This page on my site is a “shameless plug” with links concerning various other topics of interest to me that some of you might also find of interest. Many of these sites and webpages are not directly connected with glass or glass collecting.
Note: If anyone notices any link listed here that is “dead” or no longer working, please let me know via the email address listed on the “CONTACT INFORMATION” webpage. THANK YOU!!
Christian evangelist William Marrion Branham, born in great poverty in rural Kentucky in 1909, and growing up in southern Indiana with only a seventh-grade education, preached all around the world, and spearheaded the divine healing revival during the 1940s and 1950s. His supernatural ministry has remained unequaled since the days that Jesus Christ himself walked upon the earth. Who was this man? The controversy continues to rage about just who he was, and his place in Bible prophecy. Yes, the great power of the infinite, Eternal God, our Creator, is just as real and true today as it ever was in the so-called “Bible days”. Hebrews 13:8. If you’ve never heard of the End-time Message, please take a few minutes and find out more about Brother Branham and the Message, sent by God Himself to a dying world! It’s really later than you think!
(At this website, link below, anyone can access, download and listen to any of over 1,200 audio sermons on their computer, smartphone or other device, totally free.)
https://branham.org/en/MessageAudio
Also, hundreds of Brother Branham’s audio sermons have been uploaded over the last few years and are now available on Youtube.com – just search that site with the keywords “William Branham Sermons”. Those sermons are from actual original recordings of his church meetings and evangelistic services held around the United States, as well as some in Canada and other countries, during the period of 1947 to 1965. You can hear for yourself the many, many times in which he called out persons in the audiences he had never met, and told them exactly what was wrong with them, their name, where they lived, etc. This was true discernment of the Holy Spirit speaking though a man…. the “Word of knowledge” in action, God showing that He truly IS the same yesterday, today and forever, and that divine healing and the Supernatural are still in effect NOW for those who have faith in Jesus Christ and His atoning power. God’s promises are true. Many miracles happened over the years during and after these meetings, and true divine healing by the power of God was shown to be a reality in our modern times.
Recently, an app for mobile devices has been introduced by Voice of God Recordings, called “LIFELINE”, and among the many features of this app is the new “Voice Radio” which is a streaming of Brother Branham preaching, with original audio sermons being streamed constantly 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The app can be downloaded from the Google Play store (or the Apple store) to any mobile device, smartphone or tablet. Just a tap of the “Voice Radio” button on the Lifeline app screen will bring up the streaming audio of a sermon already in progress, and the total number of listeners currently tuned in worldwide is shown on the top right-hand corner of the screen. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.branham.lifeline&hl=en
Bookfinder.com : One of the very best sites on the web if you are looking for any obscure or hard-to-find book title…………… this site has info/links pointing to over 150 million books for sale–a database of thousands of book dealers and websites from around the U.S. and the world! You can get a quick glance at titles available through Amazon, eBay, Alibris, and many, many other sources, and do quick price comparisons to find out the best value for a book:
Bookfinder.com
Great website all about birds and birdwatching.
eBird.org (affiliated with Cornell University) is a fantastic website for anyone interested in birds and birdwatching, with tons of content geared toward the beginner, the expert or anywhere in between! I love this site because anyone can easily sign up as a member, and with their sophisticated, innovative and easy to use software, you can easily keep track of all of the birds in your own personal “Life List”. Anyone can record and keep track of your own checklists you compile for any particular place and time you have observed birds.
The site features extremely good, clear, colorful photographs of virtually any of the birds you might encounter here in the United States (and around the whole world), and also they have a huge database of audio recordings of the calls and songs of most birds. So it is very easy and fun to work on being able to identify birds in your own area or region, by both their appearance and their typical sounds.
This site lists thousands of “hot spots” with a page devoted to each hot spot where birders record their latest checklists for that particular location. This has to be the very best website I know of, for anyone interested in wild birds. To start, try clicking on the EXPLORE button along the upper left side of the page, to look for bird species or regions (any county, state, province, country, territory or dependency) to explore for more detailed information.
