Apollo 13 oxygen tank explodes on April 13, 1970

The First Hospital Founded in the 13 Colonies in America: Pennsylvania Hospital was founded in 1751 by Dr. Thomas Bond and Benjamin Franklin “to care for the sick-poor and insane who were wandering the streets of Philadelphia.” At the time, Philadelphia was the fastest growing city in the 13 colonies. In 1730, the population numbered 11,500 and had grown to 15,000 by 1750 (the city continued to grow and by 1776, its 40,000 residents made Philadelphia the second largest English-speaking city in the British Empire).

The docks and wharves along the Delaware River teemed with activity as ships bound for foreign ports loaded up with flour, meat and lumber while overseas vessels delivered European-manufactured goods and wines. Foreign visitors noted with envy the city's growing prosperity. Although the majority of the population was neither extremely wealthy nor extremely poor, there was a significant increase in the number of immigrant settlers who were “aged, impotent or diseased”.

At the time, colonial America's urban centers were far healthier than their European counterparts. Nevertheless, the Philadelphia region, according to city leaders of the day, was “a melting pot for diseases, where Europeans, Africans and Indians engaged in free exchange of their respective infections”. Faced with increasing numbers of the poor who were suffering from physical illness and the increasing numbers of people from all classes suffering from mental illness, civic-minded leaders sought a partial solution to the problem by founding a hospital.

The idea for the hospital originated with Dr. Thomas Bond. Born in Calvert County, Maryland, Bond, a Quaker, moved to Philadelphia as a young man. In 1738, in order to further his medical education, he went abroad to study medicine in London. While in Europe, Bond spent time at the famous French hospital, the Hotel-Dieu in Paris, and became impressed with the continent's new hospital movement. Bond returned to Philadelphia in 1739 and two years later was appointed Port Inspector for Contagious Diseases.

Bond and Benjamin Franklin were long-standing friends. Bond was a member of Franklin's Library Company and helped establish the American Philosophical Society and the Academy of Philadelphia, which evolved into the University of Pennsylvania.

Around 1750, Bond “conceived the idea of establishing a hospital in Philadelphia for the reception and cure of poor sick persons.” The idea was a novelty on this side of the Atlantic, and when Bond approached Philadelphians for support they asked him what Franklin thought of the idea. Bond hadn't approached his good friend because he thought it was out of Franklin's line of interest, but because of the reaction he received, Bond soon turned to Franklin. After hearing the plan, Franklin became a subscriber and strong supporter. Franklin's backing was enough to convince many others that Bond's projected hospital was worthy of support.

Franklin organized a petition, although not signed by him, bearing 33 names and brought it to the Pennsylvania Assembly on January 20, 1751. The petition stated that although the Pennsylvania Assembly had made many compassionate and charitable provisions for the relief of the poor, a small provincial hospital was necessary.

The hospital bill met with some objections from rural members of the Assembly because they thought the hospital would only be serviceable to the city. At this critical juncture, Franklin saved the day with a clever plan to counter the claim by challenging the Assembly that he could prove the populace supported the hospital bill by agreeing to raise 2000 pounds from private citizens.

Franklin's fundraising effort brought in more than the required amount. The Assembly signed the bill and presented it to Lieutenant Governor James Hamilton for approval. After amending the bill several times, Hamilton signed it into law on May 11, 1751.

Penn Medicine / Wikipedia / Benjamin Franklin History.org

Understanding Military Terminology

Redeployment

(DOD) The transfer or rotation of forces and materiel to support another joint force commander’s operational requirements, or to return personnel, equipment, and materiel to the home and/or demobilization stations for reintegration and/or out-processing.

See also Deployment.

Joint Publications (JP 3-35) Deployment and Redeployment Operations

Red Team

(DOD) An organizational element comprised of trained and educated members that provide an independent capability to fully explore alternatives in plans and operations in the context of the operational environment and from the perspective of adversaries and others.

