DAILY BRIEFING

[rufusredtail]

DID YOU KNOW ?

All early ships' ropes were plaited from strips of dried rush, a plant known in Latin as the juncus. Even when ropes were made out of more sophisticated materials, such as nylon, the term "junk" remained to describe worn-out bits of rope chucked over the side as rubbish.

The eastern sailing junk is unconnected, taking its name from the Javanese "djong", for ship. As for the phrase "money for old rope ", this was coined to describe the easy money made by sailors who stored up all the ship's rope-junk and sold it at the shipyard in the next port of call.

Here it was shredded out and hammered into the gap between deck planking before it was sealed with pitch. Meanwhile, the fat collected from the boiling down of meat in the gallery was kept by the cook , who made it into candles and sold these when next ashore. This fat was known as the slush, hence the modern term"slush fund".

[Adam]

Very good rufus, tell 'em about Brass Monkeys... 

[urleft]

Very good rufus, tell 'em about Brass Monkeys... 

Yesterday I was going to reply with the brass monkey story, but as I checked the internet, sources said it wasn't true. 

So how about the railroad width being determined by Nookie's personality: 



Four Feet, Eight and a Half Inches

Standard gauge railway lines are used throughout New South Wales & on Australian National Railways' interstate lines. It is also the primary gauge used in Britain, Europe, the USA, & many other countries. It is used on such high speed lines as France's TGV, Germany's ICE, & Japan's Bullet Trains.

Standard gauge, in railway terminology, means a distance between the rails of 4 feet, 8 ฝ inches or 1.435 metres. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?

Because that's the way they built them in England, & English expatriates built railways all around the world. Why did the English build them like that?

Because the first railway lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railway tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did they use that gauge in England, then?

Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing. Okay! Why did their wagons use that odd wheel spacing?

Because, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads. Because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts. So who built these old rutted roads?

The first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The Roman roads have been used ever since. And the ruts?

The original ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by the wheels of Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

Thus, we have the answer to the original question. The standard railway gauge of 4 feet, 8 1/2 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot.

Specifications and Bureaucracies Live Forever.

So, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to  accommodate the back-ends of two war-horses.

And the Space Shuttle?

Plus, there's an interesting extension of the story about railway gauge and horses' behinds. When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on the launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are the solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at a factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railway from the factory runs through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than a railway track, and the railway track is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So a major design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was originally determined by the width of a horse's ass.

 

[erik69]

Four Feet, Eight and a Half Inches

What about the 'whole nine yards' enchilada

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/the-whole-whole-nine-yards-enchilida.html

[rufusredtail]

DID YOU KNOW ?

The replacement of the horse by the car as the main mode of transport left some pretty bizarre regulations on the English statue books.

The drivers of all hackney cabs could be arrested for failing to carry a bale of straw for their horse and a bucket and shovel to clean up behind it.

The English ''journey" derives from the French "jour" -- as in early times few ventured farther than a place from which they could return safely before dark.

In law, this was seven miles_ and ended up creating a nightmare for inn landlords. Riders more than seven miles from home could, at any time of night or day, knock at the inn and the landlord was legally obliged to provide food, lodgings and stabling facilities.

If the landlord politely told you to go away, you could canter to the local police station and demand a constable return with you to enforce your rights.

[rufusredtail]

DID YOU KNOW ?

''As Mad As A Hatter”

Back in the 1800′s, hatters used a process called carroting. The hatters would use an orange liquid (mercury nitrate) to help separate the fur. Because workshops and warehouses were so badly ventilated at the time, workers were literally slowly killing themself via mercury poisoning. They would go insane hence the term “as mad as a hatter”

[rufusredtail]

DID YOU KNOW ?

Anorexia nervosa might be popularly perceived as a "new" condition but it is nothing of the sort. The condition is mentioned in ancient Egyptian papyri and the first case study is that noted by the Persian physician Avicenna in the 11th Century.

The oxford Dictionary contains a quote from 1598, "Then the Anorexie, Then the Dog-hunger", and in 1694 the English doctor Richard Morton first gave the condition a name --- Phthisis Nervosa--- which translates from the Greek as the nervous condition which causes wasting away.

