From Prussia With Love

Yes, I Am Being A Teensy Bit Clickbaity

Also, I can't think of a reasonable or logical way to introduce the Moon into this Intro.  Well, BOOJUM! has never really bothered with logic or reason, especially if avoiding either means more visitors.  So - 

"LET'S BLOW UP THE MOON!" By Conrad C<redacted>y
"A classic for our times," TLS*

     And why not!  A couple of thermostellar Planetary Removal Devices and Hay Pesto! no more pesky Moon, especially if it looked as though either the Ruffians or the Populous Dictatorship were going to get their hideous scabby talons on it.  There might be a few, minor, quite acceptable side-effects as a result, like a gigantic bombardment of Earth by billions of tons of debris, all tides ceasing, and some very cross astronomers - nothing major.
     Anyway - NO!  That title is NOT A TYPO! and once again I must invoke the usual threat to overamp your server system, as well as sending you a Slap In The Face by post.  Art?

    This is where the clickbaity bit comes in, as these chaps were principally led by Teutons from Hanover and Brunswick.  Napoleon, you see, had gotten rid of the Teuton principality of Hanover, causing a lot of the angry and embittered male residents to jump country and take up arms against Nappy.  Where could they possibly go?  Who could possibly receive them, clothe them, train them, arm them and - O yes feed and water them too - have them wreak a bloody revenge on the French?

     "O Hai," said Perfidious Albion.  "U ar wantin gunz an monies?"

     Suddenly, in 1803 we see the KINGS GERMAN LEGION being formed, whole regiments of them, to the tune of 14,000 at any one time.  They fought everywhere the British army did and were notable for being excellent soldiers, as good as the best the British had.

KGL soldiers, thinking happy thoughts about bayonets and the French

     They fought manfully until 1816 and the demise of Nappy, whereupon some of their units were incorporated into the new Hanoverian army.  Take the KGL's 1st Light Battalion, as pictured above; they were merged into the 17th Infantry Regiment, and in 1940 as part of the Wehrmacht's 31st Infantry Division in the invasion of France, they were up against the British, which is irony of a very peculiar sort.

     And at that time, the Ruffians were our allies, since we and they tend to unite in the face of a greater threat.

     

     In other late-breaking news, the Motley is back at The Mansion after the tragic failure of MOT-1 to make it successfully to Mars.  Better luck next time, Motley**!

Beers, Bears And A Bumbletuck

Another one from the Darwin Award archives, and a salutary lesson that beer and wild animals that can kill do not make a good combination.  

Yeah, yeah - you try getting it off him.

    The picture above lacks only one thing - a drunken human.  In the case I relate, you should know that there are, or were, a pair of bears at Belgrade Zoo, namely Misha and Masha.  Art?

     The 23 year-old victim left his clothes, all of them, and a large pile of empty beer cans outside the bear's enclosure before scaling the fence.  Alone.  At night.  Whilst the zoo was closed and empty.

     Predictably, when keepers discovered the empty clothes and empty cans, they also found a rather empty corpse within the bear's enclosure.

Thank You, Stephen

One can always count on Stephen King to illuminate a minor aspect or two of South Canadian popular culture in his novels, which he has done in "The Shining" by mention of 'Lincoln Logs'.  Your Humble Scribe had never heard of these before, and so could not resist a quick diversion onto teh interwebz to find out more.  Art?

     They are made out of wood, logically enough, and are notched to allow young children (and adults with an excuse) to create structures akin to the above.  No vehicles, it seems, as they don't appear to come with wheels <sad face>.

And of course some people have entirely too much time on their hands ...

     Whatever next!   Regan Rocks?  Clinton Cogs?  Bush Bricks?  and as we seem to be skirting the waters of Politics, we shall move swiftly on.

Lethal Wobble

No!  Nothing to do with the debut novel of Peter Lovesey and the introduction of Sergeant Cribb, subsequently made into one of a series of television programmes about the Victorian-era detective.

"Wobble To Death"

     No, this is a lot more serious and concerns another dam disaster, except this time it happened within the dam's power-generating structures.  Art?

The dam itself

     The Sayano Shushenskaya dam was one of the largest power-generating dams in the world, supplying energy on a large scale to Siberia and what you might call a monument to Sinister 'gigantomania'.  It also suffered from another Sinister-era problem: shoddy quality.  There were 10 turbines in the plant, and Number 2 had always been problematic in performance: the turbine blades were always cracking and the whole thing was liable to undergo significant oscillation when under load (that 'wobble' of the title).  This had been known about, and ignored by management, for at least 10 years.

     There are various sites across the internet that show diagrams of performance and rotor speed and danger r.p.m. zones and safe zones blah blah blah.  The essential fact is that Number 2 was a lemon and should have been replaced entirely or left out of electricity generation altogether, no middle ground.

     However -

     The hydroelectric plant at Bratsk was put out of action by fire, meaning that Sayano S. had to take up the slack by producing as much power as possible, which meant that dodgy old Number 2 turbine went into operation.  End result?

Turbine 2, all 920 tons of it

     The sustained and severe vibrations had destroyed bolts securing Number 2 Turbine in position, which then threw off it's cover (destroying the turbine house roof) and emerged from it's pit, still spinning.  Water instantly flooded the turbine house and 75 people present for maintenance and repair work were killed, either crushed or drowned.  Art?

The moment the turbine house floods

     Quite apart from the human cost, the renovation and repairs cost £1 billion and took 5 years.  "Five years?" I hear you quibble.  Yes, that long, because -

With puny humans for scale

     Let there be no gloating here, a lot of people died through no fault of their own (unlike the Belgrade Zoo idiot), and this is an example of what ignoring safety procedures can end up in.


Finally -

O that was grim!  Let us lighten the tone with some LITHIUM WAFER - actually no.  KILLER EELS! - perhaps not.  Aha!

     I found a copy of this under the bed, and it will make a splendid contrast to "The Shining", don't you think?

Pip pip!

*  Tacoma Library Services

**  Because there most definitely will be one.