In Other News...

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Albany, N.Y. (AP) — A New York City man who admitted to smuggling three pythons in his pants through a U.S.-Canadian border crossing was sentenced Wednesday to a year of probation and fined $5,000, federal prosecutors said.








Eric Idle; Michael Palin and John Cleese were unavailable for comment.

 

[Stivino]

Literally, trouser snakes.

 

[Odds]

Had to take the guy literally when he excused himself to 'siphon the python'...

 

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London (AP) — Michael “Barney” Chandler has just got the most important job in England.

The 56-year-old former Royal Marine is the new ravenmaster at the Tower of London, responsible for looking after the feathered protectors of the 1,000-year-old fortress. He heads a team of four other Beefeaters looking after the tower’s seven ravens — the six decreed by Charles II and a spare. They are Jubilee, Harris, Poppy, Georgie, Edgar, Branwen and latest addition Rex, who was named in honor of the coronation of King Charles III last year.

“You never know what they’re going to do,” Chandler said. They’re all totally different, personality-wise. Some will play ball, but others won’t. It’s just the unpredictability, which is also the interesting part of the job.

“They’re always trying to catch us out,” he said fondly. “They know what we’re up to.”

 

[Odds]

But Bella and the Seven Winds certainly earns her title. Isn't she beautiful?

She'll give those Kelpies a run for their money.
BBCnews.co.uk
And...
Orca vs Jaws
Who d'you think would win?

 

[Odds]

About fifty miles north of London is an Iron Age Roman settlement along its southern edge and medieval earthworks are visible in the northeast section. Berryfields was charitably excavated between 2007 and 2016 by Oxford Archaeology, and the results of the fieldwork revealed nearly two millennia of fascinating human activity.
A team of researchers believe the Romans originally used to extract water for brewing ale, and later transformed the well into a place of ritual. However, in addition to the many objects uncovered from the depths, one item has baffled scientists today: a 1,700-year-old egg that is completely intact. The egg was found some years ago, but more recently, scientists made another discovery about it. A Micro CT scan showed that this ancient egg is still full of liquid.

The unbreakable egg@Atlas Obscura.com

 

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Are we there yet?

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A nugget of local news regarding Godfrey Maynell who's walking 1,000 miles for Christian Aid charity. Godfrey has completed more than one-hundred miles so far, walking around four miles a day, and hopes to cover the whole distance in two-hundred days or so.

At the age of 89 i'd be happy to make it downstairs for breakfast.

At the end of January in 2003, as mass opposition was mounting against another conflict being waged in the Middle East region, Meynell boarded one of three London double-decker buses for a 20-day, 3,000-mile journey to Iraq. Meynell, then a 68-year-old grandfather, was heading off to act as a human shield with other anti-war protesters from around the world in the hope of preventing the city from being bombed by a US-led coalition. The organisers' ambition was to inspire a crusade for peace that would stop America and her allies, including Britain, from going to war. In the event, it fizzled out.

In 2014, he was so moved by the plight of refugees from Syria arriving in Greece that he donated the proceeds of the sale of a masterpiece by the 18th-century artist Joseph Wright to a church charity. Valued before auction at £150,000, A Grotto in the Gulf of Salerno, with the Figure of Julia, Banished from Rome went under the hammer for £665,000.

The National Archive

He has a long legcy to live up to: the Meynell family has held the ancestral seat for 800 years and one of them won the VC.

On 29th September 1935 at Mohmand, in the Nahaqi Pass within the Khyber Pass on the North West Frontier, British India (now Pakistan), in the final phase of an attack, Captain Meynell, seeking information on the most forward troops, found them involved in a struggle against an enemy vastly superior in numbers. He at once took command, and with two Lewis guns and about thirty men, maintained a heavy and accurate fire on the advancing enemy, whose overwhelming numbers nevertheless succeeded in reaching the position and putting the Lewis guns out of action. In the hand-to-hand struggle which ensued, Captain Meynell was mortally wounded, but the heavy casualties inflicted on the enemy prevented them from exploiting their success.

Victoria Cross online.com

 

[Odds]

Excavations at Pompeii have revealed fresh details about life in a Roman town: one thing never changes...the fizzin' builders scarpered leaving a pile o' rubble behind before the home owner could get his money back.

In the reception hall, rubble in the far right corner is from renovation at the time of the eruption

BBCnews.co.uk

The three-part series, Pompeii: The New Dig, begins on Monday 15 April, 21:00 BST, on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer. It will become available internationally. There is also an Open University website connected with the series.

 

[Brigadier]

They had steel scaffolding in ancient Rome?

 

[Odds]

They had steel scaffolding in ancient Rome?

Not as such...but Roman concrete is much better than our stuff.
Arabs had far better steel, though. You can't replicate the technique's used to make a Damascene blade these days. A lost art.

 

[IT Minion]

Not as such...but Roman concrete is much better than our stuff.
Arabs had far better steel, though. You can't replicate the technique's used to make a Damascene blade these days. A lost art.

Roman concrete wasn't better. It lasted longer but it was harder to work with, which is why we don't use that formula.

Damascus steel is also inferior to modern high carbon steel, but it's unusually good stuff that wasn't bettered until after we discovered science.

 

[Odds]

Roman concrete wasn't better. It lasted longer but it was harder to work with, which is why we don't use that formula.

Damascus steel is also inferior to modern high carbon steel, but it's unusually good stuff that wasn't bettered until after we discovered science.

Well, Roman concrete was more dangerous to work with but has lasted far longer than any other material from ancient times and nobody has worked out how to recreate the vitrified forts found in Scotland...

The research team discovered that while modern concrete is made to be inert, the Roman version interacts with the environment. When seawater interacts with the mixture, it forms rare minerals aluminous tobermorite and phillipsite which are believed to strengthen the material.

Risk Frontiers.com

Modern steel has the edge since the Bessemer process made the metal much stronger but for the pure aesthetic, a blade made with Wootz steel, folded over and over, then worked back and forth has an unrivalled beauty.

 

[Odds]

Watching the dig aat Pompeii last night was v. interesting. The room with the fresco was in a building that was found to be a bakery and in a room next to it, the remains of two women and a child were found crushed by the roof collapsing on them as the weight of rock and pumice from the eruption fell on the town. In the room where builders were at work, it was surmised they were repairing damage from an earlier earthquake and the remains of a pickaxe were found to measure exactly with a modern pick used on the dig.

They still haven't dug into half of the buried town and it's weird to think of the amazing discoveries yet to be found 100 or 200 years from now. By then i expect technology could've developed to bring some of these victims back from the dead and tell people of their everyday lives through holograms and artificial intelligence. A portrait of the wealthy owners of the bakery was discovered and they could even show tourists around a recreation of their business, two thousand years ago. Enjoy a slice of pizza with the Julians, Roman style.

Catch it on Iplayer if you missed it.