Old Sailors' Almanac

THIS WEEK IN HISTORY

Week 23, 2017

Previous Week   June 05, 2017 - June 11, 2017  Next Week

First Porsche completed on June 08, 1948

June 08, 1948

First Porsche completed: On this day in 1948, a hand-built aluminum prototype labeled “No. 1” becomes the first vehicle to bear the name of one of the world’s leading luxury car manufacturers: Porsche.

The Austrian automotive engineer Ferdinand Porsche debuted his first design at the World’s Fair in Paris in 1900. The electric vehicle set several Austrian land-speed records, reaching more than 35 mph and earning international acclaim for the young engineer. He became general director of the Austro-Daimler Company (an outpost of the German automaker) in 1916 and later moved to Daimler headquarters in Stuttgart. Daimler merged with the Benz firm in the 1920s, and Porsche was chiefly responsible for designing some of the great Mercedes racing cars of that decade.

Porsche left Daimler in 1931 and formed his own company. A few years later, Adolf Hitler called on the engineer to aid in the production of a small “people’s car” for the German masses. With his son, also named Ferdinand (known as Ferry), Porsche designed the prototype for the original Volkswagen (known as the KdF: “Kraft durch Freude” or “strength through joy”) in 1936. During World War II, the Porsches also designed military vehicles, most notably the powerful Tiger tank.

At war’s end, the French accused the elder Porsche of war crimes and imprisoned him for more than a year. Ferry struggled to keep the family firm afloat. He built a Grand Prix race car, the Type 360 Cisitalia, for a wealthy Italian industrialist, and used the money to pay his father’s bail. When Porsche was released from prison, he approved of another project Ferry had undertaken: a new sports car that would be the first to actually bear the name Porsche. Dubbed the Type 356, the new car was in the tradition of earlier Porsche-designed race cars such as the Cisitalia. The engine was placed mid-chassis, ahead of the transaxle, with modified Volkswagen drive train components.

The 356 went into production during the winter of 1947-48, and the aluminum prototype, built entirely by hand, was completed on June 8, 1948. The Germans subsequently hired Porsche to consult on further development of the Volkswagen. With the proceeds, Porsche opened new offices in Stuttgart, with plans to build up to 500 of his company’s own cars per year. Over the next two decades, the company would build more than 78,000 vehicles.

History Channel / Wikipedia / Britannica Encyclopedia / Ran When Parked / Automotive News Porsche 356 No. 1 Roadster 1948 - Interview (YouTube) video


Understanding Military Terminology: Scout of Many Trails (Sea Scout and Boy Scout look at globe with old sailor) ~ Norman Rockwell

Understanding Military Terminology - Media operations center

(DOD) A facility established by the commander to serve as the focal point for the interface between the military and the media during the conduct of military operations. Also called MOC.

Joint Publications (JP 3-61) (Public Affairs)


“The Odyssey”

The Old Salt’s Corner

“The Odyssey”

BOOK VI

So here Ulysses slept, overcome by sleep and toil; but Minerva went off to the country and city of the Phaecians - a people who used to live in the fair town of Hypereia, near the lawless Cyclopes. Now the Cyclopes were stronger than they and plundered them, so their king Nausithous moved them thence and settled them in Scheria, far from all other people. He surrounded the city with a wall, built houses and temples, and divided the lands among his people; but he was dead and gone to the house of Hades, and King Alcinous, whose counsels were inspired of heaven, was now reigning. To his house, then, did Minerva hie in furtherance of the return of Ulysses.

She went straight to the beautifully decorated bedroom in which there slept a girl who was as lovely as a goddess, Nausicaa, daughter to King Alcinous. Two maid servants were sleeping near her, both very pretty, one on either side of the doorway, which was closed with well-made folding doors. Minerva took the form of the famous sea captain Dymas's daughter, who was a bosom friend of Nausicaa and just her own age; then, coming up to the girl's bedside like a breath of wind, she hovered over her head and said:

“Nausicaa, what can your mother have been about, to have such a lazy daughter? Here are your clothes all lying in disorder, yet you are going to be married almost immediately, and should not only be well dressed yourself, but should find good clothes for those who attend you. This is the way to get yourself a good name, and to make your father and mother proud of you. Suppose, then, that we make tomorrow a washing day, and start at daybreak. I will come and help you so that you may have everything ready as soon as possible, for all the best young men among your own people are courting you, and you are not going to remain a maid much longer. Ask your father, therefore, to have a waggon and mules ready for us at daybreak, to take the rugs, robes, and girdles; and you can ride, too, which will be much pleasanter for you than walking, for the washing-cisterns are some way from the town.”

