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Railroad tracks (and more)

Be sure to read the final paragraph; your understanding of it will depend on
the earlier part of the content.

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet,
8.5 inches. That's an odd number.

Why was that gauge used?
Because that's the way they built them in England ,
and English expatriates built 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 used for building wagons,
which used that wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular 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
(and England ) for their legions. The 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.

Bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed
a Specification/Procedure/Process and wonder
"What horse's (_|_) came up with it?" 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 sitting on its launch pad, there are two big
booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid
rocket boosters, or SRB's. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in
Utah . The engineers who designed the SRB's would have preferred to make them
a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory 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 (_|_).

And you thought being a horse's (_|_) wasn't important ? Ancient horses'
asses control almost everything... and CURRENT horses' asses are controlling
everything else, including our government!


And that is the end of today's lesson!


Hope it was educational for you....

So, when I call my hubby a horses arse, I'm actually paying him a compliment?

_________________
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