#a seven foot austrian perhaps

[uhohdad]

I hope your back doesn't hurt from carrying the weight of being the funniest most talented person in the König fandom

my back does hurt but only from carrying my massive ti

[ryuzakemo128]

Grim Reaper Part Five

Pairings: Poly 141 x female reader / female reader x her mental health x König

Content Warnings: Kidnapping, breaking and entering, mention of one-night stand, pregnancy from one-night stand, mention of past divorce, mention of miscarriage, possessive & obsessed Austrian man.

Words: 1426

Masterlist - Prequel - Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five - Part Six - Part Seven - Part Eight - Part Nine

Supernatural AU - Poem

Credit for Dividers: @cafekitsune + @strangergraphics

Summary: “I have nothing to say to you.” You spat. “You decided to step out of the relationship. I just decided I didn’t want to wait for someone who didn’t want me.”

You should have known better than to think he would have ever let you go. You were a fool to think you would be able to outrun him, Maus. Nine years of marriage to you. It wasn’t his fault his affair partner caused your first miscarriage. How was he to know that she would have done that to you?

“I have nothing to say to you.” You spat. “You decided to step out of the relationship. I just decided I didn’t want to wait for someone who didn’t want me.”

König frowned as he sat across the table from you. “You left first.” He stated. As if anything he could ever say would bury anything he had done.

You were back in Austria. The same place you were so determined to leave behind all those years ago. The main reason why you moved into the cabin in Alaska. You missed the chill the Alaskan air had, the way it soothed your nerves, and the sauna you had in your backyard. Which you used when you felt overwhelmed or even overstimulated.

You looked into his blue eyes, you wouldn’t be moved by them like you were when you were young and naïve about the world. Not anymore. “What do you want from me?” you asked. You didn’t bother hiding the venom in your tone.

You slept with him. A one-night stand months ago. You didn’t understand why you did it at the time. Perhaps you were drunk or too drunk to notice it was him instead of someone else. You were pregnant again. You didn’t want to risk another miscarriage. Though the question hung in the back of your mind. How did he find out?

You didn’t tell him. You haven’t spoken to him in years, or at least in the past few months. This is the first time you spoke to him sober. How much does he know? What does this six foot ten sized man child know of it?

Silently, hoping they would find you before you decided to do something stupid or make a decision based on your own stupidity. You thought about picking the locks on the handcuffs and sprinting for the door. Something kept you from doing so. You didn’t know what it was. It must have been the photo of you that you happened to spot on the writing desk inside the room he locked you inside.

A spacious white room, beige walls and a chandelier that looked like it belonged to a museum exhibition than a cottage in the middle of the countryside of Austria. The large oil paintings decorated the walls must have been switched out since you have last stepped inside. You barely recognise the room you’re in now. It felt more sterile. Business-first, home second. Just like much of the rest of him.

The home you once thought of making with him, long gone by now. A blissful memory in a sea of ongoing mistakes. Him being the biggest one you made. You were sure to tell him when you sold the furniture you personally bought when you were living with him. No trace of your personality remained for any onlooker to discern. He was deployed when you left him. You were long gone by the time he got back.

You were indifferent to his thoughts; escape from your home-turned-nightmare was all that mattered. You were kind in leaving him a letter. Poetic. Subtle. Called him a lamb because by the time you were done sobbing. He was a lamb in your eyes. No more, no less.

The combination of the fluorescent lighting, the background noise, and the god-awful socks he put on your feet. Sent your mind spiralling in a mess of overstimulation. So many things going on a once, you wanted to puke and scratch your face off all at the same time. You expected this was his doing. Keeping your mind totally fucked, enough to keep you from making any rational decisions.

When you finally passed out on the super king-sized bed decorated in crimson red silk sheets and a black duvet. König had your meals brought in through a maid young enough to be your little sister or your niece. Which you have more of those than nephews at this stage of your life now.

Though you suspect this is due to being the eighth and final sibling. The youngest one of the lot. At times, it was clear who the favourites were, not that you would say anything about it at the time. As it wouldn’t have changed anything either way. Words were said about you to your face and behind your back enough times for you to go low contact with them. At least, at the time, it made sense for you to do such a thing. Looking back on it now. Maybe it wasn’t so much of a good idea.

Who knows now. You got married too young? Perhaps. You were expecting things to move at a faster pace? Not really. You had expectations and felt let down by the outcome. Though those expectations weren’t even high to begin with. You met Simon and Soap first, you were about to head out into a mission when you told them about the affair König is having. You weren’t thinking about who you were talking about to. You thought they’d ignore you or tell you to pipe down or something.

You still remember the conversation and how it played out to this day. It was the soothing memory you had all to yourself. You had no intention of telling him. A secret you would take to your grave no matter what happened to you in life.

“I found out about the affair the same time as I miscarried.” You started the conversation with Soap and Ghost that way. Which took them off guard. You must have been so tired at the time. As you rarely spoke to them. “I feel like a naïve idiot. I want the earth to open up and swallow me whole.”

Soap and Ghost exchanged a glance, their expressions filled with concern. “Hey, it's okay to feel that way,” Soap said softly. “Losing a child is incredibly painful.”

“And finding out your husband was cheating on you during such a difficult time? That's a betrayal,” Ghost added.

“It feels like a mismatch of double jeopardy and cosmic injustice," you continued, your voice trembling slightly. “I feel like a stale egg sandwich left out in the sun for two hours.”

It was the first conversation of the many, of them talking you into leaving the man for good. Soap said, “You deserve more than a man who thinks he can use you whenever and however he wants to.” Soap continued, a quiet rage building inside of him. “He doesn’t respect you now or ever. You don’t need him. He needed you.”

Ghost chimed in with, “I'm sure he won't notice you gone either. Think about it, he doesn't know of your work with us because he would rather be nose deep with another woman's business.”  Ghost continued, a quiet rage simmering just below the surface. “He's a selfish prick who doesn't deserve you.”

On the way back home you passed out, you were back at Austria at the time and slowly, yet surely you started to pull away from the relationship. The first thing you started doing was pulling your money into buying a cabin in the Alaskan wilderness, you started selling bits of furniture you couldn’t afford to take with you to Alaska.

By the time, König had any kind of inkling of what was happening around him. You were already gone, and you had no intention of coming back to a man who didn’t feel like being faithful was something he ‘had’ to do in any kind of way.

Seeing him there in the doorway now, it felt like a different world entirely, and you didn’t know how to feel about it either. An entire world away from the one you started to build with task force 141. Something they gave you, it couldn’t be taken from you in the same way he did to you. “I don’t need you anymore. I have a new life somewhere. You should have gone on to that ‘pretty young thing’ you had.”

[empirearchives]

Napoleon and Water

Excerpt from the book Aaron Burr in Exile: A Pariah in Paris, 1810-1811, by Jane Merrill and John Endicott

Aaron Burr lived in Paris for 15 months, and this book goes into detail about those years living under Napoleon’s rule. This part focuses on Napoleon’s water related reforms.

———

Napoleon’s fountains gave drinking water to the population, that is, children drank water, not beer. The water was free, not purchased. And the apartment would have had a separate water closet equipped with squat toilets (adopted from the Turks) and a bucket to wash it after use. Some restaurants and cafes had W.C.s, even one for ladies and one for gents. These were hooked into the sewer system that branched under each important street.

Napoleon merits points for delivering fresh water to Paris. If serving Paris with water from the d'Ourcq River by canals was not be a consummate success, Paris gained 40 new fountains, and the emperor commanded that fountains run all day (instead of a few limited hours) and that the water be free of charge.

Perhaps the most laudable of Napoleon’s policies were utilitarian city works, especially bringing clean water and sanitation to Paris. The improvements to infrastructure included new quays to prevent floods, new gutters and pavement, new aqueducts and fountains, and relocating cemeteries and slaughterhouses to the outskirts of the city. This was also a way of keeping up employment. An Austrian aristocrat in town during Napoleon’s wedding to Marie-Louise wrote his mother, in Vienna: “Nothing can give an idea of the immense projects undertaken simultaneously in Paris. The incoherence of it is incredible; one cannot imagine that the life of a single man would be enough to finish them.”

It was a tall order. Previous rulers had been aware of the problems and one big engineering initiative, a failed marvel, had been the waterworks at Marly, located on the banks of the Seine about seven miles from Paris. Louis XIV had it constructed to pump water from the river to his chateaux of Versailles and Marly. This was the machine marvel of its age, with 250 pumps that forced river water up a 500-foot rise to an aqueduct, and it was a sight Burr mentions going to see. By 1817 the “Marly machine” had deteriorated because it was made of wood, and the waterworks were abandoned.

Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, the prominent 19th century literary critic, wrote that there had been “ten years of anarchy, sedition and laxity, during which no useful work had been undertaken, not a street had been cleaned, not a residence repaired nothing improved or cleansed.” Postrevolutionary Paris was at a nadir in terms of both the inadequate, disease-ridden water supply and the filthy streets, which were basically open sewers, deep with black mud and refuse.

“Napoleon,” writes Alistair Horne, “was obsessed by the water of Paris, and everything to do with it.”

Parisians had mostly been getting their water directly from the Seine or lining up at the scant pay fountains. In 1806, nineteen new wells for fountains were dug that flowed day and night and were free. Napoleon had a canal built 60 miles from the River Ourcq, ordering 500 men to dig it, while still a consul in 1801. It brought water to the Bassin de la Villette, opening in 1808. Some doubted the wisdom of having such an abundance of water—an oriental luxury that might incur moral decay. Now the supply of water for firefighting was also much improved. The canal had light boats, as Napoleon tried to make back some of the huge expenditure by licensing navigation, and a circular aqueduct from which underground conduits went to the central city. In 1810, there were still many water porters wheeling barrels through the city.

Now Napoleon attacked the problem of the Seine as a catchall for pollution. Parisians were so used to it that men swam naked in the river and a contemporary guidebook advised merely that the water of the Seine had no ill effects on foreigners so long as they drank it mixed with wine or a drop of vinegar. Thus houses on bridges were demolished and an immense push began to clean and modernize the city sewers.

As this book is about Aaron Burr, here is section about Burr taking inspiration by a new water related invention during his time in Paris:

Remarkably for someone who was very aware of his health, he never complained of the water. He did, however, take an interest in an invention to make it easier to dig a well. When the inventor of a process to make vinegar from the sap of any tree was not in his shop, Burr and a friend, “Crede”, went to see another invention: “We went then to see Mons. Cagniard, and his new invention of raising water and performing any mechanical operation. His apparatus is a screw of Archimedes turned the reverse, air, water, and quick silver. Cagniard was abroad; but we saw a model, and worked it, and got the report of a committee of the Institute on the subject. If the thing performs what is said I will apply it to give water to Charleston.”

[Bold italics for quotations by me]

[inky-duchess]

The Duchess's Writeable People of History #8

Maria Antonia of the House of Haspburg, Marie Antoinette, Last Queen of France and Archduchess of the Holy Roman Empire

Marie Antoinette was the last Queen of France. Hated and villified, Marie Antoinette has been centre stage of the French revolution. Known to her enemies as Widow Capet, Madam Deficit and the Austrian bitch, Marie Antoinette was slandered ever since she crossed the French border. Did history ever give her a chance? We're going to, right here.

Marie Antoinette was born as Maria Antonia, youngest daughter of the powerful Holy Roman Empress, Maria Theresa. She was one of fifteen children so there was little time for her. She wasn't educated as greatly as others and nobody bothered to teach her how to be a queen. Maria Antonia was trained from birth to become the Dauphine, the wife of the heir to the throne. In her fourteenth year, she was finally sent to go to marry her prince. This was going to be the biggest moment of her life. She was not going to ever be sidelined again. She was not Maria Antonia. She was to be Marie Antoinette.

Arriving in France was no fairytale. She did not take to her husband Louis at first (they didn't consummate the marriage for seven years) and the king turned out to be under the spell of his mistress Madame du Barry. Marie Antoinette was inducted into the intricate etiquette system of Versailles. Everything was done for her. She didn't dress without help or alone. People came to watch her get dressed and eat. Nothing was private any more.

