A 300 Years Old Scottish Beret

On the Isle of Lewis, in the early 1700s, a young man was mortally injured in mysterious circumstances. His body was buried just off the main road. Over 300 years later, his clothed remains with a few small possessions were recovered, preserved in the peat.

The man was found on 23 May 1964. Forensic analysis revealed that the person was a man, around 20 to 25 years old and 1.64m tall. A fracture to the back of his head led at the time to a suggestion that he had been murdered. 

His clothing and personal possessions were given into the care of National Museums Scotland. They are remarkably well-preserved, which gives us a rare insight into the type of dress being worn in the Outer Hebrides in the early 1700s. Through studying the fabrics, we can learn more about woven cloth and its making. 

The first item found was the beret, or bonnet which remains in good condition. It is a traditional Scottish knitted bonnet, round in shape, and made of a firm felted wool that is now brownish green in colour. Dye analysis shows the presence of indigo, which suggests the bonnet used to be dark blue. Around its rim is a row of red wool knots at two-stitch intervals, which created a pattern like that of the red-checked bands that became popular later on in the 1700s.

Greta Torpadie

Greta Torpadie (also known as Greta Torpadie Bratt or Greta Hervor Lisbeth Torpadie) was an American soprano (1890-1982).

She was immortalized by Hedvig Gustava Lagercrantz, generally known as Ava de Lagercrantz, a prominent Swedish portrait painter who was active in New York, Stockholm and Paris. A cousin of Sweden's envoy to Washington, Herman Lagercrantz, she prospered in New York from portrait commissions.

Jean - Shepherd

At 91 years old, Jean is still practicing his profession as a breeder. 

Every day he takes care of his 80 animals, on his own, and shares his philosophy of life.

Nadau

Nadau, or Los de Nadau, is a Gascon - Béarnais music group created in 1973 celebrating Gascon and more broadly Occitan culture.

Nadau's longevity and notoriety are unmatched in the Occitan musical landscape. Nadau goes far beyond the borders of its Béarnese and Gascon base, to become the very symbol of Occitan music and one of the emblematic groups of Occitania.

Nadau performs here a song in which poor Little Peter, as penniless as a rat, but a poet at heart, expresses all his love for Catherine, as beautiful as the morning, who chose him rather than the king's son.

Simon Kieffer - Cheesemaker

Alsatian cheesemaker Simon Kieffer, who keeps a tiny herd of Vosgiennes and makes cheeses very traditionally in La Salcée.

Chloé and Kevin Prost

It's an old-fashioned sawmill. A traditional workshop like no other, where automation isn't yet operational.

The sharpening machines are very dusty, the imposing bandsaw dates from the last century, and the logging tractor is far from new.

A vision of happiness for Chloé and Kevin Prost, who couldn't have dreamed of anything better. "We like old equipment," he says. "It's also about perpetuating a tradition," she adds, proud not to saw her logs "on a computer."

Elie Honig

Elie Honig (1975) is an American attorney and legal commentator. He is the senior legal analyst for CNN. Prior to CNN, Honig was an assistant US Attorney.

He is Jewish and two of his grandparents survived the Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust.

But, he is not the only Elie Honig. 

Pablo Dreams of Cats

Pablo dreams of painting cats. But his pack doesn’t approve and the cats just dash away from him. Will this painter ever be able to make the art he dreams of?

Dutch artist Timo Kuilder’s first children’s book introduces us to an imaginative dog who is infatuated with cats, celebrating diversity and inviting all animals to conquer their misconceptions, and embrace everyone.

Timo Kuilder is an Amsterdam-based illustrator and artist. His work has been published in Vogue, NY Times, and Google. He released an illustrative mobile game called Kontrast in 2019, blurring the lines between - game and illustration.

Josep Maria Domènech

Josep Maria Domènech was born on November 19, 1931 in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.

He was an actor, known for Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), Policías, en el corazón de la calle (2000) and Es muß nicht immer Kaviar sein (1977).

He died on November 23, 2017 in Mataró, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.

Omali Yeshitela

Omali Yeshitela (born Joseph Waller, October 9, 1941) is an American political activist and author. 

Yeshitela belongs to what historian Donna Murch calls "the Black Power Generation", black working-class activists who came of age between the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till and the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X. 

Yeshitela is less than two months younger than Till and was 13 years old when the 14-year-old Till was lynched in Drew, Mississippi on August 28, 1955. Yeshitela has noted that the lynching of Till impacted his worldview, and the worldview of Black People in the United States.

He is a co-founder and current chairman of the African People's Socialist Party (formed in 1972) which leads the Uhuru Movement. Yeshitela has advocated for reparations as a "People's Advocate" at the First International Tribunal on Reparations to Black People in the U.S., held in Brooklyn, New York, in 1982.

