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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Watching 'The Brothers Grimm' to get a good screenshot of the carriage used in that film as it is sometimes shared with the claim that it is a genuine Victorian carriage in stead of one designed by specifically by Guy Hendrix Dyas for this film.
What a lovely film it is.
Just look at this gorgeous sweetness.
And of course it's all a fairytale sort of fantasy history so there's no real need to pay attention to historical accuracy.
Mind you, even though this isn't the middle ages, we have someone emptying a bucket from a window into a street.
Don't people realise how silly this is?
No matter what era, even in the rain, anyone, ever, would get angry if they walked underneath that.
This is Josef Menšík, the last owner and knight of Strakonicku castle in Dobrš who tried to stop a convoy of German tanks while wearing a suit of armour and seated on a horse when they tried to cross into Czechoslovakia in 1938.
Thread.
Menšík didn't like the modern world very much.
In 1911 he bought the neglected Dobrš castle in Strakonicku and renovated it.
He collected lots of old things and started living according to the values he attributed to Medieval knights.
He even had a suit of armour made in France.
Local school classes were invited to visit the castle and see his huge collection and learn about history.
Josef became a bit of a local celebrity.
Although I'm not that into fashion as a subject, the topic of this documentary sounded too good to ignore: The dramatic change of fashion in Europe during the middle ages.
I'm not too excited about the beginning, Visigoths being depicted as replacing elegance with poverty and barbarism.
They don't say 'dark ages', but you can hear they wanted to.
Game review!
Recently I was given a copy of the game 'War Mongrels' to check out, thanks developers!
The game is a strategy WW2 game that takes place on the Eastern Front but you get to play deserters, resistance members, secret agents, etc.
If you're old, like me, it will remind you of the classic 'Commandos' which I loved and more recently 'Partisans'.
You get this top view of cities, prisons, etc. and you then have to use the different abilities of the agents you get to control to solve problems.
Spoilers ahead;
The thing that makes this game different from Commandos and most other WW2 games is the subject.
You start with two German deserters at the east front and you get to witness the most gruesome parts of the war that many games shy away from.
The Germans organised many dog inspections, dogs big enough for "war work" were confiscated.
People were told they would be guard dogs but many were probably just send into mine fields.
So the dogs had to be big and heavy.
Some of these photos were taken secretly.
Thanks to the dog tax Germans knew exactly who owned a dog.
To save their canine friends (good) people tried all sorts of tricks to fool the Germans, like (temporarily) swapping their dog for a smaller one or sending it to the countryside and say it ran off or died.