Posted at 5:22 am by 1909ventilo, on March 19, 2011
If you’re like me you cherish the time you have for yourself! I don’t play golf or tennis, I don’t run, I am terrible at cards. I don’t knit, I’m horrid at sewing. I rarely fish, or hike I do like to walk, but I’m poor at skiing. I do however like to treasure hunt! If I’m not treasure hunting, I’m reading about treasure to be hunted. I’ve successfully taught my daughters to hunt also, just like a bear teaches her cubs. Constantly, they amaze me with the knowledge they have amassed in such a short time. Fueled up on cappuccinos and armed with bottles of hand sanitizer we set out. I hear voices chattering directing me to sometimes the worst looking thrift shop, my girls constantly advising me how some of the best treasures are found in the most unlikely places! Furthermore, I heed their advice and we venture in.
This weeks treasure’s an old leather purse. I remember casting it aside before a flash of gold caught my eye. A gold pendant someone had mounted on an old worn black leather purse. The pendant looked tarnished; the initials were my husbands, and on the back was a moon and rhinestones for stars! I knew I had to have it. I tossed the old thing in my basket along with: Italian cowboy boots, a Fendi purse and several cashmere sweaters.
… I guess $12.95 wasn’t too much to pay for the old dirty black purse after all! Upon making a detailed inspection of the pendant, it turned out to be 18 k rose gold, with mine cut diamonds.. and just think of the great story I get to tell when I wear it!
Posted at 6:29 pm by 1909ventilo, on March 16, 2011
he said ……”Just because I love You!”
“Love doesn’t make the world go round, love is what makes the ride worthwhile.” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
The red rose also has an interesting place in the history of England. Opposing factions in York and Lancaster fought for control over England in the 15th century. York was synonymous with the white rose and Lancaster with the red rose. In fact, the friction between these warring factions led to the coining of the term ‘War of the Roses’. Lancaster emerged victorious, but this victory did not spell defeat for York. Tudor Henry VII and his bride from York facilitated the symbolic union of red rose and the white rose, and gave England ‘the Rose of England’.
Posted at 12:19 am by 1909ventilo, on March 16, 2011
Doug Devine instrumental in the raising of the Hunley
Shiloh April 6, 1862, My life Preserver G. E. D. (Lt. Dixon’s initials)
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Have you ever been to a dinner party seated next to a person who extravagantly boasts about the things they have done? Yet, across from where you sit the humble gentleman who never says a word, if he did therein would lie the extraordinary story that you would love to hear. The Hunley, have you heard of it? My friend Doug Devine director of OnlineAuction.com could tell you of it, of course, you would have to ask, Mr. Devine has accomplished many things but the Hunley is what I want to talk of. The hand-cranked Confederate Hunley rammed a black powder charge into the Union blockade ship Housatonic on Feb. 17, 1864, becoming the first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship.
. …The H.L. Hunley and its eight-man crew were preserved for more than 140 years under silt.
Life has its surprises, doesn’t it? Getting a call to be a part of this historical project probably wasn’t what Doug thought his day would entail as he drank his coffee that morning. Mr. Devine owner of Pacific Survey has been involved with measuring technologies for more than 25 years; he was instrumental in the raising of the Hunley. Using computer models, advanced measuring and analytical instrumentation the recovery plans were developed to ensure the safety of this historical project – the only one of its kind on the planet today. August 8, 2000, was a joyful day in Charleston. After five years of planning and fund-raising, the Hunley was raised from beneath 3 feet of sand and 27 feet of water from its resting place, four miles off Sullivan’s Island. The tube-shaped boat was forty feet long and four feet deep. There was barely enough room for eight men. Inside, the men would use candles for light; they would sit on a wood bench and turn a shaft that moved the propeller. The Hunley’s whereabouts remained unknown until divers, funded by author Clive Cussler, discovered the sunken vessel in 1995, 4 miles off the Carolina coast.
If you read the fascinating story about the Hunley and crew member George Dixon you will hear of the famous gold coin that Queenie Bennett gave him “Hold this keepsake close, to remember my love and bring you good luck.” In 1864 George was leaving Mobile, Alabama to fight with the Confederate Army of the South. It’s rumored George slipped the gold coin into the left pocket of his trousers, and in the fierce fight at the Battle of Shiloh he was shot, he fell to the ground but the gold coin stopped the bullet and saved his life. Later, he had the coin inscribed “Shiloh April 6, 1862, My Life Preserver.”… “The Story of the H.L Hunley and Queenie’s Coin” by Fran Hawk. The coin is on display today at the Hunley Exhibit. Horace Hunley, a wealthy Southerner who lived in Mobile, and helped George Dixon and others build and pay for the submarine the H.L. Hunley. If you know me at all you know I tend to be a romanticist. Queenie did eventually remarry but I wonder if her heart was forever broken just like the broken vessel that lay mysteriously unearthed in the Atlantic Ocean all those years. I can’t wait to someday go to the museum and see it for myself.
