Tag Archives: history

Reviews

The Tartan Pimpernel, by Donald Caskie

The Tartan PimpernelReverend Caskie was an amazingly brave Scottish minister who helped Allied soldiers escape from Nazi-occupied France during WWII.

He wrote about those incredibly dangerous and trying years of his life in this wonderful little book. The camaraderie that developed between those working for the common cause of defeating the Nazis is heartwarming, and shows how well human beings can work together to achieve a noble goal.

His prose is so well written you’ll think you’re reading one of the Classics, and his story will inspire you to stand up for what’s right when and if a future time of trouble comes.

Recommended: Yes

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How To

ABC’s of Hand Tools

In 1946, Disney made an industrial short for General Motors called “ABC’s of Hand Tools”. While the whereabouts of that movie, which must have been entertaining, are unknown, the handbook is still with us. Cartoon Brew has the details in this post, along with a link to a PDF of that book. This is funny stuff, and still relevant!

➡ Updated 12/10/09: It’s YouTube to the rescue, thank goodness! Found the video, in two parts, and embedded them below. Enjoy!


Watch Part 1 on YouTube


Watch Part 2 on YouTube

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Thoughts

The story of Comeacross and Doublecross

I did a search for ComeAcross on Google today, and stumbled upon an old folktale printed in Bagdad in the early years of the 20th century. It’s recorded on the website of Allan D. Corre of the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, where it’s part of a collection of popular Arabic literature of the Jews. Read it, it’s nice, and the moral is good. I’m glad to see Comeacross behaved wisely even before it became an informative website! 😀

➡ Updated 2/17/08: ComeAcross was the name of my site from May 2006 to December 2007.

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Events

Yesterday in 2003, iTunes Music Store passed 1 million download mark

Chris Seibold of Apple Matters has a great series of posts going on at his site — to which one can subscribe — called “This Day in Apple History”. For May 5, he had a post about the iTunes Music Store, which on 5/5/03, less than one week after its launch, announced it had passed the 1 million download mark for songs. I hadn’t known about this, and the information shocked me. If something bespeaks of popularity through sheer numbers, THAT does. I say this because when it launched, the Music Store was only for Apple computers, and its collection was approximately 200,000 songs – a mere fraction of today’s collection.

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Thoughts

Hurrah!!! ComeAcross is alive!

ComeAcross is live and well, thanks to a few days of feverish work! I am deeply grateful to my beautiful wife, for helping me sort through all of the content and helping me link and categorize it! Love ya, sweetie! 😉

Those of you wondering why I’m calling this site new when it’s chock full of content, take a peek at this. This is, indeed a brand new site, in many, wonderful ways! So put on a propeller beanie, folks, and sing for joy, because our new, “free for all to use and enjoy” site is up and running! Okay, if you won’t put on the beanie, I won’t mind, but at least belt out a couple of verses from your favorite song. Come on, do it like you’re in the shower!

Here on ComeAcross, you’ll find all sorts of interesting information such as “Pigs in a Polka“, all categorized, searchable, and updated regularly with new, “fresh as the spring air” content. As a matter of fact, I’d be tickled pink if you thought of this site as a source of information from now on, and came back often to see what’s cooking!

➡ Updated 2/17/08: I’ve changed my site’s name to my own since I published this. This site could initially be found at comeacross.info. It is now found at raoulpop.com, which is where you are right now.

This site has been a labor of love for me, and it represents the culmination of years of publishing articles and other information on the web, for various of my sites. I was finally able to put together a great site with a single, large collection of content, where users can interact with each other and discuss the topics presented, thanks to a wonderful CMS/platform called WordPress. It would have taken me several months of coding to get this site going without WordPress, so the amazing capabilities of this platform can’t be underestimated.

Please, pull up a chair and enjoy! If you like it, spread the word! If you don’t, still spread the word, maybe others will! 🙂

Thanks!

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