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Mathew Brady, now known as the father of photojournalism, was a 19th century photographer. He was famous even then for his focus on becoming a photo-historian, documenting the American Civil War and taking portraits of the important personalities of the day. “From the first, I regarded myself as under obligation to my country to preserve the faces of its historic men and mothers.”

On the 27th of February, 1860, Mathew Brady took a photograph of the President after the Cooper Union speech.

Mathew Brady’s Lincoln « Iconic Photos

Lincoln would also later admit that “Brady and the Cooper Union speech made me president of the United States,” adding the photograph “dispelled the opposition base on the rumours of my long ungainly figure, large feet, clumsy hands, and long, gaunt head; making me into a man of human aspect and dignified bearing.”

On the 27th of February, 2010, these great photographs were taken, documenting just one Saturday out of dozens in the year. But who knows which photographs may prove important in the years to come?

Send a hello tweet to this weeks contributors and let them know you are watching:

• andrew_lillie
• Mutley627441
• domr
• JanetIsserlis
• sarahfenn
• illuminancy
• twasntme
• RAFairman
• elibrody
• capo42
• gwilkinson1989
• akaSylvia
• ingridf
• raumsinn
• pixelesh
• drewbenn
• Sithefire
• tashenubaste
• vaxanta
• pixelfreund

Saturday Scenes is a great way to see the world from someone else’s point of view! Taking part is easy:

1. Take a photograph on a Saturday
2. Send it to @SatScenes on Twitter
3. Wait for the webpage to get updated
4. Oooh and aah over all the great submissions from all over the world!

So take a photograph this weekend and send it to @SatScenes!

In 1460, Margaret, the daughter of King Christian I of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, was engaged to marry James III, King of Scots. The political point of the union was to end the feud over the Hebrids islands between Denmark and Scotland. Her father pledged the islands of Orkney and Shetland, possessed by the Norwegian crown, as security against the considerable dowry that her rank commanded. Margaret and James married in 1469 at Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh.

Orkney – Wikipedia

Apparently without the knowledge of the Norwegian Rigsraadet (Council of the Realm), Christian pawned Orkney for 50,000 Rhenish guilders. On 28 May the next year he also pawned Shetland for 8,000 Rhenish guilders. He had secured a clause in the contract which gave future kings of Norway the right to redeem the islands for a fixed sum of 210 kg of gold or 2,310 kg of silver.

On the 20th February, 1472, the dowry remained unpaid and James annexed the islands to the Scottish Crown.

When in the 20th century, there was some Orcadian dissatisfaction with the government of the United Kingdom, some Orcadians investigated the terms of Margaret’s marriage contract and pleaded to the Kings of Denmark and Norway to pay Margaret’s dowry to the British Exchequer so that Orkney and Shetland would return to the government of a Scandinavian nation and not be governed by the United Kingdom.

However, from 20 Feb 1472 to 20 Feb 2010, it appears that none of the later Kings have been inspired to pay up.

And on Saturday, the 20th of February 2010, we had not a single Scottish submission. However, England is heavily represented, swiftly followed by Switzerland and the U.S. as well as a selection from Dubai, Israel, Holland, Spain and Ireland – we’re almost as multi-national as the Winter Olympics!

We have a great selection of submitters both old and new. Encourage one another!

• raumsinn
• capo42
• Twasntme
• Sithefire
• sarahfenn
• domr
• michrueg
• Mutley627441
• RAFairman
• icklemouse
• rOcKeTmAn_76
• jmorby
• JanetIsserlis
• elibrody
• akrabat
• ingridf
• akaSylvia
• drewbenn
• tashenubaste
• timewind
• pixelfreund
• cornellfinch
• tradingnothing

We’d love to see your photos, too! Just take a picture on a Saturday and send it to SatScenes with a location.

George Orwell (best known for Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm) kept a diary, that much we know. The The Orwell Prize | Diaries has made these available in blog format as a celebration of the 70th anniversary of the diaries, which they say began in 1938. They are posting his diary entries exactly seventy years after each entry was written; the first time they have been published in collected form. It’s most interesting to read Orwell’s thoughts from the late 1930s mixed in with current blogposts in my RSS reader.

However, the The Diary Junction Blog points out that Orwell most certainly had a journal before 1938. Paul K. Lyons has put forward the details of the various arguments, including this sample of Orwell’s diary.

