The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet,8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? We ll, because that's the way they built themin England , and English engineers designed the first US railroads. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lineswere built by the same people who built the wagon tramways, and that'sthe gauge they used. So, why did 'they' use that gauge then? Because the people who built thetramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for buildingwagons, which used that same wheel spacing. Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if theytried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break more oftenon some of the old, long distance roads in England. You see, that's thespacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first longdistance roads in Europe (including England) for their legions. Thoseroads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts,which everyone else had to match or run the risk of destroying theirwagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they wereall alike in the matter of wheel spac ing. Therefore the United Statesstandard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from theoriginal specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracieslive forever. So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process andwonder 'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly right.Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodatethe rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.) Now, the twist tothe story: When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are twobig booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. Theseare solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol attheir factory in Utah . The Engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bitfatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to thelaunch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through atunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel.The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroadtrack, 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'smost advanced transportation system was determined over two thousandyears ago by the width of a horse's ass. And you thought being a horse'sass wasn't important? Ancient horse's asses control almost everything...andCURRENT Horses Asses are controlling everything else.
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Topic: Funny in a slightly nerdy way (Read 547 times)