There is a lot of this sort of thing doing the circuit at the moment, which
does not mean that it isn't correct.
I for one am very interested in anything that anyone can add to this for the
simple reason that I have a lifelong fascination with, well, quirks of
history, twists of fate etc.
Just as every one of us has to make decisions in life that can affect the
rest of our lives for better or worse, history tends to do the same thing.
Off subject but for example, during the American civil war the Confederate
States ordered 2 ocean going ironclads from Laird Brothers to be paid for in
cotton, which the Confederacy had abundance of rotting at the docks due to
Union blockade.
The delivery of these warships was stopped by political pressure, they were
eventually sold to Argentina, but if they had been delivered to their
original prospective purchaser, world history could now be very different
indeed.
So back to mining, try this for size.
The gunpowder plot
Who was present at Old Westminster Hall
Francis Bacon (Definite)
Sir Hugh Myddleton (Highly probable)
A young Thomas Bushell (Highly probable)
Bang
What would mining history read like today?
Kindest regards
RF
-----Original Message-----
From: Roger Hutchins [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 16 February 2010 20:38
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: FW: History Lesson
Can anybody verify this ???
HISTORY LESSON
Railroad tracks. This is fascinating.
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? Well, because that's the way they built them in
England , and English engineers designed the first US railroads.
Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were
built by the same people who built the wagon tramways, and that's the gauge
they used.
So, why did 'they' use that gauge then? Because the people who built the
tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building
wagons, which used that same 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 more often on
some of the old, long distance roads in England .. You see, 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 (including England ) for their legions. Those 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 or run the risk 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 this?', 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. 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.
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