A Long Time...

I haven't posted something in what i felt like was a long time. I'm working on something now, but not sure how to put it together. Just reassuring you that I'm still here. I think I'm working on some movie reviews and others like that. See ya soon!

The Winchester History

                                 

The Winchester House today.

  Living in the South Bay for all this time, I actually never been to the Winchester House (Never got the time). Even though I've never stepped even one footstep in the property, I know quite a bit of info on the place. Everyone knows that the widow Sarah Winchester built it. Everyone knows that her husband was a guy who managed the Winchester Corporation. How many people actually know how that corporation came to be? Anyone know who Oliver Winchester is?

Oliver Winchester 

Oliver Winchester                           

 Oliver Winchester was born on November 30th, 1810. The son of Samuel Winchester and Hannah Bates was an American businessman. He was also a politician. On February 20th, 1864, Winchester married Jane Ellen hope in Boston.

In New Haven, Connecticut and New York City, Winchester had started a clothing manufacturing company. Winchester soon come to the realization that the Smith and Wesson firearms business sales had plummeted rapidly. Seeing a chance of opportunity, Winchester brought forth a group of stockbrokers to acquire the Smith and Wesson division.  In 1850, the company was known as Volcanic Repeating Arms Company. He had relocated the company to New Haven in 1857 and had the company's name changed to the New Haven Arms Company.

The company struggled with business early on. Due to the Volcanic's poor performance and design, rival company's products were more in the line of succession. Luckily, Benjamin Tyler Henry, an engineer of Winchester's, thought of a brilliant idea for Winchester. Henry had improved parts of the Volcanic repeating rifle. Henry increased the size of the rifle's frame, allowing it to accommodate seventeen brass cases. This new rifle so called the "Henry Rifle" brought fame to the company. Approximately 12,000 of these rifles were produced in a span of six years. Due to the success of the company, Winchester decided to rename it again. The company was then known as Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Nelson King, a company employee, had improved known flaws to the Henry rifle by moving the loading gate to the side.

In the American Civil War, the Winchester rifle was not used even though repeating were used. The United States Army decided not to used too many new technology repeating rifles at the time, as they deemed it was untested.

The Winchester rifle is considered one of the earliest repeating rifles. By Western settlers it gained a reputation as "The Gun that Won the West."

Though a famed rifle manufacturer, Winchester was also active as the Republican Presidential elector in 1864. From 1866-1867, he was also the Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut.

Winchester died on December 11th, 1880. The Winchester Repeating Arms Company was handed down to his son, William Wirt Winchester.

William Wirt Winchester

William's the Boss
William inherited the company from his father. However, prior to that, he married Sarah Lockwood Pardee on September 30th in 1862. On July 15th, 1866, they gave birth to Annie Pardee Winchester, however died six weeks later.

Sarah Winchester

Winchester was the treasurer of the company for four months, as he died of tuberculosis on March 7th, 1881. The company was then owned by Sarah Winchester by 50 percent. The company gave her a daily income of roughly $1,000 a day. Today that would be an approximate equivalent of $22,000 a day.


Construction of the Winchester House
The death of her daughter Annie brought Winchester into a great depression. As a superstitious women, Winchester felt that the family was cursed by spirits killed by the Winchester rifle. A reported Boston psychic had told Winchester that spirits would keep haunting Winchester if construction of her house had halted.

The original house is shown with seven stories. Today it is only four
due to the earthquake of 1906.

Winchester decided to move to the west in 1886. There she purchased an eight acre ranch from John Hamm in San Jose, California. She spent $20 million of her fortune on adding new rooms and decorating the house. Work continued for every second of  every hour of every day on the house. He fascination with the number 13 was displayed in many parts of the house. Windows had thirteen panes, there were thirteen bathrooms thirteen chandeliers, thirteen steps on certain stairs, etc. The construction was continuous, except for a brief stint in 1906. Due to the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, Winchester was stuck in her room for hours. By the time she got out, she told her construction works to halt with work the front. She had claimed that spirits were angry with her working too hard with the main entrance. She left the front broken in rubbles and unprepared. Winchester moved to Atherton, California after the earthquake, only visiting her house in San Jose for brief stints.

Construction was unorganized, leading to a very large and complex building. Construction workers had to navigate through the house using a map.

When Winchester died on September 5th, 1922, construction of the house ended.

