In which we discover something wrong on the internet
Published at 5:16 pm on August 16th, 2007
Filed under: Geekery.
Last night, on TV, I was idly watching a documentary, Real Men, about the maintenance of the Forth Bridge. Rather interesting it was, even if the risks were a bit overstated sometimes.* One thing, though, puzzled me. It started off, as you might expect, with the history of the bridge: in the 1870s construction had begun on a Forth Bridge designed by Sir Thomas Bouch, previously responsible for designing the train ferries the bridge was to replace. In 1879, though, Bouch’s Tay Bridge collapsed catastrophically, so work on his Forth Bridge was stopped.
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Keyword noise: botch, Edinburgh, etymology, fake etymology, Fife, Firth of Forth, Forth Bridge, inaccuracy, urban myth, Scotland, Thomas Bouch, Tay Bridge, Wikipedia.
In which we post updates on a few things
Published at 8:45 pm on April 7th, 2006
Filed under: Dear Diary.
My rather cruel jibe at Fife the other day only seems to have invited a single complaint, from Greig, who pointed out that Fife was the birthplace of Sir Sandford Fleming. I’d never heard of Sir Sandford Fleming myself; but it turns out that he was rather important, particularly in Canada. He invented time zones, designed the first Canadian stamp, and surveyed the route of the first trans-Canadian railway line; more importantly, he was apparently the inventor of the in-line roller skate.
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Keyword noise: Adam Smith, Andrew Carnegie, bird flu, Canada, curvature of the spine, Fife, flu, holiday, in-line skates, kyphosis, passport, philately, roller skates, Sandford Fleming, scoliosis, Scotland, stamps.
In which things happen in remote places
Published at 9:16 pm on April 5th, 2006
Filed under: Dear Diary.