Watching that video, it's amazing how far video games have advanced since I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, they even had the voice of legendary trainer Teddy Atlas commentating the fight. Interesting Teddy Atlas story, Atlas actually helped train Mike Tyson back in the early 80s, this was back in the day when Tyson was a teenager and he was really out of control. Anyway, Teddy Atlas learned that Tyson was behaving inappropriately with an 11-year old relative of his and he found Tyson and put a loaded .38 revolver to his ear and threatened to kill him if he ever touched his family again. Atlas actually fired the gun once but intentionally missed, just to let Tyson know he wasn't screwing around. This incident caused a massive rift between them and led to Atlas being dismissed from the Catskill Boxing Club by Tyson's manager Cus D'Amato.
Young Griffo (Albert Griffiths), the original "Will-O'-the-Wisp", world featherweight champion in 1890, one of the greatest defensive fighters in boxing history. Young Griffo was not known as much of a puncher, but his skill was uncanny. He had wonderful headwork, almost impenetrable defense, dazzling feints, and rapid two-handed methods of attack. The cleverest boxers and hardest punchers were made to look ridiculous when exchanging with him. He was so good defensively that he used to perform this trick, he would take a handkerchief, put it on the ground, and put his left foot on it. Then holding his hands at his side he would bet you that you could not hit him though his foot would never leave that handkerchief. He traveled across the country doing this night after night at fairs and in vaudeville halls. At his peak no one could touch him up. By the way, his nickname "Will-o'-the-Wisp" was later given to the great Willie Pep, it means a ghostly, flickering light seen at night over bogs or marshes, known in folklore for leading travelers astray. It represents an elusive, deceptive, or impossible goal, basically a nod to their defensive genius, but Griffo was the original. This is the 1910 T220 Champions Young Griffo with Mecca Cigarettes back and a beautiful example.
Awesome book about Young Griffo, love the image of his face hovering over the Brooklyn Bridge. Here's the photo that was used for the image of his face on the cover of this book. I love photography, it's absolutely fascinating to think that we have technology that can take a snapshot of a moment in time, freeze a moment in time, and we can look back at that actual moment in time and see it with our own eyes. I have pictures of myself back in the 80s and 90s, back when I was a kid, on vacations with my grandparents, hanging out with old friends, people I love that are no longer here, and I look back at these photos and to see those moments in time with my own eyes is just mind blowing.
I mean, look at this, this is a photo, an actual photo of a moment in time, President Abraham Lincoln sitting with General George McClellan in Antietam, Maryland, on October 3rd in 1862. It's just absolutely insane that we can see this actual moment in time with our own eyes. This photo was taken by photographer Alexander Gardner, the image shows the two men meeting in the general's tent near the Antietam battlefield in Maryland. The meeting took place roughly two weeks after the Battle of Antietam as Lincoln sought to encourage McClellan to pursue the retreating Confederate army. The Battle of Antietam was the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with over 22,700 total casualties (killed, wounded, or missing) in 12 hours of combat.
Check this out, these are some of the the oldest known photos, daguerreotypes, of people in existence, most of these people were born in the 1700s but lived long enough to be photographed. Born in the freakin' 1700s, some of these people lived through the Revolutionary War.
Andrew Jackson was photographed, several daguerreotypes were taken of him in 1845, just months before his death at age 78. The images, captured at his home, The Hermitage, with one famous image taken by Edward Anthony on April 15, 1845.
The first photograph of a sitting United States president was taken of William Henry Harrison on March 4, 1841. The new executive had just delivered his inaugural speech and he paused, afterward, to pose for a portrait using the daguerrotype.
John Quincy Adams was photographed. He is the earliest born U.S. president to be captured on camera, with a daguerreotype taken in March 1843 by Philip Haas in Washington, D.C. The first ever president to be photographed, this photo was taken over 14 years after he left office. An actual photo of the 6th president, the 6th, that's insane to think about.
The first photograph ever taken of a human is believed to be "Boulevard du Temple," a daguerreotype taken by Louis Daguerre in Paris in 1838. The image features a man getting his shoes shined, appearing in the bottom left corner, the man was still long enough during the 7-15 minute exposure to be captured on photo. The daguerreotype was a method that took around 7-15 minutes to develop a single image,
such a long exposure meant that anything moving around was not picked up. The only figure to stay still long enough was a man, on the corner of the street, who had stopped to have his shoes shined.
It's absolutely fascinating looking at these old photos, a glimpse back through time, so long ago, the passage of time is fascinating. Imagine if we could look back in time and see an actual Megalodon shark, or Titanoboa, or Super Croc. Or get a glimpse at an Australopithecus, millions of years ago, see them alive with our own eyes.
Ok, let's get back to the great boxing photos that were used for some great boxing cards. Up next, Larry Gains, he was a trailblazing Black Canadian heavyweight boxer, recognized as a Canadian and British Empire champion and one of the top heavyweights of the 1920s and 30s. Known as "Larrupin' Larry" and the "Toronto Terror," he was often denied world title opportunities due to racism, yet was crowned World Colored Heavyweight Champion twice. He fought in 146 bouts (including newspaper decisions), winning 118, with 63 wins by knockout. Gains was a solid all-around fighter with a good chin and enough power to get your attention. This is the 1938 Churchman Cigarettes Larry Gains.
This is actually the first time I saw Larry Gains on film, he demolishes Phil Scott in Two rounds in 1931, he floors him with a left hand and then takes him out with a right hand.
Here's highlights from Larry Gains fight with Primo Carnera in 1932. My goodness, Gains looks like a middleweight compared to the giant 6'6" Carnera. Watching this film, Gains had a nasty overhand right that he tagged Carnera with a few times, it's the same overhand right that he took Phil Scott out with.
Larry Gains has quite a few cards but the photos that were used for the images on the cards just aren't available, it's frustrating but a lot of great boxing photos have been lost to time. Anyway, this is my favorite Larry Gains card, 1935 Gallagher Ltd. Champions Larry Gains, I wish I could find the photo to match up with this card. It's a wicked image of Gains, a savage expression on his face, and it looks like he's got blood pouring from his mouth, awesome card.
Pete "Kid" Herman, two-time world bantamweight champion, 1917-1920, and briefly in 1921, one of the greatest bantamweights that ever lived. He swapped leather with names like Kid Williams, Joe Lynch, Memphis Pal Moore, Johnny Coulon, Charles Ledoux, bantamweight was the most dangerous division in boxing during that era and nobody escaped alive, but Herman did dominate it, and there's no telling how long he could have been bantamweight champion had he not lost his vision. Herman fought nearly 150 times as a professional, and about half of his fights ended in No Decision. I read somewhere that early in his career he was strictly a fast moving outside boxer and after his vision began to deteriorate he kept getting closer and closer to his opponents and developed himself into a great infighter with a lethal body attack, partly in response to his failing eyesight. But perhaps the most impressive thing about his career was that he was stopped only one time despite fighting a number of good punchers. This is the 1922 Amalgamated Press Sporting Champions Pete Herman.
Leo Houck, "The Lancaster Thunderbolt." A truly great pound-for-pound fighter from the 1910s-1920s, also one of the most battle-hardened gladiators I've ever seen. His career spanned 24 years and over 250 fights, he fought in pretty much every weight division that existed, from flyweight all the way up to heavyweight, and his resume is just bat$hit insane, he fought 12 world champions and the names on his resume go something like this, Jack Britton, Harry Lewis, Frank Klaus, Battling Levinsky, Billy Papke, Harry Greb, Jack Dillon, Mike Gibbons, Jeff Smith, Gene Tunney. Just wow, that isn't a resume, that's trying to climb the south face of Annapurna I, blindfolded, what a list of obstacles. The guy was a damn monster. He ended his career with an 11 fight win streak, coming out of retirement 2 times, the final time at the age of 38. And get this, he was never knocked out in his career, I'd say that qualifies as having a granite chin. This is the 1910 Khedival Surbrug Prize Fighters Leo Houck, difficult card to track down.
Interestingly, his real name was Leo Hauck, but he fought under the name Leo Houck after a promotor misspelled his last name on a poster. What a beast.
Check this out, this is a diagram of the layers of planet Earth, most people never even think about what's beneath our feet. The absolute center, Earth's core, the temperatures range from about 4,400°C at the top of the outer core to roughly 6,000°C at the center of the inner core. This intense heat is comparable to the surface temperature of the Sun. The outer core is composed of liquid iron and nickel. Its extreme heat drives turbulent convection, which plays a major role in generating Earth’s magnetic field. Although the inner core is hotter than the outer core, the intense pressure (nearly 3.6 million atmospheres) keeps this region solid.
Earth's core is one of the most fascinating and mysterious places, the fact is, we don't know much about how things work down there because we simply can't reach it, and even if we could, it's one of the most violent and inhospitable places you can imagine, the heat and pressure down there make it impossible to explore. Our deepest drillings have only reached 12km. We couldn't even send a probe down there to take photos because the heat and pressure would instantly crush and vaporize it. It is roughly 3,959 miles (about 6,371 kilometers) from the Earth's surface to the center of the core. The top of the Earth's outer core begins about 1,800 miles beneath our feet, and extends to the solid inner core at the exact center of the planet. To put that massive distance into perspective, the deepest humans have ever drilled is the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia, which reached about 7.6 miles deep. That is just 0.2% of the way to the core. The distance to the Earth's center is roughly equivalent to a direct flight from New York City to Berlin. It's just a fascinating place, and man I would love to be able to explore all the layers.
This is good stuff, and you have to admire his thinking, a man proposed using a nuclear device to explore the Earth's core is David Stevenson, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The Idea he put forward in 2003 involved creating a crack in the Earth's crust using a small nuclear bomb or massive amounts of explosives. A large volume of molten iron would then be poured into this crack, carrying and shielding a small, instrument-laden probe (a "grapefruit-sized probe") down to the core in about one week. The probe would transmit information about the interior of the Earth's temperature and composition, which are otherwise impossible to access directly. While it sounds like science fiction, Stevenson presented it as a serious, albeit extreme, "thought experiment" to show that deep exploration is technically imaginable.
Earth's core
Caltech planetary scientist has "modest proposal" for sending probe to Earth's core
May 14, 2003
PASADENA, Calif. - Dave Stevenson has spent his career working on "swing-by" missions to the other planets. Now he has a modest proposal he'd like to swing by some government agency with a few billion dollars in available funding.
According to Stevenson's calculations, it should be possible to send a probe all the way to Earth's core by combining several proven technologies with a few well-grounded scientific assumptions about the workings of the planet. The probe would sink straight to the core in an envelope of molten iron, sending temperature readings, compositional information, and other data along the way.
"We've spent more than $10 billion in unmanned missions to the planets," says Stevenson, who is the Van Osdol Professor of Planetary Science at the California Institute of Technology. "But we've only been down about 10 kilometers into our own planet."
The benefits to science would be significant, Stevenson says, because so little has been directly observed about the inner workings of the planet. Scientists do not know, for example, the exact composition or even the temperature of the core, and what they do know is based on inferences about seismic data accumulated during earthquakes.
Stevenson says his proposal should be attractive to the scientific community because it is of the same scale, price-wise, as planetary exploration. To date, NASA has flown unmanned missions past all the planets except Pluto (if indeed Pluto is a planet at all), has made a few highly successful soft landings on Mars, has probed the clouds of Jupiter, is getting ready to probe the atmosphere of Titan, and has sent four spacecraft into interstellar space. Sending something into the earth, Stevenson believes, will have comparable payoffs in the quest for knowledge.
"When we fly to other worlds, we are often surprised by what we find, and I think the same will be the case if we go down."
Stevenson's plan calls for a crack to be opened in the earth, perhaps with some sort of explosion-probably a nuclear bomb. According to his figures, the crack will need to be several hundred meters in length and depth, and about 30 centimeters wide, to accommodate a volume of about 100 thousand to several million tons of molten iron.
The instant the crack opens, the entire volume of iron will be dropped in, completely filling the open space. Through the sheer force of its weight, the iron will create a continuing crack that will open all the way to the planet's core 3,000 kilometers below. Anything on a smaller scale may not work; anything larger will be even more expensive, so Stevenson thinks a crack of those dimensions is about right.
"Once you set that condition up, the crack is self-perpetuating," he explains; "it's fundamentally different from drilling, where it gets harder and harder-and eventually futile-the farther you go down."
The iron will continue to fall due to gravity because it is about twice the density of the surrounding material. Riding along in the mass of liquid iron will be one or more probes made of a material robust enough to withstand the heat and pressure. The probe will perhaps be the size of a grapefruit but definitely small enough to ride easily inside the 30-centimeter crack without getting wedged.
Inside the probe will be instrumentation for data collection, which will be relayed through low-intensity mechanical waves of some sort-probably through deformations of the ball itself to send out a sort of "Morse code" of data. Because radio waves cannot propagate through Earth, this is the only way to get the data transferred.
The probe will likely operate with about 10 watts of power, and it may even be possible to replenish energy and dispense with an on-board battery by harnessing mechanical energy from the force of the fall, just as electricity can be generated from falling water.
Such a low power rating will not make it possible to generate very strong shock waves for data transmission, but strong waves may not be necessary. In fact, Stevenson further suggests that the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) might be recalibrated in its downtime to track the falling ball.
Based on the rate the molten iron would fall due to gravity, the ball would move downward into Earth at roughly human running pace (about 10 miles per hour), meaning that the entire mission would last a few weeks.
All this may sound to some like science fiction, but Stevenson says each of the principles involved is based on sound knowledge of crack propagation, fluid dynamics, mechanical-wave propagation, and "stress states." If these things didn't already work in nature, we would have no volcanoes and poorly performing bathroom plumbing, but little to fear from a pebble shattering our windshields.
"The biggest question is how to initially open the crack," says Stevenson. "Also, there's the technological challenge of having a probe that actually does what it's supposed to do."
Stevenson says he came up with part of the title "A Modest Proposal" for his paper, which is appearing in this week's journal Nature, to have a bit of fun but at the same time to issue a serious scientific proposal. He purposely took the title from Jonathan Swift's famous essay of the same name. The Swift essay suggests that Ireland's terrible economic circumstances could be solved by people eating their own children, thereby allowing England to continue pillaging the country's resources for its own one-sided benefit.
"My proposal is not as outrageous as suggesting one should eat his own children, but still combines a serious proposal with some levity," Stevenson says. "Ninety-five percent of the scientists who read the article may laugh at an enjoyable read, but if the other five percent seriously consider the goal of probing Earth's core, then I'll be happy."
"The biggest question should not be the cost, but whether we should pursue the goal of exploring Earth's interior," he says. "That said, I'd suggest we do it if we can keep the cost under $10 billion."
This is a photo of the legendary Caltech professor David Stevenson, God bless him, you gotta love his ambition. I mean, who doesn't want to know more about Earth's core and what's going on down there. Who wouldn't want to explore down there.
The Earth's core is mythical, it has been a subject in books and film for quite some time. The first story to really discuss a journey to the center of the Earth was Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, first section – Inferno. In this book, Hell is literally a vast underground cavern. The narrator travels through the center of the Earth and out the other side, towards Mount Purgatory.
Jules Verne's classic 1864 Novel, "A Journey to the Center of the Earth." The story involves German professor Otto Lidenbrock who believes there are volcanic tubes going toward the centre of the Earth. He, his nephew Axel, and their guide Hans descend into an Icelandic volcano, encountering many adventures, including prehistoric animals and natural hazards, before eventually coming to the surface again in southern Italy, at the Stromboli volcano. In the book, the characters didn’t travel to the center of the Earth. Verne envisioned them actually going nearly 100 miles deep, and finding a continent wide subterranean world.
The Core (2003) is a sci-fi disaster movie about a team of scientists and astronauts who must drill to the center of the Earth to detonate nuclear weapons and "jumpstart" the planet's core after its rotation mysteriously stops. The team gets plans on getting to Earth's core using the Virgil, an experimental vessel constructed from "Unobtainium," a fictional material that grows stronger and more heat-resistant the more pressure it is under. They launch through the Marianas Trench and drill through the crust into the mantle. A fun film, it really captures the imagination of what it would be like to actually make that journey, far-fetched and impossible in real-life due to the sheer heat and pressure, but a fun film nevertheless.
You know, it's fascinating, we can journey into deep space, maybe even make it to Mars someday, we can visit the deepest depths of the ocean, the Challenger Deep in the Mariana trench, but we can't sniff Earth's core, just too much heat and pressure.
I was talking about photography earlier and how much it fascinates me, man would I love to see actual photos of the deep layers of planet Earth, especially the inner and outer core.
The deepest human-made hole is the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia. Started by the Soviet Union in 1970, it reached a vertical depth of 12,262 meters (approx. 7.5 miles / 40,230 feet). The project was halted in the 1990s due to the high underground temperatures. Engineers ran into extreme temperatures reaching 180°C (356°F). At this heat, the rock began to behave like malleable plastic rather than a solid, destroying drill bits and equipment. Under this small metal cap lies the world’s deepest borehole, now surrounded by ruins. It took 20 years, but Russia drilled down 40,230 feet into the earth, before heat forced work to stop. Despite reaching such a depth, Russia never got to the mantle. No one has ever reached the Earth's mantle, although scientists have never given up trying to get to it. Nearby residents of the Kola Superdeep Borehole have said they can hear souls screaming in hell coming from it.
Here are some other deep holes humans have dug in the past. The Bingham Canyon Mine, Utah. Over 100 years old, the world's largest copper mine includes a 2.5-mile-wide pit in the Oquirrh Mountains southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah. Considered the largest man-made excavation, the mine dips nearly three-quarters of a mile down and covers 1,900 acres. First started in 1906, the mine is still open, but that hasn't kept it from being named a National Historic Landmark with a visitor center for folks who want to come and gawk.