Marie Antoinette had one big obstacle in her early years: du Barry. The mistress couldn't speak to her until Marie Antoinette spoke to her first, something she avoided. She finally spoke to du Barry with the infamous words "There are a lot of people at Versailles today." But Marie Antoinette would not suffer long. When the king died, du Barry was shoved out and Marie Antoinette became Queen.

Marie Antoinette had four children but two died young. When she was giving birth, the court crowded to watch. Nothing was private in Versailles. Once Queen, Marie Antoinette began to spend. She owned thousands of gowns, shoes and wigs. Some blame her education for her recklessness with money and some say she was greedy. I think it was because of extreme loneliness.

Because France had over taxed their people, most of the increases were due to the American War of Independence, the French revolted. They stormed the Bastille on 14th July. Yet the king and queen stayed at Versailles. A group of women stormed Versailles and drove the royal family to the smaller Tuileries palace. There the royals were arrested.

Though attempting an escape, the royals never made it out. Once King Louis was guillotined, nobody was safe. Marie Antoinette was put on trial. They claimed she had molested her own son and had said the infamous and false phrase "If they have no bread, let them eat cake." Marie Antoinette climbed the guillotine steps after her trial. She stepped on her executioner's foot by accident (maybe) and apologised before getting on her knees and dying.

Marie Antoinette was not history's villain. She cannot be overly cleared for all she was accused of but perhaps we can understand her a little bit. Marie Antoinette remains the most glamorous Queens of History.

For @slythering98

[f1chronicle]

Car 77 On Pole For German GP As Nurburgring Returns To F1 After 7 Years

It didn’t take long for Valtteri Bottas to assert his Mercedes team’s dominance at its home Grand Prix event as the Finn usurped teammate Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen to take pole for the 2020 German Grand Prix, at Nurburgring.

The winner of the Russian Grand Prix, held just a fortnight ago, therefore, would now have his sights to convert his third pole of the year (previous two being at Austria and the 70th anniversary Grand Prix) into as many wins. Should that happen then the Nurburgring would raise a toast to the home team; a force that given its unmatched consistency and flawless performances in 2020 could be called the strongman of FORMULA 1.

After clear skies took over from overcast and threatening conditions that denied Friday’s free-practice, Saturday’s qualifying session was lit with great speed and the usually taxing challenge of contending with arguably the most challenging track on the FORMULA 1 calendar.

And while the numerical output of the all-important qualifying with car#77 racing to the top of a track that returns to the sport after 7 years makes sense, can Bottas’ challengers- Hamilton (searching for a 92nd career win) and Verstappen (searching for what could be a second win at Germany) stop a refreshingly charged driver would form the exciting question on Sunday.

But where it stands at the moment, then it suffices to say that the 31-year-old didn’t put a foot wrong in Q3, having looked good and smooth all weekend, as he bagged his ninth career pole recording a 1:25:269 seconds from the end of the session. A statement of intent from a driver, one would think, who returned to winning ways at Sochi. But also an act that not only denied Hamilton from producing what could’ve been yet another exhibition of Hammertime, in the process of which Bottas revived his own attempts for the 2020 World Championship.

That said, while the Nurburgring upheld the dominance of the two Mercedes on Saturday, with the Red Bulls of Verstappen and Albon, in third and fifth, following the Black Arrows, it also brought to light that at least one Ferrari is trying and doing all it can to salvage a fight in a year where things haven’t quite gone Vettel’s way. Charles Leclerc, in his P4, punched above his weight one might think in recording a strong drive for the Scuderia.

However, it was another challenging race for local-hero Sebastian Vettel, down in eleventh, not the best sight for the man who back in 2013, the last that FORMULA 1 raced at the Nurburgring, won an exciting contest ahead of the two Lotuses (Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean).

Meanwhile, the two Renaults of Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon followed in sixth and seventh, the Australian once again out-qualifying his French teammate, with Norris, Perez, and Sainz, following in eighth, ninth, and tenth, respectively.

Monza-winner Pierre Gasly is all set to begin his first-ever drive at the Nurburgring from twelfth on the grid, right behind Vettel’s Ferrari, as his teammate, Daniil Kvyat shall begin from thirteenth.

Though, the young French driver will feel disappointed having not had the best of qualifying forms of late, putting his Alpha Tauri on ninth on the grid for Russia two weeks back.

Source: Official F1 twitter handle @F1

That said, the most encouraging outcome for the backmarkers, it must be said, was Antonio Giovinazzi’s qualifying effort, the Martina Franca-born Alfa Romeo driver all set to begin his first-ever FORMULA 1 drive from fourteenth on the grid. But in so doing, the Italian made it to Q2 for the first time this season, a mighty fine result for a man who also helped his team open their account this season, thanks to his 2 points at the 2020 Austrian GP.

The 2020 German GP proving that there’s a lot of fight left in the man who’s found himself in not the most comfortable position this season, being outqualified by Kimi Raikkonen in more races than he would’ve liked.

Meanwhile, Haas’ Kevin Magnussen, following the Alfa Romeo of Giovinazzi, in fifteenth, would surely have felt disappointed with the outcome of the 2020 German GP qualifying having shown fine pace in his Q2 and Q1 runs.

Grosjean, who was on the podium here back in 2013, followed his teammate in sixteenth with Russell, outqualifying his teammate once again this season, both Williams drivers to begin this maiden race at the daunting German venue.

Meanwhile, the Nurburgring outcome on Sunday might not be the finest one for a man who is all set to become the sport’s most experienced driver, Kimi Raikkonen all set to enter his 323rd FORMULA 1 race. A poor afternoon for the Iceman, who begins from down in nineteenth doesn’t cut the finest picture for someone who recorded a blazing 1:29:892 when FORMULA 1 cars last battled for qualifying seven years back year: an effort that took him to fourth in 2013.

All of that told, perhaps nothing could be sadder than seeing another vastly promising German driver, Nico Hulkenberg, down in twentieth, the former Renault driver brought in at the very last minute for the unwell Lance Stroll (by Racing Point).

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[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/travel/the-secrets-of-a-sacred-underground/

The Secrets of a Sacred Underground

On a warm spring day, nine people were gathered inside a cold crypt beneath the Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral on Mulberry Street. “This is the size of a standard New York apartment,” the tour guide, Brandon Duncan, said to the Texas and Austrian tourists standing in the spacious room — the final resting place of a long-forgotten Civil War general.

Overhead were polished Guastavino tiles, original Edison light fixtures and space for eight more bodies, marble lids propped up and ready. “It’s sort of like a hostel situation,” Mr. Duncan said, glancing up at the empty bunks. The general, Thomas Eckert, left varying degrees of inheritance to his children, who wound up bickering and perhaps decided not to spend eternity together, Mr. Duncan explained.

Eckert’s vault doesn’t get family visitors anymore, but provides the grand finale of a 90-minute candlelight catacombs tour, opening up one of New York’s most secret spaces to the public. St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral — often referred to as the other St. Patrick’s Cathedral — recently developed this and other programming to help pay for the church’s upkeep and its historic outdoor cemetery, the only active Roman Catholic cemetery in Manhattan.

“We have a long way to go in making the grounds the way we want them,” Msgr. Donald Sakano, who took charge of the NoLIta parish a decade ago, said. “The gravestones are deteriorating as we speak, the soft stone losing inscriptions.”

The outdoor cemetery, filled with 200-year-old gravestones, some damaged and piled on the perimeter, is also part of the catacombs tour that is helping to enlighten tourists and New Yorkers about the sacred ground behind the blocklong brick wall on Prince Street.

Tour guides carry flashlights and large sets of keys, unlocking door after door and gate after gate to reveal the cathedral’s history, using pocket projectors to display old photos and other images on the darkened walls of the catacombs. Thomas Wilkinson, who dreamed up the tour in partnership with the church and is the name behind Tommy’s New York walking tours, said the candlelight was his idea. It gives the sensation, he said, “of what it would have been like to come down here when the catacombs first opened in 1815 when there was no electricity and you would have entered by candlelight or torch.”

On the tour, visitors learn that the cathedral was the largest in the United States when it was completed in 1815, and the seat of the first bishop of the Diocese of New York. Its wall was built between 1832 and 1833 to protect against marauding bands of Protestants, who were burning down Roman Catholic churches in New York City. Ironically, much of the wooden cathedral interior burned to the ground in 1866 in a fire sparked by an ember from a stove. (LED candles are now used on the subterranean tours.)

There are no bones scattered in these catacombs, as in the more ancient ones in Paris and Rome. Visitors, holding their small LED candles, are led down the sparsely lit 120-foot-long crypt corridor with marked, sealed vaults on either side.

Five priests, two bishops and 33 families were buried here. Many of the figures were famous at the time but are now mostly forgotten: People like Archbishop John J. Hughes, known as Dagger John because of his aggressive nature and the cross he placed next to his signature, which resembled a dagger. (Hughes was disinterred after 18 years and moved to the new St. Patrick’s Cathedral uptown, which opened in 1879.)

Among the others: Countess Annie Leary, a friend of the Astors, a Catholic benefactor who helped both the Irish and Italian communities; “Honest John” Kelly, Boss William Tweed’s successor at Tammany Hall; Charles O’Connor, the lawyer who took down Tweed; and the Delmonico family, restaurateurs credited with introducing baked alaska, eggs Benedict and lobster Newburg.

Visitors are led through the upstairs cathedral as well, which Francis Ford Coppola used in the baptism scene in “The Godfather.”

“That baby was Sofia Coppola,” Mr. Duncan told the group, standing on the altar. “It was bring your daughter to work day or maybe he couldn’t find a sitter.” The small crowd laughed.

They were then taken up through the cathedral’s Erben pipe organ, the size of a New York City townhouse. While the organ was being tuned, Mr. Duncan led the crowd past its nearly 2,500 pipes, its bellows and intricate workings.

“After 150 years it doesn’t sound as clear as it used to,” he explained. “A lot of the pipes have developed soot. It wheezes and coughs. Some of the leather is torn and the wood cracked.”

The church has formed a nonprofit group to raise $2 million to restore the organ, and had Martin Scorsese, the most famous altar boy from St. Patrick’s, headline a fund-raiser last fall during which he talked about growing up in the neighborhood.

“Donate one million dollars and they will name the organ after you,” Mr. Duncan told the visitors. “If you’re interested, I can put you in touch.” They laughed again.

The tours have provided much-needed income for the parish, Frank Alfieri, director of development and the cemetery, said. St. Patrick’s operates six buildings — including a rectory, a youth center, a former convent, the Shrine Church of the Most Precious Blood and the former Russian Catholic St. Michael’s — and is constantly besieged with roof repairs, plumbing issues and cemetery upkeep.

“The church struggles to pay the bills here,” Mr. Alfieri said. But the money has not been the only benefit of the tour, which has been around a year and a half. “It’s become a source of understanding the church and what it’s meant to this neighborhood for the past two centuries,” he said. “We have opened up these exclusive spaces that have never been open to the public.”

Heather Walker, who was with a group of women from Fort Worth, Tex., said they had picked the tour because it was quirky and not your run-of-the-mill walking tour. “I loved the history of it and how he brought it all together,” she said. “It wasn’t just a hole in the ground.”

The only tour in the city that bears a resemblance to this one is the annual Halloween crypt crawl at St. John the Divine, a space that’s used mostly for storage but includes the tombs of two bishops and a church dean.

Mr. Wilkinson, who oversees three to four tours a day, seven days a week at St. Patrick’s, became so enamored with the church that he’s now a parishioner. The tours are such a success that he is developing other programming, including an audience-participation re-creation of one of the first over-the-top weddings in America, The Diamond Wedding, which was held at the cathedral in 1859. A copy of the elaborate Victorian wedding gown will be designed and sewn.

“Think ‘Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding’ but more high-end,” Mr. Alfieri said. Mr. Wilkinson is also developing a tour called Pull Out All the Stops, focusing on the musical history of the church, including an organ recital.

