POSTED by: Scott McKittrick on 10/02/2009
Its April of 1860 and you are out following your daily routine. Suddenly you see on the horizon a small dust cloud. As the source draws near, you see a lone horse and rider, galloping quickly across the American countryside in a race to complete their part of the nation’s newest mail delivery system: The Pony Express.
In April of 1860, a new fast mail delivery service was started. It consisted of horses and riders carrying mail in a relay system across the US from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California. Each rider would carry saddle bags full of mail from one station to the next, where it would be handed off to the next rider for the next leg of the journey.
The Pony Express lasted for only 18 months before it was disbanded in favor of stage coaches and later a transcontinental telegraph system. The Pony Express was never a commercial success and ended completely bankrupt.
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POSTED by: Scott McKittrick on 10/01/2009
In November of 1944 as the second world war was nearing its end, a hydrogen balloon floated over the Alaskan coast and dropped a small bomb. It didn’t do any damage whatsoever, but it marked the beginning of an extremely unusual type of attack; Fire Balloons.
The Japanese Fire Balloons were hydrogen filled balloons much like a weather balloon, with various types of explosive payloads. These balloons were launched from Japanese beaches into the gulf stream and floated across the Pacific Ocean into US airspace. Once above US soil, the balloon’s payload was dropped and detonated and shortly after, an explosive charge detonated the hydrogen in the envelope was detonated as well. The balloons also had mechanisms that detected the change in altitude of the balloon and adjusted ballast and hydrogen so as to keep them within the confines of the gulf stream.
Over the course of about six months, more than 9000 of these balloons were launched into the sky and an estimated 1000 actually reached US soil. These balloons were extremely inefficient and caused only a minor amount of damage. In addition, the US press agreed not to release information about the balloons, thus preventing the Japanese from knowing that they had any effectiveness at all.
There is only one recorded incident of a fire balloon actually killing anyone. The balloon had drifted over Oregon and gotten caught in a tree. It was found by a group of people on a church picnic and exploded while they were attempting to pull it from the tree, killing the pastor’s wife and five of the attending children. After the deaths, the media blackout was lifted so as to warn the public about the dangers of these balloons.
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POSTED by: Scott McKittrick on 09/30/2009
Microgravity (aka weightlessness), it is a condition that causes all sorts of interesting phenomena…like bubbles that sit in water without floating.
The reason that bubbles float on earth has to do with the relative density of water compared to air. At sea level, water is 784 times denser than air and so gravity pulls it down towards the earth more than it does air, thus the air rises out of the water. Perhaps a more accurate way to see it would be to say that the water sinks. In microgravity, such as being on the space shuttle in orbit, there is no gravity to pull harder on the water than on the air, so the air has no reason to rise and ends up staying in the middle of the water. NASA has put together some very interesting videos on the behavior of water and bubbles in space. See them here.
Difference in density also explains why steel sinks but wood floats. For information on why steel boats float instead of sink, see Bouyancy.
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POSTED by: Scott McKittrick on 09/29/2009
Ever wonder how the people who build huge oil tankers and ocean liners get their creations into the water?
They launch them!
There are three different ways to “launch” a ship. The most known one is the stern first launch. In a stern first launch the ship is built on a slipway (a long ramp that leads to the water and some of the way into it). When the hull is completed, the ship is released and slides down the slipway and into the water. Drag chains are used to slow it down and prevent it from moving too far away from the dock. It is then tied up at the dock and the super structure is completed.
Another form of ship launch is the side launch. This is often used in cases where there is not sufficient room for a stern first launch, such as in a river or other narrow body of water. In this case, the ship is built next to the water, facing parallel to the shore. When it is ready to be launched, it slides sideways over the edge of the shore and into the water. This method also helps reduce the stresses in the keel that are caused by a stern first launch.
The final form of ship launch is not actually a real launch. Instead, the ship is built in dry dock and when it is completed, the dry dock is flooded and the ship floated out.
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POSTED by: Scott McKittrick on 09/28/2009
Here in Southern California, earthquakes are a continual and major threat, you never know when or where they will strike, and the larger ones can cause immeasurable damage to life and property. So, naturally, most people in the area are well acquainted with the standard method of measuring them: the Richter Scale.
The Richter Scale was developed in 1935 by Charles Richter as a way to measure the strength of earthquakes. The Richter scale originally started at zero and each whole number step represented a release of about 31 times more energy than the previous number. While in theory, the Richter scale has no upper or lower limit, it tends to become “saturated” around a 6.8 magnitude earthquake, and thus can be innaccurate for larger quakes.
In response to the problems with the Richter scale, a new more modern scale was developed in the 1970′s. It is known as the Moment Magnitude Scale. The main difference between the two is that the Richter scale is designed to measure intensity, while the Moment Magnitude scale measures the total energy released. In most cases the magnitudes correspond to the same number on the other scale, but in the case of larger earthquakes, the readings may be different.
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POSTED by: Scott McKittrick on 09/27/2009
One of the most famous sled dog races is the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Alaska. It is run every year to commemorate the 1925 “Serum Run” and to celebrate the sport of dog mushing. This nearly 1,200 mile race tests dogs and mushers to the limit as they struggle to cross icy terrain in subzero weather. The Iditarod is one thing that I try to follow every year, but I didn’t know that there are quite a few other races out there. For example, the Yukon Quest race is another annual sled do race and is widely considered to be even tougher and more dangerous than the Iditarod. In addition to these two races, there are numerous other long and short distance events for mushers and sled dogs.
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POSTED by: Scott McKittrick on 09/26/2009
A friend and I were discussing the dangers of Immortality and what it would take to “survive” it. One thing we decided was that to prevent extreme boredom, an immortal would have to continually learn new things, perhaps even one new thing a day, however small that new thing may be. Remember, you are never to old to learn new things, even if u are 100,000 years old.
On top of this discussion, I am continually interested in learning new things and have been known to complain that there is so much to learn, that I couldn’t possibly learn it all in the course of one lifetime.
So, in order to help out any random immortals and mostly to satisfy my own interest in learning new things, I will try to post something new to learn every day here. What I post will be on a very wide range of topics. My goal will be one thing every day. The scope of human knowledge is so vast that it will be impossible for me to run out of subject matter…Theoretically.
The Series will be called “Daily Curiosities“.
