Apollo 17 Launch on December 7, 1972

Apollo 17 Launch The huge, 363-feet tall Apollo 17 (Spacecraft 114/Lunar Module 12/Saturn 512) space vehicle is launched from Pad A., Launch Complex 39, Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Florida, at 12:33 a.m. (EST), Dec. 7, 1972.

Apollo 17, the final lunar landing mission in NASA's Apollo program, was the first nighttime liftoff of the Saturn V launch vehicle. Aboard the Apollo 17 spacecraft were astronaut Eugene A. Cernan, commander; astronaut Ronald E. Evans, command module pilot; and scientist-astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt, lunar module pilot. Flame from the five F-1 engines of the Apollo/Saturn first (S-1C) stage illuminates the nighttime scene. A two-hour and 40-minute hold delayed the Apollo 17 launching.

The Apollo lunar-landing program ends on December 19, 1972, when the last three astronauts to travel to the moon splash down safely in the Pacific Ocean. Apollo 17 had lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, 10 days before.

In July 1969, after three years of preparation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) accomplished President John F. Kennedy’s goal of putting a man on the moon and safely returning him to Earth with Apollo 11. From 1969 to 1972, there were six successful lunar landing missions, and one aborted mission, Apollo 13. During the Apollo 17 mission, astronauts Eugene A. Cernan and Harrison H. Schmitt stayed for a record 75 hours on the surface of the moon, conducting three separate surface excursions in the Lunar Rover vehicle and collecting 243 pounds of rock and soil samples.

Although Apollo 17 was the last lunar landing, the last official Apollo mission was conducted in July 1975, when an Apollo spacecraft successfully rendezvoused and docked with the Soviet Soyuz 19 spacecraft in orbit around the Earth. It was fitting that the Apollo program, which first visited the moon under the banner of “We came in peace for all mankind”, should end on a note of peace and international cooperation.

History Channel / Wikipedia / Encyclopedia Britannica / NASA / Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.edu / Space.com / Apollo 17 Launch on December 7, 1972 (YouTube)”

Pearl Harbor bombed on December 7, 1941

Pearl Harbor bombed At 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time, a Japanese dive bomber bearing the red symbol of the Rising Sun of Japan on its wings appears out of the clouds above the island of Oahu. A swarm of 360 Japanese warplanes followed, descending on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in a ferocious assault. The surprise attack struck a critical blow against the U.S. Pacific fleet and drew the United States irrevocably into World War II.

With diplomatic negotiations with Japan breaking down, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his advisers knew that an imminent Japanese attack was probable, but nothing had been done to increase security at the important naval base at Pearl Harbor. It was Sunday morning, and many military personnel had been given passes to attend religious services off base. At 7:02 a.m., two radar operators spotted large groups of aircraft in flight toward the island from the north, but, with a flight of B-17s expected from the United States at the time, they were told to sound no alarm. Thus, the Japanese air assault came as a devastating surprise to the naval base.

Much of the Pacific fleet was rendered useless: Five of eight battleships, three destroyers, and seven other ships were sunk or severely damaged, and more than 200 aircraft were destroyed. A total of 2,400 Americans were killed and 1,200 were wounded, many while valiantly attempting to repulse the attack. Japan’s losses were some 30 planes, five midget submarines, and fewer than 100 men. Fortunately for the United States, all three Pacific fleet carriers were out at sea on training maneuvers. These giant aircraft carriers would have their revenge against Japan six months later at the Battle of Midway, reversing the tide against the previously invincible Japanese navy in a spectacular victory.

The day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, President Roosevelt appeared before a joint session of Congress and declared, “Yesterday, December 7, 1941–a date which will live in infamy–the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” After a brief and forceful speech, he asked Congress to approve a resolution recognizing the state of war between the United States and Japan. The Senate voted for war against Japan by 82 to 0, and the House of Representatives approved the resolution by a vote of 388 to 1. The sole dissenter was Representative Jeannette Rankin of Montana, a devout pacifist who had also cast a dissenting vote against the U.S. entrance into World War I. Three days later, Germany and Italy declared war against the United States, and the U.S. government responded in kind.

The American contribution to the successful Allied war effort spanned four long years and cost more than 400,000 American lives.

