Wednesday, October 9, 2019
Tuesday, October 8, 2019
Surviving The Lava Bomb...!
We all know that nature can send some bad things our way every now and then. Those are the times that a little luck sure comes in handy. From Listverse, here is what I mean.
May 2018 saw the Puna district of Hawaii’s Big Island inundated with lava flows from the opening of numerous fissures. Many people evacuated, but some remained in a bid to protect their homes and those of their neighbors. One such resident was Darryl Clinton, who lived to the east of the Leilani Estates neighborhood, which was hit by quite a bit of volcanism.
Darryl knew the dangers. While lava flows are generally slow and easily avoided, “lava bombs,” ejected gobs of molten rock, are of greater concern. For five days, he and others would hose houses down when they were struck by flying molten rock from Fissure 17, and they were proficient in watching for the lava bombs, gauging where they’d land, and making sure they weren’t standing in the bombs’ paths. Darryl’s luck ran out on May 19.
That day, Darryl was standing on the third-floor lanai of his neighbor’s house and talking on his phone. A lava bomb which Darryl would later describe as moving less in an arc and more like a rifle shot hit him in the ankle, flipping him off his feet and sending him into a couch, which promptly lit on fire. A friend rushed to his aid. Darryl looked at his ankle and saw bone protruding from his flesh. His foot was hanging off the rest of his leg “like a hinge,” and he was bleeding profusely. At this point, all Darryl knew was excruciating pain and the fear that he’d bleed to death.
Darryl’s friend got a tourniquet on him and dragged him downstairs and into her truck. She called 911 and sped off to meet up with first responders. Darryl was taken to the Hilo Medical Center, fully expecting to lose his leg. Amazingly, doctors managed to save it. Darryl said of the lava bomb that hit him, “It was a mean one. And I mean, it could have hit anywhere else and it would have been all over.” Despite his brush with death, Darryl has no plans for leaving the area and described seeing the lava flows up close as “the event of a lifetime."
Either this guy was very lucky on that particular day, or he had an Angel on his shoulder! Could be a combination of both, I reckon...
Coffee out on the patio, where the temps are much cooler today.
Struck By A Lava Bomb
May 2018 saw the Puna district of Hawaii’s Big Island inundated with lava flows from the opening of numerous fissures. Many people evacuated, but some remained in a bid to protect their homes and those of their neighbors. One such resident was Darryl Clinton, who lived to the east of the Leilani Estates neighborhood, which was hit by quite a bit of volcanism.
Darryl knew the dangers. While lava flows are generally slow and easily avoided, “lava bombs,” ejected gobs of molten rock, are of greater concern. For five days, he and others would hose houses down when they were struck by flying molten rock from Fissure 17, and they were proficient in watching for the lava bombs, gauging where they’d land, and making sure they weren’t standing in the bombs’ paths. Darryl’s luck ran out on May 19.
That day, Darryl was standing on the third-floor lanai of his neighbor’s house and talking on his phone. A lava bomb which Darryl would later describe as moving less in an arc and more like a rifle shot hit him in the ankle, flipping him off his feet and sending him into a couch, which promptly lit on fire. A friend rushed to his aid. Darryl looked at his ankle and saw bone protruding from his flesh. His foot was hanging off the rest of his leg “like a hinge,” and he was bleeding profusely. At this point, all Darryl knew was excruciating pain and the fear that he’d bleed to death.
Darryl’s friend got a tourniquet on him and dragged him downstairs and into her truck. She called 911 and sped off to meet up with first responders. Darryl was taken to the Hilo Medical Center, fully expecting to lose his leg. Amazingly, doctors managed to save it. Darryl said of the lava bomb that hit him, “It was a mean one. And I mean, it could have hit anywhere else and it would have been all over.” Despite his brush with death, Darryl has no plans for leaving the area and described seeing the lava flows up close as “the event of a lifetime."
Either this guy was very lucky on that particular day, or he had an Angel on his shoulder! Could be a combination of both, I reckon...
Coffee out on the patio, where the temps are much cooler today.
Monday, October 7, 2019
Lincoln's Unread Secret Message...!
