Posts about History

  • Ranz des vaches/lyôba

    Jo reminded me earlier of the Ranz des Vaches (or Lyôba), a classical Swiss alpine song which has stirred the hearts of many Swiss for years. It’s said that the song made those Swiss living abroad so homesick, that singing and playing it was banned amongst Swiss mercenaries in the eighteenth century, so as not…

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  • Six years before this photo was taken, and after moving up the road from St. Gregory’s primary school in Yorktown, I learned to swim in the icy outdoor pool in front of the middle building, played with toy cars in the sand and roots of the reddish tree in the middle of the picture, lost…

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  • Mark Howells-Mead on stage at WordCamp Zurich

    I’ve been using WordPress since the very first version and love it. In a talk at WordCamp Zurich, I shared some of the experiences I’ve gained as a CMS developer, website builder, content manager and blogger since the late 1990s.

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  • The history of the web (and the invention of jam) by Martin Splitt at Front Conference in Zurich.

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  • The Rescued Film project

    In 2016, photographer and archivist Levi Bettwieser, who runs the Rescued Film project, put out a call for sponsorship. He had come into possession of 66 bundles of unprocessed, exposed film and needed help to cover the costs of developing it for archival purposes.

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  • Col du Pierre Pertuis, Jura

    In an unassuming bit of forest in the Jura mountains, a small road leads between the towns of Sonceboz and Tavannes, which leads up and over a small pass between the two neighbouring valleys. In the woods just before you get to Tavannes is a band of limestone cliff, in which there is an arch,…

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  • Glasgow Royal Maternity Hospital, or to many Glaswegians “The Rottenrow”, was founded in 1834 and demolished in 2001. The Victorian building had fallen into disrepair by the time of its demolition and was deemed inadequate for modern requirements. A replacement for The Rottenrow was built at Glasgow Royal Infirmary and the original building was purchased…

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  • A mural in the Lower Chapel at Flüeli-Ranft in Switzerland, initiated by Robert Durrer in 1920.

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  • Kilmuir Easter Church, Scotland

    The only remains of antiquity that stood in this parish, were last year removed.  In the place of Delny, once a principal seat of the Earls of Ross, stood the ruins of a Romish chapel on a pleasant bank surrounded by graves.  This spot has been deserted as a burying place for many years; and…

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  • Gretna Green, Scotland

    The small town of Gretna Green, which lies alongside the M6/A74M on the border between Scotland and England, is one of the most popular wedding destinations in the world.

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  • I wrote and posted my first blog post in this version of my website ten years ago today. To celebrate, I’m reviving the “Photos” section of the site, which will contain my best and my favourite photos.

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  • Bathing in public was forbidden to the women of Zurich until 1837. Once the ban had been lifted, the city constructed a bathing house on the river Limmat, alongside the Stadthausquai next to the city hall.

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  • Processing time: 70 years

    The Rescued Film Project discovers and processes 31 rolls of film shot by an American WWII soldier over 70 years ago.

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  • After a long time with a much reduced amount of interest for photography, I am finally getting back to wanting to capture images again. The unenforced time out has done me good. I am reminded once more of the pleasure of waiting for the moment to be right; when the light and the surroundings all come…

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  • I am rarely in Zurich and I prefer the countryside and mountains to cities these days. But I like to be in the midst of industrial architecture sometimes, and one of my favourite sites is the former milk processing plant in the industrial area of Pfingstweid. Mainly because of the huge corkscrew ramp leading up to…

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  • Arriving in the town of Bacoli, on the headland a few miles west of the centre of Naples, you feel a long way from the tourist crowds and certainly not anywhere historic or especially noteworthy. But look into the history of the area and you’ll find that the bay here, now surrounded by slightly shabby buildings and busy with…

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  • Battle of Britain Memorial Flight

    I’m not especially knowledgeable about aircraft but there’s something about plane flypasts which give me goosebumps.

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  • An Australian family set up a website to help their grandfather remember the places to which he travelled, and to ask the internet to help them identify some of the more obscure places on his travels.

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  • Farnborough Air Show

    The Red Arrows perform at the 2014 Farnborough Air Show.

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  • The gruesome crypt beneath the former monastery in the Aragonese Castle of Ischia Ponte.

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  • “At the top of the great stone lighthouse, hidden beyond the ridge of the southern headland, the slaves were dousing the fires to greet the dawn. It was supposed to be a sacred place. According to Virgil, this was the spot where Misenus, the herald of the Trojans, slain by the sea god Triton, lay…

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