I’m sure there was much speculation that a tiny vessel could sink the great USS Housatonic Union Ship. The same speculation that the Hunley would even be found, let alone raised and preserved. But a few people with a vision that stayed steadfast in what they believed did it. That’s what Mr. Devine brings to our company, a vision and positive attitude to get the job done even when others say it can’t be done.
I love the quote by Isabelle De Borchegrave who says, “No one truly invents anything; you always build on the Past.”
Three-dimensional laser scan of the submarine exterior and interior utilizing the ‘Cyrax system’ to provide a high resolution digital record of the submarine, which allows for the creation of a lines plan and detailed measured and accurate plans of construction details. The project team employed on the Cyrax documentation of H.L. Hunley, Epic Scan/Pacific Survey, performed this work. A big thanks to Doug DeVine and Carlos Velasquez!
photos are courtesy of Friends of the Hunley Inc. More Hunley information is available at www.hunley.org. Doug Devine is owner of Pacific Survey Supply (www.pacificsurvey.com)
Valerie Fain pictured with Mr. Doug Devine
Update….
Friday, June 24, 2011 at a conservation lab in North Charleston, S.C..
Friday, June 24, 2011 at a conservation lab in North Charleston, S.C.. The Hunley, the first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship, was rotated upright this week for the first time since it sank with its crew of eight in 1864 The hole at the lower right is on a side of the sub not seen in almost 150 years. (AP Photo/Bruce Smith)Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/06/24/2405066/hl-hunley-civil-war-sub-062511.html?spill=1#ixzz1QQ6zJzwM
for the first time since it sank with its crew of eight in 1864 The hole at the lower right is on a side of the sub not seen in almost 150 years. (AP Photo/Bruce Smith)
Posted at 5:02 pm by 1909ventilo, on March 15, 2011
Juliette Gordon Low was almost completely deaf, yet she never let her disability prevent her from accomplishing her goals.
Juliette Gordon Low, founder of Girl Scouts of the USA, was born on October 31, 1860, in Savannah, Georgia. “Daisy,” as she was affectionately called by family and friends, was the second of six children of William Washington Gordon II and Eleanor Kinzie Gordon. Family members on her father’s side were early settlers in New Jersey and moved to Georgia after the Revolutionary War, and her mother’s family played an important role in the founding of Chicago, Illinois.A sensitive and talented youngster, Daisy Gordon spent a happy childhood in her large Savannah home, which was purchased and restored by Girl Scouts of the USA in 1953. Now known as the Juliette Gordon Low Girl Scout National Center, or often referred to as the Birthplace, the handsome English Regency house was designated a registered National Historic Landmark in 1965, the first in Savannah. Read more!
Posted at 7:01 pm by 1909ventilo, on March 4, 2011
NEW DELHI: Unrest in the Arab world has been rocking Indian stocks, taking the bottom out of key indices, but it has also led to the prices of silver, of which the country is the largest importer,
“Silver prices have sky rocketed as much as 240 per cent in the past four years. It is at an all-time high of Rs 49,955 per kg. It can breach the Rs 50,000-mark any day,” said Pawan Verma who runs one of the largest jewellery stores in the capital’s old quarters.
“One of the key factors right now is the international buying spree, which is also partly based out of China. Both gold and silver are seeing enormous demand. Then there is this Gulf unrest. All are only fuelling prices, not pulling down demand,” Verma said.
Posted at 7:31 pm by 1909ventilo, on March 2, 2011
A woman who paid £100 for a locked trunk belonging to Agatha Christie has uncovered some of the author’s most personal possessions, worth £100,000.
Lucky Jennifer Grant bought the battered brown leather case at an auction held at Greenway House, Christie’s former home near Kingswear, Devon, and found another box inside.
The Agatha Christie’s fan, who is a keen follower of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, paid just £100 for the memento and kept it at her home in London as a ‘dinner party talking point’.
Jennifer Hawkins’ at home with John Benjamin and the jewellery found in the antiques box formerly owned by Agatha Christie’s mother
But when she asked her builder to force the two brass locks on the case, she was stunned to find a metal strong-box inside
Jennifer contacted the original auctioneers who had no knowledge of the strong-box or a key so Jennifer wrenched it open – and found a lost hoard of the Christie’s family jewels.
The box held more than 50 gold coins, a buckle-shaped brooch and what is thought to be Agatha’s mother’s diamond engagement ring.
In her autobiography, published in 1977 a year after her death, Christie described some jewellery of her mother’s that she and her sister Madge hoped to inherit.
She wrote of ‘my mother’s valuable jewellery’ and ‘my diamond buckle, my diamond crescent and my diamond engagement ring’.
Christie wrote: ‘They were all earmarked for the future on my mother’s demise. Madge was to have the diamond crescent, I was to have the diamond buckle.’
The larger trunk bought by Jennifer bears the initials ‘C.M.M.’ – the same as Christie’s mother, Clara Margaret Miller.