The Winchester Mystery House
The house was built with elegant rooms and stairs to nowhere. There were two main theories to why the house was built with stairs to nowhere. Many people had thought that Winchester wanted to confuse bad spirits. Good spirits would find their way to elegant rooms of gold. The house has many small steps as short as 2 inches due to Winchester's small, 4foot 10inch frame. Today, some bathrooms had to be switched with glass mirrors due to tourist thinking they were functional. The house also includes a massive garden that Sarah Winchester would stroll though on her horse-drawn carriage. Some speculate there is a solid gold room worth a fortune, hidden somewhere in the establishment. To this day, it still had not been found. The house was passed down to Winchester's niece after her death, however sold the house to the highest bidder in 1923. Today it is known as the "Mystery House" because of Harry Houdini had called it a mystery house during his visit in 1924.

Alleged Hauntings
Since public opening in 1923, tourist and employees have reported many strange phenomenons. A house caretaker had reported sounds of footsteps and creaking wood late at night. One night he reported the sound of a working screw, as if a construction worker was working. A sudden "plop" sound tempted him to turn on the lights. Nothing had changed. Nothing had fell on the floor. The caretaker had reported many pranks the mischievous ghost had played on him. One night, he checked that he had turned off the lights. He had. When he got down to the car, he had discovered that the entire third floor had been left on. He said that anyone would forget one room's switch, but rarely an entire floor. His last report had occurred when he had not been at the desk.

Many people had also felt presences, creaking, and the feeling of being touched. Many tourist who took pictures also reported faint apparitions on their images.

Well there's just a bit of info on the Winchester house. I really want to go there one day and really see how it's like in this house.

If you had ever experienced any creepiness please tell me! I wanna know!

Have a great day full of cookies!

The CINNAMON Challenge

What's this new trend with the Cinnamon Challenge? It's not really a new trend, it started in the late 1990s. Apparently your supposed to eat a tablespoon(or more) in less than sixty seconds with out the aid of water. And oh my god! I did it! It's really not as bad as you think! After watching people fail like this:

Or like this:

It made me think that the Cinnamon Challenge would be really hard to conquer. Yesterday I tried it and it really isn't that bad. If you wanna do it, I recommend moistening your mouth by drinking a bunch of water first. Cinnamon dries up and does a have a spice to it, so moisture in you mouth really helps out.

Good luck with it if you really try out. XD

One Directions Really Going One Direction

The new rising boy band One Direction! I really like them and my opinion my be biased.


One Direction is a British- Irish boy band with members Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, and Louis Tomlinson. The appeared on the seventh season of The X Factor, finishing third. Originally, each member applied to the show as solo acts, however did not qualify for the "Boys" act. Instead of performing a solo act, guest judge Nicole Scherzinger suggested that the boys could form a group. This qualified them for the groups category. They were part of Simon Cowell's act. F.Y.D, Diva Fever, and Belle Amie, were eliminated within four weeks of the competition. They were all part of Simon's act in the competition. By the fourth week, One Direction was Cowell's final act. Although finishing third, their song "Forever Young"was leaked onto the internet. "Forever Young would have been released when the band won The X Factor.


After The X Factor, the band signed with Syco Records, a secondary company to Sony Music, for £2 million. When appearing on The Alan Titchmarsh Show on April 4th, 2011, they confirmed their first official debut single "What Makes You Beautiful"after numerous rumors.


On November 13th, 2011, the One Direction released a second single, "Gotta Be You."


On November 21st, 2011, they released their first album, Up All Night. Up All Night included songs written by artist Kelly Clarkson and Ed Sheeran. 


On January 6th, 2012, One Direction released their single "One Thing."


The band signed with Columbia Records to promote music in the United States. The album originally was planned to release March 23rd, 2012, however was released earlier to March 13th due to fan demand.


Random Facts


-They are the ambassador of Pokemon! This started in April of 2011. They were in TV ads and special Pokemon fan meetings!


-They have their own Nokia C2-02 and C3-00. These limited edition phones include One Direction wallpapers, music, and behind the scenes footage.


-They also released a 2012 calendar! This was the most top sold calendar, passing Cheryl Cole's 2011 edition calendar.


-They have a book too!




