Wikipedia Article of the Day

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alietr
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Re: Wikipedia Article of the Day

Post by alietr »

bpmod wrote:
I was talking to my fellow drivers about that one just last weekend as we had our buses parked on the (Hamilton International) airport taxiway watching a plane that was quite a bit louder than the Gimli Glider. In fact, it was probably the loudest sound I had ever heard.
Try having grown up under the approach path to Kennedy Airport in the days before they figured out how to make jet engines quieter. Back then there weren't any noise standards. Nowadays, we're up to a Stage 4 standard. My High School chess team couldn't even have any home matches. Once a team visited, they never agreed to come back.
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patkav
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Re: Wikipedia Article of the Day

Post by patkav »

I'm a pretty balanced, mentally stable person, but I cannot even imagine how one copes with the "survivor's guilt" that comes from being the 1-in-91 who survives an event like that.

Goodness.
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OrangeSAM
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Re: Wikipedia Article of the Day

Post by OrangeSAM »

alietr wrote:
nightreign wrote:Here's an article I stumbled across while browsing the other day. I don't know that it's particularly trivia-dense, but it's interesting, and recaps a real incident that sounds straight out of a movie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LANSA_Flight_508
I don't remember that one. Thanks. Three that have always fascinated me:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Ande ... t_disaster
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Florida_Flight_90 (I pass by this site on my weekly bicycle ride.)
I have at least three personal connections with this one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_ ... Flight_191.
The biggest one: My father missed his connection for this flight. He's never mentioned it to me. I learned of it a couple of years later from a co-worker of his.
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Re: Wikipedia Article of the Day

Post by dhkendall »

I've always had an affinity for the Gimli Glider one, for similar reasons to Andy and Air Florida Flight 90. (Although it isn't nearly as close to me, though, it's about a 45 minute drive from us, but I've been to Gimli a few times, it's a popular vacation spot. Last time we were in Gimli was when we were on a marriage retreat and my wife first *knew* she was pregnant with our son.)
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econgator
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Re: Wikipedia Article of the Day

Post by econgator »

nightreign wrote:Here's an article I stumbled across while browsing the other day. I don't know that it's particularly trivia-dense, but it's interesting, and recaps a real incident that sounds straight out of a movie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LANSA_Flight_508
I'll see your 2-mile fall and raise you 4 more. ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAT_Flight_367

(Although the girl making her way to safety was massively impressive.)
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Re: Wikipedia Article of the Day

Post by econgator »

OrangeSAM wrote:The biggest one: My father missed his connection for this flight. He's never mentioned it to me. I learned of it a couple of years later from a co-worker of his.
Wow ....

So, is this a "you would have lost your father" story or a "you never would have been born to begin with" one?
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OrangeSAM
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Re: Wikipedia Article of the Day

Post by OrangeSAM »

econgator wrote:
OrangeSAM wrote:The biggest one: My father missed his connection for this flight. He's never mentioned it to me. I learned of it a couple of years later from a co-worker of his.
Wow ....

So, is this a "you would have lost your father" story or a "you never would have been born to begin with" one?
I and my siblings were already born.
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Re: Wikipedia Article of the Day

Post by goatman »

econgator wrote:
OrangeSAM wrote:The biggest one: My father missed his connection for this flight. He's never mentioned it to me. I learned of it a couple of years later from a co-worker of his.
Wow ....