History Channel / Wikipedia / Encyclopedia Britannica / Pearl Harbor Oahu / National Park Service / Pearl Harbor - Dec. 7, 1941 - The only color film of the attack (YouTube)”

Understanding Military Terminology - Modernized Integrated Database

(DOD) The national level repository for the general military intelligence available to the entire Department of Defense Intelligence Information System community and, through Global Command and Control System integrated imagery and intelligence, to tactical units. Also called MIDB.

Joint Publications (JP 2-01) Joint and National Intelligence Support to Military Operations

The Old Salt’s Corner

“Mariner's 23rd Psalm”

The Lord is my pilot, I shall not go adrift;

He lighteth my passage across dark channels;

He steereth me through the deep waters,

He keepeth my log.

He guideth me by the evening star for my safety's sake.

Yes, though I sail mid the thunders and tempests of life,

I fear no peril, for Thou art with me,

Thy stars and heavens, they comfort me.

The vastness of the sea upholds me.

Surely fair winds and safe harbors shall be found

All the days of my life;

And I shall dock, secure forever.

~ Unknown

“What I Learned”

“Don’t judge someone just because

they sin differently than you.”

~ Anonymous

“Thought for the Day”

“Kindness is the language

which the deaf can hear

and the blind can see.”

~ Mark Twain

“I’m Just Sayin”

“You will never reach your destination

if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.”

~ Winston Churchill

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

Naked Man Who Jumped Into Aquarium Shark Tank Wanted By Toronto Police

'Extremely dangerous' stunt jeopardized staff and marine animals, police say

A man who swam naked among sharks at Ripley's Aquarium of Canada in downtown Toronto late Friday is wanted in a violent assault earlier in the evening, police say.

Spokesperson Katrina Arrogante said investigators from the city's west-end 14 Division and the downtown 52 Division connected the incidents on Monday through evidence and the clothing he was seen wearing.

The assault took place outside Medieval Times at Exhibition Place around 8 p.m. ET Friday, police said, and the victim suffered serious injuries. It's believed the suspect fled and headed to the aquarium, around five kilometres east. Officers were called to the popular tourist attraction two hours later.

One minute-long video posted on YouTube shows a man taking off his clothes and diving into the Dangerous Lagoon, a 2.9-million-litre tank that offers an underwater gallery to dozens of marine animals, including 17 sharks.

The naked man can be seen doing the breaststroke on the surface of the water while sand tiger sharks swim within centimetres of his feet.

“I was scared I was going to

witness the death of this guy.”

~ Erinn Acland, witness

Green sawfish, green sea turtles, green moray eels and other species of tropical fish are also housed in the tank, according to the aquarium's website.

Security at the popular tourist attraction asked the man to leave shortly before 10:30 p.m. ET but he refused, said Jenifferjit Sidhu, a spokesperson for Toronto Police Service.

Instead, he swam to the edge of the enclosure and emerged from the tank before doing a backward flip into the water, she told CBC Toronto on Monday.

Visitor Erinn Acland said she heard the “big splash” and thought the trainers were feeding the sharks. As Acland and her boyfriend approached it, she said, they saw a man in the water.

“The guy seemed totally relaxed and there were sharks, like, everywhere”, she told CBC Toronto. “He appeared to be totally nude and, like, laughing.”

Acland described the display as unexpected and horrifying.

“I don't know what would possess someone to do that. It's totally insane to me”, she explained.

“I was scared I was going to witness the death of this guy.”

A video by a visitor who captured the man's aquatic adventure on YouTube.

On-site security called police, said Sidhu.

But before officers arrived, the man got out of the water.

A video shows him walking past security standing on the edge of the tank, jump the gate and slip into a crowd of onlookers where a woman appears to be holding his clothes. He put them on and left the aquarium at the request of security, Sidhu said.

No marine animals were harmed during the stunt, she noted, adding the swim was ”extremely dangerous”.

“It put the man's safety in jeopardy, the safety of the marine animals and the safety of the staff who tried to get him out of the water”, she told CBC Toronto.

“We plan to press charges to the full extent of the law.”

~ Peter Doyle, general manager of Ripley's Aquarium

CBC Toronto (10/15/2018)

Mr. Answer Man Please Tell Us: How can the evolution theory hold up against the fact that humans thousands of years ago built structures that cannot be replicated by current “evolved” human technology?

