This snack was clearly a knockoff of Brownie Brittle, with some obvious differences being that it was Kosher for Passover and gluten free -- with the help of potato starch. ...
from Taquitos.net Snack Reviews
by April 10, 2023 at 06:25PM
Monday, April 10, 2023
Review: Haddar Gluten Free Brownie Bark
This snack was clearly a knockoff of Brownie Brittle, with some obvious differences being that it was Kosher for Passover and gluten free -- with the help of potato starch. ...
from Taquitos.net Snack Reviews
by April 10, 2023 at 06:25PM
Friday, April 7, 2023
The Mysterious and Fascinating World of ‘Numbers Stations’
Numbers Stations are nearly as old as radio itself, with the first examples appearing in Europe during the First World War. Their numbers exploded, however, in the Cold War era, with the phenomenon first coming to the attention of radio amateurs around the mid-1970s. Numbers Stations are so-named because they typically broadcast nothing but seemingly random strings of numbers, letters, or sometimes words. These messages are transmitted in a variety of formats, including Morse Code, phase or frequency shifting, and voice – either real or synthesized. Each string of numbers is usually preceded by a unique identifier or callsign, which often forms the basis for the colourful nicknames given to the stations by radio amateurs. One of the most famous numbers stations, the “Lincolnshire Poacher,” used as its callsign the first bars of the English folk song of the same name, synthesized to sound like a calliope organ and repeated 12 times. This was followed by a British-accented female voice reading a string of numbers. First heard in the 1970s, the Lincolnshire Poacher initially broadcasted from Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire but later moved to the Royal Air Force Station at Akrotiri on the island of Cyprus. It ceased broadcasting in 2008. A similar station called Cherry Ripe, which also used an English folk song as its callsign, broadcast from somewhere in the south Pacific until 2009. Other famous Numbers Stations include “Ready! Ready!” “Allo! Allo!” “The English Man”, “The English Woman”, “Oblique”, “Swedish Rhapsody”, “Nancy Adam Susan”, “Cynthia”, “The Babbler”, “Squeaky Wheel” “The Pip”, and “Magnetic Field”, the latter named for its use of a song by French electronic composer Jean-Michel Jarre. While many of these stations broadcast in English, not all originated in English-speaking countries. For example, “Ready! Ready!” and “The Babbler” are thought to have originated in Bulgaria, “The English Man” in Russia, “The English Lady” in Ukraine, and “Oblique” in Poland.
The eerie and mysterious nature of numbers stations soon attracted a devoted community of radio amateurs, who began to actively seek out, classify, and study these enigmatic broadcasts. The number of recorded numbers stations quickly grew so large that in 1993 a station tracking group called ENIGMA 2000 developed a designation system to keep track of them all. This system classifies stations using a letter prefix indicating the type of broadcast and a number indicating its order of discovery. For example, E indicates a station broadcasting in English, G in German, S in Slavic, V in all other languages, M in Morse Code, and X in all other modes such as frequency and phase-shifting. But as obsessive and meticulous as this might sound, some aficionados have taken their obsession with numbers stations to even more absurd heights. From the moment he stumbled upon his first numbers station in 1992, British radio amateur Akin Fernandez was hooked, explaining in a 2004 interview:
“You’re listening, and all of a sudden you come across a really strong signal. It’s the most chilling thing you’ve ever heard in your life. These signals are going everywhere and they could be for anything. There’s nothing like it.”
Over the next five years, Fernandez spent nearly every waking hour meticulously recording and categorizing every numbers station he could track down. This work culminated in 1997 with the release of The Conet Project, one of the strangest albums in the history of recorded music. Named after the Czech word for “end,” which Fernandez heard often on the airwaves, The Conet Project comprised four CDs filled with over 280 minutes of excerpts from numbers stations around the world, along with a 74-page booklet detailing the background and details of each broadcast. While the album initially sold only 2000 copies, it had a strangely significant impact on the world of music, being sampled in a variety of other artistic projects including the band Porcupine Tree’s 1999 album Stupid Dream, Wilco’s 2001 album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and the soundtrack of the 2001 Cameron Crowe film Vanilla Sky.
But just what are these eerie broadcasts for? Are they merely pranks, placeholders for certain radio frequencies, or something more sinister? While for decades numbers stations remained one of the great unsolved mysteries of radio broadcasting, starting in the 1980s a number of international incidents finally began to shed light on their enigmatic purpose. In 1988, British Intelligence detected a strong radio signal emanating from the flat of Dutch national Erwin van Haarlem. London Police raided the flat and found van Haarlem sitting in front of a short wave radio, listening to a numbers station based in Czechoslovakia. Codebooks were later discovered in a hollowed-out bar of soap, and van Haarlem revealed to be a Czech agent named Václav Jelínek. Later that year, when the communist regime of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceasescu collapsed, all numbers stations broadcasting from Romania abruptly stopped. And in October 2011, when German Police raided the Margburg home of Andreas and Heidrun Anschlag, they caught the couple sitting at a shortwave radio receiver, receiving coded instructions from Moscow. When interrogated, the Anschlags revealed that they always received instructions at 6PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays – a schedule that happened to coincide perfectly with a Russian numbers station known as XPA. These and other incidents have led experts to suspect that numbers stations are in fact a clever means of solving a classic problem faced by nations trying to communicate with their agents abroad.
Secure communication is one of the key pillars of spycraft. Throughout history, spies and their handlers have come up with increasingly sophisticated methods of keeping secret messages safe from prying eyes, from physically hiding them in ordinary objects – a craft known as steganography – to obscuring them using codes and ciphers. But simply rendering a message unreadable to the enemy is no guarantee of security, as merely being caught sending or receiving a coded message can be enough to expose and condemn a suspected spy. And the steady march of technology only made matters worse, for as easy as it was to intercept a letter or telegram, it was even easier to tap a phone or listen in on a radio signal. This was the dilemma facing the All-Russian Co-operative Society or ARCOS in the 1920s. Officially, ARCOS was a diplomatic body governing economic trade between the UK and the newly-formed Soviet Union. However, intercepts of encrypted Soviet radio signals by the British Secret Intelligence Service or SIS revealed that the organization was in fact a front for Soviet espionage activities in the country. In May 1927, the British Government launched a raid against ARCOS headquarters London, where they discovered a secret room filled with workers hurriedly burning reams of secret documents. Realizing that the British had been reading and decrypting their broadcasts for years, almost overnight the Soviet OGPU intelligence service – precursor to the KGB – changed the way it communicated with its agents abroad. Most significantly, the OGPU switched to an enciphering system known as one-time pads, randomly-generated single-use ciphers whose keys are the same size as the plaintext being encoded – eliminating any repeats that can be exploited by codebreakers. So long as each key is used only once, one-time pads are considered mathematically impossible to crack and an absolutely secure form of encryption. To prevent the keys from falling into enemy hands, one-time pads are often printed on water-soluble or flammable paper so they can easily be soaked, swallowed, or burned.
The absolute security afforded by one-time pads allowed the Soviets to broadcast coded messages in the open, on common civilian radio frequencies. This way, while anyone could theoretically intercept the signal, only those with the one-time key could decipher it. And as it was impossible to tell who the signal was intended for, this system provided a useful degree of plausible deniability for agents, as Akin Fernandez explains:
“This system is completely secure because the messages can’t be tracked, the recipient could be anywhere. It is easy. You just send the spies to a country and get them to buy a radio. They know where to tune and when.”
This system, known as one-way voice link or OWVL, was quickly adopted by a variety of countries, including the UK, which during the Second World War transmitted instructions to the French Resistance and other Allied agents in occupied Europe via coded messages embedded in BBC radio broadcasts. Later, SIS and other intelligence agencies established dedicated numbers stations to communicate with their agents in the field, using the long-range capabilities of shortwave radio to carry their secret messages to every corner of the globe. As espionage expert Rupert Allason explains:
“Nobody has found a more convenient and expedient way of communicating with an agent.
Their sole purpose is for intelligence agencies to communicate with their agents in denied areas – a territory where it is difficult to use a consensual form of communications.”
Indeed, while numbers stations might seem like an outmoded relic of the Cold War, made obsolete by the advent of computers, the internet, and other sophisticated communications technology, in reality quite the opposite is true. Every message sent on a computer or over the internet leaves a digital trace, making absolute security difficult to achieve without incredibly strict communications protocols and sophisticated encryption. Numbers stations broadcasts, on the other hand, are untraceable, efficient, and cost-effective, meaning this system still has a place in the modern landscape of high-tech espionage.
