CAROLINA NATURALLY: Mar 21, 2015

Saturday, March 21, 2015

The Daily Drift

Random Humor ...!

Carolina Naturally is read in 202 countries around the world daily.

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Some of our readers today have been in:

The Americas

Fortaleza, Niteroi and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Quebec, Canada

Santiago, Chile

Bogota and Medellin, Colombia

Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Mexico City, Mexico

Lima, Peru

Catano, Puerto Rico

Port-of-Spain, Trinidad-Tobago

Ewa Beach, La Habra, Los Angeles, Menlo Park, Paradise Valley and Yuba City, United States

Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela

Europe

Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina

Glavinitsa, Sliven and Sofia, Bulgaria

Prague, Czech Republic

Lancaster, London and Southend-on-Sea, England

Tallinn, Estonia

Helsinki, Finland

Cerny, Meudon and Vendome, France

Berlin, Hamburg and Stuttgart, Germany

Athens, Greece

Waterford, Ireland

Bari, Eboli, Florence, Milan and Palermo, Italy

Riga, Latvia

Vilnius, Lithuania

Arendal, Norway

Warsaw, Poland

Covilha, Portugal

Deva, Romania

Bolshoy Kamen and Vladivostok, Russia

Madrid, Tres Cantos and Torrent, Spain

Stockholm, Sweden

Asia

Rangoon, Burma

Kumming and Shenzhen, China

Bangalore, Bhubaneshwar, Bokaro, Chennai, Delhi and Panaji, India

Seoul, Korea

Beirut, Lebanon

Beaufort, Kota Kinabalu, Kuala Lumpur and Kuching, Malaysia

Muscat, Oman

Doha, Qatar

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Taipei, Taiwan

Bangkok and Lat Phrao, Thailand

Africa

Rabat, Morocco

Windhoek, Namibia

Cape Town, Pretoria and Roodepoort, South Africa

Lusaka, Zambia

The Pacific

Homebush and Sydney, Australia

Auckland, New Zealand

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Today in History

630		Heraclius restores the True Cross, which he has recaptured from the Persians.
1556		Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is burned at the stake at Oxford after retracting the last of seven recantations that same day.
1617		Pocahontas (Rebecca Rolfe) dies of either small pox or pneumonia while in England with her husband, John Rolfe.
1788		Almost the entire city of New Orleans, Louisiana, is destroyed by fire.
1806		Lewis and Clark begin their trip home after an 8,000 mile trek of the Mississippi basin and the Pacific Coast.
1865		The Battle of Bentonville, N.C. ends, marking the last Confederate attempt to stop Union General William Sherman.
1851		Emperor Tu Duc orders that Christian priests are to put to death.
1858		British forces in India lift the siege of Lucknow, ending the Indian Mutiny.
1906		Ohio passes a law that prohibits hazing by fraternities.
1908		Frenchman Henri Farman carries a passenger in a bi-plane for the first time.
1910		The U.S. Senate grants ex-President Teddy Roosevelt an annual pension of $10,000.
1918		The Germans launch the 'Michael' offensive, better remembered as the First Battle of the Somme.
1928		President Calvin Coolidge presents the Congressional Medal of Honor to Charles Lindbergh, a captain in the US Army Air Corps Reserve, for making the first solo trans-Atlantic flight. On June 11, 1927, Lindbergh had received the first Distinguished Flying Cross ever awarded.
1939		Singer Kate Smith records "God Bless America" for Victor Records.
1941		The last Italian post in East Libya, North Africa, falls to the British.
1951		Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall reports that the U.S. military has doubled to 2.9 million since the start of the Korean War.
1963		Alcatraz Island, the federal penitentiary in San Francisco Bay, California, closes.
1965		The United States launches Ranger 9, last in a series of unmanned lunar explorations.
1971		Two U.S. platoons in Vietnam refuse their orders to advance.
1975		As North Vietnamese forces advance, Hue and other northern towns in South Vietnam are evacuated.
1980		President Jimmy Carter announces to the U.S. Olympic Team that they will not participate in the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow as a boycott against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
1984		A Soviet submarine crashes into the USS Kitty Hawk off the coast of Japan.

Powdered Alcohol Is Now Legal

Powdered Alcohol Is Now Legal — But Is It Safe?

Palcohol is alcohol in a powdered form, and the product is now legal in the U.S. But how safe is this stuff?

Ten Historic Architectural Marvels That Proved to be Nearly Uninhabitable

In 1945, wealthy nephrologist Dr. Edith Farnsworth of Chicago commissioned celebrated modern architect Mies van der Rohe to design a weekend home at which she could enjoy her hobbies of playing the violin, translating poetry and enjoying nature.
Van der Rohe came up with plans for the Farnsworth House which, after construction in a then rural expanse 55 miles south of Chicago, instantly became regarded as a model of modern architecture. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004 and became a National Historic Landmark in 2006. The house is now a museum, run by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The architecture even exists as a LEGO kit. Yet Dr. Farnsworth was incensed to find the structure practically uninhabitable once she began spending time there.
Van der Rohe refused to install blinds or curtains to cover the floor-to-ceiling windows that were the walls of the house. Thus, the heating bills were tremendous, and Farnsworth had no privacy. Due to the fame of its architect, sightseers were constantly trying to get a glimpse of the building. The doctor complained that people with cameras were snapping pictures of her in her underwear at night.
Also at night, the light from within and rural location attracted moths in droves. Insects and mosquitoes infested the open plan areas. Despite Dr. Farnworth suing Van der Rohe — her rumored former romantic liason — over these drawbacks, she was left with no recourse when she lost her suit.
Read about other revered architectural masterpieces that were living nightmares, including the Palace of Versailles and the homes of Frank Lloyd Wright, here.