Joint Publications (JP 2-0) Joint Intelligence

Reduced Operating Status

(DOD) Military Sealift Command ships withdrawn from full operating status because of decreased operational requirements.

Also called ROS.

See also Military Sealift Command.

Joint Publications (JP 4-01.2) Sealift Support to Joint Operations

Reduction

(DOD) The creation of lanes through a minefield or obstacle to allow passage of the attacking ground force.

Joint Publications (JP 3-15) Barriers, Obstacles, and Mine Warfare for Joint Operations

Refraction

(DOD) The process by which the direction of a wave is changed when moving into shallow water at an angle to the bathymetric contours.

Joint Publications (JP 4-01.6) Joint Logistics Over the Shore

Joint Publication - Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms

The Old Salt’s Corner

“Navy Blue”

My shipmate sleeps in his coat of Navy blue;

In a watery grave at sea lies the heart that beat so true.

He sank faint and weary among the honored brave,

As we laid him sad and lonely into his watery grave.

No more the bugle calls the weary one,

Rest, noble spirit, In thy grave below!

I’ll find you and know you, Among the good and true,

When a robe of white is giv’n for the coat of Navy blue.

He cried, give me water and just a little crumb,

And my mother she will bless you thro’ all the years to come;

Oh! tell my sweet sister, so gentle, good and true,

That I’ll meet her up in heaven, in my coat of Navy blue.

No more the bugle calls the weary one,

Rest, noble spirit, In thy grave below!

I’ll find you and know you, Among the good and true,

When a robe of white is giv’n for the coat of Navy blue.

Long, long years have vanished, and though he comes no more,

Yet my heart will startling beat with each footfall at my door;

I gaze o’er the dock where he waved a last adieu,

But no gallant lad I see, in his coat of Navy blue

No more the bugle calls the weary one,

Rest, noble spirit, In thy grave below!

I’ll find you and know you, Among the good and true,

When a robe of white is giv’n for the coat of Navy blue.

~ Author Unknown

“I’m Just Sayin”

“If you fell down yesterday, stand up today.”

“Beauty is in the heart of the beholder.”

“If we don't end war, war will end us.”

“The path of least resistance is the path of the loser.”

“Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.”

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”

“The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow.”

“Crime and bad lives are the measure of a State's failure,

all crime in the end is the crime of the community.”

“Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober;

not to make us sorry but wise.”

“There's nothing wrong in suffering,

if you suffer for a purpose.

Our revolution didn't abolish danger or death.

It simply made danger and death worthwhile.”

~ H. G. Wells

“Thought for the Day”

“Whoever loveth me, loveth my hound.”

“An absolutely new idea is one of the rarest things known to man.”

“I would uphold the law if for no other reason but to protect myself.”

“Adults are obsolete children.”

“I die the king's faithful servant,

but God is first.”

“A little wanton money,

which burned out the bottom of his purse.”

“Life is really simple,

but we insist on making it complicated.”

“If honor were profitable,

everybody would be honorable.”

“See me safe up:

for in my coming down,

I can shift for myself.”

~ Thomas More

“What I Learned”

“Anything's possible if you've got enough nerve.”

“What's coming will come and we'll just have to meet it when it does.”

“Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain.”

“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”

“Death is just life's next big adventure.”

“Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression.

It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships.

Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts that is something on which to pride yourself,”

but poverty itself is romanticized by fools.”

“Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not,

and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation

In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity,

it is the power to that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.”

~ J. K. Rowling

Mr. Answer Man Please Tell Us: How Were Roads Cleared Before Snowplows?

America's first settlers were not so well-equipped to deal with the New World's snowy winters. During the 1717 storm (four feet of snow dumped, with drifts of up to 25 feet in some places), only a solitary postman was able to make the trip from Boston to New York. His trick? Abandoning his horse for a pair of snow shoes.

Back then, plowing wasn't in the picture. Instead, residents affixed ski-like runners to their carts to move through the icy streets.

