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It looks Greek to me. Photo by Jessica Lewis on Unsplash
Phone on the range. This story blew my mind. Back in the day, ranchers in Texas and elsewhere used barbed wire fences as makeshift telephone lines! Yes, the same fences that ringed in their herds could be used to ring up cowboys across the range.
Atrocious but efficient: How ranchers used barbed wire to make phone calls
In 1897, The Electrical Review, reported that “on a ranch in California, telephone communication had been established between the various camps . . . by means of barbed wire fences.” The article says the novel use of the phone was a great success and was being used in Texas as well. That same year, the New England Journal of Agriculture was impressed that two Kansas farmers, living a mile apart, had attached fine telephone instruments to the barbed wire fence that connects their places and established easy communication. From the Butte Intermountain in 1902 we see this notice: “Fort Benton’s latest development is a barbed wire telephone communication.”
The voice quality, as you might imagine, was “atrocious”. But attaching phones to the barbed wire fences did allow for rapid communications to far flung camps across these huge ranches. I wonder if anyone could resist saying, “Get to the point!” on every call.
Cowboys used old broken whiskey bottles — which I’m sure were abundant — as insulators to improve conductivity in the line and get a better signal. So ingenious!
Though of course a barbed wire phone system does raise the problem of cows making prank calls.
The article also notes that the “fence phone” system on the 3 million acre XIT ranch is the predecessor of what is today XIT Communications, providing phone and internet service to that same region of the Texas Panhandle. Very cool!
“Is your refrigerator running? Well, you better go and catch it!” Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Wait, horned helmets were really a thing? I long ago learned that the stereotypical depiction of Vikings wearing horned helmets is inaccurate. Horned helmets look cool, and pretty much define the image of what a “Viking” looks like in most people’s mind, in much the same way that we know pirates wear a tricorn hat and an eyepatch and are likely to have a hook hand, a peg leg, or both. But it just ain’t so, historians tell us.
Something I never thought to dig into is just why we associate horned helmets with Vikings. I never thought about that — did you? Well, I just stumbled onto the answer to a question I never asked:
Horned 'Viking' helmets were actually from a different civilization, archaeologists say
Two spectacular bronze helmets decorated with bull-like, curved horns may have inspired the idea that more than 1,500 years later, Vikings wore bulls' horns on their helmets, although there is no evidence they ever did.
Rather, the two helmets were likely emblems of the growing power of leaders in Bronze Age Scandinavia.
In 1942, a worker cutting peat for fuel discovered the helmets — which sport "eyes" and "beaks" — in a bog near the town of Viksø (also spelled Veksø) in eastern Denmark, a few miles northwest of Copenhagen. The helmets' design suggested to some archaeologists that the artifacts originated in the Nordic Bronze Age (roughly from 1750 B.C. to 500 B.C.), but until now no firm date had been determined. The researchers of the new study used radiocarbon methods to date a plug of birch tar on one of the horns.
It turns out these helmets date back to the Nordic Bronze Age, around 900 B.C. They were not worn in battle, but are believed to have served a ceremonial function as symbols of authority, and perhaps representing the sun. It all sounds quite reasonable.
But horned Viking helmets are much more fun.
Olive this news. I’m usually posting articles about the miraculous health benefits of drinking coffee. Mainly because I drink a lot of coffee. But another thing I consume in large quantities is olive oil. I don’t drink it straight from the bottle but I cook pretty much everything with it. And good thing I do!
Higher olive oil intake associated with lower risk of cardiovascular disease mortality
Consuming more than 7 grams (>1/2 tablespoon) of olive oil per day is associated with lower risk of cardiovascular disease mortality, cancer mortality, neurodegenerative disease mortality and respiratory disease mortality, according to a study publishing today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The study found that replacing about 10 grams/day of margarine, butter, mayonnaise and dairy fat with the equivalent amount of olive oil is associated with lower risk of mortality as well.
"Our findings support current dietary recommendations to increase the intake of olive oil and other unsaturated vegetable oils," said Marta Guasch-Ferré, Ph.D., a senior research scientist at the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the study's lead author. "Clinicians should be counseling patients to replace certain fats, such as margarine and butter, with olive oil to improve their health. Our study helps make more specific recommendations that will be easier for patients to understand and hopefully implement into their diets."
So, hey, improve your heart health by coating everything you eat with olive oil. But don’t put it in your coffee.
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