Things we forgot

I learned about three unlrelated things this weekend that have passed out of the public consciousness (as far as I know). They are only vaguely relevant to safety, but I offer them anyway.

• There used to be "lorry girls" in the 1930s and 1940s who hung around the cafes on the A roads (precursors of the motorway services) and hitched rides with what would now be called LGV drivers up and down the country for thrills.
• Also in the 30s, there was a group of Americans lured from the depression hit US to the Soviet Union with the promise of work and wages to help industrialise the USSR during Stalin's five-year plans. They were then among the first to come under suspicion in the purges and ended their lives in the gulags. Their story is in The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia by Jim Tzouliadis, which I strongly recommend.
• Before cows routinely had their horns removed, farmers sometimes used to screw brass knobs (bedknobs or cupboard handles) into the top of them to make them less hazardous.

Louis