What did the Romans ever do for us ? Apart from Hadrian building that wall to try and stop the Scottish people integrating. They must have disliked them an awful lot to go to all that trouble. Origin Of New Year dates back to the era of emperors. First New Year celebrations were noticed in Mesopotamia around 2000 years. It was celebrated at the time of Equinox in mid-March by the Egyptians, Persians and Phoenicians while Greeks celebrated it on winter solstice. January 1- an Official Date of New Year Celebrations The Roman emperor Julius Caesar officially declared January 1 to be a New Year in 46 B.C. Romans worshiped God Janus who had two faces, one looking forward and the other looking backward. The month of January was named after this Roman God and it gave an idea to the emperor to establish January as a gate to the New Year.
I proposed to my girlfriend last week, but she never text back.
Lost This Year. January 22 Jean Simmons, British actress (born 1929) February 6 John Dankworth, British jazz musician. (born 1927) February 14 Dick Francis, British author and jockey (born 1920) March 3 Michael Foot, British politician (born 1913) April 8 Malcolm McLaren, British musician. (born 1946) May 2 Lynn Redgrave, British actress (born 1943) June 16 Ronald Neame, British Film producer. (born 1911) July 2 Beryl Bainbridge, British novelist (born 1934) July 24 Alex Higgins, Northern Irish snooker player (born 1949) October 4 Norman Wisdom, British actor & comedian (born 1915) November 25— Bernard Matthews. Turkey tycoon (Born 1930)
What else did the Romans ever do for us ? The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England , and English expatriates designed the US railroads. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did 'they' use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing. Why did the wagons have that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England , because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England ) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore, the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. In other words, bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process, and wonder, 'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.) Now, the twist to the story: When you see a Space Shuttle on its launch pad, you will notice there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit larger, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory in Utah to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. ...Explains a whole lot of things, doesn't it?
12.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48