In addition to the tours, the cathedral is bringing the catacombs into the 21st century (and raising extra income) by selling cremation niches for those looking for a final resting place. To date, 352 niches have been filled, but hundreds more are being built and sold on a first-come-first-served basis. Niches in the underground catacombs sell for $10,000 to $15,000.

A full family crypt, the last of its kind in the cathedral, is available for $7 million — the cost of a two-bedroom apartment on Elizabeth Street by current real estate standards. But the crypt can be broken up, with individual coffin burial starting at $850,000. (By comparison, General Eckert’s entire crypt cost $83,000 back in 1904. Today that would be the equivalent of more than $2 million.)

“People from the neighborhood look over the wall longingly,” Monsignor Sakano said. “It’s almost like you want to stay in the neighborhood with your eternal affordable housing.”

Catacombs of New York: An Historic Underground Tour

Tours are offered daily at the Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral in NoLIta; tommysnewyork.com/catacombs.

[fisicol92]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_NR9SxFj_U)

Autodromo Nazionale Monza

Permanent road and oval courses

Road Course: 5.793 km / 3.600 miles

Circuit History

Monza is a true cathedral to speed, unmatched around the world for its sense of history and passion, fuelled in part by its long history and also the fanaticism of the Italian fans, the tifosi. With the steadily decaying remnants of the high speed banked circuit providing a backdrop through the parkland trees, the atmosphere here is like no other; a mix of speed, melodrama and more than a hint of melancholy.

Its history began shortly after the First World War, when the Italian motor industry was undergoing its first great ascendancy. Authorities began looking for land to create a circuit to test their cars and demonstrate to the rest of the world their superiority through sporting success. Gallarte and La Cagnola near Milan were initially suggestions and rejected before some far-sighted visionary proposed the royal park at Monza to the Automobile Club of Milan. This was deemed suitable and preparations were began in earnest soon after.

Rush to completion

A company was formed to develop the project, the SIAS (Società Incremento Autodromo e Sport), under the presidency of Silvio Crespi. Agreements were made with the administrators of the park and plans drawn up for a high speed track and road circuit. Engineer Piero Puricelli, who would go on to develop many of the pioneering autostrada routes across Lombardy, was entrusted with heading up the design and construction phases. Total costs were expected to be in the region of $16 million lire.

Vincenzo Lancia and Felice Nazzaro duly turned the first sod on February 26, 1922 at an elaborate ceremony. Construction would only get under way for a matter of days, however, before conservationists – alarmed at the number of trees due to be felled to make way for the new circuit – forced a halt to proceedings.

There followed several months of negotiations with Rome by the motoring authorities but, eventually, permission was sought to resume, albeit on a much modified course using as many of the existing park roads and pathways as possible, to allay the fears over excessive tree felling.

Much time had been lost and, with the SIAS having earlier proclaimed the circuit would be ready to host that year’s Italian Grand Prix, there was no time to lose. Up to 3,500 workman were brought in to complete construction at a feverish pace, with 300 wagons, 200 trucks and even a three-mile temporary railway laid out among the trees.

Remarkably, in just 110 days, the entire complex was completed. The combined road and high speed oval course, grandstands, service roads and other spectator facilities were all ready as promised for the Grand Prix. On August 20, three Fiats, driven in turn by Nazzaro, Bordino, Salamano, Giaccone and Lampiano turned the first laps around the 6.21 miles circuit, a few days ahead of an elaborate opening ceremony which saw 200 cars driven by members of the Milan Automobile Club head out around the course.

From triumph to tragedy

Those early days were perhaps among the happiest in the circuit’s history; here was Italy leading the world with both its cars and its facilities. The sense of celebration was to be cruelly shattered just a few years later during the 1928 Grand Prix. For reasons that have never been entirely clear, the Talbot of Materassi suddenly swerved to the left while overtaking another car on the grandstand straight, ploughing through the barriers and into the crowd. Materassi was killed instantly, along with 28 spectators.

Changes were inevitable. Spectator safety was improved and by 1930, a new configuration was created with the installation of a link road between the central straight of the road course and the eastern straight of the speed course, cutting out the north curve altogether. Known as the Florio course, this was used in a variety of formations in preference to the full course but, even then, tragedy was not far away. In the 1931 Grand Prix, Philippe Etancelin left the road at the Lesmo corners, careering into another group of spectators; three died, including Etancelin, and another 14 were injured.

The came ‘Black Sunday’ on October 10, 1933. On the south curve of the speed circuit, Giuseppe Campari’s P3 Alfa Romeo and Baconin Borzacchini’s 8CM Maserati slid off on oil laid down the previous lap by a competitor; both were killed instantly. Then, later the same day, Count Stanisław Czaykowski’s Bugatti overturned on the south curve and caught fire; the Polish driver died in the ensuing blaze.

These events led to the virtual abandonment of the combined and speed courses in the following years, further variations of the Florio or the road course being preferred. After one last Italian Grand Prix on the original road course in early 1938, the Monza authorities set about more radical alterations.

War stops play

Under plans drawn up by engineer Aldo di Rionzo, the banked oval course was demolished altogether and a new Grand Prix road course devised. This saw the installation of a new Vialone curve and extended back straight which lead into two sharp right handers to complete the lap and lead back to the start finish straight. Changes were also made to the two Lesmo curves and a new section of test track, bypassing the Curva Grande, was installed at the behest of Pirelli.

Spectator facilities were also greatly improved, with a new grandstand seating 2,000; a restaurant on the ground floor; timing and scoring tower; and 30 purpose-built pit stalls among the improvements. Sadly, the outbreak of World War Two meant these new improvements were never tried in anger. All racing activities ceased at Monza and the autodrome buildings were used for various purposes, including safe storage of the public Automobile Registry archives and even as pens for the animals removed from the Milan zoo!

In April, 1945, the grandstand straight was host to a parade of Allied armoured vehicles, which broke up the track surface. A little later, large areas were used for storage of military vehicles and war surplus, mainly in the southern part of the circuit. Besides the track, the pits buildings and stands also suffered and by war’s end little remained that was usable.

At the beginning of 1948 the Milan Automobile Club decided on complete restoration of the autodrome. As with its original construction, the circuit was readied in a very short time frame; in less than two months the facilities were restored and the improvements of 1938 could finally be used for their original intended purpose. Racing was back!

Return and revival

By 1955, ambitions had grown further and plans were put in place to recreate the high-speed banked circuit, albeit with considerably steeper banking (so steep it is virtually impossible to ascend to the top on foot unaided). This roughly followed the course of the 1922 original, save for the south curve which was set closer to the pit straight. The new high-speed loop was built on reinforced concrete pillars, rather than earth banks and cut through the Vedano course, necessitating a new final parabolic curve. Like the 1922 original, it shared its pit facilities with the road course and could be combined to form a 6.21 mile full course.

Other improvements to the facilities were the construction of two large towers with luminous scoreboards set at the sides of the central grandstand and fourteen steel towers (seven along the road circuit and seven along the high speed track) to give the race positions along the track.

The full 6.21 mile circuit was used for the Italian Grand Prix races in 1955, 1956 1960 and 1961. The high-speed track, in addition to numerous record attempts by cars and motorcycles, was used in 1957 and 1958 for the Monza 500 Mile races open to Indianapolis cars, with the Two Worlds Trophy offered as prize by the Monza City Administration. This was the first time US-style single-seaters had been exported abroad and, in true American tradition, saw the cars lap in anticlockwise direction.

1959 saw the SIAS introduce a new short course especially for the popular junior single seater categories. Called the 'Pista Junior’, it was created by linking the grandstand straight with the opposing back straight through several curves.

Tragedy once again struck during the 1961 Grand Prix, run for the last time on the full course. During the second lap, the Ferrari of Wolfgang von Tripps and the Lotus of Jim Clark tangled in the braking area for the Parabolica, sending the German’s car into the air and rolling across a spectator zone. Von Trips and 10 spectators lost their lives immediately and another five died later in hospital.

The disaster largely spelled the end for the full circuit with its banked course; Grand Prix races thereafter used only ran the road course, although it was used for the Monza 1,000 Kilometres, reserved for the Sports, Prototype and Grand Touring categories, from 1965 to 1969. Starting in 1966 there were two permanent chicanes at the entrance to the banked curves and the course was 100 metres longer but by 1970 the sportscars switched to the road course and the banking fell silent altogether.

Despite numerous safety improvements, the spectre of death was still never far away. The promising Bruno Deserti perished here, as did Tommy Spychiger, Englishman Boley Pittard and, most infamously, Austrian Jochen Rindt, the only man to be posthumously declared Formula One champion.

Speeds grew ever higher as the racing cars grew steadily more sophisticated and, after the 1971 GP proved the shortest and fastest race of all time, Peter Gethin taking his only victory for BRM in the last of the slipstreamers, it was clear changes were necessary if the circuit was to continue.

Enter the chicanes

In 1972, a chicane was introduced on the Grandstand Straight, a slightly clumsy slow-speed flick just before the entrance to the Junior circuit, along with a higher speed chicane bypassing the Vialone curve and named in memory of Alberto Ascari, who had perished at the same spot some 17 years previously. The track increased in length by 109 yards as a result.

Motorcycle Grands Prix continued to use the original road course without chicanes until the 1973 event saw another 'Black Sunday’. During the first lap of the 250cc GP, a collision at the Curva Grande resulted in the deaths of both Jarno Saarinen and Renzo Pasolini. The race meeting was ultimately cancelled, but more tragedy arrived 40 days later in a junior race when three gentlman riders fell and were fatally injured at the same point. From then until 1981, the motorcycle Grand Prix was transferred elsewhere and the only bike racing occurred on the Junior circuit for minor championships.

In 1974 the Ascari chicane was completely revised, opening the entry to the chicane with a more flowing curve and installing a broad run-off area with a sand layer and catch fencing. Perhaps the more classic Monza layout was established in 1976, when a new chicane was installed at the della Roggia curve and a left-right-left-right chicane sequence created at the end of the Grandstand Straight. This layout would continue unchanged until the 1990s, save for the addition of a lengthened pit lane in 1979 and new pit buildings another decade later.

Renewal and reinvestment

The 1994 season forced further changes on many circuits in wake of the death of Ayrton Senna; Monza was no different. The second Lesmo curve was tightened, reducing speed considerably, while the following year further changes were made to increase safety at key spots. Curva Grande was re-aligned, with its new radius some 12 metres further to the inside than previously, greatly enlarging the run-off area on the outside. Della Roggia’s chicane was also brought further forward in the lap by some 50 metres, while the two Lesmo Curves were realigned, some 15 metres further inside the circuit perimeter, similarly providing enhanced escape areas. Sadly, these changes also involved the demolition of the Lesmo grandstands, removing a fantastic viewing spot once and for all.

The final changes involved a rebuilding of the first chicane in summer 2000, the new almost triangular hairpin combination providing a new overtaking point, but doing little to alleviate the traditional first lap carnage; if anything the tighter, slower combination of curves might actually have made it worse. Following a disastrous 2009 World Superbike event, where riders were toppled like dominoes, a shallower slip road was built for bike racing, which eased the problems somewhat, although Monza authroties are evaluating further changes to run-off areas in order to satisfy the FIM for future years.

