Give me a mind-blowing history fact

174,641 Views | 1088 Replies | Last: 4 hrs ago by Cinco Ranch Aggie
nortex97
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AG


Just a family trip to disney land.
agrams
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the sr-71 had one major challenge in its development: the exhaust of the massive engines were the biggest radar signatures on the plane. after multiple design attempts to solve this, they couldn't get it worked out with changes to the geometey of the engine or airframe. finally they tried the idea of ionizing the exhaust. the ionized plasma had a radar absorbing effect. to do this though they had to add cesium to the fuel.
whoop1995
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agrams said:

the sr-71 had one major challenge in its development: the exhaust of the massive engines were the biggest radar signatures on the plane. after multiple design attempts to solve this, they couldn't get it worked out with changes to the geometey of the engine or airframe. finally they tried the idea of ionizing the exhaust. the ionized plasma had a radar absorbing effect. to do this though they had to add cesium to the fuel.
Wasn't the blackbird also the jet that when they refueled on the ground the gas tanks were solid and then when it was at altitude the gas tanks contracted together and leaked the gas out. Probably told this wrong but I remember seeing this plane in the Smithsonian air and space museum and it is still amazing to this day to me.

Other crazy facts about this airplane to my knowledge if they are wrong I am sorry but this is from memory of a longtime ago.

Fastest manned plane over Mach 3, and went above like over 70k feet but cameras could take pictures like you and I from an iPhone.
I collect ticket stubs! looking for a 1944 orange bowl and 1981 independence bowl ticket stub as well as Aggie vs tu stubs - 1926 and below, 1935-1937, 1939-1944, 1946-1948, 1950-1951, 1953, 1956-1957, 1959, 1960, 1963-1966, 1969-1970, 1972-1974, 1980, 1984, 1990, 2004, 2008, 2010
USAFAg
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Think it was the other way around. Leaked on the ground, but stopped as friction in flyng caused the metal to expand.

12thFan/Websider Since 2003
whoop1995
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USA*** said:

Think it was the other way around. Leaked on the ground, but stopped as friction in flyng caused the metal to expand.
Well my memory is getting older and you have a usaf in your name so you are probably right. Still a fascinating aircraft.

I collect ticket stubs! looking for a 1944 orange bowl and 1981 independence bowl ticket stub as well as Aggie vs tu stubs - 1926 and below, 1935-1937, 1939-1944, 1946-1948, 1950-1951, 1953, 1956-1957, 1959, 1960, 1963-1966, 1969-1970, 1972-1974, 1980, 1984, 1990, 2004, 2008, 2010
Hey Nav
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Yeah , no harm.

Habu leaked on the ground and expanded when it got up to speed.

It used JP-7 and needed their own special KC-135s to pump that vaseline into them in-flight.

Watching a Blackbird take off in the very early morning or fly was a very special thing :-)

Aim high. Go Air Force.
BQ78
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Yep the KC-135Q was used for the SR-71s and the special tank was in the tail. There was a ground incident with one where they pumped all the JP-4 out of the wings but left it full of JP-7 in the tail and the plane did a wheelie.

When the SR-71 was on the ground it had all sorts of pans under it to catch the fuel. Saw it up close a couple of times.
CanyonAg77
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SR-71 at Pima museum, also has a start cart with it. If my memory is accurate, it used TWO Chevy 454 engines to spin the engines up fast enough to light
USAFAg
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As a 2Lt in ROK in '89, I was a WAO in the "tree house" in Osan. Got to flight follow a Habu as it made a pass over nK then over to South China Sea. LRRs generally have a 12 sec sweep and the old Hughs HMD 22 system being used had 2 sec processing delay...so the gap between "hits" was impressive...as was the reported (but inaccurate) altitude guess by the system.