Perhaps the most famous recent espionage case involving a numbers station is the 1998 “Atención” case, in which five agents of the Cuban Wasp network were arrested in Miami. One piece of evidence later used to convict the agents of espionage was that they had received instructions from a Cuban-based numbers station known as “Atención”. Three years earlier, FBI agents had entered the home of a network member and copied decryption software from his laptop, allowing the FBI to decode Atención broadcasts. These messages included instructions to recruit local contacts and intelligence sources, a greeting for International Women’s Day on May 8, and a warning against accepting flights from Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based anti-Castro organization. Interestingly, the only reason Atención was known to be of Cuban origin in the first place is because a technical error resulted in a snippet of a Radio Havana broadcast becoming mixed in with the signal. More recently, another Cuban numbers station was involved in the case of Ana Montes, a senior Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who in 2002 was convicted of spying for the Cuban government for nearly 17 years. According to prosecutors, Montes received her instructions via shortwave radio and decoded them using one-time-pads printed on water-soluble paper. North Korea has also made extensive use of numbers stations, suddenly resuming broadcasts in July 2016 after a 16-year hiatus. This is thought to be an act of psychological warfare, meant to put Western intelligence analysts on edge.
But what of UVB-76, the mysterious “Buzzer” that barely seems to broadcast anything but its signature droning tone? While no government agency has of yet admitted to operating the station, the most likely suspect is the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service or SVR, the agency to which German spies Andreas and Heidrun Anschlag belonged. And while the Buzzer and similar Russian stations like “The Pip” and “Squeaky Wheel” do not fit the typical profile of numbers stations, experts believe this is because they are on standby, kept in reserve for a future conflict or major deployment of Russian agents. The mysterious “buzz,” then, is likely just a placeholder, meant to discourage other broadcasters from using that particular frequency. Evidence for this theory emerged in 2013 when, after nearly 30 years of nothing but buzzing and brief number strings, UVB-76 suddenly broadcast the ominous message “Command 135 Issued.” According to radio enthusiast Māris Goldmanis, this was likely a test message, meant to bring the whole broadcast system onto a simulated war footing. So as unsettling as UVB-76’s endless, monotonous drone might be, should that drone ever stop, it might be a sign that something very, very bad is about to happen.
If you liked this article, you might also enjoy our new popular podcast, The BrainFood Show (iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Feed), as well as:
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Sorrel-Dejerne, Olivia, The Spooky World of the ‘Numbers Stations’, BBC News, April 16, 2014, https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24910397
Number Stations, Priyom, https://priyom.org/number-stations
Numbers Stations Research and Information Center, https://www.numbers-stations.com/lincolnshire-poacher/
Gorvett, Zaria, The Ghostly Radio Station That No One Claims to Run, BBC Future, July 15, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170801-the-ghostly-radio-station-that-no-one-claims-to-run
Segal, David, The Shortwave and the Calling, Washington Post, August 3, 2004, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35647-2004Aug2.html
Goldmanis, Maris, Explaining the ‘Mystery’ of Numbers Stations, War on the Rocks, May 24, 2018
The post The Mysterious and Fascinating World of ‘Numbers Stations’ appeared first on Today I Found Out.
from Today I Found Out
by Gilles Messier - April 07, 2023 at 04:48AM
Article provided by the producers of one of our Favorite YouTube Channels!
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The Horrifying Origin of the Term “Stool Pigeon”
In May 1850, Chief Simon Pokagon, of the Potawatomi tribe was camping near the Manistee River in Michigan when he beheld an astonishing sight:
“One morning on leaving my wigwam I was startled by hearing a gurgling, rumbling sound, as though an army of horses laden with sleigh bells was advancing through the deep forests towards me. As I listened more intently I concluded that instead of the tramping of horses it was distant thunder; and yet the morning was clear, calm and beautiful. Nearer and nearer came the strange commingling sounds of sleigh bells, mixed with the rumbling of an approaching storm. While I gazed in wonder and astonishment, I beheld moving toward me in an unbroken front millions of pigeons, the first I had seen that season. They passed like a cloud through the branches of the high trees, through the underbrush and over the ground, apparently overturning every leaf.”
The gigantic flock Chief Pokagon witnessed was composed of Ectopistes migratorius, better known as the Passenger Pigeon. Once the most abundant birds in North America – and possibly the world – at their peak Passenger Pigeons numbered some 5 billion. Their range extended from central Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia south to Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, with their main nesting areas stretching from the Great Lakes east to New York. A highly nomadic and communal species, Passenger pigeons migrated across the continent in vast flocks in search of beechnuts, acorns, chestnuts, and other seeds to eats and hardwood trees to roost and nest in. These flocks were often hundreds of millions or even billions strong, and were an awesome sight to behold. One flock observed over Southern Ontario in 1866 was 800 kilometres long and took 14 hours to pass overhead, while in 1855 a flock passing over Columbus, Ohio was so large and dense it blotted out the midday sun:
“As the watchers stared, the hum increased to a mighty throbbing. Now everyone was out of the houses and stores, looking apprehensively at the growing cloud, which was blotting out the rays of the sun. Children screamed and ran for home. Women gathered their long skirts and hurried for the shelter of stores. Horses bolted. A few people mumbled frightened words about the approach of the millennium, and several dropped on their knees and prayed. [When the flock passed two hours later], the town looked ghostly in the now-bright sunlight that illuminated a world plated with pigeon ejecta.”
To give an idea of how inconceivably abundant these birds were, American nature writer and poet Christopher Cokinos has calculated that if the entire population of Passenger Pigeons were to have flown single-file, the flock would have stretched around the globe 22 times. Yet little more than a half-century later, there would not be a single Passenger Pigeon left alive anywhere on earth.
When European settlers first arrived on the North American continent, Passenger Pigeons provided a conveniently abundant source of protein. Indeed, even waving a long pole in the low-flying flocks was guaranteed to kill a few birds. But so vast were the flocks that such subsistence hunting posed little threat to the birds’ survival. However, the massive post-Civil War migration of settlers into the American West drove up demand for food, creating a brand-new industry of professional pigeon hunters. And right from the start, business was booming, as the Wisconsin newspaper the Kilbourn City Mirror reported in 1871:
“Hardly a train arrives that does not bring hunters or trappers. Hotels are full, coopers are busy making barrels, and men, women, and children are active in packing the birds or filling the barrels. They are shipped to all places on the railroad, and to Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston.”
Commercial pigeon hunters used every method at their disposal to kill the greatest number of birds possible. They shot at them with shotguns, trapped them in nets, set fire to their roosts, gassed them out of the trees with burning sulphur, and even poisoned them with corn soaked in alcohol. And it is among these varied methods that we find the most commonly-accepted origin for the term “stool pigeon” – and any animal lovers or squeamish types in the audience might want to turn off the video now.
Still here? Well, don’t say we didn’t warn you…
One particularly gruesome method used by pigeon hunters was to take a live pigeon, sew its eyelids shut, and nail it to a stool. Its cries of distress would attract nearby pigeons, who would subsequently be killed. It did not take long for this practice to be associated with people who betray their own kind. However, while this is the most oft-cited origin for the term, there are several issues with this explanation which have led lexicographers to suspect it of being a false etymology.
For starters, while “stool pigeon” was used to mean “informant” as early as 1828, when it appeared in the first edition of Webster’s Dictionary, explicit references to the hunting practice do not appear until the 1870s, with its first known appearance being in M. Schele de Vere’s 1871 dictionary Americanisms; the English of the New World:
“Stool-Pigeon… it means the pigeon, with its eyes stitched up, fastened on a stool, which can be moved up and down by the hidden fowler.”
This 40-year gap suggests that either the two uses of the term developed independently, or that the hunting practice was retroactively applied as the origin of a much older term.
There are also more practical issues with the common etymology of “stool pigeon.” For example, it is dubious that hunters would go to the trouble of carrying a wooden stool into the bush solely for the purpose of hunting. Some etymologists thus suggest that the “stool” in “stool pigeon” actually derives from the 16th-century stoale, meaning the base or stump of a tree – a far likelier place for a decoy pigeon to be nailed. Still others suggest that the term has nothing to do with platforms and is instead derived from the French word estale, used to describe a pigeon used to entice a hawk into a net. Indeed, by the early 15th Century the term had entered the English language as stale, used to describe someone who baits or entrap another. It is this meaning of the word that the sorcerer Prospero employs in Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, when he commands the spirit Ariel:
“The trumpery in my house, go bring it hither for stale to catch these thieves.”