The Kimberley Diamond Mine, Africa. Located in Africa and known as one of the largest hand-made holes in the world, "The Big Hole" actually started as a bit of a hill. With more than 50,000 miners pick-axing their way into the soil starting in 1866, the Kimberley Diamond Mine sunk more than 700 feet and expanded to over 1,500 feet in width by 1914. More than 6,000 pounds of diamond were pulled from what is still, understandably, a tourist destination.
The Berkeley Pit, Montana. Opened in 1955 as a way to mine for copper in Butte, Montana, the Berkeley Pit grew to a depth of 1,700 feet before it was closed down in 1982. Since that time the pit has filled with over 900 feet worth of groundwater and rainwater. Combined with the heavy metals and chemicals of the prior mining operation, the water has turned highly acidic and measures are taken to keep birds out of the water ever since a 342-bird flock of snow geese died inside the mile-long, half-mile-wide pit in the 1990s.
Mirny Mine, Russia. There are claims that the winds around Siberia's Mirny Mine sucks unsuspecting helicopters into its 1,700-feet-deep pit swirl, but even with those rumors aside, the diamond mine that began in 1955 remains fully off limits. Deep enough to hold a 150 story skyscraper inside, Stalin's diamond mine stretches 3,900 feet across and is one of the largest excavated pits in the world. And even though work in the open-pit mine has ceased, Russia still mines underground in the site.
IceCube Neutrino Observatory, Antarctica. Thanks to the University of Wisconsin, the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica has 86 cables that reach beneath the ice, supporting 60 digital optical modules that relay data from the depths to the surface above. And that surface is a long ways away. The modules hang at depths starting at 4,750 feet all the way down to over 8,000 feet, or 1.5 miles. It took seven years to drill holes for the cables, done in the Southern Hemisphere's summer and with a 25,000-pound hot water hose that melted roughly 200,000 gallons of water per hole.
Humans first began digging toward the Earth's mantle in the 1960s, when American scientists conceived of the project known as "Project Mohole," named after Andrija Mohorovicic, who discovered the boundary between the earth's crust and mantle. Project Mohole was an ambitious 1960s scientific expedition funded by the National Science Foundation to drill through the Earth's crust and sample the mantle, the layer beneath the crust. Initiated by US scientists, the project sought to achieve for "inner space" what the space race was for outer space. Though it failed to reach the mantle and was canceled, it successfully pioneered deep-sea drilling techniques. Like the race to the moon, it was a showdown between the US and Russia to see who could get to the mantle. Because, as University of Southampton's Damon Teagle told CNN in 2012, even though the mantle makes up nearly 70% of the Earth, scientists only have a "reasonable" understanding of what it's made from, and how it works. The U. S. project aimed to drill through the Earth's oceanic crust near Guadalupe, Mexico, to reach the Mohorovičić discontinuity (the boundary between the crust and the mantle). The ocean was chosen because the crust is much thinner there than on land. After successfully proving deep-sea drilling techniques, the project was canceled by U.S. Congress in 1966 due to soaring costs and management issues. The Soviet Counterpart, Kola Superdeep Borehole, spurred by Cold War competition and the American project, began their own deep drilling initiative in 1970. Rather than drilling in the ocean, they chose a site on the Kola Peninsula in the Arctic Circle. Although the U.S. was the first to conceive of drilling to the mantle and executed the initial phase, the Soviets ultimately "won" the race to dig the deepest hole. The Soviet project became the deepest man-made hole on Earth. It reached a record depth of 12,262 meters (nearly 7.6 miles) before extremely high, unexpected temperatures halted further drilling. This is a photo of geologist Dr. Harry Hammond Hess pointing to a diagram on a blackboard for the Mohole project.
I'll tell you what's even more insane to think about, the core of our sun is 15 million degrees Celsius (27 million degrees Fahrenheit). I can't even begin to fathom, to wrap my head around that kind of heat.
In 2020, telescopes captured high resolution images of the surface of the sun, the closest we've ever seen the sun, and the images are downright frightening. It looks a lot like peanut brittle, but what you're looking at is the photosphere, or the surface of the sun up close, very close, which has an average temperature of 10,000°F (5,500°C). The dark feature is a sunspot, a temporary region on the Sun's surface characterized by intense magnetic activity and a lower temperature than the surrounding area.
Ok, I didn't mean to get caught up in the Earth's core and sun, but my mind just wanders, so many fascinating things in life. Ok, back to boxing. Peter Jackson, aka "The Black Prince", was born on the island of St. Croix, in the Danish West Indies, in 1861. He was a natural athlete who developed a marvelous physique by competing in various sports. Jackson began his boxing career in 1882 in Australia and soon perfected his ring craft. He combined a smooth style with lightning fast combination, and an ability to hit hard with either hand. Jackson fought often and was soon matched against the top heavyweights of his day, men like Joe McAuliffe, Patsy Cardiff, Jem Smith, Frank Slavin and Jim Corbett. He defeated them all, with the exception of Corbett, with whom he drew after sixty-one rounds. The greatest opponent Jackson faced, however, was social prejudice. Society mandated that John L. Sullivan, who was the reigning Champion at the time, not give Jackson or any other black fighter a shot at the Heavyweight crown. Denied his shot at the title, Jackson never got the opportunity he so richly deserved, but is still remembered as the great fighter he was. This is my favorite card of his, the artwork is just beautiful, the background scenery, it's honestly one of the most beautiful cards I've ever seen. The 1910 Champion Athlete and Prize Fighters T220 Peter Jackson.
Comments
Watching that video, it's amazing how far video games have advanced since I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, they even had the voice of legendary trainer Teddy Atlas commentating the fight. Interesting Teddy Atlas story, Atlas actually helped train Mike Tyson back in the early 80s, this was back in the day when Tyson was a teenager and he was really out of control. Anyway, Teddy Atlas learned that Tyson was behaving inappropriately with an 11-year old relative of his and he found Tyson and put a loaded .38 revolver to his ear and threatened to kill him if he ever touched his family again. Atlas actually fired the gun once but intentionally missed, just to let Tyson know he wasn't screwing around. This incident caused a massive rift between them and led to Atlas being dismissed from the Catskill Boxing Club by Tyson's manager Cus D'Amato.