13 February 1936

‘Housing conditions in Wigan terrible. Mrs H tells me that at her brother’s house (he is only 25, so I think he must be her half-brother, but he has already a child of 8), 11 people, five of them adults, belonging to 3 different families, live in 4 rooms, ‘2 up 2 down’. All the miners I meet have either had serious accidents themselves or have friends or relatives who have. Mrs H’s cousin had his back broken by a fall of rock – ‘And he lingered seven year afore he dies and it were a-punishing of him all the while’ – and her brother-in-law fell 1200 feet down the shaft of a new pit. Apparently he bounced from side to side, so was presumably dead before he got to the bottom. Mrs H adds: ‘They wouldn’t never have collected t’pieces only he were wearing a new suit of oilskins.’

So, if anyone should be wondering about Saturday Scenes, I’d like to offer up the following as proof that we were actively taking lots of great photographs as of 13 February, 2010:

Make sure to pop by the Twitter streams of everyone who took a photograph so we could see a scene from their Saturday:

• LannaGirl
• rauchy
• RAFairman
• Sithefire
• dlewis1701
• raumsinn
• rOcKeTmAn_76
• gwilkinson1989
• sarahfenn
• dreamsthedream
• twasntme
• ColinBrooks
• mousewords
• akaSylvia
• vaxanta
• timewind
• JanetIsserlis
• 7of12
• 9to5poet
• elibrody
• pixelesh

Every person who submits a Saturday Scene gets added to the Saturday Scenes list, so you can watch that page and see what people are doing the rest of the week!

Would you like to join in? Simply take a photograph on a Saturday and tweet it to SatScenes with the location!

On the 6th of February 1966 a star was born.

Newton-le-Willows is a part of Merseyside now but on that cold February in 1966, it was still considered a part of Lancashire. Although he recently referred to his biggest hit as “naff”, the song released in 1987 is still popular today and in fact, SurveyUSA estimated that some 18 million American adults had seen his video on youTube.

He was born on February 6, 1966 in the North of England and was brought up in a small coal-mining town called Newton-Le-Willows. He was the youngest of 4 children and followed in his mother’s footsteps with his fondness of music. Rick sang in a local church choir but his love for the drums inevitably found him in local bands by his early teenage years.

Have you figured out who yet?

Yes, I admit that I’m easily amused. You knew that already, didn’t you?

On the 6th of February, 2010, I thoroughly enjoyed myself looking through all your photographs. This week’s set is full of fun:

Say hello to these fine people who are never gonna let you down:

• carocat
• LannaGirl
• rOcKeTmAn_76
• gwilkinson1989
• twasntme
• sarahfenn
• NevilleFenn
• raumsinn
• JanetIsserlis
• tradingnothing
• Pewari
• akrabat
• RAFairman
• Neal55
• pixelfreund
• elibrody
• timewind
• azmichelle
• drewbenn
• ingridf
• akaSylvia

And hey you, yes you! Take a photograph on Saturday!

(To be included, just send an @reply to SatScenes with a link to the photo and the location. We’d love to see your corner of the world!)

On the 30th of January 1835, Richard Lawrence made the first known assassination attempt on an American president. Convinced that he was truly King Richard III of England (1452-1485) and that somehow President Andrew Jackson was to blame for his poverty, Lawrence bought two derringers and waited outside the Capitol to exact his revenge and regain his throne.

AmericanHeritage.com / Trying to Assassinate President Jackson

In the soft rain before the capitol, he aimed his shaking hand at Jackson’s chest and squeezed one pistol’s trigger. The hammer snapped down, detonating the small percussion cap that was supposed to spark the gunpowder in the barrel. The cap let out a loud bang but nothing more. Lawrence dropped that pistol and aimed the second one, but it misfired as well. The would-be assassin caught the crowd’s attention with the noise of the two explosions, but he did Jackson no harm.

Andrew Jackson, nicknamed Old Hickory, was no stranger to a fight and he immediately reacted by attacking Lawrence with his cane. Richard Lawrence was disarmed and taken away, under arrest. He insisted he had good reason to attack and “…boasted about his assassination attempt, shocked only that the crowd had failed to defend him from Jackson.”

And THEN, on the 30th of January in 2010, these killer-good photographs were taken. Coincidence? I think not!

Who took these great photographs? These people right here:

• twasntme
• Sithefire
• RAFairman
• Korwhai
• tradingnothing
• raumsinn
• akrabat
• pendrift
• gwilkinson1989
• elibrody
• sarahfenn
• apgphoto
• LannaGirl
• CliffStanford
• JanetIsserlis
• UKMelia
• timewind
• pixelfreund
• akaSylvia

It’s easy to take part!

1) Take a photo on a Saturday and upload it to a site like Flickr or Twitpic
2) Twitter the url for your photograph to @SatScenes
3) Watch for the next post on Twitter Blog to see a great set of all the photographs together.

I’m looking forward to seeing your scenes!

