Spiral staircases were a clever defence in medieval castles. They were almost always built with the spiral in the same direction (clockwise, when looking up from the bottom) so that the defending swordsman, who would either be coming down the stairs or backing up in reverse, could freely swing his sword. Conversely, the attacking swordsman (ascending the stairs) would have his swing blocked by the wall.
This, of course, assumed that both attacker an defender were right-handed, which most were.
Left-handed swordsman, though rare, had the advantage of surprise when attacking out-in-the-open – they had fought (and trained against) more right-handed opponents than their adversary had fought left-handed opponents. Their attack when ascending standard spiral staircases was also not blocked by the wall.
The warlike Clan Kerr trained to use their weapons with their left hands. Scottish Poet James Hogg (1770-1835) wrote, in The Raid of the Kerrs:
But the Kerrs were aye the deadliest foes
That e’er to Englishmen were known
For they were all bred left handed men
And fence [defence] against them there was none
and Walter Laidlaw wrote, in The Reprisal:
So well the Kerrs their left-hands ply
The dead and dying round them lie
Legend has it that, to allow them to more easily defend Ferniehirst Castle – seat of the Clan Kerr – the staircase was built spiralling in the other direction (see illustration above, with left-handed Kerr shown with ginger hair).
Is this true? Certainly, the castle does feature a reverse spiral staircase, but a 1993 study found no increased incidence of left-handedness in Kerrs.
Personally, I don’t Kerr whether it’s true or not – it’s a great story.
Listen to a minute of this, from about 0:50 onwards: The Swedish Rhapsody (MP3).
This spooky sound is sampled from a Numbers Station. Hundreds of these shortwave radio stations exist around the world, transmitting numbers, letters, beeps and simple tunes. Their origin – and ongoing transmissions – still largely remain a mystery.
Are they secret codes and directives for spies in foreign countries? Are they sources of misinformation to distract the enemy? Perhaps messages between druglords? Hoaxes by amateur enthusiasts? The answer is probably: yes, all of these, and more besides.
The Conet Project sampled 150 transmissions from 20 years and released them on a 4CD set (“Not available in stores!“, I suspect). This is currently “out of stock”, but the recordings are also available on archive.org, should you wish to disturb yourself some more.
You can read more about Numbers Stations on Damn Interesting, and Boing Boing’s coverage of the copyright fight between The Conet Project and Wilco, who used a sample of the recordings on their Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album. Wikipedia also has entries for some individual stations, including The Lincolnshire Poacher, Cherry Ripe, and UVB-76.
Lego spy photo under Creative Commons license from Flickr user Dunechaser.
The Whitburn Project is an informal group that collects data about all songs in the Billboard chart, and has amassed a huge amount of information from 1890 onwards. The data is a little inconsistent (due to the nature of mass collaboration) and isn’t 100% complete, but it still allows for some interesting analysis.
Here we present the most successful songwriters of all time and per decade (from the 60s onwards), according to this data. Note that inconsistencies may result in some songwriters having their data split across multiple spellings of their name, e.g. Timbaland may appear as both Tim Mosley and T.V. Mosley in the 2000s chart.