Today, Monza retains its popularity and is a staple fixture on many racing series’ calendars, Forumla One included. It is also a regularly used testing venue, while the parkland remains open to the public – you can even find an outdoor municipal swimming pool in the grounds alongside the main straight…

[wasalwaysagreatpickle]

Thursday 24th March 1825

7 40/60

2 3/4

A long grubbling last night and the kiss she said that for the first time she had had her strongest before I had mine, mine was quite at the last – 

Breakfast at 9 – Mrs B- [Barlow] and I off at 10 3/4 to Miss Gauntlet (chez Madame Frederic, rue Saint Honoré) – we all went to the Elysée Bourbon – surprised to find our billet of no use – we could not see the palace for all the furniture was packed up to go to Rheims for the coronation – on our return saw l’eglise de la madeleine – Had it been allowed to remain as a temple de gloire, and had the original plan of the interior been allowed to remain unaltered, it would have been one of the finest buildings in Europe, but the alterations made to adapt it for a roman catholic church, have utterly spoilt it; and I told the woman who shewed us round, that, were I the architect, I should die of chagrin to see my work so ruined – the 2 colossal Corinthian columns from the bottom to the top of the building, intended I suppose to form the separation between the nave and chancel – and the apsis or [rotende] for the grand altar, to say nothing of the style of ornament chosen for the cornices – are totally incongruous with the magnificent but plain and severe architecture of the temple – the king and duchess of Berri have just been there and had decided on the cornice ornaments which traced in fresco to shew the effect – the church is to be finished as soon as possible for the church of the Assomption is too small – from my manner of regret, the woman thought I should like to see the architect M. [Viguen], rue Melée, no. 40 – Madame Galvani tells me they have worked at this building already 30 years – the fine exterior columns tout antou were in the original plan, much wider apart and much larger and of finer proportions, but the then government had them done as at present to correspond better with the peristyle of the chambre des deputés, whose columns are much too close, and whose faulty architecture is most conspicuous – 

At the stand in there rue de Luxembourg, took a fiacre, drove (along the boulevards) to rue Mont Parnasse, no. 3, and took up Jane – there to the Institute royal des Sourds-muets, and got there at 1 1/4, 1/4 hour after the séance had begun – the room was quite full – but a gentleman of the Institution very civilly shewed us across the tribune whence M.L abbé serrier was speaking and we were placed close to it – I had in fact a very good seat brought from which I could see and hear everything – the answers given in writing by 3 of the grown up pupils (quite young though) to the miscellaneous questions asked them were wonderful, [imaginative] as they bespoke the writers as well informed as quick and [lauding] ideas on the subjects as just and clean as any of our senior wranglers at Oxford the questions asked were numerous – moral, metaphysical, historical – [what is] eternity? this question M. Serrier said hed been asked 20 times and the answer given had been always nearly the same – the definition was altogether precise, ending with ‘c’est l’age de Dien’ – Ditto might be said of the definition of reconnaissance, which ended with ‘c’est la memoire du coeur – the question [Re boudeir] est il absolu ou rélatif? was very well answered, as also ‘what is the difference between the characters of Nero and Trajan – the séance which began at 1 was over at 3 – the room small too [slow] and unworthy of its purpose – En sortant – found 2 or 3 stalls arranged along the pass near the outer door, containing several little pretty things turned in wood by the poor boys – very well done – did not buy anything but a small book giving 2 answers given by a sourdenuet and giving also an explanation of the ‘Ecriture manuelle’, or the [manners] of conversing with the deaf and dumb of all [counts] by means of the fingers – 

We all 4 walked leisurely home (Mrs B- [Barlow] sent back Jane afterwards) – called at the shop where I bought my Pliny’s natural history – the man asked 14 francs for a delphin edition of martel with Smidt’s notes, and 9 francs instead of 8 as before, for a variorum edition – I offered 12 francs for the former – he said he would take 13 – perhaps I may go again about it – got home at 4 – Miss Gauntlet left us at the foot of the stairs – she said lady Charlotte Beauchere, (1 of the daughters of the duke of saint Albans) was going to Madame de Rosny for a year – Madame de R- [Rosny] had asked 400 francs a month for lady C- [Charlotte] and her dame de compagnie, but the French lady who made the agreement for her ladyship, and who had been in England, said this was not enough and that lady C- [Charlotte] would pay 500 a month for herself and 250 for her dame de compagnie making nearly double what was asked !!! 

Miss G paid two hundred a month Madame de Rosny made a pretty little income by her own industry a great deal of contraband going on in Paris ladies of rank carry it on Mrs de Rosny sent the thing by means of the Austrian thro the English ambassador to London Miss G would not recommend any single lady there nor would she on this account have staid herself because tho she does not all believe it yet Madame de R is so generally esteemed the mistress of the Austrian ambassador it would not do –

Went to look at the affiches at the corner of the rue de Beaune, finding Talma not to play tonight but tomorrow came home to find Madame Galvani here – sat with her tête à tête in dining room an hour – 

It is Mr de Mortigny who goes every Sunday who was her amant she and her husband were the making of him she loved him seven years but he then deceived her in something ill avait dementi she said she would see him no more and immediately left Paris and went to her fathers at Rome where she had so violent an illness. Her husband asked if he should send for Mr de Mortigny she said no and thinking never to recover. Made an absolute donation of all her property to her husband but for this she could not have been as she is now did she love Mr de Mortigny now she would never admit him but she does not yet his wife has a horror of her thinks her the most dangerous of women and that she is the only one who troubles Mr de Mortignys rest but Madame G has told him she never wishes to see him if it annoys his wife he might get her some place but tho he makes great professions about it he does nothing I said id not like him at all he was poltron which she seems to think true saying he is like all french men –

Madame G- [Galvani] asked what she should leave me if she died – said I, the picture of yours, you shewed me – she promised to do so –promised to see her tomorrow if I went on Saturday – if not to see her on Sunday – she will be 46 tomorrow – tis her birthday – 

On going in to Mrs B [Barlow] found her quite grave saw some thing was not right guessed she had not liked my being so long [tete-tete] with Madame G [Galvani] could make nothing of her went out thinking fits like these will never suit me. On returning I myself was very grave by after dinner she had come round she had fancied Madame G [Galvani] and I had ceased talking when she entered once I knew nothing about it joked her said she was fanciful she owned it and said she had thought if she was mine she might be very miserable I was so much admired and liked by the ladies in yorkshire and they had such opportunities of besetting me all this was because she loved me so much I laughed and we got quite right she lay down while I wrote all this page of today – 

From 5 to 5 40/60 sauntered through the gardened to rue de Rivoli no. 36, and bought a large plum cake for Madame G- [Galvani] to be sent tomorrow on her birthday – the man asked 24 francs but when I said it was a commission I could only give 20 francs and ordered one to be made at this price he said he would rather sell me for this price that at 24, and so let me have it – 

From 5 3/4 till it was too dark to see by day light wrote the first 29 lines of today – the servants being out made us not have dinner till 6 3/4 – at 9 25/60 had just finished writing the last page of today – very fine day – sunny – Fahrenheit 43˚ at 10 3/4 a.m. and 39˚ at 10 3/4 p.m. – tea at 9 3/4 – settling my accounts which took me perhaps 1/4 hour – sat talking – 

At about eleven and three quarters took her on my knee and began grubbling she having no support for her back lay her on the bed knelt down by her grubbled well and had the kiss. We both groaned over she declaring towards the last that the pleasure became pain I said she had never given me so good an one. We both got in to bed to have a little nap took about an hours doze then absolutely grubbled again and had another very good kiss the kiss tho not quite so good as the one before then another hours nap and got up about two [foundress] and go regularly to bed – each took a glass of hot weak brandy and water and after my doubting a moment whether to have still another kiss we both fell asleep about three –

Ɛ (two dots underneath) O (no dots)

[365footballorg-blog]

A "special attacking talent": 10 Things with NYCFC's Ismael Tajouri-Shradi

USA Today Sports

August 16, 20184:52PM EDT

ORANGEBURG, N.Y. — He wasn’t the biggest name in the offseason, but its hard to argue few have made a bigger impact in their first season in Major League Soccer than Ismael Tajouri-Shradi.

The Libyan-born winger who arrived at New York City FC on a transfer from Austria Wien, leads his team with 10 goals after striking for a brace in a 3-2 win over Toronto FC Sunday at BMO Field.

Those 10 goals, including four game-winners, have remarkably come on just 29 shots, which highlights a stunning efficiency.

Find out more about Tajouri-Shradi’s journey, both on and off the field.

Growing to love New York City

Before arriving at NYCFC, Tajouri-Shradi had never come to New York City before. His only idea of the Big Apple came from the movies.

And coming from Vienna, a much smaller city with a slower vibe, it took some getting used to.

“Of course, it’s not crazy like in the movies, but it’s 90 percent the same,” Tajouri-Shradi told MLSsoccer.com. “It’s a big city, a little stressed city, so many people. Vienna is not like here because there’s many people in the city. When I go into the city for the first time I go a little crazy because of so many people, but now I am happy about that.”

In a multi-cultural city with cuisines from all corners of the earth, Tajouri-Shradi, though, is still in search of a good Libyan restaurant.

“I don’t find any Libyan food,” he said. “But I’m sure there’s some Libyan food somewhere because there’s every food is what you want, every shop is what you want. I will find where is the Libyan food.”

“Football crazy” family

The 24-year-old is the third youngest of seven siblings. His father, a diplomat who worked in the Libyan embassy, played when he was younger in Libya and his older brother was also in the Austria Wien academy before eventually hanging up his cleats to become a pilot.

The family is more spread out now, with his father moving to Belgrade in Serbia to work in the embassy there and other siblings living in Egypt and Libya. But soccer unites them all.

“I love football, but all of my family loves football,” Tajouri-Shradi said. “My brother played also, but he was not a professional so he broke from football and concentrated on other things. He’s now a pilot so he went another way, which is also nice. My father played also in Libya. I think all of the family is football crazy.”

The family evaluation

After each game, Tajouri-Shradi said it is the same. He speaks with his father, among others in his family, to get their breakdown of his latest performance.

He said despite the time difference, his family are dedicated NYCFC viewers.

“They watch every game. We speak after every game.,” he said. “I call my father, my mother, my brother and they tell me what was good, what was not so good. It’s normal. If I score, if I don’t score, it’s the same things.”

And what was the reaction after the win over Toronto FC?

“[My father] liked the goal and liked that we took the three points,” Tajouri-Shradi said. “He was very happy. I think he was much happier than me. Of course, I was very happy, but all of the family was very happy. I get so many messages from all of my family. I am happy that I have a family like that.”

Favorite NYCFC goal?

Tajouri-Shradi secured all three road points against Toronto FC with a sensational left-footed screamer from outside the box two minutes from full time. It didn’t win the AT&T Goal of the Week for Week 24, but where does it rank among the goals he’s scored to this point in MLS?

“I have no favorite,” he said, sounding like a proud parent. “If I can say against Toronto that goal for me was amazing, one of my favorite goals of course.”

He also singled out his first MLS goal, which came in his first start to cap a 2-0 win over Orlando City FC at Yankee Stadium on March 17. Tajouri-Shradi intercepted a poor Joe Bendik clearance attempt, took two touches to set up a shot on his right foot and scored a low shot to break the stalemate.

Favorite all-time goal?

Tajouri-Shradi was less diplomatic when discussing his favorite all-time goals. He chose two, both for different reasons. The first came when he was playing for SCR Altach while on loan from Austria Wien — an Olimpico against Austria Wien. His other favorite was a shot from “30-35 yards” against Sturm Graz.

[embedded content]

‘Pelezinho’ was his idol

Growing up in Bern, Switzerland and in Vienna, Tajouri-Shradi fell in love with soccer at a young age. And like so many young players, he had a favorite player. Perhaps not surprising, it was another player with an attacking flair.

That player was Robinho, especially when he came up through the ranks at Santos in Brazil and during his time at Real Madrid, when he wore the No. 10 jersey and was the club’s third-highest scorer behind Raul and Ruud van Nistelrooy.

“I liked how he played, what he did with the ball was amazing,” Tajouri-Shradi said. “He’s my No. 1 favorite player.”

Proud Libyan

Tajouri-Shradi is well traveled because of his father’s job in the Libyan embassy. But while he was born in Switzerland and lived most of his life in Austria — he has an Austrian passport — he identifies as Libyan.

“My blood is Libyan,” Tajouri-Shradi said. “Of course I don’t live so long in Libya, but my family comes from Libya. I can say I am from Libya.”

To this point, he’s made just one appearance for Libya, on the U-20 level in a friendly against Morocco in 2012. 

In fact, after scoring in his first start, Tajouri-Shradi raced down to the visitors’ locker room at Yankee Stadium to exchange jerseys with Mohamed El-Munir, the Lions Libyan-born defender. El-Munir signed with Orlando one week before Tajouri-Shradi joined NYCFC.

