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The Home of a Du

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29,357 notes

Wanna know something I learnt?

bakerstreetbabes:

julieftws:

thecarpenterwizard:

winterkisseswhenyourlipswereblue:

In WWII the phrase “Vatican Cameos” was used when a person who was not in the British army came before the general, or other high up ranks, as a signal to the other officers that the person was armed.

So when Sherlock says “Vatican Cameos” to warn John that the safe has a gun in it, it’s not something that they’ve set up as a code word- It’s a code Sherlock knew John would know- being a soldier! 

image

Holy…..

It’s also canon! “I was exceedingly preoccupied by that little affair of the Vatican cameos, and in my anxiety to oblige the Pope I lost touch with several interesting English cases.” —HOUN

(via thedoctorboy)

Filed under Sherlock history vatican cameos AHHHHHHHHHHHH

20,814 notes

odditiesoflife:

The Real Abandoned Overlook Hotel

Unlike the fictional Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, this hotel is really named the Overlook. The abandoned hotel is located in the small, wine growing town of Bernkastel-Kues in Germany. Other than it has been unoccupied for about 13 years, there is no information as to why the hotel was closed. All of the furniture remains and it looks as if everyone there simply left. There are rumors that the hotel is haunted. According to urban explorers who frequent the spooky site, cameras malfunction, sounds can be heard throughout the premises and items seem to move around the hotel by themselves.

(via neil-gaiman)

Filed under Overlook Hotel history COOL

49,421 notes

When the Nazi concentration camps were liberated by the Allies, it was a time of great jubilation for the tens of thousands of people incarcerated in them. But an often forgotten fact of this time is that prisoners who happened to be wearing the pink triangle (the Nazis’ way of marking and identifying homosexuals) were forced to serve out the rest of their sentence. This was due to a part of German law simply known as “Paragraph 175” which criminalized homosexuality. The law wasn’t repealed until 1969.

When the Nazi concentration camps were liberated by the Allies, it was a time of great jubilation for the tens of thousands of people incarcerated in them. But an often forgotten fact of this time is that prisoners who happened to be wearing the pink triangle (the Nazis’ way of marking and identifying homosexuals) were forced to serve out the rest of their sentence. This was due to a part of German law simply known as “Paragraph 175” which criminalized homosexuality. The law wasn’t repealed until 1969.

(Source: ramirezbundydahmer, via raphmike)

Filed under History WWII gay history

60,379 notes

jawdust: Why you should be in passionate horny love with Elizabeth ‘Nellie Bly’ Cochrane Born in 1864/65, Elizabeth, one of 15 children, was always ‘the rebellious one’. Fierce as fuck from an early age, she testified against her abusive stepfather in her mother’s divorce trial. In 1880 she enrolled in a teacher-training college but had to leave after her first semester due to lack of funding - then moved to Pittsburgh to help run a goddamn boarding school.  This is where we get to the good shit. Age 18, she wrote a letter-to-the-editor of the Pittsburgh Dispatch bitchslapping the everloving fuck out of a sexist ballsack of an article entitled ‘What Girls Are Good For’.  The editor was so goddamn wooed by her razor-sharp tongue that he RAN AN AD asking her to identify herself. Elizabeth owned up, and was hired instantaneously, her badassery radiating from her pores and intoxicating all within a twenty mile radius. Working under the pen-name Nellie Bly, Elizabeth kicked the butts of morons everywhere, writing articles aimed at social justice, particularly labour laws to protect working ‘girls’ and reform of Pennsylvania’s divorce law, which greatly favoured men. Not content with changing the world from behind her desk, Elizabeth became a founding mother of investigative journalism. She was expelled from Mexico for exposing political corruption, and henceforth wrapped in cotton wool by her editors. Infuriated by their mollycoddling, Lizzie left them a note essentially telling them to fuck themselves and hot footed it to NYC. She was still only 23. Within six months she was hired by Joseph fucking Pulitzer himself, and continued her batshit crazy investigations uninhibited. Her very first assingment had her feigning mental illness to expose repulsive conditions in Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum. Her cutting report was so fucking horrifying, compelling and persuasive that it triggered public and political action, leading to reform of the institution. In the next couple of years she had herself thrown in jail and hired by a sweatshop, all for shits and giggles. Oh, and to uncover incomprehensible injustice, cruelty, poverty, and the concealed, heinous treatment of the vulnerable and voiceless.  But was pioneering journalism, social revolution and batshit badassery enough for our Liz? Like fuck it was. On a whim Nellie did what any self-respecting 25 year old woman in the 1800s would do - she emulated Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days, and did it in 72. Millions followed her journey, and its appeal to a semi-literate populace resulted in greatly increased newspaper readership. So while travelling the entire globe (IN THE 1800s, AS A WOMAN) by ship, train, burro and balloon, she helped the world to read. Having essentially conquered the entire goddamn universe before hitting 30, Nellie retired, and wed 72 year old industrialist Robert Seaman. Their marriage was a happy one, and after his death she took over Iron Clad Manufacturing Co. But Lizzie was a writer, what would she know about the metal industry? Well, she INVENTED the steel barrel that became the model for the widely used 55-gallon drum and turned her inherited businesses into multimillion-dollar companies, so apparently a fuck ton. Furthermore, she set a precedent for working conditions, ensuring her workers had good pay, gymnasiums, staffed libraries, and health care, all completely unheard of at the time, while still writing to further the plight of the Suffragette movement. Nellie may have died age 58 of pneumonia, but HBICs live on forever.