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BQ78
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My next door neighbor colonel at Mather was a SR-71 backseater and he said he lost engines near Taiwan. They lost 50,000 feet in altitude before they restarted the engines. I said, "you must have been sweating!" He said nah, we still had plenty of altitude left.
agrams
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yeah. one major reason was the jp7 would dissolve normal fuel liners in tanks. so the tanks in the plane weren't lined. it was the skin of the plane itself that held the fuel.

the fuel also acted as a heat sink and had additives to function as lubrication for the engine. Given it's leaking before flight and how lubricious it was, it was dangerous for people and planes on the geound, with one sr71 sliding on it as it began to taxi for a mission. so special teams for cleanup were created.

shell oil developed the jp7 formula to meet the military specs. ironically, the VP of shell oil over the project: James "Jimmy" Doolittle
Green2Maroon
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I was stationed in Friedberg, Germany back in 2003-2005. I remember hearing about the old Roman walls near there.
USAFAg
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BQ78 said:

My next door neighbor colonel at Mather was a SR-71 backseater and he said he lost engines near Taiwan. They lost 50,000 feet in altitude before they restarted the engines. I said, "you must have been sweating!" He said nah, we still had plenty of altitude left.
That's like the old story (not sure if true or not) about the SR71 flying cross country and requesting an altitude change from an ARTCC....

SR71: "Salt Lake Center Speedbird 01 requesting 500FL"

Salt Lake Center: Uh, heh, ...Speedbird, if you can get there, you are cleared to 500FL"

SR71: "Copy, Salt Lake, Speedbird out of 700FL to 500FL"

12thFan/Websider Since 2003
Reality Check
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The Pilgrims set ground on the northern part of Cape Cod in November 1620 and spent several weeks surveying the area. The Mayflower Compact was drafted and signed while the ship was anchored off what is now Provincetown, Mass. Deciding they would fare better inland, they then crossed Cape Cod Bay and landed in Plymouth. On Dec. 25 they began work on the Common House declining to celebrate Christmas Day because they viewed it to be a creation devised by the Catholics.
Author of the TexAgs Post of The Day - May 31, 2024

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Reality Check
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nortex97 said:



Just a family trip to disney land.


The eldest Kim who was expected to follow Jong Il as ruler was busted trying to go to Tokyo Disney in 2001.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/02/16/asia/kim-jong-nam-profile/index.html
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p_bubel
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Dancing plague of 1518, event in which hundreds of citizens of Strasbourg (then a free city within the Holy Roman Empire, now in France) danced uncontrollably and apparently unwillingly for days on end; the mania lasted for about two months before ending as mysteriously as it began.

In July 1518, a woman whose name was given as Frau (Mrs.) Troffea (or Trauffea) stepped into the street and began dancing. She seemed unable to stop, and she kept dancing until she collapsed from exhaustion. After resting, she resumed the compulsive frenzied activity. She continued this way for days, and within a week more than 30 other people were similarly afflicted. They kept going long past the point of injury. City authorities were alarmed by the ever-increasing number of dancers. The civic and religious leaders theorized that more dancing was the solution, and so they arranged for guildhalls for the dancers to gather in, musicians to accompany the dancing, and professional dancers to help the afflicted to continue dancing. This only exacerbated the contagion, and as many as 400 people were eventually consumed by the dancing compulsion. A number of them died from their exertions. In early September the mania began to abate.

The 1518 event was the most thoroughly documented and probably the last of several such outbreaks in Europe, which took place largely between the 10th and 16th centuries. The otherwise best known of these took place in 1374; that eruption spread to several towns along the Rhine River.
Leonard H. Stringfield
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Are there still subjects deemed taboo and not allowed on this thread?
"Roswell, 1947, there was a uap (ufo) that crashed, in fact there were 2 uaps, 1 crashed and one flew away and the other one did not and was recovered by the US GOVERNMENT."
- Lue Elizondo-former director of the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program-August 20, 2024

Are A&M's core values..optional? Who has the POWER to determine that? Are certain departments exempt? Why?

Farsight Institute, Atlanta, GA

Stive
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Disclaimer: I'm obviously not a policeman for this thread in any way.