When she had said this Minerva went away to Olympus, which they say is the everlasting home of the gods. Here no wind beats roughly, and neither rain nor snow can fall; but it abides in everlasting sunshine and in a great peacefulness of light, wherein the blessed gods are illumined for ever and ever. This was the place to which the goddess went when she had given instructions to the girl.

Book VI continued ...

~ Homer

Written 800 B.C.E

Translated by Samuel Butler

Table of Contents


“I’m Just Sayin’”

“I’m Just Sayin”

“More probable behaviors will reinforce less probable behaviors.”

~ Premack's principle:


“Thought for the Day”

“Thought for the Day”

“The effects of kindness

are not always seen immediately.

Sometimes it takes years

until your kindness will pay off,

and is returned to you.

And sometimes

you never see the fruits of your labors,

but they are there,

deep inside of the soul

of the one you touched.”

~ Ritu Ghatourey


“What I Have Learned”

“What I Have Learned”

“Those who dance

are considered insane

by those who can’t hear the music.”

~ Anonymous


Bizarre News (we couldn’t make up stuff this good – real news story)

Bizarre News (we couldn’t make up stuff this good – real news story)

Flying Mattress Strikes Biker At 50 MPH, Cushions His Fall

Flying Mattress Strikes Biker At 50 MPH, Cushions His Fall

When you're hauling a bunch of stuff, always make sure your load is secure, even if it's a squishy mattress.

Motorcyclist Aaron Wood was riding his bike through the Clem 7 tunnel in Brisbane, Australia last week when a mattress flew off the back of a truck directly into his lane. Unable to avoid the mattress, Wood hit it with his bike, but fortunately, it was a mattress.

The squishy landing pad became lodged in his front tire, causing the bike to slow down rapidly. Fortunately, he was not rear ended, and was able to walk away from the wreck without serious injury.

Queensland Times (04/03/2017) video


Why Do Baseball Pitchers Stand on a Mound?

Mr. Answer Man Please Tell Us: Why Do Baseball Pitchers Stand on a Mound?

It was the first year pitchers could legally pitch overhand. It was the season that set the stage for the World Series. It was the year that baseball gloves made their debut.

Charlie “Old Hoss” Radbourn set the most unassailable record in baseball that year with 62 (counting his post-season victories), 60 or 59 wins as a pitcher, according to various interpretations of the rules. And that was in a 112-game season. Old Hoss’s Providence Grays won the National League with a record of 84 and 28 over the runner-up Boston Beaneaters at 73 and 38. They then swept the New York Metropolitans, champions of the American Association, three games to none at the Polo Grounds in a series billed by tabloids as the first “world championship” of baseball. Old Hoss recorded all three wins.

That’s Old Hoss Radbourn pictured above - believed taken from the ’86 season after many of the Grays were acquired by the Beaneaters. As the picture hints, Radbourn held a second historical distinction, the first man photographed, not once but twice, unambiguously “shooting the finger”. He was a legendarily fierce competitor.

This was bare-knuckle, bare-hand baseball. There were no relief pitchers. In fact, the rules forbade substitutions for any player not pretty much totally incapacitated. You start the game, you finish the game, even if it went extra innings.

The changes that began in 1884, especially allowing overhand pitching, reverberated through baseball to produce the modern game. It soon led to the pitcher’s mound but a lot more besides.

Hello, Pitcher’s Box

Old Hoss pitched underhanded, though occasionally in 1884 overhanded, but think of the style of a Kent Tekulve, Dennis Eckersley, Dan Quisenberry, Chad Bradford, or Byung-Hyun Kim to get a better idea of what batters faced.

