Teatanic

Tea-hee!
I know, I know, I'm a terrible person.  Let me assuage my guilt by continuing the marine theme and informing you about tea clippers.

Teak lippers, anyone?

     No!  Not an implement for removing the tips of leaves from tea bushes.  Tea clippers were ships of the sail era, built along sleek lines, carrying a whole lot of sails, and only able to carry a limited amount of cargo.  This made them perfect for the trade with China for tea, as they simply whizzed there and back, delivering the relatively low-bulk but high-value cargo of tea leaves to their thirsty customers in the Allotment of Eden.
     The best-known of the clippers is the 'Cutty Sark', which is still around in dry dock.  Art?

Greenwhich

     The clippers were put out of business by a combination of the steamship, which did not rely on the vagaries of wind, and the Suez Canal, which was easily navigable for steamships but not clippers.
     There you go.  BOOJUM - educating you one fact at a time.
     Right!  Time to send the motley over the tops, into the face of enemy fire*.

"Blitzed" By Norman Ohler
A very interesting book indeed.  Ol' Norm examines the use of legally-permitted drugs in the Third Reich, rather than illegal ones, and a sordid and unpleasant tale it is too, which makes it all the more readable.
     The Nazis were big on chucking pep pills at their soldiers, most especially one known as "Pervitin", which was a remarkably powerful stimulant; a methamphetamine compound you are perhaps more familiar with nowadays as 'crystal meth'.  Yes, really.  It was consumed in tablet form by the tens of millions, regardless of consequences - little things like psychosis, strokes, homicidal rages, items like that.  Later in the war, when things were not going too well for the Teutons, incredible combinations of various drugs were trialled in order to transform soldiers into indestructible supermen.  How did this turn out?  Not well!

How to scare cats the Hitler way

     Then there is Ol' Adolf, who was, to use a technical term, an utter junkie.  He had his own personal physician, who injected an unbelievable array of chemical compounds into the Fuhrer, to the point that the dictator's veins were collapsing and there were no remaining places to inject the Eukodal, or glucose, or Vitamultin, or camphor, or ground-up liver infested with flukes - yes, really.  Ol' Adolf was in such dire physical straits by war's-end that he'd have keeled over dead if he hadn't topped himself first.

The Great Panjandrum
I mentioned this briefly earlier today, and thought to revisit it by way of an explanation.  Tom, during our meal at Sweet Mandarin, also mentioned it, as one of those Roundly Rubbished Weapons that occasionally crop up when people have more research money than common sense.
     It was named by Lt. Neville Shute, whom you might know better as the author of such works as "On The Beach" and "A Town Called Alice".  His job was to design an apparatus capable of carrying a ton of explosive across a beach and into defensive structures, whereupon it would explode, removing said structures.
     Let's have a look at the thing.  Art?

British ingenuity at work

     Wiki describes it as a "cart", which is not quite accurate, except I don't think there's really a proper word for it.  The thing was propelled by rockets mounted on the wheels, which were always breaking off or misfiring, causing the whole thing to heel over and crash.
     It was, frankly, as dangerous to the user as the enemy.
     Nor was that all.  Supposedly Top Secret, it was tested on the beaches of Westward Ho! (the only town in the UK with an exclamation mark in it's name), which were open to the public.  So - everyone got to witness it in operation.

Westward Ho!  Ice creams, donkey rides, and deadly explosive devices

     The suggestion has been put around that this was all a spoof, and that the dangerous thing was never intended to be used, instead being a method of convincing the Teutons that the device was going to be used ahead of infantry landing in the Pas De Calais.
     Well, that could be true: it was invented by Perfidious Albion, after all.

Damn You, BBC, Damn You All To Heck!
I know that's not the proper quote, but we cherish our SFW status here.  Anyway, this is nothing to do with Planet of the Apes, and everything to do with news.
     It is, I have found, a truism that when one is short of time and need to hurry urgently about the place, the Beeb inevitably has a scad of interesting stories.  This is a regular phenomenon of my workday mornings, where your humble scribe just has to glance at that article, and click on that i-player link, and follow that sidebar article - DOG BUNS I'LL MISS THE BUS!

Minuteman missile bus. You'd not want to miss this version.

     Yet, when there is ample time, as today on Sunday, what is present?
     An item about sauce at Macdonalds, ho hum, the Spanish are protesting - how do you tell the difference? - and some sporting stuff.
     Colour me unimpressed.


*  Don't worry, it's bullet-proof.