The Official "RIU History" Thread

[potroastV2]

When I was young, the US called November 11 Armistice Day, to honor this agreement to end World War I.

The holiday was changed to Veterans Day in order to honor Veterans of all wars.

 

[BarnBuster]

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, is assassinated while traveling through Dallas, Texas, in an open-top convertible. November 22, 1963.

 

[Padawanbater2]

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, is assassinated while traveling through Dallas, Texas, in an open-top convertible. November 22, 1963.

Good post!


11-24-2015, 41st anniversary of the discovery of Australopithecus

"Australopithecus (pronounced aw-struh-loh-pith-i-kuhs, /ɒstrəlɵˈpɪθɪkəs/; anglicized[1] australopithecine or australopith) is an extinct genus of hominids. Frompaleontological and archaeological evidence, the Australopithecus genus apparently evolved in eastern Africa around 4 million years ago before spreading throughout the continent and eventually becoming extinct somewhat after two million years ago. During that time, a number of australopithecine species emerged, including Australopithecus afarensis, A. africanus, A. anamensis, A. bahrelghazali, A. deyiremeda (proposed), A. garhi, and A. sediba.

For some hominid species of this time, such as A. robustus and A. boisei, some debate exists whether they constitute members of the same genus. If so, they would be considered 'robust australopiths', while the others would be 'gracile australopiths'. However, if these species do constitute their own genus, they may be given their own name, Paranthropus.

Australopithecus species played a significant part in human evolution, the genus Homo being derived from Australopithecus at some time after three million years ago. Among other things, they were the first hominids to show the presence of a gene that causes increased length and ability of neurons in the brain, the duplicated SRGAP2 gene. One of the australopith species eventually became the Homo genus in Africa around two million years ago (e.g. Homo habilis), and eventually modern humans, H. sapiens sapiens."

 

[BarnBuster]

Modern Thanksgiving Holiday Established 1941​

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a bill officially establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day.

The tradition of celebrating the holiday on Thursday dates back to the early history of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies, when post-harvest holidays were celebrated on the weekday regularly set aside as “Lecture Day,” a midweek church meeting where topical sermons were presented. A famous Thanksgiving observance occurred in the autumn of 1621, when Plymouth governor William Bradford invited local Indians to join the Pilgrims in a three-day festival held in gratitude for the bounty of the season.

Thanksgiving became an annual custom throughout New England in the 17th century, and in 1777 the Continental Congress declared the first national American Thanksgiving following the Patriot victory at Saratoga. In 1789, President George Washington became the first president to proclaim a Thanksgiving holiday, when, at the request of Congress, he proclaimed November 26, a Tuesday, as a day of national thanksgiving for the U.S. Constitution. However, it was not until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving to fall on the last Thursday of November, that the modern holiday was celebrated nationally.

With a few deviations, Lincoln’s precedent was followed annually by every subsequent president–until 1939. In 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt departed from tradition by declaring November 23, the next to last Thursday that year, as Thanksgiving Day. Considerable controversy surrounded this deviation, and some Americans refused to honor Roosevelt’s declaration. For the next two years, Roosevelt repeated the unpopular proclamation, but on November 26, 1941, he admitted his mistake and signed a bill into law officially making thefourth Thursday in November the national holiday of Thanksgiving Day.

 

[Padawanbater2]

Yo @BarnBuster, check this site out dude, I think you might enjoy it!

http://www.shorpy.com/

HighDef pics from the past, I checked it out earlier, tons of good shit!

 

[BarnBuster]

 

[BarnBuster]

 

[Padawanbater2]

The fate of the USS Arizona is crazy. Anyone know if they retrieved all the men's bodies who perished?

 

[Oregon Gardener]

How Marie Antoinette gave prestige to the potato – and a potato recipe from the French royal court
OCTOBER 15, 2012


Girl Peeling Potatoes painted by Albert Anker

As already noted in a previous post, the potato was one of the plants brought to the Old World after Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the Americas.

