Lisa Crumley

Part-time Hoarder. Napping a specialty. Literally and figuratively several books short of a library.

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

In 1963, New York City committed what one critic called an act of vandalism against its own soul. It tore down the most beautiful building it had ever built, and it has regretted it every day since.

The building was Pennsylvania Station, and for half a century it was one of the great rooms of the world...

It opened in 1910, designed by the architects McKim, Mead & White, and it covered eight acres in the heart of Manhattan. Its main waiting room was modeled on the Baths of Caracalla in ancient Rome, with ceilings that rose 150 feet into the air.

Sunlight poured down through vast steel-and-glass canopies onto the concourse below. To step off a train and walk up into that light was, for millions of arriving travelers, the moment New York announced itself.

A historian, Vincent Scully, famously wrote that, through it, one entered the city like a god. One scuttles in now like a rat...

Because in 1963, the railroad, losing money and sitting on immensely valuable land, sold the air rights above the station. The great building was condemned. Wave by wave, the pink granite columns were pulled down and dumped in a New Jersey swamp, and a low, windowless complex of Madison Square Garden and an office tower was built on top of the surviving tracks.

There was no law to stop it. At the time, nothing in New York protected a historic building from destruction, however beloved. Leading architects stood outside in protest as the demolition began. It made no difference...

But something came out of the loss. The destruction of Penn Station horrified the public so deeply that it gave birth to the modern preservation movement in America. New York passed its landmarks law in 1965, and that law would later save Grand Central Terminal from the very same fate.

In a way, Penn Station became more powerful in death than it had ever been in life.

It’s really true that we never truly know what we have until we lose it... the columns of Penn Station could not be saved. But every landmark that still stands in New York today stands partly because of what their loss awakened in the people who watched them fall.

Ada Louise Huxtable, the first architecture critic of The New York Times, wrote of the demolition in 1963: "The tragedy is that our own times not only could not produce such a building, but cannot even maintain it."

I started this newsletter because the people who came before us left us something extraordinary, and almost no one is teaching us how to see it anymore. Every week I try to. If that is something you would like to be part of, you can join here:

https://t.co/hgJUdR0Rb5

I write about beauty in all its forms. If you'd like to support the work, a paid subscription is what makes it possible.

[Ivlia @Jewel_Lia]

Pomegranates left for Katharine of Aragon ❤️

[Penguin Classics @PenguinClassics]

Happy 150th Anniversary to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, published on this day in 1876 🇺🇸

Get the book 👉 https://t.co/hyGNPl2IcR

[Paul Rees. ex Rucksack. @HannahIamthest1]

Quotes From British Military Annual Personnel Reports.

1. His men would follow him anywhere, but only out of curiosity.

2. I would not breed from this Officer.

3. This man is depriving a village somewhere of its idiot.

4. This officer can be likened to a small puppy - he runs around excitedly, leaving little messes for other people to clean up.

5. This Officer is really not so much of a has-been, more of a definitely won't-be.

6. When she opens her mouth, it seems only to change whichever foot was previously in there.

7. Couldn't organise 50% leave in a 2 man submarine.

8. He has carried out each and every one of his duties to his entire satisfaction.

9. He would be out of his depth in a car park puddle.

10. Technically sound, but socially impossible.

11. The occasional flashes of adequacy are marred by an attitude of apathy and indifference.

12. When he joined my ship, this Officer was something of a granny; since then he has aged considerably.

13. This Medical Officer has used my ship to carry his genitals from port to port, and my officers to carry him from bar to bar.

14. This Officer reminds me very much of a gyroscope, always spinning around at a frantic pace, but not really going anywhere.

15. Since my last report he has reached rock bottom, and has started to dig.

16. She sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them.

17. He has the wisdom of youth, and the energy of old age.

18. This Officer should go far, and the sooner he starts, the better.

19. In my opinion this pilot should not be authorised to fly below 250 feet.

20. The only ship I would recommend for this man is citizenship.

21. Couldn't organise a woodpecker's picnic in Sherwood Forest.

22. Works well when under constant supervision and cornered like a rat in a trap.

23. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

24. Gates are down, the lights are flashing, but the train isn't coming.

25. Has two brains; one is lost and the other is out looking for it.

26. If he were any more stupid, he'd have to be watered twice a week.

27. Got into the gene pool while the lifeguard wasn't watching.

28. If you stand close enough to him, you can hear the ocean.

29. It's hard to believe that he beat 1,000,000 other sperm.

30. A room temperature IQ.

31. Got a full 6-pack, but lacks the plastic thingy to hold it all together.

32. A gross ignoramus, 143 times worse than an ordinary ignoramus.

33. He has a photographic memory but has the lens cover glued on.

34. He has been working with glue too long.

35. When his IQ reaches 50, he should sell.

36. This man hasn't got enough grey matter to sole the flip-flop of a one legged budgie.

37. If two people are talking, and one looks bored, he's the other one.

38. One-celled organisms would out score him in an IQ test.

39. He donated his body to science before he was done using it.

40. Fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down.

41. He's so dense, light bends around him.

42. If brains were taxed, he'd get a rebate.

43. Some drink from the fountain of knowledge; he only gargled.

44. Takes him 1.1/2 hours to watch 60 minutes.

45. Wheel is turning, but the hamster is long gone.

😁😁

[J&L Historical @Jason_R_Burt]

