Why did French knife grinders around 1900 work lying on their stomachs with dogs on their legs?

For ten hours a day, French knife grinders lay face-down over spinning stones, using gravity to save their spines. To warm their freezing, motionless legs, they used dogs.

These workers in Thiers, France, known as émouleurs, produced the majority of the country's knives at the turn of the 20th century. The physical demands of the job dictated their unusual prone posture. Grinding hardened steel against fast-spinning sandstone wheels required immense, sustained pressure. If a grinder stood and hunched over the wheel, pushing down with his arms and lower back, the strain would ruin his spine in a matter of years. By lying flat on a wooden board—called a planche à ventre—suspended above the stone, the grinder could press his entire body weight into the blade.

The dogs were a practical solution to a brutal environment. The workshops, or rouets, were built in the deep, shaded gorges of the Durolle river to harness the water power needed to spin the heavy stones. These stone buildings lacked heating and were constantly damp from splashing water and freezing mountain drafts.

While a grinder's upper body stayed warm from the intense physical exertion, his legs remained entirely stationary. To prevent frostbite and rheumatism, the men brought dogs to work. Small dogs would curl up on the workers' calves and thighs, acting as living heating pads. The arrangement benefited both: the dogs stayed off the icy stone floors and absorbed the worker's body heat, while the worker maintained circulation in his lower extremities.

Because of the yellow sandstone dust that constantly sprayed from the wheels and coated their aprons, these workers earned the nickname les ventres jaunes (the yellow bellies). The practice faded in the mid-20th century as electric motors and enclosed machinery eliminated the need to harness freezing rivers for mechanical power.

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The Last Judicial Hanging in The United States

Billy Bailey was born in 1946, the ninth of 23 children, in South Carolina, where they lived in poverty. When he grew up, he developed an alcohol addiction and had a filthy temper. Bailey also got in trouble with the law on numerous occasions, committing six felonies ranging from grand larceny to burglary. In 1979, in Delaware, after being placed in a work release facility, Billy Bailey learned he faced a potential 45-year sentence for his most recent string of crimes. After attempting to kill himself with a knife only to be stopped by his brother-in-law, Bailey asked him to stop at a liquor store. There, he robbed the clerk before knocking her down and attempting to shoot her, but thankfully, the gun jammed. He fled the scene, being dropped off by his brother-in-law at Lambertson’s Corner. There, Billy Bailey entered a farmhouse and stole a shotgun. The elderly couple inside where then slaughtered by Bailey, the man being shot twice in the chest and once in the head with the pist...

Jewish women being stripped naked by Ukrainians in 1941.

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Holocaust victim

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