04/14 Open Thread - The Titanic
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~~ RMS Titanic
Word of The Day: Today;s word is Hubris
At 11:40 pm on April 14, 1912, the ship, RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and began to sink, a process it completed between 2:10 and 2:15 am on the morning of the fifteenth. Approximately 1,500 people died, making this one of the deadliest peacetime sinkings of a single ship. I, personally, did not see the movie and ergo must rely upon printed information sources. (I had already seen The Poseidon Adventure and figured that nobody would ever top Shelly Winters' performance in a sinking boat flick.) But I digress. ..
The RMS Titanic was built in the British colonial town of Belfast. It was, at the time of its sailing the largest ship afloat, being 882 feet 9 inches long with a maximum beam of 92 feet 6 inches and a height from the base of the keel to the top of the bridge of 104 feet. It was an "Ocean Liner", which is to say a passenger ship, a very luxurious and even opulent one. It was considered to be state of the art and up-to-date, and all that. It was also considered to be unsinkable (see word of the day, supra). It had 16 water tight compartments separated by 15 bulkheads which extended above the waterline. As long as 4 or less of these compartments were flooded, the ship would stay afloat. The hull was comprised of steel plates which varied from 1 to 1.5 inches thick. Though arguably state of the art, the steel in the hull tended to become especially brittle when cold and the rivets holding it together also had a tendency to become brittle when cold. In addition the bulkheads were not sealed at the top. Given a sufficient tilt of the ship, water in one compartment could flow over the top of the bulkhead and into the next compartment.
The collision with the iceberg dented the hull in such a fashion that the steel plates in the hull buckled and created a series of openings that allowed sea water to flood into 5 of the 16 "watertight" compartments. The ship began sinking bow first and quickly reached an angle such that water began flowing from the damaged compartments into other compartments, speeding up the sinking process. Finally, the stern which had been hanging unsupported in the air, broke off and sank separately. Like many other ship of the day, the Titanic only carried enough lifeboats for about half of the passengers and crew and most of them were actually launched when barely half full. Many persons were trapped in the hull and the rest of those not in the lifeboats were in 28 degree fahrenheit (-2 degree centigrade) water except for 5 who were rescued by lifeboats.
An April 1561 broadsheet in Nuremberg told of an April 14 aerial battle in and out of the sun between various assorted objects which eventually fell to earth in clouds of smoke. The article asserts that many people observed this phenomenon. There is no report anywhere by anybody of anyone attempting to track any of these things down to see what they were. This, to me, seems to be a most curious lack of curiosity on the part of the townspeople.
On this date in 1865, Abraham Lincoln became the first US President to be assassinated. His was the second attempted assassination of a US president. So far, there have been 4 successful assassinations of US Presidents out of over 10 attempts.
On this day in history:
1395 – Timur (Tamerlane) defeated the army of the Golden Horde, starting the khanate's permanent military decline.
1561 – An apparition on the sun was reported over Nuremberg and described as an aerial battle.
1775 – The first slavery abolition society in North America was organized in Philly by Ben Franklin and Benjamin Rush
1816 – A slave rebellion broke out in British ruled Barbados,
1865 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was shot in Ford's Theatre by John Wilkes Booth
1890 – The Pan-American Union was founded by the First International Conference of American States
1909 – The Adana massacre began
1912 – The RMS Titanic hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic and began to sink.
1928 – The Bremen completed the first successful transatlantic airplane flight from east to west.
1929 – The inaugural Monaco Grand Prix was won by William Grover-Williams driving a Bugatti Type 35
1931 – The Second Spanish Republic and the Catalan Republic were both proclaimed
1935 – The Black Sunday dust storm swept across the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles
1944 – Bombay explosion: A massive explosion in Bombay harbor killed 300 and caused economic damage valued at 20 million pounds.
1958 – Sputnik 2, carrying Laika, fell from orbit after a mission duration of 162 days.
1981 – The first operational Space Shuttle, Columbia, completed its first test flight.
1988 – The Soviet Union agreed to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.
1994 – Two U.S. Air Force planes mistakenly downed two U.S. Army helicopters in the Iraq no-fly zone, killing 26 people.
1999 – NATO mistakenly bombed a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees.killing 75.
2002 – Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez returned to office two days after being ousted and arrested by the country's military.
2003 – The Human Genome Project was completed
2014 – Boko Haram abducted 276 girls from a school in Chibok, Nigeria
Some people who were born on this day:
I can not think of any circumstances in which advertising would not be an evil.