How Denver Became the Mile-High City

For a long time geologists have been trying to figure out why the High Plains, where Denver is located, turned out to be so high, yet also level and smooth enough that a city could be built there. It may have had something to do with water.

Singapore, the Most Expensive City in the World

A new report places Singapore at the top of a pricey list: the costliest place in the world to live.

Free with Purchase: The Age of Trading Stamps

These days almost every retailer has some kind of loyalty program- frequent flyer miles, grocery store club cards, even low-tech cardboard punchcards at the local sandwich shop. But 100 years ago it all started …with trading stamps.

REDEEMING IDEA

Back in 1896, a silverware salesman named Thomas Sperry was making his regular rounds of the stores in Milwaukee when he noticed that one store was having success with a unique program. They were rewarding purchases with coupons redeemable for store goods. That gave Sperry an idea: why not give out coupons that weren’t tied to merchandise from a particular store, but were redeemable anywhere in the country?
With backing from local businessman Shelly Hutchinson, he started the Sperry and Hutchinson Company, and began selling trading stamps. Here’s how it worked:
* S&H sold stamps (they looked like small postage stamps, each with a red S&H insignia on a green background) to retailers.

* Retailers gave them to customers as a bonus for purchases, ten stamps for each dollar spent.
* Customers collected the stamps in special S&H books until they had enough to trade back to Sperry and Hutchinson in exchange for merchandise like tea sets or cookware.
* Retailers who participated in the program hoped that customers would feel like they were getting something for free, which would entice them to continue to shop loyally at their stores.
* At first only a few stores across the country offered the stamps, but over the next 50 years, through economic recessions, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and two world wars, S&H’s popularity grew steadily.

Neatorama has more

What This Map Shows Your State is Googling to Buy Will Shock You

Wondering what Americans in each state are obsessed with? Well, your wait is over. Fixr.com, a cost-estimating website, created a map that shows the top searched-for costs of…

This Map Will Shock You

Twenty Iconic Images From Alternate Perspectives

Skirt Blown Up Over Grate Shot of Marilyn Monroe from The Seven-Year-Itch

Perspective is everything, and in the case of these famous photographs, seeing the scene from even a slightly alternate view can be an eye opener. This fascinating collection of iconic tableaux shot from different angles than we're accustomed to seeing may just — from a spatial or relational context — set everything viewers previously knew to "wrong."

Adam West and Burt Ward as Batman and Robin, scaling the side of a building

Star Wars Episode IV opening crawl

Random Celebrity Photos

Cher 1979

'For Allah' Inscription Found on Viking Era Ring

A ring with a rose-colored stone constitutes evidence for direct interactions between the Vikings and the Islamic world.

Ancient Whale Skull Helps Place Humanity's First Steps

A 17-million-year-old beaked whale fossil is helping researchers solve a puzzle about the likely birthplace of humanity in East Africa.

Those Earthquakes in Oklahoma Aren’t Mother Nature

If someone asked you which state is the earthquake capital of America, you’d probably say California, right? Well, according to Environment & Energy News, you’d be wrong. In…

Aren’t Mother Nature

World's Largest Cave Explored by Drone

See amazing footage from a drone fly-through of the Hang Son Doong cave in Vietnam, the largest in the world.

El Nino Can Predict Tornado Season's Severity

This year's El Niño may deliver a quiet tornado season.

Imagining Earth without Gravity

If our planet had no gravity, what would happen? Would we all just float away like so many spacesuited George Clooneys? Join us in a little thought experiment, as we ponder a world that doesn't pull us down.

Invention

A Message to the Cosmos

Buzz Aldrin was at Stonehenge on Sunday and “decided to send a message to the cosmos,” as he put it in his Tweet. If you can’t read the full slogan on his t-shirt, see the enlarged version here. The comments at reddit are mostly derails, but this one stood out:

Imagine, in full view of the world, you take a step onto a new frontier. Your foot presses down upon a celestial canvas that has been a source of folklore, myth and religious speculation for millennia. You are progress incarnate and after your time in the limelight you are eager to see your progress become the stepping stone for even greater accomplishments.
You wait a while and you see progress here and there. More discoveries are made about the nature of our universe. Machinery is sent to distant masses to search for signs of life. But there isn't any progress like what you imagined the first moment that your foot imprinted upon that fine lunar soil.
You're aging now. You're getting older and that progress still hasn't been made. You wonder what landing on the moon really accomplished if it wasn't a stepping stone for even greater things, but then you hear whisperings of plans to colonize Mars. This is what you've been waiting for. This is the next step. This is the fulfillment of your expectations and you yearn to see it.
A sentence rises from the depths of your desire and escapes your lips, "Get your ass to Mars."
If only they would do it in time.

Aldrin is actively pushing for NASA to send astronauts to Mars, and even wrote a book about it.