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Milestones
- Thread starter admihoek
- Start date
Yes - I wonder quite where the horses belong in Pharaoh's court -
but I suppose even the Verona Arena would have a job
finding a team of operatically-trained camels!
Migoz2
Senator
Today marks the birth in 1819 of George Eliot, author of one of the best novels in the English language, Middlemarch.
en.m.wikipedia.org
George Eliot - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
Migoz2
Senator
Another author, born today in 1920: Paul Celan. A major German-language (though he was Romanian) poet and translator of the post-WWII years, trying to make some sort of sense of the Shoah
en.wikipedia.org
poets.org
Paul Celan - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Death Fugue by Paul Celan - Poems | Academy of American Poets
Death Fugue - Black milk of morning we drink you evenings
connoisseurs
Senator
Yes, but every year there are more people who swear that he was wrong.
windar
Teller of Tales
More important than "The Art of the Deal" by Tony Schwartz?
Loxuru
Graf von Kreuzigung
Yes, otherwise, your username here would have been 'Wartzsch'
.
Praefectus Praetorio
R.I.P. Brother of the Quill
On this day in 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his benefactor, Lord Carnarvon, peered into the tomb of the Egyptian boy king Tutankhamun. Their team was the first to set foot in the tomb since the second millennium B.C., and they found King Tut's mummy and his collection of riches intact.
windar
Teller of Tales
Darkprincess69
High Priestess of Slaanesh
Welcome to Clown World 2019
He had his detractors in his own day too
and still has supporters today
Lord Carnarvon "Can you see anything?"
Howard Carter "Yes, wonderful things"
And yet he was a relatively minor Pharaoh. Imagine what the long-looted tombs of greater rulers might have looked like!
Darkprincess69
High Priestess of Slaanesh
I think that his relative obscurity and the fact that he was the son of a heretic pharaoh may have been one of the reasons that his tomb was relatively intact, although there were signs that the tomb had definitely been entered some time in antiquity - maybe the tomb raiders got caught before they could remove anything. If so, I would imagine that their punishment was severe, even by the standards of this forum.
Loxuru
Graf von Kreuzigung
Forty years ago, on November 28th 1979, Air New Zealand Flight 901 did not return from a sightseeing flight to Mount Erebus, Antarctica. It soon became clear that the plane, a DC-10, had struck Mount Erebus. All 257 on board perished. At the time, it was the fourth worst air disaster ever (and in three of these four, a DC-10 had been involved, including the American Airlines 191 crash in Chicago, just six months earlier, giving the type a bad safety reputation).
A salvage crew was sent to Antarctica to recover the bodies. They had to work under very difficult, and mentally and physically exhausting conditions. After a few days, measures had to be taken to prevent skua gulls from eating human remains. As the job was done, the return was delayed by bad weather, so they held a party with the liquors they had found in the wreckage, in order to chase the stress of the accomplished mission. Most of the wreckage is still in place.
Initially, the crash was attributed to pilot error, having flown under the minimum safe altitude, but on closer investigation, it was discovered that the flight plan in the plane’s navigational computer had been altered without informing the crew. The changes sent the plane’s flight trajectory straight towards Mount Erebus, in stead of along its flanks, flying over McMurdo Sound, so the crew (and air traffic control) thought that a much lower altitude could be safely permitted. Most probably, the atmospheric conditions have contributed to the accident. There were likely ‘white out’ conditions, preventing the crew to visually discern between the snow and ice covered terrain and the air. As a result, the contour of the Mount Erebus they were heading towards, was invisible for them. Thinking they were flying over McMurdo Sound, towards the sea ice of the Ross Ice Shelf, the crew only became aware that they were over high terrain when it was too late.
A salvage crew was sent to Antarctica to recover the bodies. They had to work under very difficult, and mentally and physically exhausting conditions. After a few days, measures had to be taken to prevent skua gulls from eating human remains. As the job was done, the return was delayed by bad weather, so they held a party with the liquors they had found in the wreckage, in order to chase the stress of the accomplished mission. Most of the wreckage is still in place.
