Anniversaries and Old Photographs

Diamond Comic Distributors celebrated its 40th-anniversary today.

And, even though the office doesn’t have many people working out of it right now due to COVID, the office was decorated for the day with signs.

There was even a banner at the main entrance.

Two well-endowed super-heroes.

I hadn’t been out the doors into the main lobby since March 2020.

I’ve been with Diamond for almost fifteen of those forty years, but Diamond has been a part of my life since 1991. I still have two Diamond shipping boxes from then.

Happy anniversary!


Yesterday, I saw this on Twitter:

Panoramic photos of Washington, DC in the 1880s! I had to take a look.

The link on the webpage didn’t work, but a search for “William Henry Jackson,” the photographer, on the Smithsonian website brought up the photos soon enough. (For example, the second in the series of four.)

I was taken by the last of the four photos, which I’ve cropped and run through a website that colorizes photos, out of curiosity to see how it would turn out.

Colorized by AI, it actually looks pretty good!

The Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station is to the left. That’s where James Garfield was assassinated. It’s now the site of the National Gallery of Art. It’s also where I happened to stand for the Washington Nationals’ World Series parade.

The roofed platform extending from the station is intereting. The end of it, in the center of the photo, is roughly where I stood for Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity in 2010 (and received a really funky sunburn).

Behind the station in the photo is Metropolitan Memorial Methodist Church, with a truly impressive spire — 240 feet tall! It was torn down in the 1930s.

To the right of Metropolitan Methodist, you can see the twin spires of James Renwick’s Trinity Episcopal.

The Capitol Building is at right.

Behind it, the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress is under construction. The base of its dome is clearly identifiable.

This dates the photograph to the mid-1890s. Construction on the Jefferson Building began in 1890 and was completed in 1897. The Smithsonian website suggests a date of 1886 for the photograph, but that’s clearly erroneous. 🙂

It’s a cool little photograph. I like it.

Published by Allyn Gibson

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over ten years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

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