“I know him before,” Tajouri-Shradi said after the game. “We exchange the jersey, we take a little picture. It’s great that two new Libyan guys are playing in MLS.”

Advice from a rival

When Tajouri-Shradi was about to make the move to a new league and a new city, he sought out advice from someone in the know — a former player at Austria Wien and now adversary with the New York Red Bulls.

“Before I come here, I know Danny Royer because he played on the same team as me and I asked him about New York, I asked him also about MLS. He gave me some good information. It was good from him. I think it was a good choice.”

Impressing one boss to the next

Tajouri-Shradi enjoyed a meteoric start to his NYCFC career, scoring four goals in his first four starts after coming off the bench late in the club’s first two games.

It was the perfect first impression for then-NYCFC boss Patrick Vieira. 

“He’s making a name for himself because he’s working hard,” Vieira said. “Every time he has a chance, he’s really composed and he’s really calm in front of the goal. With the left foot, when he hits the target, nine times out of 10 he will score the goal.”

And what does current NYCFC coach Dome Torrent think of Tajouri-Shradi?

“He plays really well the last three or four games, not just against Toronto,” Torrent said. “In Toronto, he was able to score two goals, much better for our team and for him. I’m very happy especially with him because he improved the last three games a lot. For me, he’s a player for us, he can play left side, right side … He plays very well on both sides. That is the reason I’m very happy with him right now.”

He does his talking on the field

Tajouri-Shradi is soft-spoken and it took him awhile to find his place in the NYCFC locker room. Even now, as an established player, he is quiet and humble, often deflecting personal praise for the betterment of the team.

But with the ball at his feet, whether in a game or on the training ground, Tajouri-Shradi speaks brashly with his magical left foot and unabated work ethic.

“He’s a special player, and I’ve said it since Day One, he’s a special attacking talent,” NYCFC goalkeeper Sean Johnson said. “It’s not often you come across a player not only with his talent, but his mentality is just relentless. It’s just go, go, go and nothing fazes him. I’m glad he’s on our side.”

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A “special attacking talent”: 10 Things with NYCFC's Ismael Tajouri-Shradi was originally published on 365 Football

[haitiqbohio]

The man who prepared the ground for the first post-colonial black state (he did not live to see it inaugurated), Toussaint Louverture (last post), was born a slave in Saint-Domingue circa 1743.

The first important black performer and composer of Western classical music, the Chevalier de Saint-George (not Georges), was born to a black mother and a white plantation owner on Guadeloupe (capital Basse-Terre) circa 1745. Residual racism makes us call him black.

This is the slow movement of a G major violin concerto of 1777. Fine, if a little sentimental by Mozartian standards. Anne-Claude Villars, violin; Orchestre de Chambre de Versailles, Bernard Wahl. YouTube image: Fragonard, Progress of Love: the Meeting (detail), Frick Collection, New York.

He was born Joseph Boulogne and acquired the name Saint-George after one of his father’s properties.

His father, Georges Boulogne, was convicted of murder in 1748 and fled Guadeloupe, where he was hanged in effigy. He may have spent his exile in Saint-Domingue. Did he take his family?

In 1755 or earlier, he returned to Basse-Terre, having been pardoned.

Joseph began to study under a black or mulatto violinist, his father’s estate manager, Joseph Platon. (On April 25 1780, Platon would play an unspecified Saint-George violin concerto at Port-au-Prince.)

Georges was ennobled in 1757 as Gentilhomme Ordinaire de la Chambre du Roi, a title that could only be inherited by children born in wedlock. But his family claimed noble ancestry anyway.

In 1759, he moved with his wife, daughter, slave-mistress and Joseph to Paris.

Joseph became an equally adept fencer and violinist. He took lessons in fencing and swordsmanship with La Boëssière and music lessons with Leclair and Gossec and perhaps Lolli.

La Boëssière, Wikipedia: “At seventeen he had acquired the greatest speed. In time, he combined with his prompt execution an expertise that finally made him without peer.”

In 1761, on completing his education, he joined the royal military household. He was also a swimmer, skater and duellist.

His music teacher Leclair was murdered in 1764, possibly on the orders of his ex-wife or other relative, or those of a jealous musician. (At least two attempts were made on Saint-George’s own life, for reasons that are unclear, in Paris in 1779 and in London in 1790.)

At some point in the late 1760s, Saint-George’s father returned alone to Guadeloupe, where he died in 1774. His wife and daughter were his only heirs. Joseph had to live on his earnings.

In 1769 Joseph became a member of Gossec’s new orchestra, the Concert des Amateurs, immediately holding the position of first violin. In 1773, he took charge of the ensemble and held the position until they were disbanded eight years later.

He was considered for appointment as director of the Royal Opera of Louis XVI, but was blocked by three Parisian divas who petitioned the Queen, insisting that it would be beneath their dignity and injurious to their professional reputations for them to sing on stage under the direction of a mulatto. Did Saint-George meet Mozart? He conducted the first performances of Haydn’s six Paris symphonies.

He was ready to embrace the Revolution. He was put in charge of a black and mulatto regiment of 800 foot soldiers and 200 mounted cavalry. They received the name Légion franche de cavalerie des Américains et du Midi, but were referred to as the Légion Saint-George. He appointed as squadron commander a mulatto born in Haiti: the future father and grandfather of the two authors called Alexandre Dumas.

The Legion helped General Menou turn back the Austrian invasion of Northern France and General Dumouriez defeat pro-Monarchy forces in Belgium.

In 1793, Saint-George played a role in the exposure of Dumouriez when he secretly turned against the Convention.

Despite military success, he was repeatedly denounced because of his aristocratic parentage and past association with the royal court (he had been a friend of Marie Antoinette). He was accused of a misappropriation of funds, dismissed from the army on September 25 1793, and imprisoned for eighteen months.

According to chevalierdesaintgeorge.com, he visited Haiti at some point after this, but no years are given. He is said to have been disillusioned there by “the struggle between Toussaint […] and reactionaries like the mulatto general, Rigaud, who wished to restore the old order, including the reintroduction of slavery”. Rigaud later helped Napoleon in that reintroduction. If Saint-George had lived longer, he would have been disillusioned with Napoleon. He is said to have had contact with the Société des amis des Noirs.

Saint-George continued to lead orchestras, but struggled to find his place in a society no longer led by an indulgent aristocracy. He tried to rejoin the army in 1797, but was refused. He died in 1799 in comparative obscurity at the age of fifty-four. His mother seems to have died and his half-sister had disappeared.

He had had a reputation as a playboy, deserved or foisted on him, but never married. It was all but impossible for a Frenchwoman to marry a mulatto, even a fencing champion and “God of Arms”.

The Chevalier d’Éon was a transgendered French diplomat, spy and soldier whose first forty-nine years were spent as a man and last thirty-three as a woman. An engraving of the painting says: “The Assaut, or Fencing Match, which took place at Carlton House on the 9th of April 1787, between Mademoiselle La chevalière D’EON DE BEAUMONT and Monsieur DE SAINT GEORGE.”

Robineau may be unknown, but this, enlarged, is a charming picture with many layers of interest. At the very least a fine eighteenth-century sporting image, like Raeburn’s skater and Zoffany’s cockfighters.

Chevalier de Saint-George is also the French name for the Old Pretender.

___

Columbus visited Guadeloupe on his second voyage and named it after the monastery of Santa María de Guadalupe in Extremadura. The French began to settle it after 1635. The French crown annexed it in 1674 during the Dutch wars. For a time it was under the control of the governor of Martinique. Britain held it for a time during the Seven Years’ War and during the revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

In 1794 the National Convention abolished slavery in all French colonies. Louis Delgrès, a mulatto officer, led an uprising in 1802. Napoleon reinstated slavery when the French retook the island. It was held by Sweden in 1813-14. The Congress of Vienna gave it back to France.

In 1848, slavery was abolished completely. In place of the black slaves, indentured servants were imported from India to work in the sugar cane fields. (Why were freed black slaves not enough?) The first arrived on December 24 aboard the Aurelie. They came from the Coromandel Coast, Pondicherry, Madras, Calcutta and Malabar.

Just after the war, in 1923, Guadeloupe exported its first bananas. In 1925, after two decades of agitation, Poincaré granted French nationality and the right to vote to the Indian workers. The island fell under the Vichy government during the Second World War. In 1946 it became an overseas department of France. It is in the eurozone.

French Antilles (Wikipedia).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_West_Indies

https://davidderrick.wordpress.com/2013/07/27/the-black-mozart/

[yahoo-roto-arcade-blog]

Fantasy Hockey pickups: Who should you add on the waiver wire?

Edmonton Oilers forward Jesse Puljujarvi is skating with Connor McDavid, which is reason enough to add him in your fantasy league. (AP Photo/Jay LaPrete)

By Neil Parker, RotoWire Hockey Writer Special to Yahoo Sports

A noticeable trend in this space through two months is the lasting availability of young players who have pedigree and are scoring. The waiver-wire “last-calls” for Mathew Barzal and Brock Boeser, for example, lasted far longer than they should have.

Perhaps there are a lot of shallow leagues. Still, make no mistake, the salary-cap era and refocus on speed and talent across the NHL has tilted the ice in favor of young scorers.

Kevin Fiala has been a lock in this column all year, and Jesse Puljujarvi could be on the verge of exploding. These are high-end talents playing in top-six roles, so don’t be afraid to take a chance on them.

Here’s the schedule for the next scoring period from Dec. 18-24:

Two games: Flames, Blackhawks, Golden Knights

Four games: Ducks, Bruins, Blue Jackets, Flyers

All other teams play three games next week

Ensure to keep tabs on who is cut in your leagues, and also remember to check the handful of the previously covered players listed below.

Yahoo ownership rates as of Dec. 14.

FORWARD

Tyler Johnson, TB (35 percent): A return to a top-six role has led to an uptick in offense for Johnson. He’s a proven scorer and has now recorded three goals, six assists and four multi-point showings during an active five-game point streak. He has the potential to score at a point-per-game pace moving forward.

Jesse Puljujarvi, EDM (9 percent): A holdover from last week, the Finn is still skating with No. 1 center and reigning Art Ross Trophy winner Connor McDavid, so Puljujarvi is a worth a roster spot in most settings for that reason alone. The fourth overall selection from the 2016 draft has also chipped in while skating atop the depth chart with three goals and five points through his past five contests.

Kevin Fiala, NSH (17 percent): For whatever reason, Fiala remains available in oodles of leagues. He’s currently riding a five-game point streak with four goals, three assists and 21 shots, and his 2.97 points per 60 minutes is a rock-solid mark. Scoop him up, folks. The Swiss native is a legit talent.

Mathieu Perreault, WPG (20 percent): There’s nothing to like about Perreault’s fourth-line assignment at even strength. Yet, he’s still marked the scoresheet in nine of his past 14 games for eight goals, seven assists and six power-play points. The 29-year-old veteran can also help in the PIM category. Additionally, he’s posted four consecutive 40-point campaigns despite missing at least 11 games in each of those seasons.

Evgenii Dadonov, FLA (24 percent): After missing eight games with a shoulder injury, Dadonov is back on the waiver wire in plenty of leagues. He returned to the lineup Tuesday and has recorded seven goals, 18 points and 58 shots through 23 games for the season, so he projects to pick up where he left off and provide serviceable offense in the majority of settings moving forward.

Phillip Danault, MON (8 percent): The 24-year-old center is currently centering Max Pacioretty and Paul Byron and has collected three goals and three assists through his past six contests. Danault certainly isn’t a universal asset, but he’s provided respectable offensive numbers dating back to the midway point of last season. There’s potential here in deep leagues.

Evan Rodrigues, BUF (0 percent): The Boston University standout is still finding his way at the highest level, but the results have been noticeable of late. Rodrigues has been skating on the No. 1 power-play unit and picked up two goals and an assist through his past three games. His ceiling is low and expectations should remain in check, but there’s appeal in cavernous settings.