82 years ago today, Bob Sales of the 29th Infantry Division landed in Normandy. When the ramp dropped, German machine gunners & a sniper cut down the 29 other men in Sales' landing craft before they could reach the beach.

He was the only one who survived. 🪖

[The Husky @Mr_Husky1]

A 24-year-old Polish tennis player arrived in Paris last week ranked 114th in the world, with no sponsors, no guaranteed income, and no certainty she could even pay for her hotel room.

She had to win three qualifying matches just to enter the French Open main draw. Prize money is only paid at the end of the tournament, so a Polish sports drink brand quietly stepped in and covered her hotel bill.

Her name is Maja Chwalinska. And today, she plays in the French Open final.

Before this tournament, she had won exactly one Grand Slam main draw match in her entire career. She had battled depression so severe that in 2021 she couldn't get out of bed. She underwent knee surgery in 2022. She spent years grinding through small tournaments across Europe just to stay afloat.

Then she arrived in Paris, won three qualifiers, and kept winning. Zheng Qinwen. Elise Mertens. Maria Sakkari. Diana Shnaider. Nine straight matches. One set dropped.

She is now the first qualifier in French Open history to reach the final. The last time a qualifier reached a Grand Slam final, it was Emma Raducanu at the 2021 US Open. Raducanu won.

By simply making the final, Chwalinska has earned more prize money than her entire career combined. The runner-up cheque alone is $1.6 million. If she wins today, she takes home $3.25 million.
One week ago she couldn't pay for her hotel room.

[Alastair Bruce @AlastairBruce_]

Lady Pamela Hicks died today

GtGtGrandDaughter of Queen Victoria.

She accompanied her parents, Lord and Lady Mountbatten, when they were the last Viceroy and Vicereine of India.

… and was with Elizabeth II in Kenya, when she became Queen.

She lived and served through an extraordinary life - another school friend of my late mother’s has been gathered.

[pourmecoffee @pourmecoffee]

I don't have anything to say about the senate race, but this is my favorite song about the perils of hauling Maine's potato harvest, an absolute banger by Dick Curless, which is also my porn name btw

https://t.co/qQE06vpwQC

[Joe Weil @RealJoeWeil]

Today should be Richard Best Day. Piloting a Dautless dive bomber, he sank two japanese carriers in battle of Midway.

He led his squadron in the attack despite an oxygen system malunction that burned his lungs and permanently disabled him. Hall of Fame American Hero. Unbeatable.

[Dr. M.F. Khan @Dr_TheHistories]

Taken by Thomas Nugent while on a flight from Bristol to Prague in 2010, this photo shows a Roman road running (bottom to top) across the land in Wiltshire, England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

This is the Fosse Way that linked Isca Dumnoniorum (Exeter) and Lindum Colonia (Lincoln). It was built in the 1st Century AD and stretches almost 230 miles. Today, its route is still used by roads and lanes.

In the lower right corner is Manor House Golf Club, and the M4 motorway runs left to right.

© International Man of History

#drthehistories

[C-Reason🇺🇸 @CreasonJana]

This is something the STUPID Hollywood Elitist A-Hole Idiots will never understand … because it takes brains!

[The Tower of London @TowerOfLondon]

A rare object joins the Tower of London's collection 📖

Curator Kate Clements show us a first edition of Walter Raleigh's The History of the World, written whilst he was imprisoned here at the Tower in the 1600s.

🎥 Here's a closer look at this significant book...

[Capel Lofft @CapelLofft]

Happy Oak Apple Day! May all the grisly and heretical Puritan interludes of your life end with the happy Restoration of days of cavalier merriment, risqué stage frolics, and High Church rectitude!

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

A bricklayer in East Yorkshire has spent 35 years putting up barn owl nest boxes on weekends. This year, the region saw 308 owlets hatch.

His name is Robert Salter. He's 56 and does bricklaying full time. In 1990, he saw a piece on the news about a man in Lincolnshire installing barn owl boxes, and decided he'd do the same. He started with five.

