onilkleymoorbaht

cold topic, surely

The Grand Scuttle: The Sinking of the German Fleet at Scapa Flow in 1919. Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1982. EDIT: Here's a fairly well sourced on-line reference http://atschool.eduweb.co.uk/jralston/rk/s...y/backgrnd.html There are also samples from the Fleet at the N.P.L. which are used to calibrate gieger counters. Also ... The scrapman who bought the Fleet for a pittance in the 1920's pioneered many of the standard salvage techniques which are still used to-day.

That's your choice, but it's true!

Here's an interesting fact: believe it or not, there are parts of Kaiser Bill's Grand Fleet on the moon! Here's how: It's the end of WWI. The German Fleet is being held at Scapa Flow. Weeks pass and the Commanding Officer of the Fleet begins to suspect that Britain is not going to let Germany keep their ships. One night he sends a coded message to each of his captains and together they scupper the entire fleet. In 1945. America explodes two nuclear weapons above mainland Japan. This results in a vast amounts of radiation being spread through out the atmosphere. Now making steel uses huge amounts of atmospheric oxygen which is now contaminated with radiation. Every single bit of steel made post Nagasaki has loads of radio activity in it. 1967: America is on it's way to the moon....they are going to conduct a lot of radioactivty sensitive experiments. But hold on! we need non radioactive steel ... otherwise the experiments won't work! where on earth can we get loads of non radioactive steel? "Hello! Scapa Flow? this is Houston, we understand you have an awful lot of non radioactive steel just a few feet under water?" And so it was that several ships of The Grand Fleet were bought to the surface and made their way to the US where their metal was used to make all of the experiments the Apollo mission deployed on the Moon. Another marvellous thing? the same ship's metal was used to make the 2 pioneer probes which have now both left the Solar System and are drifting off gently into the universe. The furthest any World War One battle ships have ever travelled!

Thanks. I guess that's yet another way of saying it. I'm guessing that the owner didn't benefit from a classical education. It's worth noting just how much a business' name can influence its performance; I remember reading not too long ago, that one of the contributory factors leading to the demise of Ciro Citterio, was that no-one, including its own staff, could decide on how its name should be pronounced!

(First post here btw) Can anyone tell me how you pronounce the name of the clothes shop on the Front Street, it's called 'Tyche'. I've asked three people so far to-day, and have got three different answers!!