There really hasn't been anything off limits on this thread as long as it fits the OP which includes the word "fact". If it's something historically factual (or accepted as factual), then I'd say it's fair game.

If it's something pulled out of your a**, something that someone made up out of thin air, something that involves a lot of assumption, or something that requires disbelief of everything we know to be true up to this point…this isn't going to be the thread for it.
BQ78
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I commend the city founders for their out of the box thinking and approach. But Occam's Razor should have told them that the dancers were all possessed witches. Fire not dancing was the solution!
Rabid Cougar
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Lewis and Clark expedition killed and ate 1,001 deer, 35 elk, 227 bison, 62 pronghorns, 113 beaver, 104 geese and brant, 48 shorebirds ("plovers"), 46 grouse, 45 ducks and coots, 9 turkeys,43 grizzly bears, 23 black bears, 18 wolves, and 16 otters.
Jabin
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Rabid Cougar said:

Lewis and Clark expedition killed and ate 1,001 deer, 35 elk, 227 bison, 62 pronghorns, 113 beaver, 104 geese and brant, 48 shorebirds ("plovers"), 46 grouse, 45 ducks and coots, 9 turkeys,43 grizzly bears, 23 black bears, 18 wolves, and 16 otters.
I remember reading that the expedition members ate an amazing amount of meat each day. It was something like 9 lbs of meat each per day, at least while they were constantly rowing upstream on the Missouri. Given the number of expedition members, that translated into a startling large number of animals that had to be killed each day.
Stive
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The number of grizzlies they shot and ate!!!

Wow!
CanyonAg77
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Rabid Cougar said:

Lewis and Clark expedition killed and ate 1,001 deer, 35 elk, 227 bison, 62 pronghorns, 113 beaver, 104 geese and brant, 48 shorebirds ("plovers"), 46 grouse, 45 ducks and coots, 9 turkeys,43 grizzly bears, 23 black bears, 18 wolves, and 16 otters.

And a partridge in a pear tree….
Green2Maroon
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Rabid Cougar said:

Lewis and Clark expedition killed and ate 1,001 deer, 35 elk, 227 bison, 62 pronghorns, 113 beaver, 104 geese and brant, 48 shorebirds ("plovers"), 46 grouse, 45 ducks and coots, 9 turkeys,43 grizzly bears, 23 black bears, 18 wolves, and 16 otters.

That is insane.
Green2Maroon
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Today we have a lot more black bears. It must have been way different back then.
ENG
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Rabid Cougar said:

Lewis and Clark expedition killed and ate 1,001 deer, 35 elk, 227 bison, 62 pronghorns, 113 beaver, 104 geese and brant, 48 shorebirds ("plovers"), 46 grouse, 45 ducks and coots, 9 turkeys,43 grizzly bears, 23 black bears, 18 wolves, and 16 otters.
simple math based on estimate harvest weights of animals (I am likely way off):

deer 50lbs
elk 150 lbs
bison 300 lbs
pronghorn 50 lbs
beaver 5 lbs
geese 3 lbs
plover 0.5 lb
grouse 1 lb
duck 2 lbs
turkey 5 lbs
grizzly 150 lbs
black bear 100 lbs
wolf 25 lbs
otter 5 lbs

total harvest amount = ~137,000 lbs
33 people => ~4150 lbs per person
person per day for 2 years = 5.7 lbs

so, yeah 9 lbs on high exertion days is not too far off.

nortex97
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They'd have never made it as vegans.