I may have covered this one before, but I find it is interesting enough to revisit. I hope you don't mind.
On April 13, 1861, Jonathan Dillon, an Irish immigrant and watchmaker, carved a hidden message in Abraham Lincoln’s pocket watch. Employed by M.W. Galt and Co. jewelers in Washington, DC, Dillon was repairing the president’s watch the day Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, which led to the US Civil War. The message would remain hidden until the Smithsonian opened the timepiece in 2009.
Dillon’s inscription read: “The first gun is fired. Slavery is dead. Thank God we have a president who at least will try.” Dillon and the president never met, and Lincoln never saw the message hidden within his timepiece.
In the 1850s, Lincoln purchased the gold pocket watch from George Chatterton, a jeweler in Springfield, Illinois. Lincoln tended away from the ostentatious, but the gold watch was a sign of his prominent law career. In 1958, the 16th president’s great-grandson, Lincoln Isham, donated the watch to the Smithsonian.
Imagine wearing something like that watch for all those years and never knowing there was a secret message inside. Outstanding if you ask me!
Coffee out on the patio this morning!
Secret Message In Lincoln’s Watch
Photo credit: Smithsonian Museum via Mashable
On April 13, 1861, Jonathan Dillon, an Irish immigrant and watchmaker, carved a hidden message in Abraham Lincoln’s pocket watch. Employed by M.W. Galt and Co. jewelers in Washington, DC, Dillon was repairing the president’s watch the day Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, which led to the US Civil War. The message would remain hidden until the Smithsonian opened the timepiece in 2009.
Dillon’s inscription read: “The first gun is fired. Slavery is dead. Thank God we have a president who at least will try.” Dillon and the president never met, and Lincoln never saw the message hidden within his timepiece.
In the 1850s, Lincoln purchased the gold pocket watch from George Chatterton, a jeweler in Springfield, Illinois. Lincoln tended away from the ostentatious, but the gold watch was a sign of his prominent law career. In 1958, the 16th president’s great-grandson, Lincoln Isham, donated the watch to the Smithsonian.
Imagine wearing something like that watch for all those years and never knowing there was a secret message inside. Outstanding if you ask me!
Coffee out on the patio this morning!
Friday, October 4, 2019
Zambia In Space...?
This next story is so strange that I felt it certainly qualified for Freaky Friday. I found it on Listverse.
Zambia is one country you do not hear about often. It is a landlocked country tucked somewhere in south-central Africa. In 1964, it joined the space race and planned to land a man on the moon before the US or the Soviet Union ever did. This was five years before Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon.
The Zambian space program was the private project of Edward Mukuka Nkoloso, a schoolteacher and founder of Zambia’s National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy. Mukaka recruited twelve prospective astronauts including a 16-year-old girl called Matha Mwamba for the planned moon landing.
Mukuka lacked funding for his space project. The Zambian government was not interested in a partnership and the United Nations, United States, Soviet Union and Israel had ignored his funding requests. Nevertheless, he continued to train his astronauts using an old drum he had found.
The trainee astronauts entered the drum, which was then rolled round a tree or down a hill to imitate flight conditions. The astronauts also learned how to walk on their hands, which Mukaka claimed was the only way a human could ever walk on the moon.
The whole thing was so hilarious that international reporters started to consider it a joke. Mukaka never clarified his intention even though he seemed to be serious about it. He once told an interviewer “I’ll be laughing the day I plant Zambia’s flag on the moon.”
The space program fell apart when the trainee astronauts started asking for money. Two of Mukaka’s top astronauts also got drunk and never for returned for training. A third joined a movie troupe. The program finally ended when the only female trainee astronaut got pregnant.
If nothing else, you have to give the man credit for chasing his dream, right? Something I believe more of us should do.
Coffee out on the patio this morning!
Zambia Joined The Space Race
Photo credit: Cristina De Middel
Zambia is one country you do not hear about often. It is a landlocked country tucked somewhere in south-central Africa. In 1964, it joined the space race and planned to land a man on the moon before the US or the Soviet Union ever did. This was five years before Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon.
