Weekend Links 11-20-20

 Congratulations on making it through another week. Here are a couple of links of interest for your weekend reading:

There used to be a time that renting a movie involved a trip to Blockbuster Video to pick up a VHS tape to play on the VCR at home. Blockbuster might be a thing of the past but there are free video kiosks popping up across the country. 

The true story of the Juliet Club: Verona's love letter writing workshop.

Things you probably didn't know about the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack. 

Time waster of the week: clicking on Random Street View will give you a Google street view of a random street somewhere in the world. Keep clicking next to get a new location. 

Sometimes you never know what you will find: workers in Athens found the bust of an ancient Greek god in the sewer while making repairs. 

Book excerpt: the evolution of espionage fiction from the introduction of the new book The Big Book of Espionage edited by Otto Penzler. 

Spruce up your virtual meeting backgrounds with these downloads from the National Trust. 

Weekend Links 11-13-20

 It's a bumper crop of interesting stories for your weekend reading.....

Fascinating artifacts from the FBI's photo archives. 

If you are of a certain age (like me) you will remember popping a TV dinner in the oven. A brief history of the culinary treat. 

This looks like fun: one of the most beautiful libraries in the world lets you spend the night.

Picture this: aerial photographs of famous landmarks. 

This is one for baseball fans: 3 triples + 2 singles + 1 double = 0 runs. You could look it up. 

Celebrating 100 years of Agatha Christie. 

If you like reading the Queen of Crime  you are likely to enjoy Anthony Horowitz's new novel, Moonflower Murders. Here is a review of the book. I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

Ranking all 24 James Bond films. Related: the time Sean Connery's brother portrayed James Bond's brother in an Italian film. 

Dutch museums unveil an online exhibit of Vincent Van Gogh's works. 

Why Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek will be remembered as a cultural icon. From the new book Answers in the Form of Questions: A Definitive History and Insider's Guide to Jeopardy! by Claire McNear.

Believe it or not: there is one company in America that still makes washboards. Business is booming. 

Answering the important questions: what if someone objects at a wedding? 

Fun fact: London's first police force was founded by novelist Henry Fielding and his brother. 

Unfortunately, FedEx wasn't an option: a carrier pigeon's military message was delivered a century too late. 

Weekend Links 11-6-20

The Presidential Election was held on Tuesday of this week here in the U. S. and strangely enough as I am writing this post we still don't have an official winner. At least we can take solace that the campaign is over and the votes have been cast. Now it's just a matter of making sure the votes are counted and the winner determined. I have seen lots of folks publicly expressing anxiety over not knowing the winner. Since I didn't vote for either of the major candidates I don't feel that same sort of investment in having one person win over another. As long as the process of counting the votes has been fair I am satisfied. 

It's probably fair to say that it is "so 2020" for the election to take so long to decide. This whole year has been weird. I have been prone to wander around the house muttering this line from one of the Harry Potter films: 

In the meantime I will continue to assemble links of interest to take our minds off these mad times. Here's what caught my eye this week.

The inside story of the "crime of the century". It's interesting to me all the different ways that the authorities bungled the investigation in the early days. It's also interesting to note that this case would serve as a major inspiration for Agatha Christie's Murder On The Orient Express.

Speaking of Agatha Christie, some criticize her works as being stuck in a time that no longer exists. Laura Thompson, author of Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life, respectfully disagrees. 

The curious history of the dust jacket. 

Talk about disaster planning: an Oreo vault built in the event an asteroid collides with Earth. 

Strange, but true: in the early 1900's the U. S. Postal Service allowed you to mail a child. The weird part is some parents actually did. 

Music to your ears: why certain songs send your brain into pleasure overload. 

How the introduction of the cheap ballpoint pen changed writing forever. 

Podcast of the week: I thoroughly enjoyed this episode of All About Agatha which features an interview with Anthony Horowitz. His new book, Moonflower Murders, will be published in the U. S. next week. I was fortunate enough to get my hands on an advance copy and it is a terrific read. I especially enjoyed the discussion on how he writes his books. I also discovered his favorite mystery writer which is someone I had never heard of before. 

I love these rules for writing from Frank Cottrell Boyce. Especially #8.