The Friday Link for 3/11/22

Here in Minnesota, we are almost out of winter.  One more morning of really cold temperatures and then we enjoy 40 and 50 degrees beginning next week.  I know a lot of people, especially people in the south, will hear that and be shocked we're excited about what sounds like cool temperatures, but most Minnesotans will be showing off their pasty white thighs in shorts if it breaks 55. 

It's been a long winter.

This week we say goodbye to the cold by remembering one of the worst snow storms of all time.  The Blizzard of 1888 was a monster, killing a lot of people along the Eastern Seaboard.  I'll let The History Guy give you the history of the storm.  He even does a very good job explaining how the storm affected city planning across the globe, but one of the things he doesn't really delve into is how the storm was also one of the first dominos in what was to become the labor movement in the United States.

This storm happened on a Sunday, but many people ended up dying because they were headed into work, or trying to get home from it. People worked 7 days a week and even in the face of a life threatening storm were headed into the office.  They ended up finding people in Philadelphia frozen to death in snowbanks, succumbed to the weather as they tried to get to work.  It's no surprise people started asking the question of "why people were trying to get into the office on a massive snowstorm," and "why was there such need for offices to be opened on a Sunday anyway."

This wasn't the one thing that borough change, but combine this with the Johnstown Flood disaster, the ruthlessness of company towns, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire and the rise of the union movement, brought into the US via immigrants, and the days of businesses mistreating their employees were numbered.

Speaking of old things, the other video this week is a restoration video.  This genre of videos is where they find something old and rusty and they go about painstakingly restoring it to its former glory. You see this a lot with cast iron pans, lighters and knives, but a corn sheller?

Sometimes technology of the past is so cool.  Enjoy this restoration video from Lost & Restored, but the incredible part is when they use it at the end.  That is an amazing machine! It makes me want to grow my own corn, dry it and then use the...well never mind.  That sounds exhausting, but I still can enjoy the ingenuity of the designers. 

Have a great weekend and if you still haven't gotten vaccinated, please do.  Thanks!