While the potato is used extensively throughout Europe today–German average potato consumption is 150 lbs per person per year–in its first years, the potato struggled for acceptance. In France, wheat and bread were the staples and the lowly potato was scorned.


Portrait of Antoine Parmentier painted by François Dumont

Antoine-Augustin de Parmentier (1737-1813), an eminent physician who wanted to introduce the potato into the French diet, decided that the best way to break through the prejudice was to recruit the good offices of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. If they made the potato fashionable, the rest of society would follow suit; and follow they did.


Potato flowers

Several stories are told. In one of them, Parmentier is said to have given the royal couple some potato flowers when they were walking in the gardens of Versailles. The Queen put some of the little flowers in her hair. The king put one in his buttonhole. The nobles and ladies in their retinue did the same and the incident became a topic of conversation throughout France.


1886 engraving of Parmentier showing potatoes to Louis XVI

Another story tells how the king gave Parmentier some acreage for the growing of potatoes. Walls were put up and a guard established to protect the garden. The air of mystery aroused people’s curiosity, which was doubled when guards accepted bribes to allow people to dig up potatoes. All of this staging encouraged people to look at the humble tuber from a new perspective.


This statue of Antoine-Augustin Parmentier showing him distributing potatoes is located in the Parmentier Métro Line 3 Terminal in Paris. The Parmentier Métro opened in 1904 and was named after him.

All of these efforts received their reward and the potato was enshrined for good in French cuisine in 1785. In that year, famine struck northern France, but the poor were able to survive, thanks to the lowly potato. The death of many by starvation had been avoided.


Parmentier offers a bunch of potato flowers to King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Louis XVI put the flowers in his buttonhole and the whole Court followed his example.

Like Frederick the Great of Prussia and others, Louis XVI immediately grasped the potato’s potential as a basic food that could make all the difference when wheat crops were jeopardized by disease or bad weather.


“The kindness of Louis XVI,” painted by Philibert-Louis Debucourt. In February 1784, near Versailles, Louis XVI visited a poor peasant family. Moved by their plight, he gave them the purse he had on him. His act of kindness became quickly known by all.

This insight, this grasping of the nature and potential of proposed remedies to social problems, and the promotion of these remedies to society at large is something that kings and nobles have down repeatedly down through the ages. It is an intrinsic part of the mission of the nobility to be always on the alert for ways to protect and advance the common good of society.


In Spain, the first potatoes were grown in the garden of a Seville Monastery by St. Teresa of Avila. Appreciating the potato’s health-improving qualities, she would give them to the sick.






Crunchy potato croquettes recipe from the French court of Louis XVI.

"Let them eat potatoes"

 

[BarnBuster]

The fate of the USS Arizona is crazy. Anyone know if they retrieved all the men's bodies who perished?

"Approximately 15 minutes into the attack, a Japanese high-level bomber dropped a 1,760-pound (800 kg) naval projectile, that had been specially converted, onto the USS Arizona. The bomb penetrated the forward deck of the ship about 40 feet in from the bow. The resulting explosion ignited aviation fuel stores and the powder magazines for the 14-inch guns, instantly separating most of the bow from the ship and lifting the 33,000-ton vessel out of the water (there is no physical evidence remotely suggesting the USS Arizona was hit by torpedoes to dispel a popular myth). The explosion and subsequent fires killed 1,177 sailors and marines instantly. In addition, the entire front portion of the ship was left destroyed and the fires burned everything in its path. The fires continued for 2½ days, virtually cremating every man on board. Out of a crew of 1,511 only 334 survived. Due to the immense fire, only 107 crewmen were positively identified. The remaining 1,070 casualties were placed into three categories: (1) Bodies that were never found; (2) Some bodies were removed from the ship during salvage operations. These remains were severely dismembered or partially cremated, making identification impossible (DNA testing was unheard of in 1941). These bodies were placed in temporary mass graves, and later moved and reburied and marked as unknowns, at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (Punchbowl) in 1949; (3) Bodies located in the aft (rear) portion of the ship. These remains could have been recovered, but were left in the ship due to their unidentifiable condition, indicating most crew members died from the concussion from the massive explosion."

