NASCAR Wildness: This Date in History

[lawtig02]

You'll love this @lawtig02

a portrait of Tenochtitlan

a 3D reconstruction of the capital of the Aztec Empire

tenochtitlan.thomaskole.nl

That's freaking spectactular. I wish someone would do that for all major ancient cities. Maybe they already have.

 

[nycfan]

OTD in history, Annie Oakley, Alfred Hitchcock and nycfan were born (different years of course).

 

[Ramrouser]

That's freaking spectactular. I wish someone would do that for all major ancient cities. Maybe they already have.

That is really, really cool. I always had difficulty imagining what the city looked like. What an engineering marvel.

 

[05C40]

Every time I think about how tragic the European conquest of the Americas was, I get sad. No matter what the Europeans did, if every single person who left Europe for America had been a saint who was dedicated to preserving and protecting the cultural integrity of Native Americans, I don't think history would have changed much. There were just too many endemic Eurasian diseases to which Native Americans had absolutely no immunity to have materially changed what happened. The Eurasian landmass was just too big, too populated, had too many diseases, and was so genetically diverse for the Native Americans to have stood a chance. This in no way excuses the atrocities the European invaders committed. It's just an acknowledgement that the European's malice had minimal effect. The adverse impacts of European diseases spread far faster, far wider, and were far deadlier than anything European malice could ever hope to accomplish.

It was a war where one side was shooting arrows and throwing spears and the other side was dropping nuclear bombs.

 

[Ramrouser]

Europe/the Middle East/Far East just had their devastation a 150 years earlier in the 14th Century with the Bubonic Plague. It killed as many as 200 million people wiping out a third to 50% of the Eurasian population.

 

[donbosco]

“The day (August 13, 1961) was hot and humid, and once cars got up to speed at Asheville-Weaverville Speedway in the North Carolina mountains, the newly paved racing surface almost immediately began to crumble. It was a recipe for disaster … or a full-scale riot, take your pick.

Fans, already miserable due to the sweltering heat, seethed when the race was called just past the halfway point of the scheduled 500-lap event. Junior Johnson was declared the winner, but that seemed of little consequence. Incredibly, a few took it upon themselves to block the only way out of the track and, in effect, held competitors hostage.

Bud Moore was there that day, and he remembered the highly charged atmosphere in an early episode of The Scene Vault Podcast. This is his story.”

 

[donbosco]

5:00 of early NASCAR wildness.