An alternate spelling of stale was stall, which came to describe a pickpocket’s accomplice who distracted a mark while they were robbed. This usage survives to this day in the phrase “stall for time.” As for the other part of the expression, the term “pigeon” has been used since at least the 16th century to describe someone who is foolish or gullible. Thus it is possible that the term “stool pigeon” never had anything to do with hunting, and instead simply combined two preexisting slang words to describe a gullible person used as a decoy by criminals. Whatever the case, by the 1840s the term “stool pigeon” was ill-understood to mean “informant”, and had acquired the verb forms “stooling” or “to stool.” Later in the 1920s, the term was shortened to simply “stoolie.”
But while the cruel 1870s hunting practice may not have given us a colourful piece of criminal slang, it – along with the myriad other tactics used by commercial pigeon hunters – contributed to a slaughter on a scale almost imaginable today. During a single hunting season in Petoskey, Michigan, in 1878, some 50,000 birds were killed every single day for nearly 5 months straight. The birds were so abundant that they sold for as little as fifty cents a dozen. Yet people continued to believe that Pigeon stocks were inexhaustible, with no less a figure than great ornithologist John James Audubon stating that:
“… nothing but the gradual diminution of our forests can accomplish their decrease as they not infrequently quadruple their numbers yearly, and always at least double it.”
And when, in 1857, a bill was brought before the Ohio State Legislature seeking protection for the Passenger Pigeon, a selected committee of the Senate dismissed the petition as unnecessary, concluding that:
“The passenger pigeon needs no protection. Wonderfully prolific, having the vast forests of the North as its breeding grounds, traveling hundreds of miles in search of food, it is here today and elsewhere tomorrow, and no ordinary destruction can lessen them, or be missed from the myriads that are yearly produced.”
Similar efforts at protection also failed, and the slaughter continued unabated. It was not until the 1890s, when Passenger pigeon flocks had started to become noticeably depleted, that serious conservation legislation was passed in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. But it was already too late. Passenger pigeon numbers were in freefall, the billions-strong flocks of just a few decades ago now a thing of the past. By the turn of the 20th Century, the bird had completely vanished in the wild, with the last known wild example, a female nicknamed “Buttons”, being shot in Pike County, Ohio in 1900. In 1903, the only Passenger Pigeons left in the world belonged to a captive flock kept by Professor Charles Whitman of the University of Chicago. Whitman attempted to breed his pigeons by getting common Rock Doves to foster their eggs, but was unsuccessful. By 1906, he was down to only five birds. The end finally came on September 1, 1914, when the last known survivor, a 29-year-old female named Martha, died in her cage at the Cincinnati Zoo. The Passenger Pigeon was no more.
But how did this happen? How did the most abundant bird in North America, whose flocks were so enormous they blotted out the sun, go from a population of billions to zero within the span of a human lifetime? While the unchecked commercial slaughter that raged from the 1860s onwards was the main cause, but there were a number of additional factors that hastened the Passenger Pigeon’s rapid demise. Among these, as John James Audubon had predicted, was the large-scale destruction of the birds’ natural habitat. Passenger Pigeons relied on large stands of oak, chestnut, and beech trees in which to roost, nest, and feed – stands which were being systematically cut down to clear land for agriculture and supply timber for industry. The birds large numbers also worked against them. The Pigeons’ iconic behaviour of travelling in giant flocks evolved as a survival strategy known as predator satiation – the idea that no group of predators, no matter how large, could possibly kill enough members of a flock to have any impact on the total population. Unfortunately, this behaviour made the birds extremely vulnerable to human hunters, making them easy to slaughter in large numbers. Worse still, Passenger Pigeons were extremely social and gregarious birds, requiring large flocks to carry out mating rituals and raise their young. Once a flock’s size dropped below a certain threshold – whether due to hunting or habitat loss – its members became unable to breed successfully, dooming the flock to inevitable decline and death. This is why efforts to breed the last captive Passenger Pigeons were unsuccessful, and why recent proposals to resurrect the Passenger Pigeon through Jurassic Park-style cloning are likewise doomed to fail: the birds simply cannot breed successfully in small groups. Furthermore, the vast stands of food-bearing trees needed to support large Passenger Pigeon flocks had already disappeared by the late 19th Century. Thus, even if all hunting had stopped in the 1890s, it is likely that Passenger Pigeon numbers would still have continued to decline. A similar fate is expected befall another heavily overexploited species: the Atlantic Codfish, Gadus morhua. By 1992, overfishing had driven cod stocks on the Grand Banks to less than 1% of their estimated peak, prompting the Canadian government to impose a total moratorium on cod fishing. But it was too little, too late; while the moratorium has been in place for over 30 years, cod numbers are still steadily decreasing, with the Atlantic Cod expected to go extinct by 2050. Both cases clearly demonstrate the principle outlined by naturalist Paul Ehrlich that:
“…it is not always necessary to kill the last pair of a species to force it to extinction.”
Recent genetic evidence has suggested that Passenger Pigeons may also have been victims of extremely poor timing. An analysis conducted by Pen-Jen Shaner and colleagues from National Taiwan Normal University revealed a surprisingly low degree of genetic diversity in preserved Passenger Pigeon specimens collected across North America indicating that the late 19th Century Pigeon population grew very rapidly from a handful of flocks. This suggests that Passenger Pigeons were a so-called “breakout species” like Australian Plague Locusts or Arctic Lemmings, whose populations explode in times of plenty only to crash once local food resources are depleted. It is thus possible that the mass commercial slaughter of Passenger Pigeons coincided with a natural downswing in population numbers, further hastening their extinction. However, later analysis by Beth Shapiro of the University of California Santa Cruz has challenged this assumption, revealing instead that Passenger Pigeon populations were, in fact, large and stable since the last ice age. Still, rapid population growth may still have played a role in the birds’ ultimate demise. One theory posits that the expansion of agriculture and the relocation of Indigenous peoples across North America both provided Passenger Pigeons with a new, abundant source of food and relieved traditional hunting pressures, allowing the population to skyrocket right before the advent of large-scale hunting.
But whatever the specific factors, what is undeniable is that the rapid and catastrophic extinction of the Passenger Pigeon was ultimately the result of human action, and that this ecological tragedy was responsible for the birth of the modern conservation movement. In 1900, Republican Congressman John F. Lacey of Iowa introduced United States’s first wildlife-protection law, which banned the interstate transportation of unlawfully killed game. In his speech to the House of Representatives, Lacey stated:
“The wild pigeon, formerly in flocks of millions, has entirely disappeared from the face of the earth. We have given an awful exhibition of slaughter and destruction, which may serve as a warning to all mankind. Let us now give an example of wise conservation of what remains of the gifts of nature.”
Later that year, Lacey’s bill was signed into law. This legislation was further strengthened in 1913 by the Weeks McLean Act and again in 1918 by the Migratory Bird Act, which protected not only birds but also their eggs, nests, and feathers. While conservation efforts are far stronger today than they were in the early 1900s, the unchecked destruction and pollution of natural habitats around the world continue to put thousands of species at risk of extinction. The destruction of the Passenger Pigeon should serve as a poignant reminder to learn from the mistakes of the past, for, in the words of naturalist and explorer William Beebe:
“The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last individual of a race of living beings breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again.”
If you liked this article, you might also enjoy our new popular podcast, The BrainFood Show (iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Feed), as well as:
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Billions to None…the Extinction of the Passenger Pigeon, John James Audubon Center at Mill Grove, https://johnjames.audubon.org/conservation/billions-none-extinction-passenger-pigeon
Yeoman, Barry, Why the Passenger Pigeon Went Extinct, Audubon Society Magazine, May-June 2014, https://www.audubon.org/magazine/may-june-2014/why-passenger-pigeon-went-extinct
Why Did the Passenger Pigeon Go Extinct? Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlscientist/2017/11/24/why-did-the-passenger-pigeon-go-extinct/?sh=70c1849a2a9d
Passenger Pigeon Extinction: It’s Complicated, Medium, June 16, 2014, https://grrlscientist.medium.com/passenger-pigeon-extinction-its-complicated-grrlscientist-3f8e8ad3b6de
Greenfieldboyce, Nell, Why Did the Passenger Pigeon Go Extinct? The Answer Might Lie in Their Toes, NPR, November 16, 2017, https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/16/564597936/why-did-the-passenger-pigeon-go-extinct-the-answer-might-lie-in-their-toes
Biello, David, 3 Billion to Zero: What Happened to the Passenger Pigeon? Scientific American, June 27, 2014, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/3-billion-to-zero-what-happened-to-the-passenger-pigeon/
The Passenger Pigeon, Smithsonian Magazine, https://www.si.edu/spotlight/passenger-pigeon
Kovalchik, Kara, Why is an Informant Called a “Stool Pigeon”? Mental Floss, August 26, 2016, https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/83619/why-informant-called-stool-pigeon
Stool Pigeon, World Wide Words, https://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-sto2.htm
What’s the Origin of the Phrase “Stool Pigeon”? The Phrase Finder, https://ift.tt/oOni9js
The Word Guy: Dropping a Dime on the Origin of “Stool Pigeon”, Tribune Live, December 4, 2015, https://ift.tt/qmOdxu5
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from Today I Found Out
by Gilles Messier - April 07, 2023 at 04:41AM
Article provided by the producers of one of our Favorite YouTube Channels!
