Archive - 2009

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An F/A-18F Super Hornet hits the speed of sound. As the plane pushes air away, the temperature drops and water vapor in the air forms a ring cloud around it.

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Photos courtesy of Christopher Pasatieri / Reuters

Original Source: Reuters, Time, and F-18 SUPER HORNET BREAKING THE SOUND BARRIER

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D-Day veterans: 'we wear medals in tribute to men who never lived to receive theirs'

World leaders and veterans gathered along the beach Saturday in Normandy, France, to commemorate D-Day. For the veterans of the Normandy Landings, almost all now in their mid eighties, this was not a moment to acknowledge their own ailments. Instead, they stood proudly in the blazing sunshine to honor the comrades who lost their lives amid the shelling and the terror and the bloodshed that were the D Day landings. To pay tribute to the men with whom they will forever have an unbreakable bond: the servicemen who gave their lives in the battle that marked the beginning of the end of the War.

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A horse racing trainer loves to trot to the pub for a glass of Red Stripe lager - on his zebra. Dad-of-two Bill Turner bought 14-month-old Zebedee for £4,500 from a Dutch game reserve. Bill, 61, said: "He loves being ridden and it means I don't have to worry about being breathalysed."

Zebras are notoriously difficult to break in but the former jump jockey soon coaxed Zebedee to accept a bridle and saddle. In less than three weeks Bill was riding his new mount round his farm. Now Mr Turner rides Zebedee to his local, the King's Arms, for a pint after work.

Bill, who saddled 600 winners in 30 years as a trainer, said: "It's a mile and a half to the pub and Zebedee pricks up his ears every time we go. "The RSPCA says its OK to ride him." Bill's wife Tracy, 61, followed in a lorry on the first pub outing in case Zebedee tired and had to be driven back. But ten-stone Bill said: "He had no trouble and even cantered for a bit. The regulars got an incredible shock when I rode up."

It was the trainer's lifelong ambition to break and ride a zebra. Bill said: "I've broken hundreds of horses and wanted to try my luck with a zebra. "Very few are ridden in Africa - usually the only way to mount one is to put it in a river." Finally a livestock agent who Bill deals with in Belgium found the zebra for him. Bill said: "They say zebras are so hard to train because they don't have any brains and panic easily. Zebedee gave me a hard time at first, coming at me with his front feet and also biting.  read more »

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Last weekend saw the 150th anniversary of the birth of Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the world's most celebrated fictional detective. So what's kept him at the top for 122 years?

In 1887, appearing in print for the first time, Sherlock Holmes set out his purpose in life. The declaration in "A Study in Scarlet" would also come to dictate much of the subsequent career of Holmes' creator, Arthur Conan Doyle - not always to his pleasure. "There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colorless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it." He went on to define the archetype of the brilliant but troubled detective. Even today the character of Holmes defines what we expect of great fictional detectives. We want them to accept that "duty" to do good - but also to be personally flawed.

The 28 year-old author wasn't the first to spot the narrative potential of an incisive but troubled detective. Conan Doyle himself acknowledged the influence of Edgar Allan Poe's Auguste Dupin and of Lecoq, created by the now largely forgotten Emile Gaboriau. But almost every fictional detective stands in Holmes' shadow - from Kurt Wallander back to Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe. Chandler once wrote: "Sherlock Holmes is mostly an attitude and a few dozen lines of unforgettable dialogue." This may or may not have been a compliment.  read more »

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The German Office Chair Racing Championship was held in Bad Koenig-Zell, Germany, on Saturday, April 25, 2009. Seventy participants took a chance and brought their office chair out into the sunshine and put it through its paces. The race down Odenwaelder street was mainly downhill and involved starting on a steep ramp and racing over another ramp.

The only uniform rule was a crash helmet, which many participants needed. Dozens of racers fell off their chairs, and many chairs didn't make it to the end of the 170-meter race.

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Photos courtesy of demonicious.com

Original Source: Cave News and Reuters (with video)

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*update* 2019
Street cleaning cost doubled in 5 years from $33.4 million (2012-2013), to $65.4 million in the current 2017-2018 budget.

4,200 foot long main suspension span
clearance above high water averages 220 feet (67 m)
2 towers rise 746 feet (191 feet taller than the Washington Monument)
length: 8,980ft (2,737m), or 1.7mi (2.7 km)
Width: 90ft (27.4m), 6 lanes, pedestrians and bicycles
opening in 1937, then both the longest and the tallest suspension bridge in the world

The iconic Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California, turned 72 years old on Wednesday. The Golden Gate Bridge is one of the most beautiful, and most photographed, bridges in the world. Its 4,200 foot long main suspension span was a world record that stood for 27 years. It is still the second longest in the United States after the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge which links Staten Island to Brooklyn in New York. The bridge's two towers rise 746 feet making them 191 feet taller than the Washington Monument.  read more »