Suprising Facts and Trivia

Post 'em if you got 'em.

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The most expensive weapons program during WW2 was not the Manhattan project, it was the B-29 without which the atom bomb could not have been dropped. Total cost for the Manhattan project was about 2 billion, the B-29 program cost 3 billion.

Kentucy Fried Chicken Colonel Sanders did not make it right off the bat, he held many jobs before he hit it big with the chicken. Even then he sold out to cheaply.

July 16, 1945.

This is a description of the first atomic explosion in New Mexico. Oppenheimer and Fermi were there, and had a $50 bet on whether or not the explosion would set the atmosphere on fire! Oak Ridge facility in Tennessee had used 10% of the total electricity in the USA to refine enough material to make the bomb.

"Time: 0529:45 The firing circuit closed; the X-unit discharged;the detonators at thirty-two detonation points simultaneously fired; they ignited the outer lens shells of Composition B; the detonation waves separately bulged, encountered inclusions of Baratol, slowed, curved, turned inside out, merged to a common inward-driving sphere; the spherical detonation wave crossed into the second shell of solid fast Composition B and accelerated; hit the wall of dense uranium tamper and became a shock wave and squeezed, liquefying, moving through; hit the nickel plating of the plutonium core and squeezed, the small sphere shrinking, collapsing unto itself, becoming an eyeball; the shockwave reaching the tiny initator at the center and swirling through its designated irregularities to mix its beryllium and polonium; polonium alphas kicking neutrons free from scant atoms of beryllium; one, two, seven, nine, hardly more neutrons drilling into the surrounding polonium to start the chain reaction. Then fission multiplying its prodigious energy release through eighty generations in millionths of a second, tens of millions of degrees, millions of pounds of pressure. Before the radiation leaked away, conditions within the eyeball briefly resembled the state of the universe moments after its first primordial explosion."

from The Making Of The Atomic Bomb ~ Richard Rhodes

Per the US Geological Survey there are roughly 10 ounces of silver remaining in the ground for every one ounce of gold.

For hundreds of years prior to the industrial age the ratio of gold to silver in buying power terms was quite stable at between 15:1 and 16:1.

Industrial uses have subsequently consumed an estimated roughly 95% of all of the silver ever mined by man, and continue to consume 70% of all current annual production. An estimated roughly 95% or more of all of the gold ever mined is still with us to this day.

The net effect of all of this is that there is vastly less above ground silver in mans possession than there is gold.

Silver is currently valued at $34.31 US per Troy oz. Gold is currently valued at $1768 US per Troy Oz. A ratio of 51.5 to 1.

What is wrong with this picture?

More steel is smelted in an hour than all the gold ever smelted in the history of man.
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Some say the bombs were dropped on Japan to justify the expenditure in producing them. Some of The Manhattan Project scientists wrote Washington recommending a demonstration of the bomb over a relatively unpopulated area. It was too late.
We had already produced more casualties in the incendiary bombing in Tokyo alone than both a-bombs.
With the unavoidable invasion of the Japanese homeland imminent; many historians claim the bombs saved an estimated 1 million US soldiers lives. The fanatical Japanese military refused to surrender; and the Japanese people were willing to fight to the last man woman and child, with sharpened bamboo sticks if necessary. The emperor made an unprecedented radio address, saying, "We must now endure the unendurable."

Time to shift gears........

After more than 4 decades in the Rock and Roll business Ozzy Ozbourne still suffers from stage fright.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xdulev ... -frig_news

"To be honest with you my stage fright gets worse and worse as I get older. After forty years you would think I would get over it but there is no trick to help you if you have got a sore throat from doing too much singing or shouting or whatever" the 61 year-old-rock star said.

When he started out in music, the demand for rock singers in his hometown of Birmingham was so strong that anyone with their own microphone and PA amplifier could get a paying gig. Osbourne's father paid for the equipment, to spare him having to work a menial job after his failures in school.


On December 8th, 2003 he was seriously injured while riding his ATV quad bike on the grounds of his Buckinghamshire estate in England. The accident occurred while he was taking a day off from his hectic promotional schedule surrounding the UK release of "Changes" - a duet with his daughter Kelly. He broke his collarbone, six ribs and a vertebra in his neck. The injuries were not considered to be life-threatening, though he has undergone some surgery.

Early in the 1970s my employer bought 128K of memory for an IBM mainframe computer. It was housed in a cabinet the size of a refrigerator.
So, 8 refrigerator-sized boxes would hold 1 megabyte of memory.
A gigabyte is 1000 megabytes. So, 8000 refrigerators would hold 1 gigabyte of memory.
I just bought a 64-GB thumb drive. 512,000 refrigerators.
I can easily hold a dozen thumb drives in one hand. Or over 6 million refrigerators. And still have the other hand free to scratch my butt.

The SR-71 Blackbird will grow nearly a foot during flight due to expansion of the fuselage caused by heat that can reach 1000 degrees on the forward leading edges at max speed. The fuel tanks leak while it's sitting on the ground and they don't fully seal until it's in flight. The jet engines are used for takeoff and low speed flight and convert to a ram jet for cruising speed, the faster it goes the more fuel efficient it becomes. Much of the titanium used to build the SR-71 ironically came from Russia the primary source at the time.

I heard that info! I had a Blackbird model when I was a kid in the 60's, must have blown it up with Black Cats on the 4th
Also heard at a cruising speed of mach 3, it outran many missiles fired at it over the years.

China both mines and produces something close to 97% of the worlds "rare earth metals". Strategic military equipment, satellites, cell phones, etc... (high technology in general) would be in deep trouble if China ever decided to play hardball with their rare earth metals.

Along those lines: ( from our own esteemable DOE)

"In 1944 General George S. Patton's Third Army was racing across southern France. In his haste to be the first U.S. commander to cross into Germany, however, Patton overextended his supply lines. His armored columns ground to a dead stop. Faced the choice of waiting until he could be resupplied or draining the fuel of captured German vehicles, Patton chose the latter. His tanks and armored personnel carriers continued to steamroll toward Germany, powered by the German's own ersatz gasoline – synthetic fuel manufactured from coal."

http://www.fossil.energy.gov/aboutus/hi ... story.html

Surprising Facts & Trivia ....

On October 3rd 2012, Mitt Romney mopped the floor with Obama's face during the presidential debate.


But back on topic ...

The first TV toy commercial aired in '46 for Mr. Potato Head

Manhattan once had more species of wildlife than Yellowstone National Park. ( One could argue that's still true ..... )

You transfer more germs shaking hands than kissing.

SMITTY wrote:Surprising Facts & Trivia ....

You transfer more germs shaking hands than kissing.

Well that explains England.