Pierce Piano Atlas: I’ve been interested in pianos and piano history for years. Here is a book that I recommend for anyone who is interested in pianos, new and old, and the companies that have made them over the last 200+ years. This book lists serial numbers seen on pianos from a large number of manufacturers. Although with some brand names, there is little or no accompanying information available, Mr. Bob Pierce has spent decades compiling lots of background information on many piano making companies from around the world, and he has recorded lists of serial numbers with year of production information. This book is used by many, if not most, piano repair technicians and piano tuners. But it is available to the general public as well, and well worth the price for the loads of information in it! For more info you can check out the site at:
https://www.piercepianoatlas.com/atlas.html
Roughfish.com: Website discussing all kinds of fish, U.S. and worldwide, including the common species and the more unusual and hard-to-catch species! Great site for those interested in multi-species fishing—not just the “standards” such as bass, bluegill, crappie or catfish! This site has tons of pics of obscure, very rarely seen fish species.
https://www.roughfish.com/species
Dick’s Towboat Gallery: Photographs & info on thousands of diesel towboats operating on the Mississippi & Ohio River systems. If you are a “river rat” and enjoy watching river traffic moving on the inland waterways, this site is a good one!
https://www.towboatgallery.com/The_Towbo
at_Gallery.php
Some Basic Information about the Ohio River:
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Ohio_River
MarineTraffic.com is a super site, an interactive website where you can find information, pictures, and the current/recent tracked location of hundreds of thousands of boats and ships of all types afloat around the world on many bodies of water (including oceans, rivers, seas, canals and lakes) and this site includes information covering lots of fishing boats, tugs, ocean cruise liners, commercial cargo ships, oil tankers, pleasure craft, sailboats, yachts and more.
My special interest here is in the commercial towboats (and some other boats) operating on the Mississippi River system, and you can find most of them are integrated into the MarineTraffic database. So far, I’ve uploaded over 200 photographs I’ve taken over the last three decades, including many towboats seen here on the Ohio River in the Louisville, KY area. This link should take you directly to a list of photos, but if not, please go to their Home page and locate the “SEARCH MARINETRAFFIC” box at the top of the page. Type in my name (David Whitten) in the search box, and click the PHOTOGRAPHERS option. Or you can click on this URL which should go directly to a list of photos I’ve posted over the years: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/photos/by/copyright:David%20Whitten?order=date_uploaded
Clint Buffington’s “Message in a Bottle” blog: Clint has a fascinating hobby of searching for (and finding) Messages in bottles along beaches. Interesting blog as he relates his attempts to find the senders of messages he has found.
I’ve long been fascinated by the old city of Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, with it’s canals, beautiful architecture, and the glass-covered cruise boats that take tourists for sight-seeing tours in the older part of the city. My interest in the city was sparked by receiving a 1000-piece Milton Bradley “Big Ben” jigsaw puzzle as a Christmas present in the early 1970s! That puzzle pictures one of the Rederij P. Kooij cruise boats moored in the canal at Rokin in downtown Amsterdam. Here is a website run by the principal sight-seeing canal company, Rederij P. Kooij, located in the heart of Amsterdam at Rokin.
On a related subject, very close to that same area in Amsterdam, a recently-opened museum displays artifacts recovered during a huge and complex decade-long subway excavation project. These artifacts range over a period of thousands of years, from pre-historic items to Victorian age antiques to modern cellphones and credit cards that were lost or discarded in the canals. For more information on the items being archived and researched, here is the main website for this project:
https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/
What is Transferware? Transferware, a type of pottery often seen with blue and other colored intricate designs. The most recognized pattern would probably be “Blue Willow”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transferware
The “Romantic period” in transferware pottery/dishes was generally most popular during the 1830s-1850s period. Romantic transferware often featured an idealized “romantic” or “gothic” scenic view with themes such as a castle, a lake, trees, people, etc, placed in the center of the plate. Thousands of different patterns were made by hundreds of potteries, most of them in Great Britain. Blue was the most plentiful design color but other colors such as black, pink, green, brown and purple were also made. The great majority of Romantic style transferware was produced in the Staffordshire pottery district in England. Much of it was exported to the United States. This link will pull up lots of pictures of transferware via the Google “Images” search engine.