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Tuesday, April 4, 2023
The Con Artist Who Managed a 13 Year Career as a Professional Football Player Despite Sucking at Football
Perhaps the most legendary of all of these sports stars is the Brazilian striker Carlos Henrique Raposo, if only because he managed to collect a salary playing for various professional football clubs for about 13 seasons from 1979-1992 despite not actually being very good at the sport and managing in just about every way he could think of to ensure that nobody ever figured this out.
Before we talk about that though, a disclaimer. While Raposo’s rather interesting career has since been documented in both film and books, hard contemporary evidence of his exploits are difficult to come by and it’s clear over the years his story has been embellished to an extent. Nonetheless, we have endeavored to tell you the most accurate possible version of his story to the point that our author even went as far as enlisting the help of a Spanish friend to read through every contemporary Spanish language source we could find that inevitably cropped up, to try to separate fact from embellishment. With that out of the way, let’s tell you the story of Carlos Raposo’s rather interesting career.
Born in 1963 in Brazil, as a youth, like many of his peers, Raposo harboured dreams of being a famous football star. The only problem was that he possessed relatively little skill for the sport compared to actual professionals. What Raposo did have though was the athletic build of a footballer, an incredibly charming personality, a host of high-profile friends who were more than happy to do him favors (even ones who knew he was full of crap), and a moral flexibility that ensured he could maximally take advantage of all of these things to become a football star despite not being very good at football. Individuals whom it is often claimed are friends of Raposo include Edmundo Alves de Souza Neto and Romário de Souza Faria, the latter of which is consistently ranked as one of the greatest players of all time.
Raposo’s alleged modus operandi at the beginning of his career was to call one of his more talented friends when they signed with a new club and simply ask for a trial with the club, which they were usually more than happy to put in a good word. During his interview, Raposo would formally request time to get fit before attending a proper training session, at which point he’d use his very made up reputation combined with his formidable physical prowess to make an impression on the club’s coach, via things like demonstrating his prodigious running ability and ability to lift heavy weights, while carefully avoiding actually needing to show off his relative lack of ability playing the sport. While you might think the coaches must have been morons, we should again stress that seemingly in all cases, he brought with him a backlog of former greatness with other clubs, including at times very real press clippings, despite, you know, that being made up.
After being signed, as soon as he attended a “proper” training session where he was expected to actually play and show off his actual football skills, Raposo would do things like feign a crippling injury via things like kicking a ball as hard as he could and then falling to the ground clutching his hamstring – a common injury for footballers. A tactic that worked surprisingly well both thanks to at times him being able to get unscrupulous doctors on his side, and also simple lack of medical technology. To quote Raposo himself about this unorthodox method of making the cut: “There were no MRI scanners in those days, so they had to believe me.”
Once he was declared injured, Raposo could safely wait out the rest of his trial period without worrying about playing and still collect a paycheck. To keep his teammates on his side, Raposo would allegedly arrive at hotels his team were due to stay in a few days earlier specifically to fill them with local women to “entertain” his friends in-between matches, in the process netting him yet more contacts who’d be willing to sing his praises when he inevitably applied to another club. Raposo would also occasionally talk on the phone in perfect English, telling friends that he was in talks with clubs in Europe that were interested in signing him to help convince managers into either extending his contract or raising his wages.
When his time with a given team came to an end, Raposo would simply repeat this formula with another club and, according to him, it worked, with the Brazen Brazilian claiming to have played for a host of well-known Brazilian clubs during his career including Vasco da Gama, Botafogo and Flamengo as well as having brief stints in France, Mexico, America and Argentina. Raposo was able to score these lucrative gigs thanks to a combination of his contacts and eventually showing he had previously played for other clubs and just sort of embellishing his exploits there. In short, developing a carefully crafted reputation, including using the media to help further all this. Sometimes it seems via journalists just trusting what he said about himself, others seemingly journalists who were happy to scratch his back if he scratched theirs.
For example, Raposo saw to it that coverage in his native Brazil while he was playing there always flanked his name by words like “gunner” and “scorer”, adjectives cherry-picked from quotes by legends of the sport whom he called his friends. We should point out here that because he, you know, rarely actually played and wasn’t that good relatively to his peers, he never actually scored any goals. Nevertheless, with such high praise coming from such well-regarded figures in the sport, clubs looking to sign Raposo seldom had a reason to doubt his claims that he was anything but a brilliant, tactically-minded striker capable of scoring goals with surgical precision, despite having a bit of a major injury problem.
Sometime during his career, Raposo also adopted the nickname “The Kaiser” as a nod to legendary German player Franz Beckenbauer, who was known by the same moniker due to his “dominance” and “leadership” while playing. If it wasn’t clear from the rest of this piece, Raposo gave this nickname to himself to try to help convince various clubs to sign him.
Although Raposo usually avoided stepping on the field like it was coated in landmines, there do appear to have been occasions in which he wasn’t able to avoid doing so and as a result, he does appear to have a legitimate traceable football record, albeit a very hazy one that’s mostly in Spanish and French. For example, Raposo is said to have played a single game with the Brazilian team, Bangu, and there’s a purported newspaper headline from the time he was signed that roughly translates to “The Bangu already has its king, Carlos Kaiser”. According to one source, Raposo was able to avoid playing in his first game with the team when he was brought on to substitute for another player by intentionally getting into a verbal argument with the fans from the sidelines, thus getting the referee to send him back to the locker room before he stepped onto the pitch and blew his cover. Raposo was somehow able to spin this into goodwill with the club’s president by saying he only got in an altercation with the fan because they’d called the president a thief. In the end, he was awarded a 6 month contract extension with that club.
Later in his career, Raposo moved to France and signed with a division two team called Gazelec Ajaccio where he made sporadic appearances, mostly limited to kicking the ball up the field and showboating for the crowd, who were more interested in the novelty of having a supposed Brazilian legend on their team than his actual performance. Further, in a training session with Ajaccio, Raposo was able to avoid playing entirely by simply walking onto the pitch and kicking all of the balls they had available into the crowd while warming up. His team, thinking he was playing to the crowd – which was quite large and filled with people eager to see their teams new Brazilian superstar perform- allowed him to do this, not realising Raposo had kicked literally every ball they had lying around. When the time came to start for real, with no ball, his lack of skills on this front was concealed and they simply enjoyed watching him show off his more natural physical skills in the training session.
As Raposo played in a time before our modern extensive online stat tracking websites and ubiquitous sports coverage, we have no way of knowing what his career record was, though most sources say that he played in around 30 games during the course of his career, the majority of which were with the aforementioned French team, with whom Raposo claims to have played “20 minutes per game, a few times per season”, although it should be noted here that one of his fellow footballers claims that actually never happened and the pictures of such were simply staged to convince other teams he had played. Whatever the case there, everybody seems in agreement that Raposo never scored a single goal, an impressive feat when you consider that he was a striker, which for non-football fans means his entire job on the pitch was more or less to score goals.
Raposo retired from the sport at age 39 and remained amazingly unrepentant about his deception, openly admitting in interviews with the Brazilian and French press that he “regretted nothing” about what he did because the clubs he played for treated their actual players so poorly, being quoted as saying: “Clubs already deceived so many players, someone had to be the avenger of the guys.”
Today, Raposo makes ends meet as a personal trainer and occasionally gives interviews about his rather colorful “career”, and even has had a book and a movie made about his exploits as a professional footballer who wasn’t actually very good at football.
Expand for ReferencesCarlos Henrique Kaiser the biggest football fraud?