Michael Raffl, PHI (2 percent): At this stage of Raffl’s career, you know what you’re getting from the 29-year-old winger. He’s a streaky scorer who shouldn’t be counted on as a year-long contributor in most settings. Raffl is currently receiving top-six minutes on a line with Jakub Voracek and Valtteri Filppula and has notched five goals and three helpers through his past nine contests, so the Austrian is worth a look until the offense dries up.

DEFENSE

Tyler Myers, WPG (43 percent): A mainstay in this space over the past month, Myers’ fantasy value might receive an added boost with Dustin Byfuglien and Toby Enstrom both nursing lower-body injuries. Considering the Texas native has three goals, 10 points, 27 shots and 12 PIM through his past 15 games, he projects to continue posting solid numbers with the uptick in ice time.

Matt Niskanen, WAS (43 percent): Good players on good teams usually provide good fantasy numbers, and Niskanen has done just that since returning from an upper-body injury. His offense doesn’t jump off the page, but with two goals, seven points, 34 shots, 23 hits, 18 blocked shots and a plus-10 rating through his past 14 contests, there’s a lot of cross-category appeal here.

Sami Vatanen, ANA (13 percent): Without a point through his first five games with New Jersey, this could prove to be a buy-low spot for Vatanen. While Taylor Hall’s knee injury could hurt the Devils’ attack, this is still one of the better offenses in the league, albeit somewhat surprisingly. Expect Vatanen’s role and talent will lead to offensive production sooner than later.

Vince Dunn, STL (0 percent): With Alex Pietrangelo (foot) on injured reserve, Dunn has skated with the No. 1 power-play unit the past two games. It’s been a quiet debut for the rookie with just two goals and assists through 30 games. He had 50 shots on goal and 45 points in his first AHL season last year, so there is some upside in cavernous settings for the 2015 second-round selection.

GOALIE

Antti Raanta, ARI (23 percent): With just a single start since Nov. 22, there’s a reason Raanta is so wildly available. However, his .919 save percentage and 2.68 GAA are solid marks, and he’s going to see the bulk of starts moving forward. Injuries have hurt his value to this point, but there’s a slim chance Arizona will turn things around enough for the Finnish netminder to post respectable numbers moving forward.

James Reimer, FLA (24 percent): The veteran has allowed three goals or more in seven of his past eight games for a 3-2-3 record, .897 save percentage and 3.34 GAA. Those are underwhelming numbers, but with Roberto Luongo (lower body) out of action, Reimer should be owned and can be turned to with modest confidence in favorable matchups.

Philipp Grubauer, WAS (5 percent): There have been some disappointing starts from the German this season, but at this stage of his career, his track record outweighs any blip on the radar. Grubauer’s stopped 66 of 68 shots (.971 save percentage) through his past three appearances and owns a career .920 mark with a 2.36 GAA through 77 games. At worst, he’s a goalie to monitor and stream when he gets the starting nod.

Players to consider from past columns: Josh Anderson, Kyle Connor, Alex DeBrincat, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Pavel Buchnevich, Marian Gaborik, Sam Bennett, Pierre-Luc Dubois, Alex Galchenyuk, Nick Bjugstad, Adam Henrique, Nick Schmaltz, Derek Stepan, Jesper Bratt, Artem Anisimov, Tom Wilson, Mikko Rantanen, Jakub Vrana, Reilly Smith, Tomas Hertl, Micheal Ferland, Craig Smith, Mathew Dumba, Erik Johnson, Johnny Boychuk, Shea Theodore, Brady Skjei, Darnell Nurse, Noah Hanifin, Alexander Edler, Esa Lindell, Jakob Chychrun, Jacob Markstrom, Thomas Greiss, Aaron Dell, Steve Mason, Darcy Kuemper, Malcolm Subban.

[bastardtravel]

November 25, 2017. Vienna, Austria.

There’s really no missing the Pestsäule. The 60-foot baroque monstrosity juts up out of the center of the Graben like an ornate middle finger to God. It’s actually emperor Leopold I delivering on his side of one of those pleading prayer bargains we’ve all done. Leo’s was “Please, let the plague stop. I swear I’ll build you a really dope art phallus right in the middle of the city, just stop killing everyone.”

The Plague Column is also called the Trinity Column due to its three sides, each one presumably representing some aspect of the tripartite God.

About a block away is the Stock im Eisen, or staff in iron. That’s misleading, it’s not a staff, it’s a tree trunk full of nails, kept in a tube that makes it totally immune to photography.

I did what I could. Now, you might be asking, “Why is there a protected chunk of tree, full of nails, on a street corner in Vienna?” Good question. I’d love to answer it, but it doesn’t seem like anyone can. Every website has a different interpretation of the Stock im Eisen‘s history, and the locals who were attempting to explain its significance to their visiting friends were telling conflicting stories.

Here’s what I’ve pieced together. In the Middle Ages, nail trees (Nagelbäume) were used by craftsmen, or anyone else with nails, for good luck. This particular nail tree had something to do with the Devil. There’s a ballet about it by Pasquale Borri, so if anyone more sophisticated than me can check that out and report back, I’d appreciate it.

There was a locksmith who wanted to marry his master’s daughter, or maybe he just wanted to be the greatest locksmith who ever lived. Dude shot for the stars. So he calls Mephistopheles out of Prague, who shows up on a FlixBus a few hours later. The locksmith sells his soul in exchange for just a really, fuckin’, top-notch padlock. It’s amazing. He puts that on the tree and issues challenges to either his master in exchange for his daughter’s hand in marriage, or to all the locksmiths of the world in exchange for World Locksmithing Supremacy. Since the Devil made the lock, nobody could crack it, and he lived happily ever after until he burnt in Hell. The tree remains with a lock on it to this day, and also full of nails, for some reason.

This is confirmed bullshit. They looked into the padlock and it’s empty, there’s no tumblers or anything in there. It would pop right open. Maybe that’s why the whole thing’s behind the bulletproof glass.

Well, that was most of center city, barring museums and palaces. I sidled all the way across town to the Freud Museum.

  I thought it was interesting, but Freud was what got me through college. I’d read the bulk of his debunked wackadoo theories long before I got “higher educated”, and since every class in undergrad wanted to beat both Freudian and Pavlovian dead horses as much as possible, I got to recycle the same paper, with subtle stylistic changes, something like ten times.

My favorite, bar none, was a History and Systems project where we were required to adopt the persona of our chosen theorist and have an open debate with the rest of the class. We got extra credit for accents, props, and convincing portrayal. I shaved my scruff into an approximation of his beard and showed up to class with a grape White Owl in my mouth and a baggie full of flour smeared around my nose. The only Austrian accent I’d ever heard at that point was the Terminator’s, so that was how Freud talked. I sat next to B.F. Skinner, as portrayed by a gorgeous little ghoul with dichromatic eyes, and we became a vitriolic tempest of condescending reductionism, laying waste to anyone fool enough to have chosen a humanistic or positive psychologist. The Carl Rogers surrogate got the worst flaying. I think he might still be institutionalized.

speaking of my college

hoo i heard that

Siggy’s personal necromancy cabinet. easily puts mine to shame, but the museum did keep repeating that his three great passions were “traveling, smoking, and collecting”

I laughed so hard and so inappropriately at that adorable picture of Carl Jung. Look at him go! With his little hat, and his little disapproving frown!

I love Jung, I think his work is interesting, if convoluted, arcanist rambling, but I wasn’t prepared for this. From here on out, I’m never gonna be able to think of Freud and Jung as anything but Germanic Rick and Morty.

On my way back to the hostel, I located the only grocery store in Vienna (I’d been looking) and picked up a box of juice brand named “Munter und Aktiv”. Well, I got half of that. I asked Google Translate and it said Munter means “blithely”. I recognized this as impossible. I activated my German field agent and she told me it’s a mixture between happy and awake and active. Well, we already have active. I asked the lady at the hostel desk, planning on averaging all these translations into one definitive Munter.

“It is like waking up with coffee in the morning,” she said. “Like chipper.”

“All right, thank you.”

She asked me if I still had my key card. I said I did.

“Good work,” she told me. She seemed serious, but she may have just been possessed of the Wiener Grant.

“Do people lose them a lot? Is that a big problem here?” I asked, blithely. Munterly.

“No, no problem. We don’t have problems here,” she said, then she honest to God slapped the table and shouted in the thickest, most Germanic accent I’ve ever heard, “VE HAVE ZOLUTIONS!”

She laughed after and clarified that she was just kidding, but I was deer-in-the-headlights frozen. One of those disbelieving grins, you know? When what’s going on… can’t be what’s actually going on.

I know we have a sad little Nazi party movement in America, but realistically that’s like 40 lonely dudes with bad haircuts who get way too much media coverage. In much of Europe, they seem mighty sorry for World War II. The Mahnmal in the heart of Vienna is a good indicator, but there’s more going on than monuments, culturally. The aforementioned German girl is currently crossing eastern Europe and self-inflicting a sort of guilt tour (or Schuldtour). Warsaw and Auschwitz, that I’m aware of. Die Madchen ist haunted.

(As a quick aside, I looked up the German word for ‘haunted’, and, unbelievably, it is spukt. Go ahead. Say it out loud. Spukt. This fuckin’ language, man.)

In the Athens flea market, after divulging her nationality to an antique dealer for reasons I will never understand, he rolled out a bunch of old Nazi medals.

“You want?”

She literally backpedaled, shielding her face like a tall, rigid vampire from an iron cross. But she went on to tell me that there are people back in Germany — in America, we’d call them hicks — that love that kind of thing.

The modern nationalism necessary to breed either sentiment is lost on me, but I don’t think that’s because I’m an American. I’m just not much of a joiner.

A final, weird note, and the last Hitler point I plan on making: the Indian guy told me that Hitler is sort of fondly remembered in India and China. In the course of the war, Germany did a lot of damage to Great Britain, and India is still carrying a pretty understandable grudge against their former imperial taskmasters.

I sat down and collected myself until my chronic and intractable antsiness returned, then I figured I’d go check out the craft beer bar half a mile away. I hadn’t eaten in six or seven hours, so that seemed like the ideal time. They had a Bier dem Wochen flight for the cost of a regular half-pint, so I got that. They brought me 4 beers, all from Anchor Brewing, which I learned from a hipster’s t-shirt is in San Francisco.

welp

The Steam beer must be called that because that’s what it tasted like. The stout was palatable, in a cream soda kind of way. I downed it and ordered a local imperial stout called Der Schnittenfahrt from a company called Brauwork. Hilarious though that may sound, it means “cut drive”, and washing down a flight with it on an empty stomach was perhaps ill advised.

“schnittenfahrt” tho

The bar was very excited about rugby. Ireland vs Argentina. I didn’t know who they were rooting for, but they were rooting for them with all their heart. I went to the bathroom and laughed so hard I scared a dude.

now that’s opulence

That was enough for one night. I had a bus to catch the next morning. I stumbled back to my hostel and passed out. I slept like a rock, except for at around 3 AM when I was awake just long enough to see the dude in the opposing bunk sit up like a mummy, slam his face into the wood support of the bunk over him, and release a long, low-pitched, closed-mouthed moan. It was sort of like a cow mooing, but in slow motion. Absolutely fantastic.

The next morning I threw all my stuff into my bag and wrote in the kitchen until my Brazilian DJ friend rejoined me, looking much worse for wear.

“Bunch of bastards,” he told me out of nowhere.

“Huh?”

“The club I played at,” he spat. “Didn’t pay me a DIME. Bastards. Didn’t even give me free drinks. I had four beers, and they charged me.”

I shook my head. “Animals. Well, chalk it up to experience, I guess.”

He made a vague allusion to being all about peace and love. I shook his hand, wished him well, and headed for the door.

Oh, right. The bus was to Bratislava, and hoo boy, do I got some stories for tomorrow.

    heard yo mama in the movies

Love,

The Bastard

Vienna: Phallic Fixations November 25, 2017. Vienna, Austria. There's really no missing the Pestsäule. The 60-foot baroque monstrosity juts up out of the center of the Graben like an ornate middle finger to God.

