The curse of King Tutankhamun, Valley of the kings

 

Valley of the Kings: The entrance to Abu Simbel is the most amazing part, with four giant statues of Rameses II. Look at the scale of the statues! just grasp the size of them compared to the people walking by. How long did these take to make and how many slaves/workers did they use? nothing it seemed was beyond the realms of possibility when it came to the Egyptians and their tombs.

 In the late 1800's Howard Carter like many others went to Egypt to discover lost tombs and treasures from the past. With the backing of wealthy folk from back home we was able to spend years (literally 30+) searching for undiscovered tombs. In 1922 he hit the jackpot when he found King Tutankhamun's tomb. The amazing thing was it was completely intact, not robbed at all. The only tomb that has been discovered that had not been robbed.

As we can see inside Tut's tomb the lavish untouched chambers. The condition of the walls and artifacts were pristine. But the discovery of the tomb did come at a price. There was talk of a curse hitting the party involved in the expedition. Many died soon after but Howard Carter bucked the trend and lived to the ripe old age of 62. We don't get to see many photo's of inside tombs in the Valley of the Kings as it is forbidden, color on the walls would fade with people using camera's so only the official photos are available. Even more reason to go visit and see inside them yourself.

WW1 Officers Wat Wat!

Officers prepare to depart for the Channel coast and Dear Old Blighty. Looks like they wont see much trench action, although they have enough warm clothes on them to be OK in the trenches! I like the fact their trousers had enough tape around them to protect them from anything. As least they seem happy.

WW1 Injured Soliders, BoardWalk Empire

One of my Favorite shows is Boardwalk Empire, a story shot in America just after WW1. One of the leading characters had half his face blown off in the War. He wears a protective mask to hide his disfigured face. WW1 was the first time for many they had to deal with mass amounts of men, troops coming back injured, wounded, badly scared etc.

Wounded Canadians en route to Blighty (England). Just look at the poor chaps, covered with bandages around the face, left with a life or pain and suffering.

WW1: Mealtime in the trenchs, Sunday prayers

 

 Mass is held in the ruins of a church at Cambrai, France, October 1918. Oh yeah churches and all places or worship were not spared in the bombings and War zones.

Either Scottish or Canadian Troops in the Chilly weather. Did he want to wear something warmer? long trousers with padded socks are in order me thinks. This is taken from the winter of 1916.

WW2 Passchendaele 1917: Canadian Troops, Mud!

Men of a Canadian machine-gun company huddle in shell holes at Passchendaele, November 1917. Now I really like this photo. It looks nothing more than a muddy hell hole, its hard to even see their are people in the picture! They had to stay in those holes for days on end, firing at the enemy and keeping guard. No wonder they ended up with so many horrid alignments, trench foot etc. As far as the eye can see the landscape looks the same, muddy, holes no trees, wildlife.

This photo also from Passchendaele shows the problems that the troops had. Guns wedged, stuck in mud, wooden slats trying to save it from sinking. Moving these blighters must have been a right bugger. They would use horses for this.

American Civil War: Big Cannon, Barges

 

The American Civil War brought the first use of large weaponry on the battle field. These included large cannons! We can see from the photo that it took 4-5 men to operate and fire these things. The effects of these and the improved guns the soldiers used would often lead to battlefields with a large amount of casualties on both sides.

African-American refugees on a barge which contains their household belongings.
1865.

WW2 Propaganda Poster: Rising Sun

Not only is this WW2 Poster clever it has a lot of instructions/guidelines for Americans. Taking care of the rising sun is a reference to Japan in WW2. Fighting in the Pacific is an often overlooked element to WW2 but none the less crucial in how the War panned out. Did people really stop and read all the different lines? Each one being a 'Key' to Victory. We it worked in the end I guess.

James Bond!

 

New Bond film out this week, but can they ever match the dizzy heights of Sean playing the main man? Skyfall looks great and cannot wait to see it, Daniel Craig has done a great job in recent movies so expect more the same. I must say Sean not looking his best in the photo above, a bit shaken?

Every time I hear about a bond film it takes me back to playing computer games on the Amiga early 90's late 80's, one of the most frustrating games every invented was:

Jump jump fall fall, die die. Did we really spend hours upon hours playing these games? Funny when looking the James Pond games it seems there were many versions for the Mega drive for years to come, no doubt milked the franchise to death.

WW2 Propaganda Posters: Festive Cheer

Yes its coming up to Xmas and so we can start rolling out all the festive photo's for the blog. I guess due to the large number of Posters America used during WW2 is comes as no surprise Santa reared his ugly head!

1800's Photos Part 4: Frozen Building!

When water was used to put out a burning building in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in the late 19th century, the air temperature was so cold that the water quickly turned to ice.

Valley of the Kings

Valley of the Kings is one of those mystical places that still exist in the world today. An area within Egypt it contains many of the Tombs of the past Kings and Queens. Tutankhamun, Ramses, Seti etc, the remains all are scattered across the vast desert land.

Alot of these were only actually discovered relatively recently in history, with the age of archeologists and adventurers (Indian Jones) the Tombs of those famous historic figures can now be unwrapped and we can learn about ancient Egypt and their people. 

Many of the Tombs are deep down in the ground, through various tunnels and traps. This had meant that a lot of the hidden chambers were kept in excellent condition and far away from the looters hands! The photo above you can see how well preserved the chamber is with the hieroglyphics around the walls. 

Spanish Civil War: 1936 - 1939

 Largely a forgotten war but important non the less. The Spanish Civil war was between 1936-39 and one of the most brutal ever.

Canadian International volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. In 1936, 1700 Canadian volunteers traveled to Spain to fight fascism under Franco. A flavor of what happened there is seen in the recent move Pan's Labyrinth.

Les Miserables 2012 Film

 

 It's been a long time coming but soon we will have Les Miserables the movie. The famous musical is now getting made and will be released this Winter 2012.

A star cast including Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried etc and produced by Cameron Mackintosh. It promises to be visually stunning and an amazing soundtrack. The trailer which was released this week gives us a flavor of the epic feel to it.

Extended first look of the movie means its a must see the Xmas.

Stalingrad Now and Then (Volgograd)

It has more names than most cities but due to wars, change in countries etc we now have it named Volgograd since 1961. Stalingrad is one of the most famous battles in WW2. It lasted months and is well known for the number of casualties and ultimate defeat of the over stretched Germans on the eastern front.

Snipers played a huge part in this long battle. Moving from bullet / bomb broken building to building, it was an excellent environment to hide and snipe off soldiers from afar. After the war the city was left flattened, the buildings that were left were unstable. One famous building left to this day is:

It is part of a museum tour, where people can safely see first hand a typical war torn building from WW2. Note the bomb ridden roof and virtually every window as bullet marks around it. Snipers snipers snipers! No wonder tunnels and underground safe area's were often used for both soldiers and civilians.

Parody Propaganda posters: Star Wars, Communism downloads.

What with Photoshop and the internet we have a little fad where people are making parody propaganda posters. Generally they are similar to famous WW1 or WW2 with a modern day twist. As we can see from the poster above it has a Star Wars theme.

I really like this one as it is a twist on an original warning us against the perils of Communism poster.