Young Griffo (Albert Griffiths), the original "Will-O'-the-Wisp", world featherweight champion in 1890, one of the greatest defensive fighters in boxing history. Young Griffo was not known as much of a puncher, but his skill was uncanny. He had wonderful headwork, almost impenetrable defense, dazzling feints, and rapid two-handed methods of attack. The cleverest boxers and hardest punchers were made to look ridiculous when exchanging with him. He was so good defensively that he used to perform this trick, he would take a handkerchief, put it on the ground, and put his left foot on it. Then holding his hands at his side he would bet you that you could not hit him though his foot would never leave that handkerchief. He traveled across the country doing this night after night at fairs and in vaudeville halls. At his peak no one could touch him up. By the way, his nickname "Will-o'-the-Wisp" was later given to the great Willie Pep, it means a ghostly, flickering light seen at night over bogs or marshes, known in folklore for leading travelers astray. It represents an elusive, deceptive, or impossible goal, basically a nod to their defensive genius, but Griffo was the original. This is the 1910 T220 Champions Young Griffo with Mecca Cigarettes back and a beautiful example.
1890 Mayo's Cut Plug Young Griffo. This is his rookie card.
Awesome book about Young Griffo, love the image of his face hovering over the Brooklyn Bridge. Here's the photo that was used for the image of his face on the cover of this book. I love photography, it's absolutely fascinating to think that we have technology that can take a snapshot of a moment in time, freeze a moment in time, and we can look back at that actual moment in time and see it with our own eyes. I have pictures of myself back in the 80s and 90s, back when I was a kid, on vacations with my grandparents, hanging out with old friends, people I love that are no longer here, and I look back at these photos and to see those moments in time with my own eyes is just mind blowing.
I mean, look at this, this is a photo, an actual photo of a moment in time, President Abraham Lincoln sitting with General George McClellan in Antietam, Maryland, on October 3rd in 1862. It's just absolutely insane that we can see this actual moment in time with our own eyes. This photo was taken by photographer Alexander Gardner, the image shows the two men meeting in the general's tent near the Antietam battlefield in Maryland. The meeting took place roughly two weeks after the Battle of Antietam as Lincoln sought to encourage McClellan to pursue the retreating Confederate army. The Battle of Antietam was the bloodiest single-day battle in American history, with over 22,700 total casualties (killed, wounded, or missing) in 12 hours of combat.
Check this out, these are some of the the oldest known photos, daguerreotypes, of people in existence, most of these people were born in the 1700s but lived long enough to be photographed. Born in the freakin' 1700s, some of these people lived through the Revolutionary War.
Andrew Jackson was photographed, several daguerreotypes were taken of him in 1845, just months before his death at age 78. The images, captured at his home, The Hermitage, with one famous image taken by Edward Anthony on April 15, 1845.
The first photograph of a sitting United States president was taken of William Henry Harrison on March 4, 1841. The new executive had just delivered his inaugural speech and he paused, afterward, to pose for a portrait using the daguerrotype.
John Quincy Adams was photographed. He is the earliest born U.S. president to be captured on camera, with a daguerreotype taken in March 1843 by Philip Haas in Washington, D.C. The first ever president to be photographed, this photo was taken over 14 years after he left office. An actual photo of the 6th president, the 6th, that's insane to think about.
Conrad Heyer, a Revolutionary War veteran, this guy actually fought in the Revolutionary war.
The first photograph ever taken of a human is believed to be "Boulevard du Temple," a daguerreotype taken by Louis Daguerre in Paris in 1838. The image features a man getting his shoes shined, appearing in the bottom left corner, the man was still long enough during the 7-15 minute exposure to be captured on photo. The daguerreotype was a method that took around 7-15 minutes to develop a single image,
such a long exposure meant that anything moving around was not picked up. The only figure to stay still long enough was a man, on the corner of the street, who had stopped to have his shoes shined.
It's absolutely fascinating looking at these old photos, a glimpse back through time, so long ago, the passage of time is fascinating. Imagine if we could look back in time and see an actual Megalodon shark, or Titanoboa, or Super Croc. Or get a glimpse at an Australopithecus, millions of years ago, see them alive with our own eyes.
Ok, let's get back to the great boxing photos that were used for some great boxing cards. Up next, Larry Gains, he was a trailblazing Black Canadian heavyweight boxer, recognized as a Canadian and British Empire champion and one of the top heavyweights of the 1920s and 30s. Known as "Larrupin' Larry" and the "Toronto Terror," he was often denied world title opportunities due to racism, yet was crowned World Colored Heavyweight Champion twice. He fought in 146 bouts (including newspaper decisions), winning 118, with 63 wins by knockout. Gains was a solid all-around fighter with a good chin and enough power to get your attention. This is the 1938 Churchman Cigarettes Larry Gains.
This is actually the first time I saw Larry Gains on film, he demolishes Phil Scott in Two rounds in 1931, he floors him with a left hand and then takes him out with a right hand.
Here's highlights from Larry Gains fight with Primo Carnera in 1932. My goodness, Gains looks like a middleweight compared to the giant 6'6" Carnera. Watching this film, Gains had a nasty overhand right that he tagged Carnera with a few times, it's the same overhand right that he took Phil Scott out with.
Larry Gains has quite a few cards but the photos that were used for the images on the cards just aren't available, it's frustrating but a lot of great boxing photos have been lost to time. Anyway, this is my favorite Larry Gains card, 1935 Gallagher Ltd. Champions Larry Gains, I wish I could find the photo to match up with this card. It's a wicked image of Gains, a savage expression on his face, and it looks like he's got blood pouring from his mouth, awesome card.
Great image of Larry Gains.