[magicalnomad-blog]

My experience with traveling in the South Tyrol

South Tyrol - Landscape scenery Parco Naturale Sciliar Catinaccio (author: Martin Kirschner) If you plan to take a vacation somewhere in the spring, South Tyrol is the right choice. If you visit South Tyrol, so you will be forever remember Mountains, dolomites, beautiful nature, good wine, home-made cheese and Tyrolean bacon. It's almost two years since I visited South Tyrol. Now I have decided to write an article about this country. South Tyrol is a province in northern Italy. It is a part of Tyrol, which was severed from Austria by a peace treaty from Saint-Germain in September 1919 and annexed to Italy. That is why Austrian and Italian culture are mixed. At the high altitudes are living a typical Tyrols with their bright hair and blue eyes. In these places are people speaking mainly German. On the contrary, in the larger cities in the lowlands are living the Italian part of the population which are speaking italian. That's why a person who comes for example out of Bolzano, into some alpine village, then they feels like in another world. In the area are people speaking a total of three oficial languages: 70 % population speaks german, 25 % italian and 5 % latin (retroromain language). Young Tyroleans learn English in schools, so if you control this language, so you can talk to them. For elderly people, but do not expect know English. If you want to go of the South Tyrol, you must first come to Bolzano, which is also its largest city. Bolzano is taken the gateway to South Tyrol. Afterwards, you have two options. Either west across the spa town of Merano towards to the Parco Nazionale dello Stelvio. Or east through the towns of Brixen, Bruneck and then by mountain bus to the south to the mountains and visit one of the four national parks where are the Dolomites and crystal clear lakes lie. As soon as you arrive in Bolzano, consider that this city has only one hostel. It's called Youth Hostel Bolzano, where you will be staying for minimal 22 euros. Another option at a relatively low price is to accomodate at the Catholic school for 33 euros. If they do not even accept you there, because of the full capacity, you have nothing option, then accomodate in the expensive hotel. So before arriving in this city, book your accommodation if you want to the save money.

How did my trip to South Tyrol and what I experienced there:

My way started go on foot from Bolzano on the east towards three national parks. They were parks: Parco Naturale Sciliar Cattinaccio, Parco Naturale Puez Odle and Parco Naturale di Fanes-Sennes-Braies. From Bolzano I  earled in the morning and went east to Tiers, where the above-mentioned national parks began. Was the beautiful spring weather. At my slow pace I went up three days, then one day decline. After four days, I reached to the city Tiers. Then I set out for the first Parco Naturale Sciliar Catinaccio National Park, which I went over in the five days. At the end of this park I reached the Tierské Alps, where I accomoded in a chalet called Schutzhaus Tierser Alpl.

View from the Tiers Alps (author: Martin Kirschner) I do not know how to properly describe Park Parco Naturale Sciliar Catinaccio, but I will try it. The park is located geographically on an extended area at an altitude of about 1,000 to 1,500 meters above sea level. On this area are Dolomites and beautiful blooming meadows. You will not find such a landscape anywhere in the world. It's really wonderful.

Beautiful landscape on the elevated area of the Parco Naturale Sciliar Catinaccio National Park (author: Martin Kirschner) The next two days it took me to arrive in Ortisei, a town in South Tyrol, located in the valley of Val Gardena in the Dolomites. The peculiarity of this city is that of a total  84.19 percent inhabitants (4,663) speaks Latin, which is a Romance language spoken mainly in the provinces of Bolzano, Trento and Belluno. The estimated number of speakers in this language from all world is around 30,000. From the town of Ortisei, I headed for Parco Naturale Puez Odle, which I passed in seven days. Even in this park are the Dolomites. In addition, here you can also meet chamois or marmot.

Landscape in the Parco Naturale Puez National Park Where you can come across muddy or camphos (author: Martin Kirschner) The next three days it took me to get to San Martino In Badia, a renowned ski resort with a number of cable cars nearby. Here you can also lisening the Ladinian language, and even here you will find the center of the ladinian culture "Micurà de Rü" and the medieval castle complex. "Ćiastel de Tor" is also the Museum Ladin Culture. Then I went over a bigger hill and to the one day I has gone to the st.Vigil. St.Vigil is a picturesque village lying at an altitude of 1201 meters at the foot of powerful dolomite giants right on the borders of one of the most beautiful Alpine nature parks of Fanes-Sennes-Braies. Here you will find a number of ski slopes and an annual festival of snow sculptures is held here in January. I stayed in this town for two days and then headed to the park Fanes-Sennes-Braies.

View of the city St.Vigil (author: Martin Kirschner) Fanes-Sennes-Braies Park is registred a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This park covers an area of almost 25,453 hectares. In the east, its territory is bounded by the Höhlensteintal valley; to east st. Vigil in Enneberg, south to St. Kassianu, where he further copied the southern Tyrolean border. It is worthwhile to visit the ladin villages, the so-called Viles, known among others by their original wooden structures. These settlements of several estates were completely self-sufficient in the past. Their inhabitants shared an economic building, a furnace and other facilities together. Also, do not miss a visit to Lake Pragser Wildsee which I also visited. This lake is set in a mountain valley and has crystal clear water with a cyan color. At the lake, there is one hotel called Lago di Braies and a pedestrian crossing for unpretentious tourists around the lake.

Landscape of Pragser Wildsee with crystal clear water. (author: Martin Kirschner) From there I went down from the mountains to the valley of the city Welsberg-Taisten, where I was accomodate at the family hotel Gasser. This hotel surprised me with their hospitality. Hotel was governed by an older lady who served breakfast in traditional Tyrolean costume. For breakfast was all kinds of food were served and cocoa served on request. From Welsberg-Taisten, on foot, I walked on a cycling way to Bruneck where I ended my hiking trip and from there I went by train to Bolzano. In South Tyrol I overall walked about 250 km and it took me about 30 days. While browsing the South Tyrolean countryside, you have the option of dining or try local wine virtually anywhere. Because this country is interwoven with a network of alpine huts, hotels and family restaurants, where is about tourists to take care of it. In addition, this country is among the culinary powers because in 2014 its 19 regional restaurants received 22 michelin stars, which means, that in the culinary industry, this region does not have competition in the whole of Italy. Along the trails of national parks there is a large number of wells to pick up fresh spring water, so you can buy one water just to have a plastic bottle, and you can draw more water to this from the wells, saving you money (that's what I did). One of the interest things I have experienced on my travels with Tyrol was the fact, that almost everywhere in high altitude hotels and cottages is paid after the end of your accommodation. I have never met with that before. This experience gave me a profound impression, that I guess that the Tyroleans are a trusting and honest nation, and apparently it does not happen, that someone has escaped without paying. This trust can be seen in their everyday life, which I had the chance to spend with them for some time.  

People leave the wheels loosely leaning against the wall without fearing that someone is stealing them. (author: Martin Kirschner) I have not seen so helpful people, just like in South Tyrol. I have a lot of experience when I was looking at the map and wondering which way to go on. I have never had to ask for advice, because always someone automaticaly came to me and asked me if I needed to advise or ride a car somewhere. Overall rating of South Tyrol, its culture and people is very positive on my side and I would definitely like to come to this country again. Maybe I again explore South Tyrol to bicycle, because this country is interwoven with a number of cycling routes. Or I'll be back and visit in the west the spa town of Merano and then visiting the Parco Nazionale dello Stelvio, which I have not had the chance to go through.   * The Dolomites (Italian Dolomites, German Dolomites) are one of the mountain massifs of the Italian Alps. It is located in the northern part of Italy, east of the Bolzano basin. The mountain range does not have a single ridge, it consists of many smaller, often very diverse mountain groups. The area is characterized by typical dolomitic elements such as the table top of some massifs, sloping walls, tower peaks, jagged rock crests and almost bizarre shapes of some shields. In the Dolomites there are perhaps all kinds of mountain landscapes - from mountain meadows to rock massifs with glaciers. Source: Wikipedia Click to Post

[itsiotrecords-blog]

http://ift.tt/2sE49gH

Have you ever dreamed of getting insanely rich overnight? Well, of course you have. Everybody wishes he or she could wake up and never have to work another day, having everything one could ever want or need. That’s why the lottery and gambling are so popular and ‘get-rich schemes’ on the internet are endless. People fall for these scams in the hope that they might be the one to get lucky to find the gold to prove that the odds weren’t against them. What about searching for a hidden treasure? Wouldn’t this fulfill every childhood dream you had? You might be surprised to find out that there are still hidden treasures out there all over the world. Things that have never been found. There is gold hidden by pirates, old artifacts stolen, golden owls hidden away for fun, yellow Indian diamonds missing, crazy expensive necklaces with thousands of diamonds, and so much more, all waiting to be discovered.

#1 Forest Fenn’s Hidden Artifacts Forest Fenn was a rich collector who was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 1988. So, with only a year to live, he went to the Rocky Mountains and hid many treasures and old artifacts estimated to value about one to three million dollars. It’s like an old adventure film. He left instructions in the form of a riddle to help people find his treasures. “Begin it where warm waters halt And take it in the canyon down, Not far, but too far to walk. Put in below the home of Brown.” Seriously! How generalized and unspecific did he want his riddle to be? No wonder no one has ever been able to find it.

#2 The Golden Owl Have you ever tried to drive someone crazy? Well, this is the way to do it. A man went by the name Max Valentine and in 1993, he claimed he had hidden a treasure, a golden owl in the French Country Side. He said if anyone managed to find it, he would reward them that person a million dollars. People went crazy trying to find this. Some even burned a church down in pursuit of this golden owl. In an interview, Max Valentine stated that the owl was still in place as he had gone back to check on its location. He said people had gotten close with obvious signs of searching nearby. Unfortunately, Max Valentine is now dead and no one knows whether the owl is even still hidden. Imagine if this man just made up the whole story to draw attention to himself and give the impression to everyone in the world that he had enough money to play games with it. We can only guess.

#3 Thomas Beale’s $63 Million Thomas Beale was a miner who discovered about $63 million worth of gold with a few other men in 1816. They wanted to make sure their children and all their descendants got this money so they left it hidden. Thomas Beale wrote three codes describing where the treasure was, what the treasure was, and the names of the men and their family, so that they would know who the treasure belonged to. He gave this code in a box to a man named Robert Morris who was supposed to open the box after ten years. Thomas Beale was supposed to send a key for the codes if he wasn’t able to return, but he never did. Robert and a friend tried their best to translate the code, but the best they could do was understand what the treasure was. No one has found the treasure to this day.

#4 Pearls In The Salton Sea In 1612, a ship was sailed by Juan De Iturbe across the Pacific Ocean. Rumor has it that the ship sank in what is now known as the Salton Sea, in the Mojave Desert. They say there were loads of expensive black pearls on the ship. The pearls are believed to be worth millions of dollars. The men say they were tossed off the boat into Cahuilla and had to leave the ship and hike on foot all the way to safety. No one has ever claimed to find all these pearls, so people believe that they are still out there somewhere. This legend has grown in fame, so much so that they even made a movie about the treasure being found in 1870.

#5 Diamonds In London This treasure has a greater chance of being discovered since it was only lost in 2009. Graff Diamonds is an expensive jewelry store in London that was robbed in 2009. The two men who robbed the place had extensive disguises. They had gone to a makeup artist for four hours before the robbery, changing their faces and hair. They said to each other that even their own mother wouldn’t have been able to recognize them. They went into the Graff store pretending to buy jewelry and then held an employee at gunpoint forcing the store to give them 43 pieces of jewelry worth up to about $65 million. These jewels were never discovered even though both of the men were eventually caught by police. So there is $65 million worth of jewels and diamonds out there somewhere. Although, if you did find these stolen jewels, you would still have to return them, as each one is marked and chipped with the Graff code.

