John Wilkes Booth escaped?

Whether it's Anastasia or Billy the Kid, there's always a contingent that wants to believe they got away. And now a reader forwards a link to an article about a couple of men convinced that John Wilkes Booth escaped, too.

Good luck to 'em, I say -- but don't count on the history books being rewritten anytime soon. It will be interesting if they manage to locate that mummy formerly trotted about as Booth's.

Ancient Greek fitness

When a reconstructed ancient Greek trireme manned by top rowers couldn't match the speeds recorded in ancient texts, it seemed fairly obvious that the problem was with the reconstruction. I was following the trireme project pretty closely at the time, and I recall reading that there were some problems with the interpretation of the design that sharply limited performance: in particular, the ergonomics of the rowing stations, which did not allow the rowers to fully use the strength of their legs. But now we see this:

We may not be as fit as the people of ancient Athens, despite all that modern diet and training can provide, according to research by University of Leeds (UK) exercise physiologist, Dr Harry Rossiter.

Dr Rossiter measured the metabolic rates of modern athletes rowing a reconstruction of an Athenian trireme, a 37m long warship powered by 170 rowers seated in three tiers. Using portable metabolic analysers, he measured the energy consumption of a sample of the athletes powering the ship over a range of different speeds to estimate the efficiency of the human engine of the warship. The research is published in New Scientist.

It might be more accurate to have written, "the efficiency of the human engine in the warship". The efficiency of the same engine in a different warship was likely significantly higher -- though it garners more headlines to triumph ancient athleticism.

Previous trireme posts here and here; the Trireme Trust has not been updated for a few months, but is a treasure trove of information and links.

Sheaffer Pen: RIP

Sheaffer is not out of business, but it has been cut loose once and for all from its Iowa roots by its parent company, BIC. Earlier this month its Fort Madison factory was auctioned off, complete with equipment (auction company listing here).

Incidentally, there is a lot of incorrect information online about Sheaffer's origins. Walter A. Sheaffer was the proprietor of a successful Fort Madison jewelry store when he put his hand to inventing. His first pen patent was granted in 1908 for a lever-filling mechanism (which in hindsight likely should not have been granted, not being sufficiently novel). He only went into the penmaking business in 1912, however. The new enterprise was a huge success, and soon became one of Fort Madison's largest businesses. Some specialized articles on early Sheaffer history are available at the Vintage Pens archive.

ADDENDUM: Looking at the Sheaffer website, I see that they have stolen one of my copyrighted pen images for their history page! Time for a polite but firm note.

Driver's Ed -- Wehrmacht style

War is supposed to be a serious business, right? Not according to German WWII technical writers who turned the thick, boring tank manuals for "Tiger" & "Panther" tanks into a "Popular Science"/"Playboy"/comic book combination. These juicy manuals proved to be so popular, that they were even translated into Russian and read throughout the Soviet Army tank corps. I could not find the Russian "link-jacked" versions, but here are a couple of genuine Nazi tank manuals, with full versions readily available on the net.

Read the rest here; thanks to reader Glenn Bowen for the pointer.

ADDENDUM: At the same site, take a look at The Most Dangerous Roads in the World (which also includes some mountain footpath shots that will make you shudder just looking at them).