In (pre Donald Trump) September 2024 Yeshitela was convicted in U.S. federal court of conspiring to act as an agent of the Russian government. Yeshitela conspired with Alexander Ionov, a Russian agent taking directions from the FSB to spread pro-Russian propaganda in the United States. In December 2024, Yeshitela was sentenced to three years' probation and 300 hours of community service.

 

The Color of the Clouds

The Color of the Clouds (El color de las nubes) is a 1997 Spanish drama film directed by Mario Camus which stars Julia Gutiérrez Caba, Ana Duato, Antonio Valero, and José María Doménech.

The plot revolves around a house in a Cantabrian village owned by Doña Lola, from which a series of intertwined subplots spawn. Lola and her niece Clementina agree on hosting a Bosnian refugee child (sabotaged by impostor kid Bartolomé), an old fisherman and Lola's friend (Colo) finds a drug cache nearby, the former house owner's son tries to evict Lola, and Clementina develops a romance with a lawyer (Valerio).

Hoppípolla

"Hoppípolla" is a song by Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós from their 2005 album Takk.... It was released as the album's second single on 28 November 2005. The song title is a univerbation of hoppa í polla (the -a in hoppa is not pronounced), which is Icelandic for "hopping into puddles", and the lyrics are mainly in Icelandic, with some nonsensical phrases, a "language" the band calls Vonlenska ("Hopelandic").

A video for "Hoppípolla," directed by Arni & Kinski, was filmed in November 2005. It depicts two groups of elderly friends strolling around the suburbs of Reykjavík and acting like children; pulling pranks on people and battling with water balloons and wooden swords near a cemetery. When one old man is injured and suffers a nosebleed (as referenced in the lyrics), the opponents run away in fear, while the others celebrate their victory. The video shows several shots of the friends "hopping in puddles" of water along a path.

The band members are featured in the video: keyboardist Kjartan Sveinsson plays the victim of a Knock, Knock, Ginger trick, guitarist and vocalist Jón Þór Birgisson plays the cashier at a shop where an old man steals and eats some pears, drummer Orri Páll Dýrason can be seen repairing his bicycle, and bassist Georg Hólm can be seen cleaning.

Morton Feldman

Morton Feldman (1926 –1987) was an American composer. A major figure in 20th-century classical music, Feldman was a pioneer of indeterminacy in music, a development associated with the experimental New York School of composers also including John Cage, Christian Wolff, and Earle Brown.

His parents, Irving and Frances Breskin Feldman, were Russian Jews who had emigrated to New York from Pereiaslav, Ukraine.

Feldman's works are characterized by notational innovations that he developed to create his characteristic sound: rhythms that seem to be free and floating, pitch shadings that seem softly unfocused, a generally quiet and slowly evolving music, and recurring asymmetric patterns. His later works, after 1977, also explore extremes of duration.

Feldman married the Canadian composer Barbara Monk shortly before his death. He died of pancreatic cancer on September 3, 1987, at his home in Buffalo.

Hermann Scherchen

Hermann Scherchen (1891 –1966) was a German conductor, who was principal conductor of the city orchestra of Winterthur from 1922 to 1950.

He promoted contemporary music, beginning with Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, followed by works by Richard Strauss, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, Edgard Varèse, later Iannis Xenakis, Luigi Nono and Leon Schidlowsky. He usually conducted without using a baton.

Scherchen commonly avoided the use of a baton. His technique when in this mode sometimes caused problems for players; an unidentified BBC Symphony Orchestra bassoonist told the singer Ian Wallace that interpreting Scherchen's minuscule hand movements was like trying to milk a flying gnat. According to Fritz Spiegl, Scherchen worked largely through verbal instructions to his players and his scores were peppered with reminders of what he needed to say at each critical point in the music.

He died in Florence, survived by a number of children from five wives and other women.

Kouhyar Goudarzi

Kouhyar Goudarzi is an Iranian human rights activist, journalist and blogger who was imprisoned several times by the government of Iran. He previously served as an editor of Radio Zamane. He is a member of Committee of Human Rights Reporters (CHRR), serving as the head from 2005-2009.

Goudarzi was an aerospace engineering student at Sharif University of Technology before being expelled in November 2009 by order of government authorities and barred from continuing his education.

He was detained twice in 2006 during peaceful rallies and three times after the events following the disputed presidential election results of 2009.

In March 2013, faced with a 5-year prison sentence in exile in the remote city of Zabol, constant pressures, harassment and threats from the authorities, Kouhyar Goudarzi fled Iran to ensure his safety. He continues his human rights work from outside the country.

Several news outlets associated with the Iranian government have since published critical and hostile reports about Goudarzi, asking that he be brought back to Iran and be punished. One outlet, Bultan News which serves as a regime mouthpiece, referred to journalist and human rights activist Kouhyar Goudarzi as a "fugitive criminal who has fled the country" and demanded that "responsible agencies make the necessary arrangements to catch this fugitive and bring him to his punishment."

