POSTED by: Scott McKittrick on 10/28/2009
Every Halloween,, front porches across the United States are invaded by carved, candle lit pumpkins. Yet, as common as Jack-o-Lanterns are, it seems an odd tradition to carve faces on pumpkins. Of course, there is a reason for the tradition, and it starts in Ireland.
According to Irish legend, a man named Stingy Jack twice tricked the devil into promising to not claim his soul when he died. Needless to say, making deals with the devil isn’t something God would be too happy about, and when it came time for Jack to die, God refused him entrance to heaven. The devil, as promised, also refused to take him. So Jack was given a piece of glowing coal and sent to wander the Earth for all eternity. He placed this coal in a hollowed out turnip and thus the Jack-o-Lantern was born.
Carved turnips (mostly without candles) existed in the British Isles for centuries, but it wasn’t until the Irish began immigrating to North America that the tradition turned to pumpkins, a fruit native to this continent.
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POSTED by: Scott McKittrick on 10/21/2009
Papyrus is one of the first forms of paper ever used. It is made from strips cut from the papyrus reed that have been laid out and hammered together. This formed a bonded sheet of papyrus paper that could be used for writing. Papyrus quickly became popular and was the primary writing medium across the ancient world for centuries. Over time, papyrus feel into disuse as more durable alternatives were introduced.
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POSTED by: Scott McKittrick on 10/19/2009
So this past weekend, I went to visit my sister in Santa Cruz (thus I missed a few posts). While I was up there, my dad and I went to the Roaring Camp railroad to ride the train. This was the first time I had ever seen a geared locomotive up close and operating. n light of this, I decided to write a post about the type of locomotive I saw.
In the 19th century, as industrial logging became more prevalent in the west, there came a need for locomotives that were capable of operating on light, uneven and often steep track. The normal locomotive design just could not handle the grades, curves and cheap construction of the logging railroads and as such a new design was desperately needed. In 1877, Ephraim Shay came up with the solution: The Shay locomotive.
Shays take the original design of a steam locomotive and reconfigure it. Instead of having horizontal cylinders, they have vertical cylinders on the right side of the locomotive that are connected to a drive shaft down its side. The drive shaft connects all the axles through a series of slip joints and bevel gears. This design allows for a very flexible wheelbase that could handle the tight curves and rough track of the time. The design also created a high shaft to wheel turn ratio, thus boosting the power of the locomotive.
There were two other types of geared locomotives designed: the Heisler and the Climax.
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POSTED by: Scott McKittrick on 10/14/2009
Between 200BC and 600AD a group of people created a series of huge line drawings in the ground. The drawings are so big that they can only be fully seen from the air. Even today, more than 1500 years after their creation, no one has yet discovered what their purpose is.
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POSTED by: Scott McKittrick on 10/11/2009
Nitroglycerin is extremely dangerous to work with, it explodes from even small physical shocks, and over time it becomes even more unstable.
In 1867, Alfred Nobel combined Nitroglycerin with diatomaceous earth to create a mixture known as dynamite. In addition to being used for mining and construction purposes, dynamite became a widely used tool of death and destruction.
In 1888, a french newspaper incorrectly printed a obituary about Nobel, who hadn’t yet died. The article harshly condemned him for creating a more efficient method of killing. This article had such an effect on Nobel that when he died he established the Nobel Prize to honor those who have made significant contributions to science.
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POSTED by: Scott McKittrick on 10/07/2009
In the year 79 C.E. Mount Vesuvius, an active volcano near Naples, Italy, erupted with fatal force. OVer the course of two days it completely buried two Roman Cities, Herculaneum and the more famous Pompeii.
Pompeii and Herculaneum were two wealthy cities in the Roman world, both situated at the base of the fertile slopes of Mount Vesuvius. This placed them right in the path of several pyroclastic flows and surges that contributed, in addition to ash-fall, to the complete burial of both cities under tens of feet of volcanic materials.
People were caught in the middle of their daily lives and their homes have been kept in a remarkable state of preservation by the dense ash covering them. The bones of the victims have been found in small cavities in the ash. When these cavities are filled with plaster and the excavated, archaeologists are left with sulptures of the residents of the cities, caught in their final moments of life, some with such clarity that even the expression on their faces may be seen.
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