Serving with the National Pigeon Service (NPS) during the Second World War, Commando made more than ninety trips into and out of German occupied France, carrying confidential messages. He was noted for three particular missions carried out in 1942—one in June, another in August, and the third in September—in which he carried crucial intelligence to Britain from agents in France. This vital information included the location of German troops, industrial sites and injured British soldiers.

For these three missions that Commando conducted, he received the PDSA Dickin Medal, which is considered to be the animals’ medal equivalent to the Victoria Cross, the highest military award for bravery in the UK.

After the war, Commando enjoyed a somewhat celebrity-like status. He also participated in an exhibition of wartime homing pigeons. Commando was later put to stud.

Also worth noting: German intelligence employed falconers to intercept pigeon spies…

August 03, 2009, 9:23am

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Chappaquiddick Bridge- Don Eddings

July 18 marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Mary Jo Kopechne.

Via WFMU.

July 15, 2009, 9:49am

The midget submarine Ha-19 was a 46-ton Type “A” midget submarine built in Kure in 1938 and transported to the region of Pearl Harbor aboard the big submarine I-24.

When the Ha-19 was dispatched into Pearl Harbor with the five other Japanese midget submarines on December 7^th 1941, its gyrocompass broke. This malfunction prevented its pilot Ensign Kazuo Shakamaki and crewman Kyoshi Inagaki from completing its attack mission at Pearl Harbor.

The midget wandered around without direction, overcome by battery fumes, spending the night of December 7^th unconscious and drifting in the waters surrounding Oahu. The midget submarine went aground at Waimanalo, on the east coast of Oahu. Ensign Sakamaki and his submarine were captured by American forces on December 8^th, and he became the first Japanese prisoner of war taken by the United States during the Pacific War. Inagaki died in the adventures of getting ashore. Sakamaki was humiliated to be taken alive, as the rest of the midget submariners died in Pearl Harbor combat. He demanded to be allowed to commit suicide in Oahu prison; American guards refused. Later he returned to Japan, deeply committed to pacifism, and was received with hostility among his fellow countrymen.

The Ha-19 itself was reclaimed and sent to the United States’ mainland,  where it was displayed at various War Bond tours across the nation, becoming a valuable recruiting tool as an odd sort of P.O.W artefact of propaganda, symbolizing the American effort against the Japanese. Below is an image of President Frankilin D. Roosevelt touring the Mare Island Navy Yard in 1942, with the captured Ha-19 in the background.The midget sub remains on display at the Admiral Nimitz Museum in Fredericksburg, Texas.

May 11, 2009, 9:30am

Return to the sea. The evolution of the whale and dolphin. [Click through for large]

April 22, 2009, 1:54pm

Soviet Russian light bulbs, circa 1935, with Stalin profile.

At the time, they “were considered to be a very classy present - the first of the series were presented to the delegates of Soviet parliament.”

April 10, 2009, 11:37am

Mount Analogue

via A Journey Round My Skull

March 06, 2009, 9:04am

via Westworld.

January 22, 2009, 11:57am

More existential fun with cross-browser scripting and the coming end times. Not worth worrying about because we are living in a simulation anyway.

January 16, 2009, 10:37am

Man-hating Dolphin Thought Police, from Grant Morrison’s The Filth

December 09, 2008, 1:43pm