RIP Maria Augustina Norberta (Ria) van Dijk, who died yesterday.
AKA "air rifle Ria" because of her habit of shooting at the photo rifle booth at fairs since 1936.
It was quite something back then but it's also just great to see our world change through these pictures.
🧵
Girls shooting rifles and being good at it was quite a thing in her part of the world back then, in her own way she was breaking barriers.
Not just by shooting but also by going her own way and running a drugstore in stead of just working in one.
1938
As Ria shoots, year after year, and wins, year after year, every bullseye gets her a photo to take home, showing not just her achievement but also her friends and random members of the public behind her.
1953
We always see Ria with the rifle but behind her the people change, the fashion, architecture, design, even, perhaps, in a way, how people react and stand.
1954
The crowds become bigger, she becomes more famous, people start to know who she is and want to be there when she hits another bullseye.
And we see their clothes, hairstyles and for a flash second see the past as it was.
1958
But it wasn't till 2006 that the rest of the country and even far beyond the borders of the Netherlands, learned of Ria when there was an exhibit of the air rifle booth pictures she had collected through the years.
1962
A book was published, the internet loved the photos, there were exhibits abroad and she, in her own modest modest way, became famous, not just in her home town.
1973
But as the world changes behind Ria in these photos, she changes as well.
Not just her look but her age, she too gets older.
1989
Shooting became a bit more difficult but she didn't stop and kept hitting that bullseye, she kept winning those photos to take home.
2016
When she was 100 years old it became a bit too much to go to the fair, so the fair came to her.
A shooting booth was set up outside the retirement home she was living in.
Of course she hit the bullseye.
Thanks for all those pictures Ria.
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A few days ago I complained about a Guardian article using a bad photo from a film in an article about Joan Clarke, a Bletchley Park code breaker, but... something much worse might have happened...
I don't think this photo they used is of Joan...
@TeaKayB pointed this out to me and I was stunned, surely not, that would be extraordinary sloppy.
So I looked into it, of course.
For starters the image they used is flipped, here's the full picture as it should look:
Time to look at another photo album in my collection, a tiny one this time with one picture on each page, showing us the adventures of some Dutch girl scouts in the early 1930s.
This Friday the game 'Manor Lord' is coming out, it's a medieval city builder that I've made a modest contribution to as a historical consultant and beta tester for.
I've been very excited about it for a long time and I'm not the only one, it's creating quite a buzz and has ended up on a lot of wishlists.
What I love about it most is that it tries to depict the middle ages in an accurate way, behind the scenes historians, experts & history addicts have been debating the tiniest details.
I think the result is one of the most historically accurate medieval games I've ever played.
#Manorlords
So let's have a sneak peek at it shall we?
First, here's an official video:
Before you start you set up your profile and design your own family crest, look familiar?
This bit alone is SUCH fun, you can fiddle and play with this editor for ages till you get exactly what you want and then you'll see it on the banners in the game!
SUCH FUN!
Sigh.
An account with half a million followers just tweeted that long debunked 'life in the 1500s' nonsense, 2.2 million people have seen it.
So here we go again...