The Intruder

The Intruder is a British drama series made by Granada Television for the ITV network and was broadcast on Sundays from 2 January to 20 February 1972. There were eight episodes made, all of them running 25 minutes.

The series was based on the children's book of this same name by John Rowe Townsend, published in 1970. The series was shot on location, predominantly in the Cumbrian village of Ravenglass with some scenes filmed in Manchester and Anglesey.

The life of Arnold Haithwaite (James Bate), a sixteen-year-old English boy, begins to change when an overbearing and sinister one-eyed stranger called Sonny (Milton Johns) arrives in the small seaside village of Skirlston, claiming to be the real Arnold Haithwaite.

The Patriotic Guards (Gărzile Patriotice)

Guards equipped with WWII weapons; here the Czechoslovak ZBvz30

The Patriotic Guards (Gărzile Patriotice) were paramilitary formations in the Socialist Republic of Romania from 1968 to 1989.

Young female Guards posing with rifles next to an industrial complex

The Patriotic Guards were formed under Nicolae Ceaușescu as an armed force under the direct control of the Romanian Communist Party to provide additional defence and support in the event of an invasion of Romania. Membership included both men and women and adolescents as young as middle school age, with a peak of approximately 700,000 members across Romania in 1989.

They were formed after condemning the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring, conducted the Soviet Union, the Polish People's Republic, the People's Republic of Bulgaria, and the Hungarian People's Republic. Romania was a member of the Warsaw Pact but did not participate in the invasion as Ceaușescu tried to pursue a political line independent from the Soviets.

Ceaușescu appealed to anti-Sovietism within the Romanian population to ask for resistance against the threat of a Soviet invasion against Romania. The Romanian nationalist themes he used had their immediate effect in rallying large portions of the public, who began organizing and arming themselves under the direction of the ruling Romanian Communist Party (PCR).

In December 1989, during the Romanian Revolution, Ceaușescu attempted to mobilise the Patriotic Guards against anti-government protesters. However, the pace of events and the breadth of hostility to his regime outstripped this plan. Many Patriotic Guard members, who like most other Romanians were fed up with Ceauşescu's failed economic policies and suffering from declining living standards, actually joined the protesters.

French Customs Service

The French Customs Service was part of the military until the armistice in 1940. Connected to the elite regiment of Chasseurs a Pied, the Customs Service still holds the hunting horn of the Chasseurs in their logo.

Beret badge, 1st Model

During the Franco-Prussian War and the First World War, the brigades of Customs Officers (Douaniers) were used to form marksmen units and to track enemy units trying to infiltrate French lines.

During WW1, due to their knowledge of the areas and their experience in human tracking, they were part of Corps Francs (small units which were tasked to operate behind German lines to collect intelligence and perform sabotages on enemy targets). The red stripe on their uniforms is a remaining of the decoration of one of their officers, Capitaine Cutsaert during the Napoleonic wars.

Beret badge, 2nd Model

The military customs service fought in the early part of the Second World War but was disbanded on June 22, 1940 after the French defeat and was never reconstituted as a military service.

The most plausible reason was the downsizing of the French Military due to the 1940 armistice. Nonetheless small units of customs men from customs posts in French Indochina fought against the Japanese as guerilla units until the end of the war.

Douaniers in Marseille, after the armistice in 1940, with gunboat in the background

The Friend

The Friend is a 2024 American drama film based on the 2018 novel by Sigrid Nunez and stars beret wearer Naomi Watts. 

New York City writer Iris finds her comfortable, solitary life thrown into disarray after her closest friend and mentor bequeaths her a Great Dane named Apollo. The huge dog immediately creates practical problems for Iris, from furniture destruction to eviction notices, as well as more existential ones. 

Yet as Iris finds herself unexpectedly bonding with Apollo, she begins to come to terms with her past, and her own creative inner life.

Cas Oorthuys

Casparus Bernardus Oorthuys (1908 –1975), known as Cas Oorthuys, was a Dutch photographer and designer active from the 1930s until the 1970s.

In 1930 Oorthuys joined the municipality of Amsterdam as a structural engineer. In 1932 he, with many others, lost his job as a result of the economic crisis. Unemployed, he came into contact with the Communist Party of Holland, which he joined.

In 1936 he became a permanent photographer at De Arbeiderspers. He produced photography and graphics for communist and anti-fascist organisations; and in the tradition of "workers' photography" he documented poverty, police violence, the unemployed, homeless people and evictions for magazines.

During the war, Oorthuys helped forge identity papers and photographed clandestinely for De Ondergedoken Camera (the Underground Camera) to document the activities of the German occupiers, and also the awful Hongerwinter, the Dutch famine of 1944–45. During the postwar recovery, he recorded the Nuremberg war crimes trials and the rebuilding of his homeland.