TIL: Today I Learned

[Hrothbern]

A kind of TIL

It is today 50 years ago that the Concorde made its maiden flight.
Where the US and the USSR had their Space projects, the second rank Big Five the UK and France embarked on another prestige project leading to a phenomenal technical achievement: the Concorde.

One of the special technical challenges was to handle the air in-take for the engine at variable speed: reducing the air from Mach 2 to Mach 0.5 before entering the engine.

Here a nice article on that:
https://www.heritageconcorde.com/air-in-take-system

 

[Hrothbern]

Concorde was such a small aircraft when you were stood close to it.
It was also very noisy, you could not speak in the site office when it was taking off.
I have seen ten B1 taking off from Fairford, I was about 4km from the end of the runway when the flew over head and the noise was similar.

I was inside a Tupolev-144 (the Russian konkorsky). Also very small, long, narrow. I could not stand straight-up at all.
There is an expo centre in Sinsheim, Germany along the A-6 with a TU-144 open for the public.

 

[Birdjaguar]

TIL that Mammoth Mt Ski Resort has had 47 feet of snow this winter. It is on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada in Central CA. That is quite a lot. El Nino has ended the west coast drought.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

TIL there was a flood which covered the entire central valley of California - an area of 5,000 to 6,000 square miles - from December 1861 to summer of 1862. Apparently that happens every few centuries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Flood_of_1862

 

[Zkribbler]

TIL there was a flood which covered the entire central valley of California - an area of 5,000 to 6,000 square miles - from December 1861 to summer of 1862. Apparently that happens every few centuries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Flood_of_1862

I grew up in California & was never taught that.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I grew up in California & was never taught that.

Me neither. Looking at the flooding map, even Palmdale got sunk. Considering that we probably don't have any better drainage today than we had in 1861 this is...interesting.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The cool thing about that flood map to me is that it makes the extinct volcano near the northern end of the valley stand out like a mini-Hawaii in an appreciable inland sea.

 

[Phrossack]

I've been thinking about how Latin and Greek loanwords and derivatives sound very posh, proper, and scientific, but when translated, they're much more relatable and understandable and less impressive.

For example, TIL that the names of the heroic and mythical half-brothers, Castor and Pollux, had names translating roughly to Beaver and Sweetie.

Sweetie was fond of boxing and fighting in general.

 

[Arakhor]

If you remember castoreum as "crushed beaver anal glands", you won't soon forget it (and you'll be appalled at what that gets put into).

 

[Dachs]

I've been thinking about how Latin and Greek loanwords and derivatives sound very posh, proper, and scientific, but when translated, they're much more relatable and understandable and less impressive.

For example, TIL that the names of the heroic and mythical half-brothers, Castor and Pollux, had names translating roughly to Beaver and Sweetie.

Sweetie was fond of boxing and fighting in general.

you can go too far with this literal names business

like, for example, the cluster of early modern English families, tired of the Biblical trend of Methuselahs and Malachis, that gave their children hortatory names like "Peace of God" and "Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith"

names so ridiculous that centuries of historians actually claimed they weren't real before many of them were corroborated

 

[Takhisis]

If you remember castoreum as "crushed beaver anal glands", you won't soon forget it (and you'll be appalled at what that gets put into).

Not least, castor oil.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Not least, castor oil.

Except that comes from castor beans....

 

[Takhisis]

shhhhh

 

[sophie]

Except that comes from castor beans....

The name in English comes from its association with the beaver's secretions though.

 

[Takhisis]

The whole point is that if you bother to read and are not afraid of sounding hoity-toity then you can call it ricinus oil (see: olio di ricino).

 

[Birdjaguar]

The name in English comes from its association with the beaver's secretions though.

All you've done is made Tak feel better.

Fun fact

Spoiler :

A heavy dose of castor oil could be used as a humiliating punishment for adults, especially political dissenters. Colonial officials used it in the British Raj (India) to deal with recalcitrant servants.[53] Belgian military officials prescribed heavy doses of castor oil in Belgian Congo as a punishment for being too sick to work.[54]

The most famous use as punishment came in Fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini. It was a favorite tool used by the Blackshirts to intimidate and humiliate their opponents.[55][56][57] Political dissidents were force-fed large quantities of castor oil by Fascist squads. This technique was said to have been originated by Gabriele D'Annunzio or Italo Balbo.[58]Victims of this treatment did sometimes die, as the dehydrating effects of the oil-induced diarrhea often complicated the recovery from the nightstick beating they also received along with the castor oil; however, even those victims who survived had to bear the humiliation of the laxative effects resulting from excessive consumption of the oil.[59] Inspired by the Italian Fascists, the Nazi SA used the torture method against German Jews shortly after the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany in 1933. [60]

It is said that Mussolini's power was backed by "the bludgeon and castor oil".[59] In lesser quantities, castor oil was also used as an instrument of intimidation, for example, to discourage civilians or soldiers who would call in sick either in the factory or in the military. It took decades after Mussolini's death before the myth of castor oil as a panacea for a wide range of diseases and medical conditions was totally demystified, as it was also widely administered to pregnant women and elderly or mentally ill patients in hospitals in the false belief it had no negative side effects.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

like, for example, the cluster of early modern English families, tired of the Biblical trend of Methuselahs and Malachis, that gave their children hortatory names like "Peace of God" and "Fight-the-good-fight-of-faith"

Puritans had some funny names like "Fly-Fornication Richardson."

 

[Dachs]

Mentioning "castor oil" reminded me of Signora Bianca Castafiore (/Blanche Chastefleur) from the Tintin books.

Castafiore is a ditz, and despite repeatedly meeting Captain Haddock she can never remember his name. The English books record her errors as Bartok, Hopscotch, Fatstock, and Stopcock, among others. In The Red Sea Sharks she is attending a party on a yacht that rescues shipwreck survivors Tintin, Haddock, and the Estonian pilot Piotr Skut from a makeshift raft. She recognizes Haddock, but of course fails to remember his name correctly, giving it as "Harrock". He takes it in stride, shaking her hand furiously with a manic grin on his face: "Harrock'n'roll, Signora Castoroili - Harrock'n'roll."

Hergé embarked on a bizarre experimental story in the early 1960s with Castafiore at the center. It is genuinely strange for a Tintin book. Nothing happens in The Castafiore Emerald. A jewel is stolen, except it isn't; a step is mended, except it is broken again almost instantly. Haddock, a homebody in the latter half of the Tintin canon, has his privacy assaulted by an increasingly expansive cast of characters, all wafting through on their own unique journeys. Some critics have associated The Castafiore Emerald with the Theater of the Absurd for obvious reasons.

When I Googled Signora Castoroili, Pierre Assouline's biography of Hergé-cum-Tintin literary criticism appeared, so I paged through it a bit. I had known that The Castafiore Emerald was a favorite of People Who Think About Tintin. However, I had not known, or had not remembered, that (TIL) Michel Serres actually wrote an article on it for a literary review, and that he introduced Tintin literary criticism to the Sorbonne.

 

[Takhisis]

Dangit I have that one in Spanish but in a VHS tape so I cannot check the translation. The only work that was translated more liberally than Tintin which I know of is Asterix (of which I even have a quite rare copy in Gaelic), and the translations are usually masterful -for both.

All you've done is made Tak feel better.

Owen does tend to do that.

 

[Takhisis]

On a completely unrelated note, TIL that the new president of the National Socialist Movement in the U.S. of A. is a black ex-con who is going to transform their main page into a memorial for the Holocaust.