In June of 1832, the 57 Irish migrant workers arrived at the docks of Philadelphia. Their job was to lance a flat path for the track through steep, hilly terrain. In railroad parlance, this is known as a ‘cut’ and thereafter that stretch of track would be known as Duffy’s Cut. Six weeks later, they would all be dead. History would blame cholera for their deaths, but history is always written by the winners, and the winners—in this case the railroad company and the landed gentry of Chester County—would be best served by such an explanation. But in fact there is a lot about the historical record that doesn’t add up.

It’s a really interesting article of cover up, death, big business exploiting the workers and people doing each other over for profit. Not to mention ghosts. Lots and lots of ghosts.

A nice atmospheric quote from the full article.

A dark shadow looms over the valley at Duffy’s Cut, dubbed Dead Horse Hollow because the carcasses of dead horses were allegedly dumped there back in the day. Some say it’s cursed, other say it’s haunted. But for the 178 years since the 57 Irishmen died there, the valley has remained untouched by development or, for that matter, any manifestation of modernity.

Something tells me I’ll be using this in a one off at some point.

Read the full article over at the Philadelphia Weekly.

Very interesting stuff, especially if you’re at all interested in Medieval history.

Although I suddenly realise I’ve never seen anyone use pictograms for a fantasy language. Odd. But my theoretical ‘Celtic islands dark fantasy game’ is definitely going to have a ancient pictographic language in it.

Today I found (via Very Short List)  this cool flickr set of 1920′s passport photos. They’re of famous people but they’re largely not recognisable (and not all of them are still famous). Perfect for a Pulp game or some 20′s Call of Cthulhu.

The first two come from Wired.com’s pretty fascinating Danger Room blog about the world of the military and national security.

• The US is thinking of starting up a special assasination squad – right or wrong (and I lean towards wrong) it would make a pretty fun game.
• While you’re running your assasination squad game, perhaps you could use some interesting spy tools.

It’s not from Danger Room, but the CIA has recently declassified their Manual of Trickery and Deception as well. It’s apparently all about using stage magic for spy purposes, but imagine if it had real magic as well?

This would make an awesome location for a modern RPG – either a location for a fight or just a really strange meeting spot.

Weird science lives!!!

In other news, I’m travelling for the next three weeks so don’t expect too many updates. I’ll schedule some for while I’m away however.

How are the pirates organized? (Are there pirate leaders, financiers, and specialists?)

The financiers are the most important since they organize and plan the big shot operations and are able to pay running cost[s]. Financiers always need to forge deals with traders, land cruiser owners, translators, business people to keep the supplies flowing during operations and manage the logistics.  There is a long supply chain involved in every hijacking.

Pretty interesting stuff and it has all sorts of applications – for modern games obviously, but also for any other game. How do you orgnaise getting rid of that loot? It doesn’t have to be as easy as going down town and selling it off.