All that glitters is not gold. In this case, it happens to be pure junk. (via)
posted on Feb 28, 2008 - View this thread

Canal Zone Images is a collection of stories and images about the Panama Canal Zone. Did you know that the construction workers were paid in gold and silver ('spiggoty' dollars)? "Paper money was not used on the pay car at all. In the first place, there was always a danger of its blowing away, and in the second place paper money in the hands of negro workmen soon assumed a most unsanitary condition."
posted on Feb 25, 2008 - View this thread

Toribash is a turn-based fighting game where, during a turn, you set-up, articulate, and execute fighting moves with rag-doll characters. Looks like a pretty cool idea. Windows based executable, Linux based server software. I've been doing this for hours, and hours now. I... I... can't stop. Via (and description courtesy of )Negatendo
posted on Aug 22, 2006 - View this thread

The Klondike Gold Rush, the last great gold rush of the 19th century.
On August 16, 1896 huge quantities of gold was found in the remote Yukon region of Canada. Word spread slowly, until eleven months later, the steamship Portland arrived in Seattle from Dawson with "more than a ton of gold". Within six months, approximately 100,000 gold-seekers set off on the perilous journey north to the Yukon. Only 30,000 completed the trip.
Resources: Eric A. Hegg's photograph's of the gold rush, stories from the gold rush, women of the gold rush, Klondike Gold Rush Historical Database, info and teaching resources (warning: annoying frames), links, Librarians' Internet Index.
posted on Jun 27, 2006 - View this thread

Two Australian gold miners spent a 12th night trapped underground as rescuers struggling to cut the final stretch of an escape tunnel by hand on Sunday considered using explosives. Officials had hoped to free Brant Webb, 37, and Todd Russell, 34, before dawn but said progress chipping through the solid rock by jackhammer was slower than expected. Previously, when a narrow shaft had been bored to provide them with air and food: Trapped Australian Miners Get IPods. This promps Dave Grohl of the Foofighters to offer to buy them a beer. One of the miners also requested "a newspaper so he could check the classified ads for a new job". Hope they make it out OK.
posted on May 6, 2006 - View this thread

The most expensive $20 you’ll never see. (Unless you happen to be kickin’ it in Long Beach next month...) The 1933 “double eagle”, a one oz. gold coin minted by the United States just prior to dropping the gold standard, is now worth approximately $10,000,000 and is the stuff of coin collection legend. A collector by the name of Israel “Izzy” Switt acquired and held on to 10 of them—just after the last “double eagle” had officially been melted down by the government in 1937. (Timeline.) Now, decades later, the coins are the subject of an intense legal battle between the US government and Switt’s descendants. “It’s a hell of a story.”
posted on Aug 29, 2005 - View this thread

Not letting people take in the wrong soft drink. Making a band change its name. 'The new bill will make it illegal to combine words like "games", "medals", "gold", "2012", "sponsor" or "summer" in any form of advertising.' I'm kind of starting to hate the olympics.
posted on Aug 16, 2005 - View this thread

spinning gold & diamond teeth to match your spinning hubcaps
posted on May 23, 2005 - View this thread

Blinded By Science: How `Balanced' Coverage Lets the Scientific Fringe Hijack Reality. How and why the media has failed so completely to educate the American public on the massive environmental dangers we face. (via WorldChanging)
posted on Nov 11, 2004 - View this thread

Oak Island is one of the greatest treasure hunting mysteries of the last 400 years. The Money Pit as it is called, has stirred up a bevy of questions including how this simple pit has alluded treasure hunters and scientists to this day. Some believe that it might be the location of the Holy Grail, stashed by the Templar Knights. Other's believe that it might be the resting place of Sir Francis Bacon's original plays acreditted to William Shakespear. The most common belief is that The pirate Captain Kidd hid his huge stash of gold deep within the pit which accounts for all of the unusual traps. Regardless of the wild speculation there has been evidence to suggest that there is deffinately something in the pit. But not all agree....
posted on Jan 15, 2004 - View this thread

The 'other' U.S. team makes history, taking first women's bobsled gold. "Poetic Justice, with her lifted scale, Where, in nice balance, truth with gold she weighs, And solid pudding against empty praise." Alexander Pope (1742)
posted on Feb 20, 2002 - View this thread

In Gold We Trust by Julian Dibbell "You want to be radical? You don't need to blow up the bank, just burn your bank account. And for that you are going to need an alternative. What is the alternative? E-dinar." I think economic warfare is pretty fascinating, like in the tungsten/wolframite markets of Portugal and Spain during WWII. Although the article acknowledges e-gold is pretty far from wresting away control of the money system from central banks, technology is certainly supplementing traditional (and arguably archaic) currency institutions. An interesting counterpoint is the rising popularity of decentralized money creation.
posted on Jan 16, 2002 - View this thread

An ancient 3,200-year-old papyrus map has led to the discovery of pharoanic gold mines in Egypt's eastern desert that will give Egypt one of the top 10 gold reserves in the world. The original pharaonic map, which is the world’s earliest surviving geological survey, was discovered in Luxor in 1820 and has since been on display in a Turin museum.
posted on Dec 30, 2001 - View this thread

$200 million in gold and silver buried under WTC. Get there first and it's yours! No harm done in picking up a bar of gold. (Via Nando)
posted on Sep 15, 2001 - View this thread

Nazis planned Palestine subversion. British secret intelligence files have been released in London about a German wartime plan for subversion in Palestine. Nazi Gold, secret parachute drops and the Grand Mufti.
posted on Jul 5, 2001 - View this thread

D-Day was 57 years ago yesterday. It was 16 years before an article in the Atlantic finally provided Americans an unvarnished account of the carnage that was Omaha Beach that day. I'm in awe of what these 19-year-olds went through.
posted on Jun 7, 2001 - View this thread