So, is this a "you would have lost your father" story or a "you never would have been born to begin with" one?
So, your dad is Werner Herzog?!?
Koepcke's story was captured for the documentary film called Wings of Hope in 2000 by director Werner Herzog, who narrowly missed Flight 508 himself. Koepcke's memoir Als ich vom Himmel fiel has been published by the German publisher Piper Malik on March 10, 2011.
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Re: Wikipedia Article of the Day

Post by trainman »

alietr wrote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Florida_Flight_90 (I pass by this site on my weekly bicycle ride.)
I happened to watch this YouTube video recently -- the ABC News special reports about the crash, interrupting an Elvis Presley movie on WLS-TV in Chicago (so the video uses Central time). There's some initial confusion about which Air Florida flight was involved.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa03FWEWEYg
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Re: Wikipedia Article of the Day

Post by BobF »

Okay, here's my contribution. I think it came up in a discussion on here recently, and it was the anniversary of the first birth of a European-American earlier this month:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roanoke_Colony
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Re: Wikipedia Article of the Day

Post by MitchO »

Was randomly reading today about the time that time the USSR paid Canada $3M CAD because they accidentally dropped yellow cake over Yellowknife. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954 (NOTE: It wasn't actually yellow cake, but it was radioactive debris from a satellite and I couldn't help but use the alliteration)
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Re: Wikipedia Article of the Day

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MitchO wrote:Was randomly reading today about the time that time the USSR paid Canada $3M CAD because they accidentally dropped yellow cake over Yellowknife. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954 (NOTE: It wasn't actually yellow cake, but it was radioactive debris from a satellite and I couldn't help but use the alliteration)
So much for the Space Liability Convention.

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Re: Wikipedia Article of the Day

Post by hbomb1947 »

I just came across this article about what is popularly called the "cadaver synod," held in 897, in which Pope Formosus was posthumously tried for perjury and having illegally assumed the papacy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod

The article mentions that the corpse of Formosus (who had died in 896) was actually exhumed and propped up on a throne during the trial. (The main wikipedia article about Formosus mentions that his corpse was even clad in papal attire during the proceedings.)

He was found guilty, by the way, and his papacy was retroactively annulled and three of his fingers were cut off. (That was an example of posthumous execution , which yet another wikipedia article defines as the "ritual or ceremonial mutilation of an already dead body as a punishment." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posthumous_execution)

During the next few years, the popes Theodore II and John IX both held synods that overturned the results of the cadaver synod. Then, several years further down the line, the ruling of the cadaver synod was reinstated by Pope Sergius IIII, who had been one of the co-judges of the cadaver synod.

But the Catholic church ultimately disregarded the findings of the cadaver synod; and a plaque in St. Peter's (where Formosus was reinterred after having spent some time at the bottom of the Tiber) recognizes him as having served as a pontiff (he was the 111th pope, BTW).
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Re: Wikipedia Article of the Day

Post by alietr »

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Re: Wikipedia Article of the Day

Post by dhkendall »

Zipf's law

This didn't really blow my mind until I saw this vsauce video. (Vsauce is a channel that regularly blows my mind.)
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econgator
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Re: Wikipedia Article of the Day

Post by econgator »

dhkendall wrote:Zipf's law

This didn't really blow my mind until I saw this vsauce video. (Vsauce is a channel that regularly blows my mind.)
Quizzaciously now gets 66000+ hits.
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Re: Wikipedia Article of the Day

Post by mahatma »

econgator wrote:
dhkendall wrote:Zipf's law
This didn't really blow my mind until I saw this vsauce video. (Vsauce is a channel that regularly blows my mind.)
Quizzaciously now gets 66000+ hits.
Self-fulfilling prophecy.
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Re: Wikipedia Article of the Day

Post by Magna »

mahatma wrote:
econgator wrote:
dhkendall wrote:Zipf's law
This didn't really blow my mind until I saw this vsauce video. (Vsauce is a channel that regularly blows my mind.)
Quizzaciously now gets 66000+ hits.
Self-fulfilling prophecy.
...he said quizzaciously.

;)
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Re: Wikipedia Article of the Day

Post by nightreign »

I leave the reason I posted this as an exercise for the reader:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedediah_Smith
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Re: Wikipedia Article of the Day

Post by bpmod »

nightreign wrote:I leave the reason I posted this as an exercise for the reader:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedediah_Smith
They need to put an updated picture on that page.

Brian
...but the senator, while insisting he was not intoxicated, could not explain his nudity.

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