Corporal Jackie Was A Baboon In The South African Army During World War I. He Was The Official Mascot Of The 3rd Transvaal Regimen When His Owner, Albert Marr Was Drafted Into War, And Would Not Leave Jackie At Home. He Asked His Superiors If Jackie, Too, Could Join The Army And They Said Yes
So Jackie was given an official style uniform with a cap, a ration set, and his own pay book. Jackie would salute to superior officers and light soldiers' cigarettes. He would even stand at ease in the style of a trained soldier.
Due to his heightened senses, Jackie was useful to sentries on duty at night. The baboon would be the first to know when an attack was coming or enemy soldiers were moving around nearby.
Jackie and Marr survived a battle where the casualty rate was 80%, in Delville Wood, early in the Somme Campaign.
When Marr was serving in Egypt he was shot in the shoulder at the Battle of Agagia, 26 February 1916, while Jackie was with him, licking the wound as they awaited help.
Jackie was given his own rations while with the army, and ate them with his own knife and fork, as well as his own washing basin.
When the regiment was drilled and marched, Jackie would be with them.
Jackie spent time in the trenches in France where he tried to build a wall around himself during extreme enemy fire, but a piece of shrapnel from an explosion flew over the wall hitting Jackie in the leg and arm.
When stretcher bearers tried to take Jackie away he refused, desperate to finish his wall and hide. Doctors treated Jackie's wounds, but they decided his leg had to be amputated and were surprised that he even survived.
Jackie was awarded a Medal of Valor for the event of his injuries, and promoted from private to corporal. After the war was over, Jackie was discharged with papers and went back to South Africa. He tragically died in a house fire in 1921.
On AI Apocalypse!!
When Elon Musk was asked what the most imminent threats to humanity were, he quickly said there were three: first, wide-scale nuclear war; second, climate change—and then, before naming the third, he fell silent. His face became sullen. He looked down, deep in thought. When the interviewer asked him, “What is the third?” He smiled and said, “I just hope the computers decide to be nice to us.”
Occultus the bearded robot, a clockwork orange man that can talk and sing, 1909.
Very little is known other than a weird photo and article on a robot named Occultus or Barbarossa, exhibited in Berlin in 1909 by Herr Adolph Whitman, a famous German inventor.
After many years, Whitman succeeded in making a mechanical man that can walk, and make other human movements such as speak, sing, whistle and laugh. This mechanical masterpiece was so human that at a distance of a yard it cannot be told from a living being. The figure is a mass of intricate cogs and machinery.
In the chest, a number of phonographs are arranged, but how the machinery is controlled is a secret of the inventor. It has been said that wireless electric waves are at the bottom of the mechanical miracle. Each part of the figure is controlled by a little electric motor.
There is currently a Turkish story going around that Occultus is an early Ottoman empire robot built as a gift for the Japanese, under the name of Alamet. An early Turkish paper shows this robot with Gernsback’s Robot Soldier. A misassociation has been made somewhere.
Contours 2016 is sculpture made by 70.000 particles that come together in fluid movement.
It is installed in Lyrical Offices New York by artist Reuben Margolin.
BURJ AL BABAS: THE GHOST TOWN OF ABANDONED FAIRYTALE CASTLES
Once marketed as a high-end neighborhood of luxury châteaux, Turkey's Burj Al Babas has stood abandoned for 12 years. The resort, which promised European-inspired châteaux and lavish amenities, now sits eerily empty amidst a sea of construction debris. These Disney-inspired fairytale mansions, once a dream development, have become a haunting reminder of unfulfilled promises. Imagine a rolling landscape of towering, pristine castles almost as far as your eyes can see. It sounds breathtaking — and it is — just probably not in the way you'd think. These Disney-esque villas are in a Turkish housing development called Burj al Babas, and it's completely abandoned.