jawdust:

Why you should be in passionate horny love with Elizabeth ‘Nellie Bly’ Cochrane

  • Born in 1864/65, Elizabeth, one of 15 children, was always ‘the rebellious one’. Fierce as fuck from an early age, she testified against her abusive stepfather in her mother’s divorce trial.
  • In 1880 she enrolled in a teacher-training college but had to leave after her first semester due to lack of funding - then moved to Pittsburgh to help run a goddamn boarding school. 
  • This is where we get to the good shit. Age 18, she wrote a letter-to-the-editor of the Pittsburgh Dispatch bitchslapping the everloving fuck out of a sexist ballsack of an article entitled ‘What Girls Are Good For’. 
  • The editor was so goddamn wooed by her razor-sharp tongue that he RAN AN AD asking her to identify herself. Elizabeth owned up, and was hired instantaneously, her badassery radiating from her pores and intoxicating all within a twenty mile radius.
  • Working under the pen-name Nellie Bly, Elizabeth kicked the butts of morons everywhere, writing articles aimed at social justice, particularly labour laws to protect working ‘girls’ and reform of Pennsylvania’s divorce law, which greatly favoured men.
  • Not content with changing the world from behind her desk, Elizabeth became a founding mother of investigative journalism. She was expelled from Mexico for exposing political corruption, and henceforth wrapped in cotton wool by her editors. Infuriated by their mollycoddling, Lizzie left them a note essentially telling them to fuck themselves and hot footed it to NYC. She was still only 23.
  • Within six months she was hired by Joseph fucking Pulitzer himself, and continued her batshit crazy investigations uninhibited. Her very first assingment had her feigning mental illness to expose repulsive conditions in Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum. Her cutting report was so fucking horrifying, compelling and persuasive that it triggered public and political action, leading to reform of the institution.
  • In the next couple of years she had herself thrown in jail and hired by a sweatshop, all for shits and giggles. Oh, and to uncover incomprehensible injustice, cruelty, poverty, and the concealed, heinous treatment of the vulnerable and voiceless. 
  • But was pioneering journalism, social revolution and batshit badassery enough for our Liz? Like fuck it was. On a whim Nellie did what any self-respecting 25 year old woman in the 1800s would do - she emulated Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days, and did it in 72.
  • Millions followed her journey, and its appeal to a semi-literate populace resulted in greatly increased newspaper readership. So while travelling the entire globe (IN THE 1800s, AS A WOMAN) by ship, train, burro and balloon, she helped the world to read.
  • Having essentially conquered the entire goddamn universe before hitting 30, Nellie retired, and wed 72 year old industrialist Robert Seaman. Their marriage was a happy one, and after his death she took over Iron Clad Manufacturing Co.
  • But Lizzie was a writer, what would she know about the metal industry? Well, she INVENTED the steel barrel that became the model for the widely used 55-gallon drum and turned her inherited businesses into multimillion-dollar companies, so apparently a fuck ton.
  • Furthermore, she set a precedent for working conditions, ensuring her workers had good pay, gymnasiums, staffed libraries, and health care, all completely unheard of at the time, while still writing to further the plight of the Suffragette movement.
  • Nellie may have died age 58 of pneumonia, but HBICs live on forever.

(via pileofgoodthings)

Filed under History women's history Elizabeth Cochrane Nellie Bly AWESOME I want to be this person I want to be the one who is HBIC in the books

2,591 notes

kadrey: The Paris Time Capsule Apartment “…The owner of this apartment, Mrs. De Florian left Paris just before the rumblings of World War II broke out in Europe. She closed up her shutters and left for the South of France, never to return to the city again. Seven decades later she passed away at the age of 91. It was only when her heirs enlisted professionals to make an inventory of the Parisian apartment she left behind, that this time capsule was finally unlocked…” FOR THE FULL ARTICLE CLICK THE LINK: http://www.messynessychic.com/2012/05/09/the-paris-time-capsule-apartment/

kadrey:

The Paris Time Capsule Apartment

“…The owner of this apartment, Mrs. De Florian left Paris just before the rumblings of World War II broke out in Europe. She closed up her shutters and left for the South of France, never to return to the city again. Seven decades later she passed away at the age of 91. It was only when her heirs enlisted professionals to make an inventory of the Parisian apartment she left behind, that this time capsule was finally unlocked…”

FOR THE FULL ARTICLE CLICK THE LINK:

http://www.messynessychic.com/2012/05/09/the-paris-time-capsule-apartment/

(via wilwheaton)

