In the sport of baseball, the home plate is a slab of white rubber, placed so that its top is flush with the field level. It is shaped as an irregular pentagon, with one edge (facing the pitcher’s mound) being seventeen inches in length, the two adjacent sides being 8 1/2 inches in length, and the final two sides being 12 inches long, and meeting at a 90 degree angle.
All the bases on the baseball field, including home plate, lie entirely within fair territory. Thus, any batted ball that touches those bases must necessarily be ruled a fair ball. While the first and third base bags are placed so that they lie inside the 90-foot square formed by the bases, the second base bag is placed so that its center (unlike first, third and home) coincides exactly with the “point” of the ninety-foot square. Thus, although the “points” of the bases are 90 feet apart, the physical distance between each successive pair of base markers is closer to 88 feet
The basic layout of the field has basically remained the same since the Knickerbocker Rules of the 1840s. Those rules specified the distance from home to second as 42 “paces”. The dictionary definition of a “pace” at the time was 30 inches, yielding base paths of approximately 75 feet; however, if a “pace” of three feet was meant then the distance would have been 89 feet. Through trial and error, 90 feet was settled upon as the optimal distance. 100 feet would have given too much advantage to the defense, and 80 feet too much to the offense.
In the United States, you are entitled to a jury trial if you are charged with any criminal or traffic offense for which jail or prison time could be imposed, if convicted. You are also entitled to a free defense lawyer in such cases, if you cannot afford one of your own.
Unsurprisingly, more tickets are issued for speeding than any other traffic violation, and speeding drivers are responsible for about one-third of all traffic fatalities. The state that is the most harsh on speeders is Delaware. Also unsurprisingly, the state that is most lenient on speeders is Texas.
The Texas Motor Speedway is a motor racing track located in Fort Worth, Texas. Opened in 1996, with a main “quad-oval” track of 1.5 miles in length, the Speedway plays host to several NASCAR races each year, as well as an Indy Car race.
Houston, Texas is the largest American city which has no zoning laws.
Houston Street in NYC is not pronounced like the city, HYOOS-ton. It is instead pronounced HOWS-ton. The street is named for lawyer William Houstoun (1755-1813) who served the Province of Georgia as a delegate to the Continental Congress and later the State of Georgia to the United States Constitutional Convention in 1787.
Houston Street used an alternate spelling. Houston Street in Savannah is also named for him.
The name of Soho, the district in London, may possibly derive from a former hunting cry. The name SoHo in New York City is an abbreviation for South of Houston Street, and also refers to the London neighborhood. NoHo is an adjoining New York City area, North of Houston Street.
The Urban Dictionary defines “NoPo” as “[t]he northern section of Portland, Oregon, north of Burnside Street and between the Willamette River and Williams Avenue.” It also defines it as an individual who has no personality.
Along I-80 in eastern Nevada, in Elko, is the CTIC, the California Trail Interpretive Center. The California Trail was an emigrant trail about 1,600 mi across the western half of North American from Missouri River towns to California. It is part of the westward expansion trails systems established in the 19th century for migrants to settle “out west”. These trails, including the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Trail, generally followed the valleys of the Platte, North Platte, and Sweetwater rivers to Wyoming, then branched off depending on the migrants’ destination.
According to California Trail - Wikipedia, during the 19th century the rough numbers of migrants that traveled to California, Oregon, and Utah were:
250,000 — to California
80,000 — to Oregon
70,000 — to Utah
According to some data sources, between 1849 and 1860 alone, some 200,000 people came to California. Many came in search of gold.
It is a very good museum, BTW. No cost.
The Oregon Trail is generally considered to have a starting point in Independence, Missouri, and ended in the Willamette Valley in Oregon, a length of over 2100 miles. The trail was active from the mid-1830s until declining in use in 1869, when the transcontinental railroad was completed.
I am reposting my play to include the photos I took of the CTIC — if anyone is interested. They’re on FB and I made them public so hopefully I did that correctly. If you check please LMK. There are approx 200 photos.
I will then repost Railer13’s play.
Along I-80 in eastern Nevada, in Elko, is the CTIC, the California Trail Interpretive Center. The California Trail was an emigrant trail about 1,600 mi across the western half of North American from Missouri River towns to California. It is part of the westward expansion trails systems established in the 19th century for migrants to settle “out west”. These trails, including the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Trail, generally followed the valleys of the Platte, North Platte, and Sweetwater rivers to Wyoming, then branched off depending on the migrants’ destination.
According to California Trail - Wikipedia, during the 19th century the rough numbers of migrants that traveled to California, Oregon, and Utah were:
250,000 — to California
80,000 — to Oregon
70,000 — to Utah
According to some data sources, between 1849 and 1860 alone, some 200,000 people came to California. Many came in search of gold.
It is a very good museum, BTW. No cost.
Three sets of photos are posted to my Facebook account:
Roy Tuason - Two Sundays ago, on our drive to Salt Lake... | Facebook
Roy Tuason - More photos from the CTIC, California Trail... | Facebook
Roy Tuason - The remaining photos from the CTIC,... | Facebook
Here is Railer13’s play.
In 1971, Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger developed a text-based strategy video game titled The Oregon Trail for use in the 8th grade history class for which Rawitch was a student teacher. The game was written in around 800 lines of HP Time-Shared BASIC for the Minneapolis school district’s HP 2100 minicomputer, to which schools could connect via a teleprinter. In 1978, John Cook adapted The Oregon Trail for the Apple II; a version for the Atari 8-bit family, again titled The Oregon Trail, was released in 1982.
Remnants of the Oregon Trail can still be seen near Baker City, OR near the National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center. The ruts are now footpaths, if one cares to walk in the footsteps of the pioneers.
Tom Baker was the fourth actor to take on the role of Doctor Who and stayed with the role the longest.
Baker CA, population 735, lies along I-15 between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. It was founded as a railroad station in 1908 and is named after Richard C. Baker who was a business partner with Francis Marion Smith (known as the “Borax King”). Their mining operations include the Rio Tinto Borax Mine which is California’s largest open-pit mine and the largest borax mine in the world, producing nearly half the world’s borates.
A large open-pit mine can be seen on the map to the northeast of the Borax Visitor Center located at grid 35.029930, -117.687202.
Borax is a salt, a hydrated borate of sodium, with chemical formula Na2H2OB4O17. Borax has many industrial and household uses, including as a pesticide, as a metal soldering flux, as a component of glass, enamel, and pottery glazes, for tanning of skins and hides, for artificial aging of wood, as a preservative against wood fungus, and as a pharmaceutic alkalizer.
Both Jim Baker of Texas and Howard Baker of Tennessee - no relation - served as White House Chief of Staff during the Reagan Administration.
Two men who served as US Senator from Tennessee were:
From 1797: Andrew Jackson
From 1953: Albert Arnold Gore, Sr.
One man who served as US Senator from Texas was:
From 1971: Lloyd Bentsen