TheOctonaut

It also reminds me of "and then everyone clapped"

I think there's some useful context, if not a good defence of this story.

It's one of the original stories told by Reverend Awdry told to his 2 year old, measles-ridden child in 1942 war-era England (Wait, is this making it worse?).

Awdry would sing/recite old poems to Christopher, who then pressed him for further details that turned into a story.

For example, the opening of that episode of Thomas features the Limerick that prompted the story, which was around at least since 1902:

In the original story by Awdry, there is only a single tunnel, and the train is completely blocking the line and essentially ruining a business. So stubborn is the engine, that they have to dig a new tunnel beside the old one. The rails are removed and "a wall" are placed in front of the tunnel, for safety - to prevent trains literally running into the wrong tunnel and crashing. The Fat Director/Controller is also pretty unsympathetic deliberately - he commands people to push and pull the train out without success, but doesn't himself help - "My doctor has forbidden me to push". However the original books follow the realities of steam engine and railway operation far more closely than the TV series did (and as a result, the original series, closer to the books, were far more realistic than the later ones).

As portrayed in the TV show it definitely comes off more villainous. But in the original telling we have to take away 70 years of Thomas trains having faces, personalities, relationships and familiarity. When originally told, the Henry story didn't even take place in the same "universe" - there was just 3 abstract stories about trains, loosely based on old rhymes and news stories.

You are correct. In my defence:

In Old English, ⟨ð⟩ (called ðæt) was used interchangeably with ⟨þ⟩ to represent the Old English dental fricative phoneme /θ/ or its allophone /ð/, which exist in modern English phonology as the voiceless and voiced dental fricatives both now spelled ⟨th⟩.

So your version of compassion towards this woman is "I hope she's part of an elaborate election lie"?

They're using ~~Thorn~~ Edd, the single character that represented the Th sound in old English (still used in Icelandic).

It's a harmless little quirk in their own writing, although editing the title of a book to include it seems pretty silly.

I think he deserved it, don't you?

Yes you are. But that's not how school credit works?

Is that a school subject in America?

Which subject did "show up on time" give you credit towards?

Um.

Does Ev have an Iron Cross on his hand?

Edit: questions bad?

Too cowardly to do anything useful to make amends. Just let another conscript fill his space.

Brave enough to drive over Palestinians and call them "terrorists in their hundreds". Not brave enough to stand up to criticism from his countrymen. This is what spending billions of dollars on an asymmetrical war gets you: a system in which the weakest people can still take the lives of hundreds before being thrown away themselves.

Fun fact! Halloween and Dia de los Muertoes are on the "same" day!

Halloween is "Hallow's Evening". ie the Evening of All Hallow's Day, aka All Saint's Day, and directly related to Dia de los Muertos. But it's the calendar day before, right? October 31st? Sort of. In Catholicism, the liturgical day begins and ends with prayers at sunset. The day had ended and a new day had begun, usually between 4pm and 6pm. So the order of the 24 hour day goes: evening, night, morning, afternoon. Therefore 6pm on the 1st of November would be too late to celebrate All Saint's Day, so it was actually celebrated the calendar day before.

The same is true of Christmas Eve. Why do we have the "Evening" of Christmas the day before? Why do many cultures begin full celebration the night before? Precisely because as a Christian event on a Christian calendar, that is when the day actually begins.

As a former Catholic it's important I acknowledge all of this overlays the local traditions syncretised into these far more secular 'holidays' today. It wouldn't be important for Halloween to be celebrated in the "e'en" if Oiche Samhain wasn't a night time thing.