willywhit Posted September 12, 2006 Report Share Posted September 12, 2006 RAILROADS 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. Okay! 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. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. 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 army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses. 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 at 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. 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skategoat Posted September 12, 2006 Report Share Posted September 12, 2006 Great story. Printed it off for my kids. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Gendzwill Posted September 12, 2006 Report Share Posted September 12, 2006 Not strictly true. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdgang Posted September 12, 2006 Report Share Posted September 12, 2006 I love the internet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
willywhit Posted September 12, 2006 Author Report Share Posted September 12, 2006 Not strictly true. wow, you can't believe everything you read on the internet or get in your email. I stand corrected,sir. :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Gendzwill Posted September 12, 2006 Report Share Posted September 12, 2006 I have that snopes site bookmarked. Everytime I get a story by email or whatever that sounds legend-ish, I run a few keywords into snopes and they usually have an article. Sometimes they turn out to be true, but mostly not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ncermak Posted September 12, 2006 Report Share Posted September 12, 2006 I hate doing it, but whenever I get those BS stories...the online amber alerts, the Microsft fowarding giveaways, etc. I snopes them, and then send a response to the sender. The ones I particularyly love are the ones that tell you a virus is out there, and give you a file to delete. It is usually a essential system file, or something of the likes. always fun to see the sender backpedaling and foward restoratioin instructions after the fact. If its virus related, I usually just look it up on Nortons homepage or the Symantec page... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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