2025 Lyon, France Light Festival

We recently went to the light festival in Lyon, France.
Lyon’s Festival of Lights (Fête des Lumières) is a spectacular annual event held around December 8th, where the city transforms with creative light installations on buildings, parks, and rivers, starting with traditional candles (lumignons) in windows and culminating in dazzling projections and shows, celebrating a historical vow to the Virgin Mary.

Escape!

  • I recently acquired a couple of glass negatives showing the aftermath of a prison break in December, 1935.
  • In researching them, I found that five prisoners tried to escape from Charlestown State Prison (Massachusetts) by hijacking a truck as it was making deliveries and ramming it through the prison gates.
  • During the breakout, the inmates attacked a truck driver and an inmate who tried to protect the driver. The truck driver was killed in the incident.
  •  All the escaping inmates were eventually captured.
    • Charlestown State Prison, a maximum-security prison that housed notable figures like Malcolm X and Charles Ponzi, operated from 1805 until its closure in 1955. The site is now occupied by Bunker Hill Community College. 

FlyBall Governors

Flyball governor is a specific type of governor with a feedback system that controls the speed of a steam engine by regulating the flow of steam to maintain a near-constant speed.