Source Data
| Song Writer |
Writing Credits |
| 1890-2008 |
|
| Babyface |
94 |
| Gerry Goffin |
96 |
| Eddie Holland Jr. |
97 |
| Carole King |
99 |
| Brian Holland |
102 |
| Lamont Dozier |
105 |
| Burt Bacharach |
105 |
| Hal David |
111 |
| John Lennon |
127 |
| Paul McCartney |
141 |
| 1960s |
|
| William “Smokey” Robinson |
61 |
| Carole King |
67 |
| Eddie Holland Jr. |
73 |
| Lamont Dozier |
74 |
| Brian Holland |
74 |
| Burt Bacharach |
76 |
| Gerry Goffin |
76 |
| Hal David |
79 |
| John Lennon |
86 |
| Paul McCartney |
86 |
| 1970s |
|
| Brian Holland |
28 |
| Neil Diamond |
28 |
| Robin Gibb |
28 |
| James Brown |
31 |
| Lamont Dozier |
31 |
| Carole King |
32 |
| Norman Whitfield |
34 |
| John Lennon |
38 |
| Barry Gibb |
39 |
| Kenny Gamble |
47 |
| Leon Huff |
48 |
| Paul McCartney |
52 |
| 1980s |
|
| B.Springsteen |
14 |
| B.Taupin |
15 |
| H.Knight |
15 |
| J.Vallance |
15 |
| D.Child |
17 |
| Babyface |
18 |
| D.Warren |
19 |
| *Prince Symbol* |
20 |
| D.Foster |
22 |
| J.Harris III |
26 |
| T.Lewis |
27 |
| 1990s |
|
| Madonna |
21 |
| L.A.Reid |
21 |
| R.Kelly |
21 |
| D.Simmons |
25 |
| T.Riley |
26 |
| *Prince Symbol* |
26 |
| J.Harris III |
45 |
| T.Lewis |
45 |
| D.Warren |
47 |
| Babyface |
69 |
| 2000s |
|
| A.Thiam |
17 |
| Jermaine Dupri |
17 |
| Marshall Mathers |
17 |
| S.Smith |
19 |
| T.E.Hermansen |
19 |
| J.Dupri |
20 |
| T.V.Mosley |
25 |
| S.Garrett |
26 |
| Tim Mosley |
28 |
| Pharrell Williams |
28 |
| Chad Hugo |
35 |
| R. Kelly |
37 |
Many older cities rapidly expanded during the Industrial Revolution, as workers flocked to the urban centers. As the towns and cities expanded, the residential areas for the workers tended to be in the east, with the middle and upper-classes in the west.
The reason for this is that in much of the northern hemisphere, the prevailing winds are westerlies – blowing from west to east. The massive, unchecked pollution from these early industries would therefore drift eastward, making the air quality much lower in the east end of cities, lowering the desirability (and price) of the housing. Middle classes preferred the cleaner west ends.
The issue was probably even pre-Industrial Revolution, as smoke from personal chimneys would still have caused problems to the east.
In many cities, this will have been compounded – or confused – by the direction of the main river in the environment, which would have been relied on for many uses, including sewerage. London, as an example, displays a massive east/west divide, caused in large part by both early industry and the west-to-east flow of the River Thames.
Smoke image under Creative Commons license, by Flickr user Señor Codo
Despite the expression “what comes around, goes around” there are a group of outlaws who had surprisingly soft endings, despite having lived extremely hard, dangerous and, in most cases, crime ridden lives.
During his eighty years of life, Wyatt Earp earned the reputation as one of the most fearsome cowboys in the West. Fluctuating between legitimate lawmaker and criminal, Earp’s claim to fame is his participation in the famous gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona and his ongoing series of vendettas, most notably the Earp Vendetta, also referred to as the Arizona war. At various points in his career, Earp also worked as a “farmer, teamster, buffalo hunter, gambler, saloon-keeper, minder and boxing referee.” (source)
There are conflicting records of how many people Earp killed during his wild old days, but there are some records that place the number somewhere between eight and over thirty (source):
- Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 1900: “Wyatt Earp is credited with ten men, one of them his own brother-in-law.”
- G. W. Caldwell in the introduction to his interview with Wyatt, 1888: “[Wyatt Earp] Has killed more than a dozen stage robbers, murderers, and cattle thieves.”
- Los Angeles Tribune, July 1888: “[Wyatt] Earp has a cemetery which he has stocked with over 30 men, and no one seemed desirous of questioning his word.”
Despite his life of debauchery, Earp had a rather peaceful death in Hollywood where, at the age of 80, he died at home of prostate cancer (though the actual cause of death isn’t confirmed) with his common law wife at his side. He had a proper funeral with Hollywood Western actors serving as his pallbearers and was cremated and buried in California. When his wife Josie died nearly twenty years later, she was also cremated, her ashes buried next to those of Wyatt Earp. He never returned to Arizona after the battle at the OK Corral.
Image Credit: Richard Beal’s Blog
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