 

[Corso312]

I'm against war. Slavery would've eventually ended anyway. The Civil War was a slaughtering of Americans.

3 times the rate of blacks died.

These numbers are just sickening.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/death-numbers/

Disagree... Those hillbillies needed to be bitch slapped.. War is awful .. Yes, but When states start printing their own currency and trying to succeed and Do whatever the hell they feel like..its time. To knock some sense into some hayseeds.

 

[BarnBuster]

On this day in 1890, in the final chapter of America’s long Indian wars, the U.S. Cavalry kills 146 Sioux at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.

Throughout 1890, the U.S. government worried about the increasing influence at Pine Ridge of the Ghost Dance spiritual movement, which taught that Indians had been defeated and confined to reservations because they had angered the gods by abandoning their traditional customs. Many Sioux believed that if they practiced the Ghost Dance and rejected the ways of the white man, the gods would create the world anew and destroy all non-believers, including non-Indians. On December 15, 1890, reservation police tried to arrest Sitting Bull, the famous Sioux chief, who they mistakenly believed was a Ghost Dancer, and killed him in the process, increasing the tensions at Pine Ridge.

On December 29, the U.S. Army’s 7th cavalry surrounded a band of Ghost Dancers under the Sioux Chief Big Foot near Wounded Knee Creek and demanded they surrender their weapons. As that was happening, a fight broke out between an Indian and a U.S. soldier and a shot was fired, although it’s unclear from which side. A brutal massacre followed, in which it’s estimated almost 150 Indians were killed (some historians put this number at twice as high), nearly half of them women and children. The cavalry lost 25 men.

The conflict at Wounded Knee was originally referred to as a battle, but in reality it was a tragic and avoidable massacre. Surrounded by heavily armed troops, it’s unlikely that Big Foot’s band would have intentionally started a fight. Some historians speculate that the soldiers of the 7th Cavalry were deliberately taking revenge for the regiment’s defeat at Little Bighorn in 1876. Whatever the motives, the massacre ended the Ghost Dance movement and was the last major confrontation in America’s deadly war against the Plains Indians.

Conflict came to Wounded Knee again in February 1973 when it was the site of a 71-day occupation by the activist group AIM (American Indian Movement) and its supporters, who were protesting the U.S. government’s mistreatment of Native Americans. During the standoff, two Indians were killed, one federal marshal was seriously wounded and numerous people were arrested.

 

[BarnBuster]

Why Oil is Measured in Barrels​

The market for crude oil really took off after Abraham Gesner began distilling kerosene in 1846. This lamp oil became very popular and as demand increased, so did the need for the crude oil it was derived from. The first successful drilled oil well (previously, it was all gleaned from “natural seepage”) was in Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859.

In the mid-1800s, all liquids that needed a tight container of any size were stored in wooden barrels. Skilled coopers (barrel makers) had been producing watertight 42-gallon wooden barrels since Richard III set the size of a tierce of wine at 42 gallons in 1483-1484. However, to catch the oil booming from the new wells in Titusville, early producers were using any watertight container they could get their hands on, including “wooden tierces, whiskey barrels, casks and barrels of all sizes.”

Nonetheless, the size of the container quickly became standardized around the 42-gallon barrel, due to practical considerations:

A 42-gallon tierce weighed more than 300 pounds – about as much as a man could reasonably wrestle. Twenty would fit on a typical barge or railroad flatcar. Bigger casks were unmanageable and small were less profitable.

By 1860, in Pennsylvania the 42-gallon barrel had become standard. Because Pennsylvania was at the forefront of the early oil boom, its practices were soon adopted across the country.

In 1872, 42 gallons became the standard for the Petroleum Producers Association and in 1882, the U.S.G.S. and the U.S. Bureau of Mines adopted the standard as well.

