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Post up facts and things that hardly anyone knows...... (for entertainment purposes only. NO need to fact check)

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You either get your wife or kid to work the back-office stuff on your phone. For me, it's my wife.
 
Kern Dog said:
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Holy moly! This is an 1895 photo of a train crossing the high bridge over the Pecos River near Langtry. If you have a large computer monitor, check out the architectural details ... the underpinnings, the foundation/footings and how they are built etc.. Wow. What an engineering feat and what a leap of faith to cross it in a train! I am reminded of this quote:
"The high, spindle-legged railroad bridge across the deep canyon formed by the Pecos River between Langtry and Comstock was breathtaking. It was more breathtaking to stand on it and look down than to stand beneath it and look up. It had no guardrails, and a broad footpath ran its length. To walk across made one giddy enough, and legend gives credit to a young ranchwoman who first dared to ride across it on horseback. She was celebrated in an anonymous poem, "The Pecos River Queen." James Cooper of Snyder said that when he lived near the bridge in the 1930s, sheet metal was laid in places where the wooden walk was unsafe. Many times, however, he and others rode their horses across that clattering path with the danger of plummeting to death at both elbows. He said you needed a steady, unspookable horse. Others told stories of their encounters with the Old Pecos High Bridge. When she was a child, Katherine Anne Porter crossed it more than once on trips from Kyle, Texas, to El Paso. She remembered the bridge, which was two years younger than she, having been built in 1892, as being unsafe. She wrote, "Here was the famous and beautiful Pecos Bridge, then supposed to be the highest and one of the longest in the world." Three hundred twenty-one feet above the river, it stretched 2,180 feet long, almost half a mile. It was the highest bridge in the United States and third highest in the world, merely 27 feet short of the record.
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They didn't waste any time (or money)!

Using a daily work crew that averaged 67 people, the bridge was completed in just 103 days at a cost of $250,108.00. The completed construction was 2,180 feet long, consisting of a combined cantilever and a 185-foot section of "suspended" lattice over the actual watercourse. The ironwork alone weighed 1,820 tons.

The Pecos Viaduct - Amistad National Recreation Area (U.S. National Park Service)
 
The phonautograph, invented by Scott in 1857, was the earliest known sound recording device. It visually represented sound waves by tracing them onto a medium like paper or glass coated with soot.
 
By Nov 15, 2026 VOYAGER 1 will be 1 light day away from earth. The only man made object to ever reach that distance, and it will have taken 50 yrs to get there. It will take NASA almost a full 24 hrs. to communicate with it at that distance. So if you're wondering that will be 16,094,764,800 mi.
VOYAGER 1 is traveling at a speed of 38,025 mph. The record for human speed was set by APOLLO 10 in 1969 at 24,116 mph and is unbroken.
 
A form of waterbed was first invented in 1833 by the Scottish physician Neil Arnott. The waterbed idea bounced around for the next 140 or so years with little real attention, especially from the mass market, but by the 1970s waterbeds had started gaining traction in the consumer market. Once marketed as both cutting-edge and sexy, waterbeds quickly gained popularity, peaking in 1987 when they accounted for nearly 20% of all mattress sales in the U.S. One memorable slogan captured the era’s enthusiasm: “Two things are better on a waterbed. One of them is sleep.” But the charm faded as waterbeds’ drawbacks mounted: heavy frames, tricky maintenance, awkward moves, and a constant risk of leaks. These days waterbeds are almost non-existent...
 
Kern Dog said:
A form of waterbed was first invented in 1833 by the Scottish physician Neil Arnott. The waterbed idea bounced around for the next 140 or so years with little real attention, especially from the mass market, but by the 1970s waterbeds had started gaining traction in the consumer market. Once marketed as both cutting-edge and sexy, waterbeds quickly gained popularity, peaking in 1987 when they accounted for nearly 20% of all mattress sales in the U.S. One memorable slogan captured the era’s enthusiasm: “Two things are better on a waterbed. One of them is sleep.” But the charm faded as waterbeds’ drawbacks mounted: heavy frames, tricky maintenance, awkward moves, and a constant risk of leaks. These days waterbeds are almost non-existent...
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And that is a real shame, because they are about impossible to find now. The slogan was correct. I am older now but still weigh almost 300lbs and sleep on my side. No regular mattress is designed to allow for this, but the old water bed years back? Water conforms and allowed my shoulder to ride low so the rest of my body could take some of the weight distribution, Now I have to sleep with my "bottom arm" out in front of me with my body in a partial twist because no mattress on earth can absorb my entire shoulder so my back stays straight. I have been meaning to go try one of those "purple" ones but I am not keen on the idea of sleeping on a bed of pure plastic(silicone rubber+EPDM and whatever else it is made of) so I haven't gone to check them out yet.

Bring them back! I never understood the leaks, we never had an issue(we got rid of it when we moved to our home 20+ years ago, mistake!!) and I find it laughable that technology wouldn't have found a way to avoid leaks by now.
 
Detective D said:
And that is a real shame, because they are about impossible to find now. The slogan was correct. I am older now but still weigh almost 300lbs and sleep on my side. No regular mattress is designed to allow for this, but the old water bed years back? Water conforms and allowed my shoulder to ride low so the rest of my body could take some of the weight distribution, Now I have to sleep with my "bottom arm" out in front of me with my body in a partial twist because no mattress on earth can absorb my entire shoulder so my back stays straight. I have been meaning to go try one of those "purple" ones but I am not keen on the idea of sleeping on a bed of pure plastic(silicone rubber+EPDM and whatever else it is made of) so I haven't gone to check them out yet.

Bring them back! I never understood the leaks, we never had an issue(we got rid of it when we moved to our home 20+ years ago, mistake!!) and I find it laughable that technology wouldn't have found a way to avoid leaks by now.
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Have you tried a sleep number? Im 260 and a side sleeper and my arm hasn't gone numb since I got the sleep number 3 years ago.
 
The average American consumes two pounds of garlic annually, which is impressive considering the food’s minuscule weight.
 
The 2005 film Lord of War starred Nicolas Cage. It was filmed in the Czech Republic, and directed by Andrew Niccol. Niccol discovered it was cheaper to purchase real firearms rather than props, and so he purchased 3,000 Kalashnikovs of several variants. After filming, most of the guns were sold back at a loss, though some were sawed in half to remove them from circulation. Niccol commented that he found it disturbing how easy it was to purchase them. Niccol met a variety of arms dealers during the production process, which he came to like. He attributed their likeability despite their profession to the fact that they were very good salesmen. A particular scene in the film featured a line of fifty T-72 tanks. These were provided by a source in the same country, and the source told Niccol that he could use the tanks until December, as they were needed back by then to sell to Libya...

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Flying Dutchman​

The Flying Dutchman, a ghost ship in several maritime legends, was a sign of bad luck, particularly for sailors. In most versions, the ship appeared off the Cape of Good Hope, the southern tip of Africa. The legend was inspired by the story of a Dutch sea captain named Vanderdecken who boasted that he could complete the journey around the cape during a fierce storm. He swore that he would do so or keep trying forever. As punishment for his rashness, he was condemned to sail around the cape until the end of time. A similar version of the legend involves another captain who was forced to sail across the ocean forever because he had sold his soul to the devil. In 1843 the composer Richard Wagner wrote art opera based on the tale of the Flying Dutchman, which spread the story's popularity.
Flying Dutchman - Myth Encyclopedia - story, legend
 
Pecos Bill said:

Flying Dutchman​

The Flying Dutchman, a ghost ship in several maritime legends, was a sign of bad luck, particularly for sailors. In most versions, the ship appeared off the Cape of Good Hope, the southern tip of Africa. The legend was inspired by the story of a Dutch sea captain named Vanderdecken who boasted that he could complete the journey around the cape during a fierce storm. He swore that he would do so or keep trying forever. As punishment for his rashness, he was condemned to sail around the cape until the end of time. A similar version of the legend involves another captain who was forced to sail across the ocean forever because he had sold his soul to the devil. In 1843 the composer Richard Wagner wrote art opera based on the tale of the Flying Dutchman, which spread the story's popularity.
Flying Dutchman - Myth Encyclopedia - story, legend
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:lol:
 
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