Hoss, like all other pitchers of the day, pitched from a box using a run-up. The box was level with the field, 4-feet wide and 6-feet long. The front of the box was a mere 50 feet from the plate.

Bye-Bye, Upper Strike Zone - Hello, Gloves - Bye-Bye, Pitcher’s Box - Hello, Mound

It was 1893 that the pitcher’s box was replaced by a pitcher’s rubber, an actual slab of rubber a foot wide, moved back to 60 and a half feet from the plate. The rubber could be on a mound raised above field level.

Overhand pitching had so come to dominate baseball that it was felt that the added distance together with the lack of run-up would re-balance offense and defense. Sure enough, the league batting average shot up 39 points in ’93 and another 29 points in ’94. But by 1904, the rules were changed to limit mound height to no more than 15 inches to counter the fact that some pitchers wanted the mound quite high.

It was not long before teams were gaming the discretion allowed for mound height. “Downhill” pitchers preferred the mound as tall as possible. Submariners, on the other hand, preferred level. The Yankees kept theirs level at all times, but other teams took to rebuilding their mound to favor the home team’s starter on a daily basis—no small undertaking. I believe it was the Cleveland Indians under GM Bill Veeck that finally provoked MLB in 1950 to implement a 15-inch rule—all mounds raised 15 inches above the playing field, period.

That, however, put a premium on the downhill pitching style of pitchers like Bob Feller and Don Gibson. Pretty soon, a generation of dominating downhillers had squelched offense again. Before the 1969 season, MLB lowered all mounds to 10 inches, a move that did get offenses going again, which in turn seemed to please the fans, leading seven years later to the last big rule change—the Designated Hitter in the American League only.

Baseball-almanacComplete PitcherMental FlossQuoraSports.stackexchangeWikipedia


Where Did That Saying Come From? “Keep Mum”

Where Did That Saying Come From?

Keep Mum”  Meaning: Remain silent.

Origin: Nothing to do with mothers. It’s derived from the German word for mumble, mummeln.

Hundreds of years ago people played a dice game called mumchance, which was played in complete silence.

Phrases.org UK


NAVSPEAK aka U.S. Navy Slang - U.S. Navy America's Navy - A Global Force For Good

NAVSPEAK aka U.S. Navy Slang


Pass in Review: The ceremony of graduation from boot camp into Navy life. Pass in Review ceremonies are always held on a Friday, meaning that there is a Pass in Review held every week, except during federal holidays i.e. Christmas, New Year's Day, Easter, etc.

Patrol Sock: See “Cruise sock”.

P.B.: Short for Pacific Beach, California, suburb of San Diego


Just for MARINES - U.S. Marines Marines - The Few. The Proud.

Just for you MARINE


Port: Naval term for "left side of ship" when on board a ship and facing forward, opposite of starboard. “Port” is the same with respect to a ship regardless of where a person is located or which way a person is facing, whereas “left” might be ambiguous.

Portholes: military issue eyeglasses, or the wearer of glasses. See also BCGs & RPGs.

Pot Shack: Place where cooking utensils are washed.


Naval Aviation Squadron Nicknames

Naval Aviation Squadron Nicknames

VX-20 - Operational Test and Evaluation Force: “Force”
Force Warfare Aircraft Test Naval Air Weapons Station Patuxent River, Maryland


The Strange, Mysterious or Downright Weird

The Strange, Mysterious or Downright Weird

Hunt for Why We Exist Turns to Weird Atomic Decay

Hunt for Why We Exist Turns to Weird Atomic Decay

A never-before-seen type of radioactivity could explain why matter, including humans, exists today. And now a team of physicists has launched an experiment to find the oddball phenomenon.

When the universe first formed some 13.7 billion years ago, current theories say that equal amounts of matter and its bizarre cousin, antimatter, should have been produced during the Big Bang. Physicists know that when the two come into contact, they annihilate each other — poof. If that were the case, though, nothing should exist except photons and neutrinos. And yet, here we are. Calculations show there was a tiny bit more matter than antimatter - enough so that things exist — but why?

