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CELEBRATING SIR FRANCIS BEAUFORT
THIS SUMMER has had a lot of hot air, everywhere from Washington, D.C., to Helsinki, and back. This got me thinking of how we measure its forceful expenditures. Add to this, our friend René in Maine...
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HOLMES AND RUGBY (MOSTLY RUGBY) PART 1
IN HIS YOUTH, Dr. John H. Watson played rugby, or rugger, as it was also called at the time. He mentions this in chronicling “The Sussex Vampire,” a Holmes adventure dated November 19–21, 1896. Some...
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HOLMES AND RUGBY (MOSTLY RUGBY) PART 2
Yesterday at SimanaitisSays, we encountered the challenge of understanding rugby jargon, part of “The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter.” Here in Part 2, we profit from editor Leslie S. Klinger’s...
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ON THE IMPORTANCE OF HISTORY
WE SEEM to be burdened at the moment with the least historically informed leader in U.S. history. I offer our president’s misdating the career of Andrew Jackson (“I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a...
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AMMONIA FROM A REVERSE FUEL CELL
AMMONIA, NH3, is used primarily as fertilizer, at an annual expenditure of $60 billion worldwide. It’s estimated that at least half the nitrogen in the human body today is traceable to synthetic...
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ETYMOLOGY—KAKISTOCRACY, KLEPTOCRACY
ALAS, WHAT an optimist I was back in April 2016! In what turned out to be the first of my Etymology for our Times series, the topic was ”Governing by Word”. The words included anarchy, democracy,...
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TIDBITS ON AUTOS—FROM THE BEST SOURCES
EVEN IN these days of e-this and e-that, I find the weekly print Automotive News the most useful and authoritative source of what’s happening in the world auto industry. And make no mistake, despite...
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THE AMERICAN AUTO FACTORY—A MINI HISTORY
THE AMERICAN AUTO business began some 120 years ago. What was originally small-shop, hand-made, one-off fabrication evolved into a highly automated, complex, internationally integrated industry. Olsen...
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VACATIONING IN EUROPE—1909 STYLE
THE IDEA of a European vacation in 1909 was different from one today. There was no jet lag. No carefully sized carryons. But it did call for suitable planning. A Satchel Guide for the Vacation Tourist...
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THE WRIGHT 1903 ENGINE PART 1
THE WRIGHT BROTHERS designed and developed the first powered heavier-than-air craft with theoretical as well as practical considerations. “The Wright Brothers—Aero Theoreticians” here at SimanaitisSays...
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