Pete "Kid" Herman, two-time world bantamweight champion, 1917-1920, and briefly in 1921, one of the greatest bantamweights that ever lived. He swapped leather with names like Kid Williams, Joe Lynch, Memphis Pal Moore, Johnny Coulon, Charles Ledoux, bantamweight was the most dangerous division in boxing during that era and nobody escaped alive, but Herman did dominate it, and there's no telling how long he could have been bantamweight champion had he not lost his vision. Herman fought nearly 150 times as a professional, and about half of his fights ended in No Decision. I read somewhere that early in his career he was strictly a fast moving outside boxer and after his vision began to deteriorate he kept getting closer and closer to his opponents and developed himself into a great infighter with a lethal body attack, partly in response to his failing eyesight. But perhaps the most impressive thing about his career was that he was stopped only one time despite fighting a number of good punchers. This is the 1922 Amalgamated Press Sporting Champions Pete Herman.
Pete Herman Linen Business Card New Orleans Night Club.
Leo Houck, "The Lancaster Thunderbolt." A truly great pound-for-pound fighter from the 1910s-1920s, also one of the most battle-hardened gladiators I've ever seen. His career spanned 24 years and over 250 fights, he fought in pretty much every weight division that existed, from flyweight all the way up to heavyweight, and his resume is just bat$hit insane, he fought 12 world champions and the names on his resume go something like this, Jack Britton, Harry Lewis, Frank Klaus, Battling Levinsky, Billy Papke, Harry Greb, Jack Dillon, Mike Gibbons, Jeff Smith, Gene Tunney. Just wow, that isn't a resume, that's trying to climb the south face of Annapurna I, blindfolded, what a list of obstacles. The guy was a damn monster. He ended his career with an 11 fight win streak, coming out of retirement 2 times, the final time at the age of 38. And get this, he was never knocked out in his career, I'd say that qualifies as having a granite chin. This is the 1910 Khedival Surbrug Prize Fighters Leo Houck, difficult card to track down.
Interestingly, his real name was Leo Hauck, but he fought under the name Leo Houck after a promotor misspelled his last name on a poster. What a beast.
Love you girl.
Check this out, this is a diagram of the layers of planet Earth, most people never even think about what's beneath our feet. The absolute center, Earth's core, the temperatures range from about 4,400°C at the top of the outer core to roughly 6,000°C at the center of the inner core. This intense heat is comparable to the surface temperature of the Sun. The outer core is composed of liquid iron and nickel. Its extreme heat drives turbulent convection, which plays a major role in generating Earth’s magnetic field. Although the inner core is hotter than the outer core, the intense pressure (nearly 3.6 million atmospheres) keeps this region solid.
Earth's core is one of the most fascinating and mysterious places, the fact is, we don't know much about how things work down there because we simply can't reach it, and even if we could, it's one of the most violent and inhospitable places you can imagine, the heat and pressure down there make it impossible to explore. Our deepest drillings have only reached 12km. We couldn't even send a probe down there to take photos because the heat and pressure would instantly crush and vaporize it. It is roughly 3,959 miles (about 6,371 kilometers) from the Earth's surface to the center of the core. The top of the Earth's outer core begins about 1,800 miles beneath our feet, and extends to the solid inner core at the exact center of the planet. To put that massive distance into perspective, the deepest humans have ever drilled is the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia, which reached about 7.6 miles deep. That is just 0.2% of the way to the core. The distance to the Earth's center is roughly equivalent to a direct flight from New York City to Berlin. It's just a fascinating place, and man I would love to be able to explore all the layers.
If you want to go on one heck of an adventure, watch this documentary about Earth's core.
This is good stuff, and you have to admire his thinking, a man proposed using a nuclear device to explore the Earth's core is David Stevenson, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The Idea he put forward in 2003 involved creating a crack in the Earth's crust using a small nuclear bomb or massive amounts of explosives. A large volume of molten iron would then be poured into this crack, carrying and shielding a small, instrument-laden probe (a "grapefruit-sized probe") down to the core in about one week. The probe would transmit information about the interior of the Earth's temperature and composition, which are otherwise impossible to access directly. While it sounds like science fiction, Stevenson presented it as a serious, albeit extreme, "thought experiment" to show that deep exploration is technically imaginable.
Earth's core
Caltech planetary scientist has "modest proposal" for sending probe to Earth's core
May 14, 2003
PASADENA, Calif. - Dave Stevenson has spent his career working on "swing-by" missions to the other planets. Now he has a modest proposal he'd like to swing by some government agency with a few billion dollars in available funding.
According to Stevenson's calculations, it should be possible to send a probe all the way to Earth's core by combining several proven technologies with a few well-grounded scientific assumptions about the workings of the planet. The probe would sink straight to the core in an envelope of molten iron, sending temperature readings, compositional information, and other data along the way.
"We've spent more than $10 billion in unmanned missions to the planets," says Stevenson, who is the Van Osdol Professor of Planetary Science at the California Institute of Technology. "But we've only been down about 10 kilometers into our own planet."
The benefits to science would be significant, Stevenson says, because so little has been directly observed about the inner workings of the planet. Scientists do not know, for example, the exact composition or even the temperature of the core, and what they do know is based on inferences about seismic data accumulated during earthquakes.
Stevenson says his proposal should be attractive to the scientific community because it is of the same scale, price-wise, as planetary exploration. To date, NASA has flown unmanned missions past all the planets except Pluto (if indeed Pluto is a planet at all), has made a few highly successful soft landings on Mars, has probed the clouds of Jupiter, is getting ready to probe the atmosphere of Titan, and has sent four spacecraft into interstellar space. Sending something into the earth, Stevenson believes, will have comparable payoffs in the quest for knowledge.
"When we fly to other worlds, we are often surprised by what we find, and I think the same will be the case if we go down."
Stevenson's plan calls for a crack to be opened in the earth, perhaps with some sort of explosion-probably a nuclear bomb. According to his figures, the crack will need to be several hundred meters in length and depth, and about 30 centimeters wide, to accommodate a volume of about 100 thousand to several million tons of molten iron.
