Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Happy National Waterpark Day! For a brief period in 1967 during the Vietnam War, USS New Jersey (BB-62) had two swimming pools on the deck. After the battleship's 40mm guns were removed during a refit, the captain had the empty tubs painted blue and filled with water to boost morale. It was reported that Russian Bear aircraft flying overhead wondering what these strange capitalist devices were for.






New Braunfels, Texas has the most spectacular waterpark in the Country, the Schlitterbahn, opened in 1979.

55 Campgrounds And RV Parks With Exceptional Water Attractions


July 28, 1945: at 9:40am a U.S. Army B-25D Mitchell bomber crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building while flying in thick fog. Despite initial headlines the final tally was 14 killed; 3 crewmen and 11 people in the building. The building's structural integrity was not compromised.



The impact hit the offices of the War Relief Services and the National Catholic Welfare Council. One engine shot through the south side opposite the impact, flew as far as the next block, dropped 900 feet (270 m), landed on the roof of a nearby building and caused a fire that destroyed a warehouse. The other engine and part of the landing gear fell down an elevator shaft, severing its cables. The resulting fire was extinguished in 40 minutes.

Here's some impressive silent footage showing the fire fighters battling the art studio/warehouse blaze and second half showing inside and around the Empire State Building.

Eight months after the crash, the U.S. government offered money to families of the victims. Some accepted, but others initiated a lawsuit that resulted in landmark legislation. The Federal Tort Claims Act of 1946, for the first time, gave American citizens the right to sue the federal government.

As a result of this bomber crash, 20-year old Betty Lou Oliver an elevator operator, survived a plunge of 75 stories (over 300 m or 1,000 ft) in an elevator in the Empire State Building. When the plane hit the building, Betty was badly burned having been blown from her position on the 80th floor. Once she received first aid treatment for her injuries, she was put into another supposedly safe elevator in order to meet an ambulance waiting at the bottom.

Unbeknown to rescue workers, the safety cables of Betty's elevator had been cut when the plane penetrated the elevator shaft at the 78th-79th floor. Witnesses heard what sounded like a gunshot as the cables snapped on her decent. By freak coincidence, if the safety cables had worked as they should, the car would have automatically stopped at the 34th and 35th floors which were known as blind hatches (meaning that there are no escape doors in the hatch), and would have entailed rescue workers breaking through time-consuming layers of marble and concrete to retrieve her.

Once the cables snapped, the elevator car went into freefall and in a matter of seconds the car had crashed to the basement. Fortunately, the impact was cushioned by the broken cables which piled in a spring-like spiral on the floor of the shaft. It is also thought that the narrow lift shaft served as a compressor for the air and therefore softened the blow. Despite the far corner of the elevator where Betty was standing, the entire car was filled with steel, bricks and parts from the airplane and she had to be cut from the mangled wreckage. Rescue workers who eventually got to Betty said that it was a miracle she was alive!! Wow, cheated death TWICE in the span of minutes and lived another 54 years. She had guardian angels with her that day. The freefall elevator record still holds today.


It took her eight months to recover fully and just to make matters worse, July 28 was supposed to be her last day on the job. The story truly is like something from a clichéd Hollywood script. Just five months later while still recovering, Betty returned to the scene with an elevator inspector who was astonished at her ‘guts’ for agreeing to travel in an elevator after her ordeal.

Betty was married at the time of the accident, and once she recovered eight months later, she returned to Fort Smith in Arizona to live with her husband, Oscar Lee. Despite suffering horrific injuries, we’re not aware if it had any long-term physical or psychological injuries because Betty stayed off the radar completely once she went back to Arizona.

What we know is that she had three children with Oscar Lee and a total of seven grandchildren. Her husband died in 1986, and according to her obituary, Betty died in Fort Smith, Arizona on November 24, 1999. She was 74 years of age.

This Woman Cheated Death Twice on the Same Day After a 1945 Disaster

If interested here's a better more detailed story on those involved & the "Sunshine Girl":
A Coast Guardsman’s Heroism at the Empire State Building


July 28, 1945: the destroyer USS Callaghan (DD-792) sank near Okinawa with the loss of 47 members of her crew after a kamikaze smashed into the starboard side. The Callaghan was the last of almost 50 Allied ships sunk by suicide attacks during the war.




The Fleet That Came To Stay (July 1945)
Director Budd Boetticher put together this short docu of World War II's Battle of Okinawa from footage shot by Navy cameramen in the thick of the fighting. War correspondent Ernie Pyle makes a brief appearance, only weeks before he was killed on an island near Okinawa.



Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmaMFpVa6LI


Psychiatrist Dr. Gregory Mannix (Dick Shawn) has an interesting mix of magazines in his office... PENELOPE (1966) starring Natalie Wood.




I'm starting to think that intellectuals without practical skills or common sense or real world experience is the cause for the collapse of civilization. Thinking again of the interpretation of 1984 that the real world setting is relatively normal except for Britain which independently decided to do that to itself. Actually, it's just London that's a mess driven by the City of London.

Something similar is said about Lord of the Flies. It wasn't just about any boys descending into savagery attempting to govern themselves, but specifically privileged British public schoolboys. Probably also applies to Brave New World, V for Vendetta, Children of Men... most memorable dystopias come from Britain.





Comics from Batman and the Outsiders Annual #1 (1984). Blunt as a brick but for a 40 year old Batman comic, it gets the job done. You can read it here.


Spoiled, eh


He forgot to mention the smell. Sort of like living inside a wet sneaker.
Oh, and when the outlet for venting the air used to push out the sewage tanks comes into your rack, right over your head?

Fantastic.

All layered on top of the usual submarine smells. Cooking grease, atmospheric control amines (for air quality), Lube oil, 5 minutes in the engine room and you smell like oil for a week. Diesel fuel and exhaust. Ozone. Body odor. And the aforementioned sewage.

You can tell the atmo is bad when you first open the hatch and take a breath of fresh sea air, and it smells HORRIBLE until your nose can adjust. And clothes you wore or stored on the boat? When you get home, burn them and bury the ashes, because that submarine smell will never leave the fabric no matter how many times you wash it.

DEEP * SILENT * FAST * DEADLY * SMELLY

U.S. SUBMARINE FORCE!


One of The Four Tomahawkalypse surfaces down under...


Guided Missile Submarine USS Ohio Spotted in Australia

USS Ohio (SSGN 726), the longest-serving submarine in US Navy history, 1981-to-present. Max capacity = 154 Tomahawks, capable of firing all within 6 minutes. #1 of The Four Tomahawkalypse.


UK No.1 on this day in 1979: The Boomtown Rats - I Don't Like Mondays