CARLOS THE KAISER: FOOTBALL’S GREATEST CHARLATAN
The story of Carlos Henrique Kaiser, the Forrest Gump of Brazilian football
Forrest Gump do futebol e a personal embananada no programa do Jô – Video – In Spanish
Carlos “Kaiser”, the legend of the player who has never played a game
Carlos ‘Kaiser’: the story of an impostor in football
Carlos ‘Kaiser’ balls off, scheduled injuries, fake mobile phones
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by Karl Smallwood - April 04, 2023 at 12:16PM
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Review: Paradise Green Milk Chocolate Chocobits Ginger
Ever since we started reviewing ginger snacks, we've seen the flavor get combined with all sort of other tastes, but coating it in chocolate is a new one for us. ...
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by April 04, 2023 at 08:28AM
Monday, April 3, 2023
The Real Life Feud That Created One of James Bond’s Most Iconic Villains
The 1964 film Goldfinger is based on the 1959 novel of the same name, the seventh in the James Bond series by British Author Ian Fleming. Fleming, who had served in Naval Intelligence during the Second World War, based many of the characters and scenarios in his books on his own experiences. For example, the golf game between Bond and Goldfinger early in the book was inspired by a real game Fleming played in 1957, while names of characters like the ill-fated Masterson sisters and improbably-named henchwoman Pussy Galore were drawn from people Fleming knew in the intelligence community. And so it was with the novel’s main villain, whom Fleming named after an influential but controversial Hungarian-English architect named Ernö Goldfinger.
Born in 1902 to a wealthy Jewish family in Budapest, in 1920 Goldfinger travelled to Paris to study at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts. Here he mingled with a veritable who’s-who of mid-century artists and designers including Man Ray, Lee Miller, Max Ernst, and Charles-Édourad Jeanneret – better known as Le Corbusier – many of whom would go on to become leading figures in the burgeoning Modernist movement. Encompassing nearly every field of human creativity from music to literature to interior design, Modernism sought to break from the traditions of the past and create new aesthetics more in line with the scientific and industrial 20th century. In architecture, this meant stripping away unnecessary ornament and creating structures that were true to the character of the materials they were built from rather than mere recreations of past styles. The movement also incorporated a type of functionalism, in which buildings were seen as “machines for living” which could be used as instruments to shape and improve society. This thinking was greatly influenced by socialist principles, with many architects seeing modern architecture as the key to housing large numbers of people in an efficient and egalitarian manner. Indeed, it was while studying in Paris that Ernö Goldfinger first publicly declared himself a communist, a political stance he would maintain for the rest of his life and which would greatly inform his architectural philosophy, which he described in 1941 as:
“Cities can become centres of civilisation where men and women can live happy lives. The technical means exist to satisfy human needs. The will to plan must be aroused. There is no obstacle but ignorance and wickedness.”
Over the following decade Goldfinger remained in Paris where he worked as a designer of furniture and home interiors, both solo and in partnership with fellow Beaux-Arts student Andre Szivessy. In 1931, he met Ursula Blackwell, wealthy heiress to the British Crosse & Blackwell food brand fortune. The two married in 1933 and a year later produced a son, Peter. The birth of his son inspired Goldfinger to maintain a correspondence with British education experts Paul and Mary Abbatt, who throughout the 1920s carried out pioneering research on the role of toys in children’s mental and physical development. Based on the Abbatt’s findings, Goldfinger designed a series of toys specifically intended to foster learning – among the first of their kind in the world.
In 1934, with anti-semitism on the rise in Europe, the Goldfingers moved to London, becoming naturalized British citizens shortly thereafter. It was in London in the late 1930s that Ernö Goldfinger would accept his first architectural commission: a series of 3 modernist houses on Willow Road in Hampstead, one of which Goldfinger built for himself. Still an avowed communist, when the Soviet Union joined the Western Allies in 1941 Goldfinger engaged in a number of advocacy efforts in support of the regime, including a 1942 “Aid for Russia” fundraising party attended by several prominent artists.
After the war, Goldfinger continued to receive architecture commissions, most of which he executed in a controversial style which had recently become popular: brutalism. Named for the French term beton brut or “raw concrete”, brutalism was the most extreme manifestation of the modernist principles of functionalism and honesty of materials. Brutalist buildings typically feature rough-cast, unpainted concrete walls, harsh, geometric shapes and little or no ornamentation. Unsurprisingly, this movement attracted the ire of a great many more traditionally-minded architecture critics, including no less a figure than Charles, Prince of Wales, who in a speech before the Royal Institute of Architects in 1984 stated:
“You have, ladies and gentlemen, to give this much to the Luftwaffe. When it knocked down our buildings, it didn’t replace them with anything more offensive than rubble. We did that.”
Royal. Mic. Drop.
Unfortunately for Charles and other critics, in the post-war years brutalist architects like Goldfinger found a ready audience, as cities across Europe devastated by the conflict sought cost-effective ways to re-home millions of people. Among Goldfinger’s best-known projects are the Metro Central Heights housing complex, completed between 1959 and 1967; and the Balfron and Trellick Tower tower blocks, completed in 1967 and 1972 respectively. The latter are notable for their space-saving features such as sliding doors between rooms and a separate tower housing the heating plant, elevators, stairs, launderettes, and other service infrastructure. In keeping with his political beliefs, Goldfinger also designed the headquarters for the British Communist Party and the Communist newspaper The Daily Worker.
As you might have guessed by now, one of the many individuals who was not a fan of Goldfinger’s architecture was Ian Fleming. There are differing accounts as to how Goldfinger first appeared on Fleming’s radar. According to some sources, their feud began in 1934 with the construction of the houses on Willow Road. The project involved the demolition of Victorian-era cottages on the site, which an outraged Fleming and many fellow Londoners petitioned unsuccessfully to prevent. According to other sources, however, Fleming learned of Goldfinger through his golf partner, John Blackwell, who was a cousin of the architect by marriage and loathed the man. And there was much to dislike about Goldfinger besides his architecture: despite his noble goals regarding social housing, Goldfinger was by most accounts an arrogant, humorous man, prone to bullying those who got in his way and single-mindedly devoted to his vision of urban development to the exclusion of what ordinary people actually found appealing. But whatever the reason, Fleming found the name “Goldfinger” irresistible and in 1958 used the architect as the basis for Bond’s next foe, changing the character’s name from Ernö to Auric after the Latin word for gold. According to historian Henry Chancellor, Fleming likely also drew inspiration from American gold tycoon Charles Engelhard Jr., who, like the fictional Goldfinger, used his company, the Precious Metals Development Company, to circumvent export restrictions and sell gold in countries where its price was higher.
Upon learning of the title and villain of Fleming’s novel, the real Goldfinger became incensed and threatened to sue Fleming’s publisher, Jonathan Cape, claiming that as there were so few Goldfingers in Britain, the choice of name was obviously a personal attack. With the initial run of the novel already printed but not yet released, the publisher was understandably nervous and did some research on the architect, informing Fleming that:
“…[we] discovered quite a bit, none of it very pleasant and all of it made us unusually wary.”
But Fleming refused to be bullied, pointing out that there were, in fact, many Goldfingers listed in the phone book.
At this point, viewers familiar only with the 1964 film adaptation may be wondering what all the fuss was about, for while the fictional Goldfinger is dastardly and ruthless, as portrayed by German actor Gert Fröbe he is nonetheless depicted as cunning, wealthy, and charming. However, this version of Goldfinger is significantly watered-down; the original book version of the character is much, much worse. Essentially a collection of traits Fleming found despicable, book Goldfinger is depicted as a short, ugly, redheaded, teetotaling Jewish Marxist in league with the Soviets, with a penchant for cheating at cards and golf, a tacky sense of style, and a body Fleming describes as being like“he had been put together with bits of other people’s bodies.” And while movie Goldfinger’s obsession with gold is on full display, the book exaggerates this trait to a grotesque degree, with Goldfinger owning a gold-bound volume of erotic photographs and covering his lovers head-to-toe in gold paint before having sex with him. So you can see why the real Goldfinger might have been a little annoyed at Fleming.
The two parties remained deadlocked until Fleming, in a stroke of glorious pettiness, threatened to release the novel with an erratum slip changing all instances of the name “Goldfinger” to “Goldprick.” Unsurprisingly, the real Goldfinger backed down and the matter was finally settled when Jonathan Cape agreed to include an “all characters are fictional…” disclaimer in the book and sent the architect some complimentary copies. According to Goldfinger’s biographer, the architect believed that the novel – at the time considered little more than a pulpy potboiler – would soon be forgotten, little suspecting the global phenomenon the film adaptation would become. Indeed, for decades following the film’s release, Goldfinger and his family endured endless late-night crank calls in which pranksters would intone, in bad Sean Connery accents, “Goldfingah? Thish ish 007” or sing Shirley Bassey’s iconic theme tune.
