But Laos is a small country. I crossed it on a bus in about three hours going between Thailand and Vietnam. I think it’s about 1000 km from north to south, but on average about 200km wide.
I just checked the surface area of Laos, about 240.000 square kilometers. With that in mind, if you draw a grid 10 meters square across the whole country on average a bomb and fraction was dropped in every single square.
I think you are out by a factor, using 10 meter squares you would have 10,000 squares per square km and the US only dropped a thousand and a fraction bombs per square km.
The thing that most surprised me was that I never knew we where at war with Laos. Stupidly at war with North Vietnam yes, but Laos???
Cleve Francis, one of the few black country music singers even to make it as far as getting a few singles or albums on the country charts, has a second job. He’s a cardiologist:
Yeah, I was reminded of it because of the article in The Washington Post today, but I had read about it years ago.
I don’t believe any of them.
They have to drive into Ohio? They don’t have a bridge into Michigan? 
I know the Mackinac Bridge is in that area.
Recently learned the Outerbridge Crossing, one of the Bridges from New Jersey to Staten Island is named after a man. Eugenius Harvey Outerbridge. This was a shock to me.
I don’t recall Congress declaring war on either Vietnam or Laos. Or Panama, Grenada, or even Iraq, for that matter.
This is doubly interesting, since it is the outermost bridge crossing in NYC.
The Holland Tunnel has nothing to do with the dutch; it was named after Clifford Milburn Holland, the first chief engineer on the project. (There’s a bust of him on the left side of the entrance on the New York side)
According to Wikipedia, Angelica Huston was born in Santa Monica, California.
Unfortunately, St. Monica was born in Algeria instead of Houston.
And if you want to cross the Potomac, there’s a Nice Bridge you can use.
St. Augustine, of course, is reputedly the oldest city in the U.S. It figures that St. Augustine is on the opposite side of the U.S. from his mother, Santa Monica.
I am probably a direct decendant of Charlemagne, and some of the atoms in my body were probably once part of William Shakespeare.
This is one that I read here on SDMB a couple of years ago, and if indeed true it blows me away.
16 year olds are legally allowed to work as fully nude strippers in Rhode Island, though they can’t work past midnight on a school night.
With the various child-porn laws and child labor laws, not to mention liquor laws, I find this almost impossible to believe, but some poster (dont remember the poster’s name, or where they lived) swore it is currently the law in Rhode Island.
Frankly, I am doubtful that it would be legal in Bangkok or Amsterdam, let alone somewhere in the USA, with the hyper-sensitivity we seem to have regarding anything sexual and children under the age of 18…
Anyone know the Straight Dope?
If true, are Rhode Island strip bars chock full of guys from all over the world who crave 16 year old girls?
In Panama you can have the Atlantic on your west, and the Pacific on your east.
That reminds me of something that is about physics, not math, but seems eerie to me in a similar way.
Picture the largest ship in the word, floating freely in a super-sized “swimming pool” that has been constructed for just that purpose. (It is not only long and wide enough, it is more than deep enough for however low the keel would end up below the surface of the water.)
Now, nobody’s mind is boggled so far. The bouyancy principle is that the ship descends no further than the point at which the weight of displaced water equals the total craft weight. And I doubt that anyone performing this thought experiment won’t see that this could be in a large-enough and deep-enough pool as in the ocean.
Now imagine that someone fashions a metal structure under the ship, matching it’s shape except for an avoiding distance of one inch. The structure goes at least as far up as the water surface.
The structure is then firmly braced against the bootom of the pool. The water is drained from the pool.
Oddly, the ship still is buoyed up by the inch of water all around the bottom. The principles of hydraulics require this!
- Oddly enough Og
Why is this one unbelievable?
No, but one of them sang back up for the Monkees…
No, George Ferris built the first Ferris Wheel as a midway ride for the Chicago world’s fair (aka the World’s Columbian Exposition) in 1893.
Because most of us Americans think of Maine as “way up North,” and Africa as South and West. We would guess Florida would be much closer. Not once has someone guessed it when I asked it as a trivia question.
You didn’t say, but I’m guessing this applies to more people than not, and therefore “probably” you. Right?