Filed under history awesome

331 notes

todaysdocument: Remembering Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941 Clarendon Hetrick, Pearl Harbor survivor, sits in his wheelchair as he views the memorial shrine at the USS ARIZONA Memorial immediately following the joint Navy/National Park Service ceremony commemorating the 65th Anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 2006, at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. More than 1,500 Pearl Harbor survivors, their families and their friends from around the nation joined the more than 2,000 distiguished guests and the general public for the annual observance. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication SPECIALIST 1ST Class James E. Foehl) (Released), 12/07/2006

todaysdocument:

Remembering Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941

Clarendon Hetrick, Pearl Harbor survivor, sits in his wheelchair as he views the memorial shrine at the USS ARIZONA Memorial immediately following the joint Navy/National Park Service ceremony commemorating the 65th Anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 2006, at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. More than 1,500 Pearl Harbor survivors, their families and their friends from around the nation joined the more than 2,000 distiguished guests and the general public for the annual observance. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication SPECIALIST 1ST Class James E. Foehl) (Released), 12/07/2006

Filed under history pearl harbor WWII

121,003 notes

goddessofcheese: brofligate: did-you-kno: Source There is literally nothing better than a sexy, badass lady. CHING MOTHERFUCKING SHIH This lady was such a badass, I can’t count the ways, but let’s try. She got married to an already successful pirate, Zheng Yi, and took over when he died. She was crazy strict to keep an iron fist over her fleet of pirates, and the punishments for stepping out of line were brutal. If you stole or looted from a town that provided assistance or tribute to the pirate fleet, Ching would chop your fucking head off with a battle axe and dump your lifeless body in the ocean.  If you stole from the pirate treasury, or she thought you were stealing from the pirate treasury, Ching would chop your fucking head off dump your lifeless body in the ocean.  Raping any captured female prisoners was punishable by immediate death.  Fuck, if you had consensual sex while on duty you got your head chopped off and the woman was chucked off the boat no matter where they were at.  Ching wasn’t fucking around, and she wanted to make damn sure you weren’t fucking around when you should have been working. Two years after she took over, she got so notorious for ransacking towns and taking taxes on them that she pissed off the entire Chinese government, and sent out a massive fleet to bring her in line. Most pirates probably would’ve said this was out of their pay grade and taken off to hide out or ransack some other country. Ching Shih said fuck that. She not only faced them head on, she wiped the floor with them, killing hundreds and capturing sixty-something ships from the Imperial Fleet. Prisoners were given the choice of joining up or being executed on the spot. The Admiral of the Chinese navy, Kwo Lang, was so afraid of being captured by her or going back to admit he’d been beaten by her that he committed suicide. For the next two years, Ching Shih not only kept on pirating, she fought off Chinese forces as well as Dutch and British warships that the navy called in to help. Finally the government gave up and offered her amnesty as well as amnesty for her then SEVENTEEN THOUSAND crewman. Ching Shih got to keep all her plunder, so she retired to the countryside where she opened up a brothel and lived until she was 69. tldr: I’ve come to terms with the reality that I’ll never be as terrifyingly badass as this woman was.

goddessofcheese:

brofligate:

did-you-kno:

Source

There is literally nothing better than a sexy, badass lady.

CHING MOTHERFUCKING SHIH

This lady was such a badass, I can’t count the ways, but let’s try.

She got married to an already successful pirate, Zheng Yi, and took over when he died. She was crazy strict to keep an iron fist over her fleet of pirates, and the punishments for stepping out of line were brutal. If you stole or looted from a town that provided assistance or tribute to the pirate fleet, Ching would chop your fucking head off with a battle axe and dump your lifeless body in the ocean.  If you stole from the pirate treasury, or she thought you were stealing from the pirate treasury, Ching would chop your fucking head off dump your lifeless body in the ocean.  Raping any captured female prisoners was punishable by immediate death.  Fuck, if you had consensual sex while on duty you got your head chopped off and the woman was chucked off the boat no matter where they were at.  Ching wasn’t fucking around, and she wanted to make damn sure you weren’t fucking around when you should have been working.

Two years after she took over, she got so notorious for ransacking towns and taking taxes on them that she pissed off the entire Chinese government, and sent out a massive fleet to bring her in line. Most pirates probably would’ve said this was out of their pay grade and taken off to hide out or ransack some other country.

Ching Shih said fuck that.

She not only faced them head on, she wiped the floor with them, killing hundreds and capturing sixty-something ships from the Imperial Fleet. Prisoners were given the choice of joining up or being executed on the spot. The Admiral of the Chinese navy, Kwo Lang, was so afraid of being captured by her or going back to admit he’d been beaten by her that he committed suicide.

For the next two years, Ching Shih not only kept on pirating, she fought off Chinese forces as well as Dutch and British warships that the navy called in to help. Finally the government gave up and offered her amnesty as well as amnesty for her then SEVENTEEN THOUSAND crewman. Ching Shih got to keep all her plunder, so she retired to the countryside where she opened up a brothel and lived until she was 69.

tldr: I’ve come to terms with the reality that I’ll never be as terrifyingly badass as this woman was.

(Source: did-you-kno, via theelyciumfields)

Filed under Ching Shih history china chinese history HBIC BOOM