#6 Flor Do Mar Put on your scuba-diving gear and get ready for the underwater experience of your life. A nobleman, Afonso de Albuquerque, had a large Carrack filled with gifts for the King of Portugal. The boat had traveled around the Indian Ocean, but unfortunately sank in November, 1511. This was one of the biggest Carracks in existence for its time, weighing 400 tons. So when you hear that it was full of treasure, you know there had to be a lot. This treasure was taken from the Sultan of Malacca’s palace. The ship sunk during a storm leaving many men dead. It sunk in the Kingdom of Aru, Sumatra off Timia Point. Alfonso lost all of the treasure. The boat and its treasure are still to be discovered. Portugal, Indonesia, and Malaysia are all fighting over who actually owns the boat if it is found, so you might have a hard time keeping this treasure even if you discover it.

#7 Mosby’s $350,000 Colonel John Singleton Mosby (is that not the longest name you’ve ever heard?), also known as the Gray Ghost because of how quickly he disappeared, was a commander in the Civil War in Virginia, fighting in the Battle of Bull Run and the Peninsular Campaign. He had outstanding skills in disappearing and blending into things to avoid being caught. As a child, he was weak and frail and was often bullied. He always tried to fight back and would lose. He shot a kid that was attacking him, without killing him, and ended up in jail for a year. Perhaps this is what taught him to disappear and hide rather than attack face on. He took $350,000, but then almost got caught so he and his men buried the treasure. He sent men back later to collect the money, but they were all caught and killed. So John Mosby never ended up going back to collect his treasure.

#8 The Irish Crown Jewels People are still trying to work out how the Irish Crown Jewels went missing back in 1907. The cleaner who worked in the Dublin Castle discovered the safe wide open with the jewels gone, while the inner door had been secured with the library key still in the lock. The Jewels were said to be worth around £1,340,000 in 2015 and contain the “jeweled star and badge regalia of the Sovereign and Grand Master of the Order of St. Patrick.” The safe was moved in 1907, but the dimensions were wrong and so it couldn’t fit in the strong room, so they had to store it in the office of the King of Arms, Arthur Vicars. The keys were all held by the Vicars and staff. They were very relaxed about this. The Vicar got drunk once and awoke with all the precious jewels on him. This might not have been an outside job. Perhaps it was carried out by those who protected the jewels. People say these jewels have probably been broken to pieces and sold off or hidden away somewhere.

#9 The Florentine Diamond This mystery feels like the sort of thing you find in many novels. The Florentine Diamond is a beautiful yellow diamond with origins from India that was valued at $750,000 during World War One. The stone dates back to at least 1476. During the 1700’s, the jewels were placed in the Hapsburg Crown Jewels after Francis Stephan of Lorraine married Empress Maria Theresa, bringing the jewel to Vienna with him. During WWI, the Austrian Empire fell. Thus, Charles I took many jewels, including the Florentine diamond, into exile to Switzerland. This diamond was stolen by an unknown subject around 1918 and was taken to South America. With no clue of its whereabouts, some claim it may have been cut up and sold in America after it was stolen in 1918. If it wasn’t cut and resold, it would be an extremely impressive jewel to discover and would be worth a great amount today.

#10 Oak Island Mystery The Oak Island Mystery is a baffling one. While many critics believe there is no treasure on this island, there have been countless books written about this mystery and even a documentary that was aired in 2014 about finding the hidden treasure of the island. The Oak Island is located in Canada in Nova Scotia’s south shore. There are so many different theories as to what’s hidden in these islands, mostly ancient artifacts and numerous locations the supposed treasures could be. Mostly, treasure hunters like to look at a few specific locations—the “Money Pit, a formation of boulders called Nolan’s Cross, the beach at Smith’s Cove, and a triangle-shaped swamp.” They say that the Money Pit has already been excavated and nothing has ever been found, but people continue to go to these islands to search.

#11 Patiala Necklace This is a pretty amazing necklace. It contains 2,930 diamonds. Not only that, but it actually holds the world’s seventh largest diamond known as the “De Beers,” some rubies, and seven more diamonds with 18 to 73 carats. The necklace was made for Bhupinder Singh of Patiala in 1928 by the House of Cartier, and then later given to Maharaja, also of the state of Patiala. Somehow, in 1948, the necklace disappeared, but the famous De Beers diamond reappeared in 1982 by itself at Geneva auction being sold for $3.16 million. The rest of the necklace later surfaced in London, but was of course missing all of its large diamonds and rubies. Cartier decided to buy the necklace and remake it. It took them four years, and they only made a replica, probably realizing the danger of making such an outrageous necklace. They filled the missing jewels with cubic zirconia and made a fake De Beers diamond for the centerpiece.

#12 Alamo Treasure In Texas USA, the lost Alamo Treasure is hidden. The Mexican army fought 100 men from Texas and destroyed every single one of them in the battle of the Alamo in 1836. Reportedly, the Alamo had hidden treasure of gold in its grounds worth millions. The treasure was brought to help free the Texas people from Mexico. They hid the treasure in case another war arose and they needed supplies. The theory is that the treasure was hidden in the bottom of the well, though others believe there isn’t any treasure and that if there were, they wouldn’t have hidden it in a well during a war, as that would have dirtied their only access to clean drinking water in the instance of a siege. The Alamo was a fortress and also used as a Roman Catholic mission. The building was actually designed for educating the newly converted Christian American natives. The front street has already been excavated in search of the lost treasure. The building is now a museum.

#13 Poland’s Royal Casket Poland’s Royal Casket was made for royalty in 1800 and was said to contain seventy-three prized relics “including gold watches, chains, silver rosaries, ivory boxes and silver cutlery.” It went missing during the World War II after it was sent to Sieniawa in Southwest Poland. They tried to hide the treasure in Poland, but ended up losing it. Some people say that its whereabouts were given away in 1939 by a local named German Miller who told the invading Nazis where to find the hidden Royal Casket. To this day, none of the missing relics have been found. It’s possible that they are all scattered throughout Germany hidden in various places.

#14 Ivory Coast Jewels $6 Million The Ivory Coast Jewels were stolen only in 2011. The museum in the capital of Ivory Coast was robbed during the Abidjan battle. They believe this robbery had help from the inside as none of the windows or glass boxes were smashed and the doors weren’t even open. The museum hasn’t been able to recover a single thing. The museum has managed to mark most of the stolen things in the Interpol database, so that if anything surfaces, they will know that it’s stolen. They didn’t just steal things of monetary value, these artifacts contain Ivory Coast’s precious history, with some of them being from as early as the 17th century. “Among the stolen artifacts were 35 gold pendants dating from the 18th Century, 12 traditional necklaces from the 17th Century, six miniature gold boxes from the 18th Century, a 19th Century royal sabre, and an Akan king headdress, which could come from the Baoule or Anyi kingdoms.”

#15 Jean Lafitte Jean Lafitte was a pirate from France. He and his brother worked together during the 19th century to steal treasure off boats in the Gulf of Mexico. They were hardcore pirates. They had a warehouse set up where they would bring the treasure to sell it. Many people believe that Jean and his brother, Pierre Laffite, had so much treasure that they weren’t able to sell it all. Instead, they began to bury the treasure to keep it safe. Whether this part is true or just a legend is hard to really know. Rumor has it that the treasure was buried in Lake Borgne and still remains there. This is located near the coast of New Orleans. Jean died in 1823, right before pirates basically became extinct in the Gulf of Mexico. There are also many rumors and legends about his death. No one is really sure how it happened.

Source: TheRichest

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Son Heung-min strikes to salvage draw for Tottenham at Manchester City

Goals from Dele Alli and Son Heung-min earned Tottenham a 2-2 draw away to Manchester City, who had gone two goals ahead thanks to Leroy San and Kevin De Bruyne

By the end, Tottenham Hotspur might even have been reflecting on their first run of seven straight top-division wins in half a century. They rode their luck at times and Manchester City are entitled to be aggrieved bearing in mind the chaotic events that brought Pep Guardiola down to his knees at one stage, doing a fine impersonation of Basil Fawlty. Yet this was also an occasion where we learned a little bit more about the durability of this Spurs side and the qualities that will be needed if they are to sustain a title challenge.

They certainly made life difficult for themselves after the two mistakes from Hugo Lloris early in the second half had enabled Leroy San and Kevin De Bruyne to put their opponents in a position of control. Yet even in the more difficult moments Spurs never looked like a team that lacked belief.

Yes, they were mightily fortunate that Kyle Walkers penalty-area push on Raheem Sterling went unnoticed, with the score at 2-1, but it still amounted to a rousing comeback once Dele Alli had given them hope just before the hour.

The equaliser came from Son Heung-min, a half-time substitute, barely a minute after Sterling had run clear only for Walker to impede his opponent just at the moment when he was taking aim. In the process, Spurs had scored with their first two attempts on target, extending Claudio Bravos sequence to 16 goals conceded from 24 shots. Bravo, in fairness, could not be blamed on this occasion but Guardiola must be alarmed by the frequency with which his team sieve goals.

On the one hand, there is plenty to admire about a manager who shoehorns David Silva, San, De Bruyne and Sterling into a side that already has Sergio Agero in its most advanced position. On the other, there cannot have been many City supporters who did not feel a pang of anxiety when they looked at Guardiolas lineup and realised Yaya Tour hardly a modern-day Claude Makelele was their only cover in front of a defence that had kept fewer clean sheets this season than Stoke City or Bournemouth.

Guardiola certainly cannot be accused of lacking adventure but he was taking a risk when there has been so much palpable evidence this season that City are vulnerable, to say the least, in defence. First, though, Spurs had to get the ball and the visitors had to withstand some concerted pressure during the opening part of the match. Pablo Zabaleta also seemed intent on joining Citys attacking ranks and, with their front players constantly interchanging positions, there was an urgency to their play that troubled their opponents for long spells.

So much of Tottenhams success at White Hart Lane has been based on their refusal to let the opposition settle yet they were given a taste here of what it is like to be on the receiving end. When Guardiolas players lost the ball they went to great efforts to get it back as quickly as possible.

They might have lacked tacklers but they were quick to the ball, chasing down their opponents and discomfiting Spurs to the point that Lloris could be seen shanking the ball out of play even before his day became a personal ordeal.

By half-time, there had not been a great deal of evidence to demonstrate why Spurs had won their previous six games and there was so much disorder in their defence the visiting supporters must have longed for the reassuring presence of Jan Vertonghen. This was only the fourth occasion Kevin Wimmer has started a league fixture this season.

He was booked in the opening exchanges after being caught in possession by Zabaleta and it was another mistake from the Austrian that led to Citys best chance of the opening 45 minutes. Lloris spared his team-mate with a flying save but it was unusual to see Spurs under so much pressure and Pochettino must have been disappointed at the interval that his side had not done more to explore the theory that Bravo might be a danger to his own team.

Sons introduction at half-time meant Spurs reverting to a 4-2-3-1 system with Alli coming in from a left-sided role to take up a more central position behind Harry Kane. Yet the visitors hardly had time to adjust before Citys superiority finally started to pay and, given that Spurs arrived here with the best defensive statistics in the league, they were wretched goals to concede.

Perhaps the mistake for Sans goal was still weighing on Lloriss mind when Sterling sprinted along the right five minutes later and clipped in a low cross that the goalkeeper would usually expect to gather no problem. Lloris went down to meet the cross inside his own six-yard area but his handling was clumsy and the ball squirted out. De Bruyne jutted out his boot and Spurs were suddenly two behind.

It was rare to see Lloris make such an error, and particularly unusual to see him at fault twice. For the first goal, he had sprinted out of his penalty area to throw himself at the ball in an attempt to prevent De Bruynes long pass reaching San. The problem was that his header came back off San and, though it actually struck his hand, he was given the benefit of the doubt to slip the ball into the goal.

The game changed after Alli headed in Walkers cross and the second Spurs goal was one of the fleeting occasions when we saw Pochettinos team at their best. Kane flicked Christian Eriksens path into Son and the substitute beat Bravo with a right-footed drive to spark a chaotic finale in which Gabriel Jesus, Citys Brazilian newcomer, thought he had scored the winner only to realise, midway through his lap of honour, that the flag had gone up for offside.

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