Author Topic: Did you know?  (Read 2758 times)

xyzer

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Did you know?
« on: March 27, 2008, 12:05:12 AM »
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5
inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.


Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England , and
English expatriates built the US railroads



Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were
built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the
gauge they used.


Why did 'they' use that gauge 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.


Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried
to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long
distance roads in England , because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.


So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance
roads in Europe (and England ) for their legions. The roads have been used ever
since.


And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which
everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the
chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were all alike in the matter of
wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet,
8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war
chariot. Bureaucracies live forever.


So the next time you are handed a Specification/ Procedure/ Process and wonder
'What horse's ass came up with it?' you may be exactly right.


Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.) Now, the twist to the story:


When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big
booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid
rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah
. The engineers who designed the SRBs would 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 railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the
mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly
wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about
as wide as two horses' behinds.


So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most
advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the
width of a horse's ass.

A nd you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important? Ancient horse's asses
control almost everything....and CURRENT Horses Asses are controlling everything
else!! ;D
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rbodell

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Re: Did you know?
« Reply #1 on: March 27, 2008, 12:16:24 AM »
And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important? Ancient horse's asses
control almost everything....and CURRENT Horses Asses are controlling everything
else!! ;D


Well, what do you know about that, I am inpotent.
The shear depth of my shallowness is perplexing yet morbidly interesting. Bob 2007

Tom

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Re: Did you know?
« Reply #2 on: March 27, 2008, 12:44:35 AM »
Careful Bob, you are now like to receive 10,000 spams for that little blue pill.
Tom
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rbodell

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Re: Did you know?
« Reply #3 on: March 27, 2008, 02:13:43 AM »
Careful Bob, you are now like to receive 10,000 spams for that little blue pill.

OOPS silly me, I misspelled it.

Well now that you mention it ......
The shear depth of my shallowness is perplexing yet morbidly interesting. Bob 2007