Daily history

Good morning,







Quote of the day:


“And now here are the headlines. The Pope actually found to be Jewish. Liberace is Anastasia and Ethel Merman jams Russian radar. The East Germans claimed today that the Berlin Wall was actually a fraternity prank. Today the Pope decided to release Vatican-based bath products. An incredible thing, yes it is going to be pope-on-a-rope, that's right folks, pope-on-a-rope. Take one bath with it an go straight to heaven.”


Adrian Cronauer (Robin Williams)Good Morning, Vietnam






Last Friday Japanese officials got more and more evidence that the reactor in the damaged nuclear power plant has been holed or has cracked. That, my friends, means a very serious problem for those countries on the Pacific Rim. The fuel used is a mixture of utilities grade Uranium and weapons grade Plutonium in a 9/1 ratio. This is known as “MOX” and a plant to make this mixture is being designed and built on the Savannah River Site near Aiken, SC. I worked on this project myself. This arrangement was brought about because America signed a disarmament agreement with Russia to decrease the number of nuclear weapons on both sides. The problem was what the hell were we going to do with all that very high powered and very expensive weapons grade Plutonium. The agreement was to mix it with utilities grade Uranium in a manageable ratio and use it in nuclear power plants. If nothing goes wrong, it is a win-win situation. But if something goes wrong it is a lose-lose situation. I believe that they will have to do what they did at Chernobyl and that is start pouring heavy duty concrete in the reactor building that is giving them trouble until all radiation is undetectable and write that one off to experience.






I was watching TV show about a young lady that was trying her hand at buying houses, remodeling them and then selling them at a profit. She had set a remodeling cost of $30,000 but it ended up being $51,000 because there was a water leak in an inside-the-wall water line that had soaked one whole hardwood floor end to end 2” deep. After that a brand new stainless steel refrigerator with through-the-door water and ice refused to give any water or ice. She called company that sold her the refrigerator and complained. The salesman said that it was probably because the valve on the water line was closed. She said “What water line?.” “Do you mean that after I paid what I did for that refrigerator I have to do something else than just plug it in?” She finally called Sam the plumber and he fixed it. No comment.






Here is a note to any and all of the fans of the Big Ten, Ohio State in particular. From what I can determine, the athletic prowess in football and basketball that is crowed about all pre-season and during the season is nothing short of phoney hype. Almost without exception when they are ranked high in the national rankings and end up playing a team from the SEC and they get their brains beat out. They were ranked number one in the nation in basketball this year and they did not make it out of the sweet sixteen in March Madness. Paper tigers, y'all, paper tigers.






NEWS FLASH:


Hell has frozen over!!!! Virginia Commonwealth University Basketball team has beaten number the number one ranked Kansas Jayhawks!!! They will play Butler next.






This date in history March 28


1979 On this date began a comedy of errors resulted the worst nuclear accident in United States history at the recently built Reactor #2 at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant. This particular power plant was built on an island in the middle the Susquehanna River about 10 miles from the Pennsylvania capitol of Harrisburg. There was a slight overpressure in the reactor and a pressure relief valve opened as it was supposed to, the only problem was that it failed to close back and cooling water began to escape. The emergency relief pumps began to operate automatically as they were suppose to. If the plant operators had let this safety system work as designed, nothing would have happened. But the newly trained plant workers could not figure out what the hell was going on. With the cooling water leaking out onto the floor of the containment building the reactor core temperature began to rise. For reasons known only to the plant operators, they chose to shut down the emergency relief pumps. There is no need for me to tell you what happened to the core temperature. Pennsylvania Governor Thornburgh was between a rock and a hard place. After being appraised of the situation, he had to so something but he did not want to cause a panic. He sent out a notice that everyone with a 10 mile radius of Three Mile Island to stay indoors. Then the next day he advised that pregnant women should evacuate. Then word leaked out that radioactive steam had escaped and a small amount of radioactive water had leaked into the Susquehanna River. All of this was true but it was not that much of a risk but a panic began and over 100,000 people near the plant evacuated. By now the core had reached a temperature of 4,000 degrees which is within 1,000 degrees of a complete meltdown. Eventually experts from Metropolitan Energy and the reactor designer (Babcock and Wilcox) arrived and figured out what the problem was and the emergency pumps were restarted and the core temperature began to fall. In an attempt to lessen the panic, United States President Jimmy Carter went to the plant. Carter was a Naval Academy trained nuclear engineer and had dealt with damaged cores in the past. This was probably in a nuclear submarine. But he was not there to offer expertise but to restore the confidence of the population. Everyone thought the problem had been solved but two days later a hydrogen bubble was discovered in the top of the containment building and there had been a small explosion but the containment building held. Apparently the containment building in Japan did not. It was determined that the hydrogen bubble was not a threat. By the way, it was an explosion of a hydrogen bubble that destroyed the Russian power plant at Chernobyl but the Russians did not use containment buildings over their reactors. The core had been damaged in reactor # 2 making it useless. During the crises, reactor # 1 had been shut down also. Reactor # 1 was not restarted until 1985 and reactor # 2 was sealed. Since this emergency the building of not one nuclear power plant has begun in the United States. There have been reports that those that stayed those few days after the initial accident have an increased incidence of leukemia and other cancers but it is not a proven statistic. There was one of the plant operators that put on a safe suit and went into the floor of the containment building where the water was about 18 inches deep trying to find out what the problem was. He had with him a flask of test water that began to effervesce like carbonated water very soon after he arrived. He saw this and got the hell out of there, and I don’t blame him. A lot of lessons were learned during this experience. That is the only upside I can find to this whole scenario.


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1776 On this date Juan Bautista de Anza founded the city of San Francisco and has with him 247 settlers. Anza was born in Mexico and is the equivalent of Lewis and Clark, Kit Carson and John Colter when it comes to exploration. It was Anza that explored northwest out of Mexico City and discovered most of what is now the resort area of the west coast of Mexico. He blazed a trail all the way to northern California and established trading posts and helped locate several Spanish missions along the way. In spite of Spanish ships sailing up and down the west coast of North America for 200 years, they had never discovered San Francisco Bay and neither had the Russians. It took Anza’s exploration by land to discover it. This area remained under Spanish control until the Mexicans kicked them out and under Mexican control until they lost the Mexican War in 1848 to the United States.






Born today:






1868 Russian writer Maxim Gorky. He said “A man may be stupid and still be good. But a bad man needs brains.” Believe what you want, but Hitler was brilliant.






1890 US bandleader Paul Whiteman. He said “Jazz came to America 300 years ago in chains.” So did okra, the banjo and Gullah.






1942 English politician Neil Kinnock. He said “You cannot make one wit out of two half wits.” I know lots of them.






Died today:






1941 English writer Virginia Wolfe. She said “I have lost friends because of death and others for no other reason than the inability to cross a street.” I hope I never reach that point.






1957 US writer Christopher Morley. He said “A critic is a gong at a railroad crossing clanging wildly while the train passes by.” I cannot relate to this, y’all. Critique me all you want, I am very happy with me.






1958 US song writer W.C. Handy. He said “You never can tell what’s on a woman’s mind, and if she is from Harlem there’s no use trying.” Add Greenville, SC to that, W.C.






1984 US educator Benjamin Mays. He said “Isn’t it a calamity that we died with unfulfilled dreams, but it is even a bigger calamity not to dream.” Ben was a wise individual.






Quotable quotes:






“I think the reason men like women in leather outfits so much is they smell like a new car.”


George Fara






“She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.”


Raymond Chandler






“Start every day with a smile and then get over it.”


W.C. Fields






Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow