The 1952 gothic horror film The Black Castle features Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney, Jr. The story is not all that supernatural, but is full of evil people in a murderous plot set against the background of the horrors of colonial Africa. It earned great reviews for a B-movie, and in some ways is more chilling than atomic monsters and aliens. (Thanks, WTM!)
Somewhere, probably packed away with my college work, is a picture of me atop the original 1 World Trade Center in 1979. It was once the tallest building in the world, for about a year until the Sears Tower was completed. I returned to that site in 2006, when there was still plenty of rubble, five years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. St. Paul's Chapel across the street was still displaying the tributes and memorials sent in from all over the world. Returning in 2008, most of the rubble was gone, and the site was a very large hole.
But since then, the World Trade Center is being reborn. The original seven buildings have been replaced by four skyscrapers (to eventually become six) plus a memorial fountain, a museum, a church, a performing arts center, and a transportation terminal. The new One World Trade Center skyscraper opened in 2013, but construction on the rest of the complex is ongoing. In this time lapse video, you'll see the progress through 2026.
I've been posting videos of comedian Zach Anner since he first went viral in 2010. Today I found out that Anner got married this past June, to Karlee Currin. The wedding pictures are here, here, and here. In this video, they relate the story of their first date, in which Anner says the worst thing anyone can say on a first date. Lucky for both of them, it didn't spoil their future together.
Of the four airliners hijacked on 9/11, United Airlines Flight 93 was the one that was delayed, so that the passengers became aware of what was going on that day. They knew the plane was doomed to crash into another target. The passengers stormed the cockpit and caused the plane to crash in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, instead of the target, which some involved claimed to have been the US Capitol Building. All 44 passengers and crew, plus the hijackers, died that day. But the Air National Guard was on the way to do the same thing. Heather “Lucky” Penney piloted one of those aircraft that day. Since her jet was unarmed, she would have to crash into the airliner. Penney was ready to die, but didn't, and has spent the last 25 years working to make sure that an event like that never happens again.
Here's a 9/11 story you may not be familiar with, or might have forgotten. Tens of thousands of people were pouring out of the World Trade Center and nearby buildings, and they were stuck in Manhattan. Businesses shut down. The bridges and subways were closed. That's when the boat operators on all sides of the city converged to get people away from the site. They took half a million people away from the disaster site in about nine hours. (via Nag on the Lake)
As we observe the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it's natural to take a look at what has changed on the years since. Those horrific moments when we all watched the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapse live on TV were particularly scarring. You have to wonder how safe such tall buildings really are, as those towers were a model of safe architecture in their day. It might be reassuring to know that we've come a long way in both design and materials since the World Trade Center was designed in the 1960s, and especially in the past 25 years since they fell. (via Digg)
