Roman Glass Bowl, 0-100 A.D., 12 cm diameter, Inventory number: H2901, Thorvaldsen Museum.

This glass bowl is in bluish green glass with a pattern in yellow, lilac, white and pale green. This colourful glass bowl has acquired its delightful pattern by means of a special technique called mosaic glass or millefiori, a thousand flowers, as the finished result often emerges as a flower-pattern. Glass using this technique was made by slowly melting different-coloured glass rods, fusing them together, cutting them into discs, placing them in a mould and finally polishing them.

Vintage News says that the Fairbanks House in Dedham, Massachusetts is the oldest:

The west wing of the house was built around 1654, and the east wing was added in the 18th century. After its construction, a chimney was built at its top, and around 1800 expansion of the parlor was made on this side. At the same time, a new wing with two rooms was added to the west side, and behind this side, a toilet was made as the last addition to the house.

The early inhabitants of the house carved hex signs into the mantle in order to protect themselves from witches. Also, shoes have been found in the attic to chase away evil spirits. In 1895, one of the heirs, Rebecca Fairbanks, was in a difficult financial situation, so she sold the house to John Crowley who after the selling allowed her to live there.

Later, Rebecca sold many of the family items including a unique wooden chest which was made by John Houghton in 1658. This item was purchased back by the family in 2003.

When Crowley wanted to tear down the house in 1897, it was immediately purchased by Mrs. J. A. Codman and her daughter. In 1904, the newly established Fairbanks Family took the house over, and in 1905 it became a museum. In 1960, it was declared a National Historic Landmark and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Two buildings, the La Maison Puisseaux and La maison des Jésuites in Quebec City, date from 1637, but it unclear if they were wood-frame houses.

Retri
everman:

The recent birth of an elk calf is the first in West Virginia since elk were reintroduced in December 2016, according to the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources.

The agency confirmed the birth Thursday, saying it has captured footage of the calf passing by a camera set up to monitor a pregnant cow separated from the herd.

Out of the 24 elk brought to West Virginia in 2016, six were pregnant, though two died soon after arriving. Officials believe at least one other cow is currently pregnant.

“For our elk population to be sustainable, there has to be reproduction, and this calf is the first of many to be born here in West Virginia,” Division of Natural Resources Director Stephen McDaniel said in a statement. …

Legislation in 2015 authorized the elk restoration plan. The Tomblin Wildlife Management Area in Logan and McDowell counties set aside 9,000 acres for elk restoration.

HT: Karen L. Myers.

Elk were reintroduced in Pennsylvania, via a small herd imported from Wyoming, in 1913.

Mu (無), meaning ‘nothingness’ or ‘emptiness’ referring to the idea/essence of reality that exists beyond form.

Timelapse of fireworks over Los Angeles (OC)

CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski proudly explains how CNN tracked down the identity of the Reddit user who created the “Trump wrestling CNN” video that President Trump gleefully tweeted three days ago.

Using identifying information that “HanA**holeSolo” posted on Reddit, KFile was able to determine key biographical details, to find the man’s name using a Facebook search and ultimately corroborate details he had made available on Reddit.

On Monday, KFile attempted to contact the man by email and phone but he did not respond. On Tuesday, “HanA**holeSolo” posted his apology on the subreddit /The_Donald and deleted all of his other posts.
“First of all, I would like to apologize to the members of the reddit community for getting this site and this sub embroiled in a controversy that should never have happened,” he wrote. “I would also like to apologize for the posts made that were racist, bigoted, and anti-semitic. I am in no way this kind of person, I love and accept people of all walks of life and have done so for my entire life. I am not the person that the media portrays me to be in real life, I was trolling and posting things to get a reaction from the subs on reddit and never meant any of the hateful things I said in those posts. I would never support any kind of violence or actions against others simply for what they believe in, their religion, or the lifestyle they choose to have. Nor would I carry out any violence against anyone based upon that or support anyone who did.”

The user further apologized for calls for violence against the press in his statement on Reddit.

