The use of Roman Numerals for Super Bowls began with Super Bowl IV in January 1970, the first time the big game was called the Super Bowl, when QB Len Dawson and the Kansas City Chiefs defeated QB Joe Kapp and the Minnesota Vikings.
Due to the NFL’s strenuous efforts to keep control of the “Super Bowl” name and logo, Stephen Colbert hit on the idea of calling the game as the Superb Owl.
Backup NFL quarterback Gale Gilbert played for the Buffalo Bills and the San Diego Chargers in the early 1990s. With those teams he went to five straight Super Bowls. His team lost all five of them.
Gale Gilbert is the only player ever to go to five straight Super Bowls.
The U.S. National Weather Service defines a gale as 34–47 knots or 39–54 miles/hour of sustained surface winds. On the Beaufort Wind Scale, a gale is classified as: 7: Moderate Gale (32–38 miles per hour), 8: Fresh Gale (39-46 mph), 9: Strong Gale (47-54 mph) and 10: Storm/Whole Gale (55-63 mph).
The now second highest surface wind speed ever officially recorded on earth is 231 mph at the Mount Washington NH USA Observatory at 6,288 ft above sea level in the US on 12 April 1934, using a heated anemometer. The anemometer, specifically designed for use on Mount Washington was later tested by the US National Weather Bureau and confirmed to be accurate.
The fastest wind speed not related to tornadoes ever recorded was during the passage of Tropical Cyclone Olivia on 10 April 1996: an automatic weather station on Barrow Island AUS registered a maximum wind gust of 253 mph.
The Enhanced Fujita Scale was developed to measure the intensity of tornadoes and the damage caused by tornadoes. Tornadoes with winds of 65-85 mph are classified in the lowest rating on the scale, EF0. The highest rating is EF5, which classifies tornadoes with winds in excess of 200 mph. EF5 tornadoes are capable of picking up vehicles and throwing them a distance of up to a mile.
The 1925 Tri-State Tornado, which spread through parts of Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, is the deadliest tornado in the US recorded history. 695 deaths and 2,027 injuries are associated with the Tri-State Tornado. The damage was estimated at $16.5M, or $1.4B in 2011 adjusted dollars.
The Plimsoll lines painted on a ship’s hull are at the water’s edge when a ship is at its maximum safe loading for the water and weather conditions it will sail in. The levels are marked TF, F, S, W, and WNA, for Tropical Freshwater, Freshwater, Summer, Winter, and Winter North Atlantic.
Per Wiki: In the 1860s, after increased loss of ships due to overloading, a British Member of Parliament, Samuel Plimsoll, took up the load line cause. A Royal Commission on unseaworthy ships was established in 1872, and in 1876 the United Kingdom Merchant Shipping Act made the load line mark compulsory, although the positioning of the mark was not fixed by law until 1894. In 1906, laws were passed requiring foreign ships visiting British ports to be marked with a load line. It was not until 1930 that there was international agreement for universal application of load line regulations.
“Good men with poor ships are better than poor men in good ships."
— Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan
Alfred Thayer Mahan (September 27, 1840 – December 1, 1914) was a US naval officer and historian, whom John Keegan called “the most important American strategist of the nineteenth century.”
One of my all-time favorite quotes, up on that first line.
Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast (referring to the sailors’ quarters in the forecastle), published in 1840, was little-read before the California Gold Rush of 1849, when it became a top seller due to its being the only available book that described California. Dana’s purpose of publicizing the life, and plight, of a common sailor then finally was achieved. Dana was a Harvard undergraduate who signed on as a common seaman with a ship working the leather business in hopes of improving his eyesight and health after a bout of measles.
It’s highly readable even today, even with all the now-unfamiliar sailing terminology. Dana’s description of rounding Cape Horn in wintertime is especially memorable.
Thank you for this, Elvis. It was assigned undergraduate reading for me but I wasn’t smart enough to want to read it. I instead focused on my engineering classes. From your post, I’ll add it to my reading list. Thanks for the reminder!
Richard Henry Dana Jr. (1815-1882), the author of Two Years Before the Mast, was the son of poet and critic Richard Henry Dana Sr. (1787-1879).
Junior was 19 years old when he caught the brig Pilgrim bound for Alta California. After witnessing the captain’s sadistic practices, including a flogging on board the ship, he vowed that he would try to help improve the lot of the common seaman.
(It’s public domain, so a Kindle download is only $1.99 or some other token amount.)
A brig like the Pilgrim, which has a replica based at Dana Point, CA, has two masts, both square-rigged. If the mainmast (the aft one) is lateen-rigged, the ship is a brigantine, aka a hermaphrodite brig.
(Not in play)
link for Two Years Before the Mast and a plug for one of my favorite sites, Project Gutenberg, with thousands of free public domain e-books
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2055/2055-h/2055-h.htm
There have been three warships named USS Pilgrim to serve in the U.S. Navy, the most recent of which was a former sailing yacht and later patrol vessel, decommissioned in 1919 after the end of World War I.
Actor John Wayne only used the term pilgrim in two of his films. The first was the 1962 film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and the second was the following year in McClintock.
The Cenotaph in Regina, Saskatchewan, was built to memorialise the province’s war dead in the Great War of 1914-1919.
Although the War is now considered to have ended on November 11, 1918, at the time the date 1919 was used because British troops, including Canadians, had intervened in the Russian Civil War on the Eastern Front. The troops were not removed from Russia until 1919.
ETA: John Wayne never made a movie set in Saskatchewan.
On Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, the Allied generals knew the Armistice would be signed at 5:00 and that fighting would stop six hours later. Until then, they were determined to gain favorable positions, should the cease fire fail, and to continue to punish the Germans until the very last minute. In those hours there were almost 11,000 casualties, including almost 2,700 killed. More men were killed, wounded or missing that morning than both sides suffered on D-Day in June 1944 during the Normandy Invasion.
Germany signed the armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside Compiégne, France.
Hitler had the French sign the articles of capitulation in that same railroad car in 1940. He then had it moved to Berlin, where it was destroyed in an Allied bombing raid later in the war.