He now has more than 350 boxes scattered across fields, farms, outbuildings, and trees in East Yorkshire. Every June, he takes four weeks off from bricklaying and visits them with his wife Sue. Scrambling up ladders, ringing chicks, cleaning boxes, repairing the ones the weather got to. He's a licensed bird ringer for the British Trust for Ornithology.

In 2024, the region ringed 95 owlets. In 2025, the count was 308. The Barn Owl Trust says that nationally, this year was "pretty poor" for barn owl breeding, but east Yorkshire is the exception, and it's the exception because of one man with a ladder.

The barn owl population in the UK was estimated at 4,000 pairs in the mid-2000s and crashed to roughly 1,000 by the early 2010s. The species is still recovering.

Most of conservation is one person who refuses to give up.

[DocumentingLibs @HistorianUSA1]

This video is PEAK comedy gold. I felt this in my SOUL. 😂

“Can’t stand these fckn bicyclists” — my brother, you just narrated my morning commute.

He nails it: Grown-ass men in skin-tight neon spandex outfits looking like a pack of radioactive Power Rangers, riding three-wide like it’s the Peloton Championships on a residential road. No one’s handing out medals at the cul-de-sac, Kyle. You’re not transporting a heart for surgery. You’re just expensive, slow-moving road geese with $10k carbon fiber attitudes.

One? Fine. Eight? That’s a tactical formation. That’s how civilizations fall.

I’m honking, I’m crying, I’m in agreement. Save us from the Lycra Legion. He nails every reason I can’t stand the bicycle militia.

[MAGA X Times Daily News 🇺🇸 @MAGA_X_Times]

Gen X ladies just bodied the entire younger generation 😂
’We’ve officially hit that age where kids who can legally drink are now straight-up babies to us.
How DARE you not be out here making all the same terrible decisions we made in the early 2000s?!
We did NOT survive garden hoses, truck beds, flip phones, zero seatbelts, and pure unmedicated chaos just so y’all could be smarter, more responsible, and in therapy.
The absolute AUDACITY of these children 😭’
Gen X — who else is personally triggered and kinda proud?
Gen Z & Millennials — you actually winning at life or are we still the last OGs standing?
Drop your most unhinged early 2000s story below if you survived it. Tag your crew who definitely repeated our mistakes 👇

[J&L Historical @Jason_R_Burt]

I can’t think of a better way to end Memorial Day than Major Dick Winters holding the American flag. 🇺🇸

[Library of Congress @librarycongress]

There's a lot of talk about Founding Fathers lately, but what about Founding Mothers? One name for consideration: Mary Katharine Goddard, the Baltimore printer whose name appears on the second printing of the Declaration of Independence, commissioned in January 1777 by the Continental Congress. 🧵⬇️

[Dave @GamewithDave]

They removed CD/DVD drives from devices.
They made physical media harder to buy and use.
They removed expandable storage from phones.
They pushed us into streaming subscriptions.
They made always-online normal.
They made unlimited internet necessary.
Then slowly raised the price of everything.

Ownership quietly became renting.

[Paul Rees. ex Rucksack. @HannahIamthest1]

A heartwarming story to end this evening.

In 1948, a young British sailor named George Hickinbottom discovered a starving black-and-white kitten wandering the docks of Hong Kong and secretly brought him aboard the HMS Amethyst. The crew named the cat Simon, and he quickly became beloved throughout the ship. More than just a mascot, Simon proved useful by hunting rats that threatened the ship’s food supplies and equipment.

He charmed both sailors and officers alike, especially the captain, often sleeping in his cabin and bringing comfort and companionship to the crew during long days at sea.

Everything changed in April 1949 when the HMS Amethyst came under heavy attack while traveling along China’s Yangtze River during the Chinese Civil War. The ship was severely damaged, dozens of sailors were killed or wounded, and Simon himself was badly injured by shrapnel and burns. Despite his wounds, Simon survived and soon returned to roaming the ship, visiting injured sailors in the sick bay and continuing to hunt rats while the crew remained trapped for more than 100 days under constant fear and dwindling supplies. His determination and resilience became a powerful source of hope and morale for the exhausted crew.

When the HMS Amethyst finally escaped and returned home, Simon was celebrated across Britain as a national hero. He received the Dickin Medal, the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross, becoming the only cat ever awarded the honor, and was officially promoted to Able Seaman Simon. However, the injuries he suffered during the attack left him weakened, and he died only weeks later in quarantine before reuniting fully with the crew. The sailors mourned him deeply and buried him with full naval honors, remembering him not simply as a ship’s cat, but as a brave companion who shared their suffering and courage during one of the darkest moments of their lives.

Have you seen the film?