whale by detonating a charge inside it, hoping to obliterate the bulk of the problem and let seagulls and crabs deal with the rest.

They estimated a half a ton of dynamite would do the trick.

As it turns out, that was overkill. Mammalian marine guts spewed everywhere, raining down on townsfolk. A quarter-mile away, cars were smashed with chunks of cetacean carcass. This story remained a local legend for two decades, until the early ’90s , when the newspaper columnist Dave Barry mentioned seeing footage of the exploding beast. Soon after, this video clip — originally reported by Portland news channel KATU — went viral on the internet, long before “going viral on the internet” was even a thing.

kottke

 

Previously: Ireland’s Oskar Schindler

Con Kennedy tweetz:

This photo is from the collection of the Irish Society of Antiquarians and was used to document tenement life in Dublin a century ago. This particular photo taken in 1911 is often used in books and documentaries on Dublin life of the time. The photo is of a Tenement in Chancery Lane, AKA Little Italy.

My Great-Great-Grandfather is in the centre by the door. He was a German immigrant, a Jew who married an Italian Roman Catholic in Cork and settled in Dublin. He was a barrel organ grinder who befriended the Ganter Brothers – I have a clock they made for him. I suspect the woman beside him is my Great-Great-Grandmother with my infant Great grandmother in her arms who died when I was 7. The photo depicts all the families who lived in the one tenement. I thought I’d add false colour to the photo.

And you thought it was Liam Neeson.