LZ 127 Graf
Zeppelin was a German-built and -operated, passenger-carrying, hydrogen-filled, rigid airship which operated commercially from 1928 to 1937. It was named after the German pioneer of
airships, Ferdinand
von Zeppelin, who was a graf (count) in the German nobility.
During its operating life, the airship made 590 flights covering
more than a million miles (1.6 million km). It was designed to be operated by a crew of
36 officers and men. The loss of
the D-LZ 129 Hindenburg at Lakehurst on May 6, 1937 shattered public faith in
the safety of hydrogen-filled airships making the continuation of their
commercial passenger operations unsustainable unless the Graf
Zeppelin and
the still under construction LZ 130 Graf Zeppelin II could
convert to non-flammable helium, the
only alternative lifting gas for airships.
Unlike the relatively inexpensive and universally available hydrogen,
however, the vast majority of the world's available supplies of the much more
costly, less buoyant, and harder to produce helium (it is an extracted
byproduct of mined natural gas) were controlled by the United States. Since 1925, the exportation of helium had
also been tightly restricted by Congress although there is no record that the
German Government had ever applied for an export license for helium to use in
its airships prior to the Hindenburg's crash
and fire. Although the Graf
Zeppelin II made
30 test, promotional, propaganda and military surveillance flights around
Europe between the airship's launch in mid-September 1938 and its last flight
11 months later on August 20, made just 10 days before the formal start of World War II in Europe with the German invasion
of Poland on
September 1, 1939, the LZ 130 never entered the commercial passenger service
for which it was built. The ultimate
fates of both the original Graf Zeppelin (LZ
127) and the Graf
Zeppelin II (LZ
130) were formally sealed on March 4, 1940, when German Air Minister Hermann Göring issued a decree ordering both to be immediately
scrapped for salvage and their duralumin airframes and other structures to be melted down for
reuse by the German military aircraft industry.
Read
more and see graphics at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_127_Graf_Zeppelin
A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
A living language, just
like humans, adapts with time. In the
beginning, to broadcast was to sow seeds by scattering, a diaper
was a kind of fabric, and a matrix was a womb.
harbinger (HAHR-bin-juhr) noun One that foreshadows the approach of
something. verb tr. To signal the arrival of something. Originally, a harbinger was a host, a person
who provided lodging. With time the
sense changed to a person sent in advance to find lodging for an army.
restive (RES-tiv)
adjective Restless, uneasy. Earlier the word meant refusing to go
forward, as in a restive horse. Over
time the word shifted in meaning and now it means the opposite. Instead of "unable to advance", now
it means "unable to remain still".
garble (GAHR-buhl)
verb tr. To distort a message,
document, transmission, etc. noun An instance of garbling. Originally the word meant to sift, for
example to remove refuse from spices.
With time its meaning became distorted to what it is now. From Old Italian garbellare (to sift), from
Arabic gharbala (to select).
The World Trade Center ship, discovered in the rubble of the once-mighty
skyscrapers, is starting to reveal its secrets.
The World Trade Center ship was discovered in July 2010, by workers at
the Manhattan site. A significant
portion of the hull of the wooden ship was still preserved in wreckage found
under debris from the attacks of 11 September 2001. Samples of the ship, made from white pine,
were obtained for testing. These were
then matched against samples of the wood with known ages and origins. The best matches for seven samples taken from
the hull were from trees felled around 280 years ago, near Philadelphia. Researchers believe the wood used to
construct the World Trade Center ship was likely harvested in 1773, or soon
after. Details in the design of the
vessel are unlike that used by any large ship builder, suggesting the vessel
may have been constructed by a small shipyard.