The now recognised name of anorexia nervosa first appeared in medical literature in 1874 after a study by Sir William Gull of Guy's Hospital. He was also a physician to Queen Victoria. It was not only his fixation with conditions afflicting young women but also his stalking of Whitechapel at night that made him a prime suspect for the Jack the Ripper murders.

[rufusredtail]

DID YOU KNOW ?

BLACKMAIL

Extortion

Back in the 16th- century England, ''blackmail'' (reditus negri in Latin) meant nothing more threatening than a form of rent paid in a combination of produce and low denomination coins that were black from constant handling; higher rents were  ''whitemail''  (reditus albi) and paid in silver coin.

These payments were recognized in early Scottish law, and ''blackmail'' acquired its criminal connotations after it was used to describe the supplies extorted from farmers and crofters along the Scottish borders by the outlaws who would otherwise burn them out at the drop of a hat. PAY THROUGH THE NOSE

[rufusredtail]

DID YOU KNOW ?

AMMONIA

The ancient temple of Ammon at Siwa in the Libyan Desert attracted thousands of pilgrims, who left their camels tied up nearby.

Over the centuries, the sand soaked up thousands of gallons of camel urine. When the oasis was commandeered by the Roman Army in 106 BC for a new garrision, the troops digging out the initial defences found large and foul-smelling crystals of sal ammoniac, which were shipped back to Rome , where their properties were identified and named after the garrision.

Once alerted to the cleansing powers of ammonia, all garrisions began to collect urine every day for use in the laundry and the daily oral hygiene drill.

[rufusredtail]

DID YOU KNOW ?

BATTLEAX

Overbearing harridan

Despite the antiquity of the weapon, this use of the term in its non-military, pejorative sense only dates from the 1890s, and refers to the American Rights Movement magazine of the same title.

The magazine celebrated the activities of one of the movement's more strident members, Carrie Nation (1846-1911), a 6-ft-(1.8m) tall Prohibitionist famed for marching into saloons to close them down with an axe. Weighing in at over 180lbs (82kg) it is said that most fled and left her to it.

[rufusredtail]

 Food for thought… or possible death
◾Those with a little money had plates made of pewter. Food with a high acid content caused some of the lead to leach into the food, causing lead poisoning and often death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

[rufusredtail]

DID YOU KNOW ?

TURNCOAT
Traitor.
This was known in the 16th century long before soldiers had uniforms or coats, so all the stories claiming this is derived from deserters turning their coats inside out to show the colour of the opposing army are spurious; how could cloth be dyed to show a different colour each side ?

Only the very rich and powerful had coats that were lined .

A ''turncoat'' was an old coat that had been taken to a tailor to be inside out and revamped for those who could not afford to buy a new one .

The modern use was born of the metaphorical allusion to the changing of sides. REVAMP

[rufusredtail]

DID YOU KNOW ?

GENOCIDE
Eradication of an ethnic group.
Professor Raphael Lemkin (1900-59) of Duke University, North Carolina coined this term in 1933, and first used it when he addressed the League of Nations in Madrid at the beginning of his campaign to make genocide a recognized crime in its own right.

This meeting did not happen until December 9 ,1948, so it is a myth that the criminals at Nuremberg stood trial on such a charge, although the term was used during the proceedings. CONCENTRATION CAMP and HOLOCAUST

[rufusredtail]

DID YOU KNOW ?

KNUCKLEDUSTER
Brass finger guard

Firmly associated in the modern mind with street thugs, "knuckleduster" is actually a mid-19th century American nickname for the pepperbox pistol. Something of an early revolver, this had several barrels that could be rotated to bring them under the flintlock, resulting in the shotter's hand recieving a generous dusting of powder burn.

The brass trigger guard enclosed the shooter's entire hand so, even after all shots had been discharged, it could still serve as a brutal effective weapon.

In time , the pistol faded from use but left its nickname behind for brass knuckles.

[SOM LUCK]

Always entertaining, Thanks