Initially, the crash was attributed to pilot error, having flown under the minimum safe altitude, but on closer investigation, it was discovered that the flight plan in the plane’s navigational computer had been altered without informing the crew. The changes sent the plane’s flight trajectory straight towards Mount Erebus, in stead of along its flanks, flying over McMurdo Sound, so the crew (and air traffic control) thought that a much lower altitude could be safely permitted. Most probably, the atmospheric conditions have contributed to the accident. There were likely ‘white out’ conditions, preventing the crew to visually discern between the snow and ice covered terrain and the air. As a result, the contour of the Mount Erebus they were heading towards, was invisible for them. Thinking they were flying over McMurdo Sound, towards the sea ice of the Ross Ice Shelf, the crew only became aware that they were over high terrain when it was too late.
Darkprincess69
High Priestess of Slaanesh
So who altered the flight plan, and why?
Gibbs505
SERVORUM DOMITOR
There was a commission of inquiry on the accident. I don't remember the details but ANZ management got lambasted.
Loxuru
Graf von Kreuzigung
These sightseeing flight had an approved flight route, and there were regular briefings about it. But there had been an error in the coordinates entered in the flight computers. When a deviation of the computed flight plan with the plane's actual position compared to beacons had been discovered, during an earlier sightseeing flight, the error had been corrected, but, apparently they stored the coordinates of a wrong waypoint this time, programming yet another erronous flight path compared to approved one, but this time over mountainous terrain, and failed to inform the crew about the change..
Loxuru
Graf von Kreuzigung
Sixty years ago : the Malpasset Dam disaster.
It was a marvel of modern civil engineering. Sixty-six meters high, two hundred and twenty two meters wide. A slender (6,5 m at the base, only 1,5 m at the top), innovative, elegant arch shaped concrete work of art, designed by France’s -and the world’s - undisputed expert in dam construction, André Coyne.
The Malpasset Dam had been built in a rather dry area in southern France, on the Reyran river, Var Department. Its purpose was to collect a water reservoir for drinking water and irrigation. The dam had been completed in 1954, and since, the reservoir was filling up.
The filling up lasted until November 1959. Continuous rainfall made it reach its maximum design level for the first time. On December 2nd 1959, at 9:13 p.m., the Malpasset Dam, collapsed. Within minutes, a 40 m high wall of water made its way through the valley. It swept through the city of Fréjus, killing about 423 people.
Was there a design failure? Had André Coyne overestimated his own expertise and taken too much risks? The Malpasset Dam was reputed as ‘the thinnest dam in Europe’, as ‘hardly an egg shell’ in the river valley.
Investigations showed however no errors in Coyne’s design, properly. The advantage of arch dams was, that they can be built so thin and still be technically safe. The problem had been in the soil.
The name of the dam site should have been a warning. ‘Malpasset’ indicates a place difficult to cross (‘mal à passer’). Because of landslides, of friable grounds, of dangerous rocks. Actually, geologists deemed the whole valley as a difficult area for dam construction. But politics wanted the dam.
The subsoil of the dam consisted of gneiss, a kind of rock comparable to granite. Gneiss, like granite, normally offers a solid foundation, impermeable for water. But under the Malpasset Dam, the gneiss was very brittle, particularly under the left bank of the valley. The brittle structure allowed water from the reservoir to penetrate into the rock under the reservoir. Under the dam itself, however, the gneiss had been compressed by the weight of the concrete structure, down to a fault which had not been detected before the disaster. The compressed rock and the fault, created an impervious shield for the infiltrating water. The compressed gneiss acted as a sort of subsurface continuation of the dam, against which the infiltrating water exerted an upward pressure. This underground dam, compressed, but still of brittle gneiss, had much less resistance against such pressure, than the dam itself.
When, on December 2nd 1959, the water in the reservoir rose to its maximum height, the upward pressure of the infiltrating water on the compressed gneiss became so high, that the brittle rock could no longer hold. A block of rock moved and the left bank side of the dam got detached from its rock foundation, and subsequently broke under the pressure of the reservoir.
The ruins of the Malpasset Dam still stand in the Reyran river valley. Particularly the side at the right bank. At the left bank, most of the structure has completely collapsed.
