Today, our cruise on the Queen Mary 2 from Southampton to New York City, actually, Brooklyn.  A few things about Cunard. Has been sailing for 184 years.   Founded by Sir Samuel  Cunard  to provide transatlantic service in 1840 with the Britannia He was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1787.  His father fled the American Revolution because he was a Loyalist to the British Crown. By 1900, Cunard advertised their ships as floating palaces, and shared design features similar to The Ritz. Lusitania and Mauretania had revolutionary steam engines, where the first ship to shore by Marconi wireless transmission was made on them. The Lusitania was sunk by a German-U-boat killing 1195 people in 1915, leading to the U.S. joining World War I. When the Titanic sank in 1912, Cunard's Carpathia arrived to rescue the survivors. In the late 20's/30's, Cunard got loan guarantees from the British government, merged with its rival White Star Line and launched the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth.

  Well,   Barbenheimer   was boffo.   It’s also the first time that one movie opened to more than $100 million and another movie opened to more than $80 million in the same weekend. When all is settled, it will likely turn out to be the fourth biggest box office weekend of all time with over $300 million industry wide. We're avoiding crowds and paying less by going to this double-bill tomorrow. Cruise ships are getting larger and larger.  From  Wikipedia : In the two decades between 1988 and 2009, the largest cruise ships grew a third longer (268 m to 360 m), almost doubled their widths (32.2 m to 60.5 m), doubled the total passengers (2,744 to 5,400), and tripled in volume (73,000 GT to 225,000 GT) .    As of January 2022 , the largest cruise ship,   Wonder of the Seas , has a gross tonnage of 236,857, is 362 metres (1,188 ft) long, 64 metres (210 ft) wide, and holds up to 6,988 passengers. [6] [7] Now, the biggest one of all-time, having five times the tonnage of the Titanic--whi