An interesting thing I didn't know until today

[San Bernardhinault]

That is utterly, utterly brilliant.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Yup. Brilliant. I wonder how the dissolved gold was reversed though?

[Sam]

Yup. Brilliant. I wonder how the dissolved gold was reversed though?

Piece of piss. Stick the container in a sock and swing it really fast around your head.

[lambers]

Two brand name origin stories that have surprised me today: <snip> Lexmark's name comes from "lexicon" and "marks" (on paper) apparently, and nothing to do with their HQ being in Lexington, KY

Huh. I worked for Lexmark for a few years, and similarly thought it was derived from the HQ.

[Levin]

The K in RKO Pictures stands for Keith.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

I thought I'd heard before about how Hevesy and Bohr dissolved von Laue and Franck's Noble Prize medals for future recovery, and indeed I had - I'd read it some years ago (in less detail, to be fair) in Richard Rhodes' utterly superb book The Making of The Atomic Bomb (at p329 of the 25th anniversary paperback edition). If I had to name the best 5 non-fiction books I've read in my life, that would probably be the first title I'd select.

[Nefertiti2]

Max von Laue used to go out carrying two parcels- one under each arm so he would never be able to give a Hitler Salute.

[Snake Plissken]

The K in RKO Pictures stands for Keith.

Similarly, the DB in all posh Aston Martins stands for David Brown. (And TVR was Trevor.)

[Snake Plissken]

Anyway, those things you use to climb over walls in fields - stiles.

Turn them 90 degrees and walk through them to enter a football stadium - turnstiles.

Can't believe I never made the connection before now.

[WOM]

Anyway, those things you use to climb over walls in fields - stiles.

a) didn't know this
b) we don't really do them here, so didn't realize how many different...er...types of them there are.

[DCI Harry Batt]

How do you get over fences in fields?

[ursus arctos]

"We" don't, because private property über alles (and down here one would worry about the owner being armed).

[ursus arctos]

Turnstiles first came to prominence here as the means of restricting access to roads that required the payment of a toll, aka Turnpikes.

[Balderdasha]

Is there any sort of "right to roam" law in the US? Any protected public footpaths? Or is that heresy?

[Janik]

Yup. Brilliant. I wonder how the dissolved gold was reversed though?

Precipitated out, if I remember the story correctly. And the Nobel foundation took the recovered gold and restruck it into medals after the war.

[Satchmo Distel]

The original use of turnstile in the UK was to keep cattle from roaming. Great Turnstile is also associated with John Smeaton, whom we discussed yesterday:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Turnstile

When condemned prisoners were paraded from Newgate to Tyburn to be killed, they would pass Little Turnstile:

From this point on it could take the crowd and cart anything from 2 to 3 hours to finally make their way to Tyburn as all levels of society thronged the route to accompany them to death.

The procession would head down Snow Hill, which today is a site for the Cross Rail building works and Santander bikes, and of course Smithfield market, but for Jack this would have been Holborn hill/bridge which marked the passage from Newgate to Holborn. This today is now travelled via the Holborn Viaduct and would be unrecognisable to anyone from before the 19^th century, but from here the route to Tyburn is very similar.

The cart would have then carried on up High Holborn, and as a 1/3 of London’s population had turned out to see Jack, the excitement and building up of the crowd would have neared a feeling of chaos the closer to Tyburn. Up on High Holborn there is a nondescript side alley called ‘Little Turnstile’ and it was here Jack had planned to use his confiscated pen knife to cut his ropes and ‘run through the narrow passage, where the officers could not follow on horseback’ and by ‘the mobs’ assistance, he should make his escape’. (F J Lyons, 1936) Even today this tiny passage way would be the perfect escape route, and as Jack knew, his adoring London mob would have ensured he made a quick get away from retribution.

https://landmarksinlondonhistory.wor...ute-to-tyburn/

[ursus arctos]

Precipitated out, if I remember the story correctly. And the Nobel foundation took the recovered gold and restruck it into medals after the war.

Yes, that's covered in the thread

[ursus arctos]

Is there any sort of "right to roam" law in the US? Any protected public footpaths? Or is that heresy?

Not on private land.

There, are, however, some protected footpaths/hiking trails. California protects coastal access, though most other states do not.

The right to roam and the extent and quality of footpaths in the UK was one of the things that most surprised me when I first visited.

[San Bernardhinault]

Is there any sort of "right to roam" law in the US? Any protected public footpaths? Or is that heresy?

I think that there are no protected roaming rights on private land. I'm not 100% sure, and expect Ursus (*) to be along any moment to provide much more detail.

It is one of the great things about Britain, and something I miss terribly over here. You'll have a stretch of footpath on public land, but it won't go anywhere because public land is limited and you find yourself walking along road to try and connect various sections of land.

It may be that parts of the major hiking trails (PCT, Appalachian, etc) traverse private land, but if they do that's been negotiated and is entirely at the whim of the landowner.

* note - I was writing this as Ursus was posting

[Balderdasha]

I think a lack of right to roam would really annoy me. I spent a lot of my teens and twenties hiking around various different parts of the UK. I don't do it as much as I'd like to now but whenever we go on holiday in the UK, we always do at least a couple of walks that would be less enjoyable without good public footpaths.

Climbing over turnstiles and getting chased by cattle is almost a rite of passage in the UK.

[Janik]

Right to roam and public footpaths are different things, mind. The right to roam is the right to go on to land away from footpaths/bridleways/etc. Footpaths are already established public rights of way that the landowner is breaking the law of they block or impede without direct permission that must be posted up for all to see (not that that stops some), even if it is across land explicitly excluded from the right to roam legislation.

Stiles and the like will be provided on Footpaths, and will be the land owner complying with their legal obligations not to impede the right of way. Such as by putting a fence up to keep animals in or out, so needing something that allows people to bypass the obstruction.

[ursus arctos]

It may be that parts of the major hiking trails (PCT, Appalachian, etc) traverse private land, but if they do that's been negotiated and is entirely at the whim of the landowner.

The major trails will have contractual easements with private landowners that can't be easily negated.

Though litigation with landowners who have refused to comply with access rules on less travelled routes (particularly along the coast) is depressingly frequent (and indicative of the prevalence of the toxic mindset that one should be able to buy oneself out of any rules whatsoever).

[WOM]

One reads a lot about rich c*nts in California that cut off access to beaches / surfing spots.

On our weekend hikes, we use public trails that are sometime signed as 'crossing private property...please be courteous' etc. The odd time we'll see a 'no trespassing' sign, but they're rare.

Shoreline rights are more of a thing here.

[ursus arctos]

The reason why so many of the cases come from California is because California has the most serious laws on allowing access. The rich c*nts are fully protected by the law in many other states.

[San Bernardhinault]

Not all California coast is legal accessible. All California coast below high tide is, though. So if you're walking along the beach between Imperial Beach and Coronado where there's a big military base, you have to make sure to do it at low tide. Because if you end up being pushed to above the high-tide mark, you can get arrested and you don't want to get arrested by the US military. There are also a number of tales of kayakers who've gone aground at the bases around San Diego, with always at least massively annoying consequences, and often very expensive ones.