One barrel contains 42 gallons of crude oil from which, in the U.S., typically 19 gallons of gasoline are produced. In California, “additional other petroleum products such as alkylates” are added to the crude to create a “processing gain,” such that the total volume of products made from crude oil based origins is 48.43 gallons on average – 6.43 gallons greater than the original 42 gallons of crude.

 

[Padawanbater2]

Why Oil is Measured in Barrels​

The market for crude oil really took off after Abraham Gesner began distilling kerosene in 1846. This lamp oil became very popular and as demand increased, so did the need for the crude oil it was derived from. The first successful drilled oil well (previously, it was all gleaned from “natural seepage”) was in Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859.

In the mid-1800s, all liquids that needed a tight container of any size were stored in wooden barrels. Skilled coopers (barrel makers) had been producing watertight 42-gallon wooden barrels since Richard III set the size of a tierce of wine at 42 gallons in 1483-1484. However, to catch the oil booming from the new wells in Titusville, early producers were using any watertight container they could get their hands on, including “wooden tierces, whiskey barrels, casks and barrels of all sizes.”

Nonetheless, the size of the container quickly became standardized around the 42-gallon barrel, due to practical considerations:

A 42-gallon tierce weighed more than 300 pounds – about as much as a man could reasonably wrestle. Twenty would fit on a typical barge or railroad flatcar. Bigger casks were unmanageable and small were less profitable.

By 1860, in Pennsylvania the 42-gallon barrel had become standard. Because Pennsylvania was at the forefront of the early oil boom, its practices were soon adopted across the country.

In 1872, 42 gallons became the standard for the Petroleum Producers Association and in 1882, the U.S.G.S. and the U.S. Bureau of Mines adopted the standard as well.

One barrel contains 42 gallons of crude oil from which, in the U.S., typically 19 gallons of gasoline are produced. In California, “additional other petroleum products such as alkylates” are added to the crude to create a “processing gain,” such that the total volume of products made from crude oil based origins is 48.43 gallons on average – 6.43 gallons greater than the original 42 gallons of crude.

Posts like this one are why I really enjoy this thread, I learn about stuff I never even considered. Really interesting stuff BB, great post

 

[BarnBuster]

@sunni used this phrase in a post today. i knew origin of "shake" but not the rest of it so...

Two Shakes Of A Lamb’s Tail​

Posted by Elyse Bruce on January 28, 2011

In case you are wondering, yes, “shake” is a recognized unit of time. At the time of the first atomic bomb, scientists needed a term for an interval of time equal to 10 nanoseconds. Since two shakes of a lamb’s tail is very quick, scientists coined the word “shake” to describe this unit of time. But where does this phrase come from originally?

In the Toledo Blade newspaper of March 30, 1961 in the “Tell Me Why” column, A. Leokum started the column by writing:

Suppose you ask someone to do something for you quickly. He might say: “I’ll do it in a minute.” But he might also say: “I’ll do it before you can say Jack Robinson” or “I’ll do it in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.” The point is that when we set up a unit of time such as an hour or a minute, we are doing it by agreement or convention. We have decided that so much and so much time shall be called a “minute” or “hour.” But in setting up divisions of time there are certain natural events that can guide us.

That being said, two shakes of a lamb’s tail was a recognized time unit in the 1920s as evidenced in Pittsburgh (PA) in an advertisement that ran in The Gazette Times newspaper on May 3, 1920. The advertisement for The Men’s Store of Pittsburgh: The Only Place In Western Pennsylvania Where You Can Buy New York’s Finest Rogers Peet Clothes read:

In two shakes of a lamb’s tail! Replenishing your wardrobe may take even less time than that — our stock of Spring Suits and Overcoats is so ample. A size for every build. They’re “made to fit” not “to measure.” Highest type of tailoring. Prices reasonable.

Back on September 28, 1881 a Letter to the Editor appeared in the Nelson Evening Mail in New Zealand. The letter began with:

A Brooklyn man spent seven hours writing an essay to prove that a woman is inferior to a man, and then spent two hours more and a heap of profanity in an ineffectual attempt to thread a needle, a job which a woman finally did for him in about two shakes of a lamb’s tail.