Pictures of various “Romantic Period”
transferware
Another link showing some pics of Transferware.
https://www.seekersantiques.com/products/romantic-transferware?color=Blue
“Blue Willow” pattern dishes. This is probably the most common and recognized transferware dinnerware pattern ever made. The very first dishes featuring the pattern date from about 1780. Innumerable pottery companies (both in Great Britain and the United States) produced their own lines of Blue Willow dinnerware. Usually seen in blue and white, sometimes the pattern was made in other colors such as black, red, purple and green. It is heavily collected today, and has been collected for many, many years.
The Blue Willow pattern of dishes is often seen on older TV shows where the characters are eating at a dinner table. If you watch “The Andy Griffith Show” or “Bonanza” frequently, you might have seen this pattern on their kitchen table. I’ve also seen it featured at the dinner table in many other shows and movies – including lots of Westerns.
Beginners Guide to the Blue Willow pattern
For tree lovers: the United States “Big Tree” program at American Forests.org website. Lots of info on the Champion Trees program.
AmericanForests.org
State of Ohio DNR site on their state “Big Tree Champions”.
https://ohiodnr.gov/wps/portal/gov/odnr/discover-and-learn/safety-conservation/about-ODNR/forestry/champion-trees/native-champion+trees
Arbor Day Foundation—-Inspiring the public to plant more trees.
www.arborday.org
The Vintage Aerial website has a HUGE collection of 20th Century black and white aerial photos taken around the US, and many of them are of rural farms and farmhouses and small-town America. They date mostly from the 1950s through the 1980s. I love this site! I actually found an aerial photo of the old house we lived in when I was a boy in Central Illinois!! The picture was taken in the mid-1960s and shows our car in the driveway! Check out the site and see if they have aerial pics available from your state, county or area. They are continually adding more pics to their huge collection.
Informational Website for squirrel lovers!
https://www.about-squirrels.com/
Wikipedia page all about the white-tailed deer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-tailed_deer
All about Horses, from the National Geographic website.
https://animals.nationalgeographi
c.com/animals/mammals/horse/
The Calgary Coin website with lots of information and photos showing ancient Chinese and other oriental coins, especially the old “Cash”
coins with the square holes. The coinage of China covers a period of over 2400 years!
https://www.calgarycoin.com/reference/c
hina/chinaid.htm
Insulators.info – this is an extensive website with lots of information on the field of collecting antique electrical insulators, both glass and porcelain.
Insulators.info
“WheresGeorge.com“– the U.S. currency tracking site! This is a little weird and goofy, but a fun and harmless hobby! (And totally legal!). If you find a United States dollar bill (or any denomination bill) in your change that’s been marked or stamped with the words “WheresGeorge.com”, just go to this site and enter your location (zip code) and the serial number of the bill! You can leave an optional comment about where you got the bill, it’s condition, etc. You’ll then get to see where the bill has been recorded so far, and you can sign up to receive automatic email notifications to see where it is reported in the future! Anyone can “start” your own bills ………. just enter the serial number of any bill (in your possession) into the WG online database, spend them as you normally would, and see where they travel around the US (some are eventually reported from overseas).
This is a fun way to learn geography, especially towns, cities and states here in the United States, but many bills eventually show up in other countries as well. The site is at this URL:
https://www.wheresgeorge.com
Please click here to go to my GLASS BOTTLE MARKS website HOME / WELCOME PAGE.
For an extensive alphabetical list of marks seen on glass bottles, fruit jars, insulators and tableware, please Click here to go directly to “PAGE ONE” of the Glass Bottle Marks pages.