“The meme was created purely as satire, it was not meant to be a call to violence against CNN or any other news affiliation,” he wrote. “I had no idea anyone would take it and put sound to it and then have it put up on the President’s Twitter feed. It was a prank, nothing more. What the President’s feed showed was not the original post that was posted here, but loaded up somewhere else and sound added to it then sent out on Twitter. I thought it was the original post that was made and that is why I took credit for it. I have the highest respect for the journalist community and they put their lives on the line every day with the jobs that they do in reporting the news.” …

[Emphasis added]
CNN is not publishing “HanA**holeSolo’s” name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again. In addition, he said his statement could serve as an example to others not to do the same.

CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.

Well, Gentlemen, how do you like a news organization going out and hunting down the individual private citizen responsible for creating a joke at their expense, forcing him to delete his online comments and opinions, and extracting a promise from him never in future to express sentiments or opinions that CNN doesn’t like, under penalty of public targeting and exposure?

Presumably, if you create two videos mocking CNN in a row, matters will escalate to the point that they will despatch a hit squad to deal with you permanently.

Well, it may be that Mr. Kaczynski gloated publicly too soon. It may really be the case that CNN has really shot itself in the foot again. The Internet is actually exploding today with indignation over CNN’s identification and blackmail of that Reddit user. Free Speech, remember that?

CNN apparently did not like being mocked in one humorous video three days ago. Well, today there is now #CNNBLACKMAIL featuring a very large supply of brand new videos and other mockery at CNN’s expense.

—————————-

UPDATE: Apparently CNN is blackmailing the wrong guy.

HT: Roger de Hauteville.

BBC visits the first site of European settlement in North America.

In the year 1000, nearly 500 years before Christopher Columbus set sail, a Viking longboat, skippered by Leif Erikson, brought 90 men and women from Iceland to establish a new settlement – the first European settlement in the New World.

Erikson’s party arrived at low tide and found themselves stranded in the misty shallows of Epaves Bay. When the tide returned, they moved further inland, navigating up Black Duck Brook to the place where they would establish their stronghold in their new-found land.

By modern sensibilities, L’Anse Aux Meadows can seem a harsh place, with fierce coastal winds whipping across the remote landscape. But for people who just travelled across the unforgiving North Atlantic in open boats, it was perfect. The forests were rich in game; the rivers teemed with salmon larger than the Norse had ever seen; the grasslands provided a bounty of food for livestock; and, in some places, wild grapes grew, prompting the Vikings to name this land ‘Vinland’.

The settlement didn’t last long, however; the community abandoned the settlement after less than a decade after repeated clashes with the island’s native tribes, known to the Vikings as ‘Skraelings’.

For more than 100 years, archaeologists in Finland, Denmark and Norway used ancient Norse sagas to guide their search for Erikson’s lost settlement, scouring the coast of North America from Rhode Island to Labrador.

The site remained undiscovered until 1960 when a husband-and-wife team of Norwegian archaeologists, Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad, heard from locals of L’Anse Aux Meadows – the town for which the site was named – speak of what they believed to be an old Indian camp. The initial excavation of the site’s mysterious seaside mounds revealed a layout similar to longhouses found in confirmed Viking settlements in Iceland and Greenland. Then, the discovery of a 1,000-year-old nail indicated that ship building had taken place here.

“As kids we played on the curious mounds,” said Clayton Colbourne, a former Parks Canada guide at L’Anse Aux Meadows. “We didn’t know anything about the Vikings being here.”

From the entrance of the L’Anse Aux Meadows National Historic Site, a narrow path crosses a landscape that has changed very little since Erikson’s time. Mossy partridgeberry and bakeapple vines cover a boggy shelf along the rocky shoreline. Cow parsnip stands as tall as centuries-old dwarf trees, its clusters of tiny, white flowers blooming at shoulder level. The only noticeable sounds are the cry of seabirds, the rustling of grass in the wind, and the slapping of waves on the pebble-strewn shore. In the shallows, rows of jagged rocks jut out of the calm, clear water like teeth waiting to bite a boat’s bottom.

Lion Bowl
Northern Syria, 9th-8th century B.C.
Steatite, carved
Length: 7 1/4 in. (18.4 cm); Diameter: 3 7/8 in. (9.8 cm)
The Nasli M. Heeramaneck Collection of Ancient Near Eastern and Central Asian Art, gift of The Ahmanson Foundation (M.76.97.910)
Los Angeles County Museum of Art.