Category: History
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The Country Club Dispute
The Country Club Dispute came up from time-to-time in reader comments over the years. It’s one of those situations I’ve known about for awhile. Nonetheless, I placed in my pile of unused topics, and finally summoned enough motivation to write about today. It sounds like two snobby gentlemen with upturned noses and green blazers whacking…
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Starting from Zero
I used the Zero Milestone marker in Washington, DC as the center of my circle a few weeks ago in Odds and Ends 6. It occurred to me that maybe I’d not talked about this marker before. That seemed odd in itself. That’s because I include it on all of my DC tours for friends…
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The Other White House
It was Presidents Day in the United States yesterday, a fact likely known by much of the 12MC audience although perhaps not by many people outside the nation. So I posted an image and a brief message on my Findery page. [UPDATE: Unfortunately the site appears to be defunct now] I wasn’t feeling very wordy,…
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Checkerboarding
Checkerboarding has nothing to do with the game of checkers other than bearing a striking resemblance to its playing surface. Nor is it some awful new interrogation technique invented to pry information from suspects under duress. It is this. I discovered the anomaly on Google Maps in Oregon awhile ago while discussing Latitude Longitude Sequences…
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An Obscure Gettysburg
This is the story of John Kennedy. No, not that John Kennedy! I’m referring to John Wright Kennedy who I guarantee that you know nothing about, nor should you. It’s about how a formative event in his life resulting in the naming of a town twenty years later. He was a farmer who underwent a…
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Kansas Mountain Time
Loyal reader Mr. Burns pointed out that my intended Dust Bowl route will traverse a psuedo-geo-oddity. I’ll move from Central Time to Mountain time while heading due north. That happens in other places sporadically, although not as rarely as moving east from Mountain Time into Pacific Time for example. One can’t be too choosy in…
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Jalisco’s Ghostly Hand and Bony Fingers
My efforts to update each one of hundreds of customized maps to the current version of Google Maps has been an ongoing chore. Not every aspect has been without benefit though. For instance it allowed me to ponder my complete index of places featured on Twelve Mile Circle in more detail than I’ve done in…
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Life is Hard
Did anyone else notice the oddly-named park immediately to the east of Social Circle, Georgia when I posted The Chunk that Got Away in December? Well, I did. And I made a record of it intending to return later. Hard Labor Creek had to have a story. Places like that don’t get their names accidentally.…
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Fill the Dust Bowl
I posted an article last August about five marathons in five states in five days planned for March 2013. I didn’t intend to run, rather my goal was to convince my favorite runner to participate (in the half-marathon option). That would allow me to tag along to give moral support while pursuing various geo-oddity adventures.…
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History Vegas Style
Going out-of-town for the holidays to a small town where temperatures never cracked above freezing provided lots of contemplation time. It also offered abundant exercise opportunities for my right thumb via a television remote control. I’m an historian by training, so as one might expect I gravitate towards the History Channel and its ilk. Has…