Interesting faxes thread

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by storm5510

These panels had been soaked in a liquid mixture containing aluminum powder and iron oxide. ... I saw this in a documentary several months ago.

Yeah, I saw the same documentary (probably).

Let's paint the skin of our Airship with Rocket Fuel.

What could possibly go wrong???

[Dr Sardonicus]

The first bombing of an American city from airplanes occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma on June 1, 1921.

The bombing was part of the racial pogrom against the Black Greenwood community, also called "Black Wall Street."

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by storm5510

<snip>
About the Hindenburg fire. Its skin was not seamless. It was made up of large panels laced together. Half-inch gaps were left between the panels to allow any leaking hydrogen gas to easily escape. These panels had been soaked in a liquid mixture containing aluminum powder and iron oxide.
<snip>

Ah, yes, the "incendiary paint hypothesis." Color me skeptical. For one thing, I'm a bit dubious about the iron oxide.

Cheerfully disregarding that minor detail, though, the aluminum powder/iron oxide mixture known as thermite does indeed burn very hot, but it is not at all easy to ignite. In that sense, it isn't "flammable."

Hydrogen, though, is quite flammable. One redeeming feature, though -- being a gas that's lighter than air, once it's released from confinement, on fire or not, it goes straight up. That may help explain why, of the 97 people on board the Hindenburg when it was destroyed, 62 survived.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by a1call

Fax-Machines predate telephones by more than a decade.
This gentleman patented a Fax-Machine in 1843.
Oh, he also invented the Earth-Battery and the Electric-Clock.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Bain_(inventor)

Wow.

[a1call]

Sorry for three incomplete link.
Regardless, it turns out Scottish engineers actually do deserve their good reputation.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by a1call

Regardless, it turns out Scottish engineers actually do deserve their good reputation.

Absolutely! I still remember a great visit to the Glasgow Transport Museum,
and you come across locomotives built in Scotland all over the world.

[kladner]

https://www.atlasobscura.com/article...g-interactions
There is a lot of information about citrus in general in this piece. The origin of the grapefruit, from a variety of citrus imported from Asia did not happen there.

In fact, the grapefruit was first found a world away, in Barbados, probably in the mid-1600s.

The heart of the story regards grapefruit greatly increasing the absorption of a very large number of drugs. This can increase the effective dosage to dangerous levels with some drugs. However, it also raises the possibility of economizing on things like ED drugs.
EDIT: OOOps. This is a repost of a story first posted by firejuggler. https://mersenneforum.org/showpost.p...postcount=4075
I was really motivated to post because of the role Barbados plays.

[petrw1]

Canada is home to the oldest brewery in North America, Molson, which was established in 1786

[storm5510]

Originally Posted by petrw1

Canada is home to the oldest brewery in North America, Molson, which was established in 1786

This was way before Eberhard Anheuser and Adolphus Busch set up shop in St. Louis. That was sometime around 1860, give or take a few years.

[masser]

Originally Posted by storm5510

This was way before Eberhard Anheuser and Adolphus Busch set up shop in St. Louis. That was sometime around 1860, give or take a few years.

Don't forget Yuengling.

[storm5510]

During WWII, the Japanese Army occupied a tiny speck of United States territory for a while, Attu Island in the Aleutian Chain which is part of Alaska. How the U.S. Military learned they were there, I do not know. A guess: Triangulation of radio signals coming from the island somebody just happened to stumble upon. They probably did aerial reconnaissance to see exactly where the Japanese were. A navy submarine dropped off a small group of observers to report on what it was the Japanese were doing. A few days later, the USMC invaded the island and wiped them all out.