Sonic booms can get on your nerves.
NASA and the FAA learned this the hard way in 1964, when their testing over Oklahoma City caused eight booms per day for six months. It led to 15,000 complaints and a class action lawsuit — which they lost.
The idea seems to have caught Israel’s attention — last October it started using F-16 jet planes to create sonic booms over the Gaza Strip, to bug the Palestinians. Extra points for creativity, I guess.
On Aug. 10, 2003, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko became the first person to be married in space.
He was in the international space station, 240 miles over New Zealand, when he married Ekaterina Dmitrieva, who was in Texas.
“With the prospect of coal becoming as rare as the dodo itself, the world, we are told by scientists, may still regard with complacency the failure of our ordinary carbon supply. The natural gases and oils of the world will provide the human race with combustible material for untold ages — such at least is the opinion of those who are best informed on the subject.”
— Glasgow Herald, quoted in Scientific American Supplement No. 717, Sept. 28, 1889
In 1959, the U.S. Postal Service tried delivering mail with a cruise missile — they replaced its warhead with two mail containers and fired it from Virginia to Florida.
When it hit the target, the postmaster general announced a new era. “Before man reaches the moon,” he said, “mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to Britain, to India or Australia by guided missiles. We stand on the threshold of rocket mail.”
But the program went no further. “The post office has a great charm at one point of our lives,” wrote Jane Austen. “When you have lived to my age, you will begin to think letters are never worth going through the rain for.”
Record skyscrapers through history:
The Russians’ “tsar tank” (above) didn’t work in World War I, and their “winged tank” (below) didn’t work in World War II.
No matter. “Failure is not falling down,” runs an Asian proverb, “but refusing to get up.”
Bill Clinton sent only two e-mails during his entire eight-year term in office. One was to test the system; the other was to congratulate John Glenn on his return to space.
Both are archived in Clinton’s presidential library.
Robert Wallace had a noble impulse when he discovered a new species of monkey in Bolivia’s Madidi National Park. Rather than name the species after himself, he would auction off the naming rights to raise money for the park.
The marketers of the world are not so noble: $650,000 changed hands and the new species was named after an Internet casino. It’s officially called the “GoldenPalace.com Monkey.”
Uninspiring land speed records:
Interestingly, these were all set with electric vehicles.
People were willing to believe in a chess-playing automaton as early as 1769. That’s when Wolfgang von Kempelen unveiled “The Turk,” a cloaked and turbaned robot that played over a maplewood cabinet full of clockwork. The contraption toured the courts of Europe, where it beat Benjamin Franklin and Charles Babbage, among many others.
The machine’s secret emerged only in 1854, after the automaton was destroyed in the great Philadelphia fire. The cabinet had contained a human player who followed the game by watching magnets on the board’s underside. He made his moves on a secondary board that transmitted them to the Turk.
Still, it played some good games. Here it beats the crap out of Napoleon Bonaparte, who has White:
1. e4 e5 2. Qf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Nf6 4. Ne2 Bc5 5. a3 d6 6. O-O Bg4 7. Qd3 Nh5 8. h3 Bxe2 9. Qxe2 Nf4 10. Qe1 Nd4 11. Bb3 Nxh3+ 12. Kh2 Qh4 13. g3 Nf3+ 14. Kg2 Nxe1+ 15. Rxe1 Qg4 16. d3 Bxf2 17. Rh1 Qxg3+ 18. Kf1 Bd4 19. Ke2 Qg2+ 20. Kd1 Qxh1+ 21. Kd2 Qg2+ 22. Ke1 Ng1 23. Nc3 Bxc3+ 24. bxc3 Qe2# 0-1