todayilearned

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todayilearned

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not sure why i found this fascinating. i was working a geospatial mapping project and stumbled on this tangent

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The Canadian Shield (French: Bouclier canadien [buklje kanadjɛ̃]), also called the Laurentian Shield or the Laurentian Plateau, is a geologic shield, a large area of exposed Precambrian igneous and high-grade metamorphic rocks. It forms the North American Craton (or Laurentia), the ancient geologic core of the North American continent. Glaciation has left the area with only a thin layer of soil, through which exposures of igneous bedrock resulting from its long volcanic history are frequently visible. As a deep, common, joined bedrock region in eastern and central Canada, the shield stretches north from the Great Lakes to the Arctic Ocean, covering over half of Canada and most of Greenland; it also extends south into the northern reaches of the continental United States. Geographical extent The Canadian Shield is a physiographic division comprising...

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Little of the soil of planet Earth is older than the Pleistocene and none is older than the Cenozoic, although fossilized soils are preserved from as far back as the Archean.

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They did a blood-filled record for Motley Crüe, a fly-filled record for Alice in Chains, a ring-filled record for the Sonic the Hedgehog movie soundtrack and other weird stuff. One even has scorpions inside it!

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Nobody mourned.

Also, why am I the only person who ever learns anything around here?

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This gigantic horseshoe crab has migrated from a harbor in Baltimore, Maryland, to dry land in Ohio. This massive piece of art has had four homes over the last 25 years. The first was in Baltimore, the second in a creationist museum in Kentucky, the third outside a church in Blanchester, Ohio, and now in Hillsboro.

Known affectionately as “Crabbie,” the fiberglass arthropod measures 67 feet long, 28 feet wide, and 12 feet high (with an even longer tail that sticks up behind the structure). It was built in 1995 for an attraction in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. The structure is open on the inside, with room for dozens of people, and it was initially used as a space for teaching about the Chesapeake Bay’s marine life at the Columbus Center. Videos of sharks hunting were shown inside the huge shell.

After it was purchased at a bankruptcy sale, the horseshoe crab moved to the Midwest where it spent time at two churches. In 2008, daredevil Gene Sullivan jumped over the horseshoe crab and through a flaming “Gates of Hell” as part of his gospel ministry stunt program, Jump for Jesus.

In 2015, the church put Crabbie up for sale. It was purchased by a family in Hillsboro, Ohio, who moved it to their property and set it up as a roadside attraction, where it remains to this day.

More on Gene Sullivan: https://www.vice.com/en/article/4wb54d/the-evangelical-evel-knievel-511

Crabbie as it was delivered to its current Hillsboro location:

Crabbie has since been given a new coat of paint:

This is the best picture I can find showing the underside. Clearly whatever building structure was beneath it to project the shark video is gone.

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They also produced the color purple or lavender from the murex mollusks that were found on the seacoast. Dye makers rubbed two of the mollusks together in order to extract the dye.

That sounds simple enough, but it also involved some real chemistry:

https://hal.science/hal-03202592/document

Purple was one of the most expensive and difficult dyes to acquire and process. 1 gram takes 10,000 snails. In Europe, it was solely used for kings.

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submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 
 

412 (1975)

e. source

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Stan Lee himself narrates.

They're extremely cheesy, but so were early FF comics.

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Founded in 1825, Seneca Village was once home to nearly 200 residents.

Some villagers were German and Irish American.

But most of them were Black

By 1855, nearly half of them owned their own homes. They had a school, churches, gardens and voting rights because they owned land.

But in 1857, Seneca Village was torn down when the city decided it wanted to create a park.

Villagers were essentially forced to leave.

Today, researchers are trying to figure out where they went and locate their descendants.

A lot of the original landscape can still be seen in the park today.

It stretches from 82nd Street to 89th Street and Central Park West.

“We know that they used some of the stone that you see out there now to build their houses,” Marie Warsh, a historian with the Central Park Conservancy, told NBC New York.

Signs erected by the Central Park Conservancy help to commemorate and tell the story of the village and its vibrant community.

“You can really start to imagine what it may have looked like,” said Warsh.

Talks to figure out a permanent way to commemorate Seneca Village, which is not a historical landmark, are ongoing.

Those interested in learning more about the history of Seneca Village can visit the MET's "Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room" exhibition or www.centralparknyc.org.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1815113

After the Romans departed, systematic construction of paved highways in the United Kingdom did not resume until the early 18th century. The Roman road network remained the only nationally managed highway system within Britain until the establishment of the Ministry of Transport in the early 20th century.

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