Copper has only the second-highest electrical conductivity of the elements, behind silver, but is much cheaper and easier to work with. The Manhattan Project reputedly borrowed silver from the US Mint to make electrical wiring, due to the massive demand for copper elsewhere in the war effort, and because it could offer the best security possible for the silver.
Tod and Copper are the main characters in The Fox and The Hound. The original novel is very different than the Disney version. For example in the book
The hunter kills both of Tod’s litters
The artist who drew the attacking bear in The Fox and the Hound said the producer kept telling him to draw the attacking bear in the movie bigger. (This was from a show at Disney/MGM studios on how cartoons are made.)
Old joke:
The National Park Rangers are advising hikers in Glacier National Park and other Rocky Mountain parks to be alert for bears and take extra precautions to avoid an encounter.
They advise park visitors to wear little bells on their clothes so they make noise when hiking. The bell noise allows bears to hear them coming from a distance and not be startled by a hiker accidentally sneaking up on them. This might cause a bear to charge.
Visitors should also carry a pepper spray can just in case a bear is encountered. Spraying the pepper into the air will irritate the bear’s sensitive nose and it will run away.
It is also a good idea to keep an eye out for fresh bear scat so you have an idea if bears are in the area. People should be able to recognize the difference between black bear and grizzly bear scat.
Black bear droppings are smaller and often contain berries, leaves, and possibly bits of fur. Grizzly bear droppings tend to contain small bells and smell of pepper.
No joke:
There is a private big cat zoo about 50 miles from where I live. They will let you haul away as much big cat scat as you can shovel into your pickup truck.
Why would anyone want a truckload of tiger sh*t? Because if you shovel piles of it around your vegatable and flower gardens no deer will come within miles, and you can for a change enjoy eating fresh raspberry and smellng roses before the deer eat them.
A friend of mine did this, but only once, because there is one big and insurmountable problem. The Tiger sh*t is effective for weeks (good), but it absolutely reeks (bad), and you do not get used to the smell (very bad), which is penetrating for some distance.
Yeah, I’ve been to zoos too, and I don’t recall the tiger cages smelling any worse than anything else. My friend is not prone to exaggeration, though, and I don’t think he just made the story up.
Tigers are powerful nocturnal hunters that travel many miles to find buffalo, deer, wild pigs, and other large mammals. A Bengal tiger can eat 21kg of meat in a night and can kill the equivalent of 30 buffaloes a year.
Tipu’s Tiger was a mechanical toy made for Tipu Sultan, the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore in India. The carved and painted wood casing represents a tiger savaging a near life-size European man. Mechanisms inside the tiger and man’s bodies make one hand of the man move, emit a wailing sound from his mouth and grunts from the tiger. In addition a flap on the side of the tiger folds down to reveal the keyboard of a small pipe organ with 18 notes.
The tiger was created for Tipu and makes use of his personal emblem of the tiger and expresses his hatred of his enemy, the British of the East India Company. The tiger was discovered in his summer palace after East India Company troops stormed Tipu’s capital in 1799. The Governor General, Lord Mornington, sent the Tiger to Britain initially intending it to be an exhibit in the Tower of London. First exhibited to the London public in 1808 in East India House, then the offices of the East India Company in London, it was later transferred to the Victoria and Albert Museum.
For Claire Chenault’s Flying Tigers, of the first 100 pilots, 60 came from the Navy and Marine Corps, and 40 from the Army Air Corps.
The Curtiss P-40 Warhawk was an American single-engined, single-seat, all-metal fighter and ground-attack aircraft that first flew in 1938. The Warhawk was used by most Allied powers during World War II, and remained in frontline service until the end of the war. It was the third most-produced American fighter, after the P-51 and P-47; by November 1944, when production of the P-40 ceased, 13,738 had been built,[4] all at Curtiss-Wright.
It is perhaps most famous for being the plane used by the 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG) of the Chinese Air Force in 1941–1942, nicknamed the Flying Tigers.
The British Commonwealth and Soviet air forces used the name Tomahawk for models equivalent to the P-40B and P-40C, and the name Kittyhawk for models equivalent to the P-40D and all later variants. The famous shark’s-mouth logo used by the Flying Tigers was copied from a magazine picture of a British Tomahawk in North Africa.
Peter Benchley, who wrote the popular novel Jaws, is the grandson of Algonquin Round Table Charter Member Robert Benchley.
Robert Benchley, in addition to being a humor writer, also wrote and starred in many Hollywood films. His “How to Sleep” won and Oscar for Best Short Subject in 1935.
Oneirology is the scientific study of dreams and their content. Brain scans have recorded heavy activity in the limbic system and the amygdala during REM sleep. Animals have complex dreams and are able to retain and recall long sequences of events while they are asleep. Studies show that various species of mammals and birds experience REM during sleep, and follow the same series of sleeping states as humans.
The 1946 film The Big Sleep with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and the 1978 remake with Robert Mitchum and Joan Collins were based on the 1939 novel by Raymond Chandler, the first to feature private detective Philip Marlowe.
In medeival times, a Chandler was a member the household staff who was responsible for candles and soap. Later, the term was used for Ship’s Chandlers, who were retail merchants in ports who purveyed all the supplies a ship would need. Chandlers still exist in modern times, as a ship often remains in port for too little time for the crew to go ashore and buy all the necessary provisions. A chandler is contracted to have in stock and deliver the goods quickly to the ship.
NFL wide receiver Wes Chandler played eleven seasons for the New Orleans Saints, the San Diego Chargers, and the San Francisco 49ers. He still holds the NFL record for most receiving yards per game for an entire season, 129.0 yards in 1982.
The San Francisco 49ers was one of three teams in the All America Football Conference accepted into the NFL in 1949. The others were the Cleveland Browns and the Baltimore Colts. The Colts folded after the 1950 season (though its marching band and fan club remained); a new team with the same name was added to the NFL in 1953.
By the beginning of 1849, word of the California Gold Rush had spread around the world, and an overwhelming number of gold-seekers and merchants began to arrive from virtually every continent. The largest group of forty-niners in 1849 were Americans, arriving by the tens of thousands overland across the continent and along various sailing routes (the name “forty-niner” was derived from the year 1849).
Many from the East Coast negotiated a crossing of the Appalachian Mountains, taking to riverboats in Pennsylvania, poling the keelboats to Missouri River wagon train assembly ports, and then travelling in a wagon train along the California Trail. Many others came by way of the Isthmus of Panama and the steamships of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company.
Australians and New Zealanders picked up the news from ships carrying Hawaiian newspapers, and thousands, infected with “gold fever”, boarded ships for California.
The state boundary between California and Nevada was contested between the two burgeoning states in large part because of the gold rush. In the end it was decided to draw straight lines through the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. The northern part of the boundary is a north-south line that follows the 120° W Longitude line south to its intersection with 39° N Latitude. From there, a southeast diagonal goes to the intersection of the Colorado River and the 35° N Latitude line. The remainder of the eastern boundary follows the Colorado River.
In spite of its relatively limited interest and esoteric subject matter the book Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel became a surprise bestseller in 1995. Her next bestseller was Galileo’s Daughter, about the life and correspondence of Virginia Galilei, who took vows as Maria Celeste.