“In 1997, Mark Lehner and stonemason Roger Hopkins conducted a three-week pyramid-building experiment for a NOVA television episode. They built a pyramid 6 metres (20 ft) high by 9 metres (30 ft) wide, consisting of a total of 162 cubic metres (5,700 cu ft), or about 405 tons. It was made out of 186 stones weighing an average of 2.2 tons each. Twelve quarrymen carved 186 stones in 22 days, and the structure was erected using 44 men. They used iron hammers, chisels and levers.”

“They used levers to lift the capstone to a height of 20 feet (6.1 m). Four or five men were able to use levers on stones less than one ton to flip them over and transport them by rolling, but larger stones had to be towed. Lehner and Hopkins found that by putting the stones on wooden sledges and sliding the sledges on wooden tracks, they were able to tow a two-ton stone with 12 to 20 men.”

Keep in mind, this was just 12 men working for 3 weeks using only hammers and chisels, although 44 men were involved in erecting the final structure (using only levers). And they were able to build a small pyramid.

The Great Pyramid of Giza is estimated to have taken ancient Egyptians around twenty years to build, and required up to 40,000 workers.

Typically it’s more in the line “We currently do not know how they were able to build this structure 5,000 years ago without the use of modern (last 1,000 year) tools).”

If this was a fact it would have NOTHING to do with evolution. We lose knowledge all the time either due to be replaced or nobody learn the skill. Very few people today know how to navigate the sea without the use of GPS (well this is not true for sailors), but that does not mean we don’t know how to navigate the sea today.

Evolution does not mean ‘better’, just changed to better adapt. With more machines doing the work for us, it might very well be that humans will evolve ‘backwards’ in the future, not needing canine tooth, large brain, endurance and hair (we already lost a lot of hair).

The reason we don’t understand somebody is just pointing to the fact that we need to research more / cannot expect to understand everything but it does not disprove something.

Just as if you find a whale with a sword attached to his flipper does not indicate that whales was an integral part of the Spanish inquisition. Finding one item we cannot explain does not invalidate the other 99, but might indicate there is a piece we don’t fully understand yet, or got wrong … so over time we fix that through better theories, but rarely does that mean we will discard 100% of the previous one.

BBC • NCBI.gov • Phys.org • Quora • Smithsonian • History of evolutionary thought - Evolutionary psychology, Wikipedia • How can the evolution theory hold up against the fact that humans thousands of years ago built structures that cannot be replicated by current “evolved” human technology?? (YouTube)

NAVSPEAK aka U.S. Navy Slang

Bar Stool Technician: A term labeled to the former AQ rating, Aviation Fire Control Technician. The rating badge icon looked like a bar stool.

Batphone: A dedicated outside telephone line (not for personal use) typically for shore power or security purposes. Sometimes used to connect CIC to Engineering.

Battle Group (BG): A group of warships and supply ships centered around a large deck aircraft carrier and that carrier's airwing. Usually consists of one cruiser, one supply ship, and one or two destroyers, frigates, and submarines. More recently referred to as a Carrier Strike Group (CSG).

Battle Racks: (Term for) When mission-exhausted Aviators are allowed to sleep through General Quarters.

Battle rattle: Body armor and helmet.

Battle Stations:A manning condition involving (usually) all hands. Assignments are planned out prior to setting the underway watch and posted in the Watch, Quarter, and Station Bill. Assigned personnel go to their assigned stations to do their assigned task in support of fighting the ship in a battle or when there is a credible threat of attack for which the ship must be prepared to fight against.

Battlewagon: Battleship.

Just for you MARINE

BB Counter: Marine whose duties are the handling, storage, issue of ordnance

BCGs or BCs: Birth Control Glasses or Boot Camp Glasses: military issue glasses worn at recruit training; so called because they make the wearer too ugly to engage in sexual relations. See also portholes and RPGs.

Naval Aviation Squadron Nicknames

Patrol Squadron Ten (VP-10) - nicknamed the “Red Lancers”
United States Navy - Naval Air Station, Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Jacksonville, Florida - Established March, 10 1951

Where Did That Saying Come From?

“Flogging a dead horse:”  Meaning: To flog a dead horse is to attempt to revive an interest which has died out; to engage in fruitless effort.