In the end, it is difficult to say who had the last laugh – Goldfinger or Fleming. On the one hand, while the fictional Goldfinger has become one of the most iconic villains in cinema history, his real-life counterpart is all but forgotten outside the relatively narrow field of brutalist architecture. Furthermore, criticism by Fleming and others about the dreariness and oppressiveness of Goldfinger’s designs proved prophetic, as his Balfron and Trellick Tower blocks quickly succumbed to the blight of urban decay, becoming poorly-maintained hotbeds of poverty, drug abuse, vandalism, prostitution, and other social ills. And in an even greater irony, the Metro Central Heights complex, originally named Alexander Fleming House after the discoverer of Penicillin, became infamous for making its residents sick due to poor ventilation, forcing the Department of Health and Social Services to abandon the complex as its headquarters. On the other hand, however, in more recent years the architectural community has come around on Goldfinger’s work, recognizing it as significant to the history of architecture. Indeed, several of his creations, including Trellick Tower, Metro Central Heights, and the modernist Teesdale House in Surrey, now enjoy Grade II listing as protected historic buildings. It is the sort of recognition that would have made Ian Fleming livid, meaning that we can probably call this particular feud a draw.
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Bonus Facts
In adapting Fleming’s novel to the screen, screenwriters Richard Maibaum and Paul Dehn did far more than tone down the villain’s more unsavoury traits. Indeed, the changes the pair made are considered by many critics to have resulted in a far more cohesive and compelling story. For example, in the novel, Goldfinger plans to break into Fort Knox by blowing open the vault with a tactical nuclear weapon, then steal the gold by loading it onto trucks and carting it away. However, Maibaum and Dehn found this notion ridiculous, for given the sheer volume and weight of gold in the repository it would realistically take hundreds of trucks and nearly two weeks to cart away. Instead, the pair came up with a much more elegant plot wherein Goldfinger plans to detonate the bomb inside Fort Knox itself, irradiating the U.S. gold supply and causing the value of his own gold to increase substantially. And as a sly jab at Fleming’s original plot, the film has Bond point out to Goldfinger the impracticality of robbing Fort Knox, only for Goldfinger to turn the tables and reveal his actual plan.
Another positive change from book to film concerns the characterization of Goldfinger’s main henchwoman, Pussy Galore. In the novel, Pussy is explicitly stated to be a lesbian, and heads an all-female gang of acrobats-turned-cat burglars called the Cement Mixers. Yet despite Pussy’s stated sexuality, Bond is still able to seduce and turn her to his side through his sheer masculine charisma, with Fleming explaining that Pussy isn’t really as lesbian but simply hates men on account of being raped as a child. Yikes. But while the film makes Pussy straight – avoiding that particular minefield of misogynistic pop psychology – it is still far from perfect, for Bond’s seduction and conversion of Pussy is accomplished by, shall we say, less than consensual means. Ladies and gentlemen: the 1960s.
Finally, one of the strangest differences between the book and the film is that of Auric Goldfinger’s voice. While in the book Goldfinger is explicitly stated to be British, in the film he speaks with a thick German accent. While at first glance this is readily explained by Goldfinger being portrayed by German actor Gert Fröbe, in reality Fröbe’s command of English was shaky and he was forced to learn most of his lines phonetically. The final result was deemed unacceptable by the studio, and so all of Fröbe’s lines were dubbed over by English actor Michael Collins, who chose to closely emulate Fröbe’s original accent. This disconnect between the character’s backstory and voice results in one of the film’s strangest lines, in which CIA agent Felix Leiter informs Bond: “He’s British, but he doesn’t sound like it.”
2. The film Goldfinger is packed wall-to-wall with iconic Bond moments, from the iconic theme tune sung by Shirley Bassey to Bond girl Jill Masterson covered head-to-toe in gold paint, Goldfinger threatening to cut Bond in half with a giant laser, and henchman Oddjob dispatching enemies with the toss of his razor-brimmed bowler hat. But perhaps one of the most quintessentially James Bond moments occurs in the film’s pre-title sequence, in which Bond swims up to an unnamed central American country’s shoreline and proceeds to infiltrate and blow up a large drug operation. His mission complete, Bond proceeds to strip off his wetsuit, revealing a perfectly dry – and perfectly pressed – white tuxedo complete with a red carnation on his lapel. But while this might seem like the sort of stylized, tongue-in-cheek nonsense the James Bond series has become legendary for, incredibly this particular bit was actually inspired by a real-life secret mission from the Second World War. In 1941, Dutch Resistance fighter Peter Tazelaar was tasked with investigating methods of infiltrating secret agents into the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. The mission, rather unimaginatively codenamed “Contact Holland”, called for Tazelaar to be dropped by boat off the seaside resort town of Scheveningen, infiltrate a German officers’ party at the local casino, and make contact with British Intelligence using a radio dropped to him by parachute. On November 23, Tazelaar swam ashore and stripped off his dry suit – not a wetsuit as depicted in film – to reveal a full tuxedo. He then doused himself in brandy and stumbled up to the casino, pretending to be a drunken reveller who had gone for a seaside stroll. The act was so convincing that the German guards let Tazelaar pass, and he was able to enter the casino undetected. However, the mission was a failure, for Tazelaar’s radio was damaged in the drop and sea conditions around Scheveningen proved too rough to safely extract Dutch agents by boat. Nonetheless, the improbable mission helped inspire one of the most memorable moments in the history of spy cinema, though there is no evidence Tazelaar ever wore a snorkel topped with a stuffed seagull. That’s the sort of thing only Sean Connery could make look cool.
Expand for References
Wain, Natalie, He Was Immortalized as a Bond Villain by Ian Fleming, but now Architect Erno Goldfinger’s Most Revered London Tower Block Has Been Given Listed Building Status, Ideal Home, July 21, 2013, https://www.idealhome.co.uk/news/erno-goldfinger-s-metro-central-heights-given-listed-building-status-42393
Schwarcz, Joe, Did You Know: Goldfinger’s First Name was “Auric” Based on the Latin “Aurum” for Gold, McGill University, May 28, 2021, https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/history-did-you-know/did-you-know-goldfingers-first-name-was-auric-based-latin-aurum-gold
Passino, Carla, A Modernist House by the Architect That Inspired James Bond’s Arch-Villain, Country Life, June 15, 2021, https://www.countrylife.co.uk/property/a-modernist-house-by-the-architect-that-inspired-james-bonds-arch-villain-228234
Duncan, Michael, Fleming vs. Goldfinger: What Really Happened When the Architect Took on the Author, Footprints of London, November 12, 2015, https://footprintsoflondon.com/live/2015/11/fleming-vs-goldfinger-what-really-happened-when-the-architect-took-on-the-author/
Ezard, John, How Goldfinger Nearly Became Goldprick, The Guardian, June 2, 2005, https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/jun/03/film.hayfestival2005
Ernö Goldfinger, GreyScape, https://www.greyscape.com/architects/ernogoldfinger/
How Ernö Goldfinger Brutalised Both East and West, Phaidon, https://ift.tt/e0UV3gG
Forget, Benjamin, Prince Charles, Architecture’s Royal Pain, The Washington Post, February 22, 1990, https://ift.tt/BNe6oOC
The post The Real Life Feud That Created One of James Bond’s Most Iconic Villains appeared first on Today I Found Out.
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by Gilles Messier - April 03, 2023 at 01:47PM
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Saturday, April 1, 2023
Review: Rap Snacks Hot Rings MoneyBagg Yo
These corn-based rings were narrow in diameter and fairly thick with a very bright red seasoning powder that coated the surfaces fairly completely. ...
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by April 01, 2023 at 08:24AM
Friday, March 31, 2023
What Actually Defines an ‘Assault Rifle’ and Who Invented Them?
“Like the Swiss Army Knife, the popular AR-15 rifle is a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment.”
Benitez’s landmark decision was but one episode in the long-running political debate over gun rights and gun control in the United States, much of which has centred on the class of firearms known as assault rifles and in particular the popular AR-15 family. To gun-control advocates, rifles like the AR-15 are deadly weapons of war unsuited to civilian use and the favoured tools of criminals and mass shooters; while to gun rights activists they are merely highly adaptable, reliable tools, no different from any other sporting firearm. But what is the truth of the matter? What is an “assault rifle”, how did it get its name, and how does this class of firearm differ from all others. The answer may surprise you.
