2084 The End of Days ✨ 👽 📚

@davepperlmutter @X The Two Dereks 1/3

Ah, fun fact…

Reflections on the Forth. A 4 minute long exposure of the Forth Bridge.

The Man Who Went Shopping For Dining Chairs and Accidentally Bought Stonehenge. On September 21, 1915, a British barrister named Cecil Chubb was given a very simple task by his wife, Mary. She sent him to a local auction in Salisbury with strict instructions: buy a nice set of dining chairs for their home. But as Chubb sat in the auction house, he got distracted. "Lot 15" came up for sale, a 30-acre plot of land featuring a crumbling, dilapidated ring of ancient rocks. The bidding was incredibly sluggish, and on a complete whim, Chubb raised his hand. When the gavel fell, he had just purchased Stonehenge for £6,600 (roughly $800,000 today). He proudly presented the 5,000-year-old megalithic wonder to his wife as a surprise "birthday present." Mary was absolutely furious. She didn't want a pile of ancient rocks; she wanted her dining chairs. Three years later, tired of his wife’s complaints and realizing the immense historical weight of his impulse purchase, Chubb donated the entire monument to the British government. He attached one strict condition: the public must always have access to it. Today, it stands protected forever, all because a husband couldn't stick to a shopping list.

Now here’s an Office that wouldn’t mind working in 😏🖖

With heavy hearts, we say farewell to World War Il legend John Gleeson. John passed away on January 15, 2026, at the age of 102, who passed away peacefully, at home and surrounded by family a gentle ending to a life of heroic service. During World War II, John served as a pilot in the Army Air Force, flying the B-24 Liberator on long, dangerous missions deep into contested skies. 🫡🇺🇸

In 1994, during a power outage, the only time the Milky Way was visible in the city of Los Angeles, many people were scared by the sight and called 911.

#AuthorLife #RomanticComedy #WritingCommunity #AmWriting #IndieAuthor #Bookish #WritersOfX #EditingLife #NovelInProgress #FictionWriting #BookLove #ScottishCastle #Storytelling #CreativeWriting

Do you remember when you joined X? I do! #MyXAnniversary

Finally got back into my Amazon KDP account, and pleased to see a few books gone out including HIDDEN PATHS-Walking Historical Kyoto and a copy of PARANORMAL JAPAN, many thanks to the readers. Enjoy. hiddenpathskyoto.com

#FF @Rolan1Michael @Nereide @manuelacasasoli @LuisADomDaly @JohnWilkinson2 @space_cooper @alhanda @tetzlaff_mike @EdwardSelender @kellyvampyre @DavidJNann @MMBeats5 @borlan_anamaria @onlybeci @GBHolley1 @JRSchmit @GargoylePhan @MartinJBest1 @ztevetevans @MarcosFizzotti

Do you dread the daily grind and your commute? Why not escape with an adventure? The Martian Diaries is an award-winning 3-part continuation of The War Of The Worlds, featuring original music & sound effects. Check it out here martiandiaries.com #audiobook #audiodrama

@pjacksonmusic That's a turnip for the books. In Scotland we call them neeps, as in haggis, needs and tatties. Lovely.

Cut some turnip leaves from the garden to mix with garlic and mustard.

May 16, 1963. Gordon Cooper was orbiting Earth alone inside a capsule barely big enough to turn around in, moving at 17,500 miles per hour. He had been up there for over a day. Then the warnings started. First a faulty sensor screaming that the ship was falling — it wasn't. He switched it off. Then something far worse: a short circuit knocked out the entire automated guidance system. The one that kept the capsule steady. The one that was supposed to bring him home. Without it, reentry was nearly impossible. Too shallow an angle and the capsule would bounce off the atmosphere back into space. Too steep and it would incinerate. The margin for error was razor thin — and every computer that was supposed to hit that margin was dead. Down on the ground, NASA engineers watched the telemetry in silence. They could see everything going wrong. They could fix nothing. Cooper didn't panic. He uncapped a grease pencil and drew lines directly on the inside of his window to track the horizon. He looked up at the stars he had spent months memorizing and used their positions to orient the ship by eye. Then he set his wristwatch. Because when you have no computers left, you become the computer. At exactly the right moment — calculated in his head, confirmed by the stars outside — he fired the retrorockets. The capsule shook. The sky turned to fire. For several minutes, no one on Earth could reach him as plasma swallowed the ship whole. Then the parachutes opened. Faith 7 hit the water just four miles from the recovery ship — the single most accurate splashdown in the entire Mercury program. The man with a wristwatch and a few pencil marks on a window had outperformed every automated system NASA had. We talk a lot about technology saving us. And it often does. But Cooper's story is a quiet reminder that behind every machine, there still has to be a human being who can look out the window, think clearly under pressure, and decide what to do next. The final backup was never the software. It was him.

If you love fantasy with HEROIC stakes, fierce friendship, ancient magic, and unforgettable dragons… meet your next series obsession. #YAFantasy #KindleEbooks #Dragons #FantasyReaders #AmazonBooks #Kindle Amazon kindle: mybook.to/WDSVolume1 Website: paulcude.com

@ProofreadJulia My colleague has a letter written to his mother from Dirk Bogarde. Bogarde replied to all his avid fans. She liked Bogarde so much, she called her son Derek, Bogarde's real first name. Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van Den Bogaerde. Niven was his Scottish mother's surname.

Here is the letter Elizabeth Jane Howard wrote to me. I saw a newspaper article that said she lived in Bungay, Suffolk. Knowing that's a small place, I addressed it to her, in 'Bungay, Suffolk', reckoning the postman would know where she lived. He/she did!

#FF @VodkaWardrobe @KaceyKells @wordrefiner @KRM_Morgan @HPL_JDeLaughter @dozeebird @lizette_neves @Pennan_Brae @A_R_Pearson1 @GabrielBlake_ @DavidBazo @cox_passaris @ReadingIsOurPas @GabrielConstans @JcGemmell @fett1111 @MaryLSchmidt @TudorTweep @lawrence_wray @bionicanadian

@ProofreadJulia I cottoned on right away.