Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

May 2, 1933: the first modern-day sighting of the Loch Ness Monster was reported in the Scottish Highlands. The Royal Navy would later claim that the sighting and all those that followed were due to strings of horned mines. The dummy mines had been moored to the bottom of Loch Ness during a WWI experiment but began to break free and float to the surface in the 1930s.




A fond look back at the 42nd Street Movie Center (Known as the "Deuce"), from the mid 1960's through the mid 1980's. A magical, bizarre and seedy entertainment center, stretching from 42nd Street into Times Square.



Relive it for 5 minutes:




On May 2, 1968 then-real estate mogul Lawrence Wien, the owner of the Empire State Building as well as other engineers and commercial landmark owners took out a full page ad in the NY Times warning that the World Trade Center could have catastrophic ramifications and headlined it as the following...




May 2, 1982: The Argentine light cruiser, General Belgrano, was sunk by British nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror (S48) during the Falklands War: 323 died, making up just over half of all Argentine military deaths in the conflict. The Argentine Navy claimed it was hit outside an exclusion zone.


Daily Mail

This was the first time a Royal Navy submarine flew a Roger since World War II. Flying the Jolly Roger is also a tradition in US silent service, but does not necessarily mean it sunk a ship. The only nuclear submarine ever to sink an enemy warship.

HMS Conqueror was decommissioned in 1990 and the periscopes, captain's cabin and main control panel from the submarine's control room are on display in the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport. As of 2019, Conqueror is one of 20 nuclear submarines still held in storage by the Ministry of Defence, awaiting final disposal.



May 2, 1982: The Weather Channel 24 hour live cable network launched. The channel originally focused just on providing weather reports and other meteorological information. Wow, what a concept! Prior to the Internet, it was all about getting more cable subscribers.


Screencaps from The Weather Channel Inaugural telecast on May 2, 1982, with smooth jazz playing in the background:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZHIhAIGDY8

Their slogan 1982–1983: "We Take the Weather Seriously, but Not Ourselves". By second half of 1983 it changed to: "The Cable Television Network for America's Lifestyle" and many other slogans down through the years to 2024-present: "Be a force of nature". The graphics got better but the data went into a centrifuge of marketing fluff & drama fest entertainment.

The Weather Channel co-founder was John Coleman (1934-2018), a long time meteorologist anchorman who fiercely opposed the global warming/climate change nonsense. Primarily, he championed skepticism about the human role in causing climate change.

Weather: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) from Oct 13, 2019, starting at 7:00 min mark about naming winter storms is a bad idea and other really good points on "marketing" weather data.



Archived at Ghostarchive.

In August 2023, it was announced that IBM was selling The Weather Company (parent company of the Weather Channel) and its assets to the Francisco Partners. An American private equity firm focused exclusively on investments in technology and technology-enabled services businesses with offices in San Francisco, NYC, and London. As a part of the deal, IBM will retain the company's weather data which it uses to power AI models to sell its enterprise clients for NASA. Meanwhile, the plebes get AI entertainment.


May 2, 2011: Osama bin Laden (aged 54), the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on the USA, was shot dead in his home in Abbottabad,  Pakistan by Navy SEALs of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group. The operation was code-named Operation Neptune Spear. (I'll skip the controversy over that 'operation') The CIA has a whole reading room archive named "Abbottabad" for your reading pleasure.




Today is Baby Day. Navy tradition allows for sailors to have their babies baptized in their ship's bell. The name of the baby is then engraved inside the bell as a permanent record.


I was already long off the ship when my first was born so did not do this tradition. Instead, it happened here...




We didn't need that bridge either...


Tractor-trailer carrying thousands of gallons of gasoline explodes into massive inferno