What we now call assault rifles can trace their origins back to the Second World War. While that conflict is remembered for introducing advanced technologies like radar, jet aircraft, and nuclear weapons, the average infantryman went into WWII armed essentially the same weapon his parents had used in the last war: a bolt-action, manually-repeating rifle firing a full-power cartridge. The only major exception was the United States, which in 1936 became the first nation to issue a semi-automatic rifle – the M1 Garand – as its standard infantry weapon. But while such weapons were well-suited to shooting across no-man’s-land during the Great War or the South African Veldt during the Boer War, in the increasingly urban, close-quarters combat troops increasingly found themselves engaged in, bolt-action rifles quickly became something of a liability. Not only were they slow and awkward to operate – severely limiting the volume of fire that could be laid down – but the full-power cartridges they fired, great for precision shots over long distances, were grossly overpowered, with Army reports indicating that few combat engagements occurred at ranges over 300 metres. Such cartridges also made fully-automatic weapons all but uncontrollable when fired from the shoulder.
Thankfully, most armies had another class of weapon at their arsenal: the submachine gun. Developed at the end of the Great War for raiding and clearing trenches, submachine guns fired lower-recoil pistol-calibre ammunition and could deliver a murderous volume of fire at close quarters, making them ideal for urban combat. This advantage was exploited to great effect by the Soviet Red Army, who equipped entire infantry companies with PPsH-41 and 43 submachine guns for house-to-house fighting in cities like Stalingrad. But submachine guns were not a perfect solution, being inaccurate at ranges beyond a few dozen metres. Both the Soviets and the Germans quickly realized that this new kind of combat required a new kind of weapon, one which combined the volume of fire and full-auto controllability of a submachine gun with the accuracy of a rifle – at least over moderate ranges.
Interestingly, both nations approached the same problem from opposite ends. Unlike most armies, the tactical structure of the German Wehrmacht was organized not around the rifleman, but rather the machine gun squad, with rifle-carrying infantry playing a supporting role. This is a major reason army planners chose to retain the Great War-era Mauser 1898-pattern bolt-action rifle rather than adopt a more modern semi-automatic infantry weapon. But while this arrangement worked well during the Blitzkrieg campaigns of 1939, 1940, and 1941, it proved less effective in 1943 as the Wehrmacht found itself in full-on retreat following the disaster at Stalingrad. Though the German MG 34 and MG 42 machine guns could lay down an impressive volume of fire, they required extensive setup before they could be brought to bear – something that was difficult to do while retreating. German industry thus set about designing a more compact, man-portable machine gun that could be more easily used on the retreat.
Fortuitously, the basic elements for such a weapon were already in development. In 1938, the Polte Ammunition Works in Magdeburg designed a new kind of ammunition, designated the 7.92x33mm Kurz or “short.” This was essentially a cut-down version of the standard full-power 7.92x 57mm Mauser cartridge used in German bolt-action rifles and machine guns, with a shorter case and lighter bullet. This provided a balance between recoil and accuracy, allowing an infantryman to lay down controllable automatic fire from the shoulder while still being able to accurately hit targets out to 300 metres. In 1940 the German government issued contracts to firms Haenel and Walther to produce prototypes of a rifle to fire the new Kurz cartridge, to be designated the Maschinenkarabiner or “Machine Carbine” 42. Both companies produced similar weapons, which looked unlike anything that had come before. Both were gas-operated, built of lightweight and inexpensive welded steel stampings, and featured an inline shoulder stock, low-slung barrel to reduce muzzle climb, and a long, curved 30-round detachable box magazine. Both companies’ prototypes were extensively tested at the Kummersdorf proving grounds in December 1940, and the results were…less than impressive, with the weapons suffering a large number of jams, burst barrels and other failures. Undaunted, Walther and Haenel continued to refine their designs, and in April 1942 the Haenel weapon was judged reliable enough for combat trials, first seeing service on the Eastern Front, south of Leningrad.
The reaction of the first troops to use the new weapon was overwhelmingly positive, and they requested that more MKb 42s be sent to the front immediately. Unfortunately, the entire program suddenly fell victim to that greatest of enemies to the German war effort: Adolf Hitler, who ordered all new rifle development programs suspended. The reason for this decision is hotly debated among historians, with some arguing that Hitler, having been a soldier in the Great War himself, was suspicious of new technology and believed that the standard KAR98K bolt-action rifle was perfectly adequate for the German infantryman’s needs. Others, however, claim that his decision was a far more pragmatic one. German forces had lost vast quantities of rifles and other weapons during the retreat from Stalingrad, greatly straining the capacity of German industry to replace them. Introducing a new pattern of rifle, which required brand-new tooling and manufacturing facilities, would only make the situation worse and result in too few new rifles being produced to have any significant impact on the war effort. Hitler thus limited research and development efforts to upgraded models of submachine guns.
Believing they had a winning weapon on their hands, Haenel made the bold decision to go behind the Führer’s back and continue development of the Mkb 42 under the designation Maschinenpistole or “Machine Pistol” 43. In order to address the issue of manufacturing capacity, Haenel attempted to develop the MP 43 into a complete replacement for the KAR98K, fitting it with a grenade launching attachment, mounts for telescopic sights, and a bayonet lug. Unfortunately, the rifle proved fundamentally unsuited to sniping, bayonet fighting, or grenade launching, and it was reluctantly decided that the MP43 could only ever supplement the KAR98K, not replace it. In March 1943, Hitler discovered Haenel’s deception and ordered the project shut down once again. However, he was eventually persuaded to allow development to continue on an evaluation basis only. But the results of early trials proved so promising that Hitler approved the weapon for mass-production, the first examples entering combat in October 1943. Once again the reaction from front-line soldiers was overwhelmingly positive- so much so that when Hitler asked his Eastern Front generals in July 1944 what they most needed, one general immediately exclaimed “more of those new rifles!” Hitler soon warmed to the MP 43 concept, and recognizing the propaganda value of this new weapon, requested that it be given a new name: Sturmgewehr, or “Assault Rifle.” Nearly 426,000 StG 44 rifles were produced by the end of the war, and while they proved extremely effective in combat, by the time they entered service the war for Germany was already lost, and the new weapon had little to no impact on the final outcome of the conflict. However, the basic concept of a select-fire rifle firing an intermediate cartridge – as well as the name “assault rifle” – was to have major impact on the future of firearms design.
Meanwhile, a similar development was taking place in the Soviet Union. Recognizing, as the Germans had, the need for a cartridge halfway between a pistol and rifle in power, in 1943 the Soviet OKB-44 design bureau developed the intermediate 7.62x39mm cartridge for use in a planned family of new infantry weapons, including a semi-automatic rifle, an automatic rifle, and a light machine gun. The cartridge, along with the semi-automatic SKS rifle designed by Sergei Simonov, first entered combat in limited numbers in 1945 during the final battles against Nazi Germany. The round performed well, and in 1949 the SKS was officially adopted as the Red Army’s standard rifle, alongside the RPD light machine gun firing the same round. However, the SKS would prove extremely short-lived in front-line service, thanks to the development of a weapon that would go on to become legendary.
In October 1941, tank commander Mikhail Kalashnikov was recovering in hospital from shoulder wounds received during the Battle of Bryansk. With plenty of time on his hands, Kalashnikov decided to solve what he saw as a major deficiency in Soviet armaments and designed a new type of submachine gun for the Red Army:
“I was in the hospital, and a soldier in the bed beside me asked: ‘Why do our soldiers have only one rifle for two or three of our men, when the Germans have automatics?’ So I designed one. I was a soldier, and I created a machine gun for a soldier.”
While Kalashnikov’s submachine gun was not accepted into service, his talent as a designer was recognized and he was reassigned to the Red Army’s Central Scientific Development Firing Range for Rifle Firearms of the Chief Artillery Directorate. In 1944 Kalashnikov became aware of the 7.62x39mm intermediate cartridge and redesigned his submachine gun to accommodate it. The resulting weapon looked very similar to the German StG 44, with an inline stock, low-slung barrel, and curved 30-round magazine. Whether Kalashnikov was directly influenced by the German weapon is debatable, with most historians attributing the similarities to a case of convergent design – that is, of two designers coming up with similar solutions to the same problem. Indeed, the operating mechanism of the two rifles is quite different, the StG 44 using a tipping bolt and the Kalashnikov a rotating bolt. However, it is worth noting while the Germans were trying to create a machine gun that could be used at shorter ranges, Kalashnikov was trying to create a submachine gun that could be used at longer ranges.
