Pittsburgh was named in honour of William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham. He is generally referred to as Pitt the Elder, to distinguish him from his second son William Pitt the Younger, who had the distinction of becoming the youngest man to become Prime Minister, at the age of 24.
With its proximity to three major rivers and countless hills and ravines, Pittsburgh is known as “The City of Bridges”. A 2006 study determined that Pittsburgh has 446 bridges.
Meanwhile Pittsburg, California (no “H”), originally settled in 1839, was called first “New York Landing”, then “Black Diamond”, before citizens voted on “Pittsburg” in 1911. The name “Pittsburg” has at least two origins. First, it was the name of a coal mining company that built a railroad in 1865 on the eastern edge of what is now the city. Second, some citizens wanted to honor Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, (without the “H”), because of the city’s relations with the steel building industry, which was first established by the Columbia Geneva Steel Company.
Proposition 5 of Book 1 of Euclid’s Elements is nicknamed the ‘Pons Asinorum’ or the ‘Bridge of Asses’. It states that “in isosceles triangles the angles at the base are equal to one another, and, if the equal straight lines be produced further, the angles under the base will be equal to one another”.
There are two schools of thought regarding the meaning of the nickname. One is that it is a reference to the diagram accompanying the proposition, which resembles a bridge. The other is that the fifth proposition is the first difficult one encountered by students, and that the less intelligent (the asses) will be unable to cross it.
Euclid is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, part of the Greater Cleveland area. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 48,920. It was named after the Greek mathematician when founded in 1796.
Ulysses S Grant was born in Point Pleasant, OH in 1822. He died at the age of 63 in Wilton, NY.
Ulysses S. Grant, top general of the U.S. Army during the Civil War and later a two-term President of the United States, was tone deaf. He once joked, “I know two tunes. One is “Yankee Doodle,” and the other isn’t.”
The tune of “Yankee Doodle” was used in the theme song of the cartoon series “Roger Ramjet”, whose hero led the American Eagle Squadron (members: Yank, Doodle, Dan and Dee). They sometimes had help from his Proton Energy Pills (“PEP”), which give him “the strength of twenty atom bombs for a period of twenty seconds”. Ramjet was the rival of Lance Crossfire for the affections of Lotta Love, who eventually dumps them both and goes out with General Brassbottom.
The National Museum of the Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton OH houses a special McDonnell Douglas F-15, the Strike Eagle. The F-15 was first flown in 1972 and it entered service in 1974. It was the first US fighter to have its engine thrust greater than its weight, meaning it could accelerate while going in a straight up climb. The Strike Eagle was a special test version that set eight time-to-climb records in early 1975. In setting the last of the eight records, it reached an altitude of 98,425 feet just 3 minutes, 27.8 seconds from brake release at takeoff. It then “coasted” to nearly 103,000 feet before descending.
The Latin word for eagle is aquila. In Roman times the *aquilifer *was the man who carried the eagle standard of a Roman legion. This standard was the most important possession of the legion and its loss was a terrible disgrace.
The Channing Tatum film The Eagle, based on Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical adventure novel The Eagle of the Ninth, tells the story of a young Roman officer and his English slave searching to recover the lost Roman eagle standard of his father’s legion in the northern part of Great Britain. The story is based on the Ninth Spanish Legion’s disappearance there.
Eagles’ nests are called aeries (alternatively, eyries). Of all birds in the world, Bald Eagles hold the record for the biggest nest ever built. One nest in Florida was 20 feet deep, 9½ feet wide, and weighed 6,000 lbs.
Aerie is the term for the nest of a bird of prey.
Benjamin Franklin proposed that the symbol of the United States should be the wild turkey rather than the Bald Eagle.
The Sydney funnel web spider (atrax robustus) builds its nest in sheltered habitats e.g. in the bush and in gardens where it can find a moist and humid climate. They usually build silk-lined tubular retreats with collapsed “tunnels” or open “funnel” entrances from which irregular trip-lines radiate over the ground.
The funnel web is considered one of the most venomous spiders in the world.
Sorry, Cunctator, you were ninja’d. Playing off of Northern Piper…
Benjamin Franklin was credited with inventing, or helping to invent, the following:
[ul]
[li]bifocals[/li][li]lightning rod[/li][li]Franklin stove - instead of a fireplace against a wall, and metal-lined stove standing in the middle of the room[/li][li]mapping of the Gulf Stream currents in the western Atlantic Ocean[/li][li]swim fins, for the hands[/li][li]glass armonica, a mechanized form of water-filled wine glasses whose rims are rubbed by a wet finger to produce a tone[/li][li]flexible urinary catheter[/li][li]odometer[/li][li]a “long arm” to reach for books high on a shelf[/li][/ul]
Hate to burst everyone’s bubble, but this one’s actually a myth.
Soap bubbles are used by mathematicians to study minimizing energy states and maximizing volume based on physical constraints in the most simplest manners. Mathematician Frank Morgan of Williams College offers a talk titled ‘The Double Soap Bubble Theorem’. Morgan says the reason soap bubbles are round is not that the molecules that constitute them are round, but because they “just want to be efficient, to enclose a given volume of air with the least surface area or energy.”
The round shape, observed for thousands of years, was mathematically proved optimal in 1884.
The double bubble theorem effectively states that the double bubble “provides the least-perimeter way to enclose and separate two prescribed volumes,” according to a paper Morgan co-authored that was published in 2004.
Wealthy New York financier and investor J.P. Morgan personally organized Wall Street’s response to the Panic of 1907, saving the American economy from what could have been a much deeper crisis.
A panic bar is a device that allows an outward-opening exit door to be opened during an emergency.
The impetus to make the panic bar a standard part of building requirements came in 1883 after the Victoria Hall disaster in Sunderland in the UK, where more than 180 children died because an inward-opening door had been bolted at the bottom of a stairwell.
San Francisco Giants second baseman Joe Panik made his Major League debut on June 21, 2014 pinch-hitting for the pitcher in the 8th inning and drawing a walk against Arizona Diamondbacks relief pitcher Matt Stites in a game the Giants won 6-4. Panik’s first Major League start came the next day, June 22, 2014, when he batted seventh and played second base.
Saint Francis founded the Order of Friars Minor in 1209.