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More French soldiers died during World War I than American soldiers during all of U.S. history

World War I was catastrophic on levels that most of us alive today cannot even comprehend. One example? The numbers of total deaths. During the first world war, France lost about 1,360,000 soldiers. In contrast, the United States has recorded about 1,350,000 military deaths total, over every war since 1775. Here are 20 cool everyday things made for WWI.
Quote:

Kleenex

How bad is it to reuse a tissue? Doctors had that very same thought when they decided to use gas mask filters as disposable handkerchiefs after the war. "Items created for the war often had to be repurposed following the war, and one of those items is Kleenex, which was actually the crepe paper used in the filters of gas masks," says Jonathan Casey, Director, Archives and Edward Jones Research Center, of The National World War I Museum and Memorial. "During the influenza epidemic following the war, [paper goods company] Kimberly-Clark repurposed the paper as a disposable product for people to sneeze into and limit the spread of bodily fluids." Later given the brand name "Kleenex," we now use the word to refer to any facial tissue.
CanyonAg77
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Side note, the National WWI Museum in Kansas City is fantastic. A bucket list item
BQ_90
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CanyonAg77 said:

Side note, the National WWI Museum in Kansas City is fantastic. A bucket list item
we need another thread on best history museum to go to
Rabid Cougar
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ENG said:

Rabid Cougar said:

Lewis and Clark expedition killed and ate 1,001 deer, 35 elk, 227 bison, 62 pronghorns, 113 beaver, 104 geese and brant, 48 shorebirds ("plovers"), 46 grouse, 45 ducks and coots, 9 turkeys,43 grizzly bears, 23 black bears, 18 wolves, and 16 otters.
simple math based on estimate harvest weights of animals (I am likely way off):

deer 50lbs
elk 150 lbs
bison 300 lbs
pronghorn 50 lbs
beaver 5 lbs
geese 3 lbs
plover 0.5 lb
grouse 1 lb
duck 2 lbs
turkey 5 lbs
grizzly 150 lbs
black bear 100 lbs
wolf 25 lbs
otter 5 lbs

total harvest amount = ~137,000 lbs
33 people => ~4150 lbs per person
person per day for 2 years = 5.7 lbs

so, yeah 9 lbs on high exertion days is not too far off.



They were pulling a 55 foot keel boat laden with 18 tons of "stuff" up the Missouri River.. It has been estimated that they expended between 10,000 to 15,000 calories per day.

They basically ate the equivalent of 4 deer or an elk and a deer or one buffalo every day... That was when it was available.

They caught thousands of fish. As many as 300 to 500 at a time using fish nets or "fish drags"... Willow branches tied together to go completely across a stream.

They ate their horses as they went across Lolo pass. They ate 18 horses....

They also acquired a taste for dog from the Mandans and Hidatsa. The journals indicate that they procured and ate a total of 193 dogs .....


p_bubel
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Tekh Festival: The Feast of Drunkenness:

This festival was dedicated to Hathor and commemorated the time when humanity was saved from destruction by beer.

Ra had become weary of people's endless cruelty and nonsense and so sent Sekhmet to destroy them. She took to her task with enthusiasm, tearing people apart and drinking their blood. Ra is satisfied with the destruction until the other gods point out to him that, if he wanted to teach people a lesson, he should stop the destruction before no one was left to learn from it.

Ra then orders the goddess of beer, Tenenet, to dye a large quantity of the brew red and has it delivered right in Sekhmet's path of destruction. She finds it and, thinking it is blood, drinks it all, falls asleep, and wakes up as the gentle and beneficent Hathor.
CanyonAg77
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BQ_90 said:

CanyonAg77 said:

Side note, the National WWI Museum in Kansas City is fantastic. A bucket list item
we need another thread on best history museum to go to
I like that idea so much, I'm stealing it



https://texags.com/forums/49/topics/3463115
Hey Nav
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Quote:

grizzly 150 lbs
That seemed a little small, based on my limited experience being way to close to grizzley bears in Alaska. A quick search indicates average grown males are maybe 3 or 4 times heavier - not sure, though, on harvest weight.

Fascinating info, though.
QBCade
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Hey Nav said:

Quote:

grizzly 150 lbs
That seemed a little small, based on my limited experience being way to close to grizzley bears in Alaska. A quick search indicates average grown males are maybe 3 or 4 times heavier - not sure, though, on harvest weight.

Fascinating info, though.


He's referring to meat harvest per animal, not 'on the hoof' weight
ReloadAg
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What's a good book to read on the L&C expedition?
 
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