But urban development brought with it streets, and people who needed to get through them. Residents depended on regular deliveries of food and fire wood. When snow made transport impossible, they would dig themselves out in de-facto teams to allow sleigh traffic to pass through. Though ordinances in many cities required homeowners to clear snow off their sidewalks, snow removal was not yet practiced on a citywide basis.

That changed in the 1840s, when the first snow plow patent was issued. According to a wonderfully comprehensive history by the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the first snow plow was deployed in Milwaukee in 1862. They write that the plow “was attached to a cart pulled by a team of horses through the snow-clogged streets”.

Over the next several years, other cities adopted the horse-drawn plow, along with a sense that snow removal was a city's problem. As the Data Center notes “the invention of the snow plow initiated widespread snow removal efforts in cities and also created a basis for municipal responsibility in snow removal.”

Of course, with great plowing comes great responsibility. Cities were able to clear main streets, but side streets and sidewalks often ended up blocked off by huge mounds of snow. Again, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, businessmen and townsfolk “complained and even brought lawsuits against the plowing companies ... [claiming] their storefronts were completely blocked with mounds of plowed snow, making them inaccessible to their customers.”

New York handled this by hiring horse-drawn carts and teams of shovelers to work in conjunction with the plows.

However, these advances were no match for the Blizzard of 1888, which paralyzed cities. Some areas saw as much and four feet of snow, trapping people in their homes (or in one tragic case, in a train bound for New York City) for days on end.

But the storm had an upside - it led cities to develop more comprehensive snow plans. Cities began plowing when storms started, rather than waiting until the end of the storm. Officials divided cities into sections and assigned different areas to different plow drivers.

Some cities even tried equipping their electric trolleys with plows, which didn't work so well.

In the early 20th century, the automobile entered the picture, creating new problems and new possibilities for snow plowing. In 1913, New York unveiled the first motorized dump truck (complete with tractor tires), abandoning the traditional horse-drawn cart.

In the 1920s, Chicago unveiled the snowloader, an “ingenious contraption” that “was equipped with a giant scoop and a conveyor belt. As the snow was plowed, it was forced up the scoop, caught by the conveyor belt which carried it up and away from the street into a chute at the top where it was dropped into a dump truck parked underneath.”

The last major innovation to snow removal came mid-century. In 1959, space technology entered the snow removal effort. Satellites allowed for more accurate storm forecasting and quicker preparation.

The Atlantic - CityLab • Marketplace.org • Mental Floss • Quora • Wikipedia

NAVSPEAK aka U.S. Navy Slang

Ahead Flank Liberty: The fictitious speed at which a ship travels after a mission or patrol is completed with high marks and the ship is headed into very nice foreign ports that cater to visiting U.S. Forces.

AIMD: ADministrative SEParation: Release from Naval Service for administrative reasons. (The list of reasons is very extensive and can be found in BUPERSINST 1900.8C, Enclosure (2).)

AD: Aviation Machinist Mate, one who throws wrenches at aircraft and prays to mech gods for a favorable outcome.

AE: Aviation Electrician's Mate.

A-Farts: (AFRTS) Armed Forces Radio & Television Service. A-Farts is received via satellite all over the world and offers a variety of shows.

Some of the most entertaining offerings are the propaganda commercials it frequently airs since regular advertising is not permitted.

AFRTB: Airframes Runs This Bitch) Term commonly used among AM's.

AFTA: Advanced First Term Avionics: Part of the advanced electronics schooling package, reserved for AT's AQ's and AX's for advanced training. Basically, they taught the PO2 exam for 6 months.

A-Gang: The Auxiliaries Division of the Engineering Department. Members are known as “A-Gangers”. Also called “Fresh Air Snipe”.

Wiktionary.org

Just for you MARINE

Air Crew: Personnel that work on board any aircraft that can carry a crew (i.e. UH-1, CH-46, CH-53, V-22, etc.), and are normally charged with loading gear, passengers, and manning the door/ tail guns.

Air Force Pockets or Army Gloves: An individual's hands being inside his or her pockets.

