- The Sky Thief - ”How did Beebo Russell — a goofy, God-fearing baggage handler — steal a passenger plane from the Seattle-Tacoma airport and end up alone in a cockpit, with no plan to come down?” The strange tale of the man who stole a plane in 2018 despite having no idea of how to land it.
- Gas Giants’ Energy Crisis Solved After 50 Years - ”Jupiter and Saturn, the gas giants, and Uranus and Neptune, the ice giants, were always expected to be frosty realms. But when NASA’s Voyager spacecraft sailed past them in the late 1970s and 1980s, scientists found that all four worlds were running planetary fevers — a revelation as jarring as finding a bonfire inside your freezer.” Now the source of their unexpected warmth has been determined.
- Animals can navigate by starlight. Here’s how we know. - ”Planetariums for birds, tiny hats for beetles: The surprising ways scientists have learned that animals look to the stars.” And you thought the beetles were just fashionable
- Toaster Museum - Another fine use of the Internet: ”The revelation that somebody collects toasters often leads to the same reaction: awkward pause, nervous laugh, then: ‘...Toasters?’ The problem is not, to collect toasters. The problem is, to have hundreds of them. The result: They simply call you crazy. Well, and sometimes I think they are right!”
- Why Everyone Started Juuling - How the e-cigarette (do we still call them that?) cornered the market: ”Vape shops were dominated by a steampunk culture filled with pierced guys with beards who’d typically kicked a lifelong habit of smoking through ripping monster nicotine hits on squonk mods… It would always amaze people when Halverson told them that a single tiny Juul pod delivered an amount of nicotine equivalent to an entire pack of Marlboro Reds. Even with Juul’s proprietary benzoic acid–nicotine salt formulation that made its hits smoother compared to others, its potency delivered a powerful zing. Before long even the most hard-core vapers were Juuling.”
- Meet The Soldier Who (Accidentally) Had An Epic Drug Trip ... In The Middle of WWII - Finnish soldier Aimo Koivunen spent an interesting few days: ”The patrol had been equipped with a stockpile of methamphetamine pills to keep their energy up in the heat of battle. Ironically, Koivunen had always strongly disapproved of these drugs, which was why he was considered trustworthy enough to carry the whole stash… Unfortunately, it proved impossible to get a lone pill out of the bottle with his clumsy winter mittens. And taking them off would have slowed him down, plus made his fingers cold. So he just dumped out the entire bottle and swallowed all 30 pills. Which was supposed to be enough to last an entire patrol for weeks.”
- Astronomers identify the stars where any aliens would have a view of Earth - ”If we share the galaxy with extraterrestrials, they wouldn’t be able to spot Earth crossing in front of the sun unless they live in one of these star systems.”
- What Did Stonehenge Sound Like? - ”Recently, a team from the University of Salford, in Manchester, and English Heritage, the charitable trust that manages Stonehenge, made a breakthrough about the monument’s acoustical wonders. Despite the lack of a roof, the research team has found, the original circle of 157 standing stones (only 63 complete stones remain today) once acted like a sound chamber. For people in the inner sanctum 4,000 years ago, the placement of stones would have amplified and enhanced human voices and music in a way that must have been spellbinding.” I think it was either Autumn Equinox or Winter Solstice 1987, or possibly Spring Equinox 1988, when I was inside Stonehenge at night with a bunch of people drumming, and even now the acoustics are impressive
- Apollo Flight Controller 101: Every console explained - Ever wondered what all those people in Mission Control were doing? ”This is a station-by-station tour of Historical Mission Operations Control Room 2, or ‘MOCR 2.’ …MOCR 2 was used for almost every Gemini and Apollo flight, and in the late 1990s was restored to its Apollo-era appearance. You can visit it if you're in Houston, but you won't get any closer than the glassed-in visitor gallery in the back, and that's just not close enough. Strap yourselves in and prepare for an up-close look at the MOCR consoles.” And there’s more info in this PDF from the Apollo 15 mission: MCC Operational Configuration
- Экраноплан Спасатель - or Ekranoplan Rescuer according to Google Translate: ”In 1987, the first ekranoplan of project 903, named ‘Lun’, was launched. It was a missile-carrying ekranoplan strike designed to combat surface ships… The second ship was laid down, but did not have time to finish building, because the collapse of the Soviet Union negatively affected the financing of the military-industrial complex. We decided to complete the construction of the second ekranoplan, converting it into a search and rescue vessel. This is how the Rescuer appeared, work on which was curtailed in the 90s and frozen at 75% of the ship's readiness.”
Happy invoicing!
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