Pass the plate.

On this day in 1730 Josiah Wedgwood was born. An English potter, he is perhaps best known for "jasper ware", the blue and white pottery that instantly identifies English pottery around the world. Started in 1774 it is still being made today.

Early in his career he met and became friends with Erasmus Darwin and when long time business associate Thomas Bentley died, he asked Erasmus to come on board. Josiah's daughter wound up marrying Erasmus's son and they had, amongst other children, you guessed it, Charles Darwin.

Video game frenzy.

Its so hot today I just had to take a time out. Plans were for a piece on a notable leader who had embarassed himself. Instead I went looking for really bad video games. A while back I wrote a bit about how many lines of programming it takes to create a real simple program, so it floors me to know how much time and sweat went into these stinkers. They were all bad for various reasons, and I'm sure some may have been a favourite of yours at one time in 1989 or something. What is incredible is that someone thought they had a hit.

In no particular order, how about JumpMan for the Commodore 64, PC and Apple 2? The character simply jumped.

Or Wild Woody for the Sega, about a pencil that throws dynamite.

Nintendo's Princess Tomato in Salad Kingdom.

Um Jammer Lammy. A psychedic guitar playing lamb.

70's Robot Anime Geppy-X: The Super Boosted Armour. What?

Ninja Hamster. The game package has a hamster that looks kinda Hitler-ish. Just too odd.

And, I'm sorry, Lee Trevino's Fighting Golf.

I just have to stop.

For a look at these and over 40 other treasures check out http://www.gamerevolution.com/feature/worst_names

Money troubles.

I'm starting a new section called "Back to Front" where I dig up and examine stuff that we seem to feel are part of our time and history, when, in fact, they came from a while ago.

So here's a quick look at the Secret Service. I must admit I got onto this upon seeing a picture in Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples of President Abraham Lincoln with a Secret Service agent, Allan Pinkerton. The caption states that the year is 1862, when many other sources say Lincoln established the USSS in 1865. Doesn't matter. Pinkerton looks dogged and observant.

Initially the Seccert Service was charged with eliminating the vast amount of countefeit money that was circulating in the US. This was compounded by the states issuing their own currencies through many different banks. There were hundreds of kinds of ways to pay for things and this just made it so much easier for the bogus bills to proliferate. In 1865 some estimates show one third of the money in circulation was fake.

As history is rife with irony, the USSS was not charged with the protection of the president. In fact Lincoln was assassinated the night of the very day he formed the service. Two more presidents were assassinated (Garfield and McKinley) before the duty was assigned to them in 1901.

Here we go again.

The Russians have had big cannons and big trains. Neither of which worked a damn, or at all. So I am not surprised that they built and tested an ekranoplan, or Ground Effects Vehicle. In simpler terms it's a huge plane with stubby wings that flies about 20 feet off the water at high speed.

I may not have the engineering down, but Russian scientists discovered that airplane wings had peculiar lift qualities at very low altitudes. In fact they discovered that wings can lift more at low altitude because air is trapped between the surface and the wings. And, here comes that love of real big dangerous machines again, the bigger the wing, the bigger the lift.

Russian aviators, like their engineering cousins of yore created a craft that was over 100 metres long, 40 metres wide and powered by 10 jet engines. Take that down to your Town Pantry Chevron for a fill up and scrape the bugs off the windshield. Not surprisingly when mortals tinker with big and loud they get hurt. One of the babies crashed in the early 80's as a result of NOT ENOUGH POWER to safely lift it off the surface of the water.

The Americans, never one to miss a chance at jumping at quality intelliegence, dubbed the soviet ekranoplan, when having been scratching their heads over what they were looking at in U2 photographs, the Caspian Sea Monster.

Give em enough time and money . . .

So this time I just have to get into the 20th century and find a machine worthy of my scrutiny. There are many worthy contenders, but I'm going to start working on the pile with this magnificent machine, the Convair F2Y Sea Dart.

The idea was a seaplane / fighter aircraft hybrid. Not a bad concept, but this thing flew supersonic, and remains the only seaplane to exceed the speed of sound. I live on the coast and have flown in and seen many seaplanes. It is truly unbelievable that this plane flew and was somehow quite safe given the conditions seaplane fly under.

It actually sat in the water, the fuselage acting as a boat, with the wingtips touching the surface. There were two retractable skis that popped out once the plane was moving. The jet engine air intakes were thoughtfully mounted as far away from the water as possible.

Intitial tests were with low power engines and the plane never did much, although it did fly a bit. No one liked the tremendous shaking on takeoff and landing that the skis produced either. No matter what, it could not break the sound barrier with these engines. Once proper engines were fitted it went supersonic once, but fell apart during aerial demonstrations killing the test pilot.

The truly odd thing is that after such a crappy start the navy actually thought of carrying these things around in a submarine and launching them out of doors behind the conning tower.

And oh yeah, I forgot to mention, did you know that Goodyear made something called the XAO-3 Inflatoplane?

What's that really bright light?

July 4, 1054. Way before the first rockets lit up the Independance Day skies, something was going on up there. First recorded by Chinese astronomers, Supernova 1054, (what was to be called the Crab Nebula), showed up in the heavens. According to records it was damn bright. It was easily visible during the day for weeks and remained in the sky for a total of nearly 2 years altogether.

For a slightly technical but none the less engaging report on this check out this SEDS article:http://www.seds.org/messier/more/m001_sn.html

Really big shoe (in the mouth)

Never one to shy away from anything big; noises, smoke and smells, I couln't pass up at least one miltary shit storm. This one begs to be examined closer: The Battle of Karansebes. It's a little tough to dig up a lot of facts on so hang with me a bit, have faith.

Sometime in the fall of 1788, the Austrians were at war with the Ottomans. The Austrian army comprised about 100, 000 soldiers. Seems some of the scouts headed out to see where the enemy was and instead found some locals who were quite willing to part with some liquor. They had been walking all day and were very thirsty, and in the absense of someone to shoot at they got drunk.

As the day wore on the rest of the Austrian army caught up with the scouts, now with a good glow on, and asked them nicely to share. Fearing they might sober up and have to fight the enemy, they chose to sharpen their skills instead on there brothers.

What really happened, of course , there was one shot in the air that scared the real crap out of the soldiers. The ensuing runnning and yelling was just gas on the fire. In the confusion shouts were mistakenly interpreted. Cries of "the Ottomans are coming! struck fear into their hearts. To make matters even muddier, the army was composed of Italians, Slavs and regular Austrians of varying dialects, and . . . a few other nationalities just for fun, all of whom had just moments earlier been arguing over fair liquor rations for all.

The poor Austrian officers tried to restore order but that ended in more confusion. Their shouts were mistakenly understood to identify THEM as the Ottomans. Would someone just dish up an Ottoman?

Everyone went screaming through the woods and eventually got the whole army running around shooting at imaginary enemies.