ALICE: All-purpose Lightweight Individual Carrying Equipment, a form of combat gear still in occasional use in some Marine activities, replaced by MOLLE and ILBE.

Wikipedia.org

Naval Aviation Squadron Nicknames

Navy Rotary Wing Weapons School Other Rotary Wing Aircraft Units - nicknamed the “SEAWOLF”

United States Navy - Naval Air Station Fallon, Near Fallon, Nevada

Wikipedia.org

Where Did That Saying Come From?

“Hair of the dog that bit you:”  Meaning: A small measure of drink, intended to cure a hangover.

Origin: The fuller version of this phrase, that is, 'the hair of the dog that bit me', gives a clue to the source of the name of this supposed hangover cure. That derivation is from the medieval belief that, when someone was bitten by a rabid dog, a cure could be made by applying the same dog's hair to the infected wound. How many people managed to get bitten again when trying to approach the aforesaid dog to acquire the hair to achieve this completely useless remedy isn't known. The knowledge of the derivation should at least put paid to the frequent 'hare of the dog' misspelling.

With most metaphorical phrases that have a literal origin, for example toe the line and on the warpath, the later figurative use doesn't become popular until the literal use has fallen out of use. 'The hair of the dog' is unusual in that the figurative version is recorded before any known examples of the literal meaning.

John Heywood, in his early text, A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the Englishe tongue, 1546, uses the phrase with a clear reference to drinking:

“I pray thee let me and my fellow have

A hair of the dog that bit us last night -

And bitten were we both to the brain aright.

We saw each other drunk in the good ale glass.”

Another useful text, Randle Cotgrave's A dictionarie of the French and English tongues, 1611, also records the 'drinking' version of the expression:

“Our Ale-knights [habitual drinkers] often use this phrase, and say, Give us a haire of the dog that last bit us.”

It isn't until the 18th century that the literal use of dogs' hair to cure bite wounds is recorded in print. Robert James alludes to the method in A Treatise on Canine Madness, 1760:

“The hair of the dog that gave the wound is advised as an application to the part injured.”

In fact, James is rather skeptical about the treatment, preferring another commonly believed but equally unpromising remedy - the application of the ashes of river crabs.:

Whilst the hair of the dog that bit us is now dismissed as an effective rabies treatment, the taking of additional alcohol to cure a hangover has some scientific basis. The symptoms of hangover are partly induced by a withdrawal from alcohol poisoning. A small measure of alcohol may be some temporary relief, even if in the longer term it makes the hangover worse.

Phrases.org UK

Science & Technology

FEATURE: New results from NASA's DART planetary defense mission confirm we could deflect deadly asteroids • Most detailed geological model reveals Earth's past 100 million years

Tracing the history of grape domestication using genome sequencing • Giving plants animal antibodies to help them ward off diseases • Students ate less meat in the three years after hearing talk on its negative environmental impacts

Determining the tempo of evolution across species • Destroying the superconductivity in a kagome metal • Illuminating the evolution of social parasite ants

Can the dogs of Chernobyl teach us new tricks on survival? • Simple techniques to quantify Lithium (Li) plating and speed up the charging of Li-ion batteries • Study reveals link between selenium and COVID-19 severity Phys.org / MedicalXpress / TechXplore

FEATURE: Bees follow linear landmarks to find their way home, just like the first pilots • NASA captures sequestered carbon of 9.9 billion trees with deep-learning and satellite images

Stick to your lane: Hidden order in chaotic crowds • Flat, pancake-sized metalens images lunar surface in an engineering first • Most detailed geological model reveals Earth's past 100 million years

The world's first horse riders found near the Black Sea • Molecular atlas of spider silk production could help bring unparalleled material to market • Tracing the history of grape domestication using genome sequencing

Temperature-stable tuberculosis vaccine safe, prompts immune response in first-in-human trial • The next pandemic: Researchers develop tool to identify existing drugs to use in a future outbreak • Scientists discover answer to the mystery of cloudy filters on satellites Phys.org / MedicalXpress / TechXplore

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

“Runaway” black hole the size of 20 million suns caught speeding through space with a trail of newborn stars behind it

Astronomers have discovered a “runaway” black hole, potentially the first observational evidence that supermassive black holes can be ejected from their host galaxies.