The jewellery found in the antiques box formerly owned by Agatha Christie’s
Posted at 9:24 pm by 1909ventilo, on March 1, 2011
OMAHA, Nebraska (AP) — Linda Stafford has been going to garage sales for 30 years, and taking good-natured ribbing from her family all the while.
Now, the tables have turned.
Stafford has found more than $3,000 in bills dating from 1928 to 1953 in the bottom of a high-backed chair she bought at a garage sale — for two bucks.
“When we found the money, they could probably hear us screaming all over the neighborhood,” said Stafford, 57.
She made the discovery while trying to make room in her garage for more furniture. When one of her daughters, Mandy Rath, heard something rattle in the chair, they removed the bottom. Placed inside a compartment were two paper packets, one with $10 in coins, the other with $3,060 in bills.
Stafford remembers what she paid for the chair, but not where she bought it.
“I know that I’ve had it out in our garage for at least a year, maybe two,” she said.
But, Stafford was not sure how she would spend the money.
“Who knows?” she said. “I might spend it all at garage sales.”
One never knows for sure what they are buying till they get it home!
I can only guess what the chair looked like as there are no photos on the net, picture above is mine!
Posted at 8:12 pm by 1909ventilo, on February 25, 2011
The bottle sold July 2, 2010 for$12,500 Wautoma, Wis
the following is an extract from an article published in “Lectures Modernes”, of Paris in July, 1903:
“About twenty years ago, an American deaf mute, Andrew Clemens really sought to use in decoration (picturing) the multicolored sand which is found in abundance in the vicinity of McGregor, Iowa, and succeeded, before his lamented early death, in developing the idea to a high degree of perfection. His brilliant conception, however, seemed in danger of being forgotten, when Mr. W.S. O’Brien, manager of the Union Telegraph office at McGregor, took up the problem in such hours of leisure as his professional avocations left him, and brought it happily to a successful solution. Let us visit, then, the studio of the Sand Artist. The equipment of the “mosiaste” is simplicity itself. His “palette” comprises a case of boxes in fan form, divided into compartments, each containing sand of a different shade, forty-one in all, and none of them artificial. A pencil of wood is his only “brush”. With a small spoon he transfers from the several compartments the sands into a glass bottle, the size and form of which he selects according to the object or combinations he wishes to represent, then by means of the little wooden tools, Mr. O’Brien arranges the sands just as a painter applies his colors on a canvas. He succeeds in this way of accomplishing many beautiful effects. The sand, once in position in the bottle, is pressed strongly but with precaution so as not to shatter the glass envelope; then the mouth of the bottle is cemented. This done, no shaking or shock can disarrange the varicolored particles encased in this hermetically sealed enclosure.
“One would imagine that the sand must be pasted or glued upon the interior surface of the glass that it could hold so firmly in position. Nevertheless we affirm after personal verification that the sand has not undergone any manipulation whatever. It is used simply dry and as nature gives it, just as anyone can pick it up from the veins in the “Pictured Rocks” near McGregor. Nothing more magnificent to contemplate than these layers and veins of sand combining all the colors of the rainbow, diversified, clearcut, distinct, separate. Upon these monster mountain mosaics of nature the sun’s rays play with marvelous effects, while in the midst of the hills are running and singing little brooks and rivulets, jumping like frisking lambkins over rocks and forming sparkling cataracts in their way down to their homes in the bosom of the great “Father of Waters” a the foot of the bluffs.
Posted at 3:30 am by 1909ventilo, on February 23, 2011
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“The beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries, or the way she combs her hair. The beauty of a woman is seen in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart, the place where love resides. True beauty in a w……oman is reflected in her soul. It’s the caring that she lovingly gives, the passion that she shows & the beauty of a woman only grows with passing years. ~”
— Audrey Hepburn
Posted at 7:56 pm by 1909ventilo, on February 21, 2011
‘Secret message’ found in Abraham Lincoln’s watch
A gold watch owned by Abraham Lincoln included a message marking the start of the US Civil War, but the president never knew of the “secret” inscription uncovered at the National Museum of American History.
Abraham Lincoln’s watch: Lincoln was elected the 16th president of the United States in November 1860. Photo: REUTERS
2:43PM GMT 13 Mar 2009
The engraving, by watchmaker Jonathan Dillon, is dated April 13, 1861, and reads in part: “Fort Sumpter was attacked by the rebels” and “thank God we have a government”.
The museum said it agreed to open the watch to find out if the message really was there after it was contacted by the watchmaker’s great-great-grandson, Doug Stiles of Waukegan, Illinois.
The American Civil War began when Confederate troops opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861.
Forty-five years later, Dillon, the watchmaker, told The New York Times that he was repairing Lincoln’s watch when he heard that the first shots of the Civil War had been fired.
Dillon said he unscrewed the dial of the watch and used a sharp instrument to mark the historic day on the president’s watch. He told the newspaper that, as far as he knew, no one had ever seen the inscription
Jennifer Hawkins’ at home with John Benjamin and the jewellery found in the antiques box formerly owned by Agatha Christie’s mother
The jewellery found in the antiques box formerly owned by Agatha Christie’s
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