~~ Arnold J Toynbee
1126 – Averroes, physician and philosopher
1527 – Abraham Ortelius, cartographer and geographer
1629 – Christiaan Huygens, mathematician, astronomer, and physicist
1819 – Harriett Ellen Grannis Arey, educator, author, editor, and publisher
1866 – Anne Sullivan, educator, Helen Keller's teacher and companion
1882 – Moritz Schlick, physicist and philosopher, founded Logical Positivism and the Vienna Circle
1889 – Arnold J. Toynbee, historian and academic
1905 – Jean Pierre-Bloch, author and activist, member of French Resistance in WW II
1918 – Mary Healy, actress and singer
1924 – Shorty Rogers, trumpet player and composer
1926 – Gloria Jean, actress and singer
1927 – Dany Robin, actress and singer
1929 – Inez Andrews, singer and songwriter
1932 – Loretta Lynn, singer, songwriter, and musician
1936 – Arlene Martel, actress and singer
1936 – Frank Serpico, soldier, police officer and lecturer
1945 – Ritchie Blackmore, guitarist and songwriter
1946 – Knut Kristiansen, pianist and orchestra leader
1952 – Kenny Aaronson, bass player
1958 – Jim Smith, musician
1967 – Barrett Martin, drummer, songwriter, and producer
1976 – Christian Älvestam, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1980 – Win Butler, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
Some people who died on this day:
Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.
~~ Simone de Beauvoir
1609 – Gasparo da Salò, violin maker
1759 – George Frideric Handel, organist and composer
1843 – Joseph Lanner, violinist and composer
1914 – Hubert Bland, activist, co-founded the Fabian Society
1916 – Gina Krog, suffragist and women's rights activist
1917 – L. L. Zamenhof, physician and linguist, created Esperanto
1925 – John Singer Sargent, painter
1935 – Emmy Noether, mathematician and academic
1964 – Tatyana Afanasyeva, mathematician and theorist
1964 – Rachel Carson, biologist and author, canary in the coal mine
1986 – Simone de Beauvoir, novelist and philosopher
1990 – Thurston Harris, singer
1995 – Burl Ives, actor, folk singer, and writer
1999 – Anthony Newley, singer, songwriter, and actor
2000 – Phil Katz, computer programmer, co-created the zip file format, wrote PKZip
2007 – June Callwood, journalist, author, and activist
2007 – Don Ho, singer and ukulele player
2010 – Peter Steele, singer, songwriter, and bass player
2013 – George Jackson, singer, songwriter
2015 – Percy Sledge, singer
2021 – Bernie Madoff, businessman, entrepreneur, investment adviser, market maker
2022 – Orlando Julius, saxophonist, singer
Some Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such:
World Quantum Day
Pan American Day
Look Up At The Sky Day
National Dolphin Day
Today's Tunes
The Titanic
Shorty Rogers
Loretta Lynn
Ritchie Blackmore
Knut Kristiansen
Kenny Aaronson
Barrett Martin
George Frideric Handel
Joseph Lanner
Rachael Carson
Thurston Harris
Burl Ives
Don Ho
George Jackson
Percy Sledge
Bernie Madoff
Orlando Julius
Bonus Orlando Julius
Ok, it's an open thread, so it's up to you folks now. What's on your mind?
Cross posted from http://caucus99percent.com
open thread, Titanic, Lincoln, William Grover-Williams, Moritz Schlick, Toynbee, Shorty Rogeers, Loretta Lynn, Ritchie Blackmore, Handel, Percy Sledge, Orlando Julius
Comments
Good morning...
Hubris indeed. It was the unsinkable ship.
Digital scan of the wreckage...
(3 min) A digital scan of the Titanic has revealed new insight into the doomed liner's final hours, including how engineers kept the lights on until the last moment. The exact 3D replica shows the violence of how the ship ripped in two as it sank after hitting an iceberg in 1912, killing 1,500 people in the disaster. The scan also provides a new view of a boiler room, confirming eye-witness accounts that engineers worked right to the end to keep the ship's lights on.
Well let's keep our boat afloat. Thanks for the OT and all the music!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Good morning LO. Thanks for reading and thanks for
that video. Tonight's recommended beverage is anything on the rocks.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Good morning, El, et al!
J. D. Vance is a fake hillbilly.If Chinese peasants offer nothing but cheap labor, then we poor are peasants. Glad the pompous rich fuck says it out loud.
Col. Karen Kwiatowsky writes about yet another Israeli war crime: the release of wild boars on the farm lands of Gaza. The mention of Vance's peasant talk really triggered her, as she is a farmer. A short and interesting read.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2025/04/karen-kwiatkowski/wild-boars/
Thanks for the OT and enjoy your beverage(s) on the rocks tonight, friend.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Good morning otc. Vance is just another huckster.
His estimated net worth is $10 million - that's not hillbilly, that's strip miner.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
If Trump were
to order Muck and DOGE to design a high-efficiency dishwasher, this is the result I would expect...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Good morning UFS. Thanks for the interesting video.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
LOL
Heh….
To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.
- Kevin Alfred Strom
The denigration of "peasants"
Rubs me the wrong way. I remember my fascination at being deployed in the countryside of South Korea, every spring for three years for several weeks at a time. I was to establish some kind of paperwork trail, to clean up as it were after the inevitable property damage claims that would emerge when tanks, bulldozers, apcs, and other military equipment tore up farmlands and villages during their exercises.
The farms, the villages, and the people who lived there were far more interesting to me, than the military movements. As an urban creature by upbringing, this was really my first actual contact with Asian roots, the fundament of Asian culture, the village, the farmers, and their way of life. I'll never forget it.