On 23 January in 1897 Elva Zona Heaster was found dead in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. The resulting murder trial of her husband, Erasmus Stribbling Trout Shue, is said to be the only known case in which testimony from a ghost helped convict a murderer.

From The Greenbrier Ghost on Dead Men Do Tell Tales:

Because of Shue’s obvious grief, Knapp gave the body only a cursory examination, although he did notice some bruising on her neck. When he tried to look closer, Shue reacted so violently that the physician ended the examination and he left. Initially, he listed her cause of death as “everlasting faint” and then as “childbirth”.

Shue almost got away with it, although there was talk about his odd behaviour at her burial. But the victim’s mother was convinced that he had murdered his wife and she prayed for proof. She received it in the form of a recurring dream:

Over the course of four dark nights, the spirit of Zona Shue appeared at her mother’s bedside. She would come as a bright light at first and then the apparition would take form, chilling the air in the entire room. She would awaken her mother from her sleep and explain over and over again how her husband had murdered her. Trout Shue had been abusive and cruel, she said and had attacked her in a fit of rage because he thought she had not cooked any meat for supper. He had then savagely broken her neck and to show this, the ghost turned her head completely around until she was facing backwards.

They disinterred the corpse and found that the woman’s neck had indeed been broken. Shue claimed there was not enough evidence to convict him but the ghost story convinced the jury and Shue was sentenced to life in prison.

You can read the whole story here: The Greenbrier Ghost on Dead Men Do Tell Tales.

On the 23rd of January 2010, a selection of photographs were submitted for your perusal. I think you’ll be convinced that they are a sight to behold:

These are the fine people who submitted their photographs despite a complete lack of nagging! Go see what they have to say :

• elibrody
• JanetIsserlis
• sarahfenn
• Sithefire
• apgphoto
• raumsinn
• NevilleFenn
• RAFairman
• dlewis1701
• akaSylvia
• twasntme
• ColinBrooks
• drewbenn
• Korwhai
• carocat

We’d love to see your photos, too! Just take a picture on a Saturday and send it to SatScenes with a location.

On the 16th of January 1932, Duke Ellington and his orchestra recorded “It Don’t Mean a Thing”, an original composition with lyric by Irving Mills.

Here is a performance from 1943 on YouTube:

YouTube – Duke Ellington – It don’t mean a thing (1943)

I highly recommend that you take three minutes out of your day just to listen. The comments are very informative as well – a miracle on YouTube!

And then, feast your eyes on these photographs.

On Saturday the 16th of January in 2010 these original compositions were taken by some serious swingers on Twitter:

Want to know more about the photographers? Click through and follow!

• rOcKeTmAn_76
• carocat
• HereticChick
• mattscutt
• SarahFenn
• RAFairman
• twasntme
• akaSylvia
• akrabat
• JanetIsserlis
• Sithefire
• raumsinn
• StacyJMT
• timewind
• elibrody
• drewbenn

Next week I won’t be around much on Saturday as I have to pretend to be a grown-up. But you can watch the images arrive real time as they arrive just by clicking on the Saturday Scenes list which includes all of our recent participants. Go forth and give each other some retweet love, OK?

On 9 January, 1493, an Italian explorer named Christopher Columbus was sailing off of the coast of Hispaniola when he saw three mermaids. He seemed somewhat disappointed by the sight. In his log, he is said to have written: “In a bight at the coast of Hispaniola I saw three Sirens, but they were far less beautiful than Horaz described them...for somehow in the face they look like men.”

What did he see?

Something that looked like this:

This Day in History 1493: Columbus mistakes manatees for mermaids

Mermaid sightings by sailors, when they weren’t made up, were most likely manatees, dugongs or Steller’s sea cows (which became extinct by the 1760s due to over-hunting). Manatees are slow-moving aquatic mammals with human-like eyes, bulbous faces and paddle-like tails. It is likely that manatees evolved from an ancestor they share with the elephant. The three species of manatee (West Indian, West African and Amazonian) and one species of dugong belong to the Sirenia order. As adults, they’re typically 10 to 12 feet long and weigh 800 to 1,200 pounds. They’re plant-eaters, have a slow metabolism and can only survive in warm water.

I think I’d be pretty disappointed to see those mermaids too...

But there’s no way you’ll be disappointed with these photographs taken on the 9th of January 2010! This Saturday was clearly a perfect day for photography; just look at all these great submissions:

Take a moment to find out more about the people who submit to Saturday Scenes. I can vouch for them all as fun and friendly folk:

• Dramagirl
• sarahfenn
• dlewis1701
• twasntme
• Neal55
• Korwhai
• akrabat
• pewari
• sparc
• raumsinn
• akaSylvia
• tradingnothing
• JanetIsserlis
• ingridf
• NevilleFenn
• RAFairman
• CliffStanford
• UKMelia
• Sithefire
• cornellfinch
• mousewords
• carocat
• azmichelle
• drewbenn
• apgphoto
• pixelfreund
• elibrody

Taking part is easy – just take a photo on a Saturday and tweet the url to @SatScenes to be included in next week’s round-up!