In 1946 Kalashnikov entered his design into a competition for a new infantry automatic rifle, which it eventually won. In 1947, the weapon was approved for service under the designation Avtomat Kalashnikova – or “Kalashnikov’s Automatic Rifle” – 1947, better known as the AK-47. Trials of the new rifle began in 1948, and in 1949 the AK-47 was adopted as the Red Army’s standard rifle, replacing the SKS after barely a year in service. The AK family of rifles would go on to become the most successful and widely-produced firearms in history, renowned for their ruggedness, reliability, and ease of use. Millions were exported around the world by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist states, and can be found in war zones worldwide to this day. It is important to note here that while the weapon is popularly referred to as the “AK-47,” this designation technically applies to the first three patterns of the rifle. While the first AK-47 featured stamped steel construction like the StG 44, this proved unreliable and was quickly replaced by machined steel construction for the Type 2 in 1951 and Type 3 in 1954. Then, in 1959, Soviet manufacturers finally perfected the stamped-steel technology and introduced the Modernized AK or AKM. This is the AK most commonly encountered around the world, the original “AK-47” patterns being extremely rare.
Yet despite the success of the StG 44 and the AK, it took several decades for the assault rifle concept to catch on in the West. American infantry doctrine had long emphasized individual marksmanship and firing accurate aimed shots over long distances over suppressing fire, and despite the lessons of urban close-combat combat during WWII, the United States was reluctant to adopt an intermediate cartridge. In 1954 the U.S. pressured the newly-formed North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO into adopting the full-power 7.62×51 or .308 calibre cartridge as its infantry standard. This decision forced many NATO countries to abandon advanced assault rifle projects and adopt so-called “battle rifles” firing full-power cartridges, such as the Belgian FN-FAL, German G3, and American M14, which was essentially an M1 Garand with a detachable box magazine and select-fire capability. Unfortunately, these rifles proved less than ideal, the full-power .308 cartridge making them nigh-uncontrollable in full-automatic fire. This led many countries like the UK to delete the full-automatic capability from their battle rifles altogether.
The deficiencies of the battle rifle concept became glaringly obvious as the United States entered the Vietnam War, where the bulky, wood-stocked M14 proved prone to snagging in heavy brush and warping in the tropical humidity. By contrast, the Chinese-supplied SKSs and AKs used by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army proved ideally suited to jungle warfare, being light, compact, reliable, and capable of controlled automatic fire. It quickly became clear to U.S. Commanders that an American answer to the AK was desperately needed. Thankfully, just such a weapon was already in development.
In 1954, Richard Boutelle, president of the Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation, created the ArmaLite division to explore the use of aluminium and other aerospace materials in firearms design. The division’s first success came that same year when it designed the lightweight folding AR-5 and AR-7 survival rifles for use by U.S. aircrew shot down behind enemy lines. In 1957, ArmaLite was invited to enter the competition for a new U.S. Forces rifle to replace the WWII-era M1 Garand, and to this end designer Eugene Stoner produced the AR-10, a lightweight aluminium-bodied rifle firing the 7.62x51mm NATO round. While the AR-10 would ultimately lose out to the M14, that same year General Willard G. Wyman, commander of the U.S. Army Continental Command, put out a request for a lightweight automatic rifle to fire the newly-developed 5.56x45mm or .223 calibre intermediate cartridge. Stoner scaled down the AR-10 design to create a new rifle called the AR-15, which after extensive trials and conversion to fully-automatic capability was adopted into U.S. service in 1964 as the M16. While the lightweight, space-age weapon was initially disparaged by troops as the “Mattel Rifle”, the M16 quickly proved its worth in the jungles of Vietnam, and Eugene Stoner’s AR system has formed the basis for all standard U.S. military service rifles to the present day. The rifle also set the trend for modern assault rifles, the 5.56x45mm cartridge being flatter-shooting and more lightweight than the Russian 7.62×54, the latter feature allowing an infantryman to carry more ammunition. As a result, in 1974 the Soviet Union replaced the AKM with the AK74 firing the broadly similar 5.45x39mm cartridge. And in 1980 NATO adopted 5.56x45mm as its infantry standard, replacing the full-power 7.62×51.
All this brings us back to our original question: just what is an assault rifle? According to the standard U.S. Army definition, to be classified as an assault rifle a firearm must have three basic characteristics embodied in the original StG 44 and AK-47: 1) it must fire an intermediate cartridge with an effective range of at least 300 metres; 2) it must have select-fire capability – that is, the ability to fire in fully-automatic mode; and 3) it must have a high-capacity detachable box magazine. By this definition, most civilian versions of the widely demonized AR-15 are not, in fact assault rifles, for while these rifles are designed to fire an intermediate cartridge and can be fitted with large capacity magazines, the AR-15 is, by definition, a semi-automatic firearm. Furthermore, “AR” does not stand for “Assault Rifle,” as is widely believed, but rather “Armalite Rifle.” Similarly, any firearm lacking one or more of the above characteristics cannot be classified as an assault rifle. For example, the original M14 has a detachable high capacity magazine and select-fire capability, but fires a full-power rifle cartridge; while the SKS, despite firing an intermediate cartridge, has only a 10-round fixed magazine and no select-fire capability.
Nor should “Assault Rifles” be confused with “Assault Weapons,” the latter being neither a technical or military term but rather a political one. The term derives from the U.S. Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which defined “Assault Weapons” as those which possess one or more of the following features, among others:
- A pistol grip or thumbhole stock
- A folding or telescoping stock
- A grenade or flare launcher
- A forward handgrip
- A threaded barrel
- A muzzle device such as a muzzle brake, flash hider, or suppressor
- A bayonet mount
- A barrel shroud that prevents burns to the operator
- A manufactured unloaded weight of over 50 ounces (1.41 kg) for pistols
As you may have noticed, few of these features in any way affect the actual mechanical operation or deadliness of a firearm, and instead merely serve to make it look “tactical” or “scary” compared to more traditional firearms used for hunting and other sporting purposes. Unsurprisingly, this purely cosmetic definition has lead to a variety of nonsensical contradictions in the application of gun-control laws. For example, the Ruger Mini-14, a scaled-down version of the M14 chambered for the 5.56x45mm cartridge, has rarely been targeted by assault weapons bans despite firing the same cartridge and having roughly the same capabilities as the AR-15. The only major difference between the AR-15 and the Mini-14 is that the latter is typically sold with a traditional wooden stock, making it look less intimidating.
None of this, of course, has any bearing on who should be able to own which firearms and why, and it is hardly the business of this channel to wade into the highly contentious gun control debate. But as with any fraught political topic, it is always best to approach the conversation from a position of knowledge rather than ignorance. For as a paragon of quality 1980s children’s television once said: knowing is half the battle.
If you liked this article, you might also enjoy our new popular podcast, The BrainFood Show (iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Feed), as well as:
- Has Anyone Ever Fired a Gun in Space, Space Cannons, and the Guns Designed for Astronauts?
- The Story of the Iconic ‘Tommy Gun’
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- That Time Nevada Executed a Prisoner With a Shooting Machine
- During WWII, Lyudmila Pavlichenko Sniped a Confirmed 309 Axis Soldiers, Including 36 German Snipers
Erenfeicht, Leszek, Sturmgewehr: Hitler’s Only True Wunderwaffe, Small Arms Defense Journal, September 30, 2013, http://www.sadefensejournal.com/wp/sturmgewehr-hitlers-only-true-wunderwaffe/
Williams, Anthony, Assault Rifles and Their Ammunition: History and Prospects, June 22, 2008, https://web.archive.org/web/20080714163011/http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk:80/Assault.htm
Bocetta, Sam, The Complete History of the AR-15 Rifle, Small Wars Journal, December 7, 2017, https://ift.tt/63sQ4wK
Hogg, Ian, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Ammunition, Chartwell Books, NJ, 1985
Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-103hr3355enr/pdf/BILLS-103hr3355enr.pdf
McCollum, Ian, Kalashnikov vs Sturmgewehr, Forgotten Weapons, September 17, 2016, https://youtube.com/watch?v=sPWJOJZQCs8
The post What Actually Defines an ‘Assault Rifle’ and Who Invented Them? appeared first on Today I Found Out.
from Today I Found Out
by Gilles Messier - March 31, 2023 at 06:18PM
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