Astronomers have spotted a runaway supermassive black hole, seemingly ejected from its home galaxy and racing through space with a chain of stars trailing in its wake.

According to the team's research, which was published April 6 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the discovery offers the first observational evidence that supermassive black holes can be ejected from their home galaxies to roam interstellar space.

The researchers discovered the runaway black hole as a bright streak of light while they were using the Hubble Space Telescope to observe the dwarf galaxy RCP 28, located about 7.5 billion light-years from Earth.

Follow-up observations showed that the streak measures more than 200,000 light-years long - roughly twice the width of the Milky Way - and is thought to be made of compressed gas that is actively forming stars. The gas trails a black hole that is estimated to measure 20 million times the mass of the sun and is speeding away from its home galaxy at 3.5 million mph (5.6 million km/h), or roughly 4,500 times the speed of sound. This is fast enough to travel from Earth to the moon in about 14 minutes, according to a NASA statement.

According to the researchers, the streak points right to the center of a galaxy, where a supermassive black hole would normally sit.

“We found a thin line in a Hubble image that is pointing to the center of a galaxy”, lead study author Pieter van Dokkum, a professor of physics and astronomy at Yale University, told Live Science. "Using the Keck telescope in Hawaii, we found that the line and the galaxy are connected. From a detailed analysis of the feature, we inferred that we are seeing a very massive black hole that was ejected from the galaxy, leaving a trail of gas and newly formed stars in its wake.”

Confirming the tail of an ejected black hole

Most, if not all, large galaxies host supermassive black holes at their centers. Active supermassive black holes often launch jets of material at high speeds, which can be seen as streaks of light that superficially resemble the one the researchers spotted. These are called astrophysical jets

To determine this isn't what they observed, van Dokkum and the team investigated this streak and found it didn't possess any of the telltale signs of an astrophysical jet. While astrophysical jets grow weaker as they move away from their source of emission, the potential supermassive black hole tail actually gets stronger as it progresses away from what seems to be its galactic point of origin, according to the researchers. Also, astrophysical jets launched by black holes fan out from their source, whereas this trail seems to have remained linear.

The team concluded that the explanation that best fits the streak is a supermassive black hole blasting through the gas that surrounds its galaxy while compressing that gas enough to trigger star formation in its wake.

“If confirmed, it would be the first time that we have clear evidence that supermassive black holes can escape from galaxies”, van Dokkum said.

Black holes on the move

Once the runaway supermassive black hole is confirmed, the next question that astronomers need to answer is how such a monstrous object gets ejected from its host galaxy.

“The most likely scenario that explains everything we've seen is a slingshot, caused by a three-body interaction”, van Dokkum said. “When three similar-mass bodies gravitationally interact, the interaction does not lead to a stable configuration but usually to the formation of a binary and the ejection of the third body.”

This might mean that the runaway black hole was once part of a rare supermassive black hole binary, and during a galactic merger, a third supermassive black hole was introduced to this partnership, flinging out one of its occupants.

Astronomers aren't sure how common these massive runaways are.

“Ejected supermassive black holes had been predicted for 50 years but none have been unambiguously seen”, van Dokkum said “Most theorists think that there should be many out there.”

Further observations with other telescopes are needed to find direct evidence of a black hole at the mysterious streak's tip, van Dokkum added.

Related: James Webb Space Telescope discovers oldest black hole in the universe - a cosmic monster 10 million times heavier than the sun

New type of black hole found lurking in Earth's “cosmic backyard” is closest ever discovered

EIGHT ways we know that black holes really do exist

NINE ideas about black holes that will blow your mind

TEN most massive black hole findings from 2022

Live Science (02/26/2023)