Interesting Photographs Thread

Probably some grassland fire in these horrific temperatures.

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One of the deadliest snipers in history. Lyudmila Pavlichenko.

 

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Yuri Gagarin at Star City with the present made to him by the French government after his visit in 1965 a Matra Djet. Matra were involved and still are with the aerospace industry as part of Aerospatiale-Matra. Yuri had by this time become rather bored as an ambassador and a desk job. He loved to fly and was intending to get back into Korolev's attempt to get the Russians to the Moon. A very humble man the pressure of numerous trips abroad and women throwing themselves at him left his marriage strained as well. On his trip to the UK he later remarked he felt most comfortable when meeting the huge crowds of the public, a meeting at a Steelworkers Union laid on for him (he was a steelplant worker for a time in the Soviet Union) rather than the showpieces set up for him. The establishment were surprised by the warmth the British public acclaimed this Soviet hero and hastily laid on a banquet with Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.

Gagarin never drove the car much. He said it embarrassed him to be rewarded thus and it passed into the museum at Star City before being sold to a private collector a few years ago. Sadly Gagarin was killed gaining flying hours to return to active service for the cosmonaut programme along with his close friend and trainer Nikolai Seryugin. In the recent past it is likely caused by a near collision with another jet and wake turbulence resulting in a flat spin in the two seat trainer they were flying at the time. With the death of the genius Korolev a year later his deputy Mishin took over but could not get the N1 rocket the equivalent to the Saturn V to work with one especially disastrous launchat Baikonur that killed many personnel. Unlike the R7 Semyorka of Korolev which remains an established launcher in newer variants.

 

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Alexander Alekhine and Jose Capablanca (right) two world chess champions. Former friends who became enemies. Capablanca whose book Fundamentals of Chess is regarded as a classic was more interested in baseball and played it at Columbia University before working for the Cuban Foreign Ministry and playing chess professionally beating the leading players of the day like Frank Marshall, Aron Nimzowitsch and Siegbert Tarrasch who contributed greatly to opening theory something he himself neglected. A master of the endgame he died of a brain haemorrhage. At one simultaneous display in Chicago he defeated 102 of 103 players.

Alekhine specialized in the opening and created the Alekhine defence which encourages white to create a pawn centre that Black seeks to undermine. Born into wealth in Moscow he left during the Revolution having escaped death in Odessa at the hands of the Cheka. Twice world champion he lost his title in between to Dr.Max Euwe perhaps as a result of overconfidence. His death remains a mystery. It is quite possible as an outspoken opponent of Soviet Russia he was dispatched by a death squad in Portugal.

 

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Not strictly a photograph but a diagram from the Royal Aircraft Establishment. It collates data from 1939-41 on planes that were hit by flak in combat and returned to base having been shot up. The red spots are shell strikes clustered in a groups of a value of hundred. This is allow about sampling bias. What it indicates is that the empty areas are weak points. Hits on these blank areas resulted in planes being lost. For example loss of the tail assemble, wing splitting and engines being damaged or destroyed. Up until the analysis ground crew having seen the damage were more concerned with adding protection when they could to the hit areas rather than for example the aft fuselage.

 

The use of probability theory and statistical analysis as applied to decision making is pretty old. Around two hundred odd years including Charles Babbage's work on mail transport and it's cost resulting in the Penny Post. That more people would use the service if it was held at a lower uniform cost for packages up to a certain weight and eliminating corruption and abuse and bringing about the use of the Penny Black. Patrick Blackett along with other mathamaticians were used by the MoD during WW2 to improve efficiency, kill rates, unit organization, risk assessment. survivability of armaments and members of the armed forces based on data received in the field. The analysis by the RAE being one such thing one other notable one being how to target flak efficiently instead of using blanket barrage by improving the efficiency of the predictor mechanisms on AA guns.

https://www.informs.org/Explore/His...e/Biographical-Profiles/Blackett-Patrick-M.-S
Blackett's War: The Men Who Defeated the Nazi U-Boats and Brought Science to the Art of Warfare

Field research or operational research as Bwood mentions is still integral to all sorts of matters relating to decision making and strategic planning.

 

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Mikhail Bulgakov. Born in Little Russia like his predecessor Nikolai Gogol and also a keen satirist poking fun at authority and authority figures. Mikhail Zoschenko is also well worth reading with his absurd characters lampooning human foibles.

He had many of his works banned some of them being quite open critiques of the Stalin regime but others of his earned the evil dictators favour and protected him from the NKVD. Died rather young and never knew the subsequent fame he earned. Best know for one of the twentieth centurys greatest novels which have been dramatized several times on Russian television but for some thirty years was only available in a samizdat version.

This is the novel The Master & Margarita. In it a host of demonic figures descend and turn Moscow upside from a giant talking cat to the Devil himself granting everyones wishes but no one is believed because religion has been banned. Bulgakov uses them to satirize the Communist system and the writers union and books contrary to Heine once said will not burn. Bulgakov casts himself as the writer having under fear of imprisonment burnt his original manuscript of the novel. The other tract of the novel is of Christian philosophy focusing on the trial of Jesus.

There is a complex interplay in imagery be it slapstick farce or serious discussion of the importance of adhering to the truth, light and dark. It spawned a genre in which books are set in reality but have a magical element used for all sorts of purposes.

 

Soviet soldier after four years on the Eastern Front.

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Elisa Lam Taken by CCTV in a hotel in Feburary 2013. One of the final images of her who was tragically found a few days later. One of the few unsolved cases that remains a mystery to this day. It's a case that has always fascinated me, and I do hope one day her family can finally discover what happened to her. There are many theories, some plausable and some wild, but all could be true to an extent. RIP x​

 

Ah but that's the mystery. Water tank was closed and locked. Lid of it weighed at ton and there is no possible way that she unlocked the lid, climbed inside and locked it from the inside without any means of doing so. It's "possible" the lid self-locked when it was closed but as far as investigators know the bolt or whatever it was that holds it shut was never designed to do that. It's quite the debate, but I do agree on the fact she had a psychological disorder - this much was proven as fact, it explains her behaviour in the elevator.