Band Members


Niall Horan 
Birthday: September 13th 1993 
From: Mullingar County Westmeath, Ireland
                       



Harry Styles
Birthday: February 1st, 1994 
From Holmes Chapel, Cheshire, UK






Louis Tomlinson:
Birthday: December 24th, 1991 
From Doncaster, South Yrokshire, UK





Zayn Malik
Birthday: January 12th, 1993 
From: West Lane Baildon, Bradford England
He's British Pakistani
BTW: He dated Rebecca Ferguson...they broke up 4 months later





Liam Payne
Birthday: August 29th, 1993 
From: Wolverhampton, West Midlands, UK





Wow! that took a long time just getting the background of these guys! I really love their music. "What Makes You Beautiful" was the first song I heard, but at the time I didn't really like it. A while later, I heard "One Thing." I fell in love with it. I started to discover other One Direction songs like "Na Na Na" and "Another World."


Love Liam and Zayn the best ;) but they are all great in my opinion. You know they are legit because they were Simon Cowell's act. You know how hard it is to impress Simon.


Applaud or Veto?


Applaud! They are the rising band to listening to. If you love pop music they are the band for you. They are totally a band that is rising quickly through the charts and helping this apparent "British Invasion: Part II." 


Well this was my opinion of One Direction. I don't feel like it's complete for some reason.


They really are going one direction: up the charts in the UK and the world.

The Vow

Today I watched the Vow. It was such a cute movie! What made me feel more interested was that this was based on a true story. So heres my thoughts:

~~~WARNING: SLIGHT SPOILERS~~~

I'm gonna try really hard to try not to get too many spoilers but I might let some slip (sorry if i do).

Channing Tatum and Rachel Mcadams star in this romantic drama showcasing a couple who find themselves in a horrific car accident. Leo(Tatum) eventually recovers from his injuries, however Paige(Mcadams) suffers a severe brain trauma. Her injury caused memory loss, no remembering that Leo was her husband. Paige's parents attempt to bring her back to a life before the marriage to Leo, but Leo interferes. Leo eventually does get a chance to rejuvenate Paige's memories.  

Ok I'm going to stop there, because if i go any further I'm probably gonna ruin the movie for you. 

I really thought this was a good movie. Critics really are not giving it the love it deserves. It was really worth my eight bucks at the theater. I really can't believe this was based on a real story. The crash made me think it was so scary that a person can experience that. Now I'm really, really grateful for the person who invented seat belts. 

I would really give this movie an 8.5/10. It wasn't the best movie ever, but was a solid movie i would recommend to anyone who loves chick flicks. I really don't want to limit this movie to people who love chick flicks because i think it is a good movie to watch for non-chick-flickers. 

Applaud or Veto? 

This section is my opinion of if i recommend the movie or not. I didn't want to do Yay or Nay because i thought it was kind of boring. So Applaud : Yay :: Veto : Nay.

Applaud. It made my eyes watery. It was a really sad movie, but I really liked it. I do think its worth your money (unless you pay thirty bucks just to watch it once). 

So maybe I'm gonna do stuff like this. Critic stuff. Could be movies, books, or TV shows. If you wanna recommend anything you can in the comments below. 

Have a nice day everyone! :D 

The Secret of the Unicorn

Ok It's been like twenty minutes but i really would love to blog more. By the way, hows my background? Don't be afraid to comment! Ok back to business. My friend Cindy really wants me to blog about her. She really loves horses. I can ask her nearly anything about horses! And we can always talk about random TV shows. I bet you don't know this. GUESS GUESS!



Here it is:
She's secretly a unicorn :O. No really.

A New Blog!

Oh my god! I always dreamed of having a blog! I finally started this blog after I saw Darren's blog (BTW his blog: http://the-world-we-know.blogspot.com ). Well I should probably introduce myself. I'm Hannah if you didn't know (wait how would you find my blog if you didn't?). I really like free writing and just babbling what's on my mind. I'm gonna try to keep these blogs short 'cause if you do let me babble on its probably gonna be like an entire novel. And I'm not afraid to say that I'm a SF Giants fan :D (thus the name sanfranpandafan...see what I did there?). Ok I think this post is getting a bit long. Well I'm probably gonna post a lot at a time I get on. I might even post any information about anything if you want me to. Just shoot me a message. Oh yeah this is probably a new blog so I'm probably gonna have some blog spam XD.