History: The original meaning of 'a dead horse', apart from the literal 'horse that has fallen off its perch', was a reference to work for which a person had been paid in advance (and possibly had already spent the proceeds). This dates from the 17th century and is referred to in Richard Brome's play The Antipodes, first performed in 1638 and printed in 1640:

“He cur'd a country gentleman that fell mad

For spending of his land before he sold it;

That is, 'twas sold to pay his debts - all went

That way for a dead horse, as one would say!”

Our present meaning, in the phrase 'flog a dead horse', which is sometimes expressed as 'beat a dead horse', is quite different. This is a reference to something that is entirely pointless and cannot result in any productive end. The phrase, which is also sometimes expressed as 'beating a dead horse', appeared in print in 1859, in the report of a UK parliamentary debate involving Francis Wemyss-Charteris Douglas, eighth earl of Wemyss and sixth earl of March - who was better known as Lord Elcho. It was reported in Hansard's parliamentary debates, Volume 153. 1859:

“If the hon. Member for Birmingham [John Bright] had been present, he would have asked the hon. Gentleman [Lord Elcho] whether he was satisfied with the results of his winter campaign. It was notorious that he was not, and a saying was attributed to him that he found he was 'flogging a dead horse'.”

Whether Lord Elcho was the originator of the phrase, we can't tell, but no earlier use of it in print has yet come to light.

Phrases.org UK

Science & Technology

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Popular Mechanics

The Strange, Mysterious or Downright Weird

Giant, Prehistoric Bird Chowed Down on This Neanderthal Child's Bones

One Neanderthal child had a very bad day about 115,000 years ago. The child died - that much is certain - and the bones were gulped down and digested by a giant, prehistoric bird, according to archaeologists in Poland.

However, it's unclear whether the giant bird killed the child before the gruesome feast or whether the child died from another cause before the bird scavenged the remains, the archaeologists said.

Either way, it appears that the child's phalanges (finger bones) passed “through the digestive system of a large bird," Paweł Valde-Nowak, a professor of archaeology at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, said in a statement. “This is the first such known example from the ice age.” [In Photos: Bones from a Denisovan-Neanderthal Hybrid]

The discovery of the Neanderthal child's finger bones is a big finding, especially because the bones, discovered in Ciemna Cave, are the oldest known human remains ever to be found in Poland.

Until now, the oldest known human remains in Poland were three Neanderthal molars from Stajnia Cave that dated to between 52,000 and 42,000 years ago. Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) lived in Eurasia from about 300,000 to about 35,000 years ago and are modern humans' closest extinct relatives. (The date for the extinction of Neanderthals is up in the air. According to a 2006 study in the journal Nature, Neanderthals may have lived to about 24,000 years ago, although these individuals were likely among the last of their kind.)

An analysis of the newly analyzed finger bones revealed that the child was likely between the age of 5 and 7 when he or she died, Valde-Nowak said. The 0.4-inch-long (1 centimeter) bones themselves are porous, and dotted with dozens of strainer-like holes, he added.

But given their poor state of preservation, the bones are not suitable for DNA analysis, Valde-Nowak and his colleagues said.

“But we have no doubts that these are Neanderthal remains, because they come from a very deep layer of the cave, a few meters [yards] below the present surface”, Valde-Nowak said. “This layer also contains typical stone tools used by the Neanderthal.”

Moreover, it appears that the Neanderthals used the cave seasonally, he said. Researchers have been studying Ciemna Cave for decades, and while they found the child's bones (as well as a few ancient animal bones) there a few years ago, it wasn't until 2018 that a new analysis revealed that these bones belonged to a Neanderthal.

“This is a unique discovery”, Valde-Nowak said. “Only single fragments of fossil bones belonging to relatives of modern man (Homo sapiens) have survived to our times in Poland.” Researchers have also unearthed Neanderthal tools — such as knife scrapers, which could be used to cut and scrape — on the banks of Poland's Vistula River. All of these Neanderthal findings come from southern Poland, indicating that the region was advantageous for Neanderthals, unlike northern Poland, which was covered with a glacier during the last ice age.

The research, which is not yet published, is due out later this year in the Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology.

Live Science (10/05/2018)