March 2011 Articles (57)

I stopped fooling around just long enough to put a new song list together:

http://pilsnerspicks.blogspot.com/

1944. Wehrmacht soldiers marching through London, German police band playing "Horst Wessel" in Trafalgar Square...

Of all 'what if?'s, the fuel for alternate history, the most important is 'what if Germany has won the war?' Imagine the United Kingdom sharing the fate of France and other Nazi-occupied countries. More than half a century ago, two young Englishmen started to imagine. Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo were their names. It took them eight years to…

On March 29, 1911 the John Browning-designed pistol went from contender to arguably the greatest service pistol ever fielded. One hundred years ago the Department of the Army officially adopted the .45 Automatic Colt Pistol as the M1911. The .45 ACP caliber gun would serve as the handgun of the United States armed forces until the mid-1980s.

Yet, it's…

Today, a few works of an architect whose name is seldom mentioned outside his home country, the Netherlands.

Willem Marinus Dudok was born on 6 July 1884, in Amsterdam. In 1905 he began his military service with the Engineering Regiment in Utrecht as a Second Lieutenant and later served in Amsterdam supervising the fortification works. In 1913 he retired from the Army and was…

Here is a story of an unusual and unlucky battleship class that failed to revive the Great Armada glory.

Of course the term "pocket battleship" was invented to label the German Deutschland class. But two lesser sea powers can claim the copyright: one of them is Greece with its ill-fated…

More top hats and black capes...

It's time to present the most influential European graphic artist of the Diesel Era, a man who created scores of iconic images.

Cassandre is Dieselpunk. Just start to explore the Interbellum, and you'll be immediately welcomed by his travel posters. Just start to search an appropriate font for your latest Dieselpunk artwork, and you'll come across his typefaces. You may never heard of Adolphe Jean Marie Mouron aka Cassandre but you certainly recognize his…

Celebrating the heroes from the past...

In August 1936, Polish government commissioned an experimental class of two Pacific (4-6-2) locomotives.

The decision to build a locomotive of the future was made by Polish authorities to celebrate 20 years of independent Polish State Railways (PKP), created right after the Armistice from parts of Austro-Hungarian, Prussian, Saxonian and Russian railways, - and also to prove the domestic industry's capability to supply world-class quality products.

To prove the capacity…

Speaking of Death from Above, we cannot ignore a recoilless gun developed by Commander Cleland Davis, USN, between 1910 and 1914.

Here I feel like invading Redfezwriter's realm but hope we won't fight about a gun. Let's open an old but still excellent book, "The Machine Gun" by…

Hello my Grease Stained Allies,

Last night I went to the midnight viewing of SuckerPunch.  Now don't worry no spoilers here.  The visual style in which it was film was beautiful.  There were two different filming looks and both compliment the story excellently.  The acting was not outstanding, but strong and conveyed the message for the most part.  The special effects were nicely done and not completely over the top. The soundtrack and score were one of the best parts of the…

Don't you think our Garage is too serious lately? Relax:

Here are 14 photographs of beautiful ladies and their magnificent two-wheel machines, borrowed from steampunkvehicles @ tumblr. Usually I select pictures of much higher quality for this weekly column, but here quality is definitely not the reason to hide the beauty from your eyes, dear friends.

Three examples:…

Via: http://www.sharpwriter.deviantart.com/

When Soviet Spetsnaz stormed the Afghan presidential palace in 1979, the weapon brought to bear on the overwhelmed defenders, the Stechkin automatic pistol.

The Stechkin curried favor in the modern age of special operations and counter-terrorism was designed in the late 1940s as a vehicle crew weapon; and for a time was mothballed before returning to the…

The palace was built in 1937 as a centerpiece of the Exposition Internationale (Paris World Fair).

Nearly sixty years before, the Palais du Trocadéro was built here for the 1878 World Fair. The palace's form was that of a large concert hall with two wings and two towers; its style was a mixture of exotic and historical references, generally called "Moorish" but with some Byzantine elements. The architect was Gabriel Davioud:…

There's still plenty of time to get your swing on for March's Expo theme!

 It's Swingtime, baby! By the time March rolls around, we've all got cabin fever here in the Northern hemisphere, and if that puts ants in yer pants, the only thing you can do is dance. Music and dance are creative expressions, yet they're mathematics and mechanics…

No aircraft carriers and missiles today, just beer & soda cans.

If canned food is the Steam Era child, canned beverages were introduced in the Diesel Era. Technicians at the American Can Company, even before prohibition, began toying with the idea of putting beer in a can. As early as 1929, Anheuser-Busch and Pabst experimented with the canning process. Schlitz even proposed a can design that looked like a small barrel. The major problem the early researchers were…

Today, the streamliners arrive from the most unexpected place: Manchuria.

A bit of history: in 1932, Japan created a puppet Manchu State, formally separating Manchuria (occupied by the Japanese forces a year before) from China. In 1934, the Great Manchu Empire was proclaimed, with Puyi of the Qing Dynasty (remember Bertolucci's The Last Emperor?) as a…

Chinese Noir, in the shadow of Marlene...