PEERLESS PLANES, QEII, BLT AND BTS

The largest airplane, Stratolaunch (by wingspan), flew for the second time last month, a decade after first imagined by someone I mentioned this past Sunday, Paul Allen, who with Bill Gates founded Microsoft. Unfortunately, Allen never saw it take flight. Read the details here.

That plane will be reminiscent of Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose, the wooden (made of birch, not spruce) Flying Boat that was originally designed to ferry American troops to Europe to avoid being sunk by German submarines. It was six times larger than any aircraft of its time, and made only one flight, in 1947. The plane can today be found, of all the places, in McMinnville, Oregon, where volunteers are trying to restore it.

Did you know the USA has a Doomsday Plane?

The following video indicates the power of Queen Elizabeth II. Donald Trump is not mentioned, but the Queen cannot be arrested and pays her taxes...even though she legally does not need to do this. She is the largest landowner in the world with 6.6 billion acres.

The Queen makes around $100 million/year and has a net worth of $88 billion, only #5 of royal leaders. The House of Saud, now headed by Mohammed bin Salman, is the wealthiest at $1.4 trillion. No wonder we are so deferential to him. But here is that clip about QEII:

Next, the story of BLT:

They lived together as brothers for 15 years, but Leo the lion died in 2016 and Shere Khan the tiger in 2018. You can still visit Baloo the bear at Noah's Ark Animal Sanctuary in Locust Grove, Georgia. He weighs 800 pounds and likes Tootsie Pop and Oreos. You know, I always thought the male lion had an impressive mane of hair around the neck. I guess not.

BTS just released Butter. Watch it hit #1 on Billboard. Already, there have been 137 million You Tube views. Maybe not for most of you, but you gotta admit it's more bearable than Gangnam Style of nearly a decade ago, which has now received more than 4 billion pings.

Comments

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These a...

OSAKA EXPO: Day One

Well, the day finally came for us to go to the Osaka Expo. We were told ahead of time that the long walks would be fearful, giant lines will need to be tolerated just to get into the Expo, with those ocean breezes, it would really be cold, and so forth. Maybe it was pure luck, but we avoided all the above warnings We had a grand day, and are looking forward to Sunday, our second day at the Expo. So come along for an enjoyable ride. Our hotel is adjacent to the Tennoji Station, a very large one with several lines. We upgraded our Suica card and caught the Misosuji red line towards Umeda. Transferred to the Chuo green line at the Hommachi Station. This Osaka Metro train took us to the Yumeshima Station at the Expo site. It was a very large mob leaving the train and heading to the entrance. Took only a few minutes to get to the entrance. This mob was multiplied by at least a factor of ten of those already waiting to enter. However...

WHY YOU SHOULD CONVERT TO A JAPANESE HIGH TECH TOILET

Did you know that Oktoberfest in Germany is mostly in September? The very first day of Oktoberfest 2021 was supposed to be today, September 18, extending into October 3. Well, as in 2020, Oktoberfest was cancelled. So why is it called by that month when it is held mostly in September? The first celebration in 1810 was in October. Did you also know that Oktoberfest is held only in Munich? These days seven million drink more than a liter ( about three typical cans ) of beer each, costing around $11. Except for my wife and I when we followed the crowd to board the S-Bahn to the fairgrounds near Old Town. It was drizzling a bit. We bought a large pretzel outside of a typical barn where beer is served. We did not know that you needed to get this inside the hall. So no one came to serve us beer. After a while we decided to have lunch, and the restaurant we settled on only served wine. Thus, we might have been the ...

Search This Blog