Today’s Silver-Plated Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Richard Snowden Andrews (October 29, 1830 – January 5, 1903) led an interesting life. Born in Baltimore, he was an architect, a warrior, and a diplomat. As an architect he had achieved national recognition. His resume included the Maryland Governor’s residence in Annapolis, and the south wing of the U.S. Treasury Building in Washington, D.C. The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia was his masterpiece.
The Beautiful Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum.
During the Civil War, after a career of raising buildings, Andrews spent the next few years knocking them down. He organized the First Maryland Light Artillery and was later promoted to major in charge of a whole battalion of artillery. Andrews was wounded three times. The first wound came during the Seven Days Battle in July 1862 and was minor. The second was not.
In August of that year, the 31-year-old major was in charge of General Charles S. Winder’s divisional artillery at the Battle of Cedar Mountain when a Union shell exploded close by tearing open his right side. Holding in his intestines with one hand, and sliding from his horse, he fell to the ground. He lay there for hours before being found and taken to a hospital. When surgeons examined him, they all concluded that the wound was fatal. They sewed him up with little hope of his recovery. Andrews defied the prognosis. After being fitted with a silver plate over his wound he spent eight months convalescing before he was released. He returned to his unit only to be wounded again at the Second Battle of Winchester. After recovering from this latest wound, he was given a diplomatic desk job.
Richard Snowden Andrews
Culled from: Lunatic: The Rise and Fall of an American Asylum
It cracks me up that even after having to hold his intestines in for hours and convalescing for eight months, he still had to go back to work! Tough boss!
Car Crash Du Jour!
Weegee was the pseudonym of Arthur Fellig (June 12, 1899 – December 26, 1968), a photographer and photojournalist, known for his stark black and white street photography. Weegee worked in Manhattan, New York City’s Lower East Side as a press photographer during the 1930s and ’40s, and he developed his signature style by following the city’s emergency services and documenting their activity. Much of his work depicted unflinchingly realistic scenes of urban life, crime, injury and death.
Here’s a photo from the book Weegee’s New York: Photographs, 1935-1960
“The end of a joyride.”