The instant the crack opens, the entire volume of iron will be dropped in, completely filling the open space. Through the sheer force of its weight, the iron will create a continuing crack that will open all the way to the planet's core 3,000 kilometers below. Anything on a smaller scale may not work; anything larger will be even more expensive, so Stevenson thinks a crack of those dimensions is about right.
"Once you set that condition up, the crack is self-perpetuating," he explains; "it's fundamentally different from drilling, where it gets harder and harder-and eventually futile-the farther you go down."
The iron will continue to fall due to gravity because it is about twice the density of the surrounding material. Riding along in the mass of liquid iron will be one or more probes made of a material robust enough to withstand the heat and pressure. The probe will perhaps be the size of a grapefruit but definitely small enough to ride easily inside the 30-centimeter crack without getting wedged.
Inside the probe will be instrumentation for data collection, which will be relayed through low-intensity mechanical waves of some sort-probably through deformations of the ball itself to send out a sort of "Morse code" of data. Because radio waves cannot propagate through Earth, this is the only way to get the data transferred.
The probe will likely operate with about 10 watts of power, and it may even be possible to replenish energy and dispense with an on-board battery by harnessing mechanical energy from the force of the fall, just as electricity can be generated from falling water.
Such a low power rating will not make it possible to generate very strong shock waves for data transmission, but strong waves may not be necessary. In fact, Stevenson further suggests that the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) might be recalibrated in its downtime to track the falling ball.
Based on the rate the molten iron would fall due to gravity, the ball would move downward into Earth at roughly human running pace (about 10 miles per hour), meaning that the entire mission would last a few weeks.
All this may sound to some like science fiction, but Stevenson says each of the principles involved is based on sound knowledge of crack propagation, fluid dynamics, mechanical-wave propagation, and "stress states." If these things didn't already work in nature, we would have no volcanoes and poorly performing bathroom plumbing, but little to fear from a pebble shattering our windshields.
"The biggest question is how to initially open the crack," says Stevenson. "Also, there's the technological challenge of having a probe that actually does what it's supposed to do."
Stevenson says he came up with part of the title "A Modest Proposal" for his paper, which is appearing in this week's journal Nature, to have a bit of fun but at the same time to issue a serious scientific proposal. He purposely took the title from Jonathan Swift's famous essay of the same name. The Swift essay suggests that Ireland's terrible economic circumstances could be solved by people eating their own children, thereby allowing England to continue pillaging the country's resources for its own one-sided benefit.
"My proposal is not as outrageous as suggesting one should eat his own children, but still combines a serious proposal with some levity," Stevenson says. "Ninety-five percent of the scientists who read the article may laugh at an enjoyable read, but if the other five percent seriously consider the goal of probing Earth's core, then I'll be happy."
"The biggest question should not be the cost, but whether we should pursue the goal of exploring Earth's interior," he says. "That said, I'd suggest we do it if we can keep the cost under $10 billion."
This is a photo of the legendary Caltech professor David Stevenson, God bless him, you gotta love his ambition. I mean, who doesn't want to know more about Earth's core and what's going on down there. Who wouldn't want to explore down there.
The Earth's core is mythical, it has been a subject in books and film for quite some time. The first story to really discuss a journey to the center of the Earth was Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, first section – Inferno. In this book, Hell is literally a vast underground cavern. The narrator travels through the center of the Earth and out the other side, towards Mount Purgatory.
Jules Verne's classic 1864 Novel, "A Journey to the Center of the Earth." The story involves German professor Otto Lidenbrock who believes there are volcanic tubes going toward the centre of the Earth. He, his nephew Axel, and their guide Hans descend into an Icelandic volcano, encountering many adventures, including prehistoric animals and natural hazards, before eventually coming to the surface again in southern Italy, at the Stromboli volcano. In the book, the characters didn’t travel to the center of the Earth. Verne envisioned them actually going nearly 100 miles deep, and finding a continent wide subterranean world.
Jules Verne's book was made into a film in 1959.
The Core (2003) is a sci-fi disaster movie about a team of scientists and astronauts who must drill to the center of the Earth to detonate nuclear weapons and "jumpstart" the planet's core after its rotation mysteriously stops. The team gets plans on getting to Earth's core using the Virgil, an experimental vessel constructed from "Unobtainium," a fictional material that grows stronger and more heat-resistant the more pressure it is under. They launch through the Marianas Trench and drill through the crust into the mantle. A fun film, it really captures the imagination of what it would be like to actually make that journey, far-fetched and impossible in real-life due to the sheer heat and pressure, but a fun film nevertheless.
You know, it's fascinating, we can journey into deep space, maybe even make it to Mars someday, we can visit the deepest depths of the ocean, the Challenger Deep in the Mariana trench, but we can't sniff Earth's core, just too much heat and pressure.
I was talking about photography earlier and how much it fascinates me, man would I love to see actual photos of the deep layers of planet Earth, especially the inner and outer core.
The deepest human-made hole is the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia. Started by the Soviet Union in 1970, it reached a vertical depth of 12,262 meters (approx. 7.5 miles / 40,230 feet). The project was halted in the 1990s due to the high underground temperatures. Engineers ran into extreme temperatures reaching 180°C (356°F). At this heat, the rock began to behave like malleable plastic rather than a solid, destroying drill bits and equipment. Under this small metal cap lies the world’s deepest borehole, now surrounded by ruins. It took 20 years, but Russia drilled down 40,230 feet into the earth, before heat forced work to stop. Despite reaching such a depth, Russia never got to the mantle. No one has ever reached the Earth's mantle, although scientists have never given up trying to get to it. Nearby residents of the Kola Superdeep Borehole have said they can hear souls screaming in hell coming from it.
Here are some other deep holes humans have dug in the past. The Bingham Canyon Mine, Utah. Over 100 years old, the world's largest copper mine includes a 2.5-mile-wide pit in the Oquirrh Mountains southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah. Considered the largest man-made excavation, the mine dips nearly three-quarters of a mile down and covers 1,900 acres. First started in 1906, the mine is still open, but that hasn't kept it from being named a National Historic Landmark with a visitor center for folks who want to come and gawk.
