Who gives a horses ass? Caesar lives on even now.


The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4'8.5".
That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because
that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built
the US Railroads.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines
were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and
that's the gauge they used. Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because
the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they
used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well,
if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would tend to break
apart on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the
spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads? Why old
Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England)
for their legions. And some of those roads have been in use ever since.

And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts,
which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels.
Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the
matter of wheel spacing.

The United States standard railroad gauge of 4'8.5" is derived from the
original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies
live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder
what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the
Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the
back ends of two war horses.

Now the twist to the story. When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on it's
launch pad, there are two big Solid Fuel Booster rockets attached to the
sides of the main fuel tank. These are the SRBs. The SRBs are made by
Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would
have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by
train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the
factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to
fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is somewhat wider than the railroad
track, and the track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably one of the world's
most advanced transportation systems was determined over two thousand years
ago by the width of a horse's ass.....

And you thought that being a "HORSE'S ASS" wasn't important!

Ziggy

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> And you thought that being a "HORSE'S ASS" wasn't important!
>
> Ziggy
>

My ex-wife thinks she is important!!!

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I'd rather speak my mind because it hurts too much to bite my tongue.

American Spirit BBQ Proudly Serving those that courageously defend freedom.

> Who gives a horses ass? Caesar lives on even now.


GreaT StorY!!!

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