The layout of the entire ship was photographed and mapped for
archeological study, before pieces were removed from its resting place. Ed Cook, a research professor in the tree
ring lab at the Lamon-Doherty Earth Observatory, examined wood samples obtained
from Independence Hall in the early 1990's. His maps of rings found in those samples
matched the wood from the World Trade Center ship. The ship is believed to be a Hudson River
sloop, a type of vessel designed to ferry cargo and passengers in shallow,
rocky water. It likely sailed for two to
three decades before coming into the city to retire. Over years, it was covered in garbage and
landfill before the Twin Towers were constructed over the artifact. Investigation of the World Trade Center ship
and how material used in its onstruction reveals the time and place of its
construction was detailed in the journal Tree Ring Research. James Maynard http://www.techtimes.com/articles/11583/20140729/origin-of-18th-century-ship-found-in-debris-of-world-trade-center-finally-explained.htm
George Foster Peabody, was born on July 27, 1852, in Columbus, Georgia, the
oldest of four children born to native New Englanders Elvira and George Henry
Peabody. Peabody's father had relocated
the family from Connecticut to Columbus, where he ran a general store. Growing up in Columbus, Peabody attended
private school and later studied at Deer Hill Institute in Danbury,
Connecticut. The Civil War (1861-65) pushed the family into poverty, and by 1866 they had relocated to
Brooklyn, New York, where the fourteen-year-old Peabody took a job with a
wholesale dry goods firm. In 1881
Peabody became a partner in the new investment firm, Spencer Trask and
Company. During the 1880s and 1890s the
company began to work in several lucrative fields, including electrical
construction financing and railroad construction in the western United States. Peabody ran most of the company's railroad
investments. He was a member of the
board of trustees for the American Church Institute for Negroes, which funded
Episcopal schools in the South; the Penn Normal Industrial and Agricultural School
in St. Helena, South Carolina; Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia; Tuskegee
Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama; and the University of Georgia in Athens.
Peabody gave money for new buildings and also for the development of new
programs and schools at these institutions.
By the 1900s Peabody's philanthropic work in education included serving
as the treasurer for three boards: the
Southern Education Board, the General Education Board, and the Negro Rural
School Fund. In 1903 he was granted honorary degrees by both Harvard University
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Washington and Lee University in Lexington,
Virginia. His interest in the education system of his native state led Peabody
to become one of the University of Georgia's main benefactors. The Peabody Awards, the most prestigious awards
given in broadcasting, are awarded by the Grady College of Journalism and Mass
Communication at the University of Georgia and bear not only Peabody's name but
also his likeness on the medals. The
awards were first given out in 1941.
We have just returned from a
two-week vacation in Seattle and British Columbia and you will read about
places we've been in the near future. I
tried to remain Internet-free for 14 days, and almost made it--succumbing after
12 days.
The Italian verb "bruscare" means 'to roast over coals' and "brusciare"
means 'to burn or toast,' which is how the first bruschetta was made. The noun bruschetta is derived from these verbs
although modern style bruschetta is often made from bread grilled in a skillet
or baked in an oven until hard and dry.
If you order bruschetta in Italy, you will likely be served one piece of
crusty, lightly toasted Italian bread slathered with olive oil with a clove of
garlic on the side. However, if you
order bruschette, the plural of bruschetta, expect a plate of bruschetta with a
variety of toppings. Although all accounts
of bruschetta's origins trace it back to Italy, the exact region and year of
its birth are murky. Ancient Romans
reportedly used to test the quality of freshly pressed olive oil by smearing it
on a piece of fire-toasted bread for tasting, a custom that is now common in
all major olive-oil producing regions of Italy.
Certain accounts claim the oil-soaked bread was rubbed with a clove of
garlic to bring out the flavors of the oil.
Other historical accounts of bruschetta claim it evolved from people
trying to revitalize stale bread by soaking it with olive oil. Cassie Damewood http://www.ehow.com/info_8610344_history-bruschetta-bread.html
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1181
August 22, 2014 On this date in 1770, James Cook landed
on Possession
Island, Queensland and
claimed the east coast of Australia as New South Wales in the name of King
George III. On this date in
1851, the first America's Cup was won by the yacht America.
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