The Kimberley Diamond Mine, Africa. Located in Africa and known as one of the largest hand-made holes in the world, "The Big Hole" actually started as a bit of a hill. With more than 50,000 miners pick-axing their way into the soil starting in 1866, the Kimberley Diamond Mine sunk more than 700 feet and expanded to over 1,500 feet in width by 1914. More than 6,000 pounds of diamond were pulled from what is still, understandably, a tourist destination.
The Berkeley Pit, Montana. Opened in 1955 as a way to mine for copper in Butte, Montana, the Berkeley Pit grew to a depth of 1,700 feet before it was closed down in 1982. Since that time the pit has filled with over 900 feet worth of groundwater and rainwater. Combined with the heavy metals and chemicals of the prior mining operation, the water has turned highly acidic and measures are taken to keep birds out of the water ever since a 342-bird flock of snow geese died inside the mile-long, half-mile-wide pit in the 1990s.
Mirny Mine, Russia. There are claims that the winds around Siberia's Mirny Mine sucks unsuspecting helicopters into its 1,700-feet-deep pit swirl, but even with those rumors aside, the diamond mine that began in 1955 remains fully off limits. Deep enough to hold a 150 story skyscraper inside, Stalin's diamond mine stretches 3,900 feet across and is one of the largest excavated pits in the world. And even though work in the open-pit mine has ceased, Russia still mines underground in the site.
IceCube Neutrino Observatory, Antarctica. Thanks to the University of Wisconsin, the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica has 86 cables that reach beneath the ice, supporting 60 digital optical modules that relay data from the depths to the surface above. And that surface is a long ways away. The modules hang at depths starting at 4,750 feet all the way down to over 8,000 feet, or 1.5 miles. It took seven years to drill holes for the cables, done in the Southern Hemisphere's summer and with a 25,000-pound hot water hose that melted roughly 200,000 gallons of water per hole.
Humans first began digging toward the Earth's mantle in the 1960s, when American scientists conceived of the project known as "Project Mohole," named after Andrija Mohorovicic, who discovered the boundary between the earth's crust and mantle. Project Mohole was an ambitious 1960s scientific expedition funded by the National Science Foundation to drill through the Earth's crust and sample the mantle, the layer beneath the crust. Initiated by US scientists, the project sought to achieve for "inner space" what the space race was for outer space. Though it failed to reach the mantle and was canceled, it successfully pioneered deep-sea drilling techniques. Like the race to the moon, it was a showdown between the US and Russia to see who could get to the mantle. Because, as University of Southampton's Damon Teagle told CNN in 2012, even though the mantle makes up nearly 70% of the Earth, scientists only have a "reasonable" understanding of what it's made from, and how it works. The U. S. project aimed to drill through the Earth's oceanic crust near Guadalupe, Mexico, to reach the Mohorovičić discontinuity (the boundary between the crust and the mantle). The ocean was chosen because the crust is much thinner there than on land. After successfully proving deep-sea drilling techniques, the project was canceled by U.S. Congress in 1966 due to soaring costs and management issues. The Soviet Counterpart, Kola Superdeep Borehole, spurred by Cold War competition and the American project, began their own deep drilling initiative in 1970. Rather than drilling in the ocean, they chose a site on the Kola Peninsula in the Arctic Circle. Although the U.S. was the first to conceive of drilling to the mantle and executed the initial phase, the Soviets ultimately "won" the race to dig the deepest hole. The Soviet project became the deepest man-made hole on Earth. It reached a record depth of 12,262 meters (nearly 7.6 miles) before extremely high, unexpected temperatures halted further drilling. This is a photo of geologist Dr. Harry Hammond Hess pointing to a diagram on a blackboard for the Mohole project.
It's absolutely fascinating, the layers of our planet, the core, such an enigma.
I'll tell you what's even more insane to think about, the core of our sun is 15 million degrees Celsius (27 million degrees Fahrenheit). I can't even begin to fathom, to wrap my head around that kind of heat.
In 2020, telescopes captured high resolution images of the surface of the sun, the closest we've ever seen the sun, and the images are downright frightening. It looks a lot like peanut brittle, but what you're looking at is the photosphere, or the surface of the sun up close, very close, which has an average temperature of 10,000°F (5,500°C). The dark feature is a sunspot, a temporary region on the Sun's surface characterized by intense magnetic activity and a lower temperature than the surrounding area.
Look at this, the surface of the sun doing it's thing, temperatures hot enough to instantly vaporize or melt a space shuttle.
Ok, I didn't mean to get caught up in the Earth's core and sun, but my mind just wanders, so many fascinating things in life. Ok, back to boxing. Peter Jackson, aka "The Black Prince", was born on the island of St. Croix, in the Danish West Indies, in 1861. He was a natural athlete who developed a marvelous physique by competing in various sports. Jackson began his boxing career in 1882 in Australia and soon perfected his ring craft. He combined a smooth style with lightning fast combination, and an ability to hit hard with either hand. Jackson fought often and was soon matched against the top heavyweights of his day, men like Joe McAuliffe, Patsy Cardiff, Jem Smith, Frank Slavin and Jim Corbett. He defeated them all, with the exception of Corbett, with whom he drew after sixty-one rounds. The greatest opponent Jackson faced, however, was social prejudice. Society mandated that John L. Sullivan, who was the reigning Champion at the time, not give Jackson or any other black fighter a shot at the Heavyweight crown. Denied his shot at the title, Jackson never got the opportunity he so richly deserved, but is still remembered as the great fighter he was. This is my favorite card of his, the artwork is just beautiful, the background scenery, it's honestly one of the most beautiful cards I've ever seen. The 1910 Champion Athlete and Prize Fighters T220 Peter Jackson.
1910 T220 Champions Silver border Peter Jackson.
1889 Hess Athletes and Celebrities Peter Jackson.
1890 Mayo's Cut Plug Peter Jackson.
1911 W.D. & H.O. Wills Peter Jackson with Scissors back. Love this set, especially the Red Scissors backs.
2011 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions Peter Jackson.