A triceratops makes a rare appearance in the news, in this March 6, 2014 report by Sidney Bender in the Vineyard Gazette [in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts]: Triceratops Incineration? Not on Island Firemens’ Watch When Oak Bluffs firefighters responded to a fully involved fire on Barnes Road late Wednesday night, they knew that they had more […]
Tag: fire
Flammable trousers: then, and later, and now
Behold three eras in the international saga of trouser flammability. THEN: The 2005 Ig Nobel Prize for agricultural history was awarded to James Watson of Massey University, New Zealand, for his study, concerning the period between World War I and World War II, called “The Significance of Mr. Richard Buckley’s Exploding Trousers.” LATER: This month, in 2013, the […]
300,000 to 450,000 Cows Per Zeppelin, approximately
Some say that the German Army General (retired), Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin, was a man “who made the improbable probable.” For an example of this viewpoint, see the website of Zeppelin University (based on the shores of Lake Constance, Germany) “Graf Zeppelin was a manager at the end of the 19th century […]
Fire in the river (Cleveland), fire from on high (London)
The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, caught fire, in 1969. Randy Newman wrote a song about that. This week, in London, UK, things in a neighborhood in London are burning, the heat being supplied by a new, tall building that—for lengthy periods of the day during at least part of the year— focuses sunlight down […]