How the peace symbol came to be

I am always on the lookout for interesting pieces of historical trivia and how the famous peace symbol came into existence certainly qualifies. It turns out that it was created in 1958 by Gerald Holtom by superimposing the international semaphore alphabet signals for ‘N’ and ‘D’ so that the symbol represents ‘Nuclear Disarmament’.

On Good Friday 1958, thousands gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square to protest nuclear weapons. They were responding to a string of test blasts conducted by the United Kingdom, the third nation to join the nuclear club after the US and USSR.

For the next four days, the bravest among them marched to Aldermaston, a small village 50 miles west of London where British nuclear weapons were designed and stockpiled.

On the protesters’ signs and banners, a new symbol was making its first appearance. Gerald Holtom, a designer and a pacifist, had developed it specifically for the march just a few weeks prior. He believed that a symbol would make the message stronger.

He was right: The symbol was adopted soon after by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and went on to become one of the most widely recognized designs in history.

“It’s a minor masterpiece with major evocative power,” said design guru and cultural critic, Stephen Bayley, in an email. “It speaks very clearly of an era and a sensibility.

“It is, simply, a fine period piece: the ordinary thing done extraordinarily well.”

The symbol has a strong similarity to the Mercedes Benz emblem (that has resulted in some satire about how people mistakenly used one for the other) and I wonder if the car company ever considered suing for copyright infringement. Of course, this was in 1958 not long after the Nazis had been defeated in World War II and a German company’s efforts to suppress a peace symbol may not have been viewed as the wisest public relations move.

Meanwhile in the chess world …

The championship match between Magnus Carlsen and challenger Fabiano Caruana has so for resulted in eleven straight draws, breaking the earlier record of eight straight draws before one person won. The 12th and last regular game will be played on Monday. If that game also ends in a draw, then the match will be decided on Wednesday in a series of increasingly rapid-fire games in the following order.
[Read more…]

Dine-and-dash dater gets his just desserts

Remember the story I wrote about back in August of the Los Angeles man who would use dating apps to arrange dinner dates with women at nice restaurants and after eating an expensive meal would leave the table on some excuse and vanish, leaving the women with huge bills? He had defrauded at least ten women over a period of two years.

Well a court has sentenced him to 120 days in jail, three years of probation, and banned him from using dating apps and websites.

At least for the next three months, he won’t have to pay for his meals.

That’s pretty impressive speed work

I knew that in Formula One car racing the pit crews can do things incredibly fast but I was not aware that they could remove all four tires and replace them with new ones in less than two seconds. Watch.

This made me curious about what holds the tires in place that enables such a quick turnaround. Magnetism? Or is there a single clasp that holds each tire in place?

(Via David Pescovitz.)

Impressive trick

This performance by Eric Chien was enough to win him the FISM Grand Prix at an event held in Hong Kong recently. I assume that this trick was done on a stage in front of judges without camera trickery and CGI. But I am not sure if this video is taken from that stage performance or was created independently in a studio. Anyway, it is fun to watch.

(Via Seamus Bellamy)

Taking advantage of the kindness of strangers

This story has received widespread coverage but I felt that I had to comment on it because these kinds of things infuriate me. Last year, I read the heartwarming story of a homeless man who gave his last $20 to a woman whose car had run out of gas. The woman and her boyfriend posted this story online and started a GoFundMe page to raise money for the homeless man and received over $400,000.
[Read more…]

Family murders in rural Ohio

Ohio has developed a reputation for producing grisly serial killers and psychopaths. Jeffrey Dahmer is perhaps the poster child for but there are so many competitors for that dubious honor. I don’t usually comment on such things but two years ago in April 2016, there was a particularly bizarre case. That was the systematic execution style murder of eight members of a family in four different homes. Seven of them had been shot in their beds. The case remained unsolved but just yesterday authorities finally announced arrests and the information that was released was startling.
[Read more…]