178 m/s which is about 400 mph or Mach 0.5:
“Many have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that, we should know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.”
This is c & p from Wikipedia. It makes perfect sense apart from that strange comma after “thought that”.
After much thought, I see it’s not so strange after all.
Perhaps if we knew exactly why bob_2 had thought that, we should know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.
This was my first thought on reading the title too. 
Great minds think alike, fools seldom differ.
I missed this thread the first time around.
Thank you, borofergie!
The price of the book referenced in post #4 is now sitting at ~ USD $200. Sadly, still outside my budget.
So no one started with ‘assume a spherical sperm whale’?
Given the date of the OP, I can’t help but wonder if it was the precursor for what ultimately became Sharknado?