Factoids - useless but interesting snippets

[Bill W]

57 minutes ago, Zombie said:

I recalled there was a big court battle over this, involving Universal Studios and copyright claims - this is the legal version…  

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ca-court-of-appeal/1849267.html

It just goes to show that for every action there's someone waiting in the wings to take you to court.  

[Bill W]

1 hour ago, Ron said:

According to a quick internet search Dracula was quite the shape-shifter in Stoker's novel.

Thank you for that information.  It makes me appear lazy for not looking it up on the internet myself.  

[Leslie Lofton]

On 5/12/2022 at 9:36 AM, Zombie said:

This gif is from the movie "The General", starring Buster Keaton, a silent comedy loosely based on the Andrews Raid of 1862. US military spies hijacked a northbound locomotive -- The General -- in Big Shanty (present-day Kennesaw) Georgia, and drove it toward Chattanooga, destroying tracks and telegraph lines along the way, while Confederate troops gave chase on foot and aboard other locomotives. Watch the movie.

 

[Leslie Lofton]

About the Western and Atlantic Railroad, speaking of The General (note the W&ARR on the locomotive's tender):

A defining feature of the middle latitudes of North American, dominated by the USA is the massive, nearly flat Mississippi River valley, whose navigable waterways penetrate deep into the country's interior. It's a perfect situation for the bulk transportation  of raw materials, with which the USA is loaded. However, all those rivers go drain into the ocean in only one place: New Orleans.

Another defining feature is the Appalachian mountain range, which separates the colonial ports on the Atlantic from the Mississippi valley. Masses of capital were expended  trying to get canals and later railroads through the rugged folds to take shipping away from New Orleans and enrich the eastern states. The state of New York just happens to have natural passes that connect the Hudson River to the Great Lakes. Projects like the Erie Canal were the first successful passages, fueling New York City's modern commercial dominance.

The state of Georgia took up the challenge of connecting its ports -- Macon, Savannah, and Augusta -- to the Tennessee River at Chattanooga, once they got the Creek and Cherokee evicted and shipped off to Oklahoma. The state chose a site by the upper Chattahoochee River to connect up all the railroads before routing them north through the mountains on the Western and Atlantic Railroad.

The site was called "Terminus", then to emphasize the cross-continental nature of the new city, it was renamed Atlantica-Pacifica, later shortened to Atlanta. (If you read "Gone with the Wind" you knew this already) It's still a massive transportation hub, and the biggest city in the southeast USA.

Edited April 18 by Leslie Lofton

[Bill W]

16 minutes ago, Leslie Lofton said:

This gif is from the movie "The General", starring Buster Keaton, a silent comedy loosely based on the Andrews Raid of 1862. US military spies hijacked a northbound locomotive -- The General -- in Big Shanty (present-day Kennesaw) Georgia, and drove it toward Chattanooga, destroying tracks and telegraph lines along the way, while Confederate troops gave chase on foot and aboard other locomotives. Watch the movie.

 

For those that don't know this part of history, some of the raiders were quickly captured and executed (by hanging) as spies, including Andrews, who was a civilian and whom the raid was named after.  Eight of the raiders managed to escape, and although the 1862  raid was exciting, it had little effect on the war.  The General survived and is now in a museum at the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History Kennesaw, Georgia.  

Another train, The Texas, was chasing the General and trying to stop it, and although The Texas never caught up to it, The General ran out of fuel 18 miles short of its destination, Chattanooga, Tennessee.  The Texas is now located in the Atlanta History Center.  This same raid was also the inspiration for the 1956 film, The Great Locomotive Chase, a Disney production.