Fascinating Facts and Trivia

There was only one code during World War II that was never broken by the enemy and was used by the US Army.

Navajo soldiers, called Codetalkers, developed a radio code based on their native language.

It was the only way US soldiers on the battlefield could be sure that messages were from there own side and not from Japanese imitators.

The language of a society changes slowly but steadily with the result that an educated person will not be able to read or understand words in his language written 500 years ago.

The European standard railway gauge is the one we have here in the UK
4 feet 8 1/2 inches. America has it too and so does a lot of the third world because the European nations brought it with them during colonialisation.
Seems a fairly arbitary size but that's what it is.
That in Russia however is different. They have 4 feet...ok so far...11 27/32 inches. Groovy huh. those wacky Ruskies.
This helped them when Hitler tried invading because of the logistic issues.
The differece between the two gauges is only a few inches different, I think they just did it a little bit different to taunt them. Cos we can

The 4ft 8in gauge was derived from horse wagon wheel gauge - the width required to allow a cart horse to fit between the shafts of a wagon. In fact the gauge of Roman chariots was close to this.

This was the gauge used for many colliery horse-drawn railways prior to Stephenson, and he used this for his original steam powered railways, although later adjusted it to 4ft 8 1/2 inches to stop wheels binding on curves. This was the gauge used on the first passenger railway (Stockton and Darlington) and was subsequently adopted by all UK railways except Brunel's original GWR which used 7ft, and could run at much faster speeds than all standard gauge railways. However because of the problems in transhipping goods between the 2 gauges the government decreed all railways should be standard gauge, so the GWR had to change.

Guess what my degree dissertation was about?

edit - forgot to mention the Russian, and also original French/Belgian gauge was 1500mm which converts to the approx 4ft 11 and a bit inches you mention above. In Ireland the standard gauge is 5ft 3 inches.

Brunel's gauge was 7 feet and 1/4 inch wasn't it.
My favourite thing on railways is their slang...any good suggestions?

(15-06-2020 17:57 )Chrisst Wrote:  Brunel's gauge was 7 feet and 1/4 inch wasn't it.
My favourite thing on railways is their slang...any good suggestions?

That's correct, was supposed to be 7ft according to Brunel's original specifications, but no-one seems to know where the extra quarter inch came from.

Not at all knowledgeable about railway slang - more interested in the engineering side of things.

The bulky plastic electical 3 pinned plug used in the UK is called a Type G plug and conforms to BS1363
In Europe the two pinned Type F plug is used
The UK plug is designed to be superior because the earth pin opens the shutters in the socket first when you plug something in and closes the shutters last when you take it out. If the cable is pulled out of the plug the the live wire will be disconnected first and the earth wire last. Furthermore the plug features a fuse selected according to the nature of the appliance
BS1363 was introduced in 1947, the result of meetings during the war led by Lord Reith (he of the BBC) and was revolutionary and far sighted. It considered matters that are increasingly relevant today.
Incredible really that that generation did things like this, established the NHS that same year and won a war with the other hand.

Silence may be golden, but too much of it will drive you mad.

In Minnesota's Orfield Laboratories, there's an anechoic chamber that is so quiet, the background noise is measured in negative decibels (-9.4 dBA, to be exact).

The room's founder, Steven Orfield, said that not only can you "hear your heart beating and sometimes hear your lungs," but those who have entered the space have trouble standing up due to the fact that humans use sounds to orient themselves.

That means anyone who spends a little time in the room needs to be seated. But they won't be there for long.

According to Orfield, the longest anybody has been able to tolerate the extreme silence is 45 minutes.

Research published in the journal PLOS ONE found that for significant spans of time during the Stone Age, there were fewer than 1,500 people living in Central Europe

The popular "Keep Calm and Carry On" slogan was originally created by the British government as a form of propaganda to urge citizens to stay civil during World War II, when London frequently endured air raids from Germany.

Alas, it never caught on.

Years later, in the 2000s, a poster was discovered, and many companies have used it as a slogan or marketing theme for their products.

Apparently, vintage sensibilities apply to modern public relations campaigns too.