A generation before that on August 26, 1853 in an article entitled “Turning The Tables” and published in the New Zealand newspaper, the Daily Southern Cross, the following was published:

A correspondent of the ‘Dublin Warder’ shows how an old acquaintance once turned the tables upon the bailiffs. Two smart-looking fellows dressed as sailors, and with a rolling seaman-like gait, called at his house, and chucking the servant under the chin, told her to tell her master that they had brought commands from his brother, who was at that time at sea. The credulous debtor eagerly opened the door and was soon in the arms of the bailiffs. After complimenting them upon t heir ingenuity, he invited them into a back parlour, and begged they’d wait till he’d send off a bit of a note to a friend that he expected would arrange it for him. “The messenger was back in the shakin’ of a lamb’s tail; and, my dear life, ’twasn’t long till the tables wor rightly turned, and the brace o’ shoulder tappers frightened out o’ their seven sinses by the arrival of a press gang; and, says Misther Blake, throwin’ the freemason’s sign to the officer, who happened, as Providence would order it, to be a Leithrim man. Here’s a pair o’ light active chaps that have deserted their ship and are disgracin, the blue jacket by actin’ as bailiffs.” Sure that was a sore day for the disguised bailiffs, for notwithstanding their entreaties, they were obliged to go with the gang!

In the end, the phrase first appeared in Richard Barham’s book “Ingoldsby Legends” published in 1840 however that it was used with such ease in a news article in 1853 gives reason to believe that the phrase existed in modern language long before 1840.

 

[sunni]

@sunni used this phrase in a post today. i knew origin of "shake" but not the rest of it so...

Two Shakes Of A Lamb’s Tail​

Posted by Elyse Bruce on January 28, 2011

In case you are wondering, yes, “shake” is a recognized unit of time. At the time of the first atomic bomb, scientists needed a term for an interval of time equal to 10 nanoseconds. Since two shakes of a lamb’s tail is very quick, scientists coined the word “shake” to describe this unit of time. But where does this phrase come from originally?

In the Toledo Blade newspaper of March 30, 1961 in the “Tell Me Why” column, A. Leokum started the column by writing:

Suppose you ask someone to do something for you quickly. He might say: “I’ll do it in a minute.” But he might also say: “I’ll do it before you can say Jack Robinson” or “I’ll do it in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.” The point is that when we set up a unit of time such as an hour or a minute, we are doing it by agreement or convention. We have decided that so much and so much time shall be called a “minute” or “hour.” But in setting up divisions of time there are certain natural events that can guide us.

That being said, two shakes of a lamb’s tail was a recognized time unit in the 1920s as evidenced in Pittsburgh (PA) in an advertisement that ran in The Gazette Times newspaper on May 3, 1920. The advertisement for The Men’s Store of Pittsburgh: The Only Place In Western Pennsylvania Where You Can Buy New York’s Finest Rogers Peet Clothes read:

In two shakes of a lamb’s tail! Replenishing your wardrobe may take even less time than that — our stock of Spring Suits and Overcoats is so ample. A size for every build. They’re “made to fit” not “to measure.” Highest type of tailoring. Prices reasonable.

Back on September 28, 1881 a Letter to the Editor appeared in the Nelson Evening Mail in New Zealand. The letter began with:

A Brooklyn man spent seven hours writing an essay to prove that a woman is inferior to a man, and then spent two hours more and a heap of profanity in an ineffectual attempt to thread a needle, a job which a woman finally did for him in about two shakes of a lamb’s tail.