As the upcoming generations have moved to the cities, for job opportunities, populating the countryside is something of a challenge now. But during the big holidays, like Chuseok, the Korean thanksgiving, and Seolnal, lunar new year, the younger generations return like clockwork to the hometown of their ancestors alive and deceased. They know where their culture comes from, their hardworking ethic, their respect for nature, the traditional foods, and thee ways of processing them from seed, to the plate. This resourcefulness, this heritage, is something carried within their hearts and culture, it has meaning, it's a way of life in the mind, even far away in the grind of the city, it's there alive in one's heart. So many small street vendors, try to preserve, the recognizable manifestations of the old ways, in their tiny shops and street restaurants.
This is the way of Korea. To my mind, it's not that much different, in China, Vietnam, and other East Asian states. To insult peasants is so ugly American, I can't stand it. More power to the bek sang, the workers in white, the nong-min, the farmers. These people represent the spirit of their culture and their countries.
Ms. So watches the youtube videos about life in the Vietnam countryside, Chinese villages and farms and those of Laos and Thailand. Many times the videos on Southeast Asia focus on homesteads, new farms carved out of wilderness. These things are literally on for hours in my home when Ms. So is watching. It's such a coincidence, that in my youth I studied the critical role of peasants in modern Eurasian history, from the Russian revolution, to the Chinese revolution, to the Vietnamese war for independence. Only an ignorant fool would denigrate these talented, resourceful, hardworking, courageous, and yes, dignified and cultured peoples. I have felt this way since I was a teenager, first learning about Asia from my mom a librarian with an open mind. It's been a great journey to become familiar with an Asian community in my adult life, and to gain a window to East Asian culture. I'd beware of taunting and threatening Asian civilizations with western delusions of superiority.
That's my rant. I see some of the Chinese youtube channels have pretty good English subtitles lately. Axia and Dianxi Xiaoge are moving into the Lixiqi niche. Dianxi is incredibly popular.
語必忠信 行必正直
Hey, soryang.
I can't imagine referring to anyone as a peasant. Peasantry left the vernacular after Royals here and there got killed in revolutions who got damn tired of being treated like a low life form..
Who does Vance think he is? He is a prick, if he asks me, I will give him an education.
I come from generations of farmers and ranchers. That is something to take pride in anywhere it happens in the world.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
I was curious about "peasant" in Mandarin
I see that it is 农民 nong min the same as it is in Hangul. Of course, the Korean term taken from the Chinese. I was watching one US ex-patriot (Nuance) talk about this Vance thing with people on the street in some city in China. He said most of the people he talked to didn't get the pejorative connotation to the expression, in the way it was used by Vance. I think the Chinese leadership understood it right away. It just didn't have the negative connotation for ordinary people in China like that until it was explained. So it has to be taken in the diplomatic context, of Vance being a complete alpha hotel, in the "Anchorage" tradition of giving the Chinese s..t, posturing for the domestic audience here at home.
I think that Asians are quite aware of their agrarian roots, and don't look down on it. It's their tradition. Certainly in the communist Chinese revolutionary doctrine, the peasants are the good guys. There weren't enough of the classical "workers," to win the civil war. The same was true in Russia, although Russian communist party doctrine has the factory workers overthrowing the old order. When the aristocracy cut off the serfs from the commons, it was all over for them. The same for the relatively small number of Russians living in the cities. The food stopped flowing to the urban areas when the serfs rebelled.
There are parallels between the Taiping rebellion in China, and the Tonghak movement in Korea, both basically peasant rebellions, with religious overtones.
語必忠信 行必正直
Hola Soryang. Peasant has such a continental ring to it -
out here they were called peons. Every now and then folks would show up to take up their cause, folks like Zapata and Villa, so it was wise to treat them fairly and with respect.
be wll and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Funny how that happens isn't it?
thanks for the open thread EL. I was carried away by the Vance story and failed to mention that. I'm not up to speed on Mexican history. I had a colleague I worked with once, who was from San Diego and married a Mexican-American. As our friendship matured he tried to explain the nuances of Mexican history, but he got orders back to San Diego. Before that we only talked about the cold war, the middle east, and what a fool's operation the Vietnam war was
語必忠信 行必正直
Monday Monday
Hi all, Hey EL!
Hope it's all good out there...
Thanks for the OT, history, and great sounds!
At least I can still hear dawn chorus and the spring migrants as they show up or go through. Yesterday had my first of season Yellow Warbler and Red-eyed Vireo sing as they passed through northbound. Painted Bunting should be back any day now.
Today is also Puffin Day methinks? So, it appears I've got some puffin' to do...
happy trails all!
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
Good afternoon Dysto, good that yu can still dig on the dawn
chorus.
Happy Puffin Day
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Trump backs away from improving relations
with Russia, even restarted sending weapons to Zelenskye, and expending Russian sanctions for a year.
I am not a Paul Craig Roberts fan, recommend it for news content, not opinions.
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2025/04/13/trump-backs-away-from-improv...
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981