The word 'celadon’, which refers to a pale blueish-green glaze popular from ancient China through today, for its delicacy and resemblance to jade, is from French, a reference to a character named Celadon in a 17th century novel by Honore D’Urfe, who wore pale jade-colored ribbons. The author borrowed the name from Ovid, who was a Roman (43 BC – 17/18 AD) who wrote about ancient Greek myths, where the word celadon appears, referring to a river, a race of mythical beings created by Hephaestus, and a couple different unrelated warriors.
So the name and the glaze came into being within perhaps 500 years of each other, on separate continents, but did not become associated with each other until the 17th century in Europe.
In the Brian DePalma movie “The Untouchables,” there’s a character named Walter who is captured by Elliot Ness in the train station scene. Walter was based loosely on Capones lawyer named Edward O’Hare. “Fast Eddie” O’Hare had a son named Butch who flew a Wildcat in WWII. Butch O’Hare got a Medal of Honor in the war and in fact, Chicago’s Orchard Depot Airport was renamed O’Hare International Airport in his honor.
This happened in my Junior High, which was when swimming was taught in my school district. We had such a population boom that there wasn’t enough money for the school to provide suits for all so many boys gym classes went without when swimming was on the class agenda. Girls gym classes had suits. That was in the early 70s. By the time my youngest brother hit Junior High, they had enough suits for all the boys, too.
I’ve been reading this swim suit story and I don’t get it: were the schools supposed to offer the swimming suits, and they claimed they did not have enough funds? When we had our swimming lessons in the 70s in Spain we had to bring our own swimming trunks, of course.
If the school provided the trunks: how often were they washed?
I think the washing was a big part of the budget. Yes, the schools provided the suits. That way, we kids didn’t know who was poor and who was better off in gym class. We were all the same. Naturally, this was a bit silly because we did not wear uniforms other than for gym class. And because bullies are bullies. They can sniff out a potential victim no matter the clothing.
Curious, the USA is really a different place.
Now back to the random facts: There is no official time on the moon. Yet. But there should be soon. Interesting how many things one has to take into account. From the linked article:
Defining lunar time is not simple. Although the definition of the second is the same everywhere, the special theory of relativity dictates that clocks tick slower in stronger gravitational fields. The Moon’s gravitational pull is weaker than Earth’s, meaning that, to an observer on Earth, a lunar clock would run faster than an Earth one. Gramling estimates that a lunar clock would gain about 56 microseconds over 24 hours. Compared with one on Earth, a clock’s speed would also subtly change depending on its position on the lunar surface, because of the Moon’s rotation, says Tavella. “This is a paradise for experts in relativity, because you have to take into account so many things,” she adds.
I think the fact that O’Hare airport is named after Al Capone’s lawyer’s kid is the headline here. Not sure why you needed the reference to the loosely based character in the movie.
This raises interesting questions. If one were to put a supercomputer in geosynchronous orbit, would it complete lengthy tasks more quickly than a computer on Earth due to the difference in general relativity? Or is there some quirk of physics that would resolve computation time to equivalence?
I guess the supercomputer in orbit would indeed calculate a tiny bit faster, but some 56 microseconds per day would be far offset by the time it takes to communicate up and down again (300,000 km/s makes 2 x 36,000 km about 0.25 s, several orders of magnitude slower). Particularly as most calculations would not take one full day.
For calculations that take centuries, like in the Hitchhiker’s Guide, it may be an advantage. But then, such a massive supercomputer may create its own gravitational field due to its own weight, including the weight of several nuclear power plants to run it, and that might slow it down again. And maintenance would be hard.
That is the figure given for the Moon, which is in a gravity well one-sixth that of the Earth. A satellite in orbit would be in a very different gradient.
So a 5/6ths reduction of Earth’s gravity makes for a difference of 56 microseconds per day, full zero gravity, or 6/6ths less than Earth’s surface would be… under 70 microseconds? Just extrapolating.
It’s generally accepted that the first occurrence of the word “Rockabilly” is a song called “Rockabilly Boogie” written by Johnny and Dorsey Burnette in 1953 (though not recorded until 1957). It’s also generally assumed that the term is a portmanteau of “Rock and Roll” and “Hillbilly”.
This assumption has been challenged by Johnny’s son, Rocky and Dorsey’s son Billy.
As of this writing, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the NBA scoring leader with 38,387 points over his 20-year career. How many three-pointers did he make in that time?