A generation before that on August 26, 1853 in an article entitled “Turning The Tables” and published in the New Zealand newspaper, the Daily Southern Cross, the following was published:

A correspondent of the ‘Dublin Warder’ shows how an old acquaintance once turned the tables upon the bailiffs. Two smart-looking fellows dressed as sailors, and with a rolling seaman-like gait, called at his house, and chucking the servant under the chin, told her to tell her master that they had brought commands from his brother, who was at that time at sea. The credulous debtor eagerly opened the door and was soon in the arms of the bailiffs. After complimenting them upon t heir ingenuity, he invited them into a back parlour, and begged they’d wait till he’d send off a bit of a note to a friend that he expected would arrange it for him. “The messenger was back in the shakin’ of a lamb’s tail; and, my dear life, ’twasn’t long till the tables wor rightly turned, and the brace o’ shoulder tappers frightened out o’ their seven sinses by the arrival of a press gang; and, says Misther Blake, throwin’ the freemason’s sign to the officer, who happened, as Providence would order it, to be a Leithrim man. Here’s a pair o’ light active chaps that have deserted their ship and are disgracin, the blue jacket by actin’ as bailiffs.” Sure that was a sore day for the disguised bailiffs, for notwithstanding their entreaties, they were obliged to go with the gang!

In the end, the phrase first appeared in Richard Barham’s book “Ingoldsby Legends” published in 1840 however that it was used with such ease in a news article in 1853 gives reason to believe that the phrase existed in modern language long before 1840.

thanks i say that phrase all the time in real life.
and my husband just laughs i never new the origin of it

 

[BarnBuster]

Snow Blowers​

The motorized snow clearing machine was first invented in 1870 by Robert Carr Harris of Dalhousie, New Brunswick. Although Harris patented his “Railway Screw Snow Excavator”, a basic type of snow blower, the first practical snow blower belongs to someone else.

A Quebec dairy farmer named Arthur Sicard invented the thing in about 1925, because the roads to his local town were often snow-packed in winter and he was unable to deliver milk. But in the summer, he saw one of the early self-propelled combines operating in a neighbour's field. As he watched wheat being cut, drawn into the machine, and the straw being ejected from the back, he immediately wondered if something similar could be made to pick up snow and blow it away.

Mr. Sicard tried to make such an apparatus, but his first efforts were failures, and neighbouring farmers thought he was crazy. They were sure the thing would never work. But it did. He put a blower on the front of a truck chassis; then installed a motor behind the cab to run the blower. His invention threw snow 90 feet. For that reason, when he went out one day and opened his laneway in no time, his friends stopped laughing. That winter, he was hired to clear the streets of the nearest village.

Two years later, Sicard sold the first “Sicard Snow Remover Snowblower” to Outremont, Montreal, and the rest is history Sicard never looked back. He patented his invention, and although he died in 1946, the company that bears his name still operates out of Quebec and New York State. Today, their snowblowers are sold in more than 12 countries.

In the mid 1950s, the first little "walk behind" snowblowers appeared. Some were great; some were junk; all were dangerous if the person operating them was not careful.

 

[BarnBuster]

International Holocaust Remembrance Day​

Date 27 January

International Holocaust Remembrance Day, is an international memorial day on 27 January commemorating the victims of the Holocaust. It commemorates the genocide that resulted in the death of an estimated 6 million Jewish people, 2 million Romani people, 250,000 mentally and physically disabled people, and 9,000 homosexual men by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. It was designated by the United Nations General Assembly resolution 60/7 on 1 November 2005 during the 42nd plenary session.[1] The resolution came after a special session was held earlier that year on 24 January 2005 during which the United Nations General Assembly marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and the end of the Holocaust.

On 27 January 1945, Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration and death camp, was liberated by Soviet troops.

Prior to the 60/7 resolution, there had been national days of commemoration, such as Germany's Tag des Gedenkens an die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (The Day of remembrance for the victims of National Socialism), established in a proclamation issued by Federal President Roman Herzog on 3 January 1996; and the Holocaust memorial day observed every 27 January since 2001 in the UK.

The Holocaust Remembrance Day is also a national event in the United Kingdom and in Italy.

 

[BarnBuster]

At 11:38 a.m. EST, on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Christa McAuliffe is on her way to becoming the first ordinary U.S. civilian to travel into space. McAuliffe, a 37-year-old high school social studies teacher from New Hampshire, won a competition that earned her a place among the seven-member crew of the Challenger. She underwent months of shuttle training but then, beginning January 23, was forced to wait six long days as the Challenger‘s launch countdown was repeatedly delayed because of weather and technical problems. Finally, on January 28, the shuttle lifted off.

Seventy-three seconds later, hundreds on the ground, including Christa’s family, stared in disbelief as the shuttle exploded in a forking plume of smoke and fire. Millions more watched the wrenching tragedy unfold on live television. There were no survivors.

In 1976, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) unveiled the world’s first reusable manned spacecraft, the Enterprise. Five years later, space flights of the shuttle began when Columbia traveled into space on a 54-hour mission. Launched by two solid-rocket boosters and an external tank, only the aircraft-like shuttle entered into orbit around Earth. When the mission was completed, the shuttle fired engines to reduce speed and, after descending through the atmosphere, landed like a glider. Early shuttles took satellite equipment into space and carried out various scientific experiments. The Challenger disaster was the first major shuttle accident.

In the aftermath of the explosion, President Ronald Reagan appointed a special commission to determine what went wrong with Challenger and to develop future corrective measures. The presidential commission was headed by former secretary of state William Rogers, and included former astronaut Neil Armstrong and former test pilot Chuck Yeager. The investigation determined that the explosion was caused by the failure of an “O-ring” seal in one of the two solid-fuel rockets. The elastic O-ring did not respond as expected because of the cold temperature at launch time, which began a chain of events that resulted in the massive explosion. As a result of the explosion, NASA did not send astronauts into space for more than two years as it redesigned a number of features of the space shuttle.

In September 1988, space shuttle flights resumed with the successful launching of the Discovery. Since then, the space shuttle has carried out numerous important missions, such as the repair and maintenance of the Hubble Space Telescope and the construction of the International Space Station.

On February 1, 2003, a second space-shuttle disaster rocked the United States when Columbia disintegrated upon reentry of the Earth’s atmosphere. All aboard were killed. Despite fears that the problems that downed Columbia had not been satisfactorily addressed, space-shuttle flights resumed on July 26, 2005, when Discovery was again put into orbit.

 

[Padawanbater2]

On this day in 1984, American astronaut Bruce McCandless became the first person in history to make an untethered spacewalk.

Bruce McCandless was the first man to ever exit a spacecraft without a tether, 1984. Photograph by Robert Lee Gibson.

McCandless' walk lasted more than six hours, during which time he traveled faster than 18,000 miles per hour. Photograph by Robert Lee Gibson.


“I don’t like those overused lines 'slipped the surly bonds of Earth,' but when I was free from the shuttle, they felt accurate. It was a wonderful feeling, a mix of personal elation and professional pride: it had taken many years to get to that point." - Bruce McCandless

After three untethered spacewalks in 1984, the Manned Maneuvering Units (MMUs) were not used again, as NASA decided to only perform tethered spacewalks for safety reasons. However, in 1994, NASA introduced a new backpack - Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue (SAFER), which was tested with a spacewalk. It was the fourth and last untethered spacewalk.

You can read the original New York Times article from 1984 that reported the spacewalk here.

As a sidenote, I just want to take a minute to appreciate the truly awesome nature of these two photographs. They are truly iconic, and quite literally out of this world. I know that we are somewhat spoiled with space photos - anyone who follows the International Space Station on social media is treated to some really beautiful photos on a daily basis. But these two pictures... That's a man out there. Floating in space. Free. Pretty amazing if you ask me.

Let's also give credit to Challenger Pilot Robert Lee "Hoot" Gibson, who took the two photographs from the spacecraft. I've heard that after Gibson saw the photos, he imagined a good caption could be: "NASA Photo by Hooter."

http://www.aheadlandhashed.com/blog/a-space-walk

 

[Padawanbater2]

The Pale Blue Dot

Captured 26 years ago today