One way to explain this matter-antimatter asymmetry is to look for some difference between the two, besides charge, that could explain matter's advantage. It's a big question in contemporary physics, because otherwise matter and antimatter should, per contemporary theories, behave the same way. [The 18 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics]

Live Science (04/05/2017) video


© CEASAR CHOPPY by cartoonist Marty Gavin - archives Ceasar Choppy's Navy! “© CEASAR CHOPPY” by Marty Gavin

SONG FACTS

“Let My Love Open The Door” - Pete Townshend 1980

“Let My Love Open The Door” - Pete Townshend
Album: Empty Glass
Released 1980 video

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine just after this song became a hit, Townshend referred to it as “Just a ditty”. He went on to say that he preferred another song from Empty Glass, “A Little is Enoughvideo, which only reached #72 on the U.S. charts.

Pete Townshend has been a follower of the Indian spiritual teacher Meher Baba (1894-1969) since 1968 and this appears to be a devotional love song to his religious guru. However in the liner notes of Townshend's Gold (Remaster) CD, he refers to this song as “Jesus sings”.

Among the films this has been used in are Look Who's Talking (1989), Mr. Deeds (2002) and Along Came Polly (2004). A different version was recorded for Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), and It was also the end credit song for Jersey Girl (2004). The song played a prominent role in the 2007 movie Dan In Real Life, where Steve Carell and Dane Cook perform the song to Cook's girlfriend, who Carell has deep feelings for.

Two of the musicians on this track, the bass player Tony Butler and drummer Mark Brzezicki, became part of the Scottish Rock quartet Big Country a few years later.

The Christian rock-pop band Audio Adrenaline remade this song on their 1999 Underdog album. In their case the “my love” was referring to God's love.

This was Pete Townshend's only solo American Top 10 hit, but it charted as high as any Who song released in America - “I Can See For Milesvideo also hit #9.

According to the 1985 Pete TownshendMy Generationvideo radio special, Townshend's manager hated this track and felt it should be left off the album because it didn't sound like a Pete Townshend song. Weeks after the release, Pete's manager called to apologize when the song became the first hit single from Empty Glass.

Pete Townshend, official site / Billboard / All Music / Song Facts / Ultimate Classic Rock / Wikipedia

Image: “Empty Glass (album)” by Pete Townshend


Trivia

Trivia

The first aerial war photographs were taken from a balloon, during the U.S. Civil War.

● Gustave Eiffel was the engineer who built a large structure for the Paris Exhibition of 1889

● Which writers created these characters? a. Uncle Tom b. Dorothy Gale in the Wizard of Oz c. Cinderella. - a. Harriet Beecher Stowe b. L. Frank Baum c. Charles Perrault.


People Who Know Everything

A Test for People Who Know Everything

From the Jeopardy Archives Category - “I'M JUST A SAYING” ($600):

St. Paul was a big fan of this virtue, which, idiomatically, “begins at home”.

Answer for People Who Do Not Know Everything, or Want to Verify Their Answer Minneapolis – Saint Paul Star Tribune


Answer to Last Week's Test

From the Jeopardy Archives Category - “SPICES” ($200):

Spanish for “little gourd”, the guajillo is a mild type of these with a heat rating of 2,500-5,000 Scoville units.

Answer: A Chilie (pepper). Mexican Food Products


Joke of the Day

Joke of the Day

A phlebotomist at the Denver VA hospital, entered a patient’s room to draw blood.

Noticing an apple on his nightstand, the doctor remarked, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away, right?”

“That’s true”, he agreed. “I haven’t seen a doctor in three days.”


Quotable Quotables

“Have Gun - Will Travel” Season 3 Episode 13 - Charley Red Dog

Paladin: “Some friendships are like a good wine; a wise man let's them age before sampling.”

Paladin: “Some good wines are better slightly chilled.”

Paladin: “Respect can be as contagious as measles if it's properly spread around.”

Paladin: “Respect is important to all men. Some will even risk death for it.”

Paladin: “ I think we came out just about even. The marshal has your gratitude and I have your money.”

~ “Have Gun - Will Travel” - “Charley Red Dog (#3.13)” (1959) video Written By: Gene Roddenberry, Herb Meadow - IMDb - CBS (from 1957 through 1963)