On the 2nd of January, 1860, the discovery of the planet Vulcan was announced at a lecture at the Académie des Sciences in Paris.

Mercury’s orbit had long been known to be eccentric, ranging from 46 million to 70 million kilometers away from the sun. Urbain Le Verrier believed that the orbital deviations were caused by an as yet unidentified mass on the far side of Mercury – specifically a planet or an asteroid belt. He believed the planet had not been detected because of its nearness to the sun. Another French astronomer excitedly pointed out that he had seen “a round black spot” which he believed could be a planet transiting the Sun.

Le Verrier decided that this was almost certainly the intra-Mercurial planet he’d predicted, which he named Vulcan. Le Verrier hoped that it would be possible to spot Vulcan during a solar eclipse but unfortunately, confirmed sightings of the planet remained elusive. The question of Vulcan became a huge controversy, with excitement peaking in 1878, a year after Le Verrier’s death.

The Planet That Wasn’t by Isaac Asimov (warning, annoying pop-up windows)

As the nineteenth century closed, photography was coming into its own. There was no more necessity to make feverish measurements before the eclipse was over, or to try to make out clearly what was going on across the face of the Sun before it was all done with. You took photographs and studied them at leisure.

With that, hope for the existence of Vulcan flickered nearly to extinction. Yet Mercury’s perihelion did move. If Newton’s law of gravitation was correct (and no other reason for supposing its incorrectness had arisen in all the time since Newton) there had to be some sort of gravitational pull from inside Mercury’s orbit.

And, of course, there was, but it originated in a totally different way from that which anyone had imagined. In 1915, Albeit Einstein explained the matter in his General Theory of Relativity.

And 150 years later, on the 2nd of January, 2010, these shining stars of Twitter submitted photographs to be featured on Saturday Scenes … and here they are:

Isn’t this week’s set is full of fun? It seems like there’s a lot of personality shining through the snapshots.

The submitters:

• Dramagirl
• apgphoto
• FunkJem
• musecrossing
• Neal55
• RAFairman
• raumsinn
• pewari
• vaxanta
• sarahfenn
• twasntme
• akrabat
• akaSylvia
• StacyJMT
• tradingnothing
• NevilleFenn
• drewbenn
• azmichelle
• carocat
• michrueg

You can find out what all of these great people are up to simply by checking the Saturday Scenes list which includes all recent participants.

And if you’d like to join in, just take a photograph on Saturday and send the link to @SatScenes with the location! It’s easy and fun and we love seeing new sights.

This week, Saturday fell on a very important date: the 26th of December.

Many celebrate Boxing Day, some celebrate St. Stephen’s Day but a most interesting celebration on the 26th of December is the Day of the Wren.

Observed only in Ireland, Wales, the Isle of Man and Newfoundland, Wren Day is one of those celebrations that is good for everyone but the wren. The tradition was, apparently, to hunt and kill a wren on this day and take it, nailed to a stick, around the city to collect money for that evening’s dance. These days, the boys still dress up in straw suits but it is a fake wren which is paraded around the town on a pole. Why a wren? No one is really sure.

Wren’s Day, Dingle Peninsula, Ireland

Mysteriously, the wren has a reputation for treachery. A wren is said to have betrayed Irish soldiers fighting the Norsemen by beating its wings on their shields. The wren, too, is blamed for betraying St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr. This is the usual explanation why the wren is the hunted bird on St. Stephen’s day. It has also been argued that the antipathy shown towards the bird dates from early Christian opposition to the Druidic rites that surrounded it. Today, the wren — as a feature of the event — survives only in the rhyme and in the name of the day.

On the 26th of December in 2009, these wonderful photographs were taken. It’s a small set this week but every single photograph is a treasure – take a look:

Take a moment to visit the twitter streams of our valiant photographers, submitting even in the very depths of the old year:

• tradingnothing
• raumsinn
• RAFairman
• UKMelia
• akaSylvia
• rOcKeTmAn_76
• drewbenn
• pixelfreund
• Vaxanta
• starcade
• azmichelle
• Korwhai
• cornellfinch

And that is the last SatScene of the year! Thank you to everyone who has submitted in 2009 and I hope to see photographs from all of you in 2010!

(It’s easy! Just take a photograph on Saturday the 2nd and tweet the link @Satscenes with a location.)