The disaster is since often cited as a classic case of miscommunication between engineering and geological expertise. A brief geological investigation had determined the gneiss nature of the soil, which offered for the engineers, by experience, sufficient guarantee for a stable foundation. No detailed geotechnical investigations had been carried out at the building location of the dam properly. Some geologists had expressed doubts about the suitability of the local bedrock to serve as a dam foundation. But geologists only make a diagnosis, engineers make calculations. In that professional culture, hard numbers prevail over qualitative estimations. So, the geologist’s advice had been overruled. It must also be pointed out that neither rock sampling techniques, nor knowledge of rock mechanics were at today’s levels, but the disaster was an incentive to improve these techniques, and to instigate a dialogue between the geology and geotechnics specialists, and the building experts.
André Coyne, devastated by the disaster, died a few months later.
(Incidentally, these days, the Var Department, is once more struck by heavy rainfall, and suffers from inundations).
It was a marvel of modern civil engineering. Sixty-six meters high, two hundred and twenty two meters wide. A slender (6,5 m at the base, only 1,5 m at the top), innovative, elegant arch shaped concrete work of art, designed by France’s -and the world’s - undisputed expert in dam construction, André Coyne.
The Malpasset Dam had been built in a rather dry area in southern France, on the Reyran river, Var Department. Its purpose was to collect a water reservoir for drinking water and irrigation. The dam had been completed in 1954, and since, the reservoir was filling up.
The filling up lasted until November 1959. Continuous rainfall made it reach its maximum design level for the first time. On December 2nd 1959, at 9:13 p.m., the Malpasset Dam, collapsed. Within minutes, a 40 m high wall of water made its way through the valley. It swept through the city of Fréjus, killing about 423 people.
Was there a design failure? Had André Coyne overestimated his own expertise and taken too much risks? The Malpasset Dam was reputed as ‘the thinnest dam in Europe’, as ‘hardly an egg shell’ in the river valley.
Investigations showed however no errors in Coyne’s design, properly. The advantage of arch dams was, that they can be built so thin and still be technically safe. The problem had been in the soil.
The name of the dam site should have been a warning. ‘Malpasset’ indicates a place difficult to cross (‘mal à passer’). Because of landslides, of friable grounds, of dangerous rocks. Actually, geologists deemed the whole valley as a difficult area for dam construction. But politics wanted the dam.
The subsoil of the dam consisted of gneiss, a kind of rock comparable to granite. Gneiss, like granite, normally offers a solid foundation, impermeable for water. But under the Malpasset Dam, the gneiss was very brittle, particularly under the left bank of the valley. The brittle structure allowed water from the reservoir to penetrate into the rock under the reservoir. Under the dam itself, however, the gneiss had been compressed by the weight of the concrete structure, down to a fault which had not been detected before the disaster. The compressed rock and the fault, created an impervious shield for the infiltrating water. The compressed gneiss acted as a sort of subsurface continuation of the dam, against which the infiltrating water exerted an upward pressure. This underground dam, compressed, but still of brittle gneiss, had much less resistance against such pressure, than the dam itself.
When, on December 2nd 1959, the water in the reservoir rose to its maximum height, the upward pressure of the infiltrating water on the compressed gneiss became so high, that the brittle rock could no longer hold. A block of rock moved and the left bank side of the dam got detached from its rock foundation, and subsequently broke under the pressure of the reservoir.
The ruins of the Malpasset Dam still stand in the Reyran river valley. Particularly the side at the right bank. At the left bank, most of the structure has completely collapsed.
The disaster is since often cited as a classic case of miscommunication between engineering and geological expertise. A brief geological investigation had determined the gneiss nature of the soil, which offered for the engineers, by experience, sufficient guarantee for a stable foundation. No detailed geotechnical investigations had been carried out at the building location of the dam properly. Some geologists had expressed doubts about the suitability of the local bedrock to serve as a dam foundation. But geologists only make a diagnosis, engineers make calculations. In that professional culture, hard numbers prevail over qualitative estimations. So, the geologist’s advice had been overruled. It must also be pointed out that neither rock sampling techniques, nor knowledge of rock mechanics were at today’s levels, but the disaster was an incentive to improve these techniques, and to instigate a dialogue between the geology and geotechnics specialists, and the building experts.
André Coyne, devastated by the disaster, died a few months later.
(Incidentally, these days, the Var Department, is once more struck by heavy rainfall, and suffers from inundations).