Fourth of July reading: HistoryLessons.net
Happy Fourth of July to our readers in the United States—and happy honorary Fourth to those elsewhere.
In keeping with this history-rich day, I’ll point to HistoryLessons.net, through which you can sign up for free weekly e-mails on "the oddities and ironies of history."
Topics have ranged from Churchill: God takes a hero to The Space Shuttle: Houston, we have a problem.
HistoryLessons comes from Bruce Kauffmann, author of a lively weekly newspaper-column on history (attention editors and Webmasters). In another incarnation Bruce, who lives in Alexandria, Virginia, near Washington, worked for Dan Rather at CBS. Eons ago I developed the HistoryLessons site for Bruce.
Meanwhile happy birthday to Project Gutenberg. Typed into a mainframe computer on July 4, 1971, founder Michael Hart’s first e-text was the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
Also of possible interest: The PG-related WorldeBookFair, which is offering summer specials.
July 4th, 2008 at 10:50 am
He immediately wins my informal “award for idiocy” by claiming that the Apollo 13 disaster (if one can call it that) was influenced in part by the fact that it involved the number 13, I’m afraid.
July 4th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Thanks for your thoughts, Nick, but perhaps Bruce Kauffmann was thinking of the human factors—the possibility that the number 13 might slightly unnerve people who were superstitious. I don’t know the history or technology of Apollo 13. But could something like this have made a difference when people were inspecting the problematic oxygen tank or a related part? At any rate, might there be a reason, beyond marketing, why some builders skip the 13th floor?
Meanwhile, for those curious, here’s exactly what Bruce wrote: “Ignoring superstition is one thing. Mocking it is something else entirely. Developers of high-rise buildings refuse to designate a 13th floor for fear of accidents caused by bad luck, yet the National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) gives the name Apollo 13 to one of its lunar missions–an undertaking with, oh, about five million more things that can go wrong than building a high-rise hotel. ”
As for the definition of disaster, Apollo 13 would easily qualify.
Just my hardly infallible opinions.
Thanks,
David