The Zambian space program was the private project of Edward Mukuka Nkoloso, a schoolteacher and founder of Zambia’s National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy. Mukaka recruited twelve prospective astronauts including a 16-year-old girl called Matha Mwamba for the planned moon landing.
Mukuka lacked funding for his space project. The Zambian government was not interested in a partnership and the United Nations, United States, Soviet Union and Israel had ignored his funding requests. Nevertheless, he continued to train his astronauts using an old drum he had found.
The trainee astronauts entered the drum, which was then rolled round a tree or down a hill to imitate flight conditions. The astronauts also learned how to walk on their hands, which Mukaka claimed was the only way a human could ever walk on the moon.
The whole thing was so hilarious that international reporters started to consider it a joke. Mukaka never clarified his intention even though he seemed to be serious about it. He once told an interviewer “I’ll be laughing the day I plant Zambia’s flag on the moon.”
The space program fell apart when the trainee astronauts started asking for money. Two of Mukaka’s top astronauts also got drunk and never for returned for training. A third joined a movie troupe. The program finally ended when the only female trainee astronaut got pregnant.
If nothing else, you have to give the man credit for chasing his dream, right? Something I believe more of us should do.
Coffee out on the patio this morning!
Thursday, October 3, 2019
Buffalo Bill Almost Made The Movies...!
During the times when the world was totally entertained by the Wild West Shows, the movies were coming of age. Folks like Buffalo Bill saw the writing on the wall, and made plans accordingly.
In 1913, Buffalo Bill (aka Colonel William F. Cody) complained that movies were taking audiences away from Wild West shows and circuses. Both would soon be out of business, according to him, with people wanting to sit indoors to see the sights of the world on a large screen. This probably explains why, in 1915, newspapers announced that “Buffalo Bill Breaks Into The Movies” with the film Patsy of the Circus.
Unfortunately, his movie career was over before it even truly began. Buffalo Bill died on January 10, 1917, in his sister’s home in Denver, Colorado.
I can't help but wonder just what will be our next big form of entertainment. Will we be mere spectators, or perhaps unwilling participants in that upcoming drama?
Coffee out on the patio this morning...OK?
Buffalo Bill
Photo credit: Moffett
In 1913, Buffalo Bill (aka Colonel William F. Cody) complained that movies were taking audiences away from Wild West shows and circuses. Both would soon be out of business, according to him, with people wanting to sit indoors to see the sights of the world on a large screen. This probably explains why, in 1915, newspapers announced that “Buffalo Bill Breaks Into The Movies” with the film Patsy of the Circus.
Unfortunately, his movie career was over before it even truly began. Buffalo Bill died on January 10, 1917, in his sister’s home in Denver, Colorado.
I can't help but wonder just what will be our next big form of entertainment. Will we be mere spectators, or perhaps unwilling participants in that upcoming drama?
Coffee out on the patio this morning...OK?
Wednesday, October 2, 2019
The Revolution Begins...!
Sometimes I think that I forget about some of the important things I've learned about the history around me until I read an article that brings it all back in my feeble mind. Age does that to many of us, I reckon. I remembered this tidbit of Texas history in reading about a cannon, of all things...go figure!
On October 2, 1835, the growing tensions between Mexico and Texas erupt into violence when Mexican soldiers attempt to disarm the people of Gonzales, sparking the Texan war for independence.
Texas–or Tejas as the Mexicans called it–had technically been a part of the Spanish empire since the 17th century. However, even as late as the 1820s, there were only about 3,000 Spanish-Mexican settlers in Texas, and Mexico City’s hold on the territory was tenuous at best. After winning its own independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico welcomed large numbers of Anglo-American immigrants into Texas in the hopes they would become loyal Mexican citizens and keep the territory from falling into the hands of the United States. During the next decade men like Stephen Austin brought more than 25,000 people to Texas, most of them Americans. But while these emigrants legally became Mexican citizens, they continued to speak English, formed their own schools, and had closer trading ties to the United States than to Mexico.
In 1835, the president of Mexico, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, overthrew the constitution and appointed himself dictator. Recognizing that the “American” Texans were likely to use his rise to power as an excuse to secede, Santa Anna ordered the Mexican military to begin disarming the Texans whenever possible. This proved more difficult than expected, and on October 2, 1835, Mexican soldiers attempting to take a small cannon from the village of Gonzales encountered stiff resistance from a hastily assembled militia of Texans. After a brief fight, the Mexicans retreated and the Texans kept their cannon.
The determined Texans would continue to battle Santa Ana and his army for another year and a half before winning their independence and establishing the Republic of Texas.
Sounds to me as though the folks in Gonzales wanted to keep their cannon.
Coffee out on the patio again this morning.
First shots of the Texas Revolution fired in the Battle of Gonzales
On October 2, 1835, the growing tensions between Mexico and Texas erupt into violence when Mexican soldiers attempt to disarm the people of Gonzales, sparking the Texan war for independence.
Texas–or Tejas as the Mexicans called it–had technically been a part of the Spanish empire since the 17th century. However, even as late as the 1820s, there were only about 3,000 Spanish-Mexican settlers in Texas, and Mexico City’s hold on the territory was tenuous at best. After winning its own independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico welcomed large numbers of Anglo-American immigrants into Texas in the hopes they would become loyal Mexican citizens and keep the territory from falling into the hands of the United States. During the next decade men like Stephen Austin brought more than 25,000 people to Texas, most of them Americans. But while these emigrants legally became Mexican citizens, they continued to speak English, formed their own schools, and had closer trading ties to the United States than to Mexico.
In 1835, the president of Mexico, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, overthrew the constitution and appointed himself dictator. Recognizing that the “American” Texans were likely to use his rise to power as an excuse to secede, Santa Anna ordered the Mexican military to begin disarming the Texans whenever possible. This proved more difficult than expected, and on October 2, 1835, Mexican soldiers attempting to take a small cannon from the village of Gonzales encountered stiff resistance from a hastily assembled militia of Texans. After a brief fight, the Mexicans retreated and the Texans kept their cannon.
The determined Texans would continue to battle Santa Ana and his army for another year and a half before winning their independence and establishing the Republic of Texas.
Sounds to me as though the folks in Gonzales wanted to keep their cannon.
Coffee out on the patio again this morning.
Tuesday, October 1, 2019
A Three-Eyed Snake...!
Snake are fairly scary to most of us, or at the very least make us nervous. Here is one that I'm sure will get your attention.
Wildlife authorities from Australia reported the discovery of a snake with three eyes.
The baby carpet python was found in March on a highway in Northern Australia, near the town of Humpty Doo. X-ray scans revealed that the snake did not have two heads that formed together but rather a third eye socket in its skull. All three eyes appeared to function normally. Snake expert Professor Bryan Fry believed that the deformity could have been the last bit of a twin that had been absorbed during development.
The Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife Service took charge of the unique reptile. Wildlife officers nicknamed him “Monty Python,” although people were more inclined to think of Game of Thrones, which has the Three-Eyed Raven.
Sadly, Monty died a few weeks after it was found. While cause of death is undetermined, the reptile was struggling to eat due to its malformation.
Just when you think you have seen it all, nature throws another curve ball.
Coffee out on the patio this morning!
The Three-Eyed Serpent
Photo credit: Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife
Wildlife authorities from Australia reported the discovery of a snake with three eyes.
The baby carpet python was found in March on a highway in Northern Australia, near the town of Humpty Doo. X-ray scans revealed that the snake did not have two heads that formed together but rather a third eye socket in its skull. All three eyes appeared to function normally. Snake expert Professor Bryan Fry believed that the deformity could have been the last bit of a twin that had been absorbed during development.
The Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife Service took charge of the unique reptile. Wildlife officers nicknamed him “Monty Python,” although people were more inclined to think of Game of Thrones, which has the Three-Eyed Raven.
Sadly, Monty died a few weeks after it was found. While cause of death is undetermined, the reptile was struggling to eat due to its malformation